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Afghans plea for faster US evacuation from Taliban rule

Published:Wednesday | August 18, 2021 | 4:36 PM
This satellite photo provided by Planet Labs Inc. shows vehicles trying to reach the civilian side of Kabul International Airport, also known as Hamid Karzai International Airport, Wednesday, August 18, 2021. The Pentagon said Tuesday that US commanders are communicating with the Taliban as they work to evacuate thousands of people through the airport. The Taliban cleared the civilian side of the airport Tuesday and control access to it. (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Educated young women, former US military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled on Wednesday to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport.

Afghans in danger because of their work with the American military, and Americans scrambling to get them out, also pleaded with Washington to cut the red tape that they say could strand thousands of vulnerable Afghans if US forces withdraw as planned in the coming days.

“If we don't sort this out, we'll literally be condemning people to death,” said Marina Kielpinski LeGree, the American head of a nonprofit, Ascend.

The organisation's young Afghan female colleagues were in the mass of people waiting for flights at the airport in the wake of days of tear gas and gunshots.

The US has rushed in troops, transport planes and commanders to secure the airport, seek Taliban guarantees of safe passage, and ramp up an airlift capable of ferrying between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman described an all-out effort by US officials to get Afghans and allies to safety.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck effort and we're aren't going to let up,” Sherman said at a State Department news conference.

But Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin sounded a grimmer note. “We don't have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Austin told reporters, adding that evacuations would continue “until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”

Taliban fighters and checkpoints ringed the airport — barriers for Afghans who fear that their past work with Westerners makes them prime targets of the insurgents.

Afghans who made it past the Taliban reached Americans guarding the airport complex and thrust documents at some of the 4,500 US troops in temporary control.

One of the last windows of escape from Taliban threatens to close when President Joe Biden's planned pullout by August  31 is complete.

Hundreds of Afghans who lacked any papers or promises of flights also congregated at the airport, adding to the chaos.

It didn't help that many of the Taliban fighters were illiterate, and cannot read the documents.

U.S. officials say they have evacuated 4,480 people since they took control of the airport over the weekend.

The turmoil there has seen Afghans rush the tarmac.

In one instance, some apparently fell to their death while clinging to a departing American C-17 transport plane.

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