IAF's C-17 aircraft with over 120 Indian diplomats from Kabul lands in Delhi

According to news agency PTI, the Gujarat government said that PM Modi is “personally looking after the evacuation of Indian nationals and officials stranded in Afghanistan”. A video tweeted by news agency ANI showed those airlifted inside a bus and shouting “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Vande Mataram”.

Published on: Aug 17, 2021, 14:40:17 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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More than 100 diplomats, including Indian ambassador to Afghanistan Rudrendra Tandon, officials and journalists evacuated from Kabul in Afghanistan on Tuesday reached New Delhi at 1.30pm after a stopover at Gujarat’s Jamnagar, an official said. The C-17 aircraft carrying the second batch of Indians first touched down at the IAF airbase at Jamnagar at 11:15am, the officials added. “Your welcome has an impact on all of us. Thank you to the Indian Air Force who flew us out under conditions that are not normal,” Tandon was quoted as saying by news agency ANI after landing at Jamnagar.

Indian diplomats and Indian journalists are seen inside the C17 Globemaster before it took off from the Kabul airport. (MEA Photo)

A video tweeted by news agency ANI later showed those airlifted inside a bus and shouting “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Vande Mataram”. Their evacuation came after 24-hour-long negotiations.

“Those who were aboard the aircraft will be given lunch and taken to their destinations,” Gujarat minister of state for food and civil supply Dharmendrasinh Jadeja said, according to news agency PTI. Jadeja and Jamnagar mayor reached the Jamnagar airbase before the plane landed.

PTI reported that the Gujarat government said in a release that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “personally looking after the evacuation of Indian nationals and officials stranded in Afghanistan” after the Taliban took over the war-ravaged country.

The IAF aircraft flew from the Hamid Karzai International Airport around 8am Kabul time with the help of US forces manning the air traffic control. India is now waiting for US forces to allow civilian flights to Kabul for further evacuation. The first batch of Indians came on Sunday via an Air India flight.

With no chain of command in Kabul, the Indian ministry of external affairs (MEA) and security officials started bringing evacuees to the Kabul airport from Monday as negotiations were undertaken with sundry Taliban and other terrorist groups manning the 15 check posts from the Indian mission in Kabul to the international airport. India apparently had kept two C-17s on stand-by so that officials could be evacuated as soon as the US manned ATC gave a green signal.

According to sources based in Kabul, it was part of the withdrawal deal that the Turkish forces would man the HKI airport but Ankara withdrew at the very last minute leading to utter confusion. With all local staff abandoning the ATC and other positions and illiterate Taliban having no idea about manning the air traffic services, it was left to the US to take control.

It was due to the ensuing chaos that led to the death of desperate Afghans at the HKI airport as the civilians feared for their life and limb at the hands of the Taliban. It was only after this that the US decided to stop civilian flights from Kabul on Monday and decided to only allow military flights. Other Indians will be evacuated from Afghanistan after the HKI airport is opened to civilian flights.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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