Military evacuation flights resume, total anarchy in Kabul

That a large section of Kabulites want to be evacuated is also a reflection on the popularity of the those who according to Pakistan PM delivered Afghanistan from 20 years of slavery.

Published on: Aug 16, 2021, 23:11:13 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi, Hindustan Times

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Military evacuation flights have resumed from Kabul airport even as anarchy reigns supreme in the Afghan capital with assorted insurgent and extremists group setting up check posts enroute to the airport and all evacuees at the mercy of the sundry Islamists.

Hundreds of people run alongside a US Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday, (AP)

While India is awaiting its turn to evacuate its diplomats and key people, reports from Kabul indicate utter chaos with the Taliban cadre firing bullets to even regulate traffic and with no government to enforce the law. “The Taliban is trying to tell everyone that they will not take retaliatory or vengeful measures against anyone but the public is not convinced. To add to their fears, the Taliban is going door to door in Kabul with a list of government officials and journalists who wrote or spoke against them in the past,” said a civilian on phone from Kabul.

After the mayhem at the Kabul international airport earlier on Monday, the US have taken control of the Air Traffic Control and technical area and are only allowing military flights to evacuate people with hundreds of Afghans waiting at the tarmac for their turn. The mood is very grim in Kabul with majority Afghans blaming the US forces for abandoning them to the extremists.

Also read | After Taliban take over Afghanistan, countries urge for protection of human life

However, diplomats in Kabul blame British Army Chief Nick Carter for blindsiding the US and cutting out a bad deal with the Taliban, leading to the ensuing chaos. The Chinese, Pakistanis and Russians, on their part, are enjoying their schadenfreude moment at the cost of the Joe Biden administration. It is another matter that the first decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan was taken by then President Barack Obama (Joe Biden was his Vice President) in June 22, 2011, speech on surge and then withdrawal of troops by 2014.

According to Kabul watchers, the situation in Afghan capital is extremely precarious with sundry extremist and terrorist groups affiliated to so-called Islamic state, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Tayebba (LeT) setting up road-blocks all over the city and making outlandish demands on hapless commuters. That a large section of Kabulites want to be evacuated is also a reflection on the popularity of the those who according to Pakistan PM delivered Afghanistan from 20 years of slavery.

Also read | The turn in Afghanistan will threaten Indian security

It appears from chaos in Kabul that even Taliban has various chapters with each group reporting to a different leader or group. While the name of Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader is being pushed for President of Emirate of Afghanistan, the decision on who will be the religious leader is still not clear with idealogue Haibatullah Akhundzada and Mullah Yaqoob, son of last Ameer-ul-Momeen Mullah Omar, in contention along with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the most-dreaded Haqqani network terrorist group.

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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