Evacuation Havoc in Kabul: Will People Beat The 31 August Deadline?

ALBAWABA – Its havoc down in Kabul airport. With US president Joe Biden refusing to push back the 31 August date, people, foreigners and Afghanis, are scrambling to the Hamid Karzai Airport in a bid to find a flight to get them out of the country in fear of the Taliban rulers.

Its chaos with people literally on top of each other, inside and outside, the airport compound in desperate hope they can leave anywhere!

Western countries like Britain, France and Germany are pleading with Biden to extend the airlift but the White House is refusing saying US troop pullout must be finalized on that day because of the deteriorating security situation.

How will they manage that is anyone’s guess? But all fingers are crossed.

So far reports suggest that 70,000 people have been flown out of the country since 14 August when the Taliban took over the presidential palace in Kabul.

Only recently 20,000 Afghans – mostly those who worked with the western forces – have been airlifted out of the country.

Some Afghanis are also going to Uganda to beat the 31st August deadline.

But the Taliban has just a put a check on that; no more could leave. Meanwhile, the airlifting goes on till the end of the month.

The Taliban has said they will not approve an airlift extension but how that will that be played out nobody is quite sure especially since the Americans still have over 6500 troops in Afghanistan in addition to their military hardware that need to be lifted out of the country.