Afghanistan: foreign nationals will leave Kabul – archyde

Ten days after the departure of American troops, some 200 foreign nationals, including Americans, still present in Afghanistan, are expected to leave the country on Thursday, September 9, aboard a Qatar Airways aircraft taking off from Kabul airport .

Images broadcast on Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera show women and children among those awaiting evacuation at Kabul airport. “We are very grateful to the Qataris”, one of the passengers posing as Canadian told Al-Jazeera.

New transfer scheduled for Friday

On the tarmac at Kabul airport, Mutlaq Bin Majed Al-Qahtani, Qatari special envoy, said “Call it what you want – a charter flight or a commercial flight –, everyone has tickets and boarding passes ”he said, adding that another commercial flight would take off on Friday. “Hopefully, life becomes normal in Afghanistan. “

Qatar has become a key player in the Afghan crisis. It hosted the negotiations concluded in 2020 between Donald Trump’s United States and the Taliban, then between the latter and the Afghan opposition of the now deposed president, Ashraf Ghani.

Washington calls on the Taliban to gain legitimacy

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday warned the new Taliban government that it should ” to win “ its legitimacy with the international community. He assured that the United States would do “Everything in their power” to resume evacuation flights from Afghanistan. He also accused the Taliban of preventing planes from taking off on the pretext that some passengers did not have legal travel documents.

The United States estimates that a hundred American citizens remain to be exfiltrated from Afghanistan, but also thousands of former collaborators of the American army who fear reprisals from the Taliban. The United States evacuated some 123,000 people, mostly Afghans.