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Flight with civilians onboard leaves Kabul, first since chaotic evacuation

2021-09-10 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-亚洲原网页

ISLAMABAD (REUTERS) - The first international commercial flight since the end of the chaotic Western airlift from Afghanistan last month took off from Kabul airport on Thursday (Sept 9) with more than 100 passengers on board, officials said.

“We managed to fly the first plane with passengers just an hour ago,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in Islamabad, thanking Afghanistan’s new Taliban leaders for helping reopen the airport.

About 113 passengers were on board, including US, Canadian, Ukrainian, German, and British citizens, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

They will land in Doha and head to a compound currently hosting Afghan and other evacuees. They were transported to the airport in a Qatari convoy after Qatar worked with parties on the ground to secure safe passage, the source said.

Although international flights have gone in and out with officials, technicians and aid in recent days, this was the first such civilian flight since the evacuation which followed the Taliban’s seizure of the capital on Aug 15 as foreign military forces pulled out.

It marked an important step in the Islamist militant group’s efforts to bring some kind of normality back to the country, which is facing economic collapse and a humanitarian crisis.

The Qatar Airways plane had arrived in Kabul earlier on Thursday carrying aid, it said Al Jazeera television reported.

A US official had said 200 foreigners in Afghanistan, Americans among them, were set to depart on charter flights from Kabul on Thursday after the Taliban agreed to their evacuation.

Qatari and Turkish technical teams helped restore operations at the airport, from where 124,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans were evacuated by US-led forces in the fraught days after the Taliban takeover.

Qatari special envoy Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani described Thursday’s flight out as a regular one and not an evacuation.

There would also be a flight on Friday, he said.

“Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” al-Qahtani said from the tarmac, quoted by Al Jazeera.

“Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan.”

Taliban fighters walk past a Qatar Airways aircraft preparing to take off from the airport in Kabul on Sept 9, 2021. PHOTO: AFP

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In Washington, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that as of Wednesday about 100 US citizens were still in Afghanistan but that not all necessarily wanted to leave now.

Some may have family in the country or other reasons for not departing yet, she said.

The flight came two days after the Taliban announced an interim government made up of mainly ethnic Pashtun men, including Islamist hardliners and some wanted by the United States on terrorism charges.

All men

Foreign countries greeted the formation of the new government with caution and dismay, seeing it as a signal the Taliban would not try to broaden their base and show a more tolerant face as they had suggested they would do.

All of the ministers are men, and nearly all Pashtuns, the ethnic group that predominates in the Taliban’s southern Afghan heartland but accounts for under half the country’s population.

The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, women and girls were banned from work and education. The group carried out public executions and its religious police enforced a radical interpretation of Islamic law.

That Taliban government was ousted by a US-led intervention following the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States masterminded by Al-Qaeda leaders based in Afghanistan, and 20 years of warfare followed.

The Taliban took power again with a swift offensive as US troops withdrew under a deal between Washington and the Taliban.

The new Taliban leaders have pledged to respect rights in line with Islamic law, but have yet to provide details. Afghans who won more freedoms in the past two decades fear losing them.

Afghan journalists say they were beaten by Taliban

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A newspaper editor said two of his journalists were beaten in police custody this week after covering a protest by women in Kabul where they were detained by the Taliban.

Zaki Daryabi, founder and editor-in-chief of the Etilaat Roz newspaper, shared images on social media of two male reporters, one with large, red welts across his lower back and legs and the other with similar marks on his shoulder and arm.

Both men’s faces were also bruised and cut in the pictures, which were verified by Reuters.

Pakistani role

A Taliban minister said any attack on journalists would be investigated. But protests were being curtailed because there was a security threat from Islamic State fighters, he said.

Many critics called on the leadership to respect basic human rights and revive the economy, which faces collapse amid steep inflation and food shortages.

The Taliban government wanted to engage with regional and Western governments and work with international aid organisations, the Taliban minister said.

But White House spokeswoman Psaki said no one in the Biden administration “would suggest that the Taliban are respected and valued members of the global community”.

People aboard the first international commercial flight out of Kabul since the US withdrawal arrive at Hamad International Airport in Qatar's capital Doha. PHOTO: AFP

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Analysts said the make-up of the Cabinet could hamper recognition by the West. The interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is wanted by the United States on terrorism charges and carries a reward of US$10 million (S$13 million), while his uncle, with a bounty of US$5 million, is the minister for refugees and repatriation.

US Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns discussed Afghanistan in talks in Pakistan with army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and military intelligence head Lieutenant-General Faiz Hameed, Pakistan’s military said.

Afghanistan’s ousted US-backed government accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban. While officially denying that, Pakistan has long seen the Taliban as its best option for curbing the influence of old rival India in Afghanistan.

In Islamabad, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the immediate challenge was to avoid a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

“To save lives and the people of Afghanistan, there should be no strings attached,” he said.

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