In this Aug. 24, 2021 photo, a Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-130 transport plane is seen before its departure from the ASDF's Iruma base in Saitama Prefecture, on a mission to evacuate Japanese nationals and locals working at Japanese organizations from Afghanistan. (Mainichi/Hiroshi Maruyama)

       "Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended," United States President Joe Biden declared in a statement released on Aug. 30. The U.S. military's pullout from Afghanistan took place amid chaos in which at least 120,000 Americans and others rushed to evacuate out of the country from mid-August onward. Other countries were forced to take action as well; Japan was one of the countries that was slow to evacuate people out of Afghanistan.

       When the Afghan capital of Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, the Japanese Embassy there received instructions from the U.S. military, which was in charge of security. The Americans said that they could only take responsibility for security until that day, and that embassy staff needed to evacuate from the facility right away.

       At the time, based on U.S. intel and other information, the Japanese government had predicted that the capital would not fall to the Taliban until after Aug. 31, when the U.S. military withdrawal would be complete. Because of that, Tokyo had been preparing to send a commercial charter plane to evacuate the embassy staff and others on Aug. 18. But in the end, Kabul fell half a month earlier than had been predicted.

       There had been 12 Japanese Embassy staff in Kabul at the time. The Japanese ambassador to Afghanistan, Takashi Okada, was in Istanbul, Turkey, to make arrangements for evacuation with western countries. The staff in Kabul closed the embassy in the early evening of Aug. 15, and evacuated to the office of a security company with which the embassy had a contract.

       However, the public security situation of the surrounding environs deteriorated rapidly, and prompted the Japanese Embassy staff to try to get to the airport, with the hope that they could be evacuated by U.S. military planes. But a shootout broke out on the way, forcing the staff to return to the security company's office. Afghans hoping to get out of the country had flocked to the airport, causing massive confusion there.

       Ultimately, the 12 staff were rescued by British forces, who had an outpost nearby. On Aug. 17, the 12 staffers were transported by British military aircraft to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Meanwhile, many non-Japanese staff who worked for the Japanese Embassy and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), among others, were left behind. "As a crisis that was beyond our imagination closed in on us, we had no choice but to prioritize the evacuation of Japanese nationals," a senior Foreign Ministry official recalled.

       Were there any problems with how the situation was handled in Japan?

       It was on Aug. 20, three days after the 12 embassy workers were evacuated by British military aircraft, that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested that the Ministry of Defense seriously consider dispatching Self-Defense Force (SDF) aircraft to Afghanistan. "A maximum of about 500 people," comprising non-Japanese staff who worked with the embassy or JICA, and their families, and others, would be eligible for evacuation on the SDF aircraft.

       The Foreign Ministry prepared to apply the clause stipulating "the transport of Japanese nationals abroad and others" under the Self-Defense Forces Act to the mission, which was given the go-ahead by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Aug. 22, and was formally decided on Aug. 23. At this point, already a week had gone by since Kabul was taken over by the Taliban.

       There were people at the Foreign Ministry who thought it was too late to dispatch SDF aircraft by this point, but the prime minister and those close to him were apparently intent on sending aircraft to evacuate people if it was possible. Starting on Aug. 23, the Defense Ministry dispatched a C-2 transport aircraft, two C-130 transport aircraft and one government plane.

       The U.S. military planned to begin its retreat from Afghanistan on Aug. 28, so Aug. 27 was the last day that an evacuation out of the country could be carried out for certain. Japan's C-2 aircraft, which was deployed first, arrived at Kabul on the night of Aug. 25, but there was a huge barrier standing in the way of its mission.

       People eligible for evacuation were given permission to go to the airport on the afternoon of Aug. 26, where the Japanese SDF aircraft were waiting. The Japanese government had secured at least 10 buses to transport people to the airport, but shortly afterward, a suicide bomber caused a massive blast near the airport. The buses could not move closer to the aircraft waiting inside the airport. Ultimately, one C-130 evacuated 14 Afghans at the request of the U.S. military.

       The Japanese government tried to transport people out of Afghanistan on Aug. 27, too, but by then, the Taliban had changed its policy to that of prohibiting Afghans from leaving the country. The only person that SDF aircraft evacuated out of Afghanistan on this day was Hiromi Yasui, 57, a correspondent for Kyodo News. "The biggest problem was that the Taliban did not give permission for Afghans to leave the country," Yasui said Aug. 31, when she participated online in a non-partisan parliamentary group meeting that was held at the National Diet building.

       On Aug. 25, South Korea had succeeded in evacuating nearly 400 Afghans who had cooperated with it. This one-day variance made all the difference. "If only we'd been there one day early, I think, but considering the various procedures required for the dispatch of the SDF, this was the best we could do," said a senior Foreign Ministry official.

       Afghans who requested evacuation by SDF aircraft are stranded in Afghanistan. A man in his 40s who worked at the office of a Japanese NGO in Afghanistan told the Mainichi Shimbun by telephone that maybe they had just been unlucky. He went on to say that while he was grateful that Japan tried to evacuate him and others like him, he wondered if Japan began preparations too late.

       Meanwhile, there were more than a few countries that managed to evacuate many of their collaborators. A photographer for a European news agency who left Afghanistan for France with his wife and two children told a Mainichi Shimbun assistant by telephone that everything was handled swiftly, and that if things had been moved back by just a few days, their lives might have been in danger. The French government received the man and his family's visa applications in July, and issued their visas soon thereafter. France succeeded in evacuating some 3,000 people, including about 1,500 Afghans, by Aug. 27.

       Compared to other countries, there is a sense that Japan's rescue mission was too little too late.

       (Japanese original by So Matsui, New Delhi Bureau; Tamami Kawakami, Foreign News Department; Yoshitake Matsuura,Tokyo City News Department; Hiroshi Miyajima, Shu Hatakeyama and Yusuke Kaite, Political News Department)

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