Report: Students, Alumni at American University in Kabul Trying to Flee Could Not Reach Airport

Hundreds of students, their family members, and staff of the American University of Afghanistan on Sunday were denied entry in their final attempt to enter Kabul airport and escape to freedom, according to a report in the New York Times.

The group of about 600 evacuees waited seven hours on busses to enter the facility, but “[e]vacuations were permanently called off” due to security threats outside the airport, the Times reported.

“I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA in the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights,” an email the university administration sent to the students read, according to the newspaper.

American University President Ian Bickford also described the desperate plight the students are facing to the Times. “The scholar pilgrims who were turned away today while seeking safe passage to a better future need the help of the U.S. government who gave them the hope they must not lose,” Bickford said.

Tension was added when the group of evacuees were alarmed when they learned the U.S. military “shared a list of names and passport information of hundreds of students and their families with the Taliban guarding the airport checkpoints, the university president said.”

“They told us: we have given your names to the Taliban,” said student Hosay, 24, who was turned away on the bus Sunday. “We are all terrified, there is no evacuation, there is no getting out.”

The students’ worry and concern for their safety comes as the Taliban took control of the city on August 15. When the city collapsed, Taliban fighters entered the university and replaced the institutions’s flag with the Taliban flag. The Taliban then posted a photo on social media of themselves to frighten the students, “saying this was where America trained infidel ‘wolves’ to corrupt the minds of Muslims.”

Breitbart News reported August 25 more than a thousand Americans were stranded at the American University of Afghanistan.

“It has been able to get only around 50 people out. It needs to get out 1200 more. These people have been— and will continue to be — Taliban targets,” Michelle Kosinski reported in a now deleted tweet. The university “has had difficulty getting help in evacuating its people out.”

The American University of Afghanistan first opened in 2006, as was primarily funded by $160 million the United States Agency for International Development endowed.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø