Australian citizens trying to reach evacuation transports are apparently being forcibly turned away by Taliban fighters encircling Kabul airport.
“Guards have shot at people at the gate, and some type of gas [was] released,” claimed one Australian quoted by the BBC-like Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Stephen Dziedzic, Asia Pacific correspondent for ABC, has also shared reports of “Taliban guards… throwing gas bombs of some kind to disperse crowds near the airport” and would-be evacuees abandoning hope of ever reaching a transport as there is now “too much shooting, people getting beaten up” on social media.
Australian prime minister Scott Morrisson has conceded that “Operations of Australian Defence Force or others who are there beyond the airport are not possible,” and that “They are not able to be undertaken in any way by the Australian Defence Forces — to do so would put them at great risk with no commensurate benefit.”
The Australian premier’s comments may be a tacit admission that Western forces do not appear to be willing to go outside the airport to save people because they dare not, despite the Taliban’s promises to offer “safe passage” for evacuees which they are relying on already appearing to be unreliable.
“We have seen reports that the Taliban, contrary to their public statements and their commitments to our government, are blocking Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman recently admitted.
“We expect them to allow all American citizens, all third-country nationals and all Afghans who wish to leave to do so safely and without harassment,” she added — although whether the Biden administration intends to do anything about the fact that this is clearly not happening remains to be seen.
British paratroopers from 15 Air Assault Brigade are known to have been carrying out rescue missions in Kabul proper on Saturday, but there is little indication that any Western forces are continuing to operate beyond the airport and its environs as of the time of publication.
One Afghan-Australian citizen, named as Leeda Moorabi, has told the left-wing Guardian newspaper that fellow dual nationals in her family were trapped at the airport perimeter, where “Afghan troops (who look and speak like Taliban) are shooting and threatening civilians to leave”.
Moorabi described how her brother-in-law had told her that “The crowds got worse [as] night fell and he was still stuck and things got more violent … a seven-year-old was shot. .. and died right front of him … he watched children being trampled on and he was helpless.”
Footage of somewhat less dramatic but still highly unpleasant scenes has been uploaded to social media by BBC World News anchor Yalda Hakim, showing Taliban carrying makeshift whips chastising and sometimes striking would-be evacuees including women, children, the elderly, and the disabled close by to the airport.
An official for NATO and an “official” for the Taliban — who refused to be identified by name — have reportedly conceded that 12 people have died as a result of gunfire or stampedes in and around the airport since Sunday.
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