Race to reopen Kabul airport with many still desperate to flee Afghanistan
2 September 2021, 16:24
Qatar’s foreign minister said there is still ‘no clear indication’ of when the airport will reopen.
Qatar’s leading diplomat has said experts are racing to reopen Kabul’s airport but warned it is not clear when flights will resume, with many people still desperate to flee Afghanistan’s new Taliban leaders.
After their rapid takeover, the Taliban have sought to calm the fears, including pledging to let women and girls attend school and allow people to travel freely, but many remain sceptical.
Dozens of women protested outside the governor’s office in the western province of Herat to demand their rights be protected.
They shouted slogans and urged the country’s new leaders to include women in their cabinet — a remarkable demonstration of the transformation in women’s lives in the past 20 years.
When they last held power in the late 1990s, the Taliban imposed a repressive rule, meting out draconian punishments and largely excluding women from public life.
On Thursday, Taliban fighters prevented the female demonstrators from seeing the governor as they demanded, but did not break up the rally.
Amid uncertainty about Afghanistan’s future, tens of thousands raced to flee the country in a frantic US-run airlift that ended ahead of the final American withdrawal earlier this week.
A suicide bomber targeted the evacuation efforts at one point, killing 169 Afghans and 13 US service members.
Kabul’s international airport is in Taliban hands but is closed, and Qatari foreign minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani warned there is “no clear indication” of when it will reopen.
A team of Qatari and Turkish technicians flew to Kabul on Wednesday to help restart operations at the facility, which the UN says is crucial to providing the country with humanitarian assistance.
It remains to be seen whether any commercial airlines will be willing to offer services.
“We remain hopeful we will be able to operate it as soon as possible,” Mr Al Thani told reporters in Doha. “We are still in the evaluation process.
“We are working very hard and engaging with the Taliban to identify what are the gaps and the risks for having the airport back up and running.”
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu suggested that military flights — which could be used to evacuate more people — could resume first.
Qatar, a tiny Gulf Arab sheikhdom that has played a major role in American efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan, said it remains in talks with other world powers to enable the capital’s airport to resume commercial flights.
