By PTI
NEW DELHI: India’s defence top brass, the foreign policy establishment and senior intelligence officials are understood to have reviewed the fast-paced developments in Afghanistan on Monday, a day after the Taliban seized control of the country 20 years after it was ousted by a US-led military coalition.
People familiar with the meetings said the immediate priority of the government is to evacuate nearly 200 Indians, including Indian embassy staffers and security personnel from Kabul as the situation in the Afghan capital was fast deteriorating after the Taliban captured it on Sunday night.
Capping its month-long rapid advances, the Taliban took positions in Kabul hours after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the country on Sunday for an unknown destination, paving way for a bloodless takeover of the capital city but triggering fear, chaos and uncertainty among its residents.
On Monday, thousands of desperate people converged at the Kabul international airport in hopes of getting on an evacuation flight and leave the country.
The airport has already been shut for commercial flights and subsequently, the US military has taken control of the airport security to facilitate the evacuation of foreign diplomats and citizens.
The chaos and panic at the Kabul airport was delaying a decision on sending evacuation flights to the Afghan capital though a number of heavy-lift C-17 Globemaster military transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force is kept on standby for the last two days, people familiar with these deliberations said.
According to unconfirmed reports, India sent a C-17 Globemaster aircraft to Afghanistan and it returned on Monday.
There were also security concerns over bringing the Indians from the Indian embassy and other places to the airport in view of the deteriorating security situation in the capital city.
The government is also looking at bringing back hundreds of Indian citizens and facilitate the evacuation of the members of the Hindu and Sikh minorities as well as Afghan nationals who have applied for visas from the Indian embassy, officials said.
“The situation is evolving very fast and we are monitoring it closely,” said one of the persons involved in preparations for evacuating the stranded Indians in Kabul.
India along with so many other countries were surprised at the lightning advances made by the Taliban aross Afghanistan in capturing power after the US began pulling out its troops on May 1 from the country, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
“Definitely, we did not expect Kabul to fall so soon,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
India has been a key stakeholder in Afghanistan and it has invested nearly USD 3 billion in carrying out nearly 500 projects across Afghanistan.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is largely seen as a setback for India as the militant outfit has strongly been backed by Pakistan’s powerful military.
Meanwhile, Air India cancelled its Delhi-Kabul-Delhi flight that was scheduled to be operated on Monday and carriers running flight services between India and the western countries avoided the Afghan airspace after it was declared “uncontrolled” by the Kabul airport authorities, senior officials said.
The Air India flight was the only commercial service scheduled to be operated between India and Afghanistan on Monday.
The national carrier is the only airline that has been operating flights between the two countries.
Afghanistan stares at an uncertain future as President Ashraf Ghani left the country just before Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban on Sunday.
According to a NOTAM (notice to airmen) issued by the Kabul airport authorities on Monday, the Afghan airspace has been released to the military and any aircraft transit through it “will be uncontrolled”.
In another NOTAM, it was stated that the civilian side of the Kabul airport has been shut down until further notice.
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Therefore, all carriers operating flights between India and the western countries such as Air India, United Airlines and Terra Avia had to reroute their flights on Monday so as to avoid the Afghan airspace.
Two Air India flights — one from San Francisco to Delhi and another from Chicago to Delhi — were diverted to Sharjah to avoid the Afghan airspace, senior officials stated.
Both the planes were refuelled at the Sharjah airport before they departed for Delhi.
Terra Avia’s flight from Azerbaijan’s Baku to Delhi entered the Afghan airspace in the morning but quickly took a U-turn and decided to avoid it by flying around it.
The New York-Mumbai flight of United Airlines had to take a different and longer route than usual to avoid the Afghan airspace.
According to a spokesperson of Vistara, which operates four weekly flights on the Delhi-London route, the airline has stopped using the Afghan airspace and is taking an alternate route for its flights to and from London’s Heathrow airport.
“We are closely working with the relevant authorities to monitor and assess the situation and taking necessary steps to ensure the safety of our passengers, staff and aircraft,” the spokesperson of the private carrier said.
Vistara is not going to reduce the number of its Delhi-London flights.
British Airways, which operates flights between India and the UK, announced on Sunday that it will avoid the Afghan airspace.
‘Game over’: Westerners rush to leave Kabul, rescue Afghans
The beating blades of US military helicopters whisking American diplomats to Kabul’s airport on Sunday punctuated a frantic rush by thousands of other foreigners and Afghans to flee to safety as well, as a stunningly swift Taliban takeover entered the heart of Afghanistan’s capital.
Two weeks from the Biden administration’s planned full military withdrawal, the United States was pouring thousands of fresh troops back into the country temporarily to safeguard what was gearing up to be a large-scale airlift.
Shortly before dawn Monday Kabul time, State Department spokesman Ned Price announced the U.S. had completed the evacuation of its embassy in Afghanistan, lowering the American flag.
At the same time, the administration announced it was taking over air-traffic control at Kabul’s international airport, to manage the airlifts.
Sporadic gunfire there Sunday frightened Afghan families fearful of Taliban rule and desperate for flights out, one of the last avenues for escape in an evacuation made far more urgent by the Taliban’s weeklong sweep across the country.
NATO allies that had pulled out their forces ahead of the Biden administration’s intended August 31 withdrawal deadline were sending troops back in as well this weekend to protect evacuations of their own.
Some complained the US was failing to move fast enough to bring to safety Afghans at risk of reprisal from the Taliban for past work with the Americans and other NATO forces.
“This is murder by incompetence,” said US Air Force veteran Sam Lerman, struggling Sunday from his home in Woodbridge, Virginia, to find a way out for an Afghan contractor who had guarded Americans and other NATO forces at Afghanistan’s Bagram air base for a decade.
Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, was among hundreds of Afghans waiting anxiously in the Kabul airport to board an evacuation flight.
“I see people crying, they are not sure whether their flight will happen or not. Neither am I,” she said by phone, with panic in her voice.
Educated Afghan women have some of the most to lose under the fundamentalist Taliban, whose past government, overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, sought to largely confine women to the home.
Taliban forces moved early Sunday into a capital beset by fear and declared they were awaiting a peaceful surrender.
That arrival of the first waves of Taliban insurgents into Kabul prompted the U.S. to begin evacuating the embassy building in full, leaving only acting ambassador Ross Wilson and a core of other diplomats operating at the airport.
Even as CH-47 helicopters shuttled American diplomats to the airport, and facing criticism at home over the administration’s handling of the withdrawal, Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the 1975 fall of Saigon.
“This is being done in a very deliberate way, it’s being done in an orderly way,” Blinken insisted on ABC’s “This Week.”
A joint statement from the U.S. State and Defense departments pledged late Sunday to fly thousands of Americans, local embassy staff and other “particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals” out of the country.
It gave no details, but high-profile Afghan women, journalists, and Afghans who’ve worked with Western governments and nonprofits are among those who most fear Taliban targeting for perceived Western ways or ties.
The statement promised to speed up visa processing for Afghans who used to work with American troops and officials in particular.
To many, the evacuations, and last-ditch rescue attempts by Americans and other foreigners trying to save Afghan allies, appeared far from orderly.
An Italian journalist, Francesca Mannocchi, posted a video of an Italian helicopter carrying her to the airport, an armed soldier standing guard at a window.
Mannochi described watching columns of smoke rising from Kabul as she flew.
Some were from fires that workers at the US Embassy and others were using to keep sensitive material from falling in Taliban hands.
She said Afghans stoned an Italian convoy.
She captioned her brief video: “Kabul airport. Evacuation. Game Over.”
Hundreds or more Afghans crowded in a part of the airport away from many of the evacuating Westerners.
Some of them, including a man with a broken leg sitting on the ground, lined up for what was expected to be a last flight out by the country’s Ariana Airlines.
US officials reported gunfire near the airport Sunday evening and for a time urged civilians to stop coming.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the airport was open for commercial flights, the only escape left for many ordinary Afghans, but would experience stoppages.
US C-17 transport planes were due to bring thousands of fresh American troops to the airport, then fly out again with evacuating U.S. Embassy staffers.
The Pentagon was now sending an additional 1,000 troops, bringing the total number to about 6,000, a US defence official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a deployment decision not yet announced by the Pentagon.
The Pentagon intends to have enough aircraft to fly out as many as 5,000 civilians a day, both Americans and the Afghan translators and others who worked with the U.S. during the war.
It was by no means clear how long Kabul’s deteriorating security would allow any evacuations to continue.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, whose government had been one of many expressing surprise at the speed of the U.S. withdrawal, told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that it was “difficult to endure” watching how quickly the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and how little government troops were able to do to stop them.
At a North Carolina-based adoption agency, Mary Beth Lee King sought a way to extricate two Afghan boys, ages 11 and 2, due for adoption by families in America.
“Even if the U.S. won’t admit them to the U.S., get them somewhere, so that. We know that they are alive and safe,” King said of the two Afghan children.
In Virginia, Lerman, the Air Force veteran, stayed up overnight Saturday to Sunday to finish an application for a special U.S. visa program meant to rescue Afghans who had worked with Americans.
When Lerman hit “send,” he got a message saying the State Department email box for the rescue program was full, he said, sharing screenshots.
The Afghan security contractor he was working to get out was sitting frightened inside his home with the blinds drawn and Taliban fighters outside, he said.
The State Department said late Sunday afternoon it believed it had fixed the problem.
“Never in my life have I been ashamed to be an American before,” Lerman said.
“And I am, deeply.
(With AP Inputs)