Kabul: First commercial flight post-US withdrawal flies out Westerners

Some 200 foreigners, including Americans, flew out of Afghanistan on an international commercial flight from Kabul airport on Thursday.

Kabul (Afghanistan): Some 200 foreigners, including Americans, flew out of Afghanistan on an international commercial flight from Kabul airport on Thursday. This marks the first such large-scale departure since the U.S and foreign forces concluded their frantic withdrawal at the end of last month.

The Qatar Airways flight to Doha marked a significant breakthrough in the bumpy coordination between the U.S. and Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers. A dayslong stand-off over charter planes at another airport had left dozens of passengers stranded and cast doubt on Taliban assurances to allow foreigners and Afghans with proper travel documents to leave the country.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief the media, provided the number of Westerners on board and said that two very senior Taliban officials had helped facilitate the departure. Americans, green card holders and other nationalities including Germans, Hungarians and Canadians were on the flight, the official said.

As Taliban authorities patrolled the tarmac, passengers presented their documents for checking, and sniffer dogs inspected luggage laid out on the ground. Some of the veteran airport workers had returned to their jobs after fleeing during the harrowing chaos of the US-led airlift.

Earlier in the day, Qatari officials had informed that Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities had allowed between 100 and 150 Westerners, including Americans, to fly out from Kabul, marking the airport’s first such flight since U.S. forces withdrew from the country.

Following the evacuation of over 100,000 people from the country in the wake of the troop pullout, extensive damage at Kabul airport raised questions over how soon the transport hub could resume for commercial flights. Technical experts from Qatar and Turkey have been working to restore operations.

“I can clearly say that this is a historic day in the history of Afghanistan as Kabul airport is now operational,” said Qatari special envoy Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani.

“Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” al-Qahtani said from the tarmac, adding that another commercial flight would take off on Friday. “Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan.”

In recent days, there had been a stand-off between the Taliban and organizers of several charter planes who had hoped to evacuate Americans and at-risk Afghans from an airport in the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif. The Taliban have said they would let passengers with valid travel documents leave, but that many of those at the northern airport did not have such papers.

AP