Taliban allow Americans to leave Afghanistan - as officials say Kabul airport is 90 operational

The Taliban will allow 200 Americans and other civilians to leave Afghanistan on charter flights with the first one leaving on a Qatar Airways plane on Thursday.

A US official, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the Taliban were pressed to allow the departures by US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad.

Qatari officials confirmed that a flight carrying humanitarian aid landed at Hamid Karzai International Airport on Thursday and will leave with between 100 and 150 Americans and other foreign nationals.

Image: Taliban soldiers stand guard over surrendered Afghan Militiamen in the Kapisa province northeast of Afghanistan. Pic AP

The airport is 90% operational, a Qatar official added.

From the tarmac at Kabul international airport, Mutlaq bin Majed al Qahtani, a Qatari special envoy, said the flight would leave with Americans and Westerners.

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"Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes," he said, adding that another commercial flight would take off on Friday.

"Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan."

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The flight is the first time Americans have been allowed to leave since the US left Afghanistan at the end of August, ending the 20-year long war.

Image: Afghan special forces graduating in July 2021. A former interpreter says 400 Afghan special forces are in hiding and desperate to flee to the UK. Pic: AP

Since Western forces left Afghanistan at the end of August, the United States and the United Kingdom have been attempting to find a way for those stuck in the country to leave.

The British government created a scheme to allow former employees the right to relocate to Britain and many were rescued via this policy on evacuation flights.

But a lot of people either had not yet received a reply to their application, had their application rejected or had been accepted but could not make it to the airport.

On Wednesday, a former Afghan interpreter revealed that at least 400 Afghan special forces trained by the UK are in hiding in Afghanistan and are desperate to escape to Britain.

Rafi Hottak, 35, who used to work with British special forces in Afghanistan and now lives in Birmingham, said he is compiling a list of names of elite commandos wanting help and plans to present it to ministers.

"They've served the British government for 20 years, they deserve a life without fear of being killed," he said.

Image: Ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has apologised for leaving Kabul in August

On Tuesday, the Taliban announced a caretaker government, which didn't feature any women and included several old-guard members - including Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI's most-wanted list.

As the new caretaker government takes charge, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani apologised on Wednesday for the abrupt fall of his government.

Mr Ghani fled Kabul as Taliban forces closed in on Kabul last month and in a statement on Twitter, he said he left at the urging of his security team - who told him that if he stayed there was a risk "the same horrific street-to-street fighting the city had suffered during the Civil War of the 1990s."

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Sir Nicholas Kay: Afghanistan has changed, the Taliban hasn't

"Leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life, but I believed it was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens," he said.

Mr Ghani, who was a World Bank official, dismissed reports that he had left with millions of dollars in cash as "completely and categorically false."

"Corruption is a plague that has crippled our country for decades and fighting corruption has been a central focus of my efforts as president," he said, adding that he and his Lebanese-born wife were "scrupulous in our personal finances."

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China's foreign minister Wang Yi said Beijing would provide 200 million yuan (£XX million) worth of grain, winter supplies, vaccines and medicine to Kabul.

He added that an initial batch of 3 million COVID-19 vaccines for Afghan people had already been donated.

Mr Yi added that the United States and its allies have more of a duty to supply economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan than any other country.

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