KABUL — The United States advised Americans in
Afghanistan to avoid travelling to Kabul airport on Saturday, citing security
risks as thousands gathered trying to flee the country almost a week after
Taliban Islamists took control.
اضافة اعلان
Crowds have grown at the airport in the heat and dust of the
day over the last week, with mothers, fathers and children pushed up against
concrete blast walls in the crush as they plead for their families to be
allowed to leave.
The Taliban have urged those without travel documents to go
home.
At least 12 people have been killed in and around the single runway
airfield since Sunday,
NATO and Taliban officials said.
"Because of potential security threats outside the
gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising US citizens to avoid travelling to
the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive
individual instructions from a US government representative to do so," a
US Embassy advisory said.
A senior US military official said there had been short
periods in the last 24 hours when the gates to Kabul airport have been closed,
but no reported change in the "enemy" situation in and around the
single-runway airfield.
A Taliban official, speaking to Reuters, said security risks
could not be ruled out but that the group was "aiming to improve the
situation and provide a smooth exit" for people trying to leave over the
weekend.
The Taliban are still trying to hammer out a new government
and the group's co-founder, Mullah Baradar, arrived in Kabul for talks with
other leaders on Saturday.
The group's lightning advance across the country as US-led
forces pulled out, coinciding with what German Chancellor Angela Merkel
described on Saturday as the "breathtaking collapse" of the Afghan
army, sparked fear of reprisals and a return to a harsh version of sharia
(Islamic law) the Taliban exercised when they were in power two decades ago.
Switzerland postponed a charter flight from Kabul because of
the chaos at the airport.
"The security situation around Kabul airport has
worsened significantly in the last hours.
A large number of people in front of
the airport and sometimes violent confrontations are hindering access to the
airport," the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said in a
statement on Saturday.
The United States had evacuated 2,500 Americans from Kabul
over the past week, senior
US officials said on Saturday, adding that Washington was fighting against
"time and space" to evacuate people from Afghanistan.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said he did not have a
"perfect figure" on how many Americans remain in Kabul and
Afghanistan more broadly.
Crisis management
The Taliban official said the group planned to ready a new
model for governing Afghanistan within the next few weeks, with separate teams
to tackle internal security and financial issues.
"Experts from the former government will be brought in for
crisis management," he told Reuters.
The new government structure would not be a democracy by
Western definitions, but "it will protect everyone's rights", the
official added.
Baradar will meet militant commanders, former government
leaders and policy makers, as well as religious scholars among others, the
official said.
The delay in forming a new government or even announcing who
will lead a new Taliban administration underlines how unprepared the movement
was for the sudden collapse of the Western-trained forces it had been fighting
for years.
The Taliban, whose overall leader Mullah Haibatullah
Akhundzada has so far been silent publicly, must also unite disparate groups
within the movement whose interests may not always coincide now that victory
has been achieved.
The Taliban follow an ultra-hardline version of Sunni Islam.
They have sought to present a
more moderate face since returning to power, saying they want peace and
will respect the rights of women within their framework of Islamic law.
When in power from 1996–2001, also guided by their
interpretation of sharia, they stopped women from working or going out without
wearing an all-enveloping burqa and stopped girls from going to school.
Harrowing tales
Individual Afghans and international
aid and advocacy groups have reported harsh retaliation against protests, and
round-ups of those who had formerly held government positions, criticized the
Taliban or worked with Americans.
"We have heard of some cases of
atrocities and crimes against civilians," said the Taliban official on
condition of anonymity.
"If (members of the Taliban)
are doing these law and order problems, they will be investigated," he
said.
"We can understand the panic, stress and anxiety. People think we
will not be accountable, but that will not be the case."
Former officials told harrowing
tales of hiding from the Taliban in recent days as gunmen went from door to
door.
One family of 16 described running to the bathroom, lights off and
children's mouths covered, in
fear for their lives.
Baradar, the chief of the Taliban's
political office, was part of the group's negotiating team in the Qatar capital
of Doha.
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