Time runs against the hundreds of Afghans who worked for the Spanish Armed Forces during the 20 years of NATO’s mission in the country. Every hour that passes, explain sources involved in the evacuation operation, your situation gets even more complicated. The number of Taliban in Kabul is increasing. And they have more and more weapons. In the last hours, the US has launched an alert for the arrival of very radical profiles in the city. «They will try not to leave anyone of those who have collaborated with foreigners, consider them apostates and is punishable by death», They explain.
Those who have worked as translators, drivers, or simply cleaning and service personnel at NATO bases in Afghanistan are considered by the Taliban as «backsliders». People who have renounced the Quran and abandoned the religion by turning against those who defend the Quran sharia. And for Islamic law, government sources who are currently working to get them out of the country explain, “that is punishable by death».
It is not simply a matter of revenge, it is rather «a matter of honor»For the Taliban. “There are no problems at the moment with foreign troops or non-Afghan citizens fleeing. But with his people, everything is very different », military sources explain to OKDIARIO. “They will try not to leave anyone who has collaborated with foreigners,” they sentence.
‘Hunt’ the ‘collaborator’
That is why, they explain, that the ‘collaborationists’ have become the primary target of the radicals. Patrols and controls are increasingly frequent in the districts that flank the south of the airport. They seek, they say, people who have aspect of being about to start a journey. Backpacks or suitcases are an indication of this.
The Spanish diplomatic network, Foreign sources confirm, is in contact with the majority of those who make up that list of around a thousand people that Spain is trying to get out of Afghanistan. He has asked all those workers and their families to do not try to enter the airport under your own power without receiving a green light from the Embassy. And, above all, that they do not identify with no checkpoint Taliban as personnel who worked for NATO, show any documentation or speak a language other than the local one. Speaking Spanish in front of one of these patrols, as one of the translators hiding in Kabul told OKDIARIO, implies danger of imminent death.
The difficulties in evacuating them are mainly due to the limited operational capacity that Spain and NATO currently have to carry out incursions to meeting points in the city. The missions of escorting evacuees outside the airport are few, and “almost all of them are carried out by the United States aboard Chinook helicopters of the Marines.”
Spain has deployed at the Kabul airport, in addition to a group of GEO y UIP from the National Police (plus a reinforcement on the way), to a total of 110 servicemen from the Air and Land Forces. Part of them belong to Air Deployment Support Squadron (EADA) and to Command of Special Operations, Units with the capacity to carry out NEO-type missions (evacuation of non-combatants). However, they lack the technical means for transportation: they have neither vehicles, much less helicopters. Some countries, such as Germany, have embarked light helicopters on their way to Afghanistan on their way to Afghanistan to carry out this type of mission.
US Embassy alert
As they explain, it might seem that the situation is less serious now than it was a few days ago, just after the fall of Kabul. Avalanches against the airport walls are less frequent and there are no longer images of hundreds of people invading the runway. However, from the wall to the outside, the tension is increasing. And it has a why: in the week since the fall of Kabul and the Taliban seize power, the city has attracted thousands of radicals Islamic. Many have crossed the country from remote areas to join the ‘party’. Among them, according to the information that Spain has received through NATO intelligence, there are “Very worrying” profiles.
They are members of terrorist groups attached to the more violent Taliban movement, whose presence in Kabul has alerted the coalition troops. That circumstance would be behind the warning issued by the US Embassy in Afghanistan this weekend, urging its citizens to stay away from the airport and not try to reach it by their own means. They speak, verbatim, of «potential security threats». No such alerts had been issued all week.
The airport, fenced
Meanwhile, the sources consulted by OKDIARIO explain, the situation outside the airport complex becomes more tense at times. The main access route to the civil area of the airport has been conquered by the Taliban. An avenue of approximately two kilometers that joins the call Green Zone, the safe bunkerized area where all western countries had their embassy headquarters, with the airfield.
So far they had remained outside the compound, but in the last hours images of Taliban forces have begun to arrive inside the civil facilities, located in front of the military platform from where the air evacuations are being carried out.
Taliban saying they’re moving into civ side of Kabul airport, just across from mil side where US-led evacuations taking place. pic.twitter.com/L2hHmVBbM4
— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) August 21, 2021
