Peter Dutton confirms Australian troops won’t land at Kabul Airport

Australian citizens, Afghan interpreters and refugees fleeing the Taliban will be extracted from a nearby military base, the defence minister confirmed.

Australian troops will not land directly in Kabul to evacuate citizens and Afghan workers from the Taliban-held capital as the security situation at the city’s airport deteriorates.

“We won’t be landing into Kabul in these circumstances,” Defence Minister Peter Dutton said.

Mr Dutton said Australia would “stage” the evacuation of citizens and Afghan interpreters, contractors and people fleeing on humanitarian visas from the nation’s nearest base in the United Arab Emirates.

“That‘s where we’ll stage from,” he said.

“But we’ll work with the Americans and others, including the Turks … to make a very difficult, a tragic situation as best as it can be.”

Mr Dutton said he believed Australia was “well placed” to do the final evacuations as most staff, including from the now-shuttered embassy, had already been removed.

“We do have some Australians who are left there who are working as NGOs or who are contractors in the country, or who might be dual nationals, for example, and who have (previously) decided to stay,” he said.

“We’ll provide assistance to withdraw them, but that will take some time.”

Taliban fighters stand guard along a street in Kabul. Picture: AFP

People run on the tarmac of Kabul international airport as a US military aircraft attempts to take off.

People stand in front of a US air force plane trying to leave.

Australia has deployed more than 250 Army and Air force personnel to join Coalition forces in mass evacuation airlifts as the Afghanistan capital descends into bedlam with Taliban blocking routes to the US controlled international airport.

As pictures of Taliban leaders sitting in the palace abandoned by President Ashraf Ghani flashed around the world, at least five people were killed at Kabul airport as a stampede of hundreds tried to forcibly enter the last planes leaving the capital.

A person appears to fall from a US air force plane as it takes off from Kabul airport.

US soldiers had earlier fired shots over the heads of panicking Afghans and their families as others scrambled up the outside of air bridges to try to board the flights. Defence said the Australian rescue mission, with two companies departing on a KC-30 multi-role tanker on Monday, will be joined by two C-17A Globemasters later this week to evacuate an estimated 130 Australians still in the “highly volatile and dangerous country.”

The reality for those who assisted the allies and are left behind is bleak.

One 30-year-old local who worked for the Australian embassy for 11 years as a security guard was given three months salary and thanked for his service.

DFAT contacted him to say the visa for him and his 26-year-old wife was still being processed. “We are scared, scared,” he said.

“If they capture me, they will rape my wife in front of me, then kill her, then cut my eyes out and dismember me.”

Meanwhile, veteran welfare advocates expressed concern for the mental health of Australian soldiers who served in Afghanistan and now saw their efforts wasted.

Members of the British Army disembarking in Kabul to assist in evacuating British nationals.

British soldiers as they arrive in Kabul.

Australia’s most decorated soldier, Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith said: “Forty one Australians died serving their country in Afghanistan. More than 500 veterans have taken their own life since returning home, that’s something we can never forget.”

He said the comments of Defence Force chief Angus Campbell two months ago that he did not believe the Taliban would overrun the country once NATO and its allies left “reinforces how far removed the leadership is and was from the realities of the situation in Afghanistan’’.

“It also serves as a reminder of why our senior leadership was unable to provide a successful strategy for Afghanistan or fully understand our enemy,” he said.

Adrian Sutter, former First Battalion Royal Australian Regiment corporal, who lost a mate fighting in the Chora Valley in Afghanistan, said: “Every veteran in our generation is pretty angry and pretty emotional about all the work they did coming to nothing. The big message is that while we are angry and depressed just sitting there and blaming the government doesn’t help. The only way to find any peace is to reconnect with our mates from the military who are going through the same thing.”

RSL NSW President Ray James said the organisation was packed with veterans from the Vietnam War “who would be no doubt processing similar feelings about Australia’s involvement in conflicts, like the war they fought in Vietnam.”

Former commando green beret Mick Bainbridge said: “It is heartbreaking but if you look at it pragmatically, we spent over 20 years and trillions of dollars training hundreds of thousands of people and failed to get democracy to take. I don’t think it would be any different in 100 years.”

But former Australian Commando Damien Thomlinson — who lost both his legs in a Taliban bomb blast in 2009 — said he believed Australia’s time in Afghanistan was “worth it”.

“I think as Australians we should be proud of what we did in making significant sacrifices to give them a chance,” he said.

Originally published as Peter Dutton confirms Australian troops won’t land at Kabul Airport