Australia’s Afghanistan evacuation could wind up early

Australia’s evacuation of citizens and allied Afghans from Kabul could wind up days ahead of the August 31 deadline

Australian citizens, visa holders and troops prepare to board at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul this week. Picture: ADF

Australia’s effort to evacuate citizens and allied Afghans at risk out of Kabul airport could wind up days ahead of the August 31 deadline to allow thousands of US troops and equipment to draw down from the airport, The Australian has learned.

An early withdrawal – part of a staged evacuation of foreign forces from Afghanistan’s capital – means Australian passport or visa holders or locally engaged Afghan staff left behind will have to explore other means of leaving the country.

Thousands of people are still waiting to be evacuated from Kabul but the Taliban, which captured the city just over a week ago, has warned the August 31 deadline for foreign forces to withdraw from Afghanistan is a “red line” and failure to do so will have “consequences”.

Scott Morrison said on Tuesday the evacuation effort had accelerated.

“We’ve been going like we won’t be able to get another flight in the next day,” the Prime Minister said. “So we’ve been trying to make every flight as successful as possible. We’ll keep doing that for as long as we can.”

The Australian government had told the US it would support any extension, “but in the meantime we will just keep getting on with the job”, he added.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told parliament he was now discussing with Defence Force Chief Angus Campbell “ways in which we can move our equipment, our assets and most importantly our people out safely in a timely way”.

“But we are in obviously the back end of this campaign now and the situation does continue to deteriorate over the coming hours and in the next couple of days.”

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Monday the UK’s evacuation effort was now “down to hours not weeks’’.

Some reports suggest the British military could wind up operations by the weekend.

Aid and other advocacy groups say there are still hundreds of vulnerable Afghans who have worked on Australian projects or with the Australian Defence Force or government – including close to 200 embassy security guards who protected Australian diplomats in Kabul – who are unable to penetrate the crush of desperate people outside the airport.

The guards were blocked from entering the airport on Tuesday with their families – about 1200 people in all – despite holding approved Australian e-visas. The Canberra law firm handling their case said they were forced to wait for hours in a knee-deep open sewer before being turned away at the airport gate.

“DFAT Canberra told (the guards) to be at a certain gate at a certain time,” GAP Legal Services’ Kay Danes said.

“They acknowledged our people being there. What good are DFAT visas if they can’t get people in the airport and on flights?”

Just two of the guards and their families managed later to get through.

The confusion followed a reprieve for the guards on Sunday, when they were approved for humanitarian visas after earlier being rejected.

The Australian Council for International Development said many Australian aid organisations were still trying to get local staff who worked on Australian projects to the airport.

“We have women activists who don’t feel safe going through Taliban checkpoints unless the Australian government assists them,” ACFID chief Marc Purcell told The Australian.

He urged Australian forces to work with their allies who have been mounting rescue missions into Kabul for those trapped inside the city.

European, NATO and British leaders have all urged US President Joe Biden to negotiate an extension of the evacuation deadline with the Taliban, but confidence is waning that he will agree to do so during talks with Group of Seven nations late on Tuesday. Mr Biden has already said he hopes not to have to extend the deadline.

RAAF flights airlifted more than 650 people in five flights from Kabul overnight to Tuesday morning, in the biggest 24-hour effort so far.

They brought the number saved by Australia, with British support, to almost 1700.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the government was working closely with the Afghan community in Australia to identify humanitarian applicants, and was conducting “extensive checks” on the ground in Kabul on those seeking to get on to evacuation flights.

Around 1000 evacuated Afghans are now sheltering at the Al Minhad air force base in the United Arab Emirates, Australia’s main defence hub in the Middle East, in a camp built by the ADF in just three days, and which is now full.

Australian soldiers have bought dozens of bags of clothes and toys for those who have left their lives behind with little more than the clothes they stand in.

But the last days of what is likely to be one of the biggest airlifts in history has come down to whether those Afghans eligible for evacuation can bridge a narrow strip of a few dozen metres between the mayhem of Taliban-held Afghanistan and international ground inside the airport.

American troops ramped up ­efforts on Tuesday to airlift thousands of people out of Kabul

More than 10,000 people were evacuated from Hamid Karzai International Airport in 12 hours on Monday, a White House official said.

The number of people relocated from Afghanistan on US flights since July is now 53,000, with the vast majority of those since the intense airlift operations started on August 14 as the Taliban moved into Kabul.