The airport, which in recent weeks had been the epicenter of a frantic Western evacuation mission, was turned into a venue for Taliban celebrations after the final U.S. plane took off shortly before midnight on Monday, putting end of America’s longest war.
The videos showed Taliban fighters filling the night air with gunfire and walking around the airport. As the sun rose on Tuesday, images showed militants making their way through an abandoned hanger full of equipment the United States left behind.
In a video, militants dressed in American-style uniforms and U.S.-made weapons examined a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter parked inside a hangar. Taliban fighters were also seen posing to take pictures while sitting in the cabins of planes and helicopters that once belonged to the Afghan Air Force.
But Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told CNN on Tuesday that he was not “too concerned about these images” of Taliban fighters examining the abandoned plane.
“They can inspect anything they want,” Kirby said. “They can look at them, walk, but they can’t fly them. They can’t handle them.”
He added that the US military had made “unusable all the equipment at the airport: all the planes, all the land vehicles.
“The only thing we’ve stopped working on is a couple of fire trucks and some ski lifts, so the airport itself can stay more operational in the future,” he said.
Victory and uncertainty
Standing on the airport runway on Tuesday morning, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a small crowd that “this victory belongs to us all.”
He was joined by heavily armed fighters from the Taliban’s Badri 313 Special Forces Brigade, equipped with camouflage uniforms and desert boots.
Mujahid congratulated the aligned Taliban fighters and, in fact, “the whole nation.” He said the Taliban wanted to have “good relations with the United States and the world.”
On Tuesday morning, approximately 38 million people in Afghanistan were awakened by a new phase of Taliban capture of the country since the 1990s, when it imposed a barbaric interpretation of sharia law banning schooling. to girls, he stoned women for adultery and plunged the country into an economic crisis.
This time the Taliban pledged to govern more moderately and said they would still allow foreign nationals and Afghans with the proper documentation to leave the country after August 31st. ability to lead the country.
The airport is a lifeline
An immediate challenge for the Taliban will be to get Hamid Karzai International Airport, a vital lifeline for the rest of the world, both for Afghans and for foreigners who want to leave, and to get help.
Afghanistan is heavily dependent on foreign aid, and WHO and UNICEF have already struggled to secure critical food and medical supplies at the airport amid the mass evacuation operation.
Restarting commercial flights will also be crucial for people who want to leave the country but do not reach military evacuation aircraft.
More than 123,000 people have been evacuated by U.S. and coalition planes since Aug. 14, U.S. Central Command General Frank McKenzie said Monday.
The vast majority of these, about 79,000, were evacuated by the United States in what McKenzie called the “largest evacuation without combatants” in Army history.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. and its allies were discussing ways to reopen the airport as soon as possible to facilitate safe travel outside Afghanistan to Americans, to permanent residents United States and Afghans working with the United States.
“We discussed how we will work together to facilitate safe travel outside Afghanistan, including the reopening of Kabul’s civilian airport as soon as possible,” Blinken said.
“And we are very grateful for the efforts of Qatar and Turkey in particular to make this happen. This would allow for a reduced number of daily charter flights, which is key for anyone who wants to leave Afghanistan to move forward.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Sunday that Ankara had held talks with the Taliban to provide technical assistance to operate Kabul airport, Reuters reported.
Cavusoglu said inspection reports showed that runways, towers and terminals, including those on the civilian side of the airport, were damaged and needed to be repaired.
The rockets occurred a few days after two suicide attacks at the airport that killed more than 170 people, including 13 members of the U.S. service.