Ramstein is one of the largest U.S. air bases outside of America and has become a crucial hub for the evacuation of Afghanistan after the Taliban took possession. Since August 20, about 106 planes have landed there, mostly C-17s, their cargo ships crowded with hundreds of evacuees at once. The air base was prepared with tents to accommodate 10,000 people, but they quickly filled up.
“They got us a maximum and the flow kept coming. I had to close part of the base for the Afghan evacuees,” Olson explains. “Because you can’t put them in the elements. It’s 50 degrees [Fahrenheit] outside and it rains. I can’t put people in that. Especially children. So this was one of the things that went in and out. We carried them faster than we could get out. And that is difficult. “
Ramstein is also where they transported 20 wounded U.S. soldiers and 10 wounded Afghans after a deadly terrorist attack outside Kabul airport last week, before being taken to a medical center five minutes from the base.
Andrew Landers, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC), told reporters on Tuesday that he suffered a wide variety of injuries resulting from an explosion, including explosive wounds, but also several gunshot wounds. Some of the injured required medical intervention on board and halfway through the C-17 flights that evacuated them from Kabul.
The 20 members of the U.S. military service have now been transferred to the Walter Reed Military Medical Center in the United States. They were all stable and aware, most spoke and in a good mood, according to Landers.
The last evacuation plane may have left Kabul, but Ramstein Air Force Base still has a tent city that stretches along its entire flight line. Women and children sleep in cots inside the cavernous hangars of the air base while men sleep 40 to a tent. Hot meals are distributed three times a day in separate boxes. Portable toilets and washing stations only provide the most basic sanitation.
Beyond providing a basic shelter, Olson faces new problems all the time. What to do, for example, with all children. With so many families, the base now has more than 6,000 children.
The U.S. State Department has also identified dozens of unaccompanied minors, some separated from their parents and relatives in the chaos of the evacuation. Olson took CNN to one of the base’s few grassy patches to watch the “Kinder Pod,” with foosball and a play area.
“One of our biggest problems has been baby wipes and formula,” he said, adding that aircraft crews reported running out of diapers on evacuation flights to the air base. of Ramstein. “Who would have thought that?”
The most difficult thing for most evacuees is waiting, uncertainty, and the inability to communicate with family members at home.
Donia Laali is one of those waiting. He entered Kabul airport and dragged his family, all seven women.
“We just decided to give it a try, my family tried it. Because we’re all women. There are no men with us. My two brothers are still in the US. So we’ll try to get there,” Laali tells CNN.
Laali, sitting with other women, right in front of an airplane hangar with a sea of military cribs, said her seven family members were spread across three different sections of the camp, unable to communicate with each other.
“Sometimes it doesn’t seem so fair to us,” said Laali, who described her frustration with the camp conditions. “But when I realize I’m safe here, from the Taliban, I’m fine. When I feel safe here, that means everything to me.”
The goal was to get the evacuees transferred within 48 hours, and under the U.S. agreement with Germany, the evacuees could not stay more than ten days.
However, the detection and processing of evacuees is taking longer than expected.
On Saturday, Elizabeth Horst, the U.S. Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and the senior coordinator of civilian agencies, appealed for patience.
“We are doing everything we can to help the people who worked with us in Afghanistan. We are using everything we can,” he said at a news conference. “We have a personal and professional interest [in] make sure the outgoing Afghans leave, receive medical care, and arrive in the United States where they can start again. And become Americans if they choose to do the same. ”
Ramstein’s huge Hangar 5 has been transformed into a makeshift international air terminal, with security control and check-in. The evacuees are guided by a combination of military and consular officers.
Passengers receive yellow bracelets at the entrance and then weigh their luggage. Whole lives, packed in backpacks, fabric packs or weak plastic bags, are carefully weighed on a scale and labeled. A group of volunteers gives the children colorful backpacks full of toys and coloring books for the flight.
Even here, as evacuees wait to move up to their United States, there is a mixture of emotions.
While waiting for check-in, Asadullah Sadiqi, 25, showed us a bruise on his face, the remains of a black eye that he said was given to him by Taliban soldiers at Kabul airport.
“The Taliban beat me,” Sadiqi told CNN, which described the scene at the airport. “Everyone was showing American passport or British passport. They didn’t care. They were just hitting people.”
After more than two days of waiting in Ramstein, her family was finally allowed to leave.
“Everyone is happy,” he said as he took his nephew’s hand. “Because we’re finally going to see our family in Virginia.”
Meanwhile, Shabana Rangin, 24, sat on the floor with her husband Abdul. In her arms, she had a small bundle: her 25-day-old baby.
“My brothers and sisters are in Afghanistan. That’s why I’m crying,” he told CNN as he waited to board the flight. He lifted a blanket to show his son’s sleeping face. “I don’t want to think about it in the future, talk to him. It’s not a good memory, nor a happy memory.”
Even for those who board their flights, there are still delays. Last week, CNN met Mohammad Nirwaz Maiwand, 32, who showed us a carefully sealed plastic bag that carried his ID to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), for whom he had worked. in Afghanistan.
Despite having a special approved immigrant visa, he waited more than five days to board a flight to the United States, only to be transferred to another tent camp to spend the night for later screening.
“All I can say is that the management of all of this is very basic and very weak,” he told CNN in a text message after landing at Dulles Airport.
At Ramstein Air Base, Olson is also clearly frustrated by the slow pace of entry of his new “family.”
“Think of our parents and grandparents who got on a boat and went to America. All the things they sacrificed. We forgot about it in so many ways,” he says. “We also forget the sacrifices of the last twenty years that the military has made for the freedom of these new Afghan-Americans.”
Before leaving, Olson leads CNN to the donation stations where an army of civilian volunteers organize a mountain of shoes, jackets, and blankets donated by the community at large. There are so many things that the base has had trouble storing everything.
Despite the long waits, the enclosures closed, he sees an attempt by the entire air base community to arrive and comfort the newcomers after so many heartbreaks and losses.
“For me, the amazing story is this outpouring of support. They’re people who want to do the right thing,” Olson says.