An Air Force C-130J transport aircraft took faraway from Kabul this morning with over 85 Indian nationals on board, sources said, because the government continues efforts to evacuate its citizens stranded in Afghanistan.
The plane landed safely in Dushanbe in Tajikistan for refueling, sources said, adding that there’s chaos outside the airport in Kabul at this point, which the govt is concentrated on bringing as many Indians as possible inside the airport to stay them safe.
Sources also said another IAF plane – the larger C-17 transport – is on standby to fly to Kabul to bring home a minimum of 150-180 more Indians, as soon as they will make it to the airport.
India has evacuated all embassy staff but around 1,000 citizens remain in several cities within the war-torn country, and ascertaining their location and condition is proving to be a challenge, a Home Ministry official said, since not all of them registered themselves with the embassy.
Among those are around 200 Sikhs and Hindus who have taken refuge at a gurudwara in Kabul.
Late Wednesday a spokesperson for the Taliban – which has been trying to project a more moderate image – released a video statement of the gurudwara head saying he had been assured of their safety.
Two IAF C-17s flew into Kabul on Assumption, after the Taliban marched into the town, to evacuate Indian diplomats and embassy staff, including Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel guarding them.
The first aircraft took off under very challenging circumstances given the chaos at the airport, where thousands of desperate Afghans were frantically trying to escape advancing Taliban forces.
The second brought back the remaining staff, including Ambassador Rudrendra Tandon.
Foreign Minister S Jaishankar described that evacuation as a “difficult and complex exercise”.
Yesterday sources told NDTV that messages from the Taliban’s political office in Qatar urged the Indian government to reconsider evacuating its diplomats. The messages – seen as an outreach of sorts – said India need fear no attacks on its embassy or staff from groups just like the Lashkar or Jaish.
The government chose to line aside these messages and pull embassy staff out of Afghanistan anyway, since it had received input of possible attacks by these groups.
The Taliban took effective control of Afghanistan on Sunday, after President Ashraf Ghani fled and therefore the group walked into capital Kabul with no opposition. This was after a staggeringly fast rout of major cities following twenty years of war that has claimed many thousands of lives.
Feared for its brutal and oppressive reign 20 years ago, the group has tried to present a more moderate by claiming, as an example, that ladies will have rights, including to education and work, which the media are independent and free
But violent response to protests – several were killed after Taliban fighters opened fire – and news a female Afghan journalist has been barred from working – suggest the ‘moderate’ stance might not last.
