The US military has stepped up flights out of the Kabul airport, and Pentagon officials reported Monday the biggest day of airlifts since the evacuation began on August 14th.
Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters Monday morning that within the previous 24 hours, 16,000 people were flown out of Kabul. Of that number, nearly 11,000 were evacuated by the US military, and the rest left on commercial, charter, and other military flights.
Taylor said that since the airlift began on August 16th, 37,000 people have been evacuated. It’s not clear how many US citizens have been airlifted. According to a government document obtained by Yahoo News, as of Saturday, a total of 3,376 US citizens were evacuated from Kabul. There have been instances of the US flying helicopters outside of the airport to get Americans in nearby locations in Kabul. But for the most part, US forces are staying inside the airport.
The White House still doesn’t know exactly how many Americans are in Afghanistan. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday that the US doesn’t know the exact number because not every American in Afghanistan registered with the embassy or deregistered when they left the country. Last week, government officials estimated there were about 10,000 to 15,000 US citizens in Afghanistan.
On top of the US citizens, Washington is also evacuating Afghans who supported the US war effort and their families. President Biden estimates that in total, between 50,000 and 65,000 Afghans are seeking refuge.
There are currently 5,800 US troops at the Kabul airport. Biden has promised that they would stay until every American who wants to leave is evacuated, even if that means extending his August 31st withdrawal deadline. But the Taliban warned Monday there would be “consequences” if foreign troops stay after the withdrawal deadline.
The US is counting on the Taliban to allow safe passage for Americans who are trying to get to the Kabul airport. Sullivan said the US is consulting with the Taliban “on every aspect of what’s happening in Kabul right now.”
Things have still been chaotic at the airport, and some casualties were reported over the past two days. One Afghan soldier was reported killed at the airport on Monday. The Pentagon said an “unknown hostile actor” opened fire on Afghan security forces, and Afghan, US, and other coalition soldiers fired back. On Sunday, seven Afghans were killed in a stampede by a panicked crowd.
The rate of evacuation is highly suspect:
The capacity of Kabul airport is a hundred times the evacuation rate:
1. A large plane can takeoff or land every 2 minutes on the favored runway.
2. Average capacity is over 300 passengers.
3. So one runway can handle 4500 departing passengers per hour.
4. Typical large airports handle over 200,000 passengers per day.
Continuous flights to EU would require far fewer than the idle military planes:
1. Flights of 1000 – 2000 miles require less than 4 hours.
2. Add an hour for load/unload
3. Double to include empty flights enroute back.
4. Flights to even EU locations would require less than 150 planes.
5. No doubt the US/EU have at least 150 cargo/passenger in EU/Asia/ME
Available staff should be able to process applicants at full speed:
1. Even paper records would allow verifying credentials in less than a minute.
2. Applicants can be given a risk category for evacuation priority.
3. Even five bad for every valid applicant allows 12 checks per hour per checker.
4. So one thousand checkers could handle 240,000 evacuations per day.
5. One hundred checkers could handle the entire 60,000 evacuees in two days.
6. One hundred checkers could do this without PCs in the airport lobby.
So the rate of evacuation is due to
1. Desired evacuees not arriving from remote areas because they are secret agents.
2. NATO countries refusing refugees from among their own employees there.
But these are not excuses:
1. Surely secret agents must be trained and prepared to flee elsewhere.
2. NATO countries refusing their own employees as refugees have no excuse.
Civilian transport out of Kabul International Airport was restricted to just military aircraft, and no commercial fliers are servicing Kabul Airport right now. Any planes they had on the ground that managed to fly out, arnen’t being replaced.
The Taliban are now refusing to let Afghans without passports and other documents for legal international travel to gather at Kabul International Airport.
This greatly reduces the passenger load to just those qualified to leave over economic migrants.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2021/08/19/Total-of-12-people-killed-in-around-Kabul-airport-since-Taliban-takeover-Officials-
There is also huge pushback from some EU states over accepting Afghan migrants as well, so the attempt to force a NATO stay using Afghan human shields is faltering.
It was just too obvious and cynical what EU NATO is trying to pull, but August 31 is still a long way away.
US in general and Pentagon in particular just love to brag on their statistics…!
So close to the end of this war, yet so far.