British Evacuation of Kabul Civilians to Finish Within Days, Giving Military Time to Pull Out Over Weekend

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Royal Air Force / Twitter
Oliver JJ Lane

British operations to extract passport holders, as well as Afghan migrants coming to the United Kingdom, will end in a matter of hours, it is claimed, with the British armed forces and consular staff to withdraw over the weekend ahead of Joe Biden and the Taliban’s 31st deadline.

While the pace of evacuations being effected by British forces appears to be accelerating, the chance of a deadline extension from either the United States — which is facilitating Western control of Kabul airport for now — and the Taliban appears to remain off the table, despite British pleas.

With a hard stop to Western activity in Kabul assumed for August 31st, as well as the civilian evacuation presently ongoing, the British armed forces and consular staff presently working at Kabul airport and in the city also need to leave in time. Making sure there is sufficient time and capacity to move out the roughly 1,000 military personnel means the civilian airlift could finish as soon as Friday or Saturday this week.

The Guardian cites a military insider saying the evacuation could end between “24 and 36 hours”, while The Times notes the final evacuation flight is expected to leave Kabul on Thursday or Friday. Former chief of the defence staff Lord David Richards, quoted in the Daily Telegraph, put the time remaining at 48 hours.

Even so, thousands more could be pulled out in the coming days if the rate of evacuations continues. As of Tuesday night there had been at least 57 British evacuation flights, the Prime Minister said. Since August 13th, 10,291 people had been evacuated — and 2,000 of them were just yesterday, the Foreign Secretary claimed Wednesday morning.

So far, the UK evacuation effort appears to have pulled out more Afghans than Britons. Of those 10,000 people flown out, 5,500 of them were part of the Afghan relocation programme, the Home Office said — although The Guardian reports the number of AFghans is actually far higher, at 6,380. Of the remaining approximate 4,500 passengers, many would have been British citizens but the UK armed forces has also been assisting other European nations struggling with their own evacuation flights.

 

It has been said several times by top UK figures that with the evacuation being conducted in such a hurry, there may be some people who would have been eligible for a flight who won’t make it out. Following Tuesday’s emergency G7 meeting convened by the United Kingdom the group of wealthy nations made clear they expected the Taliban to give free passage out of Afghanistan after August 31st even if the Western powers weren’t physically in the country to receive them.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson made clear he believed the G7 had leverage sufficient to force the Taliban to do this, but the terror group has ordered Afghans not to leave the country, citing concerns over ‘brain drain‘ as the wealthiest, best-educated, and most mobile citizens flee their coming rule. Brain drain is a standard feature of open-borders globalism, where the most educated in the poorest countries expatriate themselves to the most successful nations to pursue advantage — buttressing the power of the already most powerful nations while depriving the least developed of the very people they need most to progress.

The UK preparing to end its activities in Kabul comes as the Republic of Poland, one of the minor contributing nations to the Western alliance in Afghanistna, announced it was suspending its evacuation today. The Polish deputy foreign minister said the decision was taken after discussions with U.S. and British leaders, and said the country was no longer able to “risk the lives of our diplomats” in country as the security picture deteriorated. The Associated Press reports Poland had used “over a dozen” flights to evacuate Polish citizens.

 

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