A passenger jet’s departure on Thursday was the first foreign flight out of Afghanistan since the U.S. evacuation ended. But thousands who want to leave remain stuck.
Ten days after the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan came to an end, a lone jetliner lifted off from Kabul’s airport on Thursday, the first international passenger flight since American forces ended their 20-year presence in the country. The departure of the chartered Qatar Airways Boeing 777, with scores of Americans, Canadians and Britons on board, was hailed by some as a sign that Taliban-ruled Afghanistan might be poised to re-engage with the world, even as reports emerged that the group was intensifying its crackdown on dissent. “Kabul Airport is now operational,” Mutlaq bin Majed Al-Qahtani, a special envoy from Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a news conference on the tarmac. In recent days, Qatari and Turkish personnel worked with the Taliban to repair damage and make the airport basically functional again. But just more than a week ago, the facility was a scene of frantic desperation as people jockeyed to find seats on the last commercial and military planes out. When the last evacuation flight left Kabul just before midnight Aug.30, it left behind a ghost town of an airport, strewn with damaged equipment and the abandoned possessions of evacuees. Also left behind were an unknown number of foreigners and Afghans desperate to leave — but with no way out. Mr. Al-Qahtani appeared at pains Thursday to point out the difference between then and now. This, he said, was not an evacuation. “We are speaking about free passage,” he said. “We want people to feel that this is normal.” But for all the diplomat’s talk of a new era, by day’s end, only a single planeload of passengers had left the country, and “normal” seemed far away for a country just taken over by militants who are feared by many Afghans and who are shunned by much of the world. More flights were promised in the days ahead. But an untold number of people remained in limbo, including at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where dozens of Americans and hundreds of Afghans were waiting for the Taliban to let them leave on charter flights. And the country overall remained in desperate straits, as the newly installed Taliban government worked to tighten its grip, cracking down on all signs of public protest. Protesters have been violently dispersed, and reports are emerging of journalists being detained and beaten. At Thursday’s joint news conference at the airport, Taliban and Qatari officials hailed the flight as the moment that Afghanistan reconnected with the international community. While that may have been overstated — many world leaders clearly remain deeply wary of the country’s new leaders — American officials had words of praise Thursday for the militants that U.
