The US gets its collaborators to safety in Afghanistan

The United States has initiated a plan for the evacuation of thousands of people who collaborated in some way with its armed forces in Afghanistan. The first plane with 200 passengers has already left Kabul airport, inaugurating an airlift that will include some 700 flights to various US cities.

The Biden administration does not want a repeat of the reprisals that its interpreters, guides and other servants suffered in other places such as Vietnam when the troops they were helping were withdrawn. Reports from correspondents in Afghanistan agree that the Taliban increasingly control more and more provinces and the mood among former collaborators of foreign military and civilian personnel is one of fear.

A delegation of technicians still working on the programme in Kabul is drawing up lists of people to be evacuated along with their families. The numbers already registered are expected to be higher than those originally envisaged. The process envisages relocation to different states of the Union where they will have refugee status, receive help to settle and start a new life.

When the last US military units left the country a few weeks ago, the anxiety that was created among the Afghan population was very great, for some bordering on panic. Many citizens want to leave, forcing those in charge of planning the operation to be very careful and attentive to ensure that no intruders slip in and that no committed people are left without help.

The religious fanaticism that inspires some people to look forward to the return of the Taliban government is matched only by the fear that is felt, especially in urban areas, by those who remember only too well what is likely to await them. Women who in recent years have moved towards a certain modernisation of their customs are the most worried.

Not only do they fear a return to the compulsory burqa for going out on the streets as a woman, and their distance from the university, but also a return to the submission to their husbands or fathers that the Taliban authorities imposed when they ruled, before 11 March, and which they continue to enforce in the provinces that are falling under their control.