A group of Taliban fighters waited outside the main iron gate of the Indian embassy in Kabul – armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. In the compound were 150 Indian diplomats and nationals who grew increasingly nervous as they watched news of the Taliban’s increasing grip on the capital, which they had taken a day earlier. They were in a precarious position.
Historically, Pakistan has been the Taliban’s strongest ally, using it for so-called strategic depth in never-ending battles – real and diplomatic – with India. In turn, India backed the government that took over after the Taliban were ousted, earning the group’s hatred and enmity. While the Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, they were there escorting them to the airport, where a military aircraft was waiting to evacuate them after New Delhi closed its mission.
In the first of nearly two dozen vehicles leaving the embassy late on Monday, some fighters waved and smiled at the passengers, among them an AFP reporter. As they continued along the main road to the airport, one of them pointed them in the direction of the road that led out of the city’s green zone. The embassy asked the Taliban to shepherd out the Indians when the Taliban closed access to a once heavily fortified neighborhood after capturing Kabul the previous day.
Before Afghanistan’s new leaders took full control of the city, about a quarter of the 200 or so people who had gathered at the foreign mission had already left. According to a member of the second group who left the green zone on Monday, ‘we had trouble with the Taliban when we were evacuating them. We then contacted the Taliban to ask them to police our convoy out. Two promises of an escort did not materialize, unnerving the large group that bunkered down at the embassy, with one diplomat comparing the experience to being under house arrest’.
Several hours had passed since the cars left the compound and began their five-kilometer (three-mile) journey to the airport. Passengers passed each minute in constant fear of an attack during the five-hour journey. There were unfamiliar checkpoints, and thousands of displaced people were along the road.
Intermittently, Taliban fighters accompanying the convoy fired at the crowds from their own vehicles, forcing them to retreat. A large group of people who gathered around an intersection were scared back by a man who appeared to be commanding the troops. At the airport, a group of American soldiers took up positions and coordinated flights after the convoy reached it.
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After another two-hour wait, they boarded the Indian military transport aircraft C-17 that took off in the morning and landed in Gujarat, a west Indian state, later that day. Shirin Pathare, an Air India employee who flew from Kabul to Mumbai, told AFP as he stepped off the plane, ‘I’m so happy to be back. India is paradise’. In the presence of his two-year-old daughter, another Indian citizen recalled the chaos and anxiety of his hurried departure from the city and office.
‘A group of Taliban visited my workplace just hours before I took the flight,’ said the man, who declined to give his name to AFP. ‘They were polite, but they took two of our vehicles when they left. “I knew immediately that it was time for me and my family to leave,’ he added.
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