A Taliban spokesman said the group would not allow the evacuation operation to continue until what he said was an improvement in the situation of Afghans who had fled the country in the past six months and were now settling abroad.
Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference on Sunday (February 27th) that the Taliban government was responsible to the people and that the evacuation operation would be stopped until it was guaranteed that the lives of the Afghan people were not endangered abroad. will be.
During the evacuation operation from Afghanistan – August 15-30, 2021 – more than 120,000 people, mostly Afghans, fled the country, most of them to the United States, but still thousands more in the past six months. Afghanistan has been evacuated, waiting in foreign countries for the final destination.
Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban had received reports that thousands of Afghans were in “very bad” conditions in Qatar and Turkey.
Hundreds of Afghan refugees who were evacuated from Afghanistan to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates staged a peaceful demonstration on October 12 to protest the “unfortunate” and slow pace of their resettlement. They called on the United States to speed up the process and move them to the United States.
Three days after the demonstration, the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi issued a statement saying that embassy officials had met with Afghan protesting immigrants and discussed the “possibility” of their transfer to the United States.
A Taliban spokesman has expressed concern over the situation of Afghan refugees abroad. They are not allowed to leave Ukraine and are stuck in the middle of the war.
Hasibullah Nouri, an Afghan refugee in Ukraine who had previously served with US forces in Afghanistan, told VOA that after being relocated to the camp, eight Ukrainian officials confiscated their passports and gave them a document in return. To use it in this country.
The Taliban Foreign Ministry has said that “every option will be taken to safely relocate Afghans trapped in Ukraine.” According to Bakhtar News Agency, there are currently 500 Afghan citizens living in Ukraine, including asylum seekers and students.
The Department of Homeland Security says that by February 15, more than 76,000 Afghans had been relocated to the United States through “Allied Welcoming Operations” and resettled. But there are still thousands of others who have fled Afghanistan during the evacuation operations, in foreign camps, mainly in the UAE and Qatar.
