Taliban detained nearly 150 people including Indian citizens, released later

The Indians were among 150 people who were heading towards the Kabul airport when they were stopped by Taliban fighters

The Taliban militants on Saturday detained nearly 150 people, mostly citizens of India, from near the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, even as an Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft evacuated over 80 others from the capital of Afghanistan.

Nearly 150 Indian citizens and some Afghan Hindus and Sikhs reached the airport in eight vehicles in the early hours on Saturday. They wanted to catch a flight and leave for India. But they were not allowed to enter the airport. A group of unarmed militants of the Taliban took them away to Tarakhil in eastern Kabul, according to the reports reaching New Delhi.

The militants interrogated them and checked their passports before releasing them and allowed them to go to the airport in Kabul. KabulNow, a news portal, reported that the Taliban militants had assaulted some of the Indian citizens before releasing them. The news portal quoted one of the Indian citizens, who had managed to escape along with his wife when the others had been taken away by the Taliban.

An Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft meanwhile evacuated over 80 other Indians and some Afghan citizens from Kabul to a military airbase at Ayni in Tajikistan. An Air India aircraft was sent to bring them to New Delhi. The IAF aircraft would remain at Ayni to evacuate the remaining Indian citizens in Afghanistan.

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The overcrowded Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul continued to remain chaotic, with hundreds of Afghans as well foreign nationals trying to leave the country, where the Taliban now seems to return to power. The soldiers of the United States and some of its NATO allies are guarding the airport.

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New Delhi has been in touch with President Joe Biden’s administration in Washington D.C. to coordinate the evacuation of Indians and the Afghan Hindus and Sikhs from Kabul. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to his US counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss the repatriation of Indians and other foreign nationals from Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government particularly promised to help Afghan Hindus and Sikhs, who might like to travel to India in view of the return of the radical Sunni Muslim militant organization’s return to power in Afghanistan. India also promised to stand by its friends in Afghanistan. Though New Delhi could facilitate the return of some Indian citizens from Afghanistan before and after the Taliban militants took over the capital of the conflict-ravaged country, it had to pause the repatriation when the operations of the commercial airlines from the overcrowded Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul was suspended due to chaos.

New Delhi evacuated its envoy and diplomats from Kabul on Tuesday – less than 48 hours after the Taliban militants entered the capital city after occupying many provincial capitals across Afghanistan and President Ashraf Ghani escaped from the country marking the collapse of his government.