What's involved in the dangerous and ongoing evacuation efforts from Kabul? Here, an Australian helping lead operations explains 👇
Since the Taliban re-took control of Afghanistan last week, huge numbers of Afghans have attempted to flee the group's feared hardline rule.Australia's Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has said the situation at Hamid Karzai International Airport has been"diabolical" and the government was acting as fast as it could to get people out.
"We haven't got the infrastructure that you would have behind you to do a phased evacuation, where people are coming out over the period of a month," he says. "There are hundreds and hundreds of people [we are trying to help]. There is a woman and baby who persevered over 12 hours. She had an American visa and got to the front and the Taliban was whipping everyone and so she had to turn around with her child. We've got a one-year-old child. We've also got a 22-year-old female."
"My main mission is locals, people who have been left behind, those who are ultra high-risk, those who face potential execution.""If you think about it, the campaign in Afghanistan ran for 20 years from day one. There were people working alongside Americans, Western forces, NGOs. So there are 20 years of people who gave their lives," he says.
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