AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Chaos at the airport in Kabul means that no country knows which plane its citizens are on, the Netherlands’ foreign minister said on Friday, adding that there are more than 700 Dutch nationals in Afghanistan who still remain to be evacuated.
Sigrid Kaag said the Netherlands is working closely with Germany and Britain on evacuations, but getting evacuees to Kabul airport is an uncertain process due to Taliban checkpoints.
In addition, “because of the chaos at the airport we do not at this moment have a clear picture of in which airplane our own people are, or the citizens of other European countries or NATO allies, or of Afghani personnel — no country does,” Kaag said.
“We know that there are at this moment more than 700 Dutch nationals still in Afghanistan, many people who appear to have gone on family visits, despite very clear travel advisories not to go …. and we have to bring them back” she told reporters in The Hague.
The Dutch foreign ministry instructed citizens to leave the country on Aug. 12 and most Dutch diplomatic staff were evacuated on Aug. 15, but the ambassador and a small replacement team have returned on the 17th to oversee the evacuation, along with a 62-soldier protection force.
The Dutch are running flights with two C-130 military planes and are also in the process of evacuating a group of around 1,000 Afghans, including those who worked for the Netherlands as translators, and their families.
Responding to demands in parliament, the government this week also said it would try to evacuate an additional, unspecified number of other Afghanis whose lives may be threatened because of their ties to Dutch media or aid missions in the country.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
