A day after US evacuation ended with the Taliban officially taking over Kabul airport, Qatar has urged the militant group to ensure "safe passage" for those leaving Afghanistan. Over the last few days, as the August 31 deadline drew increasingly nearer, several world leaders admitted that they had not been evacuate everyone. While numerous states have insisted that they will continue their efforts to extricate
Some members of their own countries are believed to have been left behind, while many Afghans who had worked with foreign organisations and governments are going into hiding. "I can say, we know with absolute certainty, we did not get everyone out,” admitted New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently.
According to Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, the number of American citizens still stranded in Afghanistan is "in the very low hundreds". And as the UK entered the final hours of it's evacuation process, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace had opined that "approximately 100-150 British nationals" had been left. Some of them, he added, were "willingly staying".
Further details awaited.
