‘About 100’ Afghan Evacuees Reportedly Flagged for Possible Ties to Taliban, Terrorist Groups

More than 122,000 people were airlifted out of Kabul’s international airport in the last two weeks of August, among them at least 5,000 Americans, several thousand US troops, and thousands of foreign military personnel and nationals – mostly from western nations’ shuttered diplomatic missions. About 30,000 of the evacuees have been taken to the US.

About 10,000 of the 30,000 Afghan evacuees taken to the United States need additional screening, with 100 of them flagged for possible connections to the Taliban* or global terror groups, and requiring further review, NBC News reports, citing two sources said to be familiar with the situation.

According to the sources, at least two evacuees will be sent to Kosovo. They did not specify what Kosovo facility they were referring to. However, the United States has operated Camp Bondsteel, a sprawling US military facility, on the disputed Serbian territory since 1999. UN and European officials have previously compared the prison at the base with Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and reporters have alleged that the Camp Bondsteel base may also contain a secret CIA black site detention and torture facility. US officials have denied the latter allegations.

NBC’s sources further indicated that a number of evacuees sent to a holding facility in the Washington, DC area had previously been in the US, and that they had been deported for unspecified criminal offences. The sources did not elaborate on how many individuals were being referred to.

An unnamed security official confirmed that the vetting of Afghan nationals is taking place both overseas and on US soil.

US officials previously said that emergency shelter facilities had been prepared for up to 50,000 Afghan refugees at eight separate military bases spread across the country.

More than 122,000 people were flown out of Kabul in August, and it remains unclear exactly how many were Afghans, and how many foreign nationals or soldiers. US military transports flew nearly 80,000 civilians out of the country, and Washington has estimated that roughly 5,500 of those were Americans, and 73,500 were Afghans or other foreigners. The UK carried out its own evacuation operation, reporting a total of 15,000+ evacuations, 8,000 of whom were Afghan nationals.

Along with the US and the UK, some of the evacuees have been sent to temporary processing centres in countries including Spain, Germany, Qatar and Uzbekistan. Some of the European nations which took part in the US-led war and occupation of Afghanistan have promised to provide refugee status to at-risk individuals, including persons who assisted their militaries.

The people taken out aboard US and other NATO transports is just a drop in the ocean among the estimated 3.5 million Afghans already internally displaced within the war-torn country. Another 2.2 million civilians are already living in neighbouring countries because of the generations-long war in their home nation.

The International Rescue Committee, a New York-based aid and NGO organisation, estimates that at least 263,000 Afghan civilians have been affiliated with the US occupation of Afghanistan which has lasted more than 19 years. It remains unclear how many of them have been evacuated, either in the final two weeks of August after the collapse of the Kabul government or in the years before that. The Taliban has promised not to harm those who worked for the US or other NATO armies or the Afghan government. However, Sputnik has previously reported on numerous instances of Taliban fighters hunting down and killing, torturing, arresting, beating or threatening former interpreters, security officers, former officials and others.

The United Nations has estimated that the Taliban takeover may create an additional 500,000 refugees, even as Afghanistan’s neighbours seek to beef up border security and limit new entries amid fears that some of these individuals may be smuggling guns or narcotics or be terrorists posing as refugees.