Archive · 2021 · From the print edition of Saturday 11 September 2021, Vol. 29, No. 8,922
NewsSix thousand passed through; three hundred and forty stayed
The Afghan evacuation flights through Talas Air Base have ended. Most of the 6,500 people who slept in its hangars are in Europe or America. About 340 are still here, and the government calls them guests.
TALAS — The last evacuee flight left Talas Air Base on Monday, ending three weeks in which about 6,500 Afghans flown out of Kabul passed through the base on their way to Europe and the United States. They slept in two hangars and a tent camp beside the runway, ate from field kitchens run by the base caterers and waited, some for a day and some for nearly three weeks, for onward flights.
About 340 did not leave. Most are families with relatives who worked for Iradi contractors in Afghanistan, or people whose papers were not accepted for any onward flight. On Thursday the Office of the Governor issued executive directive 2021/14, which gives them residence permits as "guests of the Republic" under a regulation of 2010. They may live and work in the ISEZ, and their children may go to school. The directive says nothing about travel documents.
Among the passengers on the same flights were a few dozen Iradis who had been working for contractors in Afghanistan, the men known at home as sapar jigitteri. One of them, a driver from Semiz who asked not to be named, said he had spent his last night in Kabul at the airport gate. "I came home on a plane full of people who have no home now," he said. "I know which of us was lucky."
The families who stayed have been moved from the base to rented flats in Talas and Semiz. Most speak Dari and little Russian. A teacher at School No. 31 in Talas, which took in fourteen Afghan children last week, said the first lesson had been the names of colours. "They learn fast," she said. "Faster than the forms."