Hours after a devastating terror attack killed more than 100 people outside Kabul airport, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared Australia’s last-ditch effort to evacuate people from Afghanistan over.
“Over these nine days, we have successfully evacuated some 4100 people from one of the most dangerous places on earth,” Morrison said on Friday morning. For the government, that figure is a glimmer of success amid all the horror stories coming out of Afghanistan.
But when the final evacuation flights left Kabul last week, hundreds of Afghans with ties to the Australian military (ADF) remained in Afghanistan, with no path to safety in Australia.
Visa holders blocked from escape
It isn’t clear just how many Afghan guards and interpreters might be left behind. Afghanistan veteran Jason Scanes, who’s been working to help translators still in Kabul, said he knew of over 150 people who remain in Afghanistan. There could be many more than that.
But the problems with Australia’s evacuation efforts began well before the flights finally reached Kabul. Some Afghans waited years to get their Locally-Engaged Employee (LEE) visas approved, a bureaucratic process that was at times opaque and arbitrary. Others were denied because they were contractors rather than directly employed by Australian troops.
Those bureaucratic problems continued to undermine Australia’s evacuation effort. Last week, the government started ramping up 449 temporary humanitarian visa offers to Afghans. Had those visas been offered to anyone deemed at risk in the proceeding months and years, the final evacuation could’ve been much easier, Scanes said.
Instead, the surge in 449 visas being approved came last week, as people were being warned to stay away from Kabul airport due to fears of an imminent terror attack.
“We’ve seen 449 visas trickle out to some interpreters and their families, but without commercial options or military evacuations, those visas are pretty much worthless,” he said.
Military lawyer and Afghan veteran Glenn Kolomeitz said Afghans with 449 visa notifications were being turned away from Kabul airport at the gate by Australian troops.
“Our people were going to the gates at the airport, showing their visa notification they were sent on their phones, and were told they needed paper visas,” he said. “The only reasonable inference is the ADF had decided to bugger out of there well in advance of the US exit and they were turning them away at the gate.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has denied visa holders were denied access to the airport on this basis. But both Scanes and Kolomeitz say they’ve heard from numerous visa holders who’ve been turned away at gate.
How many were saved?
The government’s figure of 4100 people evacuated last week also tells us very little about who made it to Australia. So far, they’ve refused to provide a breakdown of those 4100 evacuees, which means we still don’t know how many were Australian nationals as opposed to Afghans with LEE visas.
“I think we’re going to find there were a lot of Australian passport holders,” Scanes said. “It’s [the 4100 number] a marketing ploy to say ‘look how well we’ve done’.”
For the Afghans who never made it onto the planes, many of whom missed out through a lack of contacts or just sheer ill-fortune, the path to Australia remains narrow. Kolomeitz said he hoped the government would “maintain pressure” on the Taliban to keep Kabul airport open for people trying to leave the country. But commercial flights aren’t landing in Afghanistan any time soon.
Their only other option is to try and escape to neighbouring countries, across borders controlled by the Taliban, and hope to reach Australia from there. But that too would require a concerted effort from Australia to try and bring people to safety. For years, we’ve failed to do that.
“The government’s left these people in limbo swinging in the wind while the bureaucracy rolls on,” Scanes said.
Time for Australia to reopen its shuttered mission and engage with those now running Afghanistan. Perhaps, initially, via a middle eastern partner country like Qatar. You know, like was done in Vietnam after that debacle. Diplomacy will get people out. The country has clearly failed when it came todris-driven, military, evacuation.
How about toxic invasion by the US supported by a snivelling supine Australia.
Been there, done that, dead,wounded & PTSD to show for it.
In respect of the many Afghans who assisted the ADF, this humanitarian disaster is the deliberate consequences of Dutton’s racist, petty discrimination, nothing else. These visa could have been processed last year or earlier, except for Dutton’s ‘national security’ bullsh*t. He is a despicable person, but will suffer no consequence for his mendacity.
In the past persons considered of ‘low moral fibre’ were labeled cowards at times of war but cowardly can now be applied to our government over our debased Afghanistan campaign. We could not cut and run fast enough.
C’est la guerre: losers weepers. Another failed Crusade. Another foreign invader of Afghanistan gets its arse kicked. Quite right too; can’t change people by dropping bombs on them. Change people by being nice to them and gently, gradually showing them a better way. (If you have one, that is.) Show them hospitals and schools, don’t show them how to shoot. War not required.
Australians should be thankful that they are insulated from the outside world and the negative perceptions, of Australians by our media, but this performance is the type which confirms what many have though for generations (e.g. Germans stereotype us as shallow, conservative and racist).
Present influential generations in Australia, inc. MPs, resist throwing off any old colonial, monarchical and US influence almost as a reaction, still, to Labor governments of Whitlam, Hawke etc. encouraging our own organic identity and deeper relations with our regional neighbours.
We are still viewed as white nation serving others’ economic/defence interests, WASP exceptionalism (or worse, eugenics, yet generally Catholics and Jewish are now accepted), xenophobic fear/anxiety and much ignorance when media do not even cover nor use content from NZ or Indonesia etc. (vs. preferred UK/US content to reflect our ‘culture’).