taliban: Hundreds queue for passports in bid to leave Afghanistan

Lots of of individuals braved sub-zero temperatures in Afghanistan’s capital to queue outdoors the passport workplace early Sunday, a day after the Taliban authorities introduced it might resume issuing journey paperwork.

Many started their wait the earlier evening and most stood patiently in single file — some determined to depart the nation for medical therapy, others to flee the Islamists’ renewed rule.

Tense Taliban personnel periodically charged crowds that shaped on the entrance of the queue and at a close-by roadblock.

“We do not need any suicide assault or explosion to occur,” mentioned Taliban safety operative Ajmal Toofan, 22, expressing issues concerning the risks of crowding.

The native department of the Islamic State group, the Taliban’s principal enemy, killed greater than 150 individuals in late August when residents massed at Kabul airport in a determined bid to depart throughout the early days of the brand new regime.

“Our accountability right here is to guard individuals,” Toofan added calmly, his gun pointed professionally in the direction of the bottom. “However the individuals are not cooperating.”

He spoke to AFP as one in every of his colleagues pushed a person who then fell headlong simply in need of a coil of barbed wire.

Mohammed Osman Akbari, 60, mentioned he was urgently attempting to succeed in Pakistan, as a result of dilapidated hospitals at residence have been unable to finish his coronary heart surgical procedure. Medics “put springs in my coronary heart”, he mentioned, referring to a stent. “They have to be eliminated and it is not doable right here.” Close by, ambulances containing individuals too sick to queue have been parked in conjunction with the street.

“The affected person has a coronary heart downside,” mentioned ambulance driver Muslim Fakhri, 21, referring to a 43-year-old man mendacity on a stretcher inside his car. An applicant needs to be current to make sure the passport is issued, he defined.

The Taliban initially stopped issuing passports shortly after their return to energy, which got here because the earlier, Western-backed regime imploded within the remaining levels of a US army withdrawal.

In October, authorities reopened the passport workplace in Kabul solely to droop work days later as a flood of functions brought about the biometric tools to interrupt down.

However the workplace mentioned Saturday that the problem has been resolved and people whose functions have been already in course of can now get their paperwork.