Taliban, US aim for ‘swift handover’ of Kabul airport amid mass evacuations: Taliban official

The Taliban and US forces are aiming for a swift handover of the Kabul airport to the militants who are prepared to take charge of the strategic facility, a Taliban official said.

“We are waiting for the final nod from the Americans to secure full control over the Kabul airport as both sides aim for a swift handover,” the Taliban official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters on Sunday.

The official added that the militants, who seized control of the capital less than a fortnight ago after a lightning advance against the Western-backed Afghan government, had a team of technical experts and highly qualified engineers ready to take over the airport.

The Taliban said a day earlier that the group would “very soon” take control of the Kabul airport and announce a full cabinet in the coming days after the United States completed its withdrawal from the war-torn country.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban Spokesman, said the group had appointed governors and police chiefs in all but one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and would act to tackle the economic problems.

Mujahid did not specify the exact timing of the cabinet formation, but later said the makeup of the new cabinet would be cleared “in one or two weeks.”

He stressed that the economic problems being experienced by Afghans would be eased once the new government was in place.

United Nations officials have warned that Afghanistan faces a humanitarian catastrophe following decades of conflict, with large parts of the country suffering from extreme drought conditions.

The Taliban are poised to run Afghanistan again 20 years after they were removed from power by American forces following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The militants intensified their offensive and rapidly overran major Afghan cities in recent weeks, as the US-led foreign forces enforced what has been criticized as a hasty and ill-planned withdrawal. The Taliban laid siege to Kabul on August 15, forcing the then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country on the same day.

Since then, Kabul’s airport has been the scene of chaos and sporadic violence, with panicked Afghan and foreign nationals desperately trying to catch evacuation flights out of the country, prompting officials there to enforce restrictions.