“We have been assured by the Taliban that all foreigners and all Afghan citizens with a visa will be allowed to leave Afghanistan,” the US State Department wrote. according to the statement.
How these people can leave Afghanistan is not clear. According to the US ministry, the Taliban say that this group of travelers can go to “departure points” “in a safe and orderly manner”. From that location they are allowed to leave Afghanistan.
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Outgoing Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag has responded on Twitter. “Together with 100 countries, we will make every effort to allow Dutch and Afghans who have worked for us, or who are at risk, to travel freely to places outside Afghanistan.”
“We expect the Taliban to honor their guarantees and that these groups can travel freely,” says Kaag.
trip
Kaag will travel to the Afghanistan region next week. “The journey that Kaag is going to make is dominated by the question: how do we get people on the Dutch list out of Afghanistan,” a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs told RTL Nieuws.
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‘Extremely good news’
According to editor Martin van Norel, who this week had a lot of contact with Afghans who were unable to flee, this is extremely good news.
“The group of Afghans without foreign papers who were to be evacuated by the Netherlands can now leave the country. Until now, the Taliban did not want to let Afghans without foreign papers go. This also applies to the interpreter Mohammed who worked for us in Uruzgan in 2010. “He was unable to escape through the airport. He is now terrified and afraid of being arrested by the Taliban because he worked for a range of foreign organizations and Afghan ministries.”
Van Norel concludes: “Hopefully the misery of a very large group of people this week will soon end who had a glimmer of hope this week that was completely extinguished when the evacuations stopped.”
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