Just as the United States, United Kingdom, India or Germany, Spain also launched an airlift to evacuate its citizens stranded in Afghanistan, from the Kabul airport.
The Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the beginning of the evacuation process, after the landing in Dubai of the first A400M of the Air Force (EdA).
#BuenosDías
El A400 del #Ala31 @EjercitoAire despegó anoche rumbo a Dubái para repatriar al personal español y sus colaboradores afganos. Así se realizó la preparación del vuelo, donde también embarcó un equipo del Batallón CIMIC @EjercitoTierra y del #EADA del Ejército del Aire. pic.twitter.com/Fvb6o8cMJ1— Ministerio Defensa (@Defensagob) August 17, 2021
“The A400M plane of the Spanish Armed Forces that departed last night from the Zaragoza airbase landed this morning in Dubai, as scheduled. In addition, the second A400M aircraft also took off from the Aragonese base a few minutes ago to Dubai», said the government in a press release.
«These planes will cover the first phase of repatriation of embassy personnel, of the Spaniards who remain in that country, as well as of all those Afghans and their families who have collaborated with our country for years. The crew of these aircraft is composed, among others, by pilots from the 31st Wing of Zaragoza, personnel from the Civilian Military Cooperation battalion (CIMC) of the Spanish Army and the Air Force’s Air Deployment Support Squadron (EADA). The aim of this device is to respond to the difficult evacuation conditions», they added.
As of today, at least one of the Spanish A400Ms should start making the roundtrip flights between Kabul and Dubai to rescue Spanish personnel and Afghan allies already at the airport.
The real problem lies in how to rescue those who did not arrive at the airport before Kabul was completely conquered by the Taliban militias. Right now, Afghanistan’s capital city is rife with checkpoints where armed militiamen intercept and investigate every movement of people and vehicles. It is really going to be an epic for these people (particularly the Afghan allies and their families) to get to the airport without being stopped along the way.
En esa línea de trabajo continuo acaba de despegar desde Zaragoza el segundo avión A400M de las Fuerzas Armadas rumbo a Dubái.???? pic.twitter.com/tUHZ809nk5
— Ministerio Defensa (@Defensagob) August 17, 2021
Each on its own
Another highlight of this tragic situation is the apparent lack of coordination of the allies at the NATO level of these evacuation operations. The lightning-fast speed with which the Taliban seized Kabul took the world (including the major intelligence agencies) by storm, surely undermining any fledgling plan for joint action, if any.
The US was the first to react, mobilizing its C-17 Globemaster heavy-lift aircraft to take as many people as they could fit inside. And although the aircraft were taking off with well over 600 passengers on board (there is talk of a flight with 800 pax), we saw traumatic scenes of people who, in desperation, decided to cling to the plane even while it was taking off.
In this context, the various NATO allies, who intervened to a greater or lesser extent during the 20 years of occupation and fighting in Afghanistan, were slow to react and implement an airlift to evacuate their people and those locals who collaborated with them. And the actions that are beginning to be carried out now are not announced as a concerted and coordinated strategy among allies, but as anomic responses, of an absolutely national nature.
Afghanistan is proving to be a litmus test for the commitment, crisis response and organizational capacity of NATO members and allied countries.
