Experts fear Afghans who worked for NATO countries will be subjected to "torture and execution".
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Human rights organisations and individuals inside Afghanistan continued to sound the alarm on Friday about attacks on progressives, minority groups and Afghans who worked with the former government and foreign states.
Amnesty International also reported that nine members of a minority ethnic group were shot and tortured to death by Taliban fighters in Ghazni province last month.
Following an urgent meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Friday afternoon, the group issued a joint statement expressing concern over the “grave events" in Afghanistan and called for “an immediate end to violence" and “serious human rights violations and abuses."
Confusion still reigns over whether the Taliban will permit Afghans eligible for evacuation to get inside Kabul Airport, which is still overcrowded as desperate families try to flee the country.
European countries continued to fly out their citizens and Afghan former colleagues on Friday, with Spain agreeing to shelter people on the way to their destinations.
But a recent diplomatic spat has left 32 Afghan refugees stranded on the Polish-Belarusian border, while Turkey has pressed ahead with plans to build a vast border wall blocking off on-foot arrivals from Iran.
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On Thursday a confidential United Nations document, leaked to the media, had warned that the Taliban was intensifying a search for people who worked with US and NATO forces.
Fighters, the UN's intelligence contractors wrote, had established "priority lists" of individuals they wanted to arrest.
"They are targeting the families of those who refuse to give themselves up, and prosecuting and punishing their families 'according to Sharia law,'" Christian Nellemann, executive director of the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, which compiled the report for the UN, told AFP.
"We expect both individuals previously working with NATO/US forces and their allies, alongside with their family members, to be exposed to torture and executions."
'We cannot abandon them'
European countries are still scrambling to evacuate those they originally deemed eligible, while calls are mounting for some states to do more.
Access to Kabul Airport is being made more difficult by hundreds of Afghans, who are not part of the official programmes, crowding the concourse outside and hoping to find a way out.
Shocking footage circulated on social media this week appeared to show parents handing their babies young children to US military officers, to be passed into the airport compound.
The UK has announced it will take in up to 20,000 Afghan refugees over the next four years, on top of those now eligible for relocation because of their past work for the British embassy or army.
France and Germany have meanwhile called for the EU to plan to manage the expected surge in refugees coming from Afghanistan.
In a phone call on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed to US President Joe Biden there was a "moral responsibility, that we collectively have, towards Afghan men and women who need our protection and who share our values... We cannot abandon them."
In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also asked Russia to raise the issue of Afghans who had worked with German forces and development groups being allowed safe passage out of the country.
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- The Taliban has said it wants "good relations" with the rest of the world
- Amnesty International reports the group tortured and killed a number of ethnic minority members in July
- An ex-senior NATO official has warned terror threats will be on the rise
- European countries continue to evacuate hundreds from a crowded Kabul Airport
- NATO foreign ministers and US President Joe Biden have said again their priority is getting citizens and Afghan partners out of the country
- Social media platforms have joined a drive to help Afghans fearing reprisal from the Taliban to protect their identities online
Biden: Our mission is to get Americans and allies out of Afghanistan
Asked by a reporter why the US did not carry out large-scale evacuations earlier in 2021, knowing a Taliban resurgence was on the cards, Biden again blamed the Afghan army's failure to hold off the Taliban for longer: "The overwhelming consensus was that they were not going to collapse... not just abandon, put down their arms, and take off."
Analysis: Five factors that were Afghan government's downfall
"Some 13 years ago an Afghan friend of mine gifted me a pair of US-army boots bought from a middle-man in front of the Bagram Airbase, apparently in exchange for Afghan hashish and directly from a US soldier or from an Afghan army official."
So writes Masoud Imani Kalesar, an Iranian-born Euronews reporter who spent time in Kabul. As the wider world grapples to understand how the Taliban managed to take back near-total control of Afghanistan in 11 days, Masoud gives his own, clear-eyed take on the five key factors that compelled the collapse of the Afghan government and army.
We need to work harder on Kabul evacuations, says NATO chief
NATO foreign ministers committed on Friday to focus on ensuring the safe evacuation from Afghanistan of their citizens and of Afghans deemed at risk after the Taliban takeover.
Faced with continuing chaos in the capital and the exit roads, many of the 30 allied nations raised “the need to work harder on how we can get more people ... into the airport, then processed and then onto the planes,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
He called that "the big, big, big challenge.”
All too often over the past hours and days, NATO planes have been able to get to Kabul, only to be forced to leave empty or near-empty.
Some allies called on the United States to secure Kabul airport for as long as it takes, even if that stretches beyond the evacuation of all U.S. nationals.
A joint statement Friday said that “as long as evacuation operations continue, we will maintain our close operational cooperation through Allied military means” at the airport.
Human rights lawyer warns Afghan women are already cut off from public life
Social networks deploy new features to protect Afghans' identities
Merkel to Putin: Foreground Germany's Afghan colleagues in Taliban talks
Stoltenberg: Any NATO recognition of Taliban depends on behaviour
Turkey presses ahead with border wall to stop Afghans trying to flee through Iran
Italian NGO's Afghan ex-staff trapped in homes after military rebuffal
Germany and US agree to pool air force resources to speed up evacuations
The German military is allowing the US to use its air base in Rhineland-Palatinate to transport Afghans seeking protection out of the country.
Germany has sent military aircraft of its own to Afghanistan in the past few days to evacuate German nationals and Afghans who worked with its forces and diplomatic mission.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Friday that the focus was on evacuating as many people from Kabul “as is possible under the very difficult circumstances”.
He added: “We agree with all our partners on the ground that no place on our planes should remain empty.” As a result, he said, US flights will also take Germans or people named by German authorities to Ramstein, while Germany also will evacuate people from various nations on its own planes.
Polish NGO demands group of Afghans be allowed to cross into Poland
The group includes a 15-year-old girl and several sick people. Team members say they have been stuck on the border with Belarus for 12 days.
Poland is refusing to let them pass because of an ongoing diplomatic row with Belarus, where president Alexander Lukashenko is widely accused of letting a flood of migrants into neighbouring states as revenge for EU sanctions.
Ocalenie has brought food, tents, sleeping bags and power banks to the group and on Friday, its lawyers issued verbal applications for their protection on megaphones.
UK Foreign Minister under increased pressure over handling of evacuation
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has faced 24 hours of scathing criticism over his conduct over the crisis in Afghanistan. So far the minister has rejected a chorus of calls for his resignation.
The furore began on Thursday morning with accusations that he Raab failed to intervene personally to seek help for Afghans who had worked for the British, while he was on holiday.
As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, Raab neglected to phone his counterpart in the Afghan government to arrange evacuations before returning from Crete on the Sunday night.
The criticism from opposition parties and civil rights groups has now widened to cover the British Foreign Office under Raab and the Boris Johnson administration as a whole.
The foreign secretary has now issued a statement, responding to "inaccurate media reporting". At the time he was asked to make the call, he said, "I was prioritising security and capacity at the airport on the direct advice of the Director and the Director General overseeing the crisis response."
READ MORE: Dominic Raab responds as calls grow for UK foreign minister to resign over Afghan 'negligence'
Events in Afghanistan can be 'triggering' for veterans, NGO tells Euronews
Help for Heroes, a British charity supporting service personnel wounded in the line of duty, told Euronews many veterans it supports are finding coverage of Afghanistan "concerning".
"The kind of graphic content being shown in the media can be triggering to anyone who has experienced being in a conflict zone," head of psychological wellbeing Sarah Jones said.
"The sights and sounds can cause them to recall difficult events and relive traumatic experiences. As such their need for support may be heightened at this time."
"We are responding to that by offering individual support on a case-by-case basis as well as encouraging veterans and their families to acknowledge their feelings, speak to someone they trust, practice self-care, reach out for professional support and look out for others who may be struggling too.
"We expect there to be a significant mental health need in the future as a result of the current events."
READ MORE: 'Was it all pointless?': Military veterans tormented by Taliban's Afghan takeover
Minister: Spanish planes leaving Kabul part-empty
Spain’s defense minister says the country’s military transport planes are leaving Kabul partly empty because chaos at the city’s airport is preventing Afghans from boarding.
Defense Minister Margarita Robles said on Friday that one Afghan family evacuated to Spain had tragically left behind a daughter they lost in the crush.
She told Spanish public radio RNE that one solution would be to set up safe corridors into the airport, but that’s impossible because “nobody is in control of the situation”.
Robles said that after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled on Sunday, air traffic controllers and security staff at Kabul had largely walked out, leaving it unmanned until United States forces took it over.
She said the US had given assurances its forces won’t leave the airport until the last person awaiting evacuation is out.
Polish diplomat: Chaos at Kabul airport hindering evacuations of Afghans
A Polish diplomat says the most difficult thing in evacuating Afghans is finding and bringing them in from the crowds outside Kabul Airport.
Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz said on Friday that sometimes consulate staff can identify the individuals in the crowd outside, but it's then difficult to get them to the gates into the airport. Poland has so far evacuated a few hundred people onthree flights.
“There are thousands of totally determined people in the crowd, in extremely difficult conditions, pressing on the walls and gates of the airport,” Przydacz told reporters.
“From this desperate, sometimes understandably aggressive crowd, our people are trying to extract those who are on our list,” Przydacz said.
“The transport logistics goes very smoothly but the greatest challenge now is how to find these people. Even if we know where they are, and sometimes our consuls can see them 40-50 meters (yards) away, they have no possibility of getting closer."
“These people must first of all, on their own, get as close as they can to the entrance, to have not only eye contact but real contact with the consul. Very often these people are simply pulled by the hand, jerked from the crowd with the help of the soldiers."
A former ambassador to Afghanistan, Piotr Lukasiewicz, has appealed to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on social media to send more evacuation planes to Kabul.
Taliban waiting for August 31 to make announcements
An Afghan official familiar with talks with the Taliban says the group does not plan to make any decisions or announcements about the upcoming government until after the August 31 US withdrawal date.
The official, who asked not to be named, said Taliban lead negotiator Anas Haqqani had told his ex-government interlocutors that the insurgent movement had a deal with the US “to do nothing” until after the date passes.
He did not elaborate on whether the reference to "doing nothing" was only in the political field. Haqqani’s statement raises concerns about what the religious movement might be planning after August 31, and whether it will keep its promise to include non-Taliban officials in the next government.
Until now the Taliban has said nothing of its plans to replace the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, or what a replacement would look like.
Amnesty says Taliban killed nine minority men
“The cold-blooded brutality of these killings is a reminder of the Taliban’s past record, and a horrifying indicator of what Taliban rule may bring,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General, said in a statement.
“These targeted killings are proof that ethnic and religious minorities remain at particular risk under Taliban rule in Afghanistan."
'Terrorism is going to rise,' ex-Nato official tells Euronews
Norway continues evacuations
Another planeload of people evacuated from Afghanistan landed on Friday at Oslo Airport.
Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide told Norwegian news agency NTB that among those onboard were Norwegian citizens, local Afghan employees, their family members and “some other European citizens.”
Eriksen Soereide didn’t give any exact figures on the number rescued. Also among the group were reporters for Norway’s TV2 and NRK television channels.
On Wednesday a plane carrying 13 Norwegian citizens, mostly diplomats, arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark.
EU chiefs to visit Afghan Spain refugee camp
The evacuees are expected to spend several days at the camp for Covid-19 and security screening before moving on to reception centres, ahead of their journeys to other states.