[More than 140 Afghan Air Force
pilots and crew members were evacuated to the United Arab Emirates three months
after flying into Tajikistan to escape the Taliban.]
The flight, bound for the United
Arab Emirates, ended a three-month ordeal for the U.S.-trained military
personnel, who had flown American-supplied aircraft to Tajikistan to escape the
Taliban only to end up in custody.
The Afghans said they were counting
on the U.S. government to secure their freedom after they were detained by the
Tajik authorities after the Taliban seized power in their home country and they
fled, fearing reprisals.
In WhatsApp audio recordings made
on smuggled cellphones, the English-speaking pilots described poor conditions,
insufficient food rations and limited medical care at the site where they were
being held outside the capital, Dushanbe.
Brig. Gen. David Hicks, a retired
Air Force officer who is chief executive of Operation Sacred Promise,
said a plane carrying the Afghans had departed Dushanbe on Tuesday night, U.S.
Eastern time, after a long delay.
“It’s just such a great relief for
the entire team knowing that they are getting out of this period of uncertainty
and taking the first step in starting their new lives,” General Hicks said.
“Hopefully, they will all be reunited with their families soon.”
But for many Afghans who worked
with the U.S. military, the ordeal is not over.
Several thousand Afghan Air Force
pilots and crew members remain in hiding in Afghanistan, with some saying they
feel abandoned by the U.S. military, their longtime combat ally. They say they
are desperate to leave Afghanistan because they and their families are at risk
of being hunted down and killed by the Taliban.
In telephone interviews from safe
houses in Afghanistan, several Afghan Air Force pilots described moving from
house to house to avoid detection. They said they were running out of money and
did not dare look for work because they feared being discovered by the
militants.
The Taliban have said there is a
general amnesty for any Afghan who served in the former government or worked
with the U.S. government or military. But several Afghan Air Force pilots have
been killed by the Taliban this year.
General Hicks said the flight that
let Tajikistan on Tuesday had been arranged by the State Department, which also
aided in the evacuation in
September of a separate group of Afghan pilots and crew members who had flown to
Uzbekistan. Those Afghans were taken to a U.S. military base in the United Arab
Emirates.
The Taliban had pressured
Uzbekistan to return the pilots and crew members to Afghanistan.
The State Department did not
immediately comment.
On Sunday, a department
spokesperson offered no timeline for relocating the Afghans but said American
officials were speaking regularly with the Tajikistan government. The
spokesperson said the U.S. government had verified the identities of the
approximately 150 Afghans after gaining access to them in mid-October.
Many Afghan pilots were trained in
the United States to fly U.S.-supplied military planes and helicopters. The
United States spent more than $8
billion to train and equip the Afghan Air Force, but the pilots and planes
were overwhelmed by the demands of supporting a
U.S.-trained army that quickly collapsed as the Taliban toppled one
provincial capital after another this summer.
Some pilots and crew members and
their families were evacuated with the help of the U.S. government and military
just after the Taliban takeover in August. But many more were unable to get
out, despite attempts by their former advisers to help them.
Since mid-August, General Hicks
said, Operation Sacred Promise has helped evacuate about 350 Afghans. The group
has vetted about 2,000 Afghan Air Force personnel and their relatives trying to
leave Afghanistan, with about 8,000 more still to be vetted, he said.
The status of the Afghan Air Force
aircraft flown to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan remains unclear.
During Afghanistan’s collapse,
about 25 percent of the Afghan Air Force’s aircraft were
flown to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, according to an Oct. 31 report by the
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. General Hicks put the
number at 56 to 60 aircraft.
U.S. forces rendered unusable 80 others at Kabul’s airport in late August.
Bryant Rousseau, Michael Crowley
and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
