The Taliban have halted all evacuee flights out of Afghanistan for the past two weeks

NBC ^ | 23 December 2021 | Courtney Kube, Dan De Luce and Josh Lederman

[blueplum]

The Taliban want to use the flights to send their own people abroad to earn desperately needed money. The Afghan economy is in tatters.

The Taliban have halted all flights of Afghan evacuees for the past two weeks in a dispute about how the airport in Kabul is run and who is allowed on the evacuation flights, according to a congressional source, two refugee advocates and a source familiar with the matter.

A State Department official involved in relocation efforts confirmed that flights have stopped....

...The Taliban’s argument is that they run the country and that it is their airspace and airport the Qataris are using, so they should get a certain number of seats on the flights.

Before the flights stopped, the Taliban were using the seats to send migrant workers out of Afghanistan to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other destinations to find work, according to the congressional source and the source familiar with the matter.....

[blueplum]

1. How many refugees have the US transported on the charter flights? 2. Are the 'workers' sent as free workers or as slave labor? 3. How many 'workers' continue on to Europe, possibly under assumed identies from documents left behind by the evacuation? 4. What is the US govt doing about this besides waving money at Afghanistan? 5. How much of the 'just workers' story is believable?

[nuconvert]

There was a story 2 or 3 days ago about Project Dynamo evacuating about 40 people.

[blueplum]

I”m not sure if the Project Dynamo flights are the same? Maybe they are? from the article, “ U.S.-chartered Qatar Airways flights that had been running between Kabul and Doha.”

[pepsionice]

Back in the 1980s....this airline ‘seat-game’ was exercised in Zimbabwe. The gov’t start to dictate x-number of seats had to be used for gov’t VIPs exiting the country. This would occur suddenly without warning....leaving the airline with angry tourists stuck there for several days.

My humble guess is that various men have been dictated to cooperate (leaving their family members as hostage members) while working for cheap labor in some neighboring country. This would require the ‘seat-game’ to be exercised and could screw the airline over with last-minute changes.

This is the Taliban’s ‘turf’ so whatever they desire...they get. If the airlines are that unhappy...just halt operations for 30 days and see how willing they are to re-establish flight operations.

[robowombat]

You are right. These are tough guys and they are brutally competent. One must respect their clear-headed will to power. That we were led by patriots with such an iron will

[Mean Daddy]

A lady I know who was in Benghazi up until a night or two before the 9/11 terrorist attack is working to get Americans and green card holders out of Afghanistan. I haven’t asked her, but I suspect it’s because the Americans in Benghazi were hung out to dry by the Odumbo/Billary administration.

Not many people know that Amb. Stevens was in Benghazi prepping for a Hillary victory lap in November. It was the Khadaffi loyalists that got the Americans out of Benghai & Libya.