Desperate Afghan women throw babies over razor wire, asking British soldiers to take them

Published

4 years ago

August 18, 2021

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You can hear a noise as you approach the high iron gates that are the only way into the compound that is the centre of the British airlift operation out of Afghanistan.

On either side of a narrow road, inside the walls of the compound in Kabul, exhausted British soldiers lie in the shade waiting for their turn to head back outside into the burning sun and the chaos once again.

The noise is the sound of shouting, it’s the noise of desperation.

Thousands of people are flooding towards this innocuous place that will, for some, be the gateway to freedom – and for many others, the end of a dream of escaping the Taliban.

After two decades this is what it has come down to. A hasty retreat, a civilian evacuation… with the Taliban watching on.

As every day passes this relief operation gets more and more urgent and desperate, as the British military tries to move thousands of people out of Afghanistan in just days.

It’s a humanitarian mission in what feels like a war zone.

A makeshift barricade is all that separates two armies who have fought for 20 years.

The Taliban are just one metre away from the British soldiers – it’s a picture I never thought I would see.

We’ve watched as thousands converged on this base threatening to overwhelm the whole evacuation operation.

The Taliban have assisted in this. Up the road they are controlling the crowds of people trying to reach the British position.

Sometimes they fire into the air, making people stop.

They are a menacing presence.

Day and night families – often with tiny children – have risked their lives, ducking past gunfire at the gates of the civilian side of the airport; passing aggressive Taliban fighters, who occasionally beat and harass them.

In the night, the paratroopers blockaded the road with cars and razor wire.

A senior officer told me they had no choice because the situation was out of control, but said the blockade will live with some of his soldiers for the rest of their lives.

“It was terrible, women were throwing their babies over the razor wire, asking the soldiers to take them, some got caught in the wire,” he told me.

“I’m worried for my men, I’m counselling some, everyone cried last night.”

It looks like chaos but there is a method, the soldiers call out for interpreters as different nationalities arrive at the barricade, including Afghans with a valid asylum case.

Passports and paperwork are then checked.

If they pass muster they’re directed to the entry gate to be processed. Some make it, others don’t.

The soldiers hate this but without the right paperwork they have to turn people away.

Terrified families – men, women and large numbers of children are sent back through the barbed wire.

We watched as one little girl, her parents and brothers were sent back.

Back into Afghanistan, back towards the Taliban.

It was heartbreaking.

Fatima, not her real name, made it through the barricade clutching her daughter’s hand. She thinks she might have a case but doesn’t know who to speak to.

She is terrified, and in tears. Her husband joined the Taliban and took to beating her.

She and her four-year-old have nothing but a UN letter identifying them as victims.

“Afghanistan is Taliban. Taliban is terrorist. My husband is a terrorist Talib,” she explained to me.

She starts listing countries: “America, Canada, France, me and just my daughter…”

I asked if they’ll go anywhere. “Anywhere! Any country,” she said.

We mentioned her story to the officer in charge outside.

The soldiers have a reasonable degree of latitude in their decision making, and Major Steve White decided to enter her into the system.

“I can put her into the system, but I don’t know if the system will spit her out, but I can do that at least,” he told me.

He walked over to Fatima and, through another journalist who could translate, explained to her what he was going to do. She seemed confused, but we told her to follow him.

And he took her to the queue.

It was quite simply an act of human kindness in all this mayhem.

Fatima did make it inside. Major White may well have saved their lives, he’s certainly given them a chance of a better one.

But there are many sad stories as well.

We met a doctor from Herat with her sister and her mother, and it would appear they had absolutely no rights to get through the gates.

They fled the Taliban and are now stuck.

They have hope but it seems hopeless.

“We don’t have brother, we don’t have father, you know that living in here is very difficult for us,” she told me.

She explained they were living in Herat but escaped to Kabul. Her uncle was part of the Taliban.

She said: “They want to obligate us into forced marriage. I am a doctor and my sister was working with women’s rights, she studied, and my mother is a teacher, my mother was a teacher…”

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I asked if they’re running away from certain danger.

“Yes, yes, we are scared, we are scared,” she said in tears.

I’ve reported on the Afghan war since it started. I’ve been on countless embeds with British and American soldiers, I’ve met with the Taliban, and I’ve seen pain and grief in Afghanistan for two decades.

The Taliban has won.

Watching on as soldiers carried babies towards the gates of the compound, I can’t help but think what a waste this has been.

And once again a small contingent of soldiers are dealing with the mess.

World

Drones and salami: How Putin is testing the West with Poland airspace violation

Published

7 hours ago

September 10, 2025

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Drones and salami: How Putin is testing the West with Poland airspace violation

The unprecedented Russian drone attacks on Poland are both a test and a warning. How Europe and NATO respond could be crucial to security on this continent.

The Russians are past masters at what’s called “salami slicing”. Tactics that use a series of smaller actions to produce a much bigger outcome that otherwise would have been far more provocative.

The Kremlin is probing the West with gradual but steady escalation. A British Council building and an EU installation are bombed in Kyiv; a senior EU official’s plane’s GPS is jammed.

On their own each provocation produces nothing more than rhetoric from the West – but new lines are crossed and Russia is emboldened.

Ukraine war latest: NATO chief sends message to Putin

Putin is good at this.

He used salami slicing tactics masterfully in 2014 with his “little green men” invasion of Crimea, a range of ambiguous military and diplomatic tactics to take control. The West’s confused delay in responding sealed Crimea’s fate.

He has just taken a larger slice of salami with his drone attacks on Poland.

They are of course a test of NATO’s readiness to deploy its Article 5 obligations. Russia has attacked a member state, allies believe deliberately.

Will NATO trigger the all for one, one for all mechanism in Poland’s defence and attack Russia? Not very likely.

But failing to respond projects weakness. Putin will see the results of his test and plot the next one.

Expect lots of talk of sanctions but remember they failed to avert this invasion and have failed to persuade Russia to reverse it. The only sanctions likely to bite are the ones the US president refuses to approve, on Russia’s oil trade.

So how are the drones also a warning? Well, they pose a question.

Vladimir Putin is asking the West if it really wants to become more involved in this conflict with its own forces. Europeans are considering putting boots on the ground inside Ukraine after any potential ceasefire.

If this latest attack is awkward and complicated and hard to respond to now, what happens if Russia uses hybrid tactics then?

Deniable, ambiguous methods that the Russians excel in could make life very difficult for the alliance if it is embroiled in Ukraine.

Think twice before committing your troops there, Russia is warning the West.

There is more Europe could do.

It could stop buying Russian energy, which it is still astonishingly importing – more than 20 billion euros a year at the last count.

It could use its massive economic advantage (20 times that of Russia’s, and that was before the war) to do more to fund Ukraine’s defence.

While it continues to do neither, expect more excruciating slices of the salami to come.

World

Riot police clash with ‘Block Everything’ protesters in Paris

Published

12 hours ago

September 10, 2025

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Riot police clash with 'Block Everything' protesters in Paris

Riot police have clashed with protesters in Paris after they took to the streets in response to calls to ‘Block Everything’ over discontent with the French government.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of the French capital and other cities, including Marseille and Montpellier, in response to the online ‘Bloquons Tout’ campaign, which is urging people to strike, block roads, and other public services.

The government has deployed more than 80,000 officers to respond to the unrest, which has seen 200 arrested nationwide so far, according to police, and comes on the same day the new prime minister is being sworn in.

Demonstrators were seen rolling bins into the middle of roads to stop cars, while police rushed to remove the makeshift blockades as quickly as possible.

Tear gas was used by police outside Paris‘s Gare du Nord train station, where around 1,000 gathered, clutching signs declaring Wednesday a public holiday.

Others in the city blocked the entrance to a high school where firefighters were forced to remove burnt objects from a barricade.

Elsewhere in the country, traffic disruptions were reported on major roads in Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, and Lyon.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau told reporters a group of protesters had torched a bus in the Breton city of Rennes.

Fourth prime minister in a year

The ‘Block Everything’ rallies come amid spiralling national debt and are similar to the Yellow Vest movement that broke out over tax increases during President Emmanuel Macron’s first term.

‘Bloquons tout’ was first spearheaded online by right-wing groups in May but has since been embraced by the left and far left, experts say.

On Monday, former Prime Minister Francois Bayrou lost a vote of no confidence, and was replaced by Sebastien Lecornu at the Hotel Matignon on Wednesday afternoon, becoming the fourth person in the job in just 12 months.

A teacher, Christophe Lalande, taking part in the Paris protests, told reporters at the scene: “Bayrou was ousted, [now] his policies must be eliminated.”

Elsewhere, union member Amar Lagha said: “This day is a message to all the workers of this country: that there is no resignation, the fight continues, and a message to this government that we won’t back down, and if we have to die, we’ll die standing.”

World

Israel has crossed a huge diplomatic red line with Qatar strike

Published

12 hours ago

September 10, 2025

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Israel has crossed a huge diplomatic red line with Qatar strike

A lot has changed in Qatar in just 24 hours.

Israel brought its war with Hamas to the streets of Doha and people can’t quite believe it.

The sound of explosions on Tuesday afternoon in a residential neighbourhood has shattered the sense of peace and security that defines life here.

Israel-Hamas latest – Qatar attack puts talks in doubt

It’s also shattered the critical sense of trust needed in these fragile ceasefire talks.

Qatar has played a critical role as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas for the last two years and those diplomatic efforts have been blown apart by this unprecedented attack.

Qatar has reacted with absolute fury and it has shocked and angered other Gulf neighbours, who, like Qatar, stake their reputation on being hubs of regional peace and stability.

Donald Trump is clearly unhappy, too. A strike on Qatar – a key American ally and home to Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military hub in the Middle East – is seen as a dangerous escalation.

There’s no suggestion that permission was sought by Israel from its own closest ally in Washington.

And there’s little clarity if they were even forewarned by the IDF, as the White House said it learned of the attack from its own military.

Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was then tasked with alerting Qatar immediately, but by this point, it was too late.

According to Qatar’s foreign ministry, that call came 10 minutes after the first explosion was heard in Doha.

It’s clear Israel has crossed a huge diplomatic red line here.

Qatar plays a pivotal role on the international stage, punching well above its diplomatic weight for a country of its size.

For decades, it has hosted negotiations in a number of conflicts, providing a safe haven for warring parties to hold talks.

Arguably, far more is achieved in Doha’s many five-star hotels than on any battlefield.

But there was never any sense that you were in danger here.

During the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021, I interviewed the Taliban in Doha.

It was a constructive and civil interview where their international leader presented their position to the world on Sky News.

It was vital information and there was never any sense we were at risk in meeting to talk here.

There is so much at stake in the Israel-Hamas war.

More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, children are starving in Gaza and 48 Israeli hostages have not been returned home.

What was Israel thinking, carrying out this attack? And was it worth it?

They claim it was a “precise strike”, but none of the Hamas leadership were taken out as they claimed was their objective.

Five lower-ranking officials were killed along with a member of Qatar’s security forces. What it has done is left any hope of ceasefire talks in tatters.

For many, this was a huge miscalculation by Benjamin Netanyahu.