Outside the compound: Confused and desperate people wait under Taliban ‘security’ for a chance to escape

Published

4 years ago

August 19, 2021

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The paras knew we wanted to get outside of the British evacuation camp where they’re protecting and processing thousands of people bound for the UK.

“Do you really want to go outside?” a somewhat incredulous looking soldier said to me.

“Obviously I’m not going to stop you, if you are sure.”

We’d been outside already, surrounded by soldiers, albeit a metre away from Taliban gunmen.

So we said yes, and that we wouldn’t get in their way.

He knocked on the massive iron gate, opening the viewing hatch, and we were beckoned forward as the side door swung open and we stepped outside.

I looked up. There were no soldiers. There were hundreds of people sitting quietly – and right in front of us stood a group of Taliban fighters.

They were doing security.

This place gets stranger and stranger by the day.

I heard my producer Dominique say to herself “Well, I didn’t expect that”, then said to me and our cameraman Toby: “Now wave at the Taliban.”

We did.

Mostly they ignored us, but one nodded. So we started filming.

It was calm outside the evacuation compound. The Taliban has that effect on people.

Among the crowd, British passport holders tried to get our attention, waving to us, but unable to come forward, knowing to stay where they were.

There were lots of British nationals and Europeans here as well, calmly waiting for their turn to get inside.

Many have taken days to get to the gates, and many have the correct paperwork.

It’s been a horrendous and dangerous journey for most.

One man from London bravely stood up and walked forward towards us. He is a British citizen and has been stuck here for two days.

“I’m trying to get in,” he told me. “I went to the Americans – they pushed me out, they kicked me out. I went to the Germans, they beat me up with sticks – they fired at us… you see this gas fired that makes you cry – tear gas.

“My one-year-old kid they fired with the gas, and everyone was crying right here like an hour ago, the tear gas in the kids, you see the kids there, like one year’s old kid, how can you do that?”

He’s upset with the American military’s heavy-handed efforts to keep crowds back.

“The Americans, they’re too rude,” he shouted. “The Americans, the Germans, they’re too rude. They beat up people with baseball bats. How can you beat someone with a baseball bat, man?”

While the British soldiers are trying to deal with large numbers of UK nationals and people cleared to come to Britain, they’re also taking in hundreds who should be at the American base, and not here.

These American evacuees have come to the wrong place. They say they were given the wrong address.

Getting them to the right place is a logistical nightmare for the British. Protecting them and the base from being overrun is hard, and moving these American evacuees is not actually their job.

The paras form a defensive square, trying to keep the crowds outside calm and urging people to stay seated. They need to move the America-bound evacuees from one base to another.

Looking around there are all ages here – all confused, tired, upset and desperate.

For now, at least, the British relief effort has to pause to let the American relief effort continue.

In single file they emerge from the British camp. Whole families attempting to escape the new Taliban Emirate of Afghanistan.

There are always so many children. I remember thinking that hopefully they are too young to know what on Earth is going on.

Children, too, among the crowds that are at the moment blocked from entry to the place that could be the gateway to a new life.

For the British, of course, it’s a return to their rightful home.

Minutes later, from the compound a helicopter lifts off, ferrying the refugees and nationals to the military airport. Their next step on the journey to freedom from the Taliban.

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.