Originally published 2021-08-17.
On 16 August 2021, the day after the Taliban entered Kabul, flights out of the city's Hamid Karzai International Airport were brought to a halt as thousands of desperate people poured onto the airfield. At least seven people died in the chaos. Some fell from a US Air Force C-17 transport plane after clinging to it as it took off, two armed men were shot dead by US troops, and the bodies of three more people were found near the passenger terminal.
The pause was temporary. Within days the airlift resumed and grew into one of the largest air evacuations in history, carrying more than 122,000 people out of Afghanistan before the last American plane left on 30 August. This article explains what happened at the airport, why so many people were trying to leave, and how the evacuation unfolded afterwards.
How Kabul fell so quickly
The United States had agreed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan after almost 20 years of war, and most troops had left by the summer of 2021. As they departed, the Taliban launched a rapid offensive, taking provincial capitals one after another, often with little resistance.
On 15 August the Taliban reached Kabul. President Ashraf Ghani left the country that day, and by the evening Taliban fighters had taken over the presidential palace. A US intelligence assessment in July had reportedly estimated that the government could survive for six to twelve months after the withdrawal. It lasted only weeks. Speaking on 16 August, President Joe Biden acknowledged that the collapse had "unfolded more quickly than we had anticipated."
What happened at the airport on 16 August
With the city in Taliban hands, the airport was the only way out for most people hoping to leave. Commercial airlines had already suspended flights, and Afghanistan's civil aviation authority handed control of Kabul's airspace to the military, warning that transit through it would be uncontrolled.
Crowds broke through onto the runway and aprons. Video shot that day showed hundreds of people running alongside a US Air Force C-17 as it taxied, with some climbing onto its wheel housings. At least two people reportedly fell to their deaths after the aircraft took off, and human remains were later found in the plane's landing gear. One of those who died was Zaki Anwari, a young footballer who had played for Afghanistan's national youth team.
In a separate incident, US soldiers shot dead two men who, according to the US military, were armed and had opened fire. No American troops were hurt. The bodies of three other people, including a woman, were found near the terminal. Early reports said they had been crushed by an aircraft, but their cause of death was never clearly established; some observers suspected a stampede.
Military flights were halted while troops cleared the airfield. Images of people falling from the sky over Kabul were broadcast around the world and became the defining pictures of the withdrawal.
Why so many people were desperate to leave
The Taliban had ruled most of Afghanistan once before, from 1996 until a US-led invasion removed them in late 2001. That period was marked by public executions, a ban on most education for girls and severe restrictions on women's lives. Many Afghans feared a return to those conditions.
Those most at risk included people who had worked for the Afghan government or the security forces, interpreters and contractors who had helped foreign troops, journalists, activists and women in public roles. Afghanistan's ambassador to the United Nations, Ghulam Isaczai, reportedly told an emergency Security Council meeting that day that residents were describing Taliban fighters going house to house, registering names and looking for people on target lists.
Those fears for women and girls proved well founded. Despite early promises of a more moderate approach, the Taliban later kept girls out of secondary school and barred women from universities.
From chaos to a mass airlift
After the airfield was secured, the evacuation restarted and quickly scaled up. The United States sent extra forces to protect the airport, bringing its presence there to around 6,000 troops, rather than the smaller figure quoted in some early reports. Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey and many other countries flew their own citizens and Afghan staff out alongside the American operation.
Conditions at the gates remained desperate. Crowds pressed against walls and razor wire for days, and some parents passed babies over the fences to soldiers in the hope of getting them out.
On 26 August a suicide bomber attacked the crowd outside the airport's Abbey Gate. The bombing, claimed by the Islamic State's regional affiliate, killed at least 170 Afghans, along with 13 US service members and British nationals, according to figures compiled afterwards. The airlift continued, and the final US Air Force C-17 left Kabul just before midnight on 30 August, one day ahead of the agreed deadline. In total more than 122,000 people were flown out.
The Saigon comparison
Many commentators compared the scenes in Kabul with the fall of Saigon in April 1975, when helicopters evacuated Americans and South Vietnamese from the city as North Vietnamese forces closed in. About a month before Kabul fell, President Biden had rejected that comparison, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected it again on 15 August.
Historians still debate how far the parallel holds. What is clear is that the speed of the Taliban's victory surprised Washington and its allies, that many Afghans who had worked with Western forces were left behind, and that the images from the airport damaged confidence in how the withdrawal had been planned.
What the evacuation left behind
For those who got out, the airlift was the start of a long journey through transit camps and resettlement programmes in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. For those who did not, life under Taliban rule brought economic collapse, strict limits on women and girls, and continuing fear among people linked to the former government.
The deaths on 16 August were among the first of the evacuation, not the last. They remain a stark reminder of how far people were willing to go to escape, and of the human cost when a state collapses faster than anyone planned for.
Sources: Wikipedia: 2021 Kabul airlift; Wikipedia: Fall of Kabul (2021); Wikipedia: Zaki Anwari; original report via the Daily Mail.
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