The Diplomat
1,435 Afghans have been evacuated by Spanish planes from Afghanistan, following the arrival yesterday afternoon of another flight with 292 people on board. As of Wednesday, according to data provided by the Ministry of the Interior, 1,040 refugees had applied for international protection or asylum in our country.
For its part, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration reported that the temporary reception facilities at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base (Madrid) had attended to 1,254 people up to Wednesday, of whom 692 are men and 562 women. In addition, 519 of them are minors.
Among the people attended to at the air base, 975 correspond to the Spanish contingent, 146 to the EU contingent, while 131 correspond to the US collaborators.
The ministry also pointed out that the majority of those arriving are being transferred to other centres, and a total of 332 Afghans have already been transferred to the centres of the state reception system in a dozen autonomous communities.
The head of the department, José Luis Escrivá, stressed that the government’s objective was that the people evacuated from Afghanistan should not spend more than 72 hours in the temporary facility at the Torrejón base and, as he explained, it is managing to reduce this period to 48 hours.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence pointed out that the Spanish planes in charge of repatriating Afghans are making “maximum use” of their capabilities to evacuate the greatest number of Afghan collaborators, trying to ensure that the repatriations are carried out “in the shortest possible time” as part of the evacuation operation.
The approach of 31 August, the date on which the US troops in control of Kabul airport must leave Afghanistan, is speeding up the process of getting the Afghan collaborators and their families out of the country.
The Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, pointed out that “plans are being made” for the definitive withdrawal of the Spanish personnel who are still in Afghanistan carrying out evacuation operations, although she avoided giving more details because the situation is one of “absolute risk”.
Vox deputy Ignacio Gil Lázaro yesterday called on the government to take charge of bringing a “small community” of Christians in Afghanistan to Spain and thus save them from the Taliban, but remarked that this group should be an “exceptional” case because his party continues to believe that the other Afghan civilians should be taken in by Muslim countries close to Afghanistan.
