Four US citizens are said to have fled Afghanistan overland. They could not reach the airport in Kabul during the evacuation.
Washington DC – The US evacuation from the crisis country Afghanistan is over. But there are still US citizens in Afghanistan who want to leave the country. Four US citizens are said to have recently left Afghanistan overland. A senior US State Department official confirmed this to CNN on Monday (September 7th, 2021).
“Our embassy welcomed the Americans as they crossed the border into the third country,” said the official. He did not say which third country is actually meant. The departures are the first Americans who have been helped to leave Afghanistan by land. Specifically, it concerns a woman and her three children from Amarillo, Texas, so the Republican MP Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma. Mullin is supporting a US-funded group of former special forces that is supposed to ensure that Americans and Visa holders can leave Afghanistan without problems.
Afghanistan: US citizen flees Afhanistan with three children
Mullin told the news channel that he spoke to the woman several times on Monday (September 7th, 2021), including before and after her departure from Afghanistan. He described the “harrowing” journey that she and her children had made on the streets of Kabul to a border crossing, where they had to pass more than 20 Taliban checkpoints. The four US citizens are said to have been unable to get to Kabul Airport when the evacuation from Afghanistan was underway.
The family had spent around 13 hours with the Taliban at a checkpoint near the Afghan border when they finally fled by land. The US citizens were in “good shape” and the Taliban did not try to prevent them from leaving the country. According to CNN, the US State Department did not want to disclose details of the departure. “In order to protect your privacy and to ensure the feasibility of our tactics, we are not able to give out further information,” it said. In the past, the Taliban had given assurances that foreigners and Afghans could leave the country with appropriate documents. (Marvin Ziegele)
