The Taliban is screening paperwork at checkpoints outside the Kabul airport, NBC News reported Friday, searching for Americal allies and others who worked for the coalition, and the situation outside has deteriorated into a “disaster,” even as the United States persists in demanding that Americans find their own way to the airport for evacuation — and claims from the Pentagon that Americans are “not being impeded” on their way out of the country.
Video posted to social media shows the “disaster” outside Kabul airport — a crowd being tormented at a Taliban “checkpoint” with soldiers whipping and beating those in line to leave, including a woman clinging to a baby.
The situation at Kabul airport is a disaster. pic.twitter.com/aZHkUqJZA6
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 20, 2021
Another video, taken by an Afghan interpreter outside a Taliban checkpoint, shows lines of people being assaulted by Taliban guards as they wait to exit the country with their families.
Now I’m hearing from another Marine veteran trying to aid his former interpreter in escaping. The biggest hurdle remains getting them safely to the airport. There are Taliban checkpoints end huge crowds. One interpreter sent him this video from one gate pic.twitter.com/Ibc0xdlGuh
— Paul Szoldra (@PaulSzoldra) August 19, 2021
The Taliban checkpoints, NBC News says, are designed to screen for American and coalition allies that the Taliban is, reportedly, arresting. As the Daily Wire has noted previously, Taliban forces are also going door-to-door looking for those who worked with U.S.-led forces and arresting them.
“The Taliban are going door-to-door and screening names at Kabul checkpoints as they hunt for people who worked with U.S.-led forces or the previous Afghan government, according to an intelligence report submitted to the United Nations,” the outlet noted. “The report — compiled by a Norwegian intelligence group and sent to NBC News — casts further doubt on the militant group’s claims of a “general amnesty” in the wake of their takeover.”
“Striking images earlier this week also showed a bloodied woman and child apparently beaten by Taliban fighters outside the capital’s airport, despite the group’s earlier assurances of “safe passage” for those wishing and able to flee,” NBC said.
The BBC said Friday, based on a similar report, that the United Nations is concerned that the Taliban may be preparing for a “mass execution,” following news that they murdered a member of a Deutsche Welles journalist’s family while hunting for the reporter.
National Security reporter Sasha Ingber, who reported early Friday morning that Americans were “beaten throughout the night” by the Taliban as they attempted to go through the gates at Kabul airport, noted that the Biden administration is continuing to say that “Americans are not being impeded as they travel to the Kabul airport,” and that no Americans have been harmed.
“What I am hearing suggests otherwise. Americans have been injured and stopped from boarding planes,” Ingber noted.
President Joe Biden, who has been largely silent on the bungled Afghan withdrawal, aside from a difficult interview with ABC News in which he insisted that video of desperate Afghans falling from the wheel wells of planes taking off from Kabul airport was “five days ago,” is scheduled to give an update on the evacuation at 1 pm EST. He is then scheduled to depart the White House at 2 pm to resume his planned vacation in Delaware.