SHEER DESPERATION

摘要

An often chaotic air evacuation by hundreds of military airlifters from multiple countries aimed at transporting an unprecedented total of more than 100,000 people from Kabul is underway, following the Taliban's sudden seizure of Afghanistan. The scale and speed of the Afghanistan airlift has already dwarfed the operation that evacuated about 57,000 South Vietnamese from Saigon in 1975. By Aug. 25, an impromptu fleet of mostly Boeing C-17s, Airbus A400Ms and Lockheed Martin C-130s had carried away more than 101,000 people from a disordered scene outside Hamid Karzai International Airport. But more than 10,000 still waited along a tense airfield perimeter patrolled by Taliban fighters, hoping not to be left behind. In the hours after two deadly terrorist bombings struck the airport gate on Aug. 26, killing at least 11 Marines and one Navy medic, Biden administration officials said they would press on with a plan to withdraw all U.S. forces by Aug. 31-only 11 days shy of the 20th anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which were planned by the al-Qaida terrorist group based in Afghanistan.