Evacuating Romanians from Afghanistan

All the Romanian citizens who requested assistance from the Romanian authorities for their evacuation from Afghanistan, are now safe outside that country, the Romanian Foreign Ministry has announced

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Leyla Cheamil, 23.08.2021, 14:00

16 Romanian nationals and 7 belonging to partner
countries, five Bulgarians, an American and a British were evacuated last week
from Kabul. On Saturday 15 Romanians and four Bulgarians landed in Romania on
board of a Hercules plane belonging to the Romanian Air Forces as part of an
extremely complicated operation involving several institutions including the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Defence Ministry.

One of the repatriated Romanians, who was working
for a company in Kabul, said he was blocked for several days in a former
military base. He eventually managed to make it to the airport in Kabul in a
convoy with 400 other Westerners. When the Taliban first entered Kabul, it
seemed that nobody could be extracted from the area he said referring to the
difficult conditions of his departure. The Romanian Hercules plane did in total
three flights to Kabul. Over 30 Romanians had earlier been evacuated by planes
of Romania’s partner countries.

On August 13th, the Foreign Ministry in
Bucharest reassessed and raised the alert level for Afghanistan urging the
Romanian citizens to immediately leave that country and avoid any trips around
the Afghan territory. On the same day, the head of the Bucharest diplomacy,
Bogdan Aurescu summoned an inter-institutional crisis cell, which had to work
around the clock to identify and implement rapid solutions for the safe
evacuation of the Romanian nationals still in that country. The Foreign
Ministry has announced it will continue efforts to bring to Romania the Afghan
citizens who worked for the Romanian troops stationed in that country, and even
some journalists.

Bogdan
Aurescu: We’ll continue our
efforts to bring to Romania the Afghan citizens who cooperated with the
Romanian troops and the students who got a Romanian scholarship. We are also
focusing on some vulnerable categories, such as the Afghan journalists and we
are going to keep in touch with the Romanian citizens who are still in
Afghanistan, either they want to be evacuated or not.

Romania joined the international coalition in
Afghanistan back in 2002 and got actively involved in the war efforts in that
country, a large-scale operation kicked off by the United States in response to
the 9/11 attacks.

‘The Romanian army’s mission in Afghanistan is
going to enter history books as the longest, most complex and important
military operation outside the national territory after WWll’, Romanian
president Klaus Iohannis said during a ceremony held in Bucharest, a month ago,
to mark the end of Romania’s mission in Afghanistan, after almost 20 years of
uninterrupted presence.

Romania spent 600 million Euros in Afghanistan, lost
27 servicemen while 200 others were wounded.

(bill)