Poland will evacuate 300 Afghans who cooperated with NATO, the prime minister, Matueusz Morawiecki, has announced following talks with NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg.
“We have agreed that Poland will be responsible for the evacuation and safe transport operation for 300 Afghan citizens,” wrote the prime minister on social media. “We will transport them first to Poland and then to other NATO countries.”
Morawiecki added that this was not Poland’s “final word” in assisting NATO efforts in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of the country, saying that the country “takes our allied commitments very seriously”. Stoltenberg tweeted his thanks to Poland for lending its support.
Discussed with PM @MorawieckiM the importance of continued coordination on #Afghanistan. I thank #Poland for agreeing to help in the evacuation of Afghans who have supported #NATO.
— Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) August 20, 2021
Last week, following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Poland granted humanitarian visas to Afghans who worked with Polish and European Union missions in the country, as well as to their families.
Warsaw subsequently dispatched military aircraft to Kabul to facilitate the evacuation of those individuals, as well as citizens of Poland and other allied countries.
Early this morning, a third plane of evacuees landed in Warsaw, bringing the total who have arrived to over 130, most of them Afghans. Further flights are planned.
The third transport evacuating people from Afghanistan to Poland has arrived in Warsaw
Over 130 people – mostly Afghans who worked for Poland – have been evacuated already, with almost 100 still waiting on the tarmac at Kabul airport, says the PM's office https://t.co/88oEvFCnfZ
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 20, 2021
Separately, the Polish authorities have been blocking the entry of a group of Afghan asylum seekers trying to enter Poland across the border with Belarus, where record numbers of migrants have been seeking to cross this year.
On Thursday, Morawiecki said that “letting these people into Poland is not the solution” as it would encourage “tens of thousands” more to come and would help Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, further “instrumentalise migrants”.
Poland and the European Commission have accused Lukashenko of deliberately facilitating the illegal crossing of migrants into Poland and Lithuania as a means of undermining the EU.
Poland has dispatched the army to the border, where it is erecting 150 kilometres of barbed-wire fencing. Human rights and legal activists have accused Polish border guards of not acting on asylum claims from the migrants and of keeping them stranded on the border.
Main image credit: Budiey/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
