573 additional people picked up from Afghanistan since end of evacuation

After the Afghanistan evacuation mission officially ended, the Netherlands retrieved an additional 573 people, the AD reported. The evacuees were flown out via Pakistan and Qatar.

Most people, including people with a Dutch passport, interpreters and other Afghans who worked for the Netherlands, could escape the Taliban via the Doha route. The Netherlands transported the remaining people out of Afghanistan via Islamabad.

When the evacuation mission ended in August, many people were still stuck in Afghanistan, where they faced persecution from the Taliban. In October, the Cabinet promised to retrieve more than 2,000 people. Several people who wanted to leave Afghanistan did not have a passport, and with the Taliban in power, it was difficult for them to get one.

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs received 21,512 emails from people asking for asylum. The Dutch military pulled around 2,500 people from the Kabul airport after the Taliban overthrew the Afghan regime in mid-August.

The Netherlands requires the help of other countries to bring people out of Afghanistan, which means that the Netherlands needs to maintain diplomatic ties to Qatar despite human rights violations against migrant workers in the country.