The flight with almost 300 former Afghan collaborators from the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs has already taken off from Islamabad (Pakistan) to the Torrejón de Ardoz airport (Madrid), where it is scheduled to land at 9:00 p.m. It is the third mass evacuation of Afghan citizens carried out by the Government of Spain after Operation Antigone I and II, which were carried out after the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August last year.
Unlike the previous mediatic evacuations, this time it has been done with total discretion by Moncloa, due to the complicated problems that the refugees have had to cross the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nor has the Ministry of Defense made military flights available for evacuation. The evacuation is taking place on an Air Europa charter flight.
At first, the list of evacuees did not reach 250 citizens, but in recent days this list has increased. The Foreign Ministry has not yet offered an official figure.
The refugees who will arrive in Spain mainly belong to groups of translators who worked with the Spanish army and professionals who participated in Spanish cooperation projects. They are, above all, relatives of them who could not fly when the Kabul airport was plunged into real chaos -in August- or they did not manage to reach Pakistan in October due to economic difficulties to travel and the danger of the route to reach the pass frontier. But there are also other groups included in this evacuation, according to ministerial sources, such as activists, journalists or people dedicated to the legal field in their native country who have been forced to flee.
Once they arrive in Torrejón de Ardoz, the refugees will be integrated into the reception system to achieve their economic and social autonomy. In the same one that the first refugees that Spain received have been 12 months. According to several testimonies from families collected by this newspaper, the main obstacle they are encountering in adapting to the country has to do with finding a job: many of them have advanced professional levels, but the language is making their search difficult. The itinerary, which is marked by the Ministry of Inclusion, has two phases that last 18 months, with an extension of another six.
