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Japan’s Afghanistan evacuation plans criticised after C-130 plane leaves Kabul with one passenger
- Tokyo is unlikely to able to evacuate several hundred Afghans who assisted at the Japanese embassy and with NGOs, following attacks at the airport
- But the situation has been blamed on a delayed response, attributed to debate over the military’s role overseas under Japan’s constitution
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Japan is unlikely to be able to evacuate several hundred Afghans who assisted at Tokyo’s embassy in Kabul, and with a number of Japanese NGOs, ahead of Taliban’s Tuesday deadline for foreign forces to leave the country.
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The Japanese government has been criticised for failing to act more swiftly when it became clear the Taliban was sweeping into the Afghan capital, and that the United States and other nations would be withdrawing their troops.
Analysts also said it was shocking that more was not being done to rescue people who had served Japanese interests faithfully for many years, along with their families, or to assist the tens of thousands of people looking to escape the country.
Some observers said the delay in sending evacuation aircraft was due to debate in Tokyo as to what the Japanese military could do overseas under the terms of its constitution.
“This is the first time that the Self-Defence Forces have operated in another country without the explicit permission of that country’s government, so there had to be a lot of discussions before the aircraft went, and about who they could help and how,” said Yuko Ito, a professor of international relations at Asia University.
The Japanese government on August 23 announced it would dispatch a number of C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to Afghanistan, with as many as 330 Afghans who had worked at the embassy, or for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), set to be airlifted to neighbouring Pakistan.
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