Ambassador Stefano Pontecorvo top player in Afghan evacuation
Newswire
Kabul: NATO worked around the clock to coordinate evacuations and the NATO Senior Civilian Representative Ambassador Stefano Pontecorvo and his staff played a key role to this effect.
Over the course of two weeks, more than 120,000 people were flown out, on hundreds of Allied flights. Troops from the US, UK, Turkey, and Norway played a key role in securing the airport and operating a field hospital, while around 800 NATO staff maintained key operations such as fuelling and communications.
Eighty former NATO Afghan employees and their family members are now being resettled in Norway. They departed temporary facilities in Kosovo on a charted civilian airline flight from Pristina to Norway on Tuesday (05 October 2021).
Troops of NATO’s high-readiness Response Force have been helping to provide care and support, including through individual and family living quarters, dining facilities, medical and dental centres, meeting rooms, recreation areas for adults and children, and religious accommodations.
“We are here in Pristina to secure the transport of 80 Afghan refugees affiliated with NATO,” following “a request from NATO,” Alan Aguillar, Senior Advisor for the Norwegian Immigration Police said.
“We did a vetting and ID check and today we are finalizing the process to transfer these refugees to Norway. They will be transferred to a camp, where we will continue a process of integration in Norway. They will be resettled throughout the country, after a couple of weeks in this camp. We will do whatever we can to help them to build a future and a new life in Norway,” he added. “We have had a good cooperation and coordination with NATO on the ground; it has been a smooth process from start to end,” he also pointed out.
As some Afghans complete their resettlement, the process continues for others. Around 2,000 Afghans who worked with NATO, and their families, were evacuated from Kabul in August, as part of the largest evacuation mission in NATO’s history.
