This Is Not Footage of the Airport in Kabul

Layne Radlauer

News

26th August 2021

This Is Not Footage of the Airport in Kabul

2019 footage of the AT&T Stadium in Arlington (Twitter).

The Claim

A video shows a large group of people running through the Kabul airport’s entrance.

News posted on

xtvnews2.0

Daily News 24

OccuWorld 🏴

wear a mask 😷stay safe Nepal 🇳🇵

Rob Phillips

Emerging story

On August 16th, the day after the fall of Kabul, a video was shared on the internet that claimed to depict chaos at the airport. While we’re not sure where this claim was made first, the earliest post we found was on Twitter. The account claims to show people running through the airport entrance. People seem to be yelling in terror.

#Afghanistan Surreal footage from Kabul airport as soon as it opened this morning. pic.twitter.com/QQgOyacqu2
— OccuWorld 🏴 (@OccuWorld) August 16, 2021

Did we not spend the last 20 years helping them? Were we supposed to hold their hands and spend billions of dollars, putting our own soldiers at risk forever? The situation is very sad. I feel for the people in Kabul. But it’s clear the army we helped build didn’t want to fight.
— Rob Phillips (@RealRobPhillips) August 19, 2021

Misbar’s Analysis

MENA: This isn’t footage of the airport in Kabul - it’s 2019 footage of the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

AT&T Stadium doors have opened for Cowboys vs. Seahawks pic.twitter.com/UTl68lVNwr
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) January 5, 2019

People are rushing to escape the Taliban and get a good spot with their Standing Room Only tickets. On the bottom-left part of the video, you can see some merchandise being sold.

A supporting image within the article body

Even though this video is falsely attributed to the Kabul airport, be aware that what’s going on in Afghanistan is worse than this video. We at Misbar do not wish to downplay the dire, all-too-real circumstances that people face in Afghanistan.