Since last week, grey military planes have been landing at the Ramstein airbase in western Germany, bringing on each flight hundreds of people who have fled the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan. At the airbase, the evacuees are given health checks and put up in tents while their paperwork is processed. If all goes well, they are then put on an onward flight, this time on a commercial liner, to the United States where a new life awaits. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES