On the day Kabul fell I refused to leave – I am not ready to give up on Afghanistan yet
It is mind-boggling how fast some world-defining moments happen to us. From entering a meeting to exiting it, my world had changed. There were people running in panic and the traffic was jammed. You could see armoured vehicles with their security protocols cutting through traffic. The city had fallen before the Taliban had entered it. There was no police, no armed forces and all government employees were asked to leave their offices.
The first night was lawless. I had to hide everything of value in my house and abandon it.
The day Kabul fell will stay with me for a very long time. Rushing to pack your life into one bag, trying to find places to hide valuables in the house and walking away from a place you called home: these are all harrowing scenes I thought I would only read in fiction.
I had to get out to get a few things on that night the president fled the country. I saw a convoy of armed forces vehicles speeding up behind me as I drove. Despite having vacated the lane for them, I saw one car overtake me from the wrong side and a tank started moving into my lane. I barely dodged it but it managed to break my side mirror. The convoy kept driving ahead of me and I could see that they were not Taliban nor army officials. Criminals and crooks had managed to loot armed forces garrisons and government offices, exploiting the absence of security in the city.
The Taliban ordered their forces to move into the city to fill the security vacuum that first night, and in the morning I had to go out and face them.
I had only read and heard stories about the rule of the Taliban more than two decades ago. This was going to be my first time coming face to face with them. I couldn’t help replaying the video of Taliban fighters shooting a biker in the head for carrying an Afghan flag when I passed the first armoured vehicle on the road, carrying Taliban fighters and waving the Taliban white flag.
I had left home that day to help foreigner friends who were stranded in a compound. They needed to get to the airport for their flights. On my way there, I saw the last military flight fly over me. It was a rare sight that day.
I would later find out that the plane had two passengers clinging to its tyres and falling to their deaths. An army vehicle with Taliban was parked outside the compound. They told us they were there to maintain the security of the compound and would check everyone going in. They would also check everyone coming out to make sure they were not taking anything of value with them. We eventually decided it wasn’t safe to attempt to move my friends and left them there for their embassies to decide how to move forward.
The city felt very different on that day. The Taliban fighters were not interacting with people. I would imagine they were using their presence as a deterrent for any crimes that might be committed.
Armed men with white armbands of the Emirate were conducting traffic, moving blocks to let traffic flow more freely. I only saw one woman with a black hijab wrapped around her outside that day. Even today, as I drove down one of the major roads of the city, I came across a random tyre in the middle of the road. As I slowed down, I saw armed Taliban waving for me to stop. I rolled down my window and apologised for not having realised it was a checkpoint. The armed man who had waved to stop me replied: “May God forgive you brother, travel home safe,” something we would never have heard from police in Kabul.
Most of the friends I made in Afghanistan over my past two years, the closest to my heart, have left the country. Though the Taliban have promised amnesty to everyone, people I know have been witness to executions in the city. We are not sure whether they were out of personal vendettas or party policy. Some of my friends insisted that I be on the last plane that was leaving on the day Kabul fell. I refused to go. I still don’t know why I refused but I feel like I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I wrote a few days back that the Afghan government had to avoid taking its final military stand in Kabul. Yet I think our final stand for our vision of the country would have to be here.
As much as I thank my stars for my friends having avoided such a volatile security situation, I do feel quite alone. I wake up every morning, put on the bravest face I have and try to raise my voice for my people. I sit in front of my laptop, from a safe place and speak to international media regarding the world we have to build together now.
The Afghan government should not have deserted its people. Not because of how dutiful they were towards us; they were not, but because of how we needed them to negotiate on our behalf.
The political settlement was not meant to be just a discussion regarding the future political order. This was going to be a discussion of how we would reconcile the two vastly different worlds – that of the Taliban and that which the post-Taliban era generation of Afghanistan want.
Just like climate change is something that our future generations will blame us for, if we do not take a stand for what we want Afghanistan to be, our children would spit on our graves too.
Such a reconciliation of two worlds can only happen when we learn to accept this new reality and go beyond our pasts. We have to sit with the Taliban now and accept that they won the military war and we would have to start contesting the battle for the future of Afghanistan.
All that being said, there is so much I haven’t processed yet. I feel like this new reality is yet to sink in and our struggle will be far too long to give up at the beginning.
• Obaidullah Baheer is a lecturer of transitional justice at the American University in Afghanistan, and has an MA in international relations from the University of New South Wales
If we do not take a stand for what we want Afghanistan to be, our children would spit on our graves