Fleeing fighting in north, Afghans pack Kabul parks
More than 17,000 crowd into capital city in last 2 weeks
KABUL, Afghanistan — Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in northern Afghanistan to escape battles that have overwhelmed their towns and villages as government forces try to fend off rapidly advancing Taliban forces. Families have flowed into the capital, Kabul, living in parks and streets with little food or water.
A U.S. peace envoy brought a warning to the Taliban on Tuesday that any government that comes to power through force in Afghanistan won’t be recognized internationally after a series of cities fell to the insurgent group in stunningly quick succession.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy, traveled to Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office, to tell the group that there was no point in pursuing victory on the battlefield because a military takeover of the capital of Kabul would guarantee they would be global pariahs. He and others hope to persuade Taliban leaders to return to peace talks with the Afghan government as American and NATO forces finish their pullout from the country.
The insurgents have captured six out of 34 provincial capitals in the country in less than a week, including Kunduz in Kunduz province one of the country’s largest cities.
Families that have fled to Kabul described on Tuesday bombardment, gunfire and airstrikes pounding their neighborhoods in multiple parts of the north, with civilians caught in the crossfire. Some said that as the Taliban captured towns, they hunted down and killed male relatives of members of the police forces and quickly started imposing new restrictions on women.
Such atrocities have fueled alarm over a potential Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. But some of those who fled were equally furious at the government.
Fawzia Karimi fled to Kabul from Kunduz, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, where the Taliban have been advancing through neighborhoods. She said government forces didn’t fight when the insurgents overran her district, but were bombing the residential area now that it was in Taliban hands.
“If the government cannot do anything, it should just stop the bombardment and let the Taliban rule,” she said. She left with her five children when an airstrike hit her neighbor’s home. Her 16-year-old son was killed in a crossfire three months ago.
Karimi was among hundreds of people from around the north who were crowded into Kabul’s main downtown park, Shahr-enaw. Men, women and children have been sleeping for days outside on the ground in blazing summer heat. A few have blankets to pad the ground or sheets to hang up as curtains for some privacy.
The surge in displaced people has heightened international calls for pressure to stop the Taliban assault. At least 60,000 people, more than half of them children, have fled their homes in Kunduz alone since the weekend, Save the Children said Tuesday.
Some moved to calmer parts of Kunduz city, living outside without food, water or medical care, it said.
“Markets have been destroyed and are now mostly closed, leaving families without anywhere to get food,” the group’s country director Christopher Nyamandi said.
At least 27 children have been killed around the country in the past three days, the group said.
More than 17,000 people from the north have arrived in Kabul in the past two weeks, staying in parks, with relatives or on the streets, said Tamim Azimi, spokesman for the state ministry for disaster management.
In the Shahr-e-naw park, almost no government help has come to the families.
Some Kabul residents have brought limited amounts of food and water and some supplies. Karimi, whose husband had stayed behind in Kunduz, said she couldn’t get any because the volunteers wouldn’t talk to her, because she was a woman.
“I got here this morning and have had nothing to eat,” she said. “Should I leave my children hungry lying under burning sun?”
Only two toilets serve the 400 people in the park. There are no medical facilities and the displaced can’t afford nearby medical centers, even as some children suffer from diarrhea.
At another park on Kabul’s northern outskirts where some 2,000 displaced were living, Zarmina Takhari, said she had received no government help since arriving three days ago and has had to rely on food from volunteers.
She fled her village, Shahr-e-kohna in Takhar province after 12 of her relatives were killed, she said. Four of them, including her brother and uncle, were in the police forces and were killed fighting the Taliban.
When the insurgents seized the village, they identified their family as linked to the police and came to their house, where they shot eight other male relatives to death.