Return to dark days: Women despair over Taliban resurgence
The Taliban were fighting within miles of Kabul last night as military analysts warned the Afghan capital will fall within weeks – if not days.
The Islamic militants yesterday reached the Char Asyab district, just seven miles south of the city, after seizing control of swathes of the country in the few weeks since the US led allied troops out of the country.
The lightning advance has provoked fears for retribution against anyone who helped the Nato allies over the last 20 years and escalating concerns about the plight of women if the Taliban return to power.
“I feel we are like a bird who makes a nest for a living and spends all the time building it, but then suddenly and helplessly watches others destroy it,” said Zarmina Kakar, a 26-year-old women’s rights activist in Kabul.
Kakar was only a year old when the Taliban entered Kabul the first time in 1996, and she recalled an occasion when her mother took her out to buy her ice cream, back when the Taliban ruled. Her mother was whipped by a Taliban fighter for revealing her face for a couple of minutes. “Today again, I feel that if Taliban come to power, we will return back to the same dark days,” she said.
Describing now living under Taliban rule, midwife Nooria Haya told the BBC: “Suddenly most freedoms have been taken away from us. It is so hard. But we have no other option. They are brutal. We have to do whatever they say. They are using Islam for their own purposes. We are Muslims ourselves, but their beliefs are different.”
Yesterday, the Taliban took more provincial capitals, Sharan and Asadabad, which gives them control of more than half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. In a televised address, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani refused to resign, saying he would not give up the “achievements” of the last 20 years and that “consultations” were under way.
In Kabul, foreign troops have started to arrive to help evacuate embassies, including around 600 British troops to help with the withdrawal of UK citizens. US troops are also now in Kabul to airlift thousands of people a day.