Farewell Afghanistan, a land that has been stripped of all hope under Taliban rule
‘Anywhere is better than there,’ say refugees as they languish in migrant camps a year after fleeing regime
In a central Islamabad park, tents and washing lines are pitched among slides and climbing frames. Afghan families sit listlessly in the new camp and wait for good news that never seems to come.
For hundreds, this green spot in the Pakistani capital has become a makeshift home after they fled their country’s new Taliban regime. Now, they find themselves stuck between their old lives and any new future. Nearby, thousands of other Afghans are in similar limbo staying in cheap guest houses or hotels.
“If everybody could find a way to leave Afghanistan, they would take it,” explains Soraya, a 33-year-old from Herat who worked for an American government aid project and now lives in the park with her family. They fled because they fear they will be persecuted under the Taliban, or be reduced to destitution by the economic meltdown that accompanied their victory. “The Taliban are showing that they are the same people who they were 20 years ago,” she says. Instead, her family are trying to make their way to the West. “Any place that will accept us. Any place that we can call home.”
In the 12 months since the Taliban shocked the world by taking power, defeating the government and humiliating its international backers, the country has seen an exodus of refugees that shows no sign of abating. Some 122,000 were airlifted out from Kabul airport in a frantic two weeks last summer and hundreds of thousands more have poured over the borders since. Among them are countless friends and contacts I have acquired during two stints covering the country for The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, firstly living in Kabul from 2008 to 2013 and for the past four years making regular trips from neighbouring Pakistan. When I have visited in recent months, it has seemed as though almost everyone I knew has left Afghanistan, or was trying to leave – journalists, businessmen, politicians, soldiers and civil servants.
Among my closest Afghan friends, one now lives in Virginia having fought his way through the Kabul airport crowds last summer to get his family on to a flight. Now a cashier in a supermarket, he is trying to find a way to get his mother, sister and nephews out, too. Another friend made it to Washington DC and is hoping to start a restaurant. A third left the baking heat of Kandahar and found refuge in snowy Canada. None of them had seen the collapse coming and, indeed, I had eaten dinner with one in Kabul only days before the city fell. That evening things looked bad, but everyone assumed the capital would hold.
Now they are all thousands of miles away. By day they are trying to start new lives. In the evening, they often brood over what went wrong and who is to blame for the collapse of their old lives. Yet these are the lucky ones.
Large numbers are stuck in Pakistan or Iran, their visas expired or without proper documentation, wondering what to do next. A year after the Taliban’s victory, the country these refugees have left behind appears firmly under the control of the former insurgents. Fighters man checkpoints across the city, stopping and checking traffic, guarding buildings that last year they were trying to blow up.
The corridors of Afghan ministries are filled with Taliban clerics and former fighters, now sitting alongside civil servants from the former government. The streets are busy, but there are many more beggars.
The suspension of aid and the economic collapse that followed the Taliban victory have pitched many into financial ruin and left them at the mercy of international humanitarian aid. The streets also have far fewer women in them. Not everyone in Kabul covers their face as the Taliban decreed earlier this year, but more seem to than before. Women are also being edged out of work and public life. The most heartbreaking are the girls who have found their dreams of education destroyed. Secondary schools are still closed to girls in most provinces and though the Taliban say this is temporary, they have not said when they will reopen.
Naima had her heart set on being a doctor. “It was the biggest dream in my life,” she says. “I was not thinking that suddenly everything will collapse and change in a few days. It’s been one year that every girl is sitting at home and waiting for an unknown future.”
It is true that not everyone despairs at the Taliban’s victory. Their war against the Afghan government and its backers at times killed hundreds each week. Fighting and Taliban bombs meant roads were impassable. Both sides killed civilians. The end of the fighting is a relief. “Life has changed for the positive,” one man in Kandahar called Haji Abdul Manan told me after Kabul fell. “I am safe and my family is safe. I am happy the Americans have left and there is no fighting.”
The predatory corruption of the former government is also not missed.
But the Taliban seem unable to cope with running the country and a brain drain is robbing the government of competent officials. What stability there is, is brought by force and the new regime also seems destined to receive little international assistance while their repressions continue.
“They have brought security but I cannot eat security,” says one unemployed civil servant. Poverty is also undermining the new stability, residents say. The country’s new rulers are also unwilling to share power with any other factions. While few Afghans want a return to civil war, Taliban repression is growing and the country is being ruled by a small part of the country’s political and ethnic mix.
“The Taliban need to change, the Taliban need to show more flexibility,” says Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhil, one of the few ex-government senior officials not to flee. “I can see which direction we are going if we do not bring changes. It’s not only civil war, it’s darkness.”
‘If everybody could find a way to leave Afghanistan, they would take it. The Taliban are showing they are the same people they were 20 years ago’