It’s 5.40 pm, Friday. At the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, the Afghanistan flag flutters within the wind below a transparent sky. The calm is misleading — moments after arrival, what hits you is the foreboding sense of departure.
At the airport entrance, there are two billboards of a beaming Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir who was the nemesis of the Soviets, the hero of the Mujahideen once they took Kabul within the Nineties, and a perennial thorn for the Taliban earlier than their ouster in 2001.
A 3rd billboard is of the present President, Ashraf Ghani, whose forces are waging a determined battle — in lots of provinces, a shedding one — to test the return of a militia the world thought had been handled 20 years in the past after two towers fell on a 9/11 morning many seas throughout.
The Massoud hoardings in Dari and English carry messages. “To compensate for a political mistake is difficult,” says one. The different is extra direct: “If our independence is lost, life will not have any joy and value.”
Telling quotes, particularly on a day the Taliban swept the nation’s south and west and, after Herat and Kandahar, took 4 extra provincial capitals –Lashkar Gah (Helmand), Qalat (Zabul), Tirin Kot (Uruzgan), Feroz Koh (Ghor) — in a lightning offensive, hoping to finally encircle Kabul. Their speedy advance has taken everybody abruptly, coming because it does a lot earlier than the US formally ends its two-decade warfare.
Friday is a vacation right here, however the street from the airport to Shehr-e-nau in downtown Kabul is busy with site visitors. Most retailers are closed, barring some which promote bread and necessities. Men, ladies and youngsters stroll hurriedly and site visitors piles up as automobiles, largely outdated Toyotas, are checked at safety barricades erected at common intervals.
This is a metropolis nervous and petrified of what lies forward, dreading the considered a return to instances when ladies had no rights, music was taboo and life, as they’ve recognized it these previous a few years, didn’t exist.
Kabul is the place many are headed as massive swathes are being overrun throughout the nation. Refugees from small cities are pouring into the town daily. The metropolis’s famed parks are actually sanctuaries, transformed into refugee shelters.
Mohammad Yunus, a 38-year-old who’s a businessman and shuttles between Delhi and Herat by way of Kabul, is anxious about his household in Herat. His dealings in cardamoms and dry fruits take him to Chandni Chowk, however he’s now dashing dwelling.
He says he should wait a number of days in Kabul earlier than he can reunite along with his spouse and 14-year-old daughter. The Taliban have simply taken over Herat, the vital metropolis in western Afghanistan.
“I don’t know how this happened… government forces did not even put up a fight, Ismail Khan (the local warlord) joined hands with the Taliban on Friday,” he says, fearful about his daughter. The solely comfort, he says, is that his 71-year-old “Baba” (father) is there to take care of his spouse and daughter.
Forty-seven-year-old Nazir – he doesn’t use his surname, lest he’s recognized – is from the province of Kapisa. He lives along with his spouse, three daughters and two sons in Kabul, and is distraught by the information of the strategy of the Taliban.
“If the Taliban take over, the majority of Afghans will live and breathe, but they will be like living corpses. Can you imagine what will happen if the Talibs want to marry my young daughters? What will I do?” he says – his daughters are aged 13, 14 and 16.
Nazir has lived in India for 3 years, and is now desperately on the lookout for an exit. “But we need to have money and resources, setting chahiye,” he says. Many of his pals need to depart the nation however it’s not simple.
Officials and diplomats in Kabul, too, are watching the Taliban advance with nice concern.
The political scenario is unfolding quickly in Kabul, and there’s hypothesis of a change in management, maybe a power-sharing association that can cease bloodshed. But nobody is certain, and rumours fly thick and quick.
Outside the airport, reverse the Massoud billboards, there’s a giant signage of white block letters and a vivid purple heart-shaped construction, a preferred selfie level which says “I love Kabul”.
On that, there’s no dispute. Not even between the Afghan authorities and the Taliban.
