Internally displaced persons in Afghanistan: homeless and desperate

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have now brought nine provincial capitals under their control. Tens of thousands are on the run. Many of them are stranded in Kabul.

Azadi Park, a long, narrow green space in the center of Kabul. Hundreds of people have made camp here. Nadia too. The 39-year-old fled with her eight children from Talokan, the capital of the northern Afghan province of Takhar, which the Taliban captured two days ago. “I could only bring my children with me and I didn’t come here with anything,” she says. “The Taliban used our house as a base. We lost everything there. Everything was burned. We ask the government to help us. My sons are still young. I am a widow. Your father was killed in the fighting with the Taliban. “

Naser is also stranded here with his family, his wife and three children. One of his daughters has leukemia, now they’re lying here in the park. He comes from Kunduz, which also fell on the weekend. He worked for the Germans, says Naser, until this year. Now he has fled the Taliban’s retribution, “because they knew that I was working with the Germans. So I left Kunduz to avoid being killed. We are gone out of fear of the Taliban.”

“The city of Kunduz was on fire”

After a long search, Naser found a taxi for himself and his family that would take them to Kabul. He had to pay 700 Afghani for each, a good seven euros. A lot of money for him. German soldiers were still deployed in Kunduz until the end of April. Now it is in the hands of the radical Islamists. “The city of Kunduz was on fire. The shops near the main square were on fire. The Taliban had checkpoints on the way. They didn’t annoy us too much because it was night.”

As a former local employee, Naser had tried to get a visa for Germany. But since he had signed his contract with a subcontractor, he had no chance.

Left behind like a “street dog”

But Zalmai is also stuck in Kabul, in a safe hiding place, a safe house, with 200 other Bundeswehr helpers. The former translator would actually be entitled to a visa. But he handed in his passport for it – and has not heard anything since then.

“They got me trapped here. I can’t get out of the country,” says Zalmai. “I was the eyes and ears of special forces. Now they just left me behind like a street dog. That’s really crazy.”

Zalmai came from Mazar-i-Sharif, where the Bundeswehr only withdrew at the end of June, from the large field camp, Camp Marmal. Now there is already intense fighting in the vicinity of the largest city in Afghanistan. In general, the Taliban are on the advance almost everywhere in the country.

Nine provincial capitals under the control of the Taliban

The two provincial capitals of Farah in western Afghanistan and Pol-i-Khomri in the north fell to the Taliban since yesterday evening. Faizabad in the northeast also fell during the night after long resistance – the Taliban now control the capitals of nine of the 34 Afghan provinces. Tens of thousands of people are currently on the run, and a total of hundreds of thousands have already been displaced within Afghanistan.

And so the Azadi Park will probably get even more crowded in the next few days. Because many refugees flock to Kabul. Naser, the man from Kunduz, has a clear message: “We call on the Taliban to join forces with the government so that we can have peace and stability and leave all the misery and problems of life behind us.”