When the Taliban took Kabul two years ago, tens of thousands fled Afghanistan. Since then, many of them have been trying to gain a foothold in a new life. How does that work? Four Destinies.
Fatima Faisi’s head is spinning when she thinks of that day in August 2021 in the Afghan capital Kabul. “It was apocalyptic,” she says. Thousands of Afghans had flocked to the airport to board an evacuation flight. “Everything at the airport was destroyed and looted, Taliban fighters beat us with sticks to drive us away. American helicopters tried to disperse the crowd at the airfield – and the Afghans absurdly threw stones at them.”
The images of the chaotic conditions went around the world. It was August 15, 2021, a Sunday on which the militant Islamist Taliban took Kabul as the last city in the country after a lightning offensive. In doing so, they regained power after 20 years. Their arrival and the flight of President Ashraf Ghani triggered mass panic. The US troops, who had fought the Taliban insurgency with Afghan soldiers for years, were on the final stretch of their withdrawal. In a rushed evacuation mission, more than 120,000 people were flown out within a few days to protect them from acts of revenge by the Taliban.
Kabul Airport became a catapult that shot local officials, human rights activists, ministers, soldiers – but also people who made it onto a flight by pure chance – into all parts of the world completely unprepared. Two years later, very few have settled into their new lives. They struggle with the loss of their homes, a powerlessness at not being able to do anything against the Taliban, anger, feelings of guilt and the burden of having to start over.
How are refugees doing today?
Faisi, now 28, was one of the evacuees. She had started working for the US newspaper “New York Times” four years earlier. She was brave and brilliant, received countless threats for her stories and was lucky to survive an attack in Kabul. Four days after the fall of Kabul, she made it onto a military plane. No one who got on this merry-go-round of evacuations knew where they would eventually end up. After several days of stops in Doha and Mexico City, she arrived in Houston in the southern US state of Texas.
“I didn’t even know how to pronounce Houston,” says Faisi. In a motel there she realized for the first time what had happened. “I had this wave of anger, this feeling of being betrayed,” she says. “I started every argument, blaming everyone for the loss of my life and country – myself, my colleagues, the Americans, the Afghan government.”
She has moved four times since then. “I’m kind of still on the run,” she says. Of her five family members, only her 22-year-old brother found work – as a warehouse worker. He now supports the family. She applied to many media, but they complained about her lack of knowledge of the country. They didn’t want them at the Walmart supermarket either.
On those long summer days, which she often spends with gardeners, and so close to August 15, the memories are particularly insistent. “The fall of Kabul was a storm that ripped out our tribe, but our roots are still deep in the ground,” she says. During the short nights, they are constantly haunted by severe nightmares.
What memories does Fatima have?
She can understand why the Americans wanted to withdraw after 20 years. But there are also her friends, whom she lost in the war, who fought against the return of the Taliban. “It’s that one question I can’t answer,” she says. “Why did they have to die when the Taliban are back in power anyway?” She often thinks of a soldier friend who was wounded ten times. “As soon as he got out of the hospital, he put his uniform back on,” says Faisi. “And today I don’t even know where or if he was buried, because we never found his body.”
Former government officials are also looking for the meaning of the past 20 years. “What happened on August 15 is actually nothing new,” says a former official who worked in the presidential palace and now lives in London. “In my short life I have seen the regime collapse in Afghanistan three times.”
Since the fall of Kabul, “we’ve all been through hell and it’s not over yet,” he says. “Afghanistan was a miserable place at the turn of the millennium,” he recalls. “Then we had everything – especially young people,” he explains, referring to the opening of the country after the first Taliban regime and the economic upswing. “A decade later, we now have nothing.” It’s so hard to come to terms with. “We didn’t realize we were living in a bubble. It wasn’t real.”
Chaibar Daulatsai has a new life in the USA
Chaibar Daulatsai has arrived in reality. The 35-year-old found himself in the US state of Utah. The ex-battalion commander, who served 12 years and fought the Taliban in 33 of the country’s 34 provinces, didn’t speak a word of English and had no idea about American culture. When he got to Salt Lake City, it was Halloween. “The houses were decorated with ghosts and pumpkins,” he says. “And I said to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve landed in crazy town.’ At first he had many problems. It took him four attempts to pass the driver’s license test. Now he works as a truck driver.
On the morning of August 15, Daulatsai was still fighting in a district of Kabul province. When rumors spread that the capital had fallen, the chief of staff ordered him to the airport. “I left with 50 of my soldiers. On the way we crashed into Taliban units at least ten times,” he says. Only days before that, an important Taliban commander had been killed in an operation he led. At the airport he had no choice: “They would not have let me live.”
He was able to save his life, but otherwise Daulatsai has little left. “I feel very lonely,” he says. He has been in his truck day and night for three months. “When I’m at home, I get too many thoughts,” he says. Why be at home, especially since his wife and six children are still not there. The documents are still not through. “My youngest daughter is now two years old. She was born a week before the fall of Kabul and I haven’t even hugged her.”
What happened after the fall of Kabul?
After the fall of Kabul, the Taliban initially promised to govern more moderately. But then their rule became more and more authoritarian and dogmatic. Women and girls are now largely excluded from public life. The internationally isolated country is in a severe humanitarian and economic crisis.
Mohammed Tarik also knows what it’s like to have to leave your children behind. “I couldn’t forget the expression on your face when we left for a long time,” says the 57-year-old about his two sons. Tarik worked for German development aid in north-east Badakhshan for nine years and nine months. As head of risk management, he prepared assessments of the security situation. When he submitted his documents, it was said that children over the age of 18 could not be taken. His sons were 22 and 26 at the time.
He has been living in a small town in Bavaria for a good year. It wasn’t easy at first, but now he’s used to the weather and life, he says. He now has at least one of his sons with him again. He doesn’t have any German friends yet. “There aren’t that many Germans where I live,” says Tarik. Those who were there greeted me kindly. He would like to have a job, had been to the job center. “I’m 57 and said I’m healthy and able to work,” he says. The lack of language skills is an obstacle. “I just want a job that keeps one hand busy and the other independent,” he says.
In the months after the Taliban took power, he almost never left the house. Now he is happy that he no longer has to think about many things. “In my whole life I’ve never had so much freedom as here,” he says. Overall, apart from nightmares, he feels fine. He doesn’t see who should drive the Taliban out of power again. “I think the world has given up on Afghanistan.”