Women in Afghanistan: “I cry all the time”

Many people in Afghanistan are in shock. Women in particular are afraid of the Taliban; many hide and see themselves forced to flee.

In front of the airport in Kabul it is loud: the panic, the desperation of the people who want to leave their country because they are afraid of the Taliban. The shock for many people in the country who did not expect the Taliban to come to power again so quickly or ever is often quiet and unnoticed.

Because many hide – with friends and distant relatives. Or don’t leave the house at all, like a young student whom we call Malala here. She doesn’t want her real name to be mentioned. So great is the fear of the Taliban: “All my friends are completely exhausted,” she says on WhatsApp.

Every time we talk on videocall I see that they are crying. I haven’t had a single normal conversation with my friends in days. I can understand that they cry, I do that all the time too.

She only knows a country without Taliban rule

Malala is 20 years old, born in the year NATO troops came to her country. So far, she only knew the Taliban from her mother’s stories or from videos. Now she sees the armed Islamists patrolling the street out of her window:

I don’t think they have changed. They’re still the same as they were before. I hardly think I can live in their regime. And that breaks my heart, because I love my country and I don’t want to leave my city or my people here.

“There is no future for us here”

This is what happens behind closed doors for many people in Afghanistan. Majid Saddad worked for years with the German troops in the north of the country, in Mazar-i-Sharif. He was the manager of the civil airport there. In a suit and tie, he was even there in the tower at night when the last Bundeswehr plane left his city at the end of June. Now not a single plane flies from his airport.

Saddad now wants to try to leave his country via Kabul airport: “I just put my family in the car and we drove for hours from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul. We had to go through more than 100 Taliban checkpoints. Me I put on a turban and my sandals. There is no hope here, no future for us. “

Disappointment with the US

Even if the Taliban promise that they will not retaliate, that women can continue to study and work. Afghanistan with an Islamist government and ideology is something that many who grew up in a – albeit fragile – democracy cannot agree with themselves. Malala has always believed in the West. But this deduction, she says, is a slap in the face for all Afghans:

The US President said: We have achieved what we wanted to achieve in Afghanistan. I ask: Is this mess that you have left here what you wanted to achieve? We didn’t just give up here!