Afghanistan: the story of a nine-day evacuation of a woman from Kabul

Caches. Teenage Taliban guards. Worried while waiting for calls from the embassy. Chaos at the airport. And a constant fear all the time that a catastrophe might befall her or her loved ones.

This, in short, is the story of Nooshin and her struggle to flee Kabul after the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital. Of course, we changed her name to protect her and her family.

I spoke to Nooshin on the phone. It was the afternoon of Saturday, August 21st. She had spent 20 hours sitting in a minibus near Kabul airport, with no food or access to a toilet, in a desperate attempt to board a military plane during India's emergency evacuation plan.

But this is not the last chapter of her story. But how did it get to this point?

Let's go back to August 15th. Nosheen, an Indian woman married to an Afghani with relatives in both countries, had booked a ticket on a flight on the 19th of the same month from Kabul to Delhi. But with the Taliban taking control of the capital, Kabul, all commercial flights, including her own, have been cancelled.

topics that may interest you. End

You woke up on the morning of the 15th to find that most embassies had closed their doors overnight and that their staff had tried to flee at the first possible opportunity.

Her husband also wants her out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. So, she took her passport and a blue chador (burqa) and hurried with her husband to the Indian embassy to inquire about evacuation flights.

Teenage taboos, hosted by Karima Kawah and edited by Mais Baqi.

The episodes

The end of the podcast

Fortunately, the Indian embassy was receiving people when we arrived. But you could feel the atmosphere of tension in the place. They were destroying all the documents and burning the papers. The staff told us that they would continue to work until that evening. I wanted visas. Travel for the rest of my family here in Afghanistan, so they asked me to come back in the evening with passports and other documents, so I went home.”

"People were running randomly for fear of the Taliban. My husband grabbed my hand, and we ran towards our house. I felt as if all the people of the city were in the streets, heading towards the airport. It was horrible. When I got home, I found that the building was surrounded by the Taliban." ".

Nousheen and her husband collected the required documents and returned them to the embassy. Fortunately, they obtained visas for the rest of the family.

Then she started waiting for that phone call from the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India; As an Indian, her name was on her country's priority list for evacuations.

“I received a letter from the ministry on August 19. I needed to get [to a place that we cannot disclose for security reasons] where many other people who were also in the evacuation plan were gathering. I had to leave my whole family behind, and it wasn't "Easy. But my family was worried about my safety and we didn't have time to think. We were only asked to carry a small handbag. So, I took my laptop, a flash drive, my mobile phone, a charging pad and left."

"I had 220 people in the bunker and we were all waiting for evacuation; there were Indian Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and a few Afghani families among us. But I didn't feel safe in that bunker and I was worried for the next two days."

"There were no arrangements, we had no information about when we would be evacuated. No security personnel were provided to protect us inside the bunker. In fact, the Taliban were standing outside to guard us. We felt very fragile and helpless. I could not sleep because of fear."

The sudden eviction order came at 10 pm on August 20. In the next hour and a half, about 150 passengers left for the airport in seven minibuses.

"The Taliban accompanied us. One car was at the front of the line and another followed us. We arrived at the airport around 12:30 in the afternoon. Large crowds were waiting outside trying to flee the country. The Taliban were firing shots from one side, and the American soldiers were firing On the other hand, they fired tear gas shells to control the crowd. They took us to the northern gate, which is mostly used by the army."

But the Americans who control the place prevented them from reaching the airport, so they spent the night on buses, with no effective evacuation plan.

"We had children, women, and patients with us. We were stranded. Some women had started their period and it was not possible to reach the toilet. We were sitting in an open place, and anyone could attack us," Nousheen says.

The situation was getting worse.

"No one should believe that the Taliban will not oppress women"

"The day Kabul fell, I lost hope in the future."

"Around 9:30 on the 21st of August, the Taliban came to our bus and started interrogating the tour coordinator. They took his phone and slapped him. We didn't know what was going on. They took us to an industrial area and detained us. They were young boys, some of them looked "Seventeen or eighteen. We were afraid for our lives and thought we were done. Those few hours were the most dangerous of my life. We thought we would never be able to see our families again."

Men and women were forced to sit separately in the garden. The Taliban took their passports and began interrogating them. Indian women married to Afghans were also separated from the rest of the Indians.

"I said to them: I am an Indian and I prefer to stay with the rest of the Indians, and they said that I should stay with the Afghans. I started to fear what they would do to my Indian sisters. What if they took them somewhere and did something to them?

"One of the officers asked me: Why do you want to leave this country? We are trying to rebuild it. He asked me if I would go back to Afghanistan or not. I told him: No, we are afraid of you. But they reassured us that there is nothing to fear and they gave us water to drink, but we did not look in the eyes of some.

"Later, they told us that there was a security threat waiting for us, and that they were guaranteeing our security. I also received a message from a friend from the Indian group that I was separated from, and she told me that the Taliban fed them and took good care of them."

A Taliban spokesman later told Afghan media that they had detained the passengers due to some concerns and wanted to ensure everyone's safety and security - refusing to talk about reports of kidnappings.

Two hours later, Nosheen got on a bus with other Afghan and Indian women married to Afghan men. They were joined by other Indian groups returning from the airport. At two o'clock in the afternoon, they returned to the northern gate and began waiting to enter the airport again.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was trying to get us into the airport, but it didn't work. I was so angry that we told them we were being held by the Taliban and how we felt helpless but no action was taken - we didn't know what was going on during the negotiations behind closed doors, but as a person Stuck there, I felt hopeless and vulnerable.

"If they weren't sure, they wouldn't have asked us to get out of our homes. We would have hidden inside our homes. We wouldn't have put ourselves in so much danger. Now we're out in the open."

The day is still the same: the 21st.

It was awful and they were still outside the airport.

At five o'clock, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Noushin group that they would be transferred to the airport in a quarter of an hour - but that did not happen.

At six o'clock, they receive another call from the Ministry, telling them to return to the hideout.

Noushin was told that the evacuation might happen later in the night. But they were told that more than once; They even went without sleep for three days and some of them had small children with them.

At eight o'clock in the evening, Noushin, frustrated and exhausted, decided to go home.

Subsequently, a group of Indians and Afghans were successfully evacuated on an Indian Air Force plane - Naushit was not on board.

"The others told me it happened very quickly. They were taken to the airport shortly after they arrived at the bunker. They didn't have time to tell me. Now they are all inside the airport. I didn't want to be hard on myself leaving the bunker. I was mentally and physically exhausted."

The next day, Noushin was contacted twice by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and her name was added to a new list of persons to be evacuated.

On August 23, the ministry called her at 2:30 pm and asked her to reach a certain location by 5:30.

At eight o'clock, two minibuses arrived at the main gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport, each with eleven seats, but carrying about eighty passengers.

The scenery outside is still no better than it used to be.

“A lot of people were still trying their luck. We saw the Taliban whipping them. They were shooting in the air. We were told to keep all the windows closed and the curtains drawn. It was scary. The Taliban were everywhere. He took us farther away.” We saw the American soldiers. They were waving at us. Some Indian officials came to check our passports."

At 11:20, Noushin and the others sat on the tarmac waiting for the Indian plane to get permission from the Americans to land.

An hour later, she said, she found herself inside a military plane bound for Tajikistan and her phone quickly turned off.

Nosheen arrived at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi at 9:40 IST on the 24th of August.

Her ordeal lasted nine days.

I called her shortly after her arrival to say "welcome home" - but she broke down.

"I don't understand what happened. I'm here, but my husband and family are still in Afghanistan. Now I'm beginning to understand the horror I went through. When we were in Kabul, I didn't have a minute to think, but as soon as we got to Dushanbe (Tajikistan), I started to wake up "I am still drugged. I now pray that my husband and relatives will be evacuated soon. But until then, I won't feel like home."