On Sunday morning, August 14, I got ready as usual and headed for the office, reaching my office at 8:30 Kabul time. I asked the Secretariat for a list of official appointments for the same day. After reviewing my work plans and reading the newspapers, I prepared to go to the ministry’s meeting room. At this point, my colleague hurried inside the office, asking me to leave the office immediately. “Boss, boss,” he said in a trembling voice. “Kabul has fallen to the Taliban, and everyone is fleeing. No one is present at the ministry except you and me.”
I went to the vestibule of the ministry. I witnessed that everyone was leaving in panic. I immediately entered the office. I took my computer and some important documents with me. I left the ministry with tears in my eyes. Everything had changed. Fear and despair were visible on the faces of the people of the city. The roads were crowded.
Everyone was trying to get home or to a safe place sooner. People had to wait for hours to get from one area to another.
However, my house is located near my office. Unlike others, I got home earlier. When I entered the house, I asked my wife to prepare the car key and some of my clothes for me promptly. I hurriedly prepared myself. My children were shouting with innocent looks and childish cries, “Father, do not go out because the Taliban are taking you.”
I had to leave the house despite the painful cries of my children. I called a family member and asked him to help with the transfer of my wife and three children. I asked him not to share the place I was going with anyone but my wife.
When I left the house, everyone was in a hurry. Government employees and the military were trying to escape. Kabul was no longer like before. Panic, despair, and fear of the uncertain future could be seen on everyone’s face. Following the Taliban’s full takeover of Kabul, rumors spread that Ashraf Ghani, a Taliban representative, and the Americans were holding extensive talks at the citadel and that preparations were being made to transfer power. In the evening of the same day, however, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah announced the escape of Ashraf Ghani by releasing a video, and all the doors of our hope for the establishment of an interim government were closed.
The Taliban announced a general amnesty the same day, vowing that no former Afghan government employee or citizen would be interrogated or beaten. However, the fear the Taliban had created over the past 20 years made their statement difficult to believe. I did not leave the house for eight days. I had lost sleep. I seldom slept at night, and I may not have slept more than four hours in eight days. The devastation of a nation and the collapse of the 20-year achievements of a system shattered my mind. This made me not even respond to messages from many of my friends asking how I was doing. Strange things came to my mind.
The days went by very hard one after the other and I became more and more scared with each passing day. On the eighth day, after a family member insisted too much, I went out for a walk with him. There was sadness, despair, and distress on everyone’s face. On the contrary, the Taliban soldiers on the roads looked happy; everyone addressed the Taliban as Mullah Sahib and Qari Sahib out of irony and fear. The Taliban’s treatment of the general public was good. Even after inspecting the car, they apologized to the driver and had nothing to do with beards, pants, and women’s clothing, unlike in 1995.
In general, they had nothing to do with Ashraf Ghani’s government officials, but in some cases violated their commitment to a general amnesty, and there were concerns seeking media, human rights, and civil society activists. In some cases, they even went to the homes of former government officials, national businessmen, human rights activists, and prominent figures under the pretext of collecting government weapons and vehicles, taking their vehicles with them.
Although Taliban leaders pledged to form an inclusive government and to respect professional cadres, it was later seen that the Taliban not only did not believe in the inclusive government but also replaced the mullahs and reciters with experts and cadres. Even the Taliban Minister of Higher Education called the graduates of the last 20 years useless, saying that nothing is going to be expected from this generation. This situation was not acceptable for young and professional cadres, and the majority of them left the country or are seeking to leave it. Dozens of professors have emigrated from Kabul alone.
The flight of the elites from the country is a great challenge for the self-made Taliban government. The Taliban should know that it is impossible to rule and serve the people by relying on a few mullahs who have only religious knowledge.
The economic difficulties of the people were getting worse day by day. There was no more news of Kabul’s bustling market. The doors of public and private banks were closed, and people lined up next to bank branches for days. After two weeks of protests, some offices in Kabul reopened to the public conditionally that each bank customer could withdraw 20,000 afghanis from their account within a week. People also stood in long queues, waiting for hours to get the money they needed to buy their necessities. The Afghan currency was losing value against the dollar with each passing day, and food prices had become expensive.
The free media, hailed as one of the achievements of the last 20 years, was severely censored, and other media outlets lost the ability to oversee government performance. Universities and schools were closed to girls. Women and girls have been barred from working and studying.
Going to hotels, listening to music, playing games, exercising, and going to coffee shops, was no more, and these lively places were in complete silence.
Kabul had become a city of nightmares, and everyone was trying to leave the country in any way possible. Considering that leaving home is full of suffering for every Afghan, there was no better option but to leave. In every group, there was talk of leaving the country. Even well-off people were willing to spend thousands of dollars on visas for neighboring countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Iran, which were free before the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Disappointments grew with each passing day. Everyone, especially human rights defenders, university professors, women’s rights defenders, journalists, and Ashraf Ghani government officials, sought to leave the country because of the direct and indirect threats they faced.
As a political figure who has been in the media almost every week for the past five years, I have faced serious threats. Although I have made several official trips to the United States and Europe since 2011, and my last trip was in 2020, I never decided to live abroad, working with complete honesty and faith for a stable, non-violent, war-free Afghanistan. I had a bright future in my mind, but these aspirations of me and my generation remained only a wish.
After enduring days of despair and hopelessness, I finally got a visa for a neighboring country with the help of a close friend. Finally, with the support of a German institution with which I worked between 2013 and 2015, I obtained a German visa and traveled to Germany with my family. Although there is no threat, I am still going through difficult times because of the hardships of immigration, homelessness, poverty, misery in Afghanistan, and the uncertain future of Afghans at home and abroad.