Every August 14 takes me back a few days earlier—to Herat, Islam Qala, the 207th Zafar Corps, and a time when people were still talking about resistance.
Five years after August 15, 2021, I remain convinced that Afghanistan did not collapse in Kabul. Kabul was only the final scene. One of the decisive moments had come several days earlier, in western Afghanistan: the fall of Herat.
This is not only a political assessment. It is something I witnessed.
When my plane landed in Herat, I looked out of the window and saw the familiar landscape of western Afghanistan. A few kilometres from the airport lay Siavashan, my mother’s village, surrounded by streams, vineyards and pomegranate gardens.
Much of my childhood was connected to that village. During the Soviet war, its people had resisted the Soviet army and paid a terrible price. Twenty-one members of my mother’s extended family never returned.
I had travelled to Herat to see the situation for myself and to meet Ismail Khan, one of the most prominent figures associated with resistance in western Afghanistan.
I did not know that this would be the last time I would see Herat in person—the last time I would walk its streets and feel the city whose soil, history and memories were deeply connected to my own life.
Herat was not simply another provincial capital. Its location near Iran and Turkmenistan, its trade routes and its historical political importance made it one of Afghanistan’s key strategic centres.
If the Taliban could take Herat, the message would be much larger than the loss of one city: the Afghan government could no longer defend the country’s major urban centres.
Afghanistan had seen a similar warning before. In 1995, the Taliban’s capture of Herat became an important step in their advance toward Kabul. In 2021, history moved much faster.
The night after I arrived, Islam Qala, Afghanistan’s major border crossing with Iran, fell to the Taliban.
For many people it may have seemed like one more battlefield report. To me, it was an alarm. I had already witnessed political collapse in Afghanistan before, and I feared that this time events could move with extraordinary speed.
When I met Ismail Khan, his concern was obvious. He was deeply critical of the central government and of the situation inside the 207th Zafar Corps, the Afghan army command responsible for western Afghanistan.
His argument was simple: as Taliban pressure increased, there was not enough coordination between government forces, local structures and the popular resistance.
But the problem went beyond weapons and ammunition.
What was disappearing was trust.
Trust between local forces and Kabul was weakening. Parts of the security establishment no longer trusted the political leadership, and ordinary people were losing confidence in the state.
On paper, Afghanistan still had a government, an army and a police force. But underneath those institutions, the system was beginning to disintegrate.
Countries do not always collapse when the last soldier is defeated. Sometimes collapse begins much earlier—when trust between the state, its security forces and its citizens disappears.
Shortly afterward, President Ashraf Ghani came to Herat. His visit could have demonstrated unity, but instead it revealed the depth of the divisions.
His meeting with Ismail Khan took place inside the Zafar Corps headquarters. Official statements presented an image of unity. In reality, distrust remained profound.
The warning was clear: without serious coordination between the army, local resistance forces and the political leadership, Herat could not hold indefinitely.
I believed Ghani’s visit represented one of the last opportunities to change the direction of events. That opportunity was lost.
Soon afterward, I travelled to Kabul to speak with Western diplomats.
My message was straightforward:
If Herat falls, it will not end in Herat.
I met Andreas von Brandt, the European Union ambassador to Afghanistan, and explained that the Taliban were tightening their grip around the city while local resistance forces felt increasingly abandoned.
He asked what I considered a realistic solution.
I told him that Herat needed urgent support from the Afghan government, together with stronger international pressure on Kabul to coordinate and support the defence of the city.
At another meeting with European ambassadors, I again warned about the consequences of Herat’s collapse. Vittorio Sandalli, Italy’s ambassador, made the situation clear: the United States was leaving Afghanistan, and European countries would ultimately leave as well.
That was the moment I understood that the crisis was bigger than Herat—and even bigger than Kabul.
International forces had decided to withdraw, while Afghanistan’s political system had no credible plan for filling the vacuum.
There are different accounts of what happened during Herat’s final days—who made which decision, which forces arrived too late, and who carries responsibility. History should examine those questions carefully.
But what I saw was simpler:
The system was no longer functioning.
Afghanistan still had thousands of armed personnel and significant military equipment. What it lacked was unified command, political confidence, and a common determination to continue the fight.
On August 12, 2021, Herat fell to the Taliban. Ismail Khan was captured. Nearly two months of resistance in western Afghanistan came to an end.
That day, I became convinced that Kabul had very little time left.
It had only three days.
Three days separated the fall of Herat from the collapse of Kabul.
Province after province fell. Soldiers abandoned positions. Officials disappeared. Ordinary Afghans began to understand that the state they expected to protect them was vanishing.
I was still in Kabul.
Around that time, Cees Roels, a Dutch diplomat I had previously met during discussions with European officials, called and warned me that the situation was deteriorating rapidly.
Until then, many of us still imagined that the Taliban might reach Kabul’s outskirts and negotiations would begin over a transitional or coalition government.
We did not realize how close the end was.
I had planned a short family trip to Iran on August 25. After the warnings, I moved our flight forward to August 15.
On the morning of August 15, I went to the bank to withdraw money for the journey when my phone rang.
The message was short:
Leave Kabul immediately.
News was arriving almost by the minute. This was no longer about a district or a province. The capital itself was collapsing.
Kabul changed within hours. Streets filled with anxiety. People rushed to banks, the airport,t and every possible exit route. Everyone was trying to protect their family.
Helicopters and aircraft filled the sky. Fear filled the streets.
At that point, political analysis no longer mattered to me. I was not thinking about Ashraf Ghani, the Doha negotiations, ns or who would eventually be blamed.
I had only one concern:
Get my family out safely.
We left Kabul with a single small piece of hand luggage, not knowing whether we would ever return.
Returning to the Netherlands was accompanied by shock and silence. Events had moved too quickly for me to process what had happened.
Only later did the reality become clear: Herat was gone, Kabul was gone, and the political order that had existed for twenty years had disappeared.
I then understood that when I had looked down at the green fields of Siavashan from the airplane window, I had unknowingly been saying goodbye to part of my own life.
Five years later, I still believe that to understand August 15, we must look back several days—to Herat.
Kabul did not truly fall when the first Taliban fighters entered the presidential palace. The collapse had begun earlier, when trust disappeared, when the state became increasingly isolated from society, and when people no longer believed that their institutions could protect them.
When Herat fell, the Taliban did not simply capture another city. They sent a powerful psychological message across Afghanistan: the government could no longer defend even its most important centres.
After that, the collapse became more than military. It became psychological.
For me, August 12 was the prelude to August 15. Herat was one of the last locks on the road to Kabul.
August 15 should not be reduced simply to Ashraf Ghani’s departure or the Taliban entering Kabul. If we do that, we reduce the collapse of an entire political system to one man and one day.
Why did a government that officially commanded hundreds of thousands of security personnel collapse within weeks? Why did twenty years of international investment fail to create institutions capable of surviving without direct foreign military support? Why did the Afghan government fail to maintain public trust? And why did the international withdrawal proceed without sufficient guarantees for the political order that would follow?
These questions are not only about blaming America, Europe, Ashraf Ghani, or individual commanders.
Afghans must also ask what kind of state we built, and why it proved so fragile.
If we describe August 15 only as a betrayal by outsiders, we avoid examining our own failures. But if we blame Afghans alone, we ignore the consequences of decisions made by powerful foreign governments.
The truth cannot be reduced to a single culprit.
But one thing remains clear to me:
Afghanistan did not fall in a single day.
Before Kabul fell on August 15, the Republic had already been collapsing from within.
And for me, that collapse still begins with the same image: an airplane window, the green gardens of Siavashan below, and a city I did not yet know I was seeing for the last time.
