NEWS
Abdul: Leaving son behind is ‘biggest sadness’
Abdul, a father of three who has worked with Afghan security forces, said he was “terrorised” by the Taliban’s sweep across the country. “We knew what the Taliban are and how they behave,” he told Al Jazeera. As reports of revenge killings in Taliban-controlled areas spread, he says he and his family had no choice but to flee. The Taliban has promised to not seek retaliation against Afghans who worked with the government or US forces. “I was panicking. On the one hand, I felt like I needed to go, but I was feeling so sad to be leaving my country and my family,” he told Al Jazeera. Abdul’s panic grew as his nine-year-old son fell ill while the family was trying to reach the airport in Kabul. He said his initial attempts to reach the compound failed because Taliban fighters at checkpoints near the airport simply pushed people back and denied them passage. With time running out, he said he had to leave his sick child with his parents in the capital and try to reach an airport gate guarded by American and Afghan forces. “That is my biggest sadness,” said Abdul, of having to leave his son in Afghanistan.
Abas: ‘Our Hazara community will suffer’
“They were happy until the Taliban captured the province,” he said. “We resisted against the Taliban all the time, and now that they are ruling, our Hazara community will suffer.” Amnesty International documented a massacre by Taliban fighters against Hazara men earlier this year. Abas said he was shocked and “felt hopeless” when the Taliban reached Kabul on August 15, capturing the city with hardly any resistance. “Because I had worked for the US military in the past, I went and hid at a relative’s house on the day when the Taliban entered Kabul,” he said. “I chose to stay in a high populated but working area, which does not get attention … I thought all my wait and struggle to get SIV was just drowning in the ocean.”
Hashima: ‘Everyone wants a good life’
Hashima, 23, was studying international relations at a private university in Kabul before the Afghan government collapsed. She said she had no immediate plans to leave the country before the Taliban captured Kabul, but with two family members who worked with American forces, she felt she had to flee. She first headed to the airport in Kabul, but with large crowds at the gates, Hashima was not able to reach the compound. Her brother, who worked with the US military and fled Afghanistan to China, instructed her to head to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif to catch a flight, she said. “We went to Mazar and waited for two days over there, then we were put on a flight to Qatar,” she said. But Hashima, who has no children, had to leave her husband behind. “My husband’s name was not in the list of evacuees, so I had to come alone,” she said. “It is because this all happened all of a sudden, and my brother had not submitted my husband’s name in his SIV case yet...”
