At-Risk Afghans Who Fear The Taliban Hunker Down And Wait To Leave

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Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan in August. After the Taliban takeover, employees of the collapsed government, civil society activists and women are among the at-risk Afghans who have gone into hiding or are staying off the streets.

Rahmat Gul/AP

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Rahmat Gul/AP

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Taliban fighters search a vehicle at a checkpoint on the road in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan in August.

Rahmat Gul/AP

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Rahmat Gul/AP

Taliban fighters search a vehicle at a checkpoint on the road in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan in August.

Rahmat Gul/AP

Taliban commanders have said they have instructions to confiscate government property, including weapons and cars, but that they have told their men to respect private property. Taliban leaders have also encouraged government workers to return to work.

Still, there are growing signs of restrictions.

In the province of Sar-e-Pol, the Taliban issued a list of directives. They included banning music, Western-style dress, and jobs that require women to appear in public. The punishment for transgressions is beating. Girls in the city of Herat, the country’s third-largest, meanwhile, were allowed to return to school as long as their teachers were women, or elderly men.

Some say it is in the interest of the Taliban not to revert to the brutality they displayed when they ruled from 1996 to 2001. In those years, they denied girls and women the right to an education, barred them from the public life, meted out brutal punishments, such as cutting of the hands of thieves, and carried out public executions.

Today, the Taliban will depend on foreign donor assistance to run the country, and may have a motive not to alienate the international community.

But those looking to leave the country fear that may not be enough, expressing concern what will happen as time passes and international focus falls elsewhere.

Mobina, the journalist, is in hiding with 25 people. The others include heads of civil society groups, women’s rights defenders and leaders of development projects.

They are too scared to leave the safe house. They say they hear Taliban fighters are roaming the streets, stopping women and asking them where their male escort is. Under the Taliban’s previous rule, women were required to have such an escort.

«Our friends are sending us money so we can afford to eat, Mobina said. «That is how we know we aren’t forgotten.

And yet, the way out of Afghanistan is also treacherous.

Evacuations are being organized largely by embassies prioritizing their own nationals and the Afghans who worked directly with them. But thousands of other at-risk Afghans don’t immediately qualify.

Those who are approved for evacuation face huge crowds at the airport, and Taliban patrols make it difficult for travelers to reach the gates. Stories abound of failed attempts over successive days.

Many others struggle to even reach the airport. Humaira Sadeq, the co-founder of the Afghan Women’s Media Network, said women who fear they are on the Taliban’s radar are advised to take precautions when they travel to Kabul from the outlying areas, including leaving behind mobile phones and covering up with a burqa.

Sadeq managed to get out of Afghanistan after the Taliban seizure of the capital and traveled to another country. She spoke on condition that country was not named.

Now she spends sleepless nights fighting to get her fellow activists out. She submitted 22 names to an organization helping people leave, but none have made it onto evacuation lists yet. Sadeq said that some of the women don’t have passports or are stuck in the provinces.

Women’s rights activists say the world’s seeming disregard for their fate was apparent when the United States, starting under then-President Donald Trump, negotiated a deal directly with the Taliban, bypassing Afghan political leaders and civil society groups. The deal, signed more than a year ago, included the terms and timetable for a withdrawal of foreign troops.

«The U.S. made a deal with the Taliban on our behalf, said Zubaida Akbar, an activist now based in the U.S. She works with FEMENA, a women’s organization that is helping Mobina and others with temporary housing and trying to get them on evacuation lists.

President Joe Biden called the anguish of trapped Afghans «gut-wrenching and insisted that the U.S. would work to help get vulnerable Afghans, including women leaders and journalists, out of the country.

Mobina said she can’t bring herself to tell the young women who looked to her for inspiration that she is trying to leave.

«If there was any chance for me to stay, I would, she said.