Afghan allies losing hope of escaping
—David Zucchino The New York Times AST WEEK, a former interpreter for a U.S. company in Kabul plunged into a mass of humanity outside a gate at the Kabul airport with her family in tow. Even as she was jostled and elbowed by people in the throng, she pushed ahead, desperate to secure a flight out of the country for everyone accompanying her: her husband, 2-year-old daughter, disabled parents, three sisters, and a cousin. Then the crowd surged. The entire family was slammed to the ground. People trampled them where they lay, the woman recalled just hours later. She remembered someone smashing her cellphone and someone else kicking her in the head. She could not breathe, so she tried to tear off her abaya, a robe-like dress.
As she struggled to her feet, she said, she searched for her toddler. The girl was dead, trampled to death by the mob. “I felt pure terror,” the woman said in a telephone interview from Kabul. “I couldn’t save her.” In the days since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, Afghans have negotiated a terrifying new reality after enduring 20 years of war and suicide bombings. Across the country, Afghans who served the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan or the U.S.-backed former government are in hiding, many of them threatened with death by the Taliban. A 39-year-old former interpreter for the U.S. military and Western aid groups was hiding Saturday inside a home in Kabul with his wife and two children. He said the Taliban had telephoned, telling him, “Face the consequences—we will kill you.” The interpreter said he had given up trying to secure a flight after a harrowing and ultimately futile attempt to force his way past Taliban gunmen and unruly mobs at the airport the day before.
He has been spending his time calling and texting American soldiers and officers in the United States who are struggling to find ways to rescue him and his family.
L“I’m losing hope,” he said by telephone. “I think maybe I will have to accept the consequences.”
In the Shar-e-Naw neighborhood of Kabul, a female Afghan journalist said she finally ventured outside after hiding indoors since last Sunday. Trying to obey randomly enforced Taliban strictures on women, she wore a full-body abaya. “It was so heavy, it made me feel sick,” she said. And in the street, she said, “there is no music, nothing. All you hear is the Taliban talking on TVs and radios.”
She said her sister-in-law appeared in front of male family members with her hair uncovered. Her brother-in-law gave her a vicious kick and told her, “Put your bloody scarf on!”
In the eastern province of Khost, a male journalist was also in hiding, moving between his home and the home of a family member. Taliban fighters were roaring through the province in U.S.-supplied vehicles captured from Afghan security forces, he said. He feared they would find him soon. “I’m out of hope,” he said. “Pray for me.” In Kabul, the woman whose daughter was killed said the family was able to bring the girl’s body back for burial. She wept as she recalled how she would try to ease her daughter’s fears whenever gunshots rang out in their neighborhood: She had told her they were “crackers”—firecrackers. “My baby was such a brave child,” she said. “When she heard the gunshots, she would just yell out, ‘Crackers!’”
first thing my sisters and I did was hide our IDs, diplomas, and certificates. It was devastating. Why should we hide the things that we should be proud of? In Afghanistan now we are not allowed to be known as the people we are.
As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war that men started. I felt like I can no longer laugh out loud, I can no longer listen to my favorite songs, I can no longer meet my friends in our favorite café, I can no longer wear my favorite yellow dress or pink lipstick. And I can no longer go to my job or finish the university degree that I worked for years to achieve. I loved doing my nails. Today, as I was on my way home, I glanced at the beauty salon where I used to go for manicures. The shop front, which had been decorated with beautiful pictures of girls, had been whitewashed overnight. All I could see around me were the fearful and scared faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women, who do not like women to get educated, work, and have freedom. Most devastating to me were the ones who looked happy and made fun of women. Instead of standing by our side, they stand with the Taliban and give them even more power. Now it looks like I’ll have to burn everything I achieved in 24 years of my life. During the last months, as the Taliban took control in the provinces, hundreds of people fled their houses and came to Kabul to save their girls and wives. I was part of a group of American University students that tried to help them by collecting donations of cash, food, and other necessities and distributing it to them.
I could not stop my tears when I heard the stories of some families. One had lost their son in the war and didn’t have any money to pay the taxi fare to Kabul, so they gave their daughter-in-law away in exchange for transportation. How can the value of a woman be equal to the cost of a journey? Then today, when I heard that the Taliban had reached Kabul, I felt I was going to be a slave. They can play with my life any way they want.
This week’s question: Larry David, 74, and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, 82, got into an angry argument at a Martha’s Vineyard general store, with the Seinfeld creator calling Dershowitz “disgusting” for aiding former President Trump’s impeachment defense. If a TV network were to create a comic reality show featuring David and Dershowitz debating politics in various public places, what should it be titled?
Last week’s contest: A YouGov survey found that Americans are an average 7.8 percentage points more confident than Brits that they could beat various animals in a oneon-one fight, including a medium-size dog, a chimpanzee, a kangaroo, and a goose. Please come up with the name of a TV show in which overconfident Americans go toe-to-toe with various angry beasts.
THE WINNER: “Bite Club” —John Laclede, Round Hill, Va. SECOND PLACE: “Rumble in the Jungle”
Norm Carrier, Flat Rock, N.C.
THIRD PLACE: “America’s Got Talons”
Sim Segal, New York City
For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest.
How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest @theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, type “Angry geezers” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Aug. 31. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday, Sept. 3. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. t The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.