[Thousands did not make it onto
U.S. military evacuation flights. Many of them are now in hiding, worried for their
safety and their future.]
Shah had already left for Kabul,
where he is now in hiding. But he believes he is a hunted man. “I’m not feeling
safe here anymore,” said Shah, whose application for a special immigrant visa
to the United States is still in the works.
“The Taliban say they are not
taking revenge, and they are forgiving everybody,” he said. “But I can’t
believe them. Why did they come to my house looking for me?”
There are thousands like Shah,
stuck in Afghanistan under a capricious and unpredictable Taliban rule, who did
not make it onto U.S. military evacuation flights — those who worked for the
U.S. Army or the government, and their families, and who were eligible for U.S.
humanitarian visas. They know they are potential targets as the Taliban tighten
their grip since taking over Kabul fully this week.
Taliban leaders have pledged to
allow those with visas to leave once they reopen the main airport, which
remained closed to commercial flights on Friday.
But those like Shah doubt the
pledges of a group that they feel they cannot trust and that has ruled
Afghanistan ruthlessly before. Trying to leave — or showing a special immigrant
visa — could itself expose them to danger if the Taliban renege on their
promises.
So with the Taliban firmly in
control on the street, they have gone into hiding. One U.S. government
contractor and humanitarian visa applicant said he had gone underground —
literally — with his pregnant wife and 1-year-old daughter in a system of
tunnels. He said he didn’t believe Taliban promises and didn’t plan to risk
leaving his hiding place.
There are also potentially hundreds
of thousands of other Afghans — aid agency workers, officials from the defunct
government, media employees, prominent women — who are fearful and laying low.
They are also eager to leave. This
week, after evacuation flights from Kabul ended, there were reports of hundreds
of people massing at border crossings with Iran and Pakistan.
“It’s because the country is
collapsing,” said Astrid Sletten, a foreign aid worker who has remained in
Kabul. “And everybody has a sister or daughter, and wondering what it is going
to be like to be living under a Taliban regime.”
She added: “I think some people are
literally saying I’d rather die than live in a Taliban regime.”
Despite Taliban pledges that no
punishment would be exacted on anyone, many Afghans question the ability of the
Taliban leadership to control their battle-hardened fighters.
Former government officials, aid
workers and diplomats say Taliban leaders have barely managed to keep their
well-armed rank-and-file in check. And there is deep uncertainty about when
even that relative restraint will end.
On Friday, an uneasy calm settled
on Kabul, four days after the Taliban took over and the last American forces
left. Afghans waited for the Taliban to announce its new government.
In Kabul, the few women venturing
out have been able to wear head scarves, rather than the face-covering burqa
the Taliban imposed during its previous rule, and several dozen protested
outside the palace, demanding the inclusion of women in a new government.
The Taliban’s leaders are still
talking about showing inclusiveness. But they have made clear in filling lower-ranking
positions so far that they are choosing from among their own.
Kabul residents interviewed by
phone described a pervasive fear as Taliban rule steadily changed life around
them.
And as the economy spiraled deeper
into crisis — with sharply rising prices and dwindling hard currency — many say
they are eager to leave, particularly those eligible for the U.S. Special
Immigration Visa, an emergency humanitarian visa that has been granted to
interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. Army.
Their numbers remain unclear.
Nobody — neither the U.S. government nor human rights groups — has an exact
figure for these Afghans who have a direct connection with official America,
but who did not make it out.
The Association of Wartime Allies,
an advocacy group, estimates that there are 118,000 Afghans, including their
families, who are still in Afghanistan and eligible for the visa.
The group wrote in a report at the
end of August that “it is reasonable that nearly 1 percent of the Afghan
population has in some way worked for, or are family members of those who
worked for, the United States.” Afghanistan’s population is estimated at about
40 million.
“There are hundreds of thousands
who remain trapped,” Adam Bates, a lawyer with the International Refugee
Assistance Project, said Tuesday during a video news conference in the United
States. “The majority of our clients were not able to leave Afghanistan on the
evacuation flights.”
How real their danger is remains
unclear. There have been scattered reports of the Taliban carrying out
executions as they swept the country, particularly at Spin Boldak on the
Pakistan border — where 40 people associated with the government were killed,
according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Since taking Kabul on Aug. 15, the Taliban
have conducted house-to-house searches and made arrests. Their methods rely
heavily on intimidation. They have announced to family members of media
workers, for instance, that they are looking for them, according to Human
Rights Watch.
“The fact that they are looking for
them is also a threat,’’ said Patricia Gossman of Human Rights Watch. “It’s the
way a police state functions,” she added.
“They have unleashed a lot of
people who are interested in revenge,” she said. “People are eager to flee
because it is not going to be survivable.”
For working Afghans attempting to
adapt to Taliban rule, preliminary contacts have been dismaying. The new order
means exclusion or segregation of women, a brutality of manner, and, always,
the presence of weapons.
In the provinces, where new
administrative appointments have been made, the Taliban appear to have relied
only on themselves.
“Caretaker appointments at various
levels — provincial, district, department and ministerial — have so far been
drawn (almost) exclusively from the Taliban’s own ranks, with no sign of
non-Taliban appointments,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network wrote on Wednesday.
An aide to a high-ranking official
of the former government, who had been meeting with the Taliban, said by
telephone from Kabul that his boss’s meetings with the new authorities had
stopped.
Meanwhile, Afghans like Shah, the
former interpreter, said that in some places the situation was terrifying. “One
Talib will kill 10 people, and there is no court,” Shah said. “This is not a
prepared government.”
An aid worker still in Kabul was
similarly fearful.
“I get the sense that those they
are putting in charge are trying to stop” random acts of brutality, the aid
worker said. “But I also get the sense that they have little control.”
Some aid agency employees who have
continued to work were disturbed by their encounters with the new authorities,
and plan to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.
The Taliban have encouraged them to
continue working, these officials said, but there is always an air of menace.
“They always come to our compound
with their guns and armed guards,’’ an aid worker in a northern province said
by phone.
They were pressuring his agency to
hire Taliban members, and to concentrate their aid work on long-held Taliban
areas, he said, and would not allow women staff members to work.
“There are many women who don’t
have hope,” said a female aid worker in Kabul who is attempting to leave. “If
you want to live, you have to work. We don’t have bread at home to feed our
children.”
“How are we going to survive in
this country?” she asked.
