The day Afghans knew Kabul would fall to the Taliban, again

Journalist Nayanima Basu had a ringside view of the total collapse of the republic of Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban. From 8 to 17 August 2021, based in Kabul but travelling outside and talking to Afghans across the political spectrum, she sent despatches of the Taliban sweeping through the country, with provinces falling one after another. Covering a hostile war zone, a woman all alone, she saw the fall of Kabul in real time and managed to get out on the last flight by negotiating with Taliban bosses.

In The Fall of Kabul: Despatches From Chaos, Basu transports us to the heart of the action with her vivid narration and precise descriptions of what was happening in Afghanistan at large and Kabul in particular. Through her astonishing account of how she did her reporting—from asking gun-toting civilians for help to find her way back to her hotel and being chided by the hotel employees to stay safe in an iron room to being the only Indian journalist to ever interview the ‘Butcher of Kabul’—Basu tells the story of not just the wreckage of the country’s present but also of the contentious past that lead to it.

In this excerpt from the chapter “Kabul: Growing Eerier Day by Day”, Basu writes about the day when people in Kabul began to realise that the day the Taliban would knock on the gates of the Afghan capital was not far off.

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12 August 2021. This is a day I would never want to see again.

An uneasy calm hung over Kabul since the morning. I felt restless, as I used to even at home when I did not find a story to file. I stepped out of the hotel for a bit, only to find myself again in the midst of a meaningless crowd just walking to and fro aimlessly. And everyone seemed scared. I wanted to speak to people, but my attempts were of no use. So I returned to the hotel. I also wanted to have some time to myself. Covering a war zone is not easy, and some days feel heavier, especially the relatively calmer days. But journalists do not have the luxury to sit back and relax, so mentally I was still searching for stories.

All appointments and meetings with senior government officials kept getting cancelled and all their key aides started to go phantom. I kept pushing for an interview with Dr Abdullah Abdullah, which was promised by his team before my trip. I was told I would get one as soon as he was back from Doha. Reports from the Qatari capital were not sounding very positive as the peace talks with the Taliban had almost collapsed and prospects of a power-sharing deal looked grim. And all the while the Taliban was claiming provincial capitals and cities, one after another.

Also Read | Coup, chaos, and Taliban: The turbulent history of modern Afghanistan

Back on ground zero, the Taliban took over Ghazni, and that literally shook Kabul. I knew something was amiss when some of my sources in the Kabul government told me they were packing their bags, while some sought my assistance to secure a temporary Indian visa before they could make their way to the West. But how could I have told them that I myself was unsure of getting any help from the Indian embassy there if the Taliban took over Kabul? I was being constantly told by the mission that there was no evacuation happening. It was only when the actual exercise took place that I realised it was incorrect on my part to blindly believe them. The embassy, I learnt later, had been in evacuation mode since 14 August, after Ashraf Ghani fled from the country.

Giving Taliban a ‘second chance’?

It was a strange environment that day in Kabul. People I knew and called friends... nearly all were packing their bags to leave. Some still had faith in the Afghan government, while some—and they were the educated class who worked with the former government—wanted to give the Taliban a ‘second chance’, should it govern in a democratic manner.

In The Fall of Kabul: Despatches From Chaos, Basu transports us to the heart of the action with her vivid narration and precise descriptions of what was happening in Afghanistan at large and Kabul in particular.

This felt strange to me. Back home in India, the news on Afghanistan suggested there was total chaos in the country. My family was beginning to worry for my safety, and by now my mother had completely given up hope about me. Had it not been for my husband, my mother would have had a nervous breakdown.

But to me, sitting in Kabul, the city appeared completely peaceful. It was calm and serene and people seemed to already have their respective Plan Bs ready. I guess this is what it means to be truly resilient—where you don’t panic, don’t get nervous, but silently make your escape plans.

However, it is also true that while the upper middle class, the rich and the elite of Kabul had a Plan B, for the poorer lot it was a ‘do or die’ kind of a situation. Like all the poor in this unfortunate world, they were helpless. But for the poor of Afghanistan, it also meant having a government that would be proscribed by every country as well as the UN. And being ruled by a banned entity meant having restricted access to food and basic necessities of life, living in perpetual poverty.

America’s favourite battlefield

Late in the afternoon, I spoke to the painter who had been waving at me every time I went in and out of the coffee shop. I sat with him, a man with a gentle smile, over a cup of chai subz to find out what had inspired him to become a painter, that too in a war zone like Afghanistan, which had hardly ever experienced peace. The painter, who was perhaps around forty, told me his father was a farmer, but he did not know if he was his real father because some of his cousins used to tease him saying he was his stepfather and that his real father had died fighting.

He said the beauty of Afghanistan—its mountains, its deserts, its vastness—had inspired him to become a painter. His main source of inspiration was his father. He ran a small drawing school in one of the shanty corners of Kabul and taught both girls as well as boys in the age group of five to fifteen to draw and paint. While some wanted to draw pictures of mountains, lakes, rivers and birds, others wanted to draw portraits of American soldiers and the war, but the most popular subject for them was undoubtedly Shah Rukh Khan, particularly his ‘dimpled smile’, the painter said, his face blushing.

Also Read | World faces tough choices in dealing with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

I knew what was coming, so before I could be asked I told him I had never met the Bollywood star, and he seemed pretty taken aback. We spoke for a long time about our lives, and then I asked him the inevitable what-if-the-Taliban-takes-over-Kabul question? His answer was also ready. He gave me a sharp look and said, directly looking into my eyes, ‘I will die, they will kill me.’ I told him what some experts had been saying—that this might be a new Taliban, a Taliban 2.0. He sighed and said nothing would be new in Afghanistan. Afghanistan would always remain the world’s, America’s, favourite battlefield, and so would the Taliban treat it, with the same attitude and fervour.

His paintings were rather costly, and by the time we finished chatting he knew well that his paintings were not within my reach, but I wrote him a few lines of appreciation in his personal notebook, as I particularly fell for a painting that depicted the vastness of Mazar and its enormous mountains—all in hues of black, blue and brown. He told me he would always cherish those lines. We had even promised to stay in touch as we shared WhatsApp numbers. But since 15 August 2021 his number has been switched off. He had told me that even if he was killed his paintings would remain somewhere, continuing to depict Afghanistan as a land of beauty, a land of peace.

Excerpted with permission of Bloomsbury India from The Fall of Kabul: Despatches From Chaos by Nayanima Basu.