ACCEPT – At nine o’clock last night the noise of military planes and helicopters invaded the sky of Kabul. Mazar-i Sharif, the fourth most important city in the country, the gateway to that North on which the president’s government Ashraf Ghani was counting on resisting the onslaught of the Taliban, has just fallen, followed by the province of Laghman.
Fear is rampant in the city. Two hours later, US military planes targeted a group of Taliban fighters who conducted a missile attack at Kandahar airport Some of the 3,000 soldiers destined to help US personnel in the emergency evacuation have already arrived: others will. soon. US President Joe Biden has announced that he will send 1000 more Marines than expected to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation.
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Embassies close, they leave the country. US citizens receive airlift emails – go to the airport now or we won’t be able to help you anymore. Same for Canadians. Then it’s up to us, the Italians: “We inform you that, given the serious deterioration in security conditions, an Air Force flight will be made available tomorrow, August 15”. Airlift, the embassy suspends work: only the consul will remain in Kabul, to assist the translators who for years have helped the Italian soldiers in Afghanistan, to whom Italy has guaranteed assistance to leave the country. All others who want it – diplomats, humanitarian personnel, journalists – will be evacuated by military flight from the airport Hamid Karzai, now controlled by the Turks, who have deployed troops after the withdrawal of NATO.
At eleven the tension rises again: the first news of the fighting at the gates of the capital arrives. The Taliban attacked the Poli Chakri prison in the PD12 district. It is the largest prison in Kabul, they entered freeing the prisoners as in all the provinces who fell like pins in the last week. At midnight the news piles up and gets confused. The Taliban are thirteen kilometers away, the Taliban are already in town, fighting against government forces, we get one call after another: it’s hard to understand where the truth lies.
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According to some, the President of the Republic, Ashraf Ghani he would already be out of the country, picked up by an American military helicopter, for others he would be on his way to Doha, ready to resign. Just a few hours earlier, as we were trying to predict Shahab, our colleague, Afghan friend, when the Taliban would arrive in the city, said: “Look around to see if there are still presidential guards. If there are, it means that there is. he is still the president. ” But there are fewer and fewer of them, perhaps they have already run away, like all those who have negotiated to save themselves.
In the evening, while the helicopters evacuated the US staff, Shahab, he called every fifteen minutes, with concern that in a few minutes turned into concern, he warned us: “Don’t move from the hotel, don’t answer the phone, don’t even open if they qualify as hotel staff, the Taliban are occupying outposts and police stations. They will cut the power. They cut the power. It’s over. ” He repeats it without crying. But it punctuates, it’s over. Try to sleep Shahab, try to sleep. We call the embassy and leave the hotel but you, try to sleep. After fifteen minutes he calls back. “Are you okay? The road from Kabul to Jalalabad has fallen.” It is the road that leads to Pakistan. “Shahab are you okay?”. “It’s over”.
Power starts to fail in entire areas of the capital when the embassy vehicles come to pick us up in the Green Zone. Headquarters of the presidential palace, government, embassy, United Nations, humanitarian organizations. The hotels, embassies and consular offices are fortified in the Green Zone. To enter our hotel, for 15 days, we went through the soldiers’ external control, the external one, two metal detectors and two other armored doors. The doors of the rooms and those of the bathrooms are also armored.
It is half past one when an armored convoy escorts us for a few hundred meters inside the Italian embassy in Kabul. The order has arrived from the ministry: everyone is gone, and immediately. Shahab calls back. “You look fine?”. “We’re fine. Shahab. And you?”. “Talk to you soon, whatever you need, I’m here.” I am here, he says that he is forced to stay with us so that we can leave.
Kabul falls, along with the inability of Ashraf Ghani’s government. Kabul falls and the warlords flee, like Ata Mohammed Noor escaped from Herat to Uzbekistan after the fall of Herat. Kabul falls, and the Afghans fall. Trapped in a blitzkrieg that took them three months back thirty years. Suitcases are closed at the Italian embassy. ‘We won’t be back shortly “they all say” poor people “. It’s ten past three, the phone rings. It’s Shahab.” We didn’t have time to say goodbye, my friend. “” We didn’t have time, no, Shahab . It will be for next time, right? “.” Inshallah. “We didn’t have time to drink another tea. None of us thought that yesterday afternoon would be the last one, the last one for now. The last one who knows. how long.
The Taliban now have practically all the roads around the city. When they arrive at Kabul airport – a matter of hours now – the country will definitely be in their hands. It means blocking goods, it means above all blocking people. “See you at eleven for the military flight” they tell us at the embassy before taking their leave. Yes, we will go home. Safe.
Two nights ago as we were returning to the Green Zone after meeting the dozens of displaced families sleeping outdoors on the northern outskirts of Kabul, we were stuck in traffic for two and a half hours, then magically once we crossed the threshold of the first check point of the ‘fortified area, Shahab told me: “You see, we have arrived in the other Kabul, it is not ours, it is yours”.
And he is right. There is a part of the city that for years no longer belongs to the Afghan people and for years has pretended to protect it. But it was a fiction, dissolved tonight in the darkness of the blackout, of the fighting entered the capital, of the assaulted prison. Of the airlift for those who can be saved from fundamentalist barbarism. “Outside their fortified walls our life is worth nothing. They are the ones who invade and are evacuated, we are the ones who stay, we go to work in the morning, always greeting our family as if it were the last time”.
Francesca Mannocchi is in Kabul for a series of reportages on behalf of Espresso
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