Chaos in Kabul: foreigners fly away, men start growing beards, women take burqas

However, chaos and panic continue in the city.

Gennady Charodeyev

The columnist for the American television channel ABC, talking about the situation in the Taliban-occupied Kabul, noted the similarity of the frames of the flight of Americans from Saigon in 1975 and the current evacuation of US diplomats from the Afghan capital. After such a phrase, both the President and the US Secretary of State were terribly tense. They had to come out with a refutation of the words of the journalist. Meanwhile, chaos and panic reign in Kabul.

Having captured the capital of the country, the Taliban announced the end of the war. They intend to create an “ideal Islamic emirate. Bearded militants are already in full swing in the presidential palace, while President Ashraf Ghani urgently left Afghanistan in an unknown direction. And now access to Hamid Karzai International Airport, located five kilometers from the center of the Afghan capital, is possible only through Taliban checkpoints.

Almost all of the staff of the United States Embassy were taken to the Kabul air harbor. While the helicopters were ferrying the Americans to the airport, smoke rose over the territory of the embassy as embassy workers destroyed confidential documents and even burned the stars and stripes of the United States.

Foreign embassies have warned their citizens and citizens of Afghanistan that it is not safe to travel to the airport on their own and can only go there in accordance with the instructions received. The personnel of the diplomatic missions are taken by helicopters to the military unit of the airport, which is currently being guarded by American paratroopers. But soon they will fly away too.

“A group of armed, bearded men drove in front of our car,” Sky News special correspondent Stuart Ramsey reported from the scene. - They were the Taliban. They stared at us, froze for a few seconds - the longest look I can remember. Then, forgetting about us, they moved on. "

“During the day,” Ramsey said, “we watched Chinook helicopters deliver US Embassy staff to the international airport - road travel was deemed too dangerous ... Tensions in Kabul have been on the verge of exploding for several days. And the Afghan soldiers seemed to have disappeared. "

“People on the streets no longer wore jeans and T-shirts, they changed into traditional clothes - shalwar kameez, and there were practically no women, even wearing a burqa. The only traffic jam in the city was near the airport. All day there was an insane struggle to get on the canceled flights and on military flights, ”the journalist told Sky News.

On the same day, an Italian medical center in Kabul received over a hundred people who were injured at the international airport. According to eyewitnesses, crowds of people were on the runway, hoping to leave Kabul. Mad with fear, people literally clung to the landing gear of aircraft ...

Afghans said they were forced to submit to the new harsh order. The country is already well acquainted with them from the past, specifically - in the second half of the 1990s. Women, for example, are prohibited from working, girls from studying, no television, not even photography. All women wear capes covering their faces, all men wear long beards, the penalty for theft is cutting off an arm or leg.

The militants imposed taxes on the people in accordance with Sharia. Now "farmers" are required to pay "usr" (tithe) and "zakat" (mandatory annual tax in Muslim law). “Individuals and groups of people are forced to take turns cooking and shining shoes for the Taliban. For insubordination - execution on the spot.

The Taliban began taking 12-year-old girls into sex slavery. Field commanders demand from the elders of the occupied areas, and now Kabul, lists of unmarried girls and women in order to force them to marry their soldiers.

According to eyewitnesses, from now on in Kabul it is forbidden to move in groups of more than two people, and women are forbidden to appear on the street unaccompanied by their husbands and close relatives. For violation - rods or execution.

In general, it is understandable why many of today's residents of the same Kabul are nervous. They do not want to live in the Middle Ages. They are already accustomed to a different life, more secular.

Many Western experts believe that the Taliban are actively using the tactics of psychological warfare. It works uncomplicated, but effective - they simply systematically intimidate all persons loyal to the official government in Kabul: public figures, officials, doctors, journalists. In fact, there are the American military who praise the Taliban. Recognize that they have excellent tactical training. The militants act like most modern Western armies - they attack mainly at night, actively using night vision devices, for fast movement - motorcycles purchased from Japan. In addition, they regularly use drones for reconnaissance purposes. Contrary to popular belief, the Taliban do not act as scattered insurgent units, but as a full-fledged army. The organization has a centralized military leadership, unified logistics, and an officer training system.

But in spite of everything, neither the Americans nor the Europeans believed in the Taliban's lightning victory. In the United States, they said that with their air support, the secular Afghan government could hold out until the end of autumn, but if the situation does not change dramatically, then its end is a foregone conclusion. The British and Germans, according to reports, did not even think about evacuating their diplomats from Kabul so quickly. People ran towards the helicopters, not having time to grab the necessary things.

Back in early August, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that the Taliban offensive had "run out of steam." True, a week later, Sergei Lavrov told reporters that he was inspired by the CIA's assessments, according to which the secular regime in Afghanistan could fall within two to three months. Everyone was wrong.

Patrick Wintour, a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian, believes that American generals and politicians in their reports and statements constantly overestimated the combat effectiveness of the Afghan army, police and special services, on which they spent about $ 100 billion.

Experts identify several reasons for the instant collapse of Afghan government forces. This is corruption in the army and police. This is the inability to handle donated complex equipment with widespread illiteracy. This is the government's inability to pay salaries to officials .. From the moment the initiative passed to the Taliban, the military immediately surrendered to them for fear that they would win anyway and take revenge.

Meanwhile, Russian diplomats are preparing for new talks in Doha with the head of the political wing of the Taliban movement Abdul Ghani Baradar, ”said the president’s special envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov. According to him, Russia has good relations with both the ousted government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, so Moscow does not worry, the diplomat emphasized.

The Taliban movement is banned in the Russian Federation.