Photo: MARCUS YAM/getty
As the Talibantightens its grip on Afghanistanand the deadline looms for American troops to leave, some of the tens of thousands of peoplewho have made it outare relating harrowing tales of escape even as they worry about family left behind.
Naveed Mustafa, a 30-year-old former Afghan special forces fighter and father of five, was at home in the country’s capital on Aug. 16 when he texted a friend in the U.S. that “the Taliban are at my back door.”
When Kabul, the capital, fell in mid-August, he and his family went into hiding.
For days after Mustafa’s frantic message, it seemed he had vanished. And then word came that he, his wife and young children had gotten out.
“We are a little tired, because we didn’t sleep for two or three nights and did not eat something good,” Mustafa told PEOPLE from the U.K. less than 48 hours after evacuating. “There was a rush to get out of Kabul. … Now we are very excited to be here.”
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Mustafa says the Taliban — despite assurances from leaders to be less violent and more tolerant — were tearing up some people’s passports and were beating civilians trying to flee and he said his family told him “of fighters searching door-to-door for special forces.”
Mustafa and his family are now in quarantine in the U.K., glad to be out of Afghanistan. But still he worries over what the Taliban may do back home with his parents and siblings still in the country.
“Believe, from the bottom of my heart, I did not want to leave the country,” Mustafa says. “I wanted to join the resistance and defend my country. But my mom said, ‘The kids need you. Your family needs you.’ "
“I already served my country,” he says. “My family needs me.”
The White House said Thursday morning that the U.S. had evacuated or helped evacuate some 95,700 people since Aug. 14 — what the administration touts as an enormous logistical feat.
But thousands of peoplestill seek evacuation, which took on new urgency Thursday afterexplosions outside the airportin what the Pentagon called a “complex attack” that killed multiple U.S. service members and Afghan civilians.
PresidentJoe Bidenhad said during a meeting of the Group of Seven nations that he would stick to that deadline — adamant that the country must end a 20-year war that he says has cost too much for too little.
“The sooner we can finish, the better,” Biden said earlier this week.
He added then that “each day brings added risk to our troops.”
It was unclear how Thursday’s bombing would affect U.S. evacuation operations.
Afghans who have managed to flee the country say risk remains for those who can’t leave.
A woman from a small village in the northern part of the country previously told CNN she watched as Taliban fightersbeat her mother to deathat home because her mother was unable to cook meals for them.
A shopkeeper in Jalalabad told PEOPLE that the Taliban ordered him to close his store and then stationed 30 of their fighters across the street. The women and children in the family were no longer venturing outside the house, they said last week.
The shopkeeper said that one day, a Taliban soldier told him to make breakfast for 17 of his fellow soldiers.
He and other men in the house, fearful of what would happen to them and their children who were hiding in their rooms if they refused the order, gave the Taliban tea, bread and eggs.
“We are afraid that if they enter our house,” he said, “they will kill us.”
If you would like to support those in need during the upheaval in Afghanistan, consider:
Donating toUNICEFto aid Afghans in the country or
Donating to theInternational Refugee Assistance Projectto help those fleeing.
source: people.com
