Leaving Kabul

right now is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. 

A colleague of mine left Kabul about eleven weeks ago. He is a very experienced aid worker who had elected to remain there. Somehow he survived being shot at and a bomb blast less than a kilometre away. He performed surgery while surrounded by men who had their rifles pointed at him to make sure he did what he could to save a fighter who was almost certainly the Taliban. 

But he could see what was coming and he made the decision that it was time to go. He loves the country. He speaks the language well enough to be understood. The local people held him in very high regard but they were urging him to go "before it is too late".  

Now he is on his way to own home country and worried sick about the friends he left behind. He emailed me in distress at the thought of what would happen to the women and the children at the hands of the Taliban. 

"Don't believe them when they say they have changed," he told me.

I don't. I never have. Groups like that don't change. Young girls will only be educated by their own mothers - those who can read. They won't be able to leave the house without a male escort. They won't have careers. They will be forced into marriages and expected to breed - breed boys rather than girls too. Women may be told they do not need to wear the burqua - but they will be expected to do it. Gatherings of more than two or, if lucky, three will not be allowed for fear that they will plot against the Taliban.

All those pictures of people "cheering" the Taliban on are what the Taliban would have us believe is real. The reality is very difficult. People are in fear of the Taliban.  Those old enough to remember when the Taliban was in power last time know that this time it will be even worse. 

I don't know enough about the strategies of war to know if things would have been any different had the Taliban at least initially stuck with the agreements made in Doha. I doubt it. Perhaps things would have been a little less chaotic but that is all. The Taliban want complete control. They want to rule over a country using the strictest possible form of sharia law. To them that is the only way forward. Nothing less will do. 

All we can hope for is that discontent among the Taliban themselves will result in some sort of power vacuum which others can take advantage. But that is a long way in the future - and it may come too late.