How I left Afghanistan, with a Taliban escort to the airport

New Delhi-based journalist Sonia Sarkar arrived in Kabul last week intending to report on the implications of the conflict between Afghan forces and the Taliban on the back of the US troop withdrawal. After the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday, sparking a mass evacuation of diplomats and civilians by the United States and its allies, she got in touch with the Indian mission in Kabul, which helped her return home. Here is her first-person account of leaving Afghanistan.

As chaos broke out at the Kabul airport on Monday fuelled by Afghans fearful of living under a Taliban regime, my local contacts advised me to stay put and not leave my hotel. One of them, who had been out and about in the Taliban-controlled areas of other provinces, texted me to say: “Pull your curtains shut, they are out on the streets”.

What made me more worried was local women contacts who asked if I had left the country. The Taliban had started looking for female Afghan journalists, they said. Would they do the same to foreign women journalists, I asked?

“But you are Indian,” came the reply, reflecting what I had heard during my short time in Kabul, that “Afghans love Indians but the Taliban hates Indians”.

New Delhi has strongly backed the Kabul government and opposed the Taliban, with no direct channels of communication between them.

As I contemplated my next move, the Indian embassy got in touch with me and a fellow female Indian journalist in response to our multiple requests made throughout the day to evacuate us. They told us to reach the embassy quarters in the next two hours as they planned to leave Kabul in an Indian air force aircraft late at night. My suitcase was already packed.