As Kabul Falls, the Burqa Shops of Afghanistan Get Busy
With the Taliban at the gates of the capital, a generation of Afghans who thought they were liberated from their tyranny talk about betrayal by the U.S. and its allies.
Displaced Afghans from the northern provinces in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Photographer: Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesAs the Taliban entered the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday, university lecturers gathered their female students for some final goodbyes. Telling the shocked young women “we may not meet again,” the lecturers, along with everyone else, were evacuated, and the universities, along with schools, offices and shops, were shuttered.
I spoke by phone with Aisha Khurram, one of those students whose academic dreams have been cut short. There are thousands more like her. The 22-year-old is in the final semester of her international relations degree at Kabul University. With just two months left, she says, “now it seems I will never graduate.” Her monograph was on United Nations Security Council reforms and how they’ll affect special missions in countries like Afghanistan. Just one more thing the world will be deprived of now the Taliban are back in power.