Like hundreds of other Kabul residents, Aisha Ahmad scurried to the Hamid Karzi International Airport on Monday, hoping to catch a flight out of the country as it became apparent the government would fall to the Taliban.
Ahmad did not make it out. On Twitter, she asked for help from a third country, only to receive death threats, she said.
The 22-year-old university student recounted her experience to CNN and explained why she’s fearful for the future.
Her experience at the airport: Ahmad said she got a call from a friend in the United States and was told that people were being ferried out of Afghanistan on military flights. She didn’t believe it at first, but when a second friend called and said the same thing, she thought they might both be right.
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The streets were quiet as she ran to the airport, except for the occasional crackle of gunshots. People were calm and looked curious.
But at the airport, Ahmad said “there were thousands of people, including many without passports and little security. She got stuck.
“The crowds were pushed by police,” she said. “Kids and women were on the ground.”
Ahmad said it felt like “doomsday.”
“I thought at one point that this is the end and I will die,” she said.
Though she did not manage to make it out of Kabul, she escaped the airport with only scrapes and bruises.
Will she go back to school: Taliban spokesman and leaders have said that they plan to run an “inclusive Islamic government” and allow women and girls to go to school. Many Afghans are deeply skeptical of those claims because it’s a major departure from the fundamentalist, totalitarian tendencies that marked the group’s time in power in the 1990s.
“Some people say the Taliban have changed, others say that they have not,” Ahmad said. “To be honest now I do not believe the Taliban.”
Taliban leaders have said that people should continue to go about their day-to-day lives for now, including women who go to school. Ahmad said based on what she sees on TV, she thinks she can go back to school but isn’t exactly sure.
She fears that she will not be able to finish her university education and worries that things will start getting harder for women in the days and weeks ahead
“Definitely there will be restrictions for women, but we do not know how much,” Ahmad said.
“People are not much outside, and they do not know how their daily activity will be when life is back to normal. Will they force stores to close during prayer time? Will there be punishment for not going to the mosque, will they force people to go? … No one knows,” she said.