"On Monday night no one slept in Kabul." The Taliban celebrated the withdrawal of the last US soldiers on August 30 with an orgy of gunfire. "From one to six in the morning they were firing non-stop, bullets, rockets ... Crazy," says Sayed H., a biomedical engineer, who spent the night upright comforting his three young children. "They did not understand anything, what is happening is beyond all logic," he says by phone. On Friday the celebratory shootings were repeated when it was announced that Abdulghani Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban, was shaping up to lead the new government team. "My children are crying again," Sayed wrote that day on WhatsApp, sending videos from his rooftop of firecrackers breaking the night, orange fireballs streaking across rooftops. “It has been a very tough week.I just want to keep my family alive. I do not think beyond. There is no future ”, he laments.
More information
Dawn in Spain for Massouda and Khadija
"Staying in Kabul is not knowing if they will kill you the next day"
The departure of the United States from the country on Monday ended 20 years of foreign presence in Afghanistan, and closed the meager opportunity to leave Kabul by plane.
Many Afghans are now looking to the Pakistani border, even though the neighboring country has already closed the door to exodus.
On the street there is talk that for a few hundred dollars you can get help to get to Jalalabad, halfway between Kabul and Peshawar, already in the neighboring country.
The added problem with Taliban checks is that hardly anyone has cash.
Most banks have been closed for weeks, the queues in the few that are open are miles long, and many salaried employees have not cashed their checks for a couple of months.
Despite everything, life in Kabul goes on in fits and starts, coexisting with fear and confusion.
There are shops and workshops open, people on the street, traffic, "but the silence can be heard even from inside the house," says Zainab S., a 25-year-old philologist, who has been locked up for two weeks, in contact with the outside thanks to Wi-Fi , “When the electricity is not cut off, something that also happened often before”.
Price increase
The prices of basic necessities are becoming more expensive and some imported goods are in short supply.
The children are beginning to return to school, which started a few days before the capture of Kabul, although it is already different: from the outset they have separated girls and boys, waiting for a new agenda dictated by the mullahs.
“The school is open but the situation is not safe.
There are shootings and there have been injuries and deaths, including some children, ”says activist Zarqa Yaftali, a mother of three children.
Join EL PAÍS now to follow all the news and read without limits
Subscribe here
A butcher, in his establishment in Kabul.Juan Carlos
"This city is already another," Sayed says, in perfect and anguished English. “Before there was life, now everyone tries to escape, they are afraid and angry. I think 99% of people will fall into clinical depression in a matter of days. " Like many professionals, he has stopped going to work. He has spent nine years calibrating and operating the sophisticated machinery of a private hospital in Kabul, but now he has enough money to sell or pawn some things, and thus get some cash to feed his wife (who is studying to become a midwife) and his three children of 11, nine and three years old. Perhaps it is because of them that his voice breaks when he remembers his life as a pre-adolescent during the Taliban five-year period (1996-2001): "I hated myself because I didn't grow a beard."
At 33, in Kabul again taken over by the extremists, he tried to get to the hospital, but at the beginning of the week they stopped him at a checkpoint. For 10 minutes the Taliban pointed and harassed him, asking if he was carrying weapons. "I am not a military man, I am a normal man, a worker!" Sayed implored them. In the end they let him turn around with a vague threat. Another day he went for a short walk to air himself: “I saw how the Taliban stopped a car, the driver did not stop. Perhaps he did not hear them or did not understand their gestures. They killed him before my eyes ”. Sayed sends by WhatsApp a heeled image, taken at a distance, in which two Taliban drag the body by arms and legs.
"Nothing makes sense," he repeats desperately, unable to fit his scientific and technological mind into the chaos that surrounds him. “Even in the jungle there are rules, this is worse. The Taliban in the streets are not an organized structure, they do not follow orders, there are no bosses, only groups of armed, confused boys who make impromptu decisions. Many have just left their villages ”. This same week he saw how a 15-year-old boy who does little work in the hospital changed his profile picture on Facebook. He forwards it on WhatsApp: dressed in camouflage, the boy carries a submachine gun and looks at the camera with a frown. An Instagram filter turns the image sepia. "I like him, so I wrote to him: 'Why did you go over to his side? Can't you see how dangerous it is?' He replied that his family forced him to join the jihad.They told him it was the best thing he could do to be safe. "
The same irrationality rules in offices.
“The ministers, the head of the central bank, the person in charge of traffic… now they will all be mullahs, they only know about religion, they don't know about inflation, about urban management, but they are the ones who are going to govern us.
Our life is in their hands ”.
Women's demonstration
Precisely in front of the Ministry of Economy ended the demonstration organized on Friday by a score of women.
They crossed Kabul with banners printed on A4-size folios calling for "A heroic cabinet with the presence of women."
Some videos on social media showed a brief shouting match with a Taliban guard who tried to disperse them.
Although some were bruised, all were able to return to their homes, according to sources close to them.
Like them, the activist Zarqa Yaftali repeats over the phone: "I'm not going to shut up." The voices of her children, aged three, seven and nine, sneak into the conversation. After the arrival of the Taliban, Yaftali fled with the children, her husband, a brother and a nephew to a friend's house where they would be safer. "I never thought of leaving my country before. It will be my last option, "he says, stating that he has" invitation letters from six different countries. " "It is a very difficult decision for me, but I see the despair in the eyes of my family."
In Kabul he hardly goes out, “not even to do the shopping”, except to participate in some meetings and interviews.
“The organization that I lead [WCLRF, for the defense of the rights of Afghan women and children] is paralyzed but I continue working.
I'm afraid… But I'm not going to shut up ”.
His intention is to meet with the Taliban, although he does not know if they will accept or when it will be possible.
“The situation is not clear.
There is still no government, there is no system, everything is very confusing ”.
A mural with the face of a woman who has just voted crossed out with black paint, in Kabul.Juan Carlos
"I am especially concerned about the situation of women in my country," she continues.
Hidden, dealing with three frightened children, Yaftali ends the conversation with a petition to the international community: "I want to ask Spain and other countries not to forget the Afghan people."
Amin D. makes the same request. “Please monitor and pressure the Taliban politically and economically. We Afghans are part of the world. Don't forget us, ”he writes on WhatsApp, closing the message with the imploring hands emoji.
He works in the Attorney General's office, in the criminal investigation department.
In the afternoons he teaches debate class at the university.
It no longer does either of the two things.
Now, the few times he goes out, he dresses in local attire, although in the photos of his social networks he wears a neat lopsided fringe, jeans and fitted jackets in western fashion.
He is 26 years old, studied Law and Political Science.
"Going to work is especially difficult for those of us who did it in government offices, the Taliban reproach us for prosecuting their crimes," he explains.
Without working courts or police in the streets, he feels that common crime has increased: "This week some armed men stole my car, I told the Taliban about it, but they ignored me."
Public scorn
In broad daylight, in a crowded roundabout in central Kabul, a Taliban patrol delivers justice in its own way. They have arrested a group of thieves and are displaying them for public derision in the back of a white pickup with police sirens. Their faces and clothes have been blackened and their hands tied behind their backs have been released so that they confess their crimes with a small megaphone in front of the people - mostly men - milling around. The scene, with medieval echoes, passes out of place between the billboards in the square that advertise technological applications or energy drinks. The public and the Taliban themselves record everything with their mobiles to upload it to social networks.
The extremists claim to have evidence that the four men have been caught in a stolen car.
The owner, they say, was wounded by a gunshot during the assault.
The weapon has been confiscated, they promise before the improvised audience.
A militia soldier controls traffic in the roundabout where the Taliban display suspected thieves.Juan Carlos
Some feel safer with this new style of law and order.
The owner of a store of accessories for mobile phones in the center of Kabul says that since the extremists have taken power, he has dared to go with money on the streets.
He even leaves cash in your store at night.
"I no longer have to pay the corrupt police officers who used to continually approach my store," he celebrates.
With the embassies also closed, there is no way to get visas, Amin continues, who will still try to leave the country.
Since the extremists took over the public media, it is reported through Facebook and some private television channel, and above all, through networks of friends on WhatsApp.
"Not change"
In a country where only 2.6% of the population is over 65, Amin belongs to a broad generation that does not remember the previous Taliban mandate.
“I've only heard what my parents say.
It will be the same again.
The Taliban do not change ”.
The same is the opinion of Zainab S., a 25-year-old philologist, single, exiled in Iran until she was seven (2003) and the last of her siblings who lives with her parents. For two weeks, locked up. "The Taliban do not allow us to go out alone, they do not want us to work or be single," she says in Spanish, as she studied Spanish literature at university. She has worked as a volunteer in the defense of women's rights, and as a delegate on gender issues in the provincial government. Now she spends the day helping her mother with housework. Her father, a retired police officer with a heart condition, goes shopping with the dwindling cash they have left at home. “We were very concerned, the street is also dangerous for men. The Taliban do not want them to wear Western clothes, nor do they want them to shave,many are growing beards… ”.
A Kabul taxi driver disagrees: “So far at least, they are less strict than 20 years ago. So on Fridays [a holiday for Muslims] it was impossible to walk around in Western clothes, and I have. It was impossible to be shaved, and I am shaved ”. For now, women without burqas can also be seen in the city crossing the checkpoints without being reprimanded.
Zanaib is not trusting.
"In a week we have gone back 20 years and it will get worse," he insists with a sad voice.
The only thing that is clear is that she wants to leave as soon as possible, if not alone, leaving them in the care of her married brothers and sisters.
"Some of my teachers have already gone to Spain," he says, "I'm also looking for a way ...", he adds without much encouragement.
A Colombian friend tried to help her with the papers, but no luck.
"Before we were free," he sums up between great silences on WhatsApp, where his profile picture is a white dove.
"Now ... now, I don't know a single person who doesn't want to run away from here."
Follow all the international information on
and
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.