The Emotional Impact of the Fall of Kabul

by Chiara Sulmoni

This is a piece I wrote in Italian in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Kabul, on 15th August 2021. Five years on, I felt the need to translate it into English, realising that for so many men and women, the wound has never truly healed.

In recent weeks, much has been said about the political, military and security implications of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the country as a whole. Less visible and less widely discussed, but no less important, is the emotional impact of the Taliban’s forceful and pervasive return to the scene.

This is an extraordinarily difficult reality for Afghans to process, but also for those who have maintained ties with the country or spent years reporting on it. The same is true for military veterans.

During these days of evacuations, aid workers, journalists, academics, soldiers, Afghans living abroad, and people with all kinds of personal and professional connections to the country have received heartbreaking messages and desperate pleas for help. Many have mobilised to support those who feel they are in danger, often without being able to find a way out.

Many people, including some facing a serious and immediate threat to their lives, have been left behind. We can certainly feel relieved and grateful for those who are now able to sleep more peacefully. But that relief is inevitably bittersweet when we think of those who still face the night with fear and uncertainty.

And there is another reality we cannot ignore: an exodus on this scale cannot be considered a success, given the long-term consequences it will have for the country.

More broadly, despite the Taliban’s repeated assurances of moderation and reconciliation—which appear increasingly at odds with reality—fear is widespread, particularly among the Hazara minority and women.

The emotional impact is especially profound for an entire generation that was born and raised during the past twenty years. Despite all the limitations and failures of this period, they experienced a degree of openness to the world and were given the opportunity to pursue dreams and build lives that would once have seemed unimaginable.

For so many young Afghans—from activists to students, journalists to entrepreneurs, from those who worked for the government and devoted themselves to the country’s security and reconstruction, to those employed by international organisations, and those who fought tirelessly through numerous local NGOs for rights and a better future—the disappointment, bewilderment, anger, sense of abandonment and despair are profound and deeply unsettling.

It is often pointed out that two decades of Western presence primarily benefited urban communities, while remote and rural areas experienced far less of this transformation. In fact, many people in those areas may have felt more acutely the absence of a strong government, including when it came to providing basic services.

And yet, these young people—many of whom returned to Afghanistan from abroad with a dream and the determination to pursue it—represented the foundations for something that could have become a truly Afghan reconstruction: a process led by Afghans themselves, built over time and rooted in the country’s own society. Such a transformation cannot be achieved within a single generation. It is a long process, and it should have been protected and supported.

Now the Taliban will have to govern. But their hostility towards those who had already been working in these fields—people who possess the skills, expertise, education and networks needed to contribute, but who have now left the country—combined with the restrictions imposed through the application of Sharia law, makes this task extraordinarily complicated and difficult.

Another major concern is that the window for freedom of expression may soon close as well. An independent and diverse media landscape was one of the significant success stories of the past twenty years, with hundreds of television channels, radio stations and newspapers emerging across the country.

The very real fear now is that we will hear less and less from inside Afghanistan, while Afghans themselves will have fewer and fewer media outlets available to them that are not exclusively religious in character. The transformation is already underway.

Let us not leave Afghanistan alone.