Before the fall of Kabul in August 2021, Mohammed Ismail Noorzad was a successful law student in Afghanistan. He participated in moot courts, represented the youth of his province (Balkh) in a competition at the presidential palace, and helped women who were unable to get lawyers to be represented in the courts. However, in the blink of an eye, everything changed. A few days before the fall of Kabul, Ismail felt that something bad was happening. It took the Taliban just over three months to conquer the whole of Afghanistan, and they seized the capital Kabul on August 15. It was a carefully planned operation, taking into account that Afghanistan is not the easiest territory to conquer. However, this time, the conquest was rapid.

A couple of days after the fall of Kabul, Ismail received an offer to be evacuated from Afghanistan through the airport, on board an allied plane – a privilege available only to a few. He agreed and immediately took the bus to Kabul, which was packed because everyone realized that it might be the last opportunity to leave and the last moment when the international community would be taking their allies out.

At the airport, Ismail told me he witnessed an unbelievable sight. There was no place for an apple to fall for kilometers around the airport. Thousands were sitting near the gates, which seemed like the only opportunity to fly away and be saved. People brought all their belongings to the streets surrounding the airport and slept for days on the ground, hoping to enter the gate.

“There were thousands of people and gunfire all the time, so I got scared … I thought I would not survive what was happening around the Kabul airport those days … It was way worse than the picture you saw in the international media,” Ismail said. For two days, he tried to make his way to the gate where he could enter the airport, but it was impossible. Fear and crowds blocked all  paths through it.

Ismail realized he should look for other ways to make his way out because he believed the new government would persecute him for his legal and human rights work. The closest alternative way out was Pakistan. He did not have the necessary visa to cross the border and all the crossings were closed, so he was forced to cross illegally. “I was a student of law doing an illegal thing. My heart was beating in my mouth those days,” he said. Forced to leave, he settled in Pakistan, where he finally obtained all the necessary documents to fly to the US and enter another university. However, his planned self-evacuation from Pakistan failed, and Ismael was forced to hit the road again and find a new way out.

Pakistan’s visa policy was stringent, so, in half a year, Ismail was forced to move back to Afghanistan and then go to Iran. He got a visa and moved there to wait for evacuation. After the fall of Kabul, however, both Pakistan and Iran tightened their migration policies to prevent a wave of people from coming. Iran still offered more opportunities to prolong visas, though. Ismael told me that Afghan people face discrimination on national grounds in both countries but an especially strong one in Iran. The worst jobs were distributed to Afghans who flew from the crisis in their country, and they were often treated as second-class people. Iran was more dangerous but still more efficient regarding documents, so Ismael opted for it. After a year of waiting and living in Iran, he was finally informed that Germany would provide him with a long-awaited humanitarian visa. Still, new issues with his passport recognition arose. Ismael extended his passport at the Afghan embassy in Iran, but the German government did not recognize it. Most of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions abroad, as well as the representatives of Afghanistan in the UN, are representatives of the former Ghani Government. It makes the recognition of the documents overcomplicated and confusing. At the end of July 2024, the Taliban disavowed many diplomatic missions abroad.

It took Ismail another couple of months and hundreds of dollars to finally deal with the problem and leave Iran to land in Germany in July 2024, almost three years after the notorious August 15, 2021. The main obstacle facing Ismail over these years was that Western countries not only cut all ties with Afghanistan but stopped all possible cooperation in terms of documents, leaving thousands of people locked inside the country with no legal way out. After the evacuation through Kabul airport stopped, people who were working with Western institutions were under threat by the Taliban but were left to deal with this on their own. The international organizations that were supposed to handle the evacuation worked slowly and inefficiently, worsening the situation.

Recently, China became the first country in the world to recognize the Taliban ambassador. Russia, Iran, Turkey and India have all reopened their diplomatic missions in Kabul. Taliban delegations are frequent guests in Moscow, so Russian recognition might be a matter of time.

At the same time, the West fails to offer any solutions to the problem and humanitarian crisis. According to Ismail, many Afghans have been frustrated by the acts of Western governments over the past two decades. Overthrowing the rule of the Taliban after 9/11 to get Osama bin Laden and then letting them peacefully regain power in 20 years seems confusing. Such rapid actions made slow changes that were supposed to happen over decades impossible and returned society to the position it was at the beginning of the century. Ismael believes that the possibility of slow positive shifts would be higher if the West left Afghanistan to develop in its own slow, peculiar way.

Ismael told me that almost every family has a relative who is connected with the Taliban. The new government has penetrated every single aspect of life in Afghanistan. For this reason, military rebellion is impossible; now, only peaceful protest can provoke change. Therefore, the population is mastering non-violent protest. In Ismail’s opinion, because of this, the Taliban government is not as harsh as it was at the beginning of the millennium. Despite all the crises, he claims, the non-violent protests work, and the population that stays in the country keeps moving towards some, at least, minor changes. Ismail defines women’s rights as one of the country’s most problematic areas now, but he is full of hope that through this slow change, something shall become different.

According to the UN, in 2024, 23.7 million people—more than half of the country’s population—will need humanitarian assistance. Norway is trying to bring the Taliban to the table with Western officials to at least sort out the humanitarian problems.

The Afghan people are forced to face a battle between a government with no official recognition but real power and a government with no real power but the leftovers of credibility. The population is struggling, and the Taliban, which is recognized as a terrorist organization in many countries, is committing numerous human rights violations in the country.

At the same time, those who are potential targets of Taliban attacks, such as civil society activists, journalists, lawyers and others, often have no way out, being, at best, silenced and, at worst, sentenced to prison or death. The whole set of policies aimed at dealing with the Taliban government can not be described without using the word “confusion.” While a government that does not let women get an education higher than sixth grade indubitably can not be seen as adequate, abandoning millions of people in a humanitarian crisis alone is hardly a solution either.