Aug. 17, 2021, 6:38 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 6:38 p.m. ETVideo
CreditCredit…AFP
The traffic on Kabul’s streets on Tuesday was a good barometer to measure the uneasy calm that suddenly prevailed. Plenty of people were out, but the streets were hardly as congested as usual. The Afghan Army’s armored vehicles could be seen — but Taliban fighters were driving and hanging out of open hatches.
Few in the city, the Taliban included, seem to know what to expect next. For all the thousands trying to get to the airport and out of the country, many more were holed up at home, waiting to see how life would shake out in the coming days and weeks.
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CreditCredit…AFP
Aug. 17, 2021, 6:18 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 6:18 p.m. ET
Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, at the Kabul airport on Tuesday.Credit…U.S. Navy/ Reuters
Some 4,000 U.S. troops are on the ground in Afghanistan to help evacuate Americans and maintain control of the international airport in Kabul, which is the last place in the country that the Taliban have not seized.
While the situation at the airport is less chaotic than it was on Sunday and Monday, there is still a frenetic effort underway by the United States and other countries to evacuate their citizens safely.
U.S soldiers standing guard along a perimeter at the international airport in Kabul on Monday.Credit…Shekib Rahmani/Associated Press
Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, visited the airport on Tuesday to “evaluate the situation” and “engage with U.S. military leaders on the ground providing security to the airport,” he said in a statement released by CENTCOM.
“U.S. military air traffic controllers and ground handlers are rapidly scaling up operations to ensure the smooth flow of military reinforcements to the airport and the evacuation of U.S. and partner civilians in coordination with our State Department colleagues,” General McKenzie said. “Currently, the airfield is secure and now open to civilian air traffic operating under visual flight rules.”
Aug. 17, 2021, 5:52 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 5:52 p.m. ET
A family pleaded with Taliban fighters to get through to the French Embassy.Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Even as the Taliban leadership sought to put on a conciliatory face and promised no reprisals against former foes, a great many Afghans remained desperate to escape. One man, his family in tow, found himself pleading to pass by Taliban fighters manning a checkpoint near the French Embassy.
“They have called me they are going to take me and my family out of the country,” he said, referring to the French diplomats. “Please let me through.”
His entreaties earned him no sympathy from the young Talibs. No one was getting through, they said. He should go home.
Aug. 17, 2021, 5:15 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 5:15 p.m. ET
The Taliban beat people to control crowds near the airport.Credit…Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images
While the Taliban sought to present a kinder and gentler Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to the world on Tuesday, scenes near Kabul’s airport offered a bloody counterpoint. American troops controlled the airport itself, but the Taliban took control of the approaches to it, and at times beat people with rifle butts and clubs to force back the crowd trying to get in.
Images taken by Marcus Yam, a photographer for The Los Angeles Times, were graphic: a man cradling a child with a bloodied forehead. A woman who appeared to be unconscious lying in the road a few feet away, blood streaming down her cheek.
Aug. 17, 2021, 4:51 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 4:51 p.m. ET
As the Taliban seized control of Kabul, there was chaos on the streets as thousands went into hiding or attempted to escape. “The Daily” explored the fall of Afghanistan, speaking with a 33-year-old woman — an outspoken critic of the Taliban who asked to refer to her by the initial R for fear of retaliation.
“To the world, it’s just a city that collapses, but to me, it’s not just a city,” R told us. “There are thousands of souls that collapse, there are millions of dreams that collapse — our history, our culture, our art, our beauty, our life collapse.”
Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Fall of Afghanistan
One Kabul resident recounts her experiences as the Taliban seized the capital and chaos descended.
Aug. 17, 2021, 4:02 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 4:02 p.m. ET
Videos and photographs have captured scenes of chaos and anguish at the international airport in Kabul, but images emerging from other parts of Afghanistan appear to show a more subdued daily reality after the fall of the American-backed government to Taliban fighters.
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CreditCredit…Associated Press
In Kandahar, a city in southern Afghanistan that the Taliban entered last month and took full control of last week, traffic proceeded past the city’s characteristic arches as Taliban fighters with long guns stood guard.
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CreditCredit…AFP
In Jalalabad, a commercial hub east of Kabul near the main border crossing with Pakistan, Taliban fighters rode through the streets in pick up trucks captured from the now-defunct police force and sat, talking casually, on roadsides.
Aug. 17, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET
Zahra Nabi, a journalist working for Baano TV, taking pictures of Taliban fighters at a checkpoint after the first Taliban news conference following their takeover of Kabul, Afghanistan.Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
As night fell on Kabul, Zahara Nabi, a reporter from Baano TV, a media company led by women, found herself in a situation few previously would have imagined possible. She was interviewing Taliban fighters at a checkpoint in the middle of Kabul and taking pictures of the men.
How long the Taliban will tolerate women working — or even showing their faces outside — is an open question. The fear, of course, is a return to the previous era of Taliban rule, when women were forced to wear burqas and banned from taking most jobs or going to school.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:49 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:49 p.m. ETVideo
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesman, said there would not be reprisals against foreign nationals under Taliban rule and that women would be allowed to work “in accordance with Shariah law.”CreditCredit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
He had been quoted in thousands of news stories, but only from telephone interviews. The U.S. military once believed he was actually a team of people, not a single man.
But on Tuesday, Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, made his first public appearance, sitting down for a news conference. For Afghans and those who have closely followed the war, it was a surreal scene: The venue was the Government and Media Information Center; American fighter jets flew overhead as reporters waited to enter under the watchful eye of Taliban fighters, and, of course, Mr. Mujahid — or the man currently using the name — was there front and center.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:37 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:37 p.m. ET
While that was going on in Kabul, some women who had enjoyed the freedom to go to school and take up careers faced the prospect of being forced out of their jobs and back into burqas.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:37 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:37 p.m. ET
Special Forces commandos, some of whom had carried on the fight to the Taliban to the bitter end, remained in hiding as rumors swirled of executions in other parts of Afghanistan, far from the spotlight of the international press and Afghanistan’s own vibrant and freewheeling media.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:28 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:28 p.m. ET
The briefing was in the same room a former Afghan government spokesman had used until a week ago. Only the flag and the man behind the microphone were different. The Taliban had killed the spokesman who sat there.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:28 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:28 p.m. ET
Reporters crammed into a Kabul briefing room on Tuesday for the first news conference with the Taliban’s elusive spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, whose face most of them had never seen. He promised the insurgents would not take reprisals.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:27 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:27 p.m. ET
Credit…Associated Press
The American military restored order on Tuesday at Kabul’s international airport, a day after scenes of chaos and desperation erupted as Afghans tried to flee the country.
Hundreds of people are still at the airport, which is divided into civilian and military sections. The U.S. currently controls both sides of the airport — Kabul’s sole connection to the outside world — with help from Turkish forces. But the Taliban control all the entrances, and there were reports that fighters were stopping people from crossing the perimeter.
Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
No civilian flights are operating, but some countries have been able to evacuate citizens on military flights. Above, Indian citizens prepared to leave Kabul on an Indian military aircraft on Tuesday.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:20 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:20 p.m. ET
On Tuesday, we got a glimpse of the efforts the Taliban is making to win over skeptics. At a news conference, a female reporter asked a question, a pointed one. And there were reports of girls going to school and women holding a protest.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:07 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:07 p.m. ET
So far, the Taliban has vowed to respect women’s rights and allow them to work. But, memories of the Taliban’s brutal rule in the 1990s is an ever-present reality for many in Kabul and beyond.
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:06 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 2:06 p.m. ETVideo
CreditCredit…The New York Times
The Taliban have promised to respect women’s rights, and on a Tuesday a small group of women risked their safety to find out what that means: They stood holding signs demanding the right to work and go to school mere feet from armed Taliban fighters, who did not interfere. Had women tried the same thing the last time the Taliban was in power, they would likely have found themselves subjected to beatings, imprisonment and possibly worse.
Aug. 17, 2021, 1:47 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 1:47 p.m. ETVideo
CreditCredit…Reuters
The new Taliban rulers were making their presence felt, taking over Parliament, confiscating possessions and vehicles from government officials and directing traffic on Kabul’s congested streets. A video showed Taliban fighters driving in what appeared to be police vehicles.
Aug. 17, 2021, 1:24 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 1:24 p.m. ETA marketplace in the Kote Sangi area of Kabul on Tuesday after the Taliban seized control of the capital. Credit…Hoshang Hashimi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Peddlers were back on the streets of Kabul, and government workers weighed whether to return to work after the Taliban promised amnesty. An Afghan reporter point-blank asked the Taliban spokesman about civilians killed in past suicide attacks carried out by the militants. Another reporter, a woman, interviewed a Taliban official on television.
As the Taliban began to consolidate their grip on Afghanistan on Tuesday, its fighters spreading out across the city on motorbikes and in American-made Humvees seized from the now nonexistent Afghan military, ordinary people began to slowly test the limits of what would be permitted in the restored Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
For the moment, at least, the Taliban appeared to be taking a hands-off approach to the lives of most Afghans, letting them go about their business much as they had before the militants swept across Afghanistan last week. But given the Taliban’s brutal and repressive stint in power in the 1990s, fear was ever-present — as were reports of violence.
Aug. 17, 2021, 1:24 p.m. ET
Aug. 17, 2021, 1:24 p.m. ET
The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on Sunday after a rapid advance across the country, overwhelming government forces and sending large swaths of the population into panic. The Times reviewed and verified scores of these videos to see what that frantic takeover of the country looked like on the ground. Here’s what we found.
