For Afghanistan’s new enemies of the state, a life in hiding

His anonymity protected only by a surgical facemask – and fogged car windows on a frozen winter day – the young Afghan man was suddenly within arm’s reach of the gun-toting jihadists whose presence on the streets has trapped him behind closed doors for months.

It was the former bodyguard’s first extensive drive in Kabul since he went into hiding in August, after the Taliban toppled the American-backed government he used to serve.

Amid Kabul’s heavy traffic, clusters of bearded Taliban fighters wave the car through, unaware that its passenger is a wanted man.

Rows of white Taliban flags, and concrete blast walls newly painted with slogans that boast of the Islamist victory over the United States, signify at every turn control by the new regime.

They remind Mr. A – who asked that his name not be used, for his own security – why he remains in hiding, with no end in sight.

Friends in his former security services unit, which protected senior government officials, have been captured by the Taliban, he says, accused of being members of the rival Islamic State, and executed.

“It is very difficult. Every few minutes we think about what is going on, about what our future will be,” says Mr. A. “If I don’t leave Afghanistan, I am sure my final destination is death. They will kill me.”

Culture of hiding

Mr. A is just one among legions of Afghans who have been forced by the lightning Taliban victory into an underground existence.

Overnight in August, anyone connected to the former government – or who engaged in civil society by advocating for women’s rights, rule of law, or even girls' education – became a de facto enemy of the state and a target of the Taliban hunt for what it called “infidels.”

The former bodyguard, a rights activist, and a former reporter for Zan (or “Women’s”) TV, told the Monitor in Kabul about their experience coping with and surviving Afghanistan’s new culture of hiding.

It’s a culture in which people are living their entire personal and social lives in a state of sheltered anonymity, protecting not only their physical selves, but their deeply held beliefs and the people they once were.

In granular detail, they spoke about their upturned lives, and how the fear, uncertainty, and crushed dreams – all ballooning into their mental space, while they pursue ways to start new lives elsewhere – have been magnified by feeling trapped.

Often, they say, they don’t know what they are waiting for, or even how long they can sustain their seclusion.

The fact that Mr. A’s unit alone numbered 2,000 – with only the “top people” finding a way out during the chaotic American airlift last August, he says – and the variety of potential Taliban targets across Afghan society, indicates that tens of thousands of Afghans may now be in hiding, if not more.

Distrust of Taliban

The Taliban declared a general amnesty in August, but that vow appears to be respected more in the breach, amid reports of frequent killings and disappearances. According to Reuters, the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan is reporting that since Aug. 15, scores of former Afghan government officials, security force members, and people who worked with the international military contingent have been killed by the Taliban and their allies, despite the amnesty. "Human rights defenders and media workers continue to come under attack, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest, ill treatment, and killings," Reuters quoted the U.N. report as saying.

“Those of us who are hiding can’t trust the promises of the Taliban,” says Mr. A.

One result is that Mr. A agreed to be interviewed only in the relative obscurity of a constantly moving car. Three of Kabul’s districts were off limits, due to a higher chance of his being recognized by the Taliban there.

Any visit by a foreigner – to look through his apartment’s one-way mirrored-glass windows onto the scene that fills Mr. A’s field of vision every day – could have jeopardized his family’s safety.

He laughs when asked how he whiles away the time. He sleeps all day, worries all night, plays games and cards, and says he can’t “mentally refresh,” despite television and internet.

Risky as the drive was through Kabul, he relished the change to his monotonous routine. A recent failed bid by a friend to apply for a passport for him – with the Taliban official insisting, “bring this person to us,” and keeping his original documents – made escape abroad even less likely.

“There is nothing making me happy,” says Mr. A, who then jokes: “I believe one day you will not recognize me, because I will be a silly boy, just sitting under a tree, laughing.”

A past life of purpose

Also grappling with the consequences of her previous life is Ms. Z, a recent college graduate who actively worked on issues of gender-based violence, youth empowerment, and peacemaking in a society riven by 40 years of war.

She has a new, ideologically neutral job, and tries not to change her wardrobe too much from what she wore before – despite new Taliban rules that demand conservative dress.

Ms. Z only leaves her home to work; her “hiding” has taken a different form, she says, to mask once “dreaming of having a good life.”

“I am completely hiding my past,” says Ms. Z, who spoke by phone to avoid visiting a foreigner in public. She has deleted her social media accounts, as well as online references to her previous activism.

“Most of these things are very strictly against the views of these [Taliban] people,” says Ms. Z. But she no longer raises her voice against the injustices she sees every day – a fact that causes deep frustration.

Recently, for example, she was accosted by a Taliban fighter at a checkpoint, who said her clothes meant she was “not allowed” to sit in the front seat of the van, where she had positioned herself to enjoy the falling snow on the way home from work.

“That night, I didn’t sleep, because this is a very crazy thing. I can’t describe, I can’t express how I was feeling that night … humiliated,” she says.

“If I were alone, I would have done many things, because I have studied and want to work in my society. But now, it’s not only me,” says Ms. Z, who gave up a chance to leave Afghanistan, so she could stay with her family.

“It’s very disappointing to want something, and to be able to do something, and physically and mentally have the education, but still you won’t be able to do [it], because a few people resist that,” she says. “That’s very painful. And those things are your life’s values.”

Of Ms. Z’s friendship group of 13, only two young women remain in the country.

“Afghanistan is set back 20 years,” she says. “People who studied … most of them are out of the country. If they are not, still they are hiding.”

Applying for a passport

Among them is Ms. A, a former reporter for Zan TV in Kabul, who – before the Taliban’s return to power – produced hard-hitting news reports about Afghan government corruption.

“My mental health is getting worse and worse,” says Ms. A. “The first month after the Taliban arrived, every day I cried.” Dreams of getting a master’s degree are gone, along with other ambitions for the future – unless she can leave.

Her fears are enhanced because several women’s rights activists have disappeared. She blocks unknown callers immediately, aware from her investigative reporting training that phones can be hacked and traced.

“Now our bodies are alive, but mentally we are dying,” says Ms. A, who spoke by phone to avoid raising Taliban suspicions.

She has been out of the house just once since the Taliban takeover, she says, to apply for a passport two months ago. She had to borrow a long dress from neighbors for the journey – none of her own clothes are Taliban-suitable.

But she was shocked by the guards, who she says cursed as they threw her documents onto the rain-soaked ground.

“The Taliban were very bad people; they beat women and called them all infidels,” recalls Ms. A, of the passport office. “They said, ‘We should beat you. We should shoot you,’” for wanting to leave Afghanistan.

“It was very difficult for me, because I am a journalist and do not stand for that,” says Ms. A. “But I did not say anything.”

She tried to apply for scholarships in Uzbekistan, and Germany, but both required a passport number. The 140-member group of female journalists on WhatsApp “are just like me; we are getting bored, we are getting depressed,” says Ms. A. The five colleagues she knows best in the group “never go out.”

Meanwhile, she shares her house with six other family members, and is “always in my room.”

“If the situation continues even one or two more years, there will be no more youth in Afghanistan,” says Ms. A, whose patience may run out before then. When winter eases, she expects to travel illegally to Iran, without a passport.

Even the end of fighting in Afghanistan, she says, has not curtailed the desire to flee the Taliban: “People are now afraid of their ideas, not war.”