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The UN has urged Afghanistan’s neighbors to keep their borders open as the number of civilians fleeing the Taliban attack rises.
Thousands of internally displaced people arrive in Kabul, seeing the capital as their last safe haven.
Food shortages are “catastrophic”, said the World Food Program (WFP). He warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.
On Friday, the Taliban seized the country’s second largest city, Kandahar, the last provincial capital to fall.
The southern city of 600,000 was once the stronghold of the Taliban and is strategically important because of its international airport, agricultural and industrial production.
Insurgents have also taken the nearby town of Lashkar Gah and now control about a third of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals.
This breakthrough comes as US and foreign troops withdraw after 20 years of military operations. More than 1,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan in the last month alone, according to the UN.
Sahraa Karimi, an Afghan filmmaker in Kabul, told the BBC that she felt the world had turned its back on Afghanistan and feared a return to “dark times”.
Life under the Taliban in the 1990s saw women forced to wear the burqas, restricted education for girls over 10, and brutal punishments, including public executions.
” I am in danger – [but] I don’t think about myself anymore, ”Ms. Karimi said. “I think of our country… I think of our generation: that we have done a lot to make these changes.
“I think of young girls… there are thousands of beautiful and talented young women in this country.”
Many of those seeking safety in Kabul sleep rough. About 72,000 children are among those who have fled to the capital in recent days, according to Save the Children.
“We have no money to buy bread or buy medicine for my child,” Asadullah, a 35-year-old street vendor who fled the country’s northern Kunduz province, told the BBC after that the Taliban set his house on fire.
“Our whole house and belongings caught fire, so we came to Kabul and prayed to God to help us,” added Asadullah, who is now with her family in Kabul.
Makeshift camps have been established in the scrubland on the outskirts of the capital, while many more are said to have slept in abandoned warehouses.
Speaking to the BBC shortly before the fall of Kandahar, Pashtana Durrani, executive director of an education NGO that works with Afghan girls, said she was afraid for her life because of her vocal role. in defense of women’s education.
“The girls we work with have already fled,” she said. “I don’t know where the students are and I’m personally afraid for their lives. What if they were married to a Taliban fighter? How will their life be?
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