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Kabul, Afghanistan – Samia gathered her seven children, packed some clothes and left her home in Takhar for the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the middle of the night.
All day Saturday, his family had heard that the Taliban were about to capture neighboring Kunduz province and would soon begin their march towards Taluqan, the capital of Takhar.
On Sunday evening, the Taliban had hoisted their black-and-white flag in both capitals, but by then Samia was already on her way to Kabul.
She left with her four boys and three daughters on Saturday evening and will not reach Kabul until well after midnight on Monday.
Normally the trip wouldn’t take more than seven or eight hours, but Samia said they had to stop along the way.
“We had to change cars three times, and each time it was more difficult to find a car ready to take us,” she said, sitting under a tree in a makeshift IDP camp north of Kabul.
Last week, hundreds of families fled the fighting to come to Kabul [Tamana Ayazi/Al Jazeera]The Taliban have controlled the road from Kabul to Kunduz for several months. With Takhar’s takeover, the group’s control of the highway now extends further east to the outskirts of the province.
“A rocket hit our house”
The Taliban’s multi-day pressure to capture the northern provinces not only affected the length of the trip, the cost also skyrocketed.
Normally, a seat in a vehicle from Takhar to Kabul would cost between 300 and 600 Afghans ($ 4-6), but that number has skyrocketed to 1,000 Afghans ($ 12.50) for an adult.
These awards mean that the 200 or so families who made it to Kabul were lucky and had the financial means to take the risk and hit the road to the capital.
Like most families in the camp, Samia came alone with her children, leaving her husband to look after their belongings.
She is aware that the Taliban have been known to use civilian homes to shoot at government targets and that the US and Afghan air forces have stepped up their air attacks against the group.
“Your life is precious, but if you don’t have a home or your possessions, then you have come to nothing,” she said, sitting on a dusty carpet surrounded by dozens of other women and children.
However, on Tuesday morning, Samia learned that there would not be much for her family to return if they ever returned to Takhar.
“I called my husband, he had fled the fighting and a rocket hit our house,” she said, adding that he would try to join the family in Kabul on Thursday.
Caught in the crossfire
Samia says many women and children have been forced to escape escalating fighting between the Taliban and government forces.
“Both sides just shoot without looking at what they are hitting. You could be hit by the ball on either side.
Yet Samia reserves most of her anger for the Taliban.
“Before, Takhar was safe, we had no worries. We had to leave because they brought the fighting to our communities, ”she said.
Not far from Samia is Zarmina, an agricultural student from Kunduz.
Hearing Samia’s story, Zarmina begins to cry, saying that she was only two months away from completing her studies at Kunduz University.
Like Samia, Zarmina’s family had to leave as a group, but her family was in particular danger as her father served in the Afghan army.
Many men tried to stay to protect homes and family assets [Ali M Latifi/Al Jazeera]Zarmina described her fear when her father was forced to take a Taliban-controlled road from Kunduz to Kabul on Saturday night to flee the fighting, despite the danger that the group would stop his vehicle to question passengers in order to find people who worked for the government or foreigners. forces.
Zarmina says that when her father and brother left Kunduz, she begged them to take her, but they were told there was no room and they would come back for the rest of the family.
However, within two hours, the remaining women and children saw that it was too dangerous and got into another vehicle that night.
“We were so scared for my dad and my brother, but they were so lucky. They were not stopped once en route, ”she said, adding that their car had been stopped several times en route.
“Our beautiful house is gone”
Samia and Zarmina feel lucky to have been able to find cars to bring them to Kabul.
Ghulam Farooq, who fled Kunduz with his brother and nephew, was not so lucky.
He had packed them in his small Indian-made motorized rickshaw, a popular mode of transport in towns outside Kabul, and headed along the traitorous Salang Pass to the capital.
“We had no choice, so I just threw them into the rickshaw and knocked him down.”
Traveling in a small, poorly insulated vehicle made them sensitive to the freezing northern air.
Farooq also had to pass through cars and buses full of other refugees in his little rickshaw.
Although they passed through several Taliban checkpoints, their biggest worry was gas.
Halfway through the Salang pass, the rickshaw ran out of fuel. Farooq had to wait by the side of the road as vehicles sped past and the Taliban patrolled the areas.
Finally, he found a young driver ready to offer him a few liters of gasoline for 70 Afghans (less than $ 1).
“If he hadn’t given me so much, I don’t know how we would have gotten here,” he said, sitting in his rickshaw parked in Kabul’s famous Shahr-e-Naw Park.
While the families gathered in this dirt-covered park are lucky enough to have Kabul, it only solves half of their problems.
Displaced families mostly reside in makeshift settlements in Sarai Shamali, Kabul [Ali M Latifi/Al Jazeera]Tamana Ayazi, a filmmaker and journalist from Balkh province, said that once families arrive in the capital, they face a host of other problems.
Ayazi’s family has welcomed nearly a dozen families from Balkh over the past week.
“My family is lucky, my father had the foresight to build a big house in Kabul and now I know why,” she said after visiting the displaced people in Kabul.
This is not the first time that Ayazi’s family has had to accommodate relatives fleeing a Taliban “invader”.
When the armed group first took Kunduz in 2015, Ayazi said they had to house her sister’s family. It was then that she saw the longer-term effects of war and displacement.
“Imagine that you are a child, or even an adult, and you have to hear the sound of rockets and bullets, it damages your mental well-being,” said the 27-year-old.
She points to her niece, whom they had nicknamed Khoshi, Happiness, for her once cheerful character, as an example.
Ayazi says that when she visited her niece in Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif for the first three years of her life, she was always smiling.
But that all changed in 2015 when Khoshi arrived with her family in Kabul from Kunduz. “She became calm and brooding. We never saw her smile again, ”says Ayazi.
Those who have recently fled the fighting agree, saying the scars will last a lifetime.
Reflecting on his home province of Kunduz, Rickshaw driver Ghulam Farooq says, “Our beautiful house is gone. He is now covered in flames.
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