Kolkata: When Air India Flight AI-244 departed from Hamid Karzai Airport Kabul for Delhi on Sunday, it was a real experience for Sohini Sarkar, a Kolkatan who now lives in the US and works with an NGO in Afghanistan.
Sarkar managed to reach the airport when the Taliban militia began to enter Kabul and was lucky to board India’s last air flights that took off at night and landed in Delhi at around 9pm on Sunday.
“It was a terrible race against time,” Sarkar told Toi after reaching a friend in Delhi.
“On Saturday night, there was a power outage and a massive power outage.
I live close to the airport where US troops are placed and thought it was a safe place.
But on Sunday everything changed.
We got urgent reminders from the US Embassy to burn All sensitive documents are related to staff and beneficiaries and go as soon as possible.
It was a terrible situation.
Some of my colleagues went to the bank to withdraw money but the banks had fallen.
We sent the Afghanistan Nationals home from the office even when part of us panicked Trying to destroy all documents.
It’s only a matter of hours, “tells Sarkar.
“It usually takes 15-20 minutes to reach the airport from where I live in Kabul but on Sunday the stretch is crowded with thousands of cars and it takes more than an hour.
Fortunately, there is no attack or checkpoint.
But I have learned the Taliban has made it Post only 100 m from where I live, “said Sarkar, who grew in Naktala where his mother was still living, and studied at the Presidency College.
‘Things changed dramatically overnight, initially had a plan to leave Afghanistan on August 21 when the US said his troops would leave the country at the end of August.
“No one in anticipation of Afghanistan will be mastered so fast.
Even when Jalalabad was arrested, we thought that with US forces still in the country, the Taliban would not enter Kabul, but things turned dramatically overnight,” said Alumni of the Presidency, which Having worked in Afghanistan since 2009.
Personally, it was traumatic left a fully good knowing that the national team would not be able to come out, he said.
“I know I can’t hold them to escape from what I remove.
I left the colleague who had become a friend and it was the toughest part.
Our male colleagues cried and asked me to pray for them,” Sarkar said.
He remembered how fear his female partners.
“They are fine for themselves, but their dreams are now destroyed,” he said.
Sarkar is now worried about the fate of his colleagues and their families, some of which have become targeted and threatened to work with American organizations.
“Those who dream of rebuilding their lives, creating a modern country.
This is not worthy of Afghanistan.
This is the fate of those who need to be told,” he said, adding that surpassed all politics and discussions about what was wrong, world leaders had to overcome humanitarian disasters This is the life of journalists, civil rights activists, artists, and Afghans who are commonly at stake.
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