I was finally, truly, in love.

Just before the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021, I had made the decision to return to Kabul. I had long dreamed of owning a home in my hometown, tucked somewhere between the storied Jewish quarter and the city’s ancient Hindu temples, resting along the rugged slopes of Koh-e Asamai, the mountain at the heart of Afghanistan’s timeless capital.

In the evenings, the mountain blazes like a ball of fire, lit by the lanterns and bulbs of the homes clinging to its sides, and as the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, echoes through the valley, the entire landscape turns majestic.

That is where I was born, on a rainy evening, and was carried home from the hospital wrapped in a newspaper, as my parents were unprepared for my arrival, much like the city itself, never quite ready to hold me. For most of my life, I have lived unmoored, never fully rooted anywhere, and after years away, working as a journalist in Eastern Europe, I had decided it was time to go back; it was time to reclaim love, a place, and a part of myself I had left behind.

But returning to Kabul meant facing memories I had tried to bury.

The last time I had stood in Kabul was only three years before, in August 2018, a visit shrouded in grief. I had buried three colleagues lost to the violence engulfing the city, and I was reminded of many others who were silenced before them.

Kabul continued to bleed in a war not of its own making.

I had become witness to the heavy cost our city and its people had paid.

Kabul was grim, the air thick with the smell of smoke and gas from heavy military vehicles and tanks roaming the streets.  

The taxi from Hamid Karzai International Airport to my neighborhood, Microrayon, just a few minutes away couldn’t stop for the hungry children and women swarming the car, their outstretched hands pleading for money as we hurried through the crowded, weary streets.

As the taxi carried me onward, I made a quiet, painful, decision not to look toward the side of the street where a suicide bombing had claimed the lives of 25 media workers, including three of my closest colleagues at Radio Free Afghanistan.

I could look away, but I could never ignore the reality: The very streets I grew up on were now stained with the blood of my fellow journalists, those I spoke with each day about our shared struggle for a kinder, freer Afghanistan.

Maharram Durrani, 28, had just been hired and dreamed of using her programs to explain women’s rights in Islam to the Afghan public. At her funeral, her grieving father wept; his gaunt face and trembling hands haunted me. I couldn’t help but wonder where people find the strength to raise a daughter in Afghanistan, to educate her, and then to lose her in an instant.

Abdullah Hananzai, 26, was about to celebrate his first wedding anniversary. A graduate of Kabul University, he was reserved and serious about journalism. He had come to work on his day off when he was killed.

Of the three, however, Sabawoon Kakar, 30, was my closest friend. He had an outstanding voice, steady, clear, and full of conviction, the kind that made you stop and listen whenever he spoke on the radio. And he was funny. Throughout my stay in Kabul, I often wondered whether I should visit his widow, a young woman in her early twenties, left alone with two babies, the youngest born after her husband was killed.

And what could I possibly say? Telling them that it would all be okay would have been a lie.

The world I once knew, where hope lived in small, stubborn places and where people held on to a vision of a better future had almost disappeared. Twelfth Street in the Wazir Mohammad Akbar Khan neighborhood, once home to a small but hopeful press club that I had co-founded with fellow journalists, had become part of the Green Zone, sealed off behind cement walls and guarded by police.

The Kabul Press Club was envisioned in the early 2000s as a gathering place for journalists committed to rebuilding a credible media in a country emerging from decades of war, but by 2018, many of my fellow club members including including  Sardar Ahmad, and Sultan Manadi, and Zabihullah Tamanna were already gone.

All killed.

I barely stepped outside my parents’ home.

The city was buried in fear under the weight of bombings, suicide attacks, and the silence that followed each targeted assassination.

Just days before my 2018 visit, Azizullah Karwan, a feared commander of the elite 01 Unit, was gunned down while picnicking with his family in the park near my old school. He died in the most horrific way: in front of his children, in public. Even now, writing this, the horror has not faded; it was evident that the government was failing.

In hindsight, I could not have imagined how much would change after U.S. planes hovered over Kabul in 2001. At the time, it’s hard to admit now, and many might judge me for it, we believed the U.S. forces had come to help. We were hungry, isolated, abused, and devastated.

We welcomed U.S. soldiers not as invaders, but as rescuers. Far from panicking, we waited for U.S. troops to arrive with hopeful anticipation of change. Change, for us, meant the simple opportunity to live in peace and build our lives with dignity, but in a country emerging from decades of nonstop conflict and war, with no real army, and nonexistent political parties, institutions, and law enforcement.

It took us some time to grasp that this hope for change was slipping away. Washington had handed us over to our former adversaries. By 2018, the historic mistake was undeniable: trusting former warlords, many with brutal pasts and little vision for the future, had eroded any hope for stability. Aside from a few isolated figures like Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, the two presidents of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, many of the “new” leaders had commanded militias; many faced war crime allegations.

During my month in Kabul in 2018, nearly every gathering I attended turned to one topic: what many called the “shameful” return of Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum. He was a powerful warlord who had risen to the second-highest office in post-2001 Afghanistan, and had just returned from a year-long, self-imposed exile in Turkey after facing rape allegations brought by his 63-year-old political rival.

Dostum and his men fiercely denied the charges, calling them a conspiracy, but for many Afghans, the debacle deeply discredited the government and became a symbol of everything that had gone wrong, an enduring embarrassment for both the Afghan leadership and their American allies.

Against the backdrop of internal lawlessness and political anarchy, billions of taxpayer dollars in aid and support, along with the lives of Afghans and their allies in uniform, were having little luck winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan public. Perhaps it was naïve to expect any outcome other than what was unfolding.

The airstrikes, night raids, the bombing of Afghan weddings, the repeated apologies from the Afghan government and its allies, and the ever-growing number of mourning Afghan villagers all fueled a deep and simmering anger. In that anger, more and more people began turning to the Taliban, who had once seemed defeated and relegated to Afghanistan’s past.

Yet while internal failures played a critical role, the forces shaping Afghanistan’s fate extended beyond its borders; the key culprit, Pakistan, openly sheltered the Taliban, militants who relentlessly attacked U.S. forces and their Afghan allies, yet somehow continued to enjoy the favor of the United States and its partners in the war on terror.

Millions of Afghans could not comprehend why the United States’ support for Pakistan remained largely unchanged, even after the discovery of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and the man at the center of the U.S.-led war on terror, was found living in Abbottabad, only meters from Pakistan’s core military and intelligence compounds; not even when the New York Times reported that he had fathered four children there, and that his wife had given birth in Pakistani government hospitals.

The well-documented clash between then-President Hamid Karzai and Vice President Joe Biden at the Arg Palace in Kabul, during which Karzai openly criticized Pakistan and Biden reportedly slammed the table in its defense, stands as unmistakable proof that the issue was raised directly with the American leadership as early as 2008.

In an already fraught alliance, Pakistan’s support for the group crippled the Afghan army and police, who were dying every day in the fight against the Taliban, and left Afghan civilians to bear the horror of daily suicide bombings and explosions.

Despite official denials from Pakistan of sheltering, financing, and lobbying for the Taliban, Afghans saw the truth: the Taliban’s Quetta Shura, one of the group’s core leadership councils was based in Pakistan and directed the insurgency across the border.

In August 2019, the BBC reported that an average of 74 men, women, and children were killed every day in Afghanistan that month, with a further 1,948 people injured. Locals, like our neighbor Sameera, often disputed the official figures and media reports, questioning how anyone could truly count those who simply vanished in suicide bombings and explosions. Sameera’s father sold fruit from a cart; he was never found after one of the bombings in Zanbaq Square. No BBC journalist interviewed her, and no government report recorded her father’s death.

Over time, the chaos at home, the ambiguity surrounding political decision making at higher levels, and the massive loss of life deepened the sense of hopelessness, and with bin Laden already gone, the continuation of the war on terror which had initially promised freedom and dignity seemed increasingly senseless.

Washington, too, exhausted and wary of the conflict, resolved to bring an end to its longest war in history, and on February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban leadership signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, which laid out several core commitments: the United States agreed to a phased withdrawal of all U.S. and international troops, while the Taliban pledged to prevent al-Qaida and other terrorist groups from operating on Afghan soil in a manner that could threaten the United States or its allies.

The agreement was also meant to be the first step toward peace talks between Afghans, with the U.S. promising to help keep the talks going. But as the U.S. and its allies sped up their withdrawal after almost 20 years, the situation inside the country showed that the hope for a better future was hanging by a fragile thread.

While the exclusion of the Afghan government from the Doha Agreement was widely criticized as a serious shortcoming, a deeper issue had already become apparent: the Afghan state lacked the cohesion to field a strong negotiating team, and its institutional legitimacy was in doubt, as it had little control over much of the country to credibly serve as a negotiating partner.

Within a year, this fragility became undeniable, as the wholesale flight of political elites and government officials exposed a fundamental absence of commitment and responsibility at the highest levels of power.

Perhaps the most disheartening chapter of two decades of war was its chaotic end, the helplessness of the Afghan people, abandoned by both the powerful Afghan elites and the Americans they once trusted. Their desperation, though only partially captured, is etched forever in the images of the Kabul airlift.

In all candor, neither the United States nor its allies ever promised to stay indefinitely, and Afghanistan was granted a critical opportunity to rebuild and secure its own future. In many cases, the elite failed to seize that opportunity or provide the leadership necessary to safeguard the nation’s interests, and in the end, many did not even look back as they fled. While the country’s eventual devastation and abandonment is rooted in numerous complex factors that warrant careful analysis and I do not intend to place all responsibility on one side, it would nonetheless be a gesture of integrity for the Afghan elite to acknowledge their failure to protect and stand with the Afghan people in their darkest hours.

Afghanistan is not a binary society, and opinions on the conflict were deeply divided: some supported the Taliban, others aligned with the government, and many simply longed for an end to the war.

As a journalist who followed the country’s turmoil for nearly two decades, I can attest that many, haunted by widespread decay in governance, the ravages of war, and the departure of allied forces, welcomed the 2020 Doha Agreement as a hopeful step toward peace.

Afghans like my aunt who had lost loved ones to the war, hoped it would establish a political framework that preserved the country’s connection to the world, safeguarded the progress made, and provided a continued opportunity to build a more stable future, even if that future meant a new government and a changed political system.

My aunt lost her 8-year-old son, holding him in her arms. As she rushed him to a local clinic, they were caught in a firefight between Taliban and government forces. Despite her desperate efforts, she watched him die before her eyes, before reaching help. After that tragic incident, she left her village and moved to Kabul, where she was able to send her five daughters to school, a happiness that helped her cope with the loss of her youngest child.

She welcomed the end of the war, yet like millions of Afghans, she was unprepared for the rapid and harsh upheaval that followed the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August 2021: sanctions, frozen assets, and the near-total isolation. Once among the earliest members of the United Nations, the country now stands without official representation at the U.N. and the country’s embassy in Washington remains vacant.  

The U.S. embassy in Kabul, once the largest American diplomatic mission in the region, now stands abandoned, too. For two decades, it symbolized Washington’s deep political, military, and financial commitment to Afghanistan. Its abrupt closure and evacuation in August 2021 marked not just a logistical withdrawal but the collapse of a two-decade experiment and the beginning of Afghanistan’s painful international isolation. Today, the embassy remains closed, not only to the Taliban government but also to the Afghan people who once trusted the United States.

The U.S. embassy was not an anomaly.

Most international organizations, aid agencies, and human rights groups also departed abruptly, resulting in the near-total isolation of Afghanistan, as if its 40 million people, including countless children and women, suddenly ceased to matter.

Four years on, the starvation ravaging Afghanistan is impossible to ignore, the parents forced to sell their young daughters to survive, the children begging on the streets, all suffering inflicted as punishment on a government while an entire nation sinks deeper into despair.

Yet the hardest question, one I still cannot answer, is this: Looking back over two decades and knowing Kabul’s fate in 2025, was the war worth the lives of Sardar, Sabawoon, Zabihullah, Maharram, and the countless others whose names we will never know? Was it worth it for those they left behind: the young widows, grieving parents, and orphaned children?

Afghanistan, after all the sacrifices, has reverted to nearly the same state it was in 25 years ago, and today, only Russia has formally recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government. Others including China, Qatar, Germany, Uzbekistan and Iran maintain varying levels of diplomatic engagement, motivated primarily by strategic and regional interests. Even Pakistan, long considered a close ally of the Taliban, has refrained from full recognition and appears to have distanced itself from the powers-that-be in Kabul. Islamabad’s increasingly harsh treatment of Afghan refugees and traders reads less as diplomacy and more as the stance of a neighbor exacting retribution.

Amid all this, what has most shattered the spirit of the Afghan people is the ban on girls’ education beyond sixth grade and the severe restrictions on women’s employment. Soon after returning to power, the Taliban reinstated their old harsh policies, the very ones many of us believed had no place in the 21st Century, and certainly not in Afghanistan, imposed on Afghan women and girls.

In June 2025, one of my close friends traveled to Kabul for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival, after a decade of living as an immigrant in North America; I am not revealing her name to protect her personal safety. She sent me a photo of our building, showing long lines of people carrying fresh laundry, just like always.

Life goes on, she said. “Women scrub their homes as they always have, washing curtains, rugs, walls, and dishes, preparing every corner to welcome guests,” and that “it feels surreal to look around and see that the war is truly over.”

In an email from Kabul, she wrote that she is still getting used to the city being free of war, and that she still jumps a little at each loud sound, remembering explosions and suicide bombings.

“But now,” she wrote, “in their place is something harder to name: an aching stillness. The people in Kabul are so upset by the ban that you can feel it in the silence.” The sadness runs so deep, she wrote, that even the joy of returning to her hometown after years as a refugee in North America, reuniting with family, revisiting old memories, savoring street food or traveling to Afghanistan’s most remote corners, made possible only after many years of war, cannot mask it.

This loss is deeply personal.

As a journalist and a woman who began her career navigating the streets of Kabul with a microphone in hand, I was confident that the hardest times were behind us and that we would never allow history to repeat itself.

I know that I will not return to Kabul until girls are once again allowed to attend school, pursue higher education, and work freely. From afar, I acknowledge that neither I nor anyone else can fully comprehend the unfolding narrative of life in Kabul.

Certainly, the collapse of the government has changed me.

It changed how I see people and understand love. It turned what had begun as a story of return into one of quiet exile.

And Kabul?

I don’t agree with the claim that Kabul fell on August 15, 2021.

Kabul did not fall; it endures.

Four years ago, what fell was a government in Kabul, nothing more, nothing less.

It was nothing new for the city.

Governments rise and fall, power shifts, alliances dissolve, yet Kabul remains standing, and its legacy of resilience lives on in its people, who continue to build, dream, and resist within its walls. But to remain standing is not necessarily to remain unchanged; it is to move forward, even when reshaped by loss.

And Kabul will never be the same, for part of its soul has been displaced, the countless people who once dreamed, and built until they were killed or forced to leave.