KABUL – Kabul’s former diplomatic quarter fell silent on Monday as foreign missions were moved to the airport, leaving Taliban patrols in control of the fortified zone of concrete blast walls and checkpoints known as the Green Zone.
With police and security contractors who once guarded the embassies in the Wazir Akbar Khan district now gone, some motorists were forced to get out of their cars and lift security barriers themselves before driving through.
“It is strange to sit here and see empty streets, no more busy diplomatic convoys, big cars with guns mounted,” said Gul Mohammed Hakim, one the city’s ubiquitous naan (bread) makers who has a shop in the area.
“I will be here baking bread, but will earn very small amounts of money. The security guards who were my friends, they are gone,” he added according to Reuters.
A couple of streets away from the now-deserted British embassy, a Taliban patrol went into the compound of Tolo News, Afghanistan’s largest private broadcaster which lost several journalists to Taliban attacks over the years.
“So far they are polite, enquiring about our weapons (of the security team),” Saad Mohseni, head of Moby Group, which owns the station, said on Twitter. “They have also agreed to keep the compound safe”.
Elsewhere in the city, there was a mood of shocked fear among many former government employees and civil rights activists, caught completely by surprise by the lightning seizure of the city and the flight of President Ashraf Ghani.
“Nobody could believe it would go so quickly,” said one former government employee, now hiding in a friend’s home. “They took Kabul in five hours!”
“Everyone I know, all the civil society people, government ministers, deputy ministers just feel lost. They’re hiding or waiting,” he said.
The victorious insurgents have promised not to carry out retribution against former government workers and a Taliban leader said his fighters had been “ordered to allow Afghans to resume daily activities and do nothing to scare civilians.”
“Normal life will continue in a much better way, that’s all I can say for now,” he told Reuters via Whatsapp.
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