Afghanistan's Most Successful Flee Before Taliban Takeover

Well, this year the U.S. would've marked its 20th anniversary in Afghanistan, minus the troop withdrawal.

Of course, we can't stay there forever, but's not just a Taliban "advance" that has Afghani's fleeing. It's that in all likelihood the Taliban will topple the government in Kabul and take over the country. 

This is interesting. At WSJ, "A Generation of Afghan Professionals Flees Ahead of Taliban Advance":

KABUL—Afghanistan’s professional class of men and women, part of a generation that came of age under the shield of the U.S. military, are weighing the danger of rapidly advancing Taliban forces. Many are packing their bags.

Hasiba Ebrahimi is already gone. The 24-year-old actress, who embodied modern Afghanistan’s optimistic youth, was raised, like many Afghans, as a refugee in Pakistan and then in Iran. She returned to Kabul in 2014 and has since become a star in the country’s new film industry.

In a video released in November, Ms. Ebrahimi urged young Afghan women not to lose hope: “Everything is hard, but nothing is impossible.” She traveled to Australia soon after—for what she thought would be a short reunion with her New Zealand-based sister. She is still there.

“My mom is telling me, ‘I am begging you, I love you so much, but I can’t let you come back, I can’t let you put yourself in danger,’ ” Ms. Ebrahimi said from Sydney. “We have all had hope. We were thinking that we would do something out of that country, working harder and harder each day. It’s really sad to think that you don’t have any future in your own country.”

Long before President Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal in April, hundreds of thousands of Afghans had fled to Europe, Australia and the U.S. Now, many of the well-educated people who prospered in the new Afghanistan and hadn’t dreamed of leaving have also concluded that staying put is no longer an option.

Even though the U.S. has said for years it would withdraw its troops, Mr. Biden’s announcement caught many Afghans by surprise. So did the meltdown of Afghanistan’s U.S.-equipped and trained security forces. Afghan soldiers surrendered en masse in recent weeks, handing over their weapons and Humvees to the Taliban, who have conquered about a third of the country’s districts since April and now surround several major cities.

A recent U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Kabul could fall to the Taliban as soon as six months after the U.S. military pullout is completed this summer.

Hamid Haidari was seven years old when he woke to see Taliban fighters fan into his western Kabul neighborhood in September 1996. The Afghan capital had fallen overnight, and militants soon were banging on doors and pulling men aside for execution. Mr. Haidari now heads the news operation for 1TV, a booming television network, one of the many new fields that have flourished in Afghanistan over the past two decades. With only a few hundred American troops remaining in the country, mostly to protect the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Haidari said he hears the same questions from his staff: What shall we do if we wake up to see the Taliban occupy Kabul again? Shall we leave? If so, where and how

Mr. Haidari went to India in January after warnings of an assassination attempt by insurgents. He returned three months later and intends to stay in Kabul for as long as he can.

Since meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar—part of the stalled Afghan peace process—Mr. Haidari has concluded that a freewheeling TV network wouldn’t survive under the Islamist movement’s rule. The network has already pulled several journalists from Taliban-besieged cities to Kabul.

“No one knows what will happen,” Mr. Haidari said. “It’s Afghanistan. In the future, there will be bloodshed, there will be killings and maybe civil war. But if there won’t be any free media, if we shut down, no one will know what kinds of crimes will be happening in Afghanistan.”

The TV company’s owner, Fahim Hashimy, said he was looking at contingency plans, moving parts of the network to Turkey or Uzbekistan. “I am joking to my people, we need to turn into a portable TV channel, a movable TV channel, a mobile TV channel so we can keep moving around the world and keep broadcasting,” he said.

More affluent Afghans are paying thousands of dollars on the black market for visitor visas to Turkey, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—the few destinations that remain relatively accessible.

“Even the friends who want to stay here are taking their families out because, when the war comes, children and women cannot fight and will be vulnerable,” said Omar Sadr, a political scientist at the American University of Afghanistan. His backup plan is moving to India, where he was educated...