KABUL: Outside the main iron gate of the Indian embassy in Kabul, a group of Taliban fighters waited — armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Inside the compound were 150 Indian diplomats and nationals — growing increasingly nervous as they watched news of the Taliban tightening their grip on the capital, which they took a day earlier without a fight.
Their position was a precarious one.
Pakistan has long been a Taliban supporter, and has been accused of using the country for so-called strategic depth in never-ending battles — real and diplomatic — with arch-rival India. Islamabad denies the charge. India has also strongly backed the government that took over when the Taliban were ousted in 2001, earning them hatred and enmity from the hard-line group.
But the Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, but rather to escort them to Kabul airport, where a military aircraft was on standby to evacuate them after New Delhi decided to shut its mission.
As the first of nearly two dozen vehicles drove out of the embassy late on Monday, some of the fighters waved and smiled at the passengers — an AFP correspondent among them.
One guided them toward the street leading out of the city’s green zone and on the main road to the airport.
The embassy’s decision to ask the Taliban to shepherd the Indians out was made when the fighters closed access to the once heavily fortified neighborhood after capturing Kabul the previous day.
A quarter of the 200 or so people who had gathered at the foreign mission had already been flown out of Afghanistan before the country’s new leaders took full control of the city.
“When we were evacuating the second group... we faced the Taliban, who refused to allow us to exit the green zone,” said an official who left with Monday’s group.
“We then decided to contact the Taliban and ask them to escort our convoy out.”
Two separate pledges of an escort failed to materialize during the day, unnerving the large group bunkered down at the embassy, with one diplomat likening the experience to “house arrest.”
It had been dark for several hours when the cars finally left the compound and embarked on the five-kilometer (three-mile) journey to the airport.
The snail-paced journey took five hours, with passengers passing each minute in constant fear of a potential attack.
- ‘I immediately knew it was time to leave’ -
Unfamiliar checkpoints had been set up and thousands of people displaced by the war were along the road.
At intervals, the Taliban fighters accompanying the Indian convoy jumped out of their own vehicles and aimed their guns at the crowds, forcing them to step back.
One man who appeared to be commanding the troops fired a few rounds in the air to scare back a large group gathered around one intersection.
The escort departed once the convoy reached the airport, where American soldiers had taken up positions and were coordinating flights.
After a wait of another two hours, the group boarded a C-17 Indian military transport plane that took off at dawn, landing at an air force base in the west Indian state of Gujarat later that morning.
“I’m so happy to be back,” Shirin Pathare, an Air India employee flown out of Kabul, told AFP as he stepped off the aircraft. “India is paradise.”
Another Indian citizen, cradling his two-year-old daughter, recalled the chaos and anxiety of his hasty departure from his office and the city.
“They were polite but when they went, they took two of our vehicles.
“I immediately knew it was time for me and my family to leave,” he added.
Escorted by Taliban: India’s midnight evacuation from Afghanistan
https://arab.news/j6pcx
Escorted by Taliban: India’s midnight evacuation from Afghanistan
- Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, but rather to escort Indians to
- Embassy decision to ask for Taliban help was made when fighters closed access to the once heavily fortified neighborhood
Three Afghan migrants die of cold while trying to cross into Iran
- More than 1.8 million Afghans were forced to return to Afghanistan by the Iranian authorities between January and the end of November 2025
AFGHANISTAN: Three Afghans died from exposure in freezing temperatures in the western province of Herat while trying to illegally enter Iran, a local army official said on Saturday.
“Three people who wanted to illegally cross the Iran-Afghanistan border have died because of the cold weather,” the Afghan army official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He added that a shepherd was also found dead in the mountainous area of Kohsan from the cold.
The migrants were part of a group that attempted to cross into Iran on Wednesday and was stopped by Afghan border forces.
“Searches took place on Wednesday night, but the bodies were only found on Thursday,” the army official said.
More than 1.8 million Afghans were forced to return to Afghanistan by the Iranian authorities between January and the end of November 2025, according to the latest figures from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), which said that the majority were “forced and coerced returns.”
“These mass returns in adverse circumstances have strained Afghanistan’s already overstretched resources and services” which leads to “risks of onward and new displacement, including return movements back into Pakistan and Iran and onward,” UNHCR posted on its site dedicated to Afghanistan’s situation.
This week, Amnesty International called on countries to stop forcibly returning people to Afghanistan, citing a “real risk of serious harm for returnees.”
Hit by two major earthquakes in recent months and highly vulnerable to climate change, Afghanistan faces multiple challenges.
It is subject to international sanctions particularly due to the exclusion of women from many jobs and public places, described by the UN as “gender apartheid.”
More than 17 million people in the country are facing acute food insecurity, the UN World Food Programme said Tuesday.
