Why this teacher-turned Taliban commander wants to flee Afghanistan

In August this year, the Taliban celebrated the completion of three years of their autocratic rule in Afghanistan. With the capture of Kabul on August 15, 2021, following a major offensive that started in May that year, the militant group returned to power 20 years after they were ousted from the South Asian nation by a US-led invasion.

The Taliban's return led to the ouster and fleeing of then President Ashraf Ghani and coincided with the hurried and messy withdrawal of US troops stationed in the country, a move which led to the widespread criticism of US President Joe Biden's administration.

After the fall of the country, the Taliban slowly and surely imposed a number of restrictions under Sharia law. The regime, a mostly male-dominated one, banned women from working and girls were not allowed to go to schools and colleges.

The Taliban later promised to reopen the schools for girls in March 2022 but retracted their statement. This year, the militant group also banned polio vaccination for children, without giving a reason.

Fearing Taliban rule, millions fled the country in the wake of the 2021 invasion. Some are still trying to escape with the fear that they might even risk their lives in doing so.

One such person is a teacher-turned Taliban commander, who spoke to Aaj Tak, India Today's sister website, who wants to escape Afghanistan on the pretext of illness.

"I cannot be patient any more. I will take my children and go. Turkey, Tajikistan or Syria, whichever country can provide us with shelter. I will go where I can start my own business. I know how to teach, I will go to such a country where I can work hard in it," the commander, whose identity was withheld for security reasons, said.

Recalling his past life before the Taliban takeover, he said he used to teach girls, but with a constant fear of the militant group returning to Afghanistan one day.

"I already had a hint of their arrival. I grew a beard, started preparing the girls so that they don't get disheartened about having to stay at home all of a sudden. But the most disturbing thing in this was that I was going to enforce these rules and regulations myself in the future. With the fall of the (Ashraf Ghani) government, I became a part of the Taliban. A commander of their intelligence department," he added.

As a Taliban commander, his job now is to monitor whether people were joining Al Qaeda or the Islamic State or were not in cahoots with any other terrorist group. He also makes sure that there is no rebellion among the locals against the Taliban regime.

"My job is to spy and punish anyone if they hide a secret. I don't punish myself, my subordinates do it. If the crime is big, we have to inform the higher authorities, then they decide. We have to be in the office from 9 in the morning to 3 or 4 in the afternoon. This is what we get paid for."

He said the Taliban's first target are the educated people, who are selected and removed from their posts. "I was one of them, the Taliban met me, they knew about my background and that I was well-known. I was helpless. There was no work, and there was the fear of losing my life if I refused."

He has tried to flee a number of times, but his wife refused as she is very strict in her outlook and extremely religious. "She prefers to wear the veil."

In between the conservation with Aaj Tak, the commander receives videos on his phone of women covered in veils, shopping in a market.

"Earlier, everything was open. There were rules, but with limitations. Now everything is restricted. The women who tried to go outside either disappeared, raped, or their bodies were found on the roadside. No one knows who committed the crime."

He said that if ordinary people make a mistake, they are imprisoned. "But if we, as members of the regime, commit a crime, the punishment is death. My family won't be spared either."

"I am afraid that one day the Taliban leadership will start suspecting me, they will ask for my phone. If I did not leave the country, then my family would also be in danger along with me," he said, adding that there was no dearth of informers. "From the soldier who brings tea for me to the soldier who opens the car door, anyone can spy. In return, they are rewarded."

The commander also said that the Taliban came with the promise of not repeating earlier mistakes. "But within a week, the promises faded. The doors of prisons were opened. Criminals, murderers, terrorists, who were Taliban supporters, roaming free. The soldiers fled. Police stations were being looted."

Speaking about how the Taliban select their commanders, he said the regime looks at the person's entire background, "but fanaticism is the first condition. The more intensity you show, the more respect you will get".

On being asked about his dislike for the militant group even though he works for them, the commander said, "The Taliban are neither completely Islamic, nor civil. They know how to control through bloodshed. As soon as they arrived, they started controlling the women. They explained to the men that their job is to make women obey the rules. My mother, wife, daughter, are all confined to the house for three years."

"If you are a woman, then for you the change of seasons means taking out clothes according to the needs, or cooking seasonal food. You can see the morning dawn or the setting sun only when no stranger is around."

He lamented that he could never return to his earlier profession of being a teacher and that he was already on the Taliban's radar.

"Some of my previous students still talk to me. While learning how to make kebabs, they will gradually forget about their early lives of being a student and going to school. I will also be forgotten."

The commander said he often remembers the colourful walls in Kabul when he often drives down the city streets. "Now posters of instructions and restrictions have replaced murals. These black and white posters are the future of a colour-less Afghanistan."