Finalist: Yaroslav Trofimov and the Staff of The Wall Street Journal

A lack of urgency in the U.S. and Afghanistan led many to believe the capital city had more time

By Yaroslav Trofimov, Vivian Salama and Dion Nissenbaum

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat and author of the book “Fixing Failed States,” gathered officials on Saturday, Aug. 7, for a conference on improving relations between the attorney general’s office and local officials. He spent much of the rest of the day on the emerald-green lawn of the presidential palace, reading a book, according to a palace official.

By then, the Afghan state was collapsing. The number of local districts under Kabul’s control was diminishing almost by the hour. Kunduz, the biggest city in the northeast, fell the following night. Within 24 hours, other provincial capitals followed, many without a fight. Taliban fighters seized bases full of U.S.-supplied arms and turned them on a demoralized Afghan army unable to resupply troops with weapons, food or water.

President Biden was at his home in Wilmington, Del., where he played a round of golf at the Fieldstone Golf Club and then held a virtual meeting with Team USA to congratulate them on their performance at the Tokyo Olympics. The White House said he was briefed on Afghanistan in between.

The U.S. Embassy on Sunday, Aug. 8, said Americans should leave Afghanistan on the first available flight. Afghans who knew they would be hunted down in a Taliban takeover talked of fleeing. Yet plenty of spaces remained on outbound flights.

The thinking was that the insurgents wouldn’t attack Kabul before the U.S. military withdrawal slated for Aug. 31. Many Washington officials were on vacation, and the attention of those in town focused on the infrastructure bill.

In Kabul, Zara, a 25-year-old English teacher, looked at escape options but kept to her daily routine. “Everything was totally normal,” she said. “We thought it would take three to four months.”

Powerful warlords who had fought against the Taliban before the 2001 U.S.-led invasion mobilized their militias, filling in for deserting troops and inspiring confidence among many Afghans. In the western city of Herat, gray-bearded warlord Ismail Khan, Kalashnikov in hand, prepared to protect the city. Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, notorious in 2001 for sealing Taliban prisoners in containers to die, and Tajik commander Atta Mohammad Noor organized the defenses of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

But cracks appeared. Officials now peppered conversations with reminiscences of how this or that senior Taliban commander was a best friend from childhood and that they had kept in touch.

On Tuesday, Aug. 10, Finance Minister Khalid Payenda quit his job and flew out of the country, tweeting that “it was time to step down to attend to personal priorities.” Alarmed by a snowballing exodus, Mr. Ghani instructed the airport not to allow senior officials to leave Afghanistan. He told the passport office to stop renewing or issuing passports for 20 days, senior officials said.

That afternoon, Afghan Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar consulted with the U.S. chargé d’affaires, Ross Wilson. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal after the meeting, Mr. Atmar acknowledged that Kabul was surprised by the speed of the Taliban advance. He also spoke with confidence about turning the tide with armed drones and reshaping the war strategy to focus on defending major cities. He complained about a “panic mood among some actors,” when asked about evacuation preparations and the advice from foreign missions for their citizens to leave the country.

In Washington, Mr. Biden celebrated the passage of the infrastructure bill by the Senate. Asked about Afghanistan, he said, “Afghan leaders have to come together.” He added that he didn’t regret his decision in spring to withdraw all U.S. forces.

By Wednesday, Aug. 11, Mazar-e-Sharif was an isolated island in a sea of Taliban, accessible only by air. The local army corps commander asked to be relieved. Mr. Ghani, along with Mr. Dostum and other warlords, flew there.

Afghanistan’s commander-in-chief made no public remarks to rally the troops or raise the morale of residents that day. Instead, he talked about how militia members could now be paid via mobile-phone apps, officials said.

In contrast, Mr. Dostum in a speech pledged to regain northern Afghanistan from the Taliban now that he was in charge again. “All the people will stand up against them,” he said. He boasted that the Taliban couldn’t defeat him “even if they brought all of Pakistan.”

Decision-making had long been concentrated in the hands of Mr. Ghani’s national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, a 38-year-old former ambassador to Washington with no military training. Mr. Mohib spent his days calling battlefield commanders, bypassing the military chain of command.

While the Taliban swept regions in the north, the insurgents that Wednesday also made a push for the city of Ghazni, south of Kabul. With little will to fight, the provincial governor, Daud Laghmani, negotiated a surrender in exchange for safe passage. He presented his Taliban successor with flowers. Taliban fighters escorted Mr. Laghmani’s convoy of SUVs to the border of the neighboring province, where he was arrested for treason.

The downfall of Ghazni opened a southern approach to Kabul and marked a turning point in the Taliban advance. “After Ghazni fell then we really couldn’t hold anything,” a palace official said.

Many Afghans saw that the Taliban might not wait for the American departure. Flights sold out, and black-market prices for visas surged. Thousands of people crowded passport offices in Kabul, despite Mr. Ghani’s order to stop issuing or renewing them.

Washington projected confidence. Afghan security forces “have the equipment, numbers, and training to fight back,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday afternoon. By then, the State Department had asked the American Embassy to destroy sensitive documents.

Taliban promises

Since striking the February 2020 deal for the withdrawal of American troops, Taliban leaders assured U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad that they wouldn’t try to seize Kabul by force. They told Mr. Khalilzad, one of the few Trump administration officials who remained under Mr. Biden, they would seek a power-sharing deal with political forces in Kabul.

Their main condition was for Mr. Ghani to resign before the forming of a transitional government. Mr. Ghani demanded a cease-fire first.

By Thursday, Aug. 12, the defenses of Herat had crumbled. Taliban fighters, hiding in the city, spread through neighborhoods. Mr. Khan, the warlord intending to protect Herat, was captured by militants. He was made to speak on camera. “This all happened so instantly,” he said, shaken. He urged soldiers elsewhere to lay down their arms. In the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace, government forces dissolved overnight.

In Kabul, Mr. Ghani convened a meeting with political leaders, including chief negotiator Abdullah Abdullah, who had just returned from talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. Mr. Ghani asked the foreign ministry for his passport, and speculation swirled that the Afghan president would resign.

Mr. Biden on that Thursday discussed Afghanistan and other national security matters with his intelligence team. He returned early in the afternoon to his home in Wilmington, Del., to continue an end-of-summer getaway.

Shortly after the president’s departure, State Department spokesman Ned Price announced that the U.S., faced with unexpectedly rapid gains by the Taliban, would dramatically scale down its embassy in Kabul and send about 3,000 troops to aid the diplomatic staff. The embassy, he said, would continue operating in the Afghan capital’s Green Zone.

Behind the scenes, Biden administration officials were devastated by the unfolding chaos in Afghanistan, and the danger the Taliban posed to Afghans who had worked for two decades alongside U.S. soldiers and diplomats as translators, fixers and drivers, among other roles.

In a call with Mr. Ghani, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin discussed what limited military support the U.S. could provide. They pressed Mr. Ghani to move quickly in talks with the Taliban, who offered a two-week transition to a new government if the Afghan president stepped down, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

On Friday, Aug. 13, Kabul was in a panic. ATMs ran out of cash. The swanky Shahr-e-Naw neighborhood filled with people who had fled the Taliban advance. Soldiers from routed units sat in roadside cafes, enjoying mango juice and ice cream, trading stories of betrayal and defeat. “The Taliban are our brothers. I would be happy if they joined the military,” said Gul Mohammad, a 25-year-old officer who had arrived from Kunduz days earlier.

Embassies in Kabul’s Green Zone started packing. On the street where the foreign minister, Mr. Atmar, lived, between the British and Canadian embassies, staffers carted away wheelbarrows of crockery and household items. Expats hauled suitcases to convoys bound for the helicopter landing zone.

In his first public remarks since the start of what would be the Afghan republic’s final week, Mr. Ghani released a two-minute video. He hinted at decisions that would follow talks with the Taliban and other politicians. He also said the government’s priority was to rebuild national security forces to preserve the past 20 years of achievements.

Safe passage

Zara went for a long swim that Friday afternoon to unwind. She wanted to make the most of the women-only pool while it was still open. “Let’s swim a little longer today because the Taliban could be here at any moment,” another pool regular told her.

“I hoped that, maybe, I could go a few more times,” said Zara, who asked to use only one name.

After her swim, Zara went to a downtown cafe, a popular hangout spot for young Afghans. She met a young man, her best friend, who wanted her help with an economics paper. They ordered two cappuccinos. Their conversation turned to the fate of Kabul. They made plans to meet again, hoping the city would hold out a few more days.

Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said in a briefing that night, “Kabul is not, right now, in an imminent-threat environment.”

On Saturday, Aug. 14, the Taliban attacked the eastern city of Jalalabad. Mr. Mohib, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, asked American officials whether they would be able to guarantee him safe passage in the embassy evacuations, a person at the meeting said. He was told his wife, a U.S. citizen, should apply on his behalf, and her request would be promptly assessed, the person said.

Mr. Ghani continued to project confidence in public. He posted pictures of himself touring military positions in the city with the defense minister. He discussed defense plans at the presidential palace with the new U.S. forces commander, Rear Adm. Peter Vasely.

Behind closed doors, Mr. Ghani said in a meeting with tribal leaders and elders from the provinces that he was prepared to resign and cede power to a transitional government. Given the Taliban’s battlefield victories, it was clear to everyone that such a government would be controlled by the Islamist movement.

Later that day, Mr. Ghani delivered the same message in a phone call with Mr. Blinken, according to senior Afghan officials. Mr. Blinken was relieved by the news and promised to work with Mr. Ghani to cement a deal with Taliban negotiators in Doha, these officials said. Mr. Ghani told Mr. Blinken he had no plans to leave Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

Taliban leaders indicated they would be ready for a two-week cease-fire to enable a traditional gathering of elders and notables, known as a Loya Jirga, to pick a new administration, a senior government negotiator said.

On that Saturday around noon, two men in Taliban-style clothes and wearing high-top sneakers favored by militants rode a motorcycle to the entrance of the Green Zone in Kabul. The man sitting behind was filming on his phone. Police at the checkpoint either didn’t see or didn’t care. Similar sightings popped up around the city.

Zara bumped into a terrified neighbor. “The Taliban are here, they are in Kabul,” she warned. Zara got dressed and hurried to the bank. “I thought, I need to withdraw money. But there was no money in the bank,” she said.

Zara went to the grocery store to buy enough rice, cheese and grains to last her and her family of seven for a week. By the time she made it to the shop there were no fresh vegetables. Kabul University, where Zara’s sister was enrolled, announced it was closed until further notice.

By the evening, the city of Mazar-e-Sharif had fallen. Messrs. Atta and Dostum, once-fearsome warlords, fled with their men across the bridge over the Amu Darya river to Uzbekistan, leaving a long convoy of SUVs, police Ford Rangers and Humvees in front of the border gates, vehicles that would be later collected by the Taliban.

Overnight, the hum of helicopters ferrying people and equipment from the American embassy to the U.S.-controlled airport continued without a break. Commercial airlines were still flying.

At 4 a.m., Zara was startled awake with good news. A friend had secured an 8:30 a.m. flight to Turkey. The catch was that she needed to show a negative Covid-19 test. By the time she got her certificate, it was too late.

Sunday morning was sunny. People formed a long line outside the central bank, the last place rumored to still have cash. “The government has betrayed the people,” said Mirwais, a Kabul teacher. “This is why I am standing here today.”

There was sporadic gunfire but no signs of a Taliban advance. Mr. Ghani posted a short, rambling video message, saying security forces were coordinating. “I assure all residents of Kabul that you,” he said, with the message ending midsentence.

At the request of Kabul’s negotiators, the Taliban, eager for a negotiated deal that would allow them to control Afghanistan without losing international recognition or aid, released a statement instructing their fighters not to enter Kabul.

Slipping away

Mr. Ghani’s chief of staff and another senior official met the president around midday in the palace, buoyed by what seemed an imminent agreement with the Taliban that would avert a battle for Kabul. Mr. Ghani complained he was tired and said he would go to his residence adjoining the palace for lunch and rest.

Mr. Mohib soon appeared at the residence as Mr. Ghani assessed warnings from his security team that a Taliban assassination squad was on palace grounds, behind the building, ready to shoot, said a person who was at the palace. No evidence of such a squad has been reported.

Around the same time, Mr. Mohib received a call from Khalil Haqqani, a Taliban leader. Everyone but you, the president, and Vice President Amrullah Saleh have made deals with us, Mr. Haqqani said. according to a senior Afghan official. The Taliban, Mr. Haqqani told Mr. Mohib, would accept only a full surrender

A presidential convoy then ferried Mr. Ghani, Mr. Mohib and a handful of close aides toward the nearby Defense Ministry. The convoy split into two groups.

Mr. Atmar, the foreign minister, had arrived earlier at the palace with Mr. Ghani’s passport. He followed one group to the Defense Ministry. Once there, he saw the president wasn’t in the vehicles and headed back to the palace, according to a senior official who spoke with him.

When Mr. Atmar arrived, he found it was abandoned. Mr. Ghani and his close aides had already boarded three armored helicopters and headed out of Afghanistan. Amid the coming-and-going of U.S. helicopters ferrying people from the American Embassy, the men had slipped away.

A person close to Mr. Ghani said that the decision to evacuate the president was taken by the head of the Presidential Guard, and that Mr. Ghani went along because he didn’t want an expected firefight in the palace to turn into a wider conflagration in Kabul.

The Afghan state, and any opportunity for a negotiated end to the war, had crumbled. Mr. Blinken, in a TV appearance, said the collapse of Afghan security forces “has happened more quickly than we anticipated.”

After word spread of Mr. Ghani’s departure, thousands of people rushed the airport. Some ministers, including Mr. Atmar, got flights.

By nightfall, looters seized abandoned police vehicles and rode through central Kabul. The Taliban’s senior leader in Doha, Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanekzai, called the head of the presidential palace’s security.

It was time, he said, to hand over the keys.

Taliban fighters entered the city, raising the white flags of their Islamic Emirate. The Afghan republic was over.

Days later, Mr. Ghani surfaced in the United Arab Emirates.

Zara remained in Kabul.

Margherita Stancati and Jessica Donati contributed to this article.

Afghanistan’s military was molded to match American operations and collapsed without U.S. air support and intelligence

By Yaroslav Trofimov

KABUL—The Afghan government outpost in Imam Sahib, a district of northern Kunduz province, held out for two months after being surrounded by the Taliban. At first, elite commando units would come once a week on a resupply run. Then, these runs became more scarce, as did the supplies.

“In the last days, there was no food, no water and no weapons,” said trooper Taj Mohammad, 38. Fleeing in one armored personnel carrier and one Ford Ranger, the remaining men finally made a run to the relative safety of the provincial capital, which collapsed weeks later. They left behind another 11 APCs to the Taliban.

As district after district fell in this summer’s Taliban offensive, without much visible support from the Afghan national army and police forces, other soldiers simply made the calculation that it wasn’t worth fighting anymore—especially if the Taliban offered them safe passage home, as they usually did.

“Everyone just surrendered their guns and ran away,” said Rahimullah, a 25-year soldier who joined the army a year ago and served in the Shahr-e-Bozorg district of northeastern Badakhshan province. “We didn’t receive any help from the central government, and so the district fell without any fighting.”

Afghanistan’s national army and police forces, theoretically numbering 350,000 men and trained and equipped at huge cost by the U.S. and Western allies, were supposed to be a powerful deterrent to the Taliban. That is one reason why President Biden, when he announced in April his decision to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan, expressed confidence in the Afghan military’s ability to hold ground.

“They’ll continue to fight valiantly, on behalf of Afghans, at great cost,” he said at the time.

The Afghan security forces have since then experienced a humiliating collapse, losing most of the country and the major cities of Kandahar and Herat in recent days. Taliban fighters on Sunday entered Kabul, freeing inmates at the city’s main prison.

President Biden said Saturday he would send approximately 5,000 U.S. troops to safely evacuate U.S. and allied personnel, a force slightly larger than the 3,000 personnel already in transit back to Afghanistan and the 1,000 already there, part of a massive effort to airlift Western diplomats and civilians as the country’s demoralized security forces offered no resistance.

This spectacular failure stemmed from built-in flaws of the Afghan military compounded by strategic blundering of the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban, meanwhile, took advantage of the U.S.-sponsored peace talks to deceive Kabul about their intentions as they prepared and executed a lighting offensive.

The Afghan army fighting alongside American troops was molded to match the way the Americans operate. The U.S. military, the world’s most advanced, relies heavily on combining ground operations with air power, using aircraft to resupply outposts, strike targets, ferry the wounded, and collect reconnaissance and intelligence.

In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the U.S. pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore. The same happened with another failed American effort, the South Vietnamese army in the 1970s, said retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who commanded the U.S.-led coalition’s mission to train Afghan forces in 2011-2013.

“There is always a tendency to use the model you know, which is your own model,” said Gen. Bolger, who now teaches history at North Carolina State University. “When you build an army like that, and it’s meant to be a partner with a sophisticated force like the Americans, you can’t pull the Americans out all of a sudden, because then they lose the day-to-day assistance that they need,” he said.

When U.S. forces were still operating here, the Afghan government sought to maximize its presence through the country’s far-flung countryside, maintaining more than 200 bases and outposts that could be resupplied only by air. Extending government operations to the most of Afghanistan’s more than 400 districts has long been the main pillar of America’s counterinsurgency strategy.

Mr. Ghani had ample warning of the American departure after the Trump administration signed the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban that called on all U.S. forces and contractors to leave by May 2021. Yet, the Afghan government failed to adjust its military footprint to match the new reality. Many officials didn’t believe in their hearts that the Americans would actually leave.

“Politically it was suicide to leave certain regions, and to concentrate on certain others, and that made the Afghan army overstretched and critically dependent on close air support for logistics, medevac and combat operations,” Afghan Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar, who previously served as national-security adviser and interior minister, said in an interview.

“We did not have enough transition time to move from that arrangement to a new arrangement, to bring back forces from areas that are difficult to defend and to concentrate on the main population centers,” he added.

When the Taliban launched their offensive in May, they concentrated on overrunning those isolated outposts, massacring soldiers who were determined to resist but allowing safe conduct to those who surrendered, often via deals negotiated by local tribal elders. The Taliban gave pocket money to some of these troops, who had gone unpaid for months.

By the time the Taliban began their assault on major population centers this month, the Afghan military was so demoralized that it offered little resistance. Provincial leaders and senior commanders replicated surrender deals struck on the local level before. The elite commando units were one exception, but they were too few in number and lacked aircraft to move them around the country.

Mr. Ghani and his national-security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, were opposed to last year’s Doha agreement and expected the Biden administration to reverse course instead of doubling down on the deal struck by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Mohib, a British-educated former ambassador with no military experience, took direct control of military operations, calling unit commanders and issuing orders that bypassed the normal chain of command, according to several senior government officials and diplomats. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

For much of the past year, the Afghan minister of defense, replaced in June by veteran anti-Taliban commander Gen. Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, was out of the country, receiving medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Ghani routinely sacked commanders. The latest chief of the army lasted less than two months.

The U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Doha allowed the Taliban to project themselves as a moderate, benevolent force just as Mr. Ghani’s political rivals in Kabul plotted to replace him with some sort of transitional administration that would facilitate a peace deal. Former President Hamid Karzai, in particular, tried to position himself as a neutral third force, frequently lashing out at Mr. Ghani and the U.S.

“The government ended up completely isolating many people,” said Hekmat Karzai, a former deputy foreign minister and a cousin of the former president. “It became a self-licking ice cream fantasy. It just talked to itself and had very senior positions led by very inexperienced people who hardly understood the reality,” he said.

“Do the troops have a reason to fight?” he asked. “I feel that the Taliban isn’t enormously strong. It’s that the government is in disarray.”

Andrew Watkins, senior analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group, a research and advocacy organization, said that there was no evidence the Taliban had increased their manpower to launch this summer’s offensive, apart from tapping some of the 5,000 insurgent detainees who had been released under the Doha agreement.

What changed between February 2020 and Mr. Biden’s withdrawal announcement was an end to American airstrikes that used to exact a heavy toll on insurgent fighters, he noted.

“The Doha agreement bought the Taliban a one year reprieve,” said Mr. Watkins. “They were able to regroup, plan, strengthen their supply lines, have freedom of movement, without fear of American bombardment.”

When the insurgents struck, after suggesting in public that they won’t attack big cities while peace talks continue, the blow was overwhelming.

“When the Kunduz province fell to the Taliban, so many soldiers were killed. We were surrounded,” said Abdul Qudus, a 29-year-old soldier who managed to make his way to Kabul in the past week. “There was no air support. In the last minutes, our commander told us that they cannot do anything for us and it’s just better to run away. Everyone left the war and escaped.”

Saeed Shah contributed to this article.

By Yaroslav Trofimov and Margherita Stancati

KABUL—Undercover Taliban agents—often clean-shaven, dressed in jeans and sporting sunglasses—spent years infiltrating Afghan government ministries, universities, businesses and aid organizations.

Then, as U.S. forces were completing their withdrawal in August, these operatives stepped out of the shadows in Kabul and other big cities across Afghanistan, surprising their neighbors and colleagues. Pulling their weapons from hiding, they helped the Taliban rapidly seize control from the inside.

The pivotal role played by these clandestine cells is becoming apparent only now, three months after the U.S. pullout. At the time, Afghan cities fell one after another like dominoes with little resistance from the American-backed government’s troops. Kabul collapsed in a matter of hours, with hardly a shot fired.

“We had agents in every organization and department,” boasted Mawlawi Mohammad Salim Saad, a senior Taliban leader who directed suicide-bombing operations and assassinations inside the Afghan capital before its fall. “The units we had already present in Kabul took control of the strategic locations.”

Mr. Saad’s men belong to the so-called Badri force of the Haqqani network, a part of the Taliban that is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. because of its links to al Qaeda. Sitting before a bank of closed-circuit TV monitors in the Kabul airport security command center, which he now oversees, he said, “We had people even in the office that I am occupying today.”

The 20-year war in Afghanistan was often seen as a fight between bands of Taliban insurgents—bearded men operating from mountain hide-outs—and Afghan and U.S. forces struggling to control rural terrain. The endgame, however, was won by a large underground network of urban operatives.

On Aug. 15, after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul, it was these men who seized the capital city while the Taliban’s more conventional forces remained outside.

Mohammad Rahim Omari, a midlevel commander in the Badri force, was working undercover at his family’s gasoline-trading business in Kabul before he was called into action that day. He said he and 12 others were dispatched to an Afghan intelligence service compound in the east of the city, where they disarmed the officers on duty and stopped them from destroying computers and files.

Other cells fanned out to seize other government and military installations and reached Kabul airport, where the U.S. was mounting a massive evacuation effort. They took control of the airport’s perimeter until better-armed Taliban troops arrived from the countryside in the morning. One agent, Mullah Rahim, was even dispatched to secure the Afghan Institute of Archaeology and its treasures from potential looters.

Mr. Omari said the Badri force had compartmentalized cells working on different tasks—armed fighters, fundraisers and those involved with propaganda and recruitment.

“Now these three types of mujahedeen have reunited,” he said. Mr. Omari himself is now deputy police chief in Kabul’s 12th District.

Their success has helped boost the influence of the Haqqanis within the overall Taliban movement. Badri was founded by Badruddin Haqqani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in 2012. It now is under the ultimate command of his brother, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is in charge of Afghanistan’s internal security as its new interior minister.

Named after the Battle of Badr that was won by Prophet Muhammad in 624, the Badri force includes several subgroups. The best known is its special-operations unit, Badri 313, whose fighters in high-end helmets and body armor were deployed next to U.S. Marines at the Kabul airport in the two weeks between the fall of Kabul and the completion of the American airlift.

Kamran, who didn’t want his surname to be used, was tasked with taking over his alma mater, Kabul University, and the Ministry of Higher Education.

A 30-year-old from Wardak province west of Kabul, he said he became a Taliban recruiter when he was pursuing a master’s degree in Arabic at the university in 2017. He estimates that, over the years, he persuaded some 500 people, mostly students, to join the insurgency. To maintain his cover, he shaved his chin, wore sunglasses and dressed in suits or jeans.

“Many of our friends who had beards were targeted,” he recalled. “I was above suspicion. While many of our low-ranking friends were arrested, I wasn’t. Even though I was their leader.”

Many of his acquaintances—former classmates, teachers and guards—first realized he was a member of the Taliban when he showed up with a gun on Aug. 15, he said. “Many employees of the ministry and the entire staff of the university knew me. They were surprised to see me,” said Kamran, whose new job is head of security for Kabul’s several universities.

Kamran has since adopted the Taliban’s trademark look: a black turban, a white shalwar kameez and a long beard. As for his suits and jeans, they are gathering dust in his closet. “Those aren’t our traditional outfits,” he said. “I don’t think I will have to wear them again.”

Similar Taliban cells operated in other major Afghan cities. In Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest metropolis, university lecturer Ahmad Wali Haqmal said he repeatedly asked Taliban leaders for permission to join the armed struggle against the U.S.-backed government after he completed his bachelor’s degree in Shariah law.

“I was ready to take the AK-47 and go because no Afghan can tolerate the invasion of their country,” he recalled. “But then our elders told us no, don’t come here, stay over there, work in the universities because these are also our people and the media and the world are deceiving them about us.”

The Taliban sent Mr. Haqmal to India to earn a master’s degree in human rights from Aligarh Muslim University, he said. When he returned to Kandahar, he was focused on recruitment and propaganda for the Taliban. After the fall of Kabul, he became the chief spokesman for the Taliban-run finance ministry.

Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghan lawyer, said she had long been suspicious about a man who worked alongside her at a fortified compound, Camp Baron near the Kabul airport, that hosted offices for development projects funded by the U.S. and other Western countries.

But it wasn’t until the day after the fall of Kabul—when the man appeared on television clutching a Kalashnikov rifle—that she discovered he was in fact a Taliban commander. “I was shocked,” said Ms. Abbasi, who is now based in London.

The commander, Assad Massoud Kohistani, said in an interview with CNN that women should cover their faces.

A person familiar with Mr. Kohistani’s employment history said he worked for a USAID-funded irrigation project and was previously employed by a United Nations agency as a finance officer. The U.S. Agency for International Development, asked about Mr. Kohistani, said it subjects its Afghan programs to counterterrorism partner vetting.

Run by Westerners, Camp Baron included a hotel with a restaurant that openly served beer and other alcoholic drinks. Ms. Abbasi, like many female colleagues working at Camp Baron, wore a loose head scarf in the office, and sometimes none at all. “I can’t imagine how angry he must have been with us,” she said.

Mr. Saad, the Badri commander, said he was shocked by his initial encounters with Kabul residents like Ms. Abbasi as he arrived to take charge at the Kabul airport at 7 a.m. on Aug. 16. Many of them screamed “You are death” at the Taliban, he recalled.

“It was painful to see Afghan women flee abroad, leaving their bags behind,” he said. “The generation of the past 20 years hadn’t seen us at all and were afraid of us.”

The group took aim at the Islamic State offshoot, earning it some support from world capitals. The Kabul airport bombings raise the specter of a longer, bloodier battle.

By Alan Cullison

Two days before he was shot dead by the Taliban, Abu Omar Khorasani, a onetime leader of Islamic State in Afghanistan, sat slumped in a dingy Afghan prison interview room, waiting for his soon-to-be executioners.

Mr. Khorasani saw the Taliban’s advance as a harbinger for change. For years both organizations had sworn to rid Afghanistan of nonbelievers.

“They will let me free if they are good Muslims,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.

When Taliban fighters seized Kabul last week, they took control of the prison, freed hundreds of inmates, and killed Mr. Khorasani and eight other members of his terror group.

Just as the Taliban has been fighting American coalition forces in Afghanistan, it has been waging a separate but parallel war against its rival Islamist group.

On one side are the Taliban, who have co-opted remnants of al Qaeda. On the other is the Afghan arm of Islamic State, known as ISIS-K, which has sought to incorporate parts of Afghanistan into a broader caliphate emanating from the Middle East.

The Taliban, assisted at times by other countries and U.S. coalition forces, were the winner in that effort, defense officials say. ISIS-K has been driven from its enclaves in Afghanistan and its fighters dispersed into hiding. There appeared to be little resistance as the Taliban swept across the country this month in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.

On Thursday, in a reminder that the battle remains bloody, two explosions ripped through the crowds surrounding Kabul airport, where the Taliban and U.S. forces had been providing security to foreigners and locals seeking to flee.

At least 90 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed, the Pentagon said. U.S. officials attributed the attacks to Islamic State’s regional affiliate. Islamic State claimed responsibility in a report posted by its Amaq news agency.

The continued presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan is one reason the Taliban could receive international support from countries, including the U.S., that view Islamic State as a profound threat.

Russia, China and Iran say they see Taliban as a mainstay of stability in Afghanistan—a reason they plan to keep their Kabul embassies open after the U.S. withdrawal.

During a news conference after Thursday’s attack, Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the U.S. was relying on the Taliban to screen Afghans as they approached the airport.

“We use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible,” he said.

When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Taliban had few allies. The organization was reviled in the West for hosting al Qaeda terrorists, and opposed by regional powers including Russia and Iran.

Behind the appearance of solidarity between the Taliban and al Qaeda was an uneasy relationship, with many Taliban resenting Osama bin Laden for using the country as an operating base starting the late 1990s.

A computer recovered by the Journal in Kabul after the Taliban were ousted in 2001 showed that al Qaeda members often looked down on their Afghans allies as illiterate and incapable of understanding the Quran. Members of the Taliban in turn blamed some in al Qaeda for exacerbating problems with the West and contributing to their country’s isolation.

The Sept. 11 attacks created new fissures as leaders of both organizations were forced into hiding. Taliban founder Mullah Omar didn’t appear to know about the attacks in advance, and his relationship with bin Laden was chilly while both were in hiding in Pakistan, said Anne Stenersen, an academic researcher of Islamism and author of the book “Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.”

After U.S. forces killed bin Laden in 2011, documents recovered from his Pakistan hideout suggest scant contact between the al Qaeda leader and Omar, she said.

The Taliban and al Qaeda forged stronger bonds on the battlefield as both fought U.S. occupation forces.

While the Taliban took years to regroup after 2001, al Qaeda launched the first successful attacks on U.S. troops in the eastern province of Ghazni in 2004, using improvised explosive devices, said one former Taliban commander who fought U.S. and government troops there.

By 2009, the groups began to merge their commands, usually with al Qaeda members embedded alongside Taliban fighter groups, the former commander said. The combined forces of the two groups waged a terror campaign against the U.S.-backed government and coalition forces through hit-and-run attacks, bombings and targeted assassinations.

The dynamic shifted as al Qaeda sought a lower profile and Islamic State rose in prominence in 2015. The new group seized territory in Syria and Iraq, and invited fighters to join to create a province of “Khorasan,” a historical region encompassing parts of Afghanistan, Iran and former Soviet states of Central Asia.

The group found devotees among disaffected Taliban and militants from Central and South Asia, some of whom volunteered for service in Syria and Iraq. Two Islamic State enclaves appeared inside Afghanistan itself; one in the eastern province of Nangarhar and another in the northern province of Jowzjan.

The arrivals weren’t welcomed by the Taliban, which viewed Islamic State as an impediment. Islamic State had more ambitious global goals, while the Taliban sought to regain control of Afghanistan and had no interest in helping Islamist groups outside the country, said Mr. Khorasani in interviews conducted shortly before his death.

“The leadership of Daesh is independent, the goals of Daesh are independent,” Mr. Khorasani said, using an alternative name for Islamic State. “We have a global agenda and so when people ask who can really represent Islam and the whole Islamic community, of course we’re more attractive.”

Other nations began to view the Taliban as a potential bulwark against Islamic State’s global ambitions.

“There was huge concern about it and suddenly there was a desire to find some common ground with the Taliban,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of security studies at Georgetown University. “People began saying maybe they were a group we could reason with.”

Russia, which still officially classifies the Taliban as a terrorist organization, opened negotiations with the group more than five years ago, according to Ivan Safranchuk, a Central Asia expert and professor at Moscow State University. The rise of Islamic State in Afghanistan “became a motive to go big with these contacts,” he said.

The U.S. has accused Russia of providing arms to the Taliban, an allegation that Russia denies. Iran also has provided arms, according to U.S. intelligence. China separately hosted a high-level Taliban delegation as recently as this year.

Mr. Khorasani said he joined ISIS-K when it opened a chapter in Afghanistan. He rose to be regional governor—its then-highest ranking member—overseeing South Asia and the Far East.

Similar to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the group in Afghanistan became infamous for grisly execution videos, attacks on civilian targets, and use of extreme violence against newly conquered locals who opposed their rule.

In Nangarhar, where Mr. Khorasani served as governor, the group executed village elders and locals by seating them blindfolded on a pile of explosives on a hillside, which it detonated. The group later circulated a video recording of the execution.

Mr. Khorasani said those executed in the video were criminals.

He said attacks by Islamic State often benefited the Taliban, despite the enmity between the groups. He noted that a prison break in Jalalabad last year, organized by Islamic State and involving four suicide bombers and 11 gunmen, set free hundreds of prisoners from both the Taliban and Islamic State.

A showdown between the Taliban and Islamic State took place in Jowzjan in 2017, Mr. Khorasani said, after a commander with Taliban ties and his fighters swore allegiance to Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They were joined by a militant Uzbek group called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Together they seized two valleys of the province and raised Islamic State flag over their statelet, Mr. Khorasani said.

The fighting that he described corresponds with U.S. accounts of the battles, in which the forces of the U.S., the Afghan government and the Taliban crushed Islamic State militants over the course of several months. Hundreds of Islamic State militants surrendered to government forces the following year.

In Nangarhar, Islamic State was similarly ground down by attacks by the U.S., Afghan government and the Taliban, Mr. Khorasani said. The U.S. dropped what is known as the Mother of All Bombs, or a MOAB, the most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S. military arsenal, to wipe out a Soviet-era cave complex controlled by Islamic State militants.

“Everyone supported the Taliban one way or another against us,” Mr. Khorasani said. “It’s no secret why they began to win.”

The U.S. said at the time that it killed more than 90 militants including several commanders in the bombing of the cave complex. Mr. Khorasani disputed that, saying the complex was evacuated at the time.

The rise of Islamic State as a new international enemy furthered the Taliban’s global diplomatic efforts, boosting a group that for years had sought to scrub itself of a terrorist taint, according to former officials of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

The U.S. offered the Taliban international recognition by opening negotiations in Doha that led to the release last year of 5,000 inmates from Afghan prisons. Many of those former detainees flocked to the battlefield, strengthening Taliban forces, former Afghan government officials said.

As part of the agreement reached in Doha, the Taliban promised to prevent militant groups from attacking the West.

Mr. Khorasani said he left Nangarhar last year as the remnants of Islamic State fighters dispersed inside Afghanistan. He was arrested by U.S. and Afghan forces in a house outside Kabul in May 2020.

A judge sentenced him to death and 800 years in prison, he said. The Taliban got to him first.

U.N. warns that 95% of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat as winter approaches

By Saeed Shah | Photographs by Joël van Houdt for The Wall Street Journal

HERAT, Afghanistan—Desperate to feed her family, Saleha, a housecleaner here in western Afghanistan, has incurred such an insurmountable debt that the only way she sees out is to hand over her 3-year-old daughter, Najiba, to the man who lent her the money.

The debt is $550.

Saleha, a 40-year-old mother of six who goes by one name, earns 70 cents a day cleaning homes in a wealthier neighborhood of Herat. Her much older husband doesn’t have any work.

Such is the starkness of deepening poverty in Afghanistan, a humanitarian crisis that is worsening fast after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, prompting the U.S. to freeze $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets and causing a halt in most foreign aid.

Already, 95% of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, which has warned that “people are being pushed to the brink of survival.” Almost the entire Afghan population of 40 million people could fall below the poverty line in coming months, according to the U.N.

Behind these statistics lie countless personal tragedies of families like Saleha’s. She and her husband used to work on a farm in the western province of Badghis, but two years ago lost that income because of fighting in the area and drought. So they borrowed money just to get food. Hoping to find employment, they ended up moving to a giant encampment of people displaced from other provinces, known as Shahrak Sabz, in Herat.

With the financial system and trade paralyzed after the Taliban takeover, prices for basic food items like flour and oil have doubled since mid-August. The lender offered early this month to write off the debt if she hands over her little girl.

They have three months to provide the money. Otherwise, Najiba will be doing household work in the lender’s home and be married off to one of his three sons when she reaches puberty. They are not sure which one. The oldest is now 6.

“If life continues to be this awful, I will kill my children and myself,” said Saleha, speaking in her tiny two-room home. “I don’t even know what we will eat tonight.”

“I will try to find money to save my daughter’s life,” added her husband, Abdul Wahab.

The lender, Khalid Ahmad, confirmed he had made the offer to the couple.

“I also don’t have money. They haven’t paid me back,” said Mr. Ahmad, reached by phone in Badghis. “So there is no option but taking the daughter.”

Following the Taliban takeover, neighboring Pakistan and Iran, where many men from this community used to work as laborers, closed their borders, bracing for a flood of refugees. All that is left as work is collecting plastic bottles and other trash to sell for recycling. Other families in the area have had to surrender children to repay debts, residents say.

Growing destitution could undermine the Taliban’s so-far solid hold on power and serve as a recruiting tool for the local branch of Islamic State, their only significant rival. A Taliban official in the west of the country said that Afghans would have to get used to a meager existence.

“We suffered for 20 years fighting jihad, we lost members of our families, we didn’t have proper food, and in the end, we were rewarded with this government. If people have to struggle for a few months, so what?” said the official. “Popularity is not important for the Taliban.”

Taliban officials have repeatedly said they welcome international aid for Afghanistan but wouldn’t compromise on their Islamic beliefs to secure assistance.

The humanitarian crisis, however, is prompting a debate within the international community over whether to condition foreign assistance on the Taliban moderating their behavior and showing more respect for the rights of women and minorities.

Afghanistan’s new health minister, a urologist appointed by the Taliban and one of the few non-clerics in the new administration, pleaded for the international community not to abandon the country.

“It is the same mother, the same child, the same patient you were previously helping. They haven’t changed,” Dr. Qalandar Ibaad said in an interview. “Governments change in all countries.”

Groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. warn that emergency humanitarian aid must be unconditional. While demanding that the Taliban allow women to study and work is important, they argue, a more urgent priority is to make sure women don’t freeze or starve to death this winter.

The U.S. and other Western nations that spent the past two decades fighting in Afghanistan have a particular responsibility, some aid officials say.

“These countries who have their fingerprints all over the sorry situation here have at least to disburse the funding we need so we can avoid people perishing in enormous numbers this winter,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which operates in more than a dozen Afghan provinces, said in an interview in Kabul. “To pause the lifesaving funding because we’re still negotiating female rights would be utterly wrong.”

Mr. Egeland, a former head of the U.N.’s emergency aid arm, said his organization wouldn’t reopen the boys schools in provinces where girls schools weren’t allowed, but it wouldn’t withhold aid that could save lives.

Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, said that donors had vowed they would judge the Taliban by its actions, but the risk of famine left them with little choice but to provide aid regardless.

“The Taliban are holding Afghans hostage and playing chicken with the international community,” she said.

Some 2,300 Afghan hospitals and clinics were dependent on foreign funding before the Taliban takeover. Just 17% of those are now fully functional, and 64% are out of essential drugs, said Richard Brennan, the regional emergency director for the World Health Organization.

International aid had also paid the salaries of tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and teachers, now struggling to get by.

In Herat, an emergency feeding center for severely malnourished babies run by the French charity Doctors Without Borders is full and has had to expand capacity. Babies are arriving with respiratory distress, dehydration, and shock. Their mothers are getting such little sustenance that they can’t produce enough milk.

At Herat Regional Hospital, the staff have threatened to quit after not having been paid for four months. The government hospital has run out of even common medicines like antibiotics and basic supplies like surgical gloves and bandages. Oxygen is in short supply. Patients have to purchase their own medicines, anesthetic and other necessities for surgeries.

“I hope we don’t go back to the situation of 25, 30 years ago, when there were basically no health facilities in this country,” said Dr. Mohammad Aref Jalali, the medical director. “We could lose everything we have achieved.”

In the orthopedic ward, Abdul Rahman, was lying on a bed with pins sticking out of his leg, where he was shot by robbers for the motorbike he was riding.  The wound had become infected and doctors told the father of seven they might now have to amputate the leg.

“If they cut off my leg, there’s no one else to provide for my family,” said Mr. Rahman, a laborer, age 37. “What will happen to my little children?”

Jalaluddin Nazari and Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article.

Three months after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, girls haven’t been allowed in public school beyond sixth grade in Kabul and other cities

By Margherita Stancati | Photographs by Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal

KABUL—A group of teenage girls filed quietly into Fawzia’s house, took off their shoes and gathered in the living room for a clandestine history lesson.

Fawzia, who asked to be identified only by her first name, talked about Afghanistan’s fabled treasure, the Bactrian Gold, and its past kings and queens. The 56-year-old teacher sees her new, secret work with teens as essential.

When the Taliban started reopening public schools in September, they banned girls from attending beyond the sixth grade. Since then, middle and high schools in a few provinces have reopened to girls, but in Kabul and most of the country they remain shut.

“If they just sit at home they will get depressed or addicted to their phones,” Fawzia said. “We need to give them hope that one day schools will reopen.”

The Taliban leadership has so far espoused a more moderate attitude toward women and girls compared with their rule in the 1990s. Taliban officials say schools for older girls will reopen in Kabul and elsewhere once appropriate gender-segregation arrangements are made.

Yet three months after the Taliban seized control of the country, many Afghans wonder if those promises to reopen schools will be kept.

“It’s clear from their past behavior how they feel about women’s education. They don’t want to empower women through education. Their goal is to keep women in their homes,” said Axana Soltan, who fled Afghanistan as a child when the Taliban were last in power and runs an NGO in the U.S. that advocates for the education of Afghan girls.

In the 1990s, Fawzia, a mother of five, tutored her eldest daughter and other children at home. She is now one of many teachers holding secret classes for teenage girls. Other teens are blending in with younger students at schools, while their teachers hope the Taliban won’t notice or care.

The willingness of parents, teachers and students to resist the de facto education ban is a measure of how much Afghanistan has changed in the past two decades. It signals there would be strong opposition, particularly in cities such as Kabul, to a return of harsh social rules imposed in the past.

The Taliban had banned television in the 1990s, but most Afghans can now access the internet, including online classes. Expectations also have changed.

“When the Taliban first came 20 years ago, the level of education in the country was very low. Many women were satisfied with basic literacy classes. Now, the education level is high,” said Farhat, 22, who asked only her first name be used. She is helping her mother, Fawzia, teach the teenage girls, including a younger sister, in their living room, but “small classes like this can’t fix the problem,” she said. “Schools must reopen.”

Pashtana Durrani, an Afghan educator, is setting up secret classes for girls in science, technology, engineering and math. “If we lose momentum there will be no female doctors, engineers, no midwives,” she said.

Around 100 teenage students in southern Afghanistan are enrolled for a mix of online and in-person teaching, Ms. Durrani said. She hopes to expand the program to other parts of the country, including where girls’ schools have reopened.

The Taliban have said they would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islam, but haven’t explained what limits they will set. Images of women outside many shops have been painted over, and women have been barred from many workplaces, including all government jobs.

“We are committed to giving girls the right to education. Islam has given them that right. But there are some issues that go against our customs and Islamic values. Once those issues are fixed, we will let girls go to school,” said Akef Muhajir, spokesman for the Taliban’s newly established Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which occupies the former ministry of women’s affairs. “We’re trying to do it as soon as possible.”

The Taliban say male teachers shouldn’t be allowed to teach female students, requiring the recruitment of more female teachers. They also say transportation must be arranged to ferry teenage girls between home and school. All that requires money the Taliban government doesn’t have. Most teachers, like other civil servants, haven’t been paid in months.

How the Taliban provides education to girls is seen as a benchmark for international assistance. The Taliban are pressing for the release of more than $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets held by the U.S.

“One of the problems regarding the reopening of girls’ schools and universities is economic,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief Taliban spokesman. “If you impose sanctions on us, you are further disrupting the process.”

Washington is committed to providing humanitarian aid to Afghanistan but is reluctant to directly support the new government unless the Taliban respect women’s rights, U.S. officials said. Legal constraints mean the frozen assets can’t be easily released, the officials said.

“We will need to find ways to continue supporting the Afghan population without benefiting the Taliban,” a State Department spokesperson said. “This won’t be easy.”

Off limits

The Taliban’s draconian treatment of women helped turn Afghanistan into a pariah state in the late 1990s. All girls were barred from education, and most jobs were off-limits to women. Women appearing in public had to be covered from head to toe and accompanied by a male guardian. Rule-breakers were beaten and detained by religious-police squads.

Fawzia, the teacher, was mostly confined at home. She recalled the time a religious-police officer berated her for not covering her face: “He asked my husband: ‘Why is your wife’s face not covered?’ I was so scared, I quickly covered my face with my head scarf.”

The Taliban lashed her husband as punishment, she said. After that, she only left her home wearing a head-to-toe blue burqa.

Fawzia learned of an undercover school for girls around that time and brought her 7-year-old daughter. “It took place in a center for Quranic studies, she said. “Nobody outside knew they actually taught English.”

While literacy rates have greatly improved in the past 20 years, Afghan girls are still behind: 40% completed primary school compared with 70% of boys, according to 2019 United Nations data. Access to education is especially limited in impoverished rural areas, where there are few schools for boys or girls.

In May, three bombs targeted a high school in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of western Kabul, killing more than 90 people, most of them teenage girls. Islamic State was suspected. The group is a foe of the Taliban and seeks to exterminate Afghanistan’s Shiite minority.

Yasamin recalled the school building shaking when the first bomb hit. The 16-year-old girl ran outside and scrambled over a wall lined with barbed wire to escape. The attack ended her desire to study. “It was my father who insisted that I return to school because my future depends on it,” she said.

The high school had reopened for a few weeks before the Taliban took control of Kabul. With the high school now closed to female students, Yasamin, who asked only her first name be used, spent her days at home until her parents discovered that some private schools were secretly enrolling teenage girls.

Nasser, 28, is the headmaster of one in a Shiite neighborhood of western Kabul. Initially, he stuck to the rules, he said: No girls beyond sixth grade. Then he started receiving calls from parents. He figured the Taliban were too busy to notice if older girls attended classes.

On Sept. 6, roughly a week after the school reopened, Nasser let families with older daughters know that the teens could return. Now, 50 girls from seventh grade to 10th grade attend, including Yasamin.

“If the Taliban find out what I am doing, they will punish me severely. But I take responsibility for my actions,” said Nasser, who asked to be identified only by his first name. “I have no fear. I want girls to continue their studies.”

Last month, two Taliban fighters responsible for security in the neighborhood knocked on the school’s gate. It turned out “they just wanted to introduce themselves,” Nasser said, and weren’t interested in looking inside.

Yasamin, a sophomore, has attended classes for more than a month. “It’s unthinkable to ban girls from education in the 21st century,” she said. “It’s a fundamental right.”

Months ago, she wanted to be a judge “because in Afghanistan we live in a society where women’s abilities are ignored and where their rights are violated every day,” Yasamin said. Under Taliban rule, she isn’t sure what she will do.

A religious school, or madrassa, in Kabul that allowed girls through the 10th grade reopened two days after the Taliban took the city. Mullah Ibrahim Barakzai, who founded and runs the school, attended by students of both Sunni and Shia sects, said he saw no reason to ask for permission.

“The students and teachers are all female. That’s why there is no issue.” he said. “We do not need to ask the Taliban for permission to pray. We do not need to ask them for permission to study the Quran. Women have the right.”

He established the madrassa three years ago with the aim of persuading conservative families to enroll their girls. The school teaches English, chemistry and physics, in addition to Islamic studies.

The Taliban are yet to revise the national school curriculum, which is expected to focus more on Afghan history and Islamic studies.

‘I said goodbye’

The last time Fawzia met her female students in a school building was on Aug. 10, five days before the fall of Kabul. Her 9th-grade students had just completed the last of their first-term exams.

“This may be the last day that you go to school because the Taliban are coming.” she recalled warning them.

Her students asked what would happen to them under the Taliban.

“Maybe they have changed, and they will let you continue your studies,” she told them. “If not, you can study at home and still learn.”

On Aug. 14, hours before the Afghan republic collapsed, Fawzia went to her school for the last time, to submit the exam papers she had graded.

“I said goodbye to my colleagues, and we promised to stay in touch,” Fawzia said. As she headed out, she said, “I looked at the school one more time and asked myself whether or not I would ever see it again.”

A few weeks later, she got a call from the dean at her school. The Taliban had ordered the teachers to start work at primary schools.

Fawzia now spends mornings teaching 7- and 8-year-old boys. Then she returns home to spend her afternoon teaching the older girls in secret.

“Studying at home is just not the same as studying in school,” her 16-year-old daughter Malahat said. “It’s not just about studying. I miss my classmates.”

Ehsanullah Amiri and Yaroslav Trofimov contributed to this article.