Hyderabad: Soon after the Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15, there was a mayhem at the Kabul airport as foreign countries started to evacuate their citizens from the war-torn country. Fearing for their lives, hundreds of Afghans also rushed to the airport hoping to escape the country. Disturbing images and videos of desperate Afghans clinging onto the US Air Force plane flooded the internet.
Many of these Afghans, who had been working there for the US, feared that the Taliban might kill them. However, the militant group sought no revenge and said that no one will be harmed.
As the situation near the Kabul airport continued to remain chaotic despite the Taliban declaring “amnesty for everyone”, a video of the group’s official addressing the Afghans surfaced on social media.
In the video, which is purportedly shot near the Kabul airport, the Taliban official urges the people to not leave the country.
Many claim that the Taliban official addressing the crowd is the Social Media head of the Taliban, General Mobeen Khan. However, we could not independently verify it.
“We are crying by looking at your condition. We see that our brothers and sisters are sleeping on the streets,” says Mobeen Khan in Dari (a local Afghan language). He then goes on to ask the desperate citizens if they had any homes and if they had a life.
Explaining the context of the video, Behestar Taher, a member of an Afghan Telegram group run by Kandahar vlogger, Farhan Hotak, said that the people were complaining about having little money and food, to which Mobeen responds by saying that it’s been the same for them, yet they never gave up.
Mobeen Khan goes on to state that nobody has it worse than himself, and claims that he doesn’t even have 1000 Afghani, and had to borrow it from somebody.
“Yesterday, the members of Taliban didn’t eat anything until evening,” the social media head claims, adding that they had to deal with the Americans with an empty stomach.
He then asks the crowd sitting under the hot sun outside the Hamid Karzai Airport, if they had any honor and dignity as they were “desperately clinging to the Americans, begging them to take you (Afghans) with them.”
“It’s up to you (Afghans) whether you want to choose the life of slavery or a life of honor,” the Taliban official remarks.
“We won’t permit the Americans here. If the US became 10 times stronger, we would still fight them. We defeated them with our old rifles” he announces.