I have spent a year helping people flee the Taliban: failure is traumatic, success bittersweet

Afghan women and children prepare to be evacuated aboard a Qatari transport plane, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, 18 August, 2021. Photograph: AP

It was past midnight on 9 August 2021, and I was immersed in writing when my phone pinged: a message from a contact at the Indian embassy in Kabul. They said the Indian mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif was evacuating and offered me a seat on the flight.

There were reports the city would collapse soon and fall to the Taliban. I had already left Mazar, but it was hard to imagine that this historic, metropolitan city could topple so easily. It was too well fortified, as I had witnessed during my recent reporting trip, with hundreds of Afghan forces patrolling its gates.