‘They’d come to kill me’: The tax reformer hunted by the Taliban and abandoned by the Britain he served

Bedlam at a Taliban-controlled checkpoint on 25 August 2021 as crowds wait to make their way towards the British-controlled entrance of Kabul airport. Photograph: Marcus Yam/EPA

Abdullah Sayyid often thinks about the moment the Taliban broke down his door, burst inside and shot his wife. The gunmen left, but would soon redouble their efforts to kill him because of his work for the British government.

Sayyid’s wife was murdered during the chaotic aftermath of Operation Pitting, the UK’s emergency mass airlift from Kabul that began on 13 August last year.