Indian journalist Nayanima Basu recalls a harrowing adventure in her newly-released book.
NEW DELHI—Afghans are landlocked, yet their rivers flow through some extremely rugged geography into seas in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The country’s civilizational crossroads and trans-regional trade routes are some of the oldest in humanity’s history, making it an unprecedented geopolitical flashpoint.
War, death, and destruction aren’t new to this territory. Neither are victories, defeats, extreme tragedies, as well as great escapes—a very personal thread that runs through the narratives of defeat and victory. Among the many escape stories from the mayhem that was Kabul in August 2021, the story of one female journalist stands out.
In an exclusive interview, The Epoch Times talked to Indian journalist Nayanima Basu, whose escape from the Kabul airport a few days after the Taliban’s takeover forms the narrative of her recently-released book, “The Fall of Kabul–Despatches From Chaos.”
Ms. Basu, who was then a journalist with the online Indian publication The Print, escaped from the Afghan capital just two days after incumbent President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the Taliban marched into the capital. She fled amid an unfolding human crisis, just eight days before a bomb detonated at the Kabul airport, killing 170 Afghans and 13 American service personnel.
She landed in Kabul on Aug. 8. Just over a week later, as she drove to the airport on Aug. 17, she was astonished by how the city had changed. “This is not the same Kabul I had seen when I landed, or also when I came back from Mazar-i-Sharif,” she said. “This is not the same Kabul. This is changed! What happened? Is this [what] a collapsed country looks like?”
In northern Afghanistan near its border with Uzbekistan, Mazar-i-Sharif is the country’s fourth largest city and the capital of Balkh province. Ms. Basu, who is currently the editor for foreign affairs, strategy, and national security with Indian media the ABP Network, visited Mazar-i-Sharif to report on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, as the Taliban were engaging the Afghan army in an intense gun battle on the city’s outskirts.
