Speaker 1 (00:00):
B-R-A-Z-E-N.
Nelufar (00:06):
Please note, this episode contains references to war and violence. Please take care as you listen.
It took the Taliban four tries to catch Muhammad Javed Khan. But one afternoon in September 2021, they finally succeeded. The first time they came looking for him, the fighters didn’t enter the house. Instead, they seized the family’s bulletproof car and the AK-47 guns carried by their security guards, and then left in a rush. Javed’s family had a security detail because his brother was a member of the Afghan parliament, and Javed worked as his aide.
Javed was proud to advocate for human rights, democracy and girls’ education, but the Taliban had long seen him and his brother as collaborators, part of an illegitimate government that couldn’t survive without American support, and they were eager for revenge. So when Kabul fell, Javed went into hiding. He stayed inside, and to pass the time he read novels, classics of Afghan literature. They were full of tales of family conflict and forbidden love, war crimes and unlikely heroes, and epic journeys to find freedom.
Over the next few weeks, the Taliban showed up at Javed’s house a second time, and then a third. They pounded on the doors and demanded to search the place. Javed thought he was done for, but somehow his mother managed to convince them he wasn’t home. He had no future in a country ruled by the Taliban, and it began to seem like nothing short of a crazy voyage could get him out of Afghanistan, the kind he had read about in books.
Javed had been in hiding for nearly a month when the Taliban appeared outside his family’s house again, yelling for him to come out. This time, they ignored his mother’s pleas and barreled inside. Javed could hear their heavy footsteps crashing from room to room, and he knew his luck had finally run out. The fighters wrapped a blindfold over his eyes and tied his arms behind his back. They marched him outside like a criminal and pushed him into a waiting car. Javed had heard the rumble of the engine and then his mother’s cries fading further and further into the distance. From Project Brazen and PRX this is Kabul Falling.
I’m your host, Nelufar Hedayat. This is episode six, Terrible House.
By September, the chaos of the summer was over. In Kabul, bulldozers tore down the concrete glass walls that had partitioned the city into a labyrinth of fortresses. Laborers dismantled coils of wire and hauled away beds of rubble. Shopkeepers threw out female mannequins and covered advertisements that displayed the faces of women and girls to avoid the ire of the Taliban’s morality police. Soon, the first passenger flight permitted to leave Afghanistan under the new regime, landed in Doha, Qatar. It carried more than 100 foreigners, including American, British and Canadian citizens who had been waiting to evacuate. But for tens of thousands more Afghans whose work and beliefs placed their lives in jeopardy, the nightmare continued.
The car came to a stop and Javed had heard the doors open. He had no idea where he was, but the Taliban pulled him out of the vehicle and tossed him into a cold, dark, dirty basement. For the next three days, they tortured him.
Javed (04:09):
Everyone who wanted to beat someone, they used to come in. They wanted to beat me and they beated me a lot.
Nelufar (04:16):
They interrogated him about his finances and his work in the government, punctuating each question with a slap, a punch or a kick.
Javed (04:26):
How much you are having your in your pocket, in your bank account, in your home? How much your brother have? From which intelligence country you are working with?
Nelufar (04:38):
The Taliban accused Javed of being a covert CIA agent. They tried to get him to confess to crimes he hadn’t committed, but Javed didn’t waiver. He’d served his country and was firm in his conviction that he had done nothing wrong.
Javed (04:56):
Why should I lie to you? What is the truth, I am telling you the truth?.
Nelufar (04:58):
It felt like they had a thousand questions and a thousand ways to terrorize him. Even the lowest ranking fighter became a fearsome commander when he stepped inside Javed’s cell. The Taliban screamed at him. They pounded him with their fists and their feet. They hit him in the face, leaving a sharp, lingering pain in his tooth. Javed would soon lose track of time, but it seemed like every hour another fighter appeared to dole out a fresh beating. Then after three days of constant torture, they let him go. Later, Javed learned that a group of elders from his home region had intervened using their tribal connections to request his release. During the early days of Taliban rule, with the rest of the world paying close attention, the regime didn’t want bad PR. In public, its leaders were making promises of reconciliation. They assured Afghans who had worked with the Americans or served in the government, that all would be forgiven. Here’s NBC’s Richard Engel, speaking to Zabihullah Mujahid, a top Taliban spokesperson.
Richard Engel (06:18):
Not everyone is going to be able to make it out. Will you let those people leave in the future? Can you guarantee their safety?
Zabihullah Mujahid (06:27):
[foreign language 00:06:27].
Zabihullah Mujahid (translation) (06:27):
We don’t want our countrymen to go to America. Whatever they have done in the past, we have given them amnesty. We need young educated professionals for our nation.
Nelufar (06:36):
Javed did not want to test the limits of that policy. As soon as he was released, he fled Kabul and went into hiding. He was far from alone. Thousands more Afghans were hiding across the country, moving from house to house to evade Taliban capture. After he fled Kabul, Javed traveled south to lay low in the Ghazni province where he had relatives. He did his best to blend in with other villagers. A week passed without incident, but Javed knew that he would not be safe as long as he stayed in Afghanistan. The Taliban had told him as much when they let him go. “If we see you again,” they said, “you know what will happen.” Javed took that to mean they would kill him.
One of Javed’s brothers had escaped from Afghanistan to Abu Dhabi with the help of Danna, the Israeli American journalist you met in our previous episodes. In our last episode, you heard how she helped a group of 42 Afghans escape north through to Tajikistan. And now Danna was once again busy helping several others.
Danna (07:49):
Of course, after the first evacuation, we got so many requests. I mean so many I wake up and I have hundreds of WhatsApps from people asking for help.
Nelufar (08:01):
Javed’s brother explained the situation and Danna…
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:08:04]
Nelufar (08:01):
…agreed to help. She texted Javed on WhatsApp and told him to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Danna was clear, she could not help Javed’s entire extended family. There was only room for eight people. So they had to make life or death decisions. Who would get a chance to escape and who would be left behind? Soon after, he received a message with instructions.
Javed (08:29):
And they’re saying that, “Tonight, you have a journey toward the border. You have to go to Tajikistan and from Tajikistan we have a plan for you.”
Nelufar (08:40):
Danna and her team had planned out the journey. First, his family would take a bus to Kunduz Province in Northern Afghanistan before making the last leg of the trip to the Tajik border. That night, they set out under the cover of darkness. Javed and his family traveled through the night, their bus jolting constantly over the bumpy, poorly paved roads. The group of 124 people Danna was helping to evacuate arrived just after 9:00 in the morning. She had connected Javed with a man who brought them to a temporary safe house, but he quickly realized the place was not safe at all.
Javed (09:23):
It had just the name safe house. It was not a safe house. It was a terrible house.
Nelufar (09:29):
The terrible house was a crumbling old building and it looked like nobody had lived there for a long time. But now it was stuffed with people.
Javed (09:39):
124 people in one house, just two rooms, two bathrooms and one basement.
Nelufar (09:46):
There were no beds and there was no water. The man told Javed they would only be there for two hours and then he’d take them to the border. But two hours turned into four. The terrible house was hot and airless. Javed felt dizzy. He has epilepsy and when he doesn’t get enough sleep it can trigger a seizure. He’d been awake all night.
Javed (10:08):
There was thousand of thinking and feel which was with me because I was taking the responsibility of the whole family, which was seven people.
Nelufar (10:21):
Then around 4:00 in the afternoon, Javed heard commotion from the street outside. The Taliban had found them. Javed and his family shuddered as the Taliban pounded on the door of their so-called safe house. Locals had tipped them off after seeing so many unfamiliar people in one place. Half a dozen fighters descended on the house calling for the men to come out. They demanded to know who all these travelers were. Javed had no choice but to comply.
Javed (10:54):
I give my name and my place in my state, my village.
Nelufar (11:01):
Some of the women started to cry. Outside the men stood shaking. When the Taliban figured out who had brought everyone to the house, they beat the man mercilessly. Eventually, they let the men go back inside. Javed’s baby daughter, who was just six weeks old, was burning up with a fever. His wife begged him to get help. He pleaded with the Taliban to let him go to the shop nearby and get some medicine, but they refused. Around 6:00 in the evening, as the sun was beginning to set, a group of Taliban fighters came back into the house. They beat a few of the refugees. When they got to Javed and his family, they screamed at them to get out or be killed. They hustled out of the terrible house. Javed’s wife had some distant relatives in the city who agreed to host them for the night. The head of the household offered some spare blankets and let the family rest.
Javed (11:58):
Okay okay okay you sleep, and, believe me, that was the most greatest gift in my whole life, someone gave to me.
Nelufar (12:06):
Javed laid down and finally he fell asleep. Javed awoke after 11 hours of deep slumber. After the family’s long journey and their day in the terrible safe house, he needed every minute of it. Danna had a new plan. The group would take a bus to Mazar-i-Sharif, another city in the north of Afghanistan, several hours away. From there, they would try a flight to Abu Dhabi. There was a slim window to fly out of Mazar Airport, but it seemed safe.
Danna (12:45):
A certain Taliban leader who usually is at the airport was going to be at a wedding for those two days so we had a really good chance of taking off.
Nelufar (12:53):
Meanwhile, Danna was busy dealing with another problem. There were over 100 Afghans in the group she was trying to evacuate and 44 of them did not have passports, including Javed and his family. How were they going to board a plane without passports? She’d run into the same issue with the previous group she had gotten into Tajikistan, which included the female robotics team and the cyclists. By several small miracles, Danna and her contacts had managed to cobble together a solution. It’s a bit complicated, like a lot of Danna’s evacuation stories, so stick with me here. A family friend of Danna’s was once married to the Israeli Ambassador to Washington. That woman happened to be friends with the wife of the Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. who’d been posted to D.C. at the same time.
Danna (13:42):
The former Afghan Ambassador to Washington had then become the Afghan Ambassador to Moscow and was in Moscow. Now the Taliban was in charge and he was no longer the Ambassador, but the Taliban yet hadn’t sent their own person and he was there in Moscow with the keys to the Embassy.
Nelufar (14:00):
Danna’s Afghan contacts in Moscow managed to get the passports printed for the first group to fly out of Tajikistan.
Danna (14:07):
They were all made on the very, very same day without any biometrics. They look a little flimsy but they are real passports.
Nelufar (14:16):
Danna was hoping the same playbook would allow them to evacuate the second group of Afghans. They sent all the required information to Moscow. The former Ambassador and his team printed out dozens of passports in the Embassy. Then they sent them across the Tajik border into Afghanistan. And then, on the other side of the board crossing, the Taliban confiscated the documents. Danna ran through every contact she had looking for any way to get them back. She and her team called many important people, but at the same time, they asked the Afghans they were helping if they had any contacts with low level Taliban at the border.
Danna (14:56):
We, first of all, searched high and low for really basically connections to the Taliban at the border back in Kunduz so that we could get our passports back. We were busy calling Tony Blair and the Governor of Kunduz and all that. That didn’t get us anywhere.
Nelufar (15:13):
After their bus arrived in Mazar, Javed and his family waited on tenterhooks. They were so close to finally getting out of our Afghanistan, but without passports, they were stuck. Javed was standing outside a small shop one evening several days later when Danna called. The flight she’d chartered to Abu Dhabi was leaving 36 hours later and it looked like it would be taking off without them. “Wait,” he told Danna.
Javed (15:43):
I said, “Can I try something?”
Nelufar (15:46):
Danna told Javed she had already tried everything to get their documents back from the Taliban, but she was keen to hear his plan.
Javed (15:54):
The President of Tajikistan called to the Taliban and they’re not giving. “How can you do it?”
Nelufar (16:01):
Javed knew it was a long shot but he…
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:16:04]
Nelufar (16:01):
…was the one on the ground, and he knew that he’d regret it forever if he didn’t try to get those passports.
Javed (16:11):
I said, “Okay, I’ll try,” because if I tried, don’t get it, I won’t feel bad, but if I don’t try, and I don’t get it, I will feel bad.” She said, okay.
Nelufar (16:21):
Danna agreed and Javed hung up the phone. Now it was up to him. Javed needed to get 44 passports from a Taliban leader in Kunduz. Eight of those travel documents were for his own family. He’d fled the area just a few days before, after the Taliban stormed into the terrible safe house and told him to leave. But he also had a connection to the Taliban who might be able to help.
Javed (16:57):
Even now, I can’t believe how it happened. And even if I tell you, you wouldn’t believe that how this thing can happen like this.
Nelufar (17:06):
Javed had a friend who had a relative in the Taliban and that Taliban member had a connection to Mulawe Sahar, a regional Taliban leader. So Javed called his friend for a big favor. Could you ask your relative to call Mulawe Sahar and ask him to facilitate the return of the passports. At 8 O’Clock on the night of September the 28th, the evening before the charter flight from Mazar to Abu Dhabi, Javed’s friend called with good news. The Taliban leader agreed to hand the passports over. Javed was shocked. His crazy plan had actually worked. There was one condition. After Javed collected the passports, they never wanted to see him in Kunduz again. It was an incredibly risky trip. Driving from Mazar would take between seven and eight hours overnight through rural areas, across mountains.
Javed (18:13):
Going to Kunduz, to the border, has 1000% chance to be killed.
Nelufar (18:21):
Javed’s wife pleaded for him not to take that chance. She didn’t want their infant daughter to grow up without a father. Her own father had died when she was just two months old, but Javed told her not to worry, that everything would be all right. He didn’t really believe that, but he had to say it. Javed texted Danna to let her know he was on his way. He would be traveling with another man Danna was also assisting to evacuate. His family’s passports had been confiscated, too. Javed kissed his daughter, grabbed his phone and some money and set off. As he stepped out of the house, his wife and baby were both in tears.
Javed (18:59):
My small, one-and-a-half-month-old daughter was crying. It was like a signal. Giving a signal something will happen.
Nelufar (19:08):
Javed headed to the bus station where he found a man driving a beat up old car and asked him for a ride. The guy asked Javed why he needed to travel so far in the middle of the night. Javed had made up a lie. His father had just been in an accident. The driver agreed. When they got on the road, Javed could barely see where they were going. The car’s weak headlights were of little help. The driver told Javed it would be fine. He knew each and every meter of the road, but Javed remained uneasy. He couldn’t sleep.
Javed (19:42):
Each kilometer of the road was like, “I am going to die.”
Nelufar (19:49):
Javed was scared of the Taliban, the rural area they were traveling through the mountains, even the driver. Every half hour he texted Danna with an update. Midway through the drive, around 2:00 AM, two men standing in the middle of the road, stopped Javed’s car. Even under the light of a full moon he couldn’t be sure if they were Taliban or just thieves. They asked Javed where he was heading and again, he lied about his father’s accident. The men allowed them to pass. Later, they reached a checkpoint and this time they were Taliban. They stopped the car and questioned Javed and his driver about some recent robberies in the area. Javed was terrified.
Javed (20:33):
The scaredness of the whole world came to my heart. The darkest night in my whole life was I was just experiencing in it in each and every second with fears.
Nelufar (20:42):
What would his family do if he didn’t make it back alive? At 4:30 in the morning, Javed arrived at the border. An armed Taliban guard approached him.
Javed (20:58):
He said, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Nelufar (21:01):
Javed explained he’d come to retrieve the group’s passports. The man told Javed to wait. Mulawe Sahar was asleep, but he would be up in an hour for morning prayers and Javed would join him. Javed went back to the car to try to get some rest.
Javed (21:17):
I sleep for half an hour in the car and then he knocked the window and he said, “Okay, we go, it is time for prayers.”
Nelufar (21:23):
Javed followed the Taliban guard to the mosque. His Western dress and hairstyle drew plenty of stares.
Javed (21:32):
When we came out, everyone was looking to me that who is this, with this beard and this clothes? Who is he?
Nelufar (21:39):
As prayers came to a close, Javed asked, which of the men was Mulawe Sahar, the Taliban regional leader he traveled all night to see. The guard pointed to a man with a big turban covering his head. Javed introduced himself and explained that he was the person from Mazar who had called about the passports.
Javed (21:59):
He said, “Oh, very nice. You are very smart.”
Nelufar (22:01):
But soon the exchange turned ominous.
Javed (22:05):
So he was asking directly the same question, where are you going, America? Are you doing human trafficking? How much you are taking for the passports?
Nelufar (22:13):
Javed explained that he wasn’t trying to make money off some human trafficking scheme. He only wanted to save his family. But the Taliban leader kept asking how much was Javed going to profit? Who had he met with on his journey? The leader looked Javed up and down. Javed got the sense that he didn’t like what he saw. Maybe it was his trimmed beard or his clothes or the way he talked, but he tried to keep his cool. Javed explained that the passports had been printed in the Afghan Embassy in Moscow. He didn’t want to sound like he was showing off. The Taliban didn’t like things from abroad. Well, except for Kalashnikovs, M-16’s and Humvees. But fancy cars, flashy sunglasses and Western style haircuts like Javed’s, those were for foreigners, not Afghans. And the foreigners weren’t here anymore. Mulawe Sahar looked at Javed and asked him …
Javed (23:08):
“Don’t you think you are so smart.”
Nelufar (23:12):
Javed said he wasn’t smart. He was just a man who was desperate and needed the Mulawe’s help. Mulawe Sahar repeated his conditions. Javed could have the passports, as long as he never showed his face in the province again.
Javed (23:27):
You will not be seen in the whole strait of Kunduz.
Nelufar (23:32):
It was a deal. The Mulawe called over a teenage boy and told Javed to follow him to the border post. When they got there, the person he needed to speak to was sound asleep. No, they couldn’t wake him up. Javed would just have to come back later. Javed had risked his life to make this journey. He’d prayed alongside men who resented him or maybe even wished him dead. He’d answered their questions, absorbed their abuse. He had to see his daughter again. He had to get back to Mazar. He had a flight to catch…
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:24:04]
Nelufar (24:00):
…and dozens of people were counting on him. Javed stood firm and demanded the passports. The Taliban guard taunted him. He asked Javed if he thought he was smart, just like the Mulawe had, and just like he had before, Javed said no.
Playing dumb was the best way to handle the Taliban, he decided. Otherwise, they’d give you an even harder time and ask you even more questions. Javed and the guard argued for a while. The man didn’t want to give him all of the passports. In the end, Javed convinced him to hand over nine of the 44 passports.
The man traveling with Javed was also able to secure six passports for his family. He texted Danna a picture of the passports. She started laughing. She couldn’t believe it. When she got the news, Danna was in a hotel room in Dushanbe, still working to coordinate evacuations. A staffer from IsraAid, the organization Danna partnered with, captured the moment on video.
Danna (25:05):
Javed! You are amazing.
Various (25:09):
[inaudible].
Danna (25:10):
Oh my God. Javed. I can’t believe it. I am so happy for him.
Nelufar (25:22):
He’d actually done it. The impossible thing that even the president of Tajikistan hadn’t been able to convince the Taliban to do. Javed turned the stack of passports over and over in his hand. Had he really pulled this off? Or was he about to wake up from some kind of crazy dream?
Javed (25:43):
I couldn’t believe, and I shake myself, but I might be sleeping or I might got it in sleep.
Nelufar (25:49):
Now he had to get back to Mazar and onto the airplane. There was no time to waste. He made it with just a few hours to spare. He embraced his wife and baby daughter and they got ready to go. Then at the airport, after everything he’d already been through, Javed faced yet another obstacle. The passports he received from Moscow didn’t have an official signature. The Taliban guard checking their documents wouldn’t let them through.
Javed (26:17):
And he said the passport is fake.
Nelufar (26:20):
Javed stood for over an hour, doing all he could to convince the Taliban that these were real passports. Finally, he and his family managed to get into the boarding area and squeezed onto the plane.
Javed (26:32):
The last, last seat.
Nelufar (26:35):
A realization washed over him. It was actually happening. They were finally leaving Afghanistan. The plane took off and just 45 minutes later, it touched down in Tajikistan. Javed was confused. They were supposed to be going to Abu Dhabi, where his older brother was waiting for them.
They sat on the plane for another two hours, wondering what was going on. After all that, were they going to be sent back to Afghanistan? Finally, the group was allowed to deplane and enter the Dushanbe airport. Danna was there to greet them. She spotted Javed and his family, and rushed over to give him a big hug.
Javed (27:16):
She was just shouting, “Javed, Javed! You are the champion. You did this, you did this, you did this.” She was hugging me. She was not letting me go.
Nelufar (27:27):
On the next episode of Kabul Falling.
Obaidullah (27:32):
I started my undergraduate degree, but by the time I finished my first semester, I turned to my dad and I said, “I’m going into Afghanistan. And I’m going there to fight.”
Every intractable conflict is born to a narrative, a version of the truth, right?
Nelufar (27:54):
We want to hear from you. Please get in touch via our website, kabulfalling.com, where you can send a voice message or tweet using hashtag #kabulfalling. We’ll share some of the best responses during the course of the show. Also, to support the women of Kandahar Treasure, you can buy one of their hand-embroidered scarves on our website. 100% of the proceeds will go to this women-owned collective in Afghanistan.
Kabul Falling is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX. It’s hosted by me, Nelufar Hedayat. Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, are executive producers. Sandy Smallens is the executive producer for Audiation. Our managing producer is Lucy Woods and Ireland Meacham is the producer. Susie Armitage is our co-producer and story editor. And Siddhartha Mahanta is our consulting producer. Our associate producers are Dan Xin Huang, Fatima Faizi, Francesca Gilardi-Quadrio-Curzio, and Neha Wadekar. Additional reporting was done by Nigel Walker. Our translators are Hasan Azimi and [ ]. Arson Fahim composed the original theme music. Sound design, musical scoring, and mixing by Brad Stratton. Cover design by Ryan Ho and Jane Zisman. Embroidery by Women of Kandahar Treasure. Additional audio and video by Nicholas Brennan, Megan Dean, and KK, with special thanks to Clayton Swisher. For more information on the people featured in this podcast and additional interviews, visit kabulfalling.com. Audiation.
