Escape from Kabul: how an Australia-linked group is working in the shadows to get people out
As the city of Kabul fell, Lina hid in her home with five children, gripped by fear.
Taliban fighters were moving through the capital unchecked, looking for high-value targets like her husband, an Australia-trained senior officer in the Afghan military.
Lina knew the government vehicles and weaponry at her home would immediately give them away.
But calls to her husband were ringing out. She hadn’t heard from him for days.
Finally, about 3pm, she got through.
“He picked up my call, saying only two words: ‘I’m OK’,” she says through a translator. “He said ‘you guys need to be considering about yourselves, take care of yourselves, don’t worry about me’.”
“Then the phone went off.”
With that, Lina found herself desperately alone in a resurrected Taliban state, her ties to the old government and the west putting a mark on her back.
Halfway across the world though, something remarkable was happening.
A small group of friends – Australian and Afghan military
