An Afghan in Ukraine
On the evening of Aug. 14, 2021, the day before the Afghan government fell to the Taliban, Masouma Tajik stepped out onto the cool white tiles of the balcony of her friend’s threestory house and looked out over Kabul. A heavy silence had settled over the Afghan capital, usually so brimming with life and noise. Her phone was pinging with messages from friends urging her to leave the country. Tajik was just 2 years old when the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan ousted the Taliban from power, bringing an end to five years of barbaric, theocratic rule and ushering in a complicated new era of conflict, insurgency, and state-building. After 20 years of war and billions of dollars of investment, it took just a few summer weeks for the militant group to cut a swath through Afghanistan as U.S. forces packed their bags and the Afghan army evaporated. The speed of the Taliban advance caught nearly everyone off guard.
Tajik is a recent graduate of the prestigious American University of Afghanistan, where she studied software engineering and data science. She had hoped that the capital would hold out for maybe three or six months, long enough for her to renew her passport and finish her application to
