Every day, thousands of people are fleeing the Taliban through the last open route out of Afghanistan. It's their last hope to escape poverty and desperation – but not everyone makes it.
Quietly, quickly and with no light: Such are the orders from the young man as they prepare to set off. A group of 40 men, women and children are gazing at him in this bare, pitch-black room – frightened, exhausted faces in the wan glow of two flashlights. Those who fall back will be left behind.
A couple of elderly and women in the group are exhausted, but are urged by the whispers of others not to give up now. Someone leaves a bag of clothes lying in the sand. The DER SPIEGEL team has to stop half a kilometer from the border, not just because of the danger that the Iranian border guards could open fire, but also because the group will be handed off to another smuggler there who is unaware that foreign journalists are accompanying his clients.
The daily exodus of thousands of people reflects the tragedy that has befallen this country. Nothing is being done to minimize the reasons people are fleeing. The Taliban may have prohibited the route across the border wall, but they have also expressly approved of a different path involving a several-day trek through the desert and across a section of Pakistan. They have even set up a fee system.
Onlookers watch the scene in silence. The man who was threatened gently tugs at the other’s beard, a gesture of conciliatory subservience."I’m going, there’s no trouble," he says before disappearing into the crowd. Almost all those who told their story to DER SPIEGEL on the previous night are part of the cortege that afternoon. Nasrullah, the tailor from Herat with his family. Ghulam Yahya, the old fruit vendor. Ali Akbar, the assiduous 17-year-old who has already learned Greek. Only a muscular floor tiler from Ghazni and a couple of other young men managed to get away, he says.
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