NEW YORK— While thousands of Afghans have fled the country on foreign planes amid the Taliban’s takeover this week, millions are left behind in rapidly deteriorating living conditions and shrinking personal freedoms, according to witnesses. 

Many are too young to remember the Taliban’s first rule that ended in 2001. In some cases, violence, the deadly work of the Taliban, is creeping closer. 

Abed, 24, told ReligionUnplugged.com he recently saw more than a dozen Taliban members beat a boy to death in his village in Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace. ReligionUnplugged has changed names of sources to protect their identities.

“People know— don’t try to step in,” he said.

Reports of alarm began Sunday as the Taliban swept into Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and President Ashraf Ghani departed the country for the United Arab Emirates. While Americans and support staff for Americans despair over a peaceful exit, this week marks the end of two decades of U.S. involvement in this war-ravaged nation. Efforts to transform Afghanistan by Western-trained security forces collapsed as Taliban fighters swiftly took city after city creating havoc in their wake. Afghan nationals are panicking over their fate.

Nageenah, 27, told ReligionUnplugged she recently saw a woman in her neighborhood in Kabul with a bullet wound in her leg. Taliban members shot a woman in the head they accused of prostitution for wearing clothes they considered immodest, and a stray bullet struck her neighbor, Nageenah said.

“The living conditions are getting worse by the minute and it is really worrying,” she said.

Jalal, 21, told ReligionUnplugged that he and his wife, 19, cannot leave their home in Khost, the largest city in Southeast Afghanistan, because the city and roads are closed, but they are desperate to flee the country. His neighbors inform him that the Taliban has begun going door to door and directly asking who is Christian, he said. Jalal and his wife converted to Christianity secretly and do not want to renounce their faith.

“They will kill me. They are checking every home,” he said. “Please help me get out of this country.”

ReligionUnplugged could not confirm whether or not the Taliban has executed anyone on these particular reported home visits, but two other sources report similar sightings of Taliban home visits and say they have asked pointedly religious questions.

Maalik, a 26-year-old university student and Afghan national in Germany, recounted stories from his relatives in Kabul about a woman executed in Jalabad for driving alone and the Taliban shooting and killing protesters for waving Afghanistan’s national flag rather than the Taliban’s.

His question to U.S. President Joe Biden: “Why have you let us down?”

On government buildings, the Taliban has replaced the national flag with their white flag of Islamic profession of faith and banned the national anthem.

“Because the flag is the identity of Afghanistan, you don’t want to lose it,” Maalik said. “You don’t want to lose it.” 

Taliban 2.0 shows signs of same extremism

The Taliban first gained control of large swaths of Afghanistan in 1995. Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 after 10 years protecting the communist government from factions of Islamic fighters, some supported by the U.S. during the Cold War. After the Soviets left, the factions fought in a civil war. In that chaos, the Taliban militants styled themselves as Afghan patriots and student soldiers of Islam fighting occupying forces. They gained a following.

From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban ruled most of the country as an “Islamic Emirate” with a harsh interpretation of the Quran, banning women from going to school or working and enforcing laws with mass executions, amputations and public floggings. A U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban from rule shortly after 9/11 for its role harboring international terrorists but the Taliban continued operating an insurgency from within and outside the country, with aims to return to power in Afghanistan. U.S. troops remained.

This week as the U.S. edged closer to their pledged Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw troops, the Taliban declared Afghanistan, for the second time, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

In recent years, American political sentiment to withdraw troops from Afghanistan had increased, leading former President Donald Trump to gradually pull out troops and initiate direct talks with Taliban representatives in Doha.

“Although the Doha agreement said that the U.S. did not recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the mere fact that it was signing an agreement with the Taliban gave them legitimacy,” said Farahnaz Ispahani, a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. and a former member of Pakistan’s parliament. “The Taliban never agreed to a transition government but the talks that bypassed the Afghan government signaled to Afghans that the government had become redundant.”

Biden assured Americans in July that a Taliban takeover was “not inevitable” and that U.S. intelligence did not think the Afghan government would collapse. His advisers are saying Biden stands by his decision despite the appearance of a disorganized withdrawal and the plight of nationals.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has repeatedly tried to assure Afghans and Western powers that this time, they will respect the rights of women — within the framework of Islam and according to their views on the Quran.

Experts say that it’s very unlikely the Taliban has changed its harsh interpretation of Islam.

“The Taliban have core beliefs that they think are derived from Islam and there is no way these beliefs have changed,” said Ispahani. “The exclusive focus on withdrawal of Western troops made the U.S. and other Western governments look for a fig leaf. That fig leaf is the notion of Taliban moderation.”

She believes the Taliban are promoting the view that they’re moderate now in hopes of securing Western aid. 

“Moderate? They have been seen spray painting over billboards with women on them; they have told women not to work or own cell phones and are against women’s education,” said Raheel Raza, a Pakistani-Canadian journalist and Munk Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. “Let’s be clear – Taliban are a terrorist entity who take their inspiration from Al Qaeda and ISIS. They are close to Hamas, who were the first ones to congratulate them.”

The so-called new Taliban are younger, more radical and technologically strong with masses of weapons they’re using against Afghans, Raza added.

“Taliban are using religion as a sham and hypocrisy,” she said, pointing out that they are violating the Quran by fighting in the month of Moharram, the first month in the Islamic calendar. 

“They just want to implement their own version of 7th Century Sharia laws. This is a classic case of Muslim Brotherhood driven political Islam which does not see any other identity except their own distorted version of Sharia.”

Afghanistan’s Secret Christians At High Risk

While the Taliban searches listservs and homes for anyone who aided the U.S. and Afghan governments, Christians and other minority faiths including Shia Muslims fear the Taliban will execute them simply for their religious beliefs. Nadine Maenza, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the Taliban’s takeover is “the worst possible development for religious minorities” and that women and minorities who remain are in “imminent danger.”

Even under the previous government’s rule, Afghan citizens were not legally permitted to convert to Christianity and Muslims who converted faced penalties like losing property, losing employment, social ostracization and even death sentences. Taliban-controlled areas have treated Christians even more harshly with public executions. The Christian persecution watch group Open Doors considers Afghanistan the second worst country in the world to be a Christian after North Korea. Precise estimates of Afghan Christians are difficult to obtain, but the U.S. State Department estimates there are only 500 to 8,000 Christians in Afghanistan. Pew data shows 90% of Afghanistan is Sunni Muslim, 9.7% is Shia, and the remaining 0.3% belong to other religions, including Sikhism, Hinduism, Christianity and others.

READ: Christian Afghans Flee Taliban And Find Safety In India

Abed secretly converted to Christianity in 2018 at a university in Kabul after questioning the role of violence in the Quran and studying the Bible with an Afghan teacher online. He said his professors promoted a view of Islam that he did not believe in.

“I asked them, in Islam, is it true and good to fight wars for jihad? They told me yes, it’s good and true,” Abed said. “I told them this war is different.”

He now leads an online church connecting Afghan Christians all around the world. He said they used to have about 70 people attending worship, but lately he stopped participating out of fear.

“Pray more. Pray a lot,” he said. “Maybe God will help the Afghan people . . . I believe if God’s kingdom comes to Afghanistan, peace will come.”

Nageenah also secretly accepted Jesus and has not told her family. She has so far avoided marrying because she wants to pursue a university degree and marry a Christian, but her uncle has pressured her to marry a man 13 years older. The marriage could mean increased protection for her in a Taliban-ruled state.

“Since the Taliban came, my uncle talks to my mother every night and wants me to marry,” she said.

Nageenah’s father worked for Americans for two years in Kandahar but did not receive approval to seek asylum for their family. He died this year.

She prays that “Afghanistan will be saved, and the thoughts and minds of the people will be rebuilt.” She prays for an end to poverty and war. And she prays for the Taliban.

“I hope that God will make all these people aware of the wrong path and the savior,” she said. 

Maalik, a Sunni Muslim, posted on Facebook on Aug. 18, asking his friends to cry out to God in desperate times for his country: “Allah, help us.”

Michael Ray Smith contributed reporting.

Michael Ray Smith is an award-winning writer and teaches for LCC International University, Lithuania, and Regent University, Virginia Beach, and writes for Religion Unplugged, Inspired magazine and other news sites. He wrote “7 Days to a Byline that Pays” among other books.

Meagan Clark is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. She has reported for Newsweek, International Business Times, Dallas Morning News, Religion News Service and several outlets in India, including Indian Express and the Wire. Her reporting won first place awards from the Evangelical Press Association and Church Press Association in 2020, and she has contributed to work that has won several awards from Editor & Publisher and Religion News Association. She is a 2022 candidate for the Masters in Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. Follow her on Twitter @MeaganKay.