Kabul couple claims they lost their 7-month-old in airport chaos

Tribune Web Desk
Chandigarh, August 18

A couple in Kabul claims their 7-month-old baby went missing on Tuesday in the airport chaos that ensued for the second day since the Taliban seized power in the country, a local news agency said.

Afghanistan’s Asvaka news agency reported that it was trying to help the couple from Kabul’s PD-5 locate their missing baby. The report comes a day after reports of a baby abandoned in a plastic crate at the airport did the rounds of the social media.

Kabul airport has been a site of complete chaos as desperate Afghans try to leave the country using any available flight since the Taliban’s lightning sweep to power.

The last week saw the Taliban swiftly seize power against the struggling Afghan forces across the country, enter Kabul, and stake claim 20 years after they were overthrown by invading US forces after the September 11 attacks.  The speed of the Taliban’s power sweep and the complete collapse of the elected Afghan government has taken many in the west—especially the US and the NATO—completely by surprise. The Taliban has since been trying to project itself as moderate, promising to allow women to work and study “within the Islamic law” and asking civil servants to come back to work without the fear of reprisals.

However, many in Afghanistan, especially women, who remember the Taliban’s earlier incarnation in 1996 continue to look upon these promises with skepticism and wariness, fearing that they would likely go back to their harsh interpretation of the Sharia laws, which included forms of severe punishments—public flogging and even public executions among them.