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The Fall of Kabul: Despatches from Chaos
Journalist Nayanima Basu had a ringside view of the total collapse of the republic of Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban. From 8 to 17 August 2021, based in Kabul but travelling outside and talking to Afghans across the political spectrum, she sent despatches of the Taliban sweeping through the country, with provinces falling one after another.
Covering a hostile war zone, a woman all alone, she saw the fall of Kabul in real time and managed to get out on the last flight by negotiating with Taliban bosses. Basu transports us to the heart of the action with her vivid narration and precise descriptions of what was happening in Afghanistan at large and Kabul in particular.
Through her astonishing account of how she did her reporting – from asking gun-toting civilians for help to find her way back to her hotel and being chided by the hotel employees to stay safe in an iron room to being the only Indian journalist to ever interview the 'Butcher of Kabul' – Basu tells the story of not just the wreckage of the country's present but also of the contentious past that lead to it.
Covering a hostile war zone, a woman all alone, she saw the fall of Kabul in real time and managed to get out on the last flight by negotiating with Taliban bosses. Basu transports us to the heart of the action with her vivid narration and precise descriptions of what was happening in Afghanistan at large and Kabul in particular.
Through her astonishing account of how she did her reporting – from asking gun-toting civilians for help to find her way back to her hotel and being chided by the hotel employees to stay safe in an iron room to being the only Indian journalist to ever interview the 'Butcher of Kabul' – Basu tells the story of not just the wreckage of the country's present but also of the contentious past that lead to it.
207 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 21, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 27, 2025
On 15 August 2021, the Taliban captured Kabul - and thus ended Afghanistan's twenty-year tryst with democracy.
It was a democracy which was extremely fragile. The country was under occupation by the USA, and in a permanent state of war in its provinces. The facade of democracy was kept up only in the capital. The USA, which was supposed to build up the capabilities of the Afghan army and also build a stable democratic system, did nothing of the sort. They occupied the country for their own selfish ends, and when it became a losing proposition, ran away and left Afghanistan to Taliban's tender mercies.
Nayanima Basu, an Indian journalist, took the courageous (and some would say, foolhardy) decision to report on the situation from the ground. She landed in Afghanistan on the eighth of August and escaped by the skin of her teeth on the sixteenth. This is her eyewitness account of those nine tumultuous days, followed by a long epilogue on the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan.
As most journalists concentrated on the war front or the diplomatic talks between the erstwhile Afghan government and the Taliban in Doha, Nayanima made it a point to walk around Kabul and report on the human beings it was home to. Also, she took out the time to interview the top brass of the army and controversial political figures. What emerges is a rather chaotic account of an extremely chaotic time, of a country in a permanent state of churn.
Here are some vignettes.
Vegetable peddlers who "sell" interviews to reporters for dollars.
Women who run beauty parlours, clinging on to the forlorn hope that Taliban 2.0 will be better than Taliban 1.0.
A woman activist who has no illusions about the Taliban, but who prefers to stay on and fight for her rights.
Clueless Afghan soldiers, still believing that the USA would not abandon them.
The foreign guests in the Serena Hotel (where the author stayed), living in a fool's paradise, believing that there would be a last minute accord and that the Taliban will not overrun Kabul.
And last but not the least, Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood actor revered by all Afghans, whose name works as a magic mantra to open many doors.
After a week of surreal existence in the eye of the storm, Kabul capitulated without a fight. The Taliban simply overran the city. The Americans quietly turned tail and ran. And the Indian embassy, as usual, screwed up everything royally by not giving any consular assistance - as a consequence of which, Nayanima ended up running the gauntlet at the Kabul airport, trying to board an Air India flight which never took off.
Her account of that night is horrifying. As she tried to enter the airport with a friend, she found that the Taliban had shut it down to prevent people from fleeing the country. A huge crowd was surging outside, trying to get out of the country, and the Taliban fighters were circling round in their humvees and firing indiscriminately into the air, and sometimes into the crowd - at everyone, including women and children. Many parts of the airport building was bathed in blood. It was a scene out of a nightmare.
The author somehow managed to get out alive, and thankfully, the Indian embassy finally woke up and evacuated using an Indian Air Force flight, flying along with the last of the Americans. And when they landed in India, they were asked to do a photo-op with Modi's picture, as though the whole show was masterfully handled by him! This was really adding insult to injury. (I am glad that the author declined to participate.)
In the epilogue, Nayanima talks about the history of Afghanistan, and about how the current situation came about. It's extremely informative, and one gets the idea that one has not seen the last of the drama. The pot is still simmering.
***
The one picture I took away from the book was that of a nameless artist who loved his country, and tried to capture her beauty in his colours. He told the author that if the Taliban came to power, he would be killed - because art was proscribed in radical Islam. But he was sure that "even if he was killed his paintings would remain somewhere, depicting Afghanistan as a land of beauty, a land of peace."
Amen to that!
It was a democracy which was extremely fragile. The country was under occupation by the USA, and in a permanent state of war in its provinces. The facade of democracy was kept up only in the capital. The USA, which was supposed to build up the capabilities of the Afghan army and also build a stable democratic system, did nothing of the sort. They occupied the country for their own selfish ends, and when it became a losing proposition, ran away and left Afghanistan to Taliban's tender mercies.
Nayanima Basu, an Indian journalist, took the courageous (and some would say, foolhardy) decision to report on the situation from the ground. She landed in Afghanistan on the eighth of August and escaped by the skin of her teeth on the sixteenth. This is her eyewitness account of those nine tumultuous days, followed by a long epilogue on the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan.
As most journalists concentrated on the war front or the diplomatic talks between the erstwhile Afghan government and the Taliban in Doha, Nayanima made it a point to walk around Kabul and report on the human beings it was home to. Also, she took out the time to interview the top brass of the army and controversial political figures. What emerges is a rather chaotic account of an extremely chaotic time, of a country in a permanent state of churn.
Here are some vignettes.
Vegetable peddlers who "sell" interviews to reporters for dollars.
Women who run beauty parlours, clinging on to the forlorn hope that Taliban 2.0 will be better than Taliban 1.0.
A woman activist who has no illusions about the Taliban, but who prefers to stay on and fight for her rights.
Clueless Afghan soldiers, still believing that the USA would not abandon them.
The foreign guests in the Serena Hotel (where the author stayed), living in a fool's paradise, believing that there would be a last minute accord and that the Taliban will not overrun Kabul.
And last but not the least, Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood actor revered by all Afghans, whose name works as a magic mantra to open many doors.
After a week of surreal existence in the eye of the storm, Kabul capitulated without a fight. The Taliban simply overran the city. The Americans quietly turned tail and ran. And the Indian embassy, as usual, screwed up everything royally by not giving any consular assistance - as a consequence of which, Nayanima ended up running the gauntlet at the Kabul airport, trying to board an Air India flight which never took off.
Her account of that night is horrifying. As she tried to enter the airport with a friend, she found that the Taliban had shut it down to prevent people from fleeing the country. A huge crowd was surging outside, trying to get out of the country, and the Taliban fighters were circling round in their humvees and firing indiscriminately into the air, and sometimes into the crowd - at everyone, including women and children. Many parts of the airport building was bathed in blood. It was a scene out of a nightmare.
The author somehow managed to get out alive, and thankfully, the Indian embassy finally woke up and evacuated using an Indian Air Force flight, flying along with the last of the Americans. And when they landed in India, they were asked to do a photo-op with Modi's picture, as though the whole show was masterfully handled by him! This was really adding insult to injury. (I am glad that the author declined to participate.)
In the epilogue, Nayanima talks about the history of Afghanistan, and about how the current situation came about. It's extremely informative, and one gets the idea that one has not seen the last of the drama. The pot is still simmering.
***
The one picture I took away from the book was that of a nameless artist who loved his country, and tried to capture her beauty in his colours. He told the author that if the Taliban came to power, he would be killed - because art was proscribed in radical Islam. But he was sure that "even if he was killed his paintings would remain somewhere, depicting Afghanistan as a land of beauty, a land of peace."
Amen to that!
April 29, 2024
But this is one war zone where the party that wins continues to lose, as it has never been able to live a normal, stable life.”
“The Fall of Kabul-Despatches from Chaos” is the author’s on-ground report of the last days of the Republic of Afghanistan before it falls prey to the approaching army of the Taliban.
Nayanima Basu bravely goes into the war zone when the Americans are receding and the Taliban is incoming, to give an account of those harrowing days leading to the capture of Kabul and her flight to safety from a land constantly caught in a quagmire of global politics, terror and neglect.
From August 8-17 2021, Nayanima Basu is desperately trying to hold on to her dear life while documenting history unfolding before her eyes. The book narrates those fearful days when the world just watched as Afghanistan fell straight into the lap of the Taliban. What was shocking was not only the speed with which events took a turn, but also the way it all happened without a fight. The world gave up and the president eloped to safety.
The author endeavours to go crisscross across the country to record the pulse of the moment. On the day she lands in Kabul, at Serena Hotel, she encounters colleagues who laugh off the suggestion, that the country would be taken over by Taliban. And in a span of a few days, all things turn around. On the day the Taliban enters Kabul, she is interviewing Gulbuddin Hekmatayar, an interview abruptly aborted with the news of the Taliban entering Kabul.
From the moment she lands in Kabul, she is engulfed with conflicting perceptions about the fate of the country. While the official word including that of the Indian embassy is that the country will be fine with a power-sharing agreement between President Ashraf Ghani and Taliban, the ground reality was something far from different. The Doha talks were constantly being flouted as the harbinger of peace to prevail in the country. While the Taliban soldiers were confidently striding towards the capital.
But as she says on page 45, ”I was covering a war that was unstructured…..soldiers in Afghanistan were not trained.”
People moved around normally, some completely in a state of denial about the fall of the government. While, some were confident about the Taliban lurking in the corner just about to take a turn in to conquer.
“An estimated 2,70,000 Afghans had been displaced inside the country between January and July 2021, primarily because of insecurity and violence they were facing.”
The global powers came in and they went. Promises of democracy and modernization all fell wayside. When it came to the crunch, all just packed their bags and left, leaving behind a population so insecure, frightened, and terrorized.
Chapters 8 and 9 describe Nayanima’s escape to life and survival, chilling to the core and scary. I am sure, the experience must have left many scars. Because it seems dangerously exciting to be reporting from conflict zones, but it must be horrifying to be standing all alone surrounded by fear and violence not knowing whether one would make out of it alive. The moment when she was walking into the embassy on August 16, 2021, wherein she was told not to look back, or else she would be shot seems her scariest moment ever.
The epilogue –an analysis of Afghanistan post the take-over by the Taliban is straight and analytical. However, it could be broken down into smaller chapters.
“To recognize or not to recognize Taliban.“
As Nayanima Basu rightly points out, it is a catch-22 situation. You recognize; one is legitimizing the wrongs. And ignore them; they have the liberty to inflict more injustice. She strongly advocates opening up the consulate in Afghanistan for us to be present there.
The book is a tribute to her bravery and courage to defy all warnings (before she left), hurdles to reach Afghanistan, and braving the chaos defined by uncertainty, inevitability, and an abject surrender to fate.
“Roughly 15 million people go to sleep hungry every night in Afghanistan, UN’s World Food Programme says.” Was this how it was supposed to end? Is this how the country’s future will be shaped?
Book Reviews, bookreview, afghanistan, bookstagram, nonfiction, politics, history, nayanimabasu, bloomsbury, taliban, news
“The Fall of Kabul-Despatches from Chaos” is the author’s on-ground report of the last days of the Republic of Afghanistan before it falls prey to the approaching army of the Taliban.
Nayanima Basu bravely goes into the war zone when the Americans are receding and the Taliban is incoming, to give an account of those harrowing days leading to the capture of Kabul and her flight to safety from a land constantly caught in a quagmire of global politics, terror and neglect.
From August 8-17 2021, Nayanima Basu is desperately trying to hold on to her dear life while documenting history unfolding before her eyes. The book narrates those fearful days when the world just watched as Afghanistan fell straight into the lap of the Taliban. What was shocking was not only the speed with which events took a turn, but also the way it all happened without a fight. The world gave up and the president eloped to safety.
The author endeavours to go crisscross across the country to record the pulse of the moment. On the day she lands in Kabul, at Serena Hotel, she encounters colleagues who laugh off the suggestion, that the country would be taken over by Taliban. And in a span of a few days, all things turn around. On the day the Taliban enters Kabul, she is interviewing Gulbuddin Hekmatayar, an interview abruptly aborted with the news of the Taliban entering Kabul.
From the moment she lands in Kabul, she is engulfed with conflicting perceptions about the fate of the country. While the official word including that of the Indian embassy is that the country will be fine with a power-sharing agreement between President Ashraf Ghani and Taliban, the ground reality was something far from different. The Doha talks were constantly being flouted as the harbinger of peace to prevail in the country. While the Taliban soldiers were confidently striding towards the capital.
But as she says on page 45, ”I was covering a war that was unstructured…..soldiers in Afghanistan were not trained.”
People moved around normally, some completely in a state of denial about the fall of the government. While, some were confident about the Taliban lurking in the corner just about to take a turn in to conquer.
“An estimated 2,70,000 Afghans had been displaced inside the country between January and July 2021, primarily because of insecurity and violence they were facing.”
The global powers came in and they went. Promises of democracy and modernization all fell wayside. When it came to the crunch, all just packed their bags and left, leaving behind a population so insecure, frightened, and terrorized.
Chapters 8 and 9 describe Nayanima’s escape to life and survival, chilling to the core and scary. I am sure, the experience must have left many scars. Because it seems dangerously exciting to be reporting from conflict zones, but it must be horrifying to be standing all alone surrounded by fear and violence not knowing whether one would make out of it alive. The moment when she was walking into the embassy on August 16, 2021, wherein she was told not to look back, or else she would be shot seems her scariest moment ever.
The epilogue –an analysis of Afghanistan post the take-over by the Taliban is straight and analytical. However, it could be broken down into smaller chapters.
“To recognize or not to recognize Taliban.“
As Nayanima Basu rightly points out, it is a catch-22 situation. You recognize; one is legitimizing the wrongs. And ignore them; they have the liberty to inflict more injustice. She strongly advocates opening up the consulate in Afghanistan for us to be present there.
The book is a tribute to her bravery and courage to defy all warnings (before she left), hurdles to reach Afghanistan, and braving the chaos defined by uncertainty, inevitability, and an abject surrender to fate.
“Roughly 15 million people go to sleep hungry every night in Afghanistan, UN’s World Food Programme says.” Was this how it was supposed to end? Is this how the country’s future will be shaped?
Book Reviews, bookreview, afghanistan, bookstagram, nonfiction, politics, history, nayanimabasu, bloomsbury, taliban, news
November 23, 2025
Gripping, fast paced narration. However, the book lacks analytical depth, written solely from the point of view of one journalist. The author’s ideology also seeps through quietly, especially when she talks about what she perceives as India’s lack of strategy and unpreparedness to deal with the rapid Taliban advance through Afghanistan. The author soft bashes the Indian Embassy in Kabul for what she perceives as their lack of cooperation, even at one point mentioning a possible “intelligence failure” when she notices that all other embassies seem to have evacuated before the Indian evacuation. All the while, she conveniently brushes aside the fact that it was her insistence to go and stay in Kabul during those chaotic days, while being perfectly aware that her country lacks any boots on the ground and that she might be a target of locals elements as well as what she terms as “Pakistani Agents”. Equating oneself in journalistic adventurism and professionalism with Western - especially American and British - Journalists is fine, so long as it comes with a clear acknowledgement that India’s security footprint and financial largesse in Afghanistan is nowhere near those countries. In its absence, it dulls the book’s appeal by appearing to lionise the author despite what she perceives as her mother country’s diplomatic naiveté and consular apathy.
Three stars for the author’s absolute courage throughout her decision to visit Afghanistan, and the very engaging narration through most of the book.
Three stars for the author’s absolute courage throughout her decision to visit Afghanistan, and the very engaging narration through most of the book.
May 1, 2024
Wearing everyday what feels like hope
Afghanistan spent years amid the chaos
What we see as “terror” might be “the terrified”
Lense is blurred, needs to be clarified..
One day it is USSR, the other day it is USA
While the Taliban all around, country is the victim of power play
The scars of war, wounds so deep
Thousands with empty stomach, silently weep..
Afghanistan spent years amid the chaos
What we see as “terror” might be “the terrified”
Lense is blurred, needs to be clarified..
One day it is USSR, the other day it is USA
While the Taliban all around, country is the victim of power play
The scars of war, wounds so deep
Thousands with empty stomach, silently weep..
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews