President Joe Biden ordered US forces to pull out of Afghanistan in 2021, which left the country weak and vulnerable enough for Taliban forces to take over, an extremist Islamic group who remains in control to this day.
Afghanistan has a history of conflicts with Pakistan, which are entwined in the involvement of the Islamist groups al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The rise of these groups can be traced back to civil unrest following the arrival of Soviet troops in Afghanistan in 1979.
Safa Sadat, a third-year biology major and member of the Muslim Student Association, visited Afghanistan several times to visit her family who still live there, and witnessed the chaos of the fighting up close.
“We were getting lunch and then there was a bomb that went off not too far away. You could feel the shaking,” Sadat said, recalling a visit to Afghanistan in 2016.
Sadat had family who were still in Afghanistan in 2020. Some of her relatives managed to catch the last plane out of the country, and other family members who were supposed to fly out the next day were stuck in the country.
When the United States left Afghanistan, it was overrun by Taliban forces. Sadat said she had family who were visiting Afghanistan at the time for a wedding, but “just had to get out of there.”
“It’s literally like you have what’s on your back and you get on a plane,” Sadat said. “People were at the airport running onto cargo planes and grabbing onto the wheels and trying to climb in and do whatever they can to escape.”
To this day, Afghanistan and Pakistan are under the control of Taliban forces, and Sadat said visiting these countries during this time is a “humbling experience.”
“People over there are making the best of the situation,” Sadat said. “You still see people living life and kids playing outside even though so much is happening around them.”
