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       A U.S. Chinook helicopter flies over the city of Kabul on Aug. 15.

       Rahmat Gul/The Associated Press

       Graeme Smith covered Afghanistan as a correspondent for The Globe and Mail from 2005 to 2011. He co-wrote and presented the documentary film Ghosts of Afghanistan, which airs Sept. 8 on TVO and later on Radio-Canada and Knowledge Network

       Like a lot of foreigners who spent their professional lives in Afghanistan, I struggled to keep up with the messages in my phone this past week. Afghan friends begged for help with escaping the country. A foreign television crew was trapped at the Kandahar airport and I tried to keep them updated as they languished on the tarmac in the blazing heat, surrounded by Taliban with the security forces around them surrendering in droves.

       The other messages were from the Taliban themselves, trumpeting their victories as they seized the country. The insurgents sent me photos of their shadow governor for Kandahar embracing the hollow-eyed governor, looking stunned as he formally handed over the most important province in the south. Canadian soldiers fought for years to keep the Taliban out of Kandahar, and now the insurgents had taken the city with a handshake.

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       With some justification, the Taliban pointed out that their blitzkrieg could have been bloodier. The last time Afghan cities traded hands so quickly, as U.S. forces invaded in 2001, America’s local allies shoved Taliban prisoners into shipping containers and executed them in the desert. The Taliban’s political leadership seemed eager to avoid such brutal scenes, taking quick action in response to allegations that the Taliban killed detainees in at least two locations. Taliban spokesmen gave assurances in several languages that they did not seek revenge against their enemies. Pro-Taliban social media accounts even circulated video of a Taliban commander smacking one of their fighters in the face as he fired into the air to celebrate victory.

       “The Taliban want to completely silence the guns,” a Taliban political official told me, explaining why the insurgent commander had been strict with his own men.

       I wrote back: “For the first time in two decades, the people will sleep without the sound of gunfire.”

       Still, the silence that settled over the conquered cities was fearful, and many of my old friends were not sleeping easily. The son of a shopkeeper reached out to me because his father had regular business inside a police headquarters and had been issued an identification badge so he could get past security checks.

       After the Taliban takeover, he worried that the police badge would be a death warrant. It was useless to destroy the document, he said, because the neighbours knew about his comings and goings. There was nothing he could do except shutter his little storefront and hide, hoping the Taliban would make good on their promises to take power in a spirit of reconciliation. Rumours circulated that the Taliban would start executing people who collaborated with the previous government but nobody knew if there was any truth to the stories.

       A friend in Kabul sent me an image of a clothing store, a popular spot for women to shop for bridal dresses, where a solitary worker was putting a coat of white paint over the advertisements. He was erasing the faces and bare shoulders of the models in wedding gowns, hoping to avoid offending the rural insurgents as they seized power in a capital city that had become more liberal during years of occupation by foreign troops.

       In other places, Afghans told me about celebrations. Images of fireworks circulated on social media on the night after the Taliban captured the city of Kandahar. I can understand why some people would feel jubilant about the toppling of their government, after my years of reporting about systematic torture in Afghan jails, the marauding of pro-government militias, and other grim aspects of the conflict. The doors of the prisons broke open in recent days, and the most notorious militias disbanded.

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       Some people feel relief about the conclusion to the deadliest war in the world. As a consultant, I’m sometimes asked to write scenarios about what could happen next in Afghanistan. Until recently, the most likely answer was that the country would suffer an escalating civil war, killing tens of thousands of people each year and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. The Taliban’s abrupt victory has reduced the chances of a deeper bloodbath.

       That fact will not bring any comfort to the Afghans on the losing side of the war, or any Afghans whose dreams for their future are different from those of the Taliban. On my last visit in 2019, to film the documentary Ghosts of Afghanistan, I was struck by the deep polarization of the society. We met Afghan feminists in Kabul who claimed they would never compromise with the Taliban point of view, and we also sat down for tea with women wearing burkas in Kandahar who did not seem bothered by the prospect of the Taliban’s return. Their separate universes seemed, at the time, like they would remain on opposite sides of the battlefield. A young woman studying photography at Kabul University told us, “I don’t think these two worlds will ever come together.”

       Now she suddenly finds herself in the Taliban’s world. I hope she’s okay.

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