Afghanistan’s professional class of men and women, part of a generation that came of age under the shield of the U.S. military, are weighing the danger of rapidly advancing Taliban forces. Many are packing their bags.

       Hasiba Ebrahimi is already gone. The 24-year-old actress, who embodied modern Afghanistan’s optimistic youth, was raised, like many Afghans, as a refugee in Pakistan and then in Iran. She returned to Kabul in 2014 and has since become a star in the country’s new film industry.

       In a video released in November, Ms. Ebrahimi urged young Afghan women not to lose hope: “Everything is hard, but nothing is impossible." She traveled to Australia soon after—for what she thought would be a short reunion with her New Zealand-based sister. She is still there.

       “My mom is telling me, ‘I am begging you, I love you so much, but I can’t let you come back, I can’t let you put yourself in danger,’ " Ms. Ebrahimi said from Sydney. “We have all had hope. We were thinking that we would do something out of that country, working harder and harder each day. It’s really sad to think that you don’t have any future in your own country."

       Long before the U.S. withdrawal was announced by President Biden in April, hundreds of thousands of Afghans had fled to Europe, Australia and the U.S. Now, many of the well-educated people who prospered in the new Afghanistan and hadn’t dreamed of leaving have also concluded that staying put is no longer an option.

       Even though the U.S. has said for years it would withdraw its troops, Mr. Biden’s announcement caught many Afghans by surprise. So did the meltdown of Afghanistan’s U.S.-equipped and trained security forces. Afghan soldiers surrendered en masse in recent weeks, handing over their weapons and Humvees to the Taliban, who have conquered about a third of the country’s districts since April and now surround several major cities.

       A recent U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Kabul could fall to the Taliban as soon as six months after the U.S. military pullout is completed this summer.

       Hamid Haidari was seven years old when he woke to see Taliban fighters fan into his western Kabul neighborhood in September 1996. The Afghan capital had fallen overnight, and militants soon were banging on doors and pulling men aside for execution.

       Mr. Haidari now heads the news operation for 1TV, a booming television network, one of the many new fields that have flourished in Afghanistan over the past two decades. With only a few hundred American troops remaining in the country, mostly to protect the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Haidairi said he hears the same questions from his staff: What shall we do if we wake up to see the Taliban occupy Kabul again? Shall we leave? If so, where and how?

       Mr. Haidari went to India in January after warnings of an assassination attempt by insurgents. He returned three months later and intends to stay in Kabul for as long as he can.

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       Since meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar—part of the stalled Afghan peace process—Mr. Haidari has concluded that a freewheeling TV network wouldn’t survive under the Islamist movement’s rule. The network has already pulled several journalists from Taliban-besieged cities to Kabul.

       “No one knows what will happen," Mr. Haidari said. “It’s Afghanistan. In the future, there will be bloodshed, there will be killings and maybe civil war. But if there won’t be any free media, if we shut down, no one will know what kinds of crimes will be happening in Afghanistan."

       The TV company’s owner, Fahim Hashimy, said he was looking at contingency plans, moving parts of the network to Turkey or Uzbekistan. “I am joking to my people, we need to turn into a portable TV channel, a movable TV channel, a mobile TV channel so we can keep moving around the world and keep broadcasting," he said.

       More affluent Afghans are paying thousands of dollars on the black market for visitor visas to Turkey, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—the few destinations that remain relatively accessible.

       “Even the friends who want to stay here are taking their families out because, when the war comes, children and women cannot fight and will be vulnerable," said Omar Sadr, a political scientist at the American University of Afghanistan. His backup plan is moving to India, where he was educated.

       Shafi Karimi, 26, worked in Kabul for the Dari-language service of Radio Azadi, a U.S.-funded broadcaster. In December, he was warned by an intelligence contact that militants planned to lure him into a trap using a woman calling him for help.

       Days later, he got a call from an unknown woman who asked to meet. Mr. Karimi and his wife, Sofia Sakhi, 23, fled to Turkey in late February. A month ago, they received asylum in France.

       “I’ve tried to make my life in Afghanistan, but now I have lost all my achievements. There is no hope for the young generation," said Ms. Sakhi, who was a show host on Afghanistan’s Ariana TV. She had recently launched her own fashion line of colorful dresses and coats for young women who had abandoned the Taliban-mandated burqa.

       Mr. Karimi said friends and acquaintances in the Afghan media and civil society, fearful of losing their freedom, are bombarding him for tips on how to get out, too. “They all say we can’t stay here anymore,’ he said.

       ‘They will not fear’

       Modern Kabul bears little resemblance to the city the Taliban ruled before the U.S. invasion 20 years ago. The capital city has expanded to a metropolis of nearly six million people. It is dotted by shopping malls, high-rise buildings, bowling alleys and espresso bars catering to a young Afghan generation that has grown up in a relatively liberal environment fostered by the U.S. presence.

       “This generation is fully independent," said Fazel Fazly, director-general of President Ashraf Ghani’s administration. “They will not listen, they will not fear. The Taliban cannot control them." Government forces would be able to push back against the Taliban and defend the capital, he said.

       Just like young men and women elsewhere, many in Kabul follow the same Instagram stars and music icons as young people in India or Europe. Hundreds of thousands have graduated from the city’s private and state universities. The Taliban’s austere view of Islam, while popular in many parts of the conservative countryside, threatens to wipe out their modern way of life.

       “The Taliban don’t understand this, it’s not part of their calculation that things have changed, that millions of people have received education and have different aspirations and different views," said Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s chief negotiator with the Taliban. “They are not counting this as a factor. They are only perhaps thinking of military strength."

       The Taliban have engaged in peace negotiations with the Afghan government in Doha, Qatar, since September while simultaneously seizing vast tracts of the country.

       Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said in an interview that young Kabulis who fear a Taliban takeover have been brainwashed by government propaganda. “All their basic rights will be acknowledged, there will be no change. The television and the social media, we will continue. The internet will be there, the mobile will be there," he said. “But of course the context will change, some of the programs will change. That will be based on our culture, on the demands and aspirations of our people."

       The head of the Taliban’s political office, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, last month in a statement urged Afghanistan’s young generation to remain and serve the nation instead of “heading for abroad, away from your families and children, in quest of a morsel of bread." The insurgents will be magnanimous in victory, he said, and the rights of minorities and women will be protected.

       Such assurances aren’t convincing to many Afghans. “The Taliban have not changed at all. The only change we see is that they now know how to deal with the international community," said Rahmatullah Nabil, the country’s former intelligence chief. “But with the Afghans, they have become even more brutal."

       The 20-year U.S. effort in Afghanistan had many failures. It generated corruption, creating a class of tycoons who grew wealthy from U.S. military contracts. The political system is dominated by the same ethnic warlords who confronted the Taliban in the 1990s.

       Yet for many Afghans, particularly the youth, the international presence has yielded a profound economic and social transformation, connecting them to a broader world and creating unprecedented opportunities.

       Equal opportunity

       Five years after the 2001 U.S. invasion, Masouma Tajik was 7, and her family, refugees from Afghanistan’s civil war, mustered the confidence to return from Iran to their village near the western Afghan city of Herat. She learned English and math at a new school funded by the international community. Later, Ms. Tajik won a scholarship to the American University of Afghanistan, the country’s most elite college.

       Established in 2006 and funded with U.S. government aid, the university had 50 male students and one female at the start. Women now make up 40% of its 250 graduates each year. The university, attacked by the Taliban in 2016, has operated online during the pandemic and because of security fears doesn’t plan to reopen its campus in the fall. The school also is making contingency plans to relocate to a different country should Kabul fall to the Taliban.

       “There are certainly imaginable futures in which internationally benchmarked liberal education, practicing equal opportunity and freedom of expression and inquiry, would not be welcomed within Afghanistan," said Ian Bickford, the university president.

       Ms. Tajik, a data analyst at a foreign-owned company in Kabul, makes enough money to support her parents and five siblings in their village. She said the Taliban won’t allow a woman to work in her chosen field.

       “A lot of dreams, a lot of plans, and now they’re all jeopardized. The first thing that I think about now is survival. It’s so different from just a month ago," Ms. Tajik said. Her years of study, she said, may come to nothing.

       If the Taliban take over, Ms. Tajik’s family will most likely flee to Iran. “I don’t want them to go there, because it’s not any better," she said. “But at least they will stay alive."

       Fazila Zamir, 26, also wants her parents to leave Afghanistan. Ms. Zamir, a professional musician and music teacher, was one of the first Afghan women to perform playing the rubab, the traditional string musical instrument. Together with other Afghan performers, she toured 10 foreign countries, including South Korea, Germany and China. Her friends were surprised that she always returned, she said.

       “There are no other female music teachers here, and, if I leave, nobody else will fill the gap," said Ms. Zamir, who teaches college-age women in Kabul. “Music is my life." She said she rejected several marriage proposals from suitors who wanted her to stop performing in public.

       “My family says nobody will marry me if I don’t leave music. And I say, that is not a problem, I will never leave music," she said and laughed.

       Ms. Zamir, easily recognizable from her TV appearances, said she has received death threats. The Taliban consider all music instruments un-Islamic.

       She wants to remain in Kabul as long as she can, but holds no illusions about life would be like under Taliban rule.

       “The classes will be closed," Ms. Zamir said. “They will easily find me, and my life will be in danger."

       This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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