Matthew Leeming

Kabul is now a city of the dead

Getty Images 
issue 18 September 2021

I lived in Kabul for nearly ten years. I had a house there for many years and I loved being there. I loved the sense of life on the edge — even at the risk of sudden death — and the extraordinary array of interesting people who visited. I later became a partner in a fuel distribution business in Kabul, with a contract to supply the jet fuel used by Nato. We supplied $2 billion worth of jet fuel, amounting to around 100,000 tons a month, giving Nato the ability to bomb the Taliban.

Several Afghans worked for me, friends as well as colleagues, and over the past few weeks I’ve been trying desperately to get them out of the country, but have come up against the brick wall of government bureaucracy. One of my old colleagues was also, for ten years, an interpreter for British forces. We were promised by the government that all such people would be given asylum in Britain.

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