The plight of women helped justify war in Afghanistan. Now they have been abandoned | Samira Shackle

Female doctors, journalists, police officers and politicians face acute danger from the Taliban

It was one of the worst phone calls I've ever received: a friend in Kabul calling on Sunday afternoon to say that armed men had just visited her house. Her voice was shaking to the extent that she sounded as if she was gasping for air. The men had intimidated her and left, and she had fled to a friend's house to hide with her children. She didn't know when they'd return, if they would find her, or when it would be possible to relocate again to somewhere farther away. I have never heard someone sound so scared.

She begged for help to escape the country; I promised I would keep trying. But options were closing all the time. Earlier that day, through a small charity, I'd managed to get my friend and her children booked on to a flight to a third country. The plan was that they'd get to safety and continue to look for a more permanent relocation. It was a brief ray of hope during a dark few days. But within hours of the booking, all commercial flights out of Kabul were cancelled.