I won’t write my real name. If needed, say “a former police officer from a southern border district.” Our outpost sat on the edge of the bazaar, by a road where freight trucks passed every morning and the road dust settled on our flag. Until early 2021, though war was near and far, a minimal order held: the Ranger pickups patrolled, our commander held a short meeting every evening, and ammunition—though scarce—arrived. After April 14, 2021, everything slowly changed; not at once—like a lamp that dims and then goes dark.
First of all, the chain of command quietly broke. The radios were more silent than alive. When we called, the answer was, “Wait, orders are coming.” Orders came less, or never. One night in June 2021, we requested support for the neighboring outpost; until morning we heard nothing. The next day when we went, we saw a “Surrendered” stamp on their gate and their men had taken a side path back to their own villages. That same day our commander said in the meeting, “The line has changed; we’ll do active defense; no unnecessary displacement.” But there was no “active” in it; we just stayed and counted: how many rounds, how many men, how many hours until the diesel for the generator ran out.
From the start of that year, the orderliness of pay had been fading. Once it didn’t come for two months, then came for one, then stopped again. A single soldier might endure, but a man with two children and house rent—when the corner grocer doubts his tab—his heart no longer stays in the outpost. On top of that, rumors spread that some in the center were making deals and that the Taliban promised if an outpost was “vacated without fighting,” they wouldn’t go after anyone. Such talk changed minds, whether true or not.
Third, the support that had been our pillar for years collapsed. Before, if we were encircled, we’d be promised air support, or at least ammunition from the center. From late June 2021 onward, those promises were empty. Once, when a brief clash flared, we ordered, for the sake of saving what we had, “three rounds per man.” Three rounds mean symbolic fighting, not real defense.
There were other signs in the bazaar. The mosque mullah came with “amnesty” letters stamped by the Taliban. He’d say if you don’t fight, no one will bother you. Shopkeepers said, “We need bread—what’s the point of you fighting?” The weekend before the district fell, we rewrote the outpost roster in the logbook and, beside each name, wrote the father’s name and the village. Then we burned extra documents—not to hide anything, but so they wouldn’t fall into anyone’s hands.
On the last night, several village elders came. They said, “You are ten men; they come from several directions. If you stay, blood will spill in the bazaar. You can leave today; tomorrow no one will come after you.” Our commander said, “We have sworn an oath.” One elder replied, “The oath is also for protecting people’s lives.” We argued for an hour. No one said, “We will fight to the last round.” No one said, “We are cowards,” either. Each of us pictured his home and children; each had heard news of other outposts falling. In the end, the commander said, “We’ll go on the condition that we hand over state weapons to the garrison, not to the bazaar.” They said, “Agreed.”
The morning we left; the bazaar wasn’t awake yet. We took the side road toward the district center. No one fired at us. There were sparrows’ chirps and our own footsteps. I looked back at the outpost: mud walls, a sheet-metal roof hot with summer, a mulberry tree by the yard. The place we had guarded for years looked that day like a shabby, ownerless hut. It wasn’t conquered, it wasn’t defeated; it just changed.
At the center, no one was waiting. The police command office was locked. We put the weapons in the armory, set the key on the desk, and each man took the road to his own village. By noon, the flag changed. No big sound, no proclamation. One color went and another came. In the afternoon, the same mullah with the same letters went to the villages and said, “This is not your business—stay calm.” That night, we were at our homes.
I don’t write this to exonerate myself. If someone asks, “Why didn’t you fight?” my answer is clear: fighting needs three things we didn’t have that day—clear orders, a reliable rear, and hope of result. We had none of them. We were a small link in a chain broken from above. Maybe if ten other outposts had stayed and fought, we would have stayed. Maybe if air support had come once, we would have believed we weren’t alone. Maybe if the provincial commander said on the radio, “I’m here,” our hearts would have been steadier. But “maybes” didn’t help us.
I learned a bitter truth that same night: collapse isn’t just on the map; it happens first in people’s minds. When the bazaar says, “Peace is better than war,” when the school empties, when the shopkeeper says, “When will you pay your debt?”, when your wife says, “Come, the child is sick,” then the outpost is no longer a redoubt; it becomes a mud-walled room you must leave so no one gets killed. Maybe this angers some, but this was our reality.
If I go back to that morning, would I make the same choice? I don’t know. Maybe if I were sure my defense would save someone’s life, I would have stayed. But that morning, our defense only put more lives at risk. We left the outpost without firing—not from fear of bullets, from fear of futility.
Publish this so no one thinks the collapse was the doing of a few people. It was collective: a sum of silences, cut-offs, amnesty letters, and long fatigue and hopelessness. We were one link in it—neither heroes nor traitors—just human beings with ten rounds, two children, and a radio that didn’t answer.
