Hundreds queue for passports in bid to leave Afghanistan

KABUL: Hundreds of people braved sub-zero temperatures in Afghanistan’s capital to queue outside the passport office early Sunday, a day after the Taliban government announced it would resume issuing travel documents.
Many began their wait the previous night and most stood patiently in single file — some desperate to leave the country for medical treatment, others to escape the Islamists’ renewed rule.
Tense Taliban personnel periodically charged crowds that formed at the front of the queue and at a nearby roadblock.
“We don’t want any suicide attack or explosion to happen,” said Taliban security operative Ajmal Toofan, 22, expressing concerns about the dangers of crowding.
The local branch of the Daesh group, the Taliban’s principal enemy, killed more than 150 people in late August when citizens massed at Kabul airport in a desperate bid to leave during the early days of the new regime.
“Our responsibility here is to protect people,” Toofan added calmly, his gun pointed professionally toward the ground. “But the people are not cooperating.” He spoke to AFP as one of his colleagues pushed a man who then fell headlong just short of a coil of barbed wire.