It was one o’clock in the morning outside Kabul airport and Sepehra Azami, 25, was crammed into one of seven buses carrying female Afghan students desperate to flee the country. Thousands of people thronged the streets and fear filled the air. Taliban fighters dressed in black turbans and camouflage jackets roamed around toting Kalashnikovs. Hours earlier the blast from a suicide bomb had ripped through the crowd, killing 13 US soldiers and more than 150 civilians.

Terrified families were now trying to claw their way inside vehicles, including the girls’ buses, hoping to escape. Sepehra watched as a young woman disembarked from one bus full of young students and began to beg the Taliban fighters to let them through the airport gates.