Fall of Kabul a year on: Pulitzer-winning photojournalist speaks about journey to NZ

Massoud Hossaini films anti-Taliban force positions in Balkh province last year before the fall of Kabul. Photo / Lynne O'Donnell

Today (Monday) marks one year since the Afghanistan capital city of Kabul fell back into Taliban hands after a 20-year war with the United States and its allies, including New Zealand. Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Massoud Hossaini's life was in danger, forcing him to flee on the last commercial international flight out of his home city and he is now living in Wellington under asylum. Kurt Bayer reports on a dramatic, tragic final goodbye.

Massoud Hossaini had been shot and wounded 11 times covering war. He had survived a bold assassination attempt and lost many friends and comrades. But by August 2021, he knew both his days – and his homeland's - were numbered. He was on a Taliban hit-list, with a feared death squad out to murder him. And he doubted he would survive a 12th scare.

Four days before Kabul fell, Hossaini was with Australian journalist and long-time collaborator Lynne O'Donnell, a former bureau chief for news agencies AFP and AP in Afghanistan, in the country's third-largest city of Herat.

They had been reporting on the front lines of the armed uprising against the Taliban, a rampant, resurgent force now that the US and its allied nations were withdrawing troops after two decades of occupation.

Their brave freelance reporting for Foreign Policy magazine, especially investigating sex slavery by Taliban militiamen and commanders, with appearances on BBC, CNN and other European TV stations, had already come to the attention of the hard-line extremists.

On a Taliban hit-squad death list, he snuck out of Afghanistan on the last commercial international flight on August 15, right as the city fell. Photo / Supplied

Hossaini, who gained worldwide attention when he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for a portfolio of remarkable war images including the devastating aftermath of a suicide bomb attack, had discovered they had both been named on circulating "death lists", which meant they were to be killed on sight. Shock troops group, the "Red Unit" or "Blood Unit" had reportedly been tasked with capturing them.

The 40-year-old knew they weren't empty threats - he had been in the feared group's crosshairs before.

In 2018, Hossaini survived an attempted hit when his car was ambushed and attacked on a highway outside his hometown Kabul.

And by early August last year, it was clear there was little resistance to an emboldened Taliban now the foreign forces had gone home. Hossaini had heard the Afghan Government was dissolving from within. Cities, provinces, and strategic strongholds were falling daily. The Taliban were encircling everywhere. Some of his friends had already been killed.

A US Chinook helicopter flies over the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

The city of Herat was falling. And history suggested to Hossaini that Kabul would follow.

"For the first time it made me so scared for [the future of] Afghanistan," he said.

By August 11 last year, Hossaini and O'Donnell were holed up in their Herat hotel, wondering what options they had to flee. Their original flight out had been scrapped. The usual safehouses were no longer safe.

With time running out, they knew they couldn't stick around. So they bought new plane tickets, from separate companies, and now just needed to somehow make it to the airport, venturing onto roads overrun by militant fighters.

Hossaini managed to hire a driver for the handsome sum of US$200 ($310). They crouched low in the backseat and ordered him to drive at speed and stop for nobody.

"Even if they start shooting ... if they shoot your car, we will pay for your car," Hossaini recalls.

"He was very brace and said, 'Okay I will do that'."

On August 12, running the gauntlet, doing around 150km/h, they arrived at the airport. It was a chaotic scene. The place was packed with government employees also trying to flee, but they managed to board their flight and return to Kabul.

Within three days, the capital of 4.5 million would fall back into Taliban hands. Hossaini knew the city was doomed but thought it was a few weeks away, not a matter of days.

Hossaini had earlier applied for a three-month humanitarian visa with the Netherlands. He emptied his bank account with multiple ATM visits over the next couple of days and booked a ticket out with Turkish Airlines.

By August 14, he made sure to visit his closest friends, while not telling them he was leaving – and possibly for good.

That night he set his alarm for 5am, thinking he would rise early, pack and head for the airport.

But at 1.30am his phone lit up. A friend was calling from Germany, asking if he was safe. Hossaini was puzzled.

World news was reporting that Kabul was falling to the Taliban.

He ventured outside. Bombs were falling in the west of the city, lighting up the night sky. He could hear gunshots.

"That was the first time I saw a serious war that close to my home," he said.

He phoned contacts at the Presidential Palace who told him the place was deserted. Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, an anthropologist who'd been in power since 2014, had already fled. He spoke to a close intelligence contact who started crying.

"Massoud, I have to tell you – everything is finished," the friend told him. "I'm going to burn my uniform and get rid of my weapons."

It was over.

The Presidential Palace in Kabul was taken over by the Taliban on August 15, 2021. Photo / AP

Hossaini started frantically packing. He grabbed clothes, documents, computer hard drive, laptop and trusty camera.

After an emotional send-off with crying family members, who knew he had to leave or else he would be killed, he headed for Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The streets were empty. No police or security forces. Even the mosques and bakeries were shut. Street dogs were hiding.

"It was like a ghost city," Hossaini says.

His head spinning, incredulous that his city was gone, that his life was suddenly full of turmoil, sadness and uncertainty, he picked up O'Donnell on the way. They found an empty airport with very few security officers or police, and those who were there looked terrified.

After getting boarding passes, they sailed through abandoned security posts and got onto the plane.

But they sat on the runway for 45 minutes. From his window seat, Hossaini could see the boarding gates inside the airport building becoming increasingly crowded and hostile.

"I was so upset, so emotional, and asked the flight attendant why are we not going. She said the captain says there was nobody to approve them in the control room," he recalls.

"I said, 'Go! The whole thing is finished. Taliban are inside, go!' She got the captain and we went."

As the plane accelerated down the runway, Hossaini said it felt like his whole life was flashing before his eyes. All of the conflict, bloodshed, horror and heartbreak he had witnessed over the past 20 years, his loved ones and friends, it all unfolded before him.

"It was like a person who was dying ... it was like that for me."

When the plane took off and the city grew small, he started sobbing uncontrollably.

Pulitzer prizewinning photo-journalist Massoud Hossaini is living in Wellington under asylum. Photo / Ehsan K. Hazaveh

After transiting through Istanbul, where he switched on his phone and saw Taliban militants with AK47 rifles sitting inside the Presidential Palace, he eventually made it to Amsterdam.

His worries were not over though. His visa was only short-term and he wasn't sure where he could go. He hoped for America but the process was long and uncertain.

Meanwhile, he was terrified for the safety of his family, and girlfriend, left behind. Communication was patchy. They would later be safe.

Soon after landing in Amsterdam, he saw disturbing newsreel footage showing desperate countrymen clutching to the outside of departing aircraft at Kabul airport but falling off and plummeting to their deaths.

"That again made me cry," Hossaini said.

"I felt broken. I had completely lost everything to the Taliban."

While waiting in Holland for news on his American Green Card, and his Dutch visa running out, New Zealand came to his rescue.

Out of the blue, after seeing his story on international news coverage, Associate Immigration Minister Phil Twyford got in contact with Hossaini.

Twyford offered him a new category of visa – despite Hossaini not having any links to the New Zealand Defence Force – and arrived in New Zealand in February.

But since then, he has been told his family can't join him, at least in the short term. He is here with little support and although he has enjoyed his time in Wellington, he's passing up asylum and still trying to get to the United States.

Hossaini, who last year won the William Randolph Hearst Award for Excellence in Professional Journalism, has a photojournalist job lined up and thinks he'd probably be quickly sent to cover other global conflicts, including Ukraine.

Watching his country fall back into Taliban hands has been difficult to watch for Hossaini, especially from the other side of the world.

"Everything that I had and worked for over 20 years is gone," he says, wiling away his time in Wellington.

"It's not a life – but I am alive."