At the end of a trip reporting on the fall of the Afghan government, Ward found the Kabul airport thronged with people desperate to leave the country. She and her crew held hands and formed a chain, but when the gate to their flight opened, the crowd closed in upon them.
"I was the last one [in line]," Ward says. "And this person on the other side just grabbed my arm and just ripped me through the door. And honestly, I think all of us were crying because it was so heartbreaking and intense and visceral."
Ward flew out of Kabul on Saturday on a U.S. Air Force flight to Doha, Qatar. There were about 300 evacuees on her flight, but she's still thinking about the people left behind: "There were little children who were howling and wailing. And you were standing there thinking: This is so wrong. Why do I get to go in? Just because I have this passport? It just feels very wrong."
Ward first spoke to the Taliban about a year and a half ago when she was granted access to a Taliban-controlled village. In her most recent trip, she covered the Afghan military in Kandahar just before it fell. Then she went to Ghazni province, where the Taliban had already taken over.
She says that reporting on the Taliban is especially challenging for female journalists.
"You're essentially invisible," she says. "They don't look at you. They don't address you. They don't talk to you. If you speak to them, they might reply to you, but they won't look in your direction."
Ward says that rural Afghans have made what she calls a "Faustian bargain" with the Taliban: "People are tired and frightened, and they just want peace."
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