Escape From Kabul: The Inside Story

Recounting the dramatic evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 after the sudden withdrawal of coalition troops, this riveting account of the heroics of the small international task force who saved the lives of ordinary Afghans from the Taliban reads like the most page-turning fiction.

I was fortunate enough to be approached by Levison Wood and Hodder books to contribute some illustrations for their recently released book. I was tasked with illustrating the Abby Gate location on the east side on Kabul National airport from an aerial view. The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. In an eerie replay of the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1842, coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan after twenty years of military campaigning. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan government and its army shocked the world, as a resurgent Taliban gathered its forces and swept across the country. Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the allies were left to the meagre mercy of the Taliban.

As the Taliban went door to door to execute 'collaborators', a small international task force set out on a daring mission to evacuate as many Afghans and their families as possible.

Drawing on a wide range of first-hand accounts - the politicians and officers who planned the trans-continental rescue, the young soldiers who were faced with the unenviable task of keeping a crowd of thousands of desperate people at bay, former interpreters and soldiers of the Afghan Special Forces who made it out - Escape from Kabul is the harrowing true story of Operation Pitting and the Kabul airlift.