Afghanistan crisis: All-girls robotics team safely evacuated to Qatar after Taliban takeover

A group of Afghan teenage girls who made headlines around the world for their success as a robotics team have fled to Qatar after the fall of their country to the Taliban, British broadcaster Sky News reported. The girls, aged 15 to 18, have patented some groundbreaking inventions, including a landmine detector and a low-cost ventilator made out of car parts.

Some also competed in the first World Robot Olympiad held in Washington, DC, in 2017. They were evacuated to Doha, where they now wait for a final destination to finish their education and decide their futures. The teenagers, who were all born after the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, left behind their families and life as they knew it.

Team members speak about miserable circumstances in Afghanistan

"When we came from Afghanistan it was a miserable circumstance for us," team member Nahid Rahimi told Sky. "And it was so hard for us because our family is there and our country is destroyed. Rahimi and her friends feared the worst under Taliban rule, that women and minorities would lose the hard-won rights and freedoms of recent years.

"Well, we really thought that we have to go because we didn't have any other choice," fellow student and team member Sadaf Hamidi said.

But the spokesperson for the new Taliban government, Suhail Shaheen, claimed the girls would have lost "nothing" and would only be made to wear a hijab, or headscarf. He said, "You should not impose your culture on us, and not we imposing our culture on you."

The US military reported its biggest day of an evacuation flight out of Afghanistan by far on Monday, as NATO allies scramble to evacuate thousands of their own nationals as well as Afghans who fear they'll be punished by the Taliban for having worked with Western forces.