An acclaimed photojournalist who captured the hopes of women and girls after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 fears they have been ‘abandoned’ after the militants’ return to power in Afghanistan.

Suzanne Plunkett was one of the first women to enter Kabul in a media role following the US-backed invasion in the aftermath of 9/11.

Ms Plunkett, who was based in New York and working for the AP news agency, captured optimistic scenes which included girls starting school for the first time and women taking driving lessons.

The gains followed years of brutal repression by the Taliban, who are said to be re-imposing a draconian sharia code after sweeping back into power.

Ms Plunkett, who also took a series of startling images under the Twin Towers during 9/11, found women emerging from an era of brutal repression when they were largely confined to their homes and subject to stonings and executions for offences such as adultery.

‘When I went into Afghanistan there was this feeling of hope that things were changing for women,’ she said.

‘I was sent there by an editor to get photographs of women because at that point they had only sent men in and they wanted to see some faces of women who weren’t just in burkas.

‘I went in to tell those stories, such as the first day of school for girls and women learning to drive. I really felt like things were changing so it’s just devastating to see what’s happening now.’

Ms Plunkett, who is now freelance, felt a common bond with those she met and is still in touch with her translator from the time who still lives in Kabul, where a fraught and deadly evacuation is taking place at the airport ahead of the US withdrawal date on August 31.

The 51-year-old, who lives in Herts, expressed her fears for the women and girls she met as the final Western coalition troops prepare to pull out of the country following their two-decades long involvement.

‘At the time we had such fun and went around eating ice creams,’ Ms Plunkett said.

‘There was a feeling of getting to know people from other cultures and having a tonne in common with them.

‘I thought it would be like that forever but it was only a very brief window of being able to access Kabul so easily in that timeframe.

‘Now I realise there was this small window it makes me sad to think of the Afghan friends I made. It feels like they’re being abandoned.’

The storyteller was in Afghanistan between January and February 2002, returning around a year later.

Her photographs included pictures of women thrown in Kabul jail for offences such as running away from arranged marriages.

She spoke to Metro.co.uk as part of the Imperial War Museum’s 9/11: Twenty Years On programme, which includes a new exhibition and an appeal for people around the world to share their stories to better illustrate and understand the complex, history-shaping chain of events.

Ms Plunkett has donated items from her time in Afghanistan and during the 9/11 attacks – when she took a series of iconic images of the immediate aftermath as the towers fell – to the museum’s collection.

The exhibition, which features five, large-scale images taken at Ground Zero two months after the attack by renowned photographer and filmmaker Wim Wenders, opens on Saturday, September 10.

‘One of the things I did while I was out there was take pictures of young girls starting school,’ Ms Plunkett said.

‘I remember seeing how excited they were. They were eight or nine.

‘Now they would be in their 20s or 30s and I’ve been looking at the pictures and wondering where they are now.

‘I also took pictures of some of the women and children thrown in Kabul jail for leaving their husbands and other so-called love crimes and the question is whether things are going to go back to that.’

Abuses of human rights including restrictions on women’s freedoms by the Taliban have been highlighted in a UN report.

A former police officer who is in hiding has also told Metro.co.uk that she fears for her life and has ‘no future’ other than being ‘imprisoned’ at home under the country’s new rulers.

The Taliban have said that women will play a ‘very active’ role in society, albeit ‘within the limits of Islam’.

A spokesman said this week that working women must stay at home until there is new security system in place.

*For more information about the IWM’s 9/11: Twenty Years On programme and the Wim Wenders exhibition click here

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