‘Who will rebuild the country?’ Educated Afghans’ stay-or-go struggle.

Even some of those Afghans who knew they had to leave their homeland wrestled with a sense that by choosing exile they were betraying their country. How did they resolve that moral dilemma?

It became a regular ritual for Ayesha. As the Taliban swept across Afghanistan in early August, every day she found herself saying goodbye to another young, well-educated friend who was fleeing the country.

The day before Taliban forces took Kabul, one of those departing friends asked Ayesha when she herself would go. She grew angry as they sat in a restaurant, and said she would not leave.

“We shouldn’t abandon our country when it needs us more than any other time,” Ayesha, a university graduate, remembers telling him. “You will just be wasted in another country.

She has since changed her mind, afraid that as an educated woman under Taliban rule she will be silenced, so she is seeking a way out of the country. “This is one of the most difficult choices I ever experienced,” says Ayesha, who asked that her real name not be used for her own safety.

Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer in transitional justice at the American University of Afghanistan who comes from an Islamist political family, felt obliged to make a different choice.

“I thought that if I could reconcile the two very different worlds I belong to, then maybe Afghanistan had a chance,” says Mr. Baheer. He is staying, for now.

The lightning-quick Taliban takeover of Afghanistan prompted an unprecedented brain drain of Afghanistan’s best and brightest, as tens of thousands of them were evacuated from Kabul last month. But many of those who stayed, voluntarily or otherwise, find themselves torn between a personal desire to flee to safety and a sense of obligation to serve their country.