Afghans create app that provides crisis alerts to Kabul residents amid Taliban takeover

A day before the Taliban took control of Kabul, 26-year-old Sara Wahedi, founder of the Afghan startup Ehtesab, instructed her team to take what they need from the office and be prepared to work remotely for as long as possible.  

Ethesab launched in 2020 and is like the popular American public safety app Citizen, which monitors 911 activity and sends security alerts to users in the area. Wahedi starts classes at Columbia University in the fall but the rest of the team is still in Kabul and working to keep the company alive with her support from abroad. "I told the team this is your app, you need to manage it, you need to take care of it," Wahedi told CBS News. The 20 members of the team still in Kabul are made up of software engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, and community activists. They are all under 25 and were educated in Afghanistan.