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By Alex Crawford, special correspondent, in Kabul

The young women chatting and sipping fresh juices in a downtown cafe in Kabul are the new generation of females in Afghanistan. And they will likely be among the ones most affected if the Taliban sweep to power.
 
Marwa and Nafisa are both 20 years old.

Thousands of international troops have been present in their country for their entire lives. They cannot remember a time when there weren鈥檛 dozens of military roadblocks across their capital city. And they can probably tell you the difference between the whir of an Apache, a Blackhawk or a Chinook just as easily as quote from Khaled Hosseini or Hamida Ghafour.

They鈥檙e educated, travelled, curious and ambitious for a better life. And they鈥檙e worried the resurgence of the Taliban may well strip them of the small freedoms and strides in female empowerment that have been made in their country over the past nearly two decades.
 
Both girls are from Kabul but met whilst studying abroad at university in India, learning cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, it鈥檚 not just the pandemic which could stand in the way of their further education.

Although the Taliban hierarchy insists it has progressed and changed, there are many worries and concerns they will row back the small advancements made in female equality and opportunities in Afghanistan.
 
"Right now we have the right to go to school, and to university, to even go abroad to study. And all of us girls can go out鈥� like men鈥� and it's good," says Marwa.

"Of course, now we worry we will lose all of this if the Taliban come into power. We will lose all of these rights鈥�. to go out to cafes鈥� or even go out of our homes鈥� we may just be forced to stay home and do nothing鈥� and it's so sad."
 
Their mothers lived during a period of Taliban power when women were forced to wear all-encompassing burqas and stay at home; where girls' education was frowned upon; when females couldn't leave their homes without a male relative escorting them; and when women were publicly flogged for meeting men outside of their family.

In a dimly-lit basement near to the school, teenage girls from a Taekwondo club are being put through their paces. Their faces are shiny with sweat from their exertions.

They're delivering some pretty impressive high kicks.

But as part of their rigorous martial arts training (which many are attending having struggled past family disapproval), they're taught further skills - including what to do in the event of bombings and shootings on their way to and from school.
 
"We are used to it," 18-year-old Khatera tells us. "This is normal to us. I'm not scared for myself but I am scared about losing any of my family members."

"Because I love all my family members and I don't want them to die." Suddenly this very poised young woman, who says she's determined to be a lawyer, tears up - but steels herself from breaking down.

"I lost my cousin and my uncle in an explosion," she says. All bar one of the group has been caught up in bombings.
 
"We are scared every time we step outside the house," another says, "We don't know if we will come back alive." Yet none have been terrified into giving up their schooling.

The schools are shut right now because of COVID-19 but that doesn't mean these students have stopped learning. They're studying whatever way they can, at home or in small groups. Far from deterring these girls, the explosions seem only to have hardened their resolve.

But the possibility of a return of hard-line Taliban extremism is not just worrying women and girls. 

Anecdotally, female activists and human rights defenders are already seeing an increase in violence towards women.

I was allowed into a women's safehouse - set up in the capital and tucked away in the middle of a residential area. Inside, it offers refuge to young girls, women and their babies.

The formidable Mahbouba Seraj runs it and as we step over the threshold into the female-only environment, she's repeatedly greeted with hugs and kisses by those to which she's provided sanctuary.

Many have run away from forced marriages, beatings, rapes and lives of servitude and purgatory 鈥� and they're frantically worried this is all going to get a whole lot worse with the brand of extremism espoused by the Taliban.
 
A tiny 15-year-old tells me how her parents both died - leaving her and her younger sister to the mercy of an uncle who beat them and was forcing them both to marry.

They were spotted on a bus on the way to try to get wedding outfits. The blood running down her head attracted the attention of an older woman who started asking questions about what had happened 鈥� and then insisted on taking the girls to the shelter.

"The bravery of these girls and women," says Mahbouba Seraj. "It is actually inspiring. I once took a woman in who arrived at our door with her legs and body just black with bruises. Black. You could barely see any skin which wasn't black."

She's constantly attending to multiple issues during our visit. Some of her staff are in one of the northern towns now surrounded by Taliban fighters.

"I have to get my people out of there," she says. Her fellow workers are scrambling to find flights their colleagues can get on. "Human rights defenders will be the ones the Taliban target," she explains. "They see us as trouble makers."
 
She is furious at the Americans for deciding to pull their troops out of the country without demanding and insisting on specific conditions of the Taliban. "Good God, what on earth were they thinking?"
 
Among those she's offered refuge to is a mother and her three children.

The mother is a female activist who worked with the US's Provincial Reconstruction Teams, helping to empower women in village communities, set up schools and skill centres.

But after receiving death threats from the Taliban and accused of being an American spy, she's now fled to a safehouse with her children. "The Taliban won't let us live," she says. "I feel totally abandoned by people we thought were our partners. But when I started getting the threats, they were nowhere to be seen. They didn't answer my calls or my messages."
 
She's now living in constant fear, terrified for herself and her children, but along with those emotions there's also growing resentment and bitterness at being left behind to deal with the anarchy and chaos so many fear will follow now.