Since Aug. 15, Samiwa Azizi’s sleep schedule has been far from normal.

There have been many sleepless nights as he thinks about the Taliban taking control of her home country of Afghanistan. But also she is awake because her family there is only allowed to communicate to the outside world between 3 and 4 a.m. Mountain Time.

“It’s family,” Azizi said. “You have to be up and show them you support them.”

Afghans like Azizi were joined by other friends and supporters — about 100 in total — in front of the State Capitol Thursday evening to stand in solidarity with Afghanistan.

Some carried the nation’s red, green and black flag, others grasped onto signs reading “20 years of war and for what?” “Stop killing Afghans” and “Pray for Afghanistan.” 

On Sunday, the Taliban swept into Kabul after the government collapsed. Heavily armed Taliban fighters spanned across the capital.

Tom Walton of Denver was one of the non-Afghans to attend Thursday’s rally. He said he served two deployments in Afghanistan and said he had to show his support to their people.

“It’s been over a decade since I was there, but I still felt I needed to be here tonight,” Walton said. “I can’t stop thinking about the people who worked with and helped us, but now there is very little being done to help them.”

Aisha Atmar and her entire family stood on the steps of the capitol wondering “how can this be happening again?”

“It’s like the same thing is happening all over again and my parents left in the 90’s, so for them it’s like a really bad nightmare,” Atmar said.

Although each person in attendance had their stories to tell, Azizi said they all came for one reason.

“To create a healing space for everybody and bring the community together through the humanitarian side of things,” she said. “We really want to focus on the victims that are having to deal with all this chaos.”

However, not everyone in attendance wanted to only discuss the humanitarian crisis. A few attendees held signs reading “Sanction Pakistan” and yelled those words. But the rest of the crowd began yelling louder, “Long live Afghanistan.”

As they prayed for those still in Afghanistan, many had survivors’ guilt.

“You think to yourself, why are we here, but they aren’t,” Aieshah Safi of Thornton said. “We all just wish we could do more.”

And even though Azizi was pleased with Thursday’s turnout, which came shortly after heavy rains, she just wants everyone to be educated on the topic and have empathy.

“Our human hearts are all bound together with one invisible strength, so when one of us is hurting we all are hurting,” she said.

“I think that’s something we really need to give attention too, because if we stay silent and don’t raise our voices for those who can’t then nothing will change and the Afghanistan I spent my formative years in will never be the same.”