I’ve lived in the same building in Kabul since 2017. Over the years, I’ve frequently found myself staring out of its large, wide windows towards the edifices of the new high-rises that started popping up in the city’s skyline, slowly obstructing the view of the iconic TV hill. As I look out, I often think about the state of the country I was born in.
I was gazing out of these windows in the winter of 2018 when my cousin and I were deciding whether I should risk getting caught in the crossfire of an hours-long gun fight between the police and the son of a former defence minister so I could meet my friends at a birthday party they had planned for me at a Lebanese restaurant.
When a series of high-magnitude earthquakes struck the city in a single 24-hour period that same year, I stared out these windows for several nights afterwards, awakened by the sensation of phantom tremors.
On 13 August 2021, when the Taliban had taken over the provinces of Herat and Kandahar, I looked out again, fearing what would come next, but vowing to try to stay and do my job as a reporter.
Two days later, when the Taliban finally arrived in Kabul, I was too scared to look out of these windows. Even high above the ground, I was afraid that I would somehow be recognised as the journalist who had spent the prior weeks speaking to what seemed like every TV station on earth about what was happening in Afghanistan in my California-boy accent.
At the time, I could not imagine what life under an Islamic Emirate would be like. I had never experienced it before. My family left Kabul when I was four-years-old (my father by foot; my mother, my siblings, and I by bus) before going to Pakistan and then the US. I finally returned in 2011.
With Kabul plunged into a chaotic frenzy as the Taliban entered the city on 15 August three years ago, I couldn’t think of anything except for the litany of fears about what might happen next that were circling through my mind.
Now, three years later, I’ve seen something strange; something I could not even imagine was possible back then: Tens of millions of Afghans, who have lived through so much cultural and political upheaval over the decades, have found ways to adjust to life under Taliban rule – even if, in most cases, it’s because they’ve had no other choice.
Embracing the Islamic Emirate?
In many ways, today’s Islamic Emirate is not the same as the one that existed in the 1990s.
Televisions remain on. Women host TV shows, though their faces are covered by COVID masks. High-level ministers and governors agree to be interviewed on private TV channels. The cities are full of amateur YouTubers, aspiring Instagram influencers, and TikTokers – including a little boy whose father swears he is a ‘genius’ and a Taliban-allied general who famously made a video offering Iran a pitcher of water from his native Logar Province.
But some things still remain very much the same: Girls are not allowed to study beyond the sixth grade; Women are barred from most employment opportunities; Afghanistan is still in the throes of a humanitarian crisis, with 23.7 million people in need of assistance; And at least 700,000 people have been rendered jobless since 2021.
While some Taliban officials insist that these are “minor” domestic issues, the truth is that, to many Afghans inside and outside the country, they are the issues that stand between them and a more wholehearted embrace of the Islamic Emirate.
Open for business
We now find ourselves in a strange place where the Taliban insist the Islamic Emirate is open for business. In many ways, it is. But in just as many ways, it’s not.
Almost every week, there are media reports of new investments, trade, mining projects, and contracts with foreign countries and investors. Uzbekistan, Iran, the UAE, Türkiye, and of course, China, have all signed deals with Kabul.
Evidence of these developments can be seen on the streets, where foreigners — from Russia, Germany, the US, and especially China — sit with Afghans at higher-end eateries to discuss potential business ventures in English, German, Russian, and Mandarin.
Those seeking to do business in the Taliban’s Afghanistan have even found their way into the villages. When a wild pig was discovered in the rural Mossahi district of Kabul earlier this summer, a local farmer told me he would kill it and give it to the “Chinese who are here every day” to eat.
Beijing has arguably become the Islamic Emirate’s closest political and economic ally. China was the first country to send a new ambassador to Kabul after the Taliban returned to power.
As with any colonial power, Beijing has a mixed track record – at best – when it comes to investment in other countries. It’s not just regional neighbours who still maintain a ground presence, though. The EU ambassador lives in Kabul. The UK’s Doha-based charge d'affaires has made several trips to the country. Even Washington’s charge d'affaires, also based in Qatar, says that isolating the Taliban this time around would be “ruinous” for the people.
Restrictions
Beyond potential investors, visitors from across the world are also being spotted in the nation’s urban centres. Afghans are returning to their homeland, mostly to visit, for the first time in years or decades, and some international tourists are eager to visit a country now governed by a group that fought a bloody and deadly insurgency against the US-led occupation for 20 years. The vast majority of the victims of that war were Afghans themselves.
While foreign nationals are busy posting about their adventures on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, for Afghans visiting their country, their fun will always be interrupted by the undeniable realities of the Islamic Emirate’s restrictions.
When an Afghan-American family visited Kabul in June, they were excited to see land owned by a friend in Mossahi, once one of the most dangerous areas in Kabul Province. The father, sitting with a cushion placed behind his shoulder, kept raving about the view, but his wife and teenage daughter lamented that there was one view they wouldn’t be able to enjoy – Band-e Amir National Park.
The park, located in central Afghanistan, is famous for its six lakes, each a different shade of blue. In 2022, tens of thousands of families visited it. But last year, the governor of Bamiyan Province – where Band-e Amir is located – announced a ban on Afghan women and girls entering.
Workarounds
One doesn’t need to travel so far outside the capital to see the sad ironies of the Islamic Emirate’s restrictions on women.
Over the last two years, the Kabul Municipality has worked on restoring and greening the Shahr-e Naw Park, a small unkempt green space that divides the capital’s economic hub. For years, it was the domain of strung-out drug addicts, snake oil salesmen, and young men lighting up joints – all of which deterred families from visiting.
Since the renovation, though, men and boys gather at the park to read, pray, play Cricket and Football, or just lounge around. Women and girls, however, are not legally allowed to enter.
People have found ways to work around at least some of the restrictions. Girls and women are attending unofficial home schools, religious madrassas, and private language and computer courses. Female NGO leaders are securing permission for their female staff to continue to work. Owners of private businesses are still hiring women as call centre operators, waitresses, salespeople, stewardesses, receptionists, and for other positions.
But the truth is that, for the people and the international community, it’s not enough.
Last autumn, I brought up these workarounds to a Western diplomat in Doha. I wanted to show that this version of the Islamic Emirate was different from its predecessor – that there might be a semblance of hope. Her response was simple and blunt: “We go by the law, not workarounds”.
Everything seems fine, until it’s not
Upon his return to California, a relative who had spent a month travelling across Afghanistan put it simply: “There is safety. There is security. You can go anywhere you want, but there is still tension in the air. Deep down, people are still afraid of that one time when they cross the wrong one.”
By “one”, he was referring to officials and authorities who still abuse and harass people, even if there are orders from higher-ups not to do so.
And that’s just it: In the Islamic Emirate, everything seems fine, until it’s not.
Even with this underlying tension, though, people – men and women – are still trying to live their lives. Critics will say it is only in the cities where a degree of flexibility has been shown, and they’re not wrong. But what that argument, conveniently deployed now by critics of the Islamic Emirate, forgets is that that’s always been the case in Afghanistan.
During the 20 years of US-led occupation, as in the decades prior, it was undeniable that development came to the nation’s urban centres. Maybe not as much as should have, considering the US spent $36 billion on reconstruction, development, and education projects, and another $4.1 billion on humanitarian aid, over that period. But there was development.
These advances were touted by many of us as signs of progress – Afghanistan keeping up with the times. But venture even a little outside the cities and the story was, and still is, notably different.
During the US-led occupation, in the districts and villages, people lived with a constant sense of dread and fear of: drone strikes that too-often killed civilians; night raids that saw Afghan and foreign soldiers, with aggressive dogs at their sides, rampaging into homes; airstrikes that hit madrasas and hospitals; arrests on shaky grounds; and the pervasive influence and brute force of local warlords and strongmen, several of whom were considered allies of the occupying forces.
Finding a way
Most of those fears are now gone, but as in the past, those on the margins of the map remain poor and underserved. Much of the violence that stalked their lives dissipated with the end of the occupation, but hunger and lack of services are still pervasive. The fact that NGOs have had to cut their global aid budgets over the last two years has not helped.
Much is rightly made of the situation of women’s rights under the Islamic Emirate, but just in the last month we’ve seen how international aid cuts are also negatively affecting women here.
First, health officials in the Northeastern province of Badakhshan announced that World Health Organization aid cuts would force them to shut the OB-GYN department of the provincial hospital. Then, the World Food Programme said that their own aid cuts would mean 600,000 pregnant women would not be receiving assistance this summer.
We are in a situation full of paradoxes. Much has changed, and much has stayed the same. Many fears have been allayed, but new ones have taken their place. The roads have opened, but many opportunities for women to study and work have been closed down. There is an acknowledgement by the Islamic Emirate that many issues must be resolved domestically, by Afghans, but there is also little proof that people’s cries are being heard by those in power. The needs remain, but aid cuts continue.
But from up here, staring out of these big windows, it looks deceivingly like life, as ever, is finding a way.
Edited by Eric Reidy.
