New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul
A large number of Taleban fighters have moved to Afghanistan’s cities since the movement’s capture of power, many of them seeing life in the city for the first time in their lifetime. These fighters, many of whom are from villages, had lived modest lives, entirely focused on the war. Their...
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I'm sure this is slanted in terms of narrative for various purposes, but it's still something to hear some of these statements
In the aftermath of seizing power in Afghanistan in August 2021, a huge number of Taleban foot soldiers rushed to the country's capital, Kabul. For many, born into rural families and with their adult lives spent primarily on the battlefield, it was the first time they had come to the capital. They had not even been born or were still children when the Taleban's first emirate fell. Even their seniors, who had experienced life in a major city like Kabul, would find the Afghan capital of 2021 a very different place to when the Taleban had last ruled there – the ruins left by the civil war had long ago been re-built, the city itself had become vastly bigger and the population increased manifold. Some of those newcomers to Kabul have settled in the city and we wanted to find out how they had experienced this sudden shift and what they thought of Kabul – and Kabulis.
To this end, the author conducted in-depth conversations with five members of the movement about their new, post-takeover life. They ranged in age from 24 to 32 and had spent between six and 11 years in the Taleban, at different ranks: a Taleban commander, a sniper, a deputy commander and two fighters. They were, respectively, from Paktika, Paktia, Wardak, Logar and Kandahar provinces.
Omar Mansur said:What I don't like about Kabul is its ever-increasing traffic holdups. Last year, it was tolerable but in the last few months, it's become more and more congested. People complain that the Taleban brought poverty, but, looking at this traffic and the large number of people in the bazaars and restaurants, I wonder where that poverty is.
Omar Mansur said:However, these days, you have to go to the office before 8 AM and stay there till 4 PM. If you don't go, you're considered absent, and [the wage for] that day is cut from your salary. We're now used to that, but it was especially difficult in the first two or three months.
The other problem in Kabul is that my comrades are now scattered throughout Afghanistan. Those in Kabul, like me, work from 8 AM to 4 PM. So, most of the week, we don't get any time to meet each other. Only on Fridays, if I don't go home, do we all go to Qargha, Paghman or Zazai Park. I really like Paghman and going there with friends makes me very happy. Such a place doesn't exist in the entire province of Paktika.
Omar Mansur said:What I like most in Kabul is its relative cleanness and how facilities have been modernised and improved, the buildings, roads, electricity, internet connection, and so many other things. You can find taxis even at midnight, hospitals are on the doorstep, and schools, educational centres, as well as madrasas are all easily available on every corner of the city. The other positive feature of Kabul is its ethnic diversity. You can see an Uzbek, Pashtun and a Tajik living in one building and going to the same mosque.
Huzaifa said:It was the first time I ever saw Kabul. I haven't seen all the provinces, but people say Kabul is the most beautiful city in Afghanistan. When I joined my group, I was of the idea that Kabul would be full of bad people, but to be honest, in the last couple of years, after we met some of the people living here, I realised I was wrong. Of course, it has plenty of negative aspects, like their support for the occupation, women not wearing proper clothing, youths flirting with girls and cutting their hair in a style even people in America might not adopt, but these are the problems that nowadays exist also in the rural areas.
Huzaifa said:When we came to our hawza [police district] and saw the compound, the weapons and the security measures, it was unbelievable how they'd abandoned such places without firing a single bullet. We were stunned by the cowardice of the [former] army and police. If even a very small number of them had tried to fight us, we couldn't have made it to Kabul for years, given its complexity and the weapons they had.
Huzaifa said:One thing I don't like about Kabul is that people have moved here from all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and among them, a large number of criminals from across Afghanistan have made their way here and turned the city into a hub for their illegal activities. We face a lot of difficulties in eliminating crime, particularly robbery.
And the savageness of people against each other, in particular against women – dozens of women approach the hawza on a daily basis and register their complaints. They're victims, subject to different forms of brutality. The head of the hawza and all other mujahedin pay special attention to solving their problems. During the first days when women approached us, many mujahedin, including myself, were hiding from them because never in our whole lives have we talked to strange women. In the days that followed, the head of the hawza instructed us that sharia does allow us to talk to them because we are now the authorities and the only people that can solve their problems.
Huzaifa said:There is another thing I dislike and that's how restricted our lives are now, unlike anything we experienced before. The Taleban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Life's become so wearisome; you do the same things every day. Being away from the family has only doubled the problem.
I've made friends with three guys who are from our province but have been living here [in Kabul] for more than 15 years. We sometimes go to Qargha, Bagh-e Wahsh [Kabul Zoo], Sarobi and Tapa-ye Wazir Akbar Khan. To be honest, every time I go with them, they pressure me to play and listen to music in the car. At first, I was resisting, but now I have given in, with the one condition that they turn it off when passing through security checkpoints because many other Taleban don't like it, and it's bad for a Taleb to be seen listening to it.
Kamran said:If you ask me why I'm unhappy in the aftermath of the fatha, it's that we immediately forgot our past. Then, we had only a motorcycle, a mukhabira, [a type of Walkie-Talkie] and a mosque or madrasa. Now, when someone's nominated for a government job, he first asks whether that position has a car or not.[5] We used to live among the people. Many of us have now caged ourselves in our offices and palaces, abandoning that simple life.
Kamran said:I'm very concerned about our mujahedin. The real test and challenge was not during the jihad. Rather, it's now. At that time, it was simple, but now things are much more complicated. We are tested by cars, positions, wealth and women. Many of our mujahedin, God forbid, have fallen into these seemingly sweet, but actually bitter traps. They forgot their old comrades on whose shoulders they secured victory and instead seek the praise and approval of sycophants. The old, the real mujahed doesn't know the meaning of sycophancy. So they are sidelined, while their places are filled by people who, until the past year, were against us in so many ways.
Abdul Nafi said:On the second week of the fatha, I made it to Kabul. I hadn't been there before. It seemed a very big city and I worried about how we'd all find our way around. Now, I might better know the streets of Kabul better than many Kabulis. I go home once a month, sometimes twice. In the village, I look like a haji because when a haji comes back from pilgrimage, his skin looks soft and his face pale and I've, similarly, come back from pleasanter weather and the cleaner environment of Kabul.
Abdul Nafi said:In our ministry, there's little work for me to do. Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We're connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter.
In those first days, when we sometimes came out of the ministry to Macroyan bazaar, there were a lot of women wearing indecent clothes. We anticipated they would wear hijab,[7] but after the initial days when women feared the mujahedin a lot, their attire has actually become less proper.
Abdul Nafi said:Now, they've become assertive to the extent they're entirely heedless of us. Many of our friends say that, apart from us coming and replacing the police and officials of the former regime, little has changed from the Republic's time in Kabul. During the first few days, many of my comrades and I hardly dared to make our way to the bazaar because of them [women]. We hoped the situation would soon get better, but it didn't. Even worse, one of my classmates in his computer course is also a woman. We sit in the same classroom. Although I despise women that don't wear proper clothes, nonetheless, I can't turn my back on the bazaar or my class because of them. If they're unashamed, let us also be so. This is the only thing I never imagined a Taleb would encounter in his lifetime.
Abdul Nafi said:In the first days, everyone feared us and we had the chance to change many things, but I think in the last year, people observed us, interacted with us, and now no longer fear us because they understand that Taleban are neither Punjabis[8] nor any other sort of strange human being.
What I dislike about Kabul is its traffic and what I fear is its thieves. We have never seen this much congestion, and in comparison to Kabuli drivers, we can hardly make our way through the streets. I don't know how people live in such a mess. The other thing is Kabul's thieves. Although Taleban have had the good fortune to capture [many], rather than diminishing, they increase in number, day by day. I keep my pistol on my person all the time after two of our comrades were robbed.
Abdul Salam said:Not only this, but at that time, people would also do their best to help, shelter and buy us clothes, shoes and petrol for our motorcycles.
However, everything has changed since then. The family wouldn't tell you blatantly to bring home your entire salary so they can feed your children because it's no longer a jihad, and you should take that on your shoulders, but you could feel from their behaviour that this is exactly what they mean. Furthermore, when sometimes I want to come from home to Kabul, for example, and I don't have a vehicle to go with, I come to the nearby road so a passer-by could pick me up and drive me to Kandahar. But once an old man with his old Corolla stopped, I thought he did so to pick me up, but he didn't. Rather, he mockingly told me that now the entire government is in your hands, so you no longer deserve help, adding that now it's your turn to pay back all the help we have given you.
Abdul Salam said:Whatever happens in Afghanistan, people blame us. Even a minor misdeed by us makes it to the media that the Taleban are doing this and that. It's like the cameras of the entire world are watching us.
Abdul Salam said:I hadn't visited Kabul before. I thought Kabul would be a city full of evil. In fact, it's not as evil as we assumed. I don't know if all that was eliminated by the mujahedin or if we were mistaken about that from the beginning.
Abdul Salam said:Although now we can go everywhere without fear, the war is over, and an Islamic system is in place, it's still difficult not to miss the days of the jihad. At that time, we weren't under strict supervision, we weren't curbed because the Emirate needed us, and as a consequence, they provided us with more freedom. Now, on the contrary, they don't need us as much as they did at that time. Besides, they pay us money. There is a proverb in our area that money is like a shackle. Now, if we complain, or don't come to work, or disobey the rules, they cut our salary. Unlike jihad, now particularly, when the battles are long gone and the risk is zero, the Emirate could find countless people to work with them in return for a salary.
Governing harder than it seems apparently
