Ezanullah, one in all 1000’s of younger Taliban fighters from the countryside who rode into Afghanistan’s capital over the weekend, had by no means seen something prefer it.
The paved streets of Kabul have been lined with towering condominium blocks, glass workplace buildings and procuring malls.
The plush furnishings contained in the Interior Ministry was like “something I thought of in a dream,” stated the 22-year-old fighter from the nation’s mountainous east.
He stated he plans to ask his commander if he can keep. “I don’t want to leave,” he stated.
The encounter highlights how a lot Kabul and different Afghan cities have modified within the 20 years for the reason that Taliban, who primarily hail from rugged rural areas, final dominated the nation. An whole technology of Afghans has come of age underneath a modernizing, Western-backed authorities flush with improvement assist.
Many concern these positive factors shall be reversed now that the Taliban are again in energy and the final US troops are on their approach out.
Thousands have flocked to the airport attempting to flee, most of them males unaccompanied by households. Younger Afghans don’t have any reminiscence of Taliban rule however concern its return will imply the lack of freedoms. The militants imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic regulation from 1996 till 2001, when a US-led invasion drove them from energy.
The Taliban, who largely hail from Afghanistan’s conservative countryside, have signaled moderation in latest days, providing amnesty to those that fought them, inviting girls to return to work and pledging to revive regular life after many years of struggle. But many Afghans, notably girls, stay deeply skeptical of the group’s intentions.
Ezanullah was stunned when two girls stated whats up to him on the road.
A brand new Saigon?
Inevitably, comparisons are being made between America’s panicky withdrawal from Kabul and comparable scenes in Saigon, 46 years in the past.
“They said we were afraid of you and thought you were horrible,” he stated. “But I told them you are like my sisters, and we will let you go to school and continue your education and give you security.”
“Just look after your hijab,” he added, referring to the Islamic scarf that covers the hair however not the face.
Whether or not the Taliban have really modified, the nation they now rule is gentle years forward of the one they captured in 1996 after 4 years of civil struggle following the Soviet withdrawal and the 1992 collapse of a pro-communist authorities.
Then the town was in ruins, ravaged by warlords who would later ally with the U.S. Most Afghans traveled Kabul’s rutted roads by bicycle or in beat-up yellow taxis. There was just one pc in your complete nation, and it belonged to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s reclusive chief, who didn’t know tips on how to flip it on.
Under Taliban rule, tv and music have been forbidden. Women have been barred from attending college or working exterior the house, and needed to put on the all-encompassing burqa at any time when they appeared in public.
Today the nation is residence to 4 cellular firms and several other satellite tv for pc TV stations with feminine anchors, one in all whom interviewed a Taliban official on Monday. The Taliban fighters themselves carry smartphones and may very well be seen taking selfies as they marveled on the capital they’d rolled into nearly unopposed after 20 years of struggle.
Videos circulating on-line seem to point out bearded Taliban fighters laughing and horsing round on amusement park rides and in an indoor fitness center.
Some issues have gotten worse for the reason that Taliban have been final in energy.
The metropolis has been within the grip of against the law wave for years, one many concern will get even worse after prisons and authorities armories have been emptied in the course of the Taliban’s advance. One of the few advantages of their harsh Islamic rule was the digital elimination of crime suspected thieves had their fingers chopped off; different criminals have been executed in public.
The Taliban have pledged to revive regulation and order, however that would take time and may make them resort to brutal measures. The metropolis’s inhabitants has quintupled to five million during the last twenty years. The Taliban, who’ve had no main presence in Kabul for the reason that 2001, have been going door-to-door registering names and amassing weapons in latest days.
In the meantime, many Afghans concern looters posing because the Taliban greater than the militants themselves, stated Saad Mohseni, proprietor of the favored Tolo TV community, who elected to remain within the capital after the Taliban takeover.
“These pretend Taliban could be very dangerous, because they are just hoodlums,” he stated.
