On August 15, 2024, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan celebrated the third anniversary of the takeover of Kabul, ending years of conflict and the failure of twenty years of Western intervention and failed nation-building.

Thirty years ago, we were in Afghanistan, witnessing the rise of the Taliban and their first seizure of power in 1996. As a family, we also experienced the hope of the early years of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan that followed it after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. Since 2022, we have returned to Kabul, trying, in our modest way, to bring support to an Afghan population severely damaged by over forty years of violence. We will not attempt here to analyze the causes of the fall of the previous regime and the return of the Taliban. History will apportion the blame among Afghans and foreigners alike and determine the victims and perpetrators.

Our aim, on this third anniversary of the second Emirate, is to report our impressions of a country that we have loved for decades and help ensure that Afghanistan is not forgotten. Despite its importance throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Afghanistan rarely makes the front pages of Western media anymore. Consequently, the lives of Afghans, especially women, grow ever more difficult. We aim to describe some aspects of everyday life in Afghanistan, which remain largely unmentioned in the Western press.

Since 2022, we have lived in Kabul daily and traveled to several provinces in the north and east of the country. We returned from this trip with impressions, images, and memories that were pleasant for some and disturbing for others.

Our general feeling is that we traveled to a generally peaceful country even if mental security is not ensured, given the restrictions many Afghans, and especially Afghan women, face. As far as physical security is concerned, apart from two provinces in the eastern part of the country where there were numerous checkpoints, our movements were easy. As foreigners, we were by far the people most subjected to security checks. Even there, searches were limited to checkpoints at the entrances and exits of the major towns. The attention we received was undoubtedly motivated by the fact that over the last three years, Westerners have become exceedingly rare. International aid workers and the few diplomats present in the country are subject to stringent rules, which, in the vast majority of cases, keep them away from the Afghan reality.

In addition to public curiosity, the authorities kept a close watch on our movements to ensure our safety and monitor our activities. In fact, as we were no longer members of an NGO nor officially connected to any government or business, our presence would have raised the eyebrows of any member of Afghan security services. Nonetheless, only once did we feel aggression directed at us. When we came across a young man in the street, he said, in a very unwelcoming tone, “djangi âmadan” (“the fighters are back”).

One category of foreigners whose numbers, although still very modest, are on the rise is the tourists. We met some of them traveling alone on motorbikes and others in small groups organized by companies specializing in “adventurous” trips. It was during our visit to Bamiyan that we came across a group of Western tourists on the site of the old town of Ghoghola. We exchanged a few words with them. In the hour that followed, we heard gunshots in the Bamiyan bazaar. 

Earlier in the day, we met the head of a United Nations agency who explained to us with a broad smile how happy he was to be stationed in Bamiyan. It was the only town in Afghanistan where international UN staff were allowed out on foot in the streets, proof that security was adequate. The Islamic State–Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for the bazaar shooting, which cost the lives of three Afghans and three Spaniards and injured six others. The people behind the attack knew perfectly well that it struck at the Achilles heel of the security apparatus in Afghanistan, which had not seen any attack on tourists for the last three years.

Other than this tragic incident, we encountered an Afghan population going about its usual business. Town centers were extremely lively, well-stocked with foodstuffs of all kinds, and well-attended by, admittedly, mostly men. Nonetheless, we did see a significant number of Afghan women going about their shopping—with the exception of one province in eastern Afghanistan, where we really had to look for women in the bazaar. This province has always had a reputation for being very conservative, even by Afghan standards.

Aware that poverty levels are very high in Afghanistan, we were alert to its visible signs. We found these, particularly in the countryside villages, where visibly malnourished children in rags could be seen. Many local houses appeared in varying states of decay. We did not travel to the provinces which, according to aid agencies, are the most affected by this poverty. During the previous regime, despite massive international aid, the percentage of the population below the poverty line was 55 percent. The conflict between the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban undermined the effective implementation of many development projects, especially in rural areas. It was also the result of significant embezzlement of aid by officials of the previous regime.

Today, poverty has worsened despite a real and tangible reduction in corruption. It is estimated that 85 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day, mainly because of the obstacles to the Afghan economy put in place by certain members of the international community (the freeze on the Central Bank of Afghanistan reserves by the United States and de facto restrictions on banking transactions to and from Afghanistan) and decisions taken by the current regime (the restrictions imposed on women’s work and the manifold other controls put in place by a fussy bureaucracy).

We traveled during the wheat harvest season. Everyone was in the fields: men, women, and teenagers. One surprise was finding that farming techniques had hardly changed over twenty years. Farmers still use the dâs (the sickle) to cut the ears of wheat, which they gather into sheaves by hand. The only mechanized tools are the threshing machines that collect the grain, and even these are the same threshing machines we saw thirty years ago. 

This puts in question the value of international aid to Afghan agriculture over the last two decades. One of the contributions has undoubtedly been the development of new agricultural zones in previously desertified areas. This has happened and continues to happen, thanks to the use of solar panels coupled with pumps on boreholes that extract water at low costs to irrigate crops. However, in the absence of any regulation, this free extraction of underground water causes the water table to fall year after year. A farmer not far from Mazar-e-Sharif, who settled in a desert area some fifteen years ago, explained to us that he was now pumping at depths of forty to sixty meters. When he started, he was only pumping at depths of fifteen to twenty meters. This model of agriculture and development of rural areas is clearly unsustainable in the long term without drastic regulation of the use of groundwater.

Water projects come in greater sizes, too. The Qosh Tepa Canal, a project whose plans date back to American development aid in the 1970s during the reign of King Zahir Shah, was initially abandoned due to Soviet concerns about shared watersheds. Brought back to life in 2018, the canal was shelved again because the Taliban conflict made it impossible to construct. Nevertheless, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has decided to make it its flagship project. 

With no more development aid from donor countries, the current authorities have decided to concentrate their efforts on this project. The aim is to build a 285 km long canal, which will irrigate 550,000 hectares. To date, and against all expectations, the first 110 km phase has been completed in record time. It was during this stretch that we visited, and we saw a canal that was over 100 meters wide, with good quality road bridges and even a railway bridge. During our visit, we met Afghan families who went there to walk around and take pictures, proud of this solely Afghan achievement. However, questions remain. For example, in the absence of a water-sharing treaty, how will the countries of Central Asia react? Could this become a casus belli or an opportunity for better management of water resources in a region that is becoming increasingly arid?

When traveling in Afghanistan, one of the most emblematic places of the country’s mountainous character is the Salang Tunnel. Built in 1964 by the Soviet Union, the tunnel cuts through the Hindu Kush mountains at a 3,400-meter altitude, linking the northern and southern portions of the country. Despite its obvious importance, it was a surprise to find that this vital route had not been rehabilitated during the twenty years of the previous regime. 

On either side of the tunnel, trucks, buses, taxis, and private cars have to drive for hours on a broken track. On one of our visits, the authorities had forbidden trucks to pass through, as the heavy rain of the previous days had turned some sections into a quagmire. We estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 vehicles were blocked on either side of the tunnel. Some had to wait more than a week to get through. How can we envisage national integration, let alone regional integration between Central and South Asia, under such conditions?

We mentioned above the low level of mechanization in the agricultural sector. Paradoxically, this is undoubtedly an advantage for today’s Afghanistan, as it enables the economy to absorb the growing number of young people. It is those under the age of twenty-five who account for 63 percent of the Afghan population. These young Afghan generations are also the ones who make up the multitude of school children seen along the roads, all carrying the same UNICEF backpack. When we came across them, two things struck us. First, the number of schools seems insufficient. We saw schoolchildren walking many kilometers to get to the nearest school. Second, the number of schoolgirls seems to be just as high as the number of schoolboys. This undermines conservative rhetoric that justifies the ban on secondary and university schooling for women on the basis that families do not want education for their girls. 

Lastly, there were our experiences with the authorities (Afghan hospitality has always been and remains an essential marker of the relationship with “foreigners”). We encountered a wide range of attitudes during our exchanges with the Taliban in the provinces. Their first reaction was astonishment since, as we mentioned earlier, there are very few foreigners on the Afghan roads. We also felt coldness on the part of some of the authorities. In many ways, this coldness is understandable since we represent the West, which they had been fighting for years in a war in which they had lost friends and family members. There was also a great deal of curiosity, with the eternal questions about our country of origin, the reasons for our presence in Afghanistan, and sometimes about our religion, a subject close to the heart of many Afghans for whom atheism is inconceivable.

As for relations between Afghan civilians and the Taliban, from what we could perceive, they range from a certain form of acceptance to feigned or deliberate ignorance. The most determined opponents are clearly not so easily discovered in the current context of omnipresent surveillance. Who can really appreciate what Afghans, and especially Afghan women, really think? Here, too, there are undoubtedly major differences between Afghan women in rural areas who appreciate the end of the war and educated women in Kabul who, under the Republic, benefited from new opportunities.

On June 30 and July 1, representatives of the international community and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan finally met around the same table in Doha under the aegis of the United Nations. The diplomats present also had the opportunity to meet a small group of Afghan men and women, the majority of whom live and work in Afghanistan. Let us hope that this first meeting will be followed by similar meetings that will pave the way toward constructive dialogue and lead to a better understanding of the reality and aspirations of Afghanistan today. Let us also hope that this process will quickly lead to a situation that will give all Afghans the political space and resources they need to build their common future together in a peaceful manner.

Jean-François Cautain, a former European Union Ambassador, has worked in Afghanistan at various times since 1986, first as an NGO director and then as a diplomat for the European Union.

Sonia Cautain has worked on several occasions in Afghanistan since 1994 with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Until last April, she was head of mission for a medical NGO in Kabul.

Image: 279 Photo Studio / Shutterstock.com.