From Kabul and beyond, a year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan

When you arrive at Kabul International Airport, the first thing you notice may be the women, clothed within brown scarves plus black cloaks, rubber stamping passports.

An airfield, which one 12 months ago was the scene of a panicked wave of people desperate to flee, is now much quieter plus cleaner. Rows associated with white Taliban flags flutter in a summer’s breeze – billboards of the old well-known faces have been painted over.

What lies beyond this particular gateway to a nation which was turned inverted by a swift Taliban takeover?

The messages are usually startling, to say the least.

“They want myself to give my work to my brother, inch writes one female on a messaging system.

“We earned our positions with our experience and education… if we accept this particular it means we have tricked ourselves, ” declares another.

I am just sitting down with a couple of former senior city servants from the finance ministry who talk about their messages.

These types of part of a group of greater than 60 women, several from the Afghanistan Revenue Directorate, who banded together after becoming ordered to go house last August.

They say Taliban officials then told them: Send out CVs of your male relatives who can apply for your jobs.

“This is our job, ” demands one woman who seem to, like all women in this group, anxiously asks for her identity to be hidden. “I worked with so much trouble for more than seventeen years to get this particular job and complete my master’s diploma. Now we are to zero. ”

On a telephone call through outside Afghanistan, we are going to joined by Amina Ahmady, former director general of the Directorate.

She’s managed to depart, but that’s not a means out either.

“We are dropping our identity, ” she laments. “The only place we can keep it is in our own country. ”

Their group’s grand title – “Women Leaders of Afghanistan” – gives all of them strength; what they want is their jobs.

They’re the women who else seized new areas for education and job opportunities during two decades of global engagement which ended with Taliban rule.

Taliban authorities say women continue to be working. Those who perform are mainly medical staff, educators plus security workers including at the airport – spaces where females frequent.

The Taliban also stress that women, who once held about an one fourth of the government’s jobs, are still being compensated – albeit a tiny part of their salary.

A former civil stalwart tells me how she was stopped on the street by a Talib guard who criticised her Islamic head include, or hijab, even though she was completely covered.

“You’ve got more important difficulties to solve than hijab, ” she photo back – one more moment of can certainly determination to in order to fight for their rights, within Islam.

The picture seems idyllic. Sheaves of golden whole wheat shimmer in a summer’s sun in the remote central highlands associated with Afghanistan. You can hear a gentle lowing of cows.

Eighteen-year-old Noor Mohammad and 25-year-old Ahmad keep swinging their particular sickles to clear a remaining patch of grain.

“There’s much less wheat this season because of drought, ” Noor remarks, perspire and dirt streaking his young encounter. “But it’s the only job I could discover. ”

A harvested field extends into the distance behind us. It’s been 10 days of backbreaking function by two men in the prime of the life for the comparative of $2 (£1. 65) a day.

“I was learning electrical engineering but had to drop out to support my family, inch he explains. His regret is palpable.

Ahmad’s tale is just as painful. “I sold my motorcycle to go to Iran but I couldn’t find work, ” he explains.

Seasonal work in neighbouring Serbia used to be an answer for those in one of Afghanistan’s poorest province. But work has dried out in Iran too.

“We desired our Taliban siblings, ” Noor says. “But we need the government which gives us opportunities. ”

Earlier that day, we sat around a shiny pine desk with Ghor’s provincial cabinet of turbaned men seated alongside Taliban Governor Ahmad Shah Din Dost.

A former-shadow deputy governor throughout the war, he gruffly shares all their woes.

“All these problems make me sad, ” he admits that, listing poverty, poor roads, lack of access to hospitals and schools not operating correctly.

The end of the war means a lot more aid agencies are now working here, which includes in districts out-of-bounds before. Earlier this year, famine conditions were discovered in two of Ghor’s most faraway districts.

However the war isn’t over for Governor Din Dost. He says he or she was imprisoned plus tortured by US forces. “Don’t provide us more pain, ” he asserts. “We don’t need help from the West. ”

“Why is the West always interfering? ” he needs. “We don’t query how you treat your own women or men. ”

In the times that follow, we go to a school and a malnutrition clinic, accompanied by users of his team.

“Afghanistan requirements attention, ” states the Taliban’s youthful university-educated Health Movie director Abdul Satar Mafaq who seems to sound a more pragmatic note. “We have to save people’s lives plus it doesn’t need to involve politics. ”

I remember what Noor Mohammad told me within the wheat field.

“Poverty and starvation is also a combat and it’s bigger than the particular gunfights. ”

Eighteen-year-old Sohaila is fizzing with pleasure.

I stick to her down a darkened stairwell in to the basement floor from the women-only market in Herat, the ancient western city long known for its more open culture, the science and creativeness.

It’s the first time this bazaar is definitely open – the Taliban shuttered this last year, Covid-19 the entire year before.

All of us peer through the glass frontage of the girl family’s dress store which isn’t ready yet. A line of sewing devices sits in the part, red heart balloons hang from the roof.

“Ten years ago, my sister started this particular shop when the girl was 18 years of age, ” Sohaila tells me, sharing a tablet history of her mother and grandmother’s sewing of brightly-patterned conventional Kuchi dresses.

Her sister experienced also opened an online club and a restaurant too.

Which quiet hum of activity in this ladies only space. Some are stocking their own shelves, others gossiping as they linger more than jewellery and embroidered garb.

The premises are poorly lit, but in this gloom, there’s a shaft of light for females who’ve spent all too much time just seated at home.

Sohaila has another story to share.

“The Taliban have closed the high schools, inch she remarks, matter-of-fact, about something that provides enormous consequences with regard to young ambitious teenagers like her.

Most secondary universities are shut, upon orders of the Taliban’s top ultra-conservative clerics, even though many Afghans, including Taliban users, have called for them to re-open.

“I’m in grade twelve – if I no longer graduate I can’t visit university. ”

I ask her whether she can be the Sohaila she wants to be in Afghanistan. “Of course”, she reports confidently. “It’s the country and I may want to go to another country. ”

But a year with no school must have already been hard. “It’s not only me, it’s all of the girls of Afghanistan” she remarks stoically.

“It’s the sad memory… inch

Her voice trails off as the girl breaks down in holes.

“I was the top student. inch

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