FactualOur former correspondent in South Asia, Bruno Philip, delved into his memories of reporting in Kabul, Herat and Kandahar during the early days of the reign of “students of religion” at the end of the 20th century.
In October 1996, shortly after the Taliban entered Kabul, the correspondent of World in South Asia had traveled to Afghanistan to tell the story of the fall of the Mujahedin regime. Twenty-five years later, with the Taliban back in power, he remembers fear and relief after years of war.
Kabul, October 6, 1996
The first signs of a “theocracy of terror”
Just ten days ago, those still known as “students of religion” entered the Afghan capital. Kabul fell on September 27, without striking a blow – as it will be twenty-five years later. Ahmed Chah Massoud, condottiere of the mujahideen regime and romantic figure of resistance to the Soviet occupier, the man with the beret, always elegantly bowed over his head, had left the day before, leaving the city in the hands of the Taliban.
On this autumn day with the nights already a little chilly, Kabul is still perplexed and opinions are divided: some inhabitants say they are relieved that the arrival of these rough-hewn peasants, come from the countryside to bring back a “decadent” capital. , put an end to the fratricidal war waged for four years by former fighters of the anti-Soviet jihad and the Taliban, these “seminarians” educated in Koranic schools in Pakistan.
Others, especially women and former communists dubbed by the deposed regime, itself Islamist and propelled to power in 1992 after the fall of the last pro-Soviet government, display unearthed mines: they fear that the first signs already visible of ‘a “theocracy of terror” – which some call “Medieval” – are henceforth the eternal horizon of their future.
An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a brave man in the chaste French whom I have known for years, drags his espadrilles in the corridors of the ministry, haggard. “We have just looked back five centuries”, he squeaks. Cautious, he burned all the photos of a compromising past in the service of several regimes, including those of the Communists (1978-1992): in addition to French, he masters Bulgarian and Russian, fruit of his studies in Bulgaria and Uzbekistan , in the not-so-distant time of the USSR …
In his tiny apartment in the Microrayon district (from Russian “Micro-neighborhood”), a set of public housing bars built not long ago for the former pro-Soviet nomenklatura, Maryam, teacher, does not take offense: “Preventing women from going to study and work is not in the Koran, it is not an Islamic law! “, thunders this woman of about fifty. ” Sure, she concedes, the rockets have stopped falling on the city, but are we not now preparing for another kind of death? “ Beside her, the eldest of her three daughters laughs because she finds that her mother is going a little hard: “Peace is still better than war”, observed the teenager.
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