Amusement parks, English, studies: Kabul infects the first Taliban with a lust for life

Amusement parks, English, studies
Kabul infects the first Taliban with a lust for life

By Kevin Schulte
March 9, 2024, 2:05 p.m

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Two and a half years after the Taliban came to power, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated massively for many women. But the urban jungle of Kabul is beginning to change the first Taliban fighters.

The Taliban’s takeover of power in Afghanistan did nothing good for the people in the country. They are starving and oppressed; women have few rights. The Taliban have catapulted Afghanistan back towards the Stone Age, said Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, commenting on the rule of the terrorists.

Shortly after the coup in August 2021, individual voices had hoped that the Taliban might now appear more moderate. It shouldn’t remain more than a pious wish. “I don’t understand where the hope came from that the Taliban have changed or even improved,” says a women’s activist from the German wave quoted. A few weeks before the takeover, it had already been pointed out how much the Taliban despise women’s rights. “But no one wanted to listen to us.”

And yet there seem to be individual glimmers of hope in Kabul. Many Taliban fighters “learned to appreciate the advantages of urban life” in the capital, writes the Washington Post in a report. The American newspaper reports visits to theme parks on weekends, Taliban fighters watching cricket matches, uploading selfies to Facebook, learning English and appearing as if they were “just as eager to study abroad as other students.” Who is changing whom here, the newspaper asks: the Taliban Kabul or Kabul the Taliban?

“They knew nothing about our culture”

Some of the terrorists even say they regret the consequences of the campaign. Many soldiers are disappointed with Kabul. For them, life in the city of five million people is lonelier, more stressful and less religious than they expected.

Other Taliban members, on the other hand, should enjoy the advantages of the 21st century. Internet, streaming, big cars. Some Afghans have the feeling that the Taliban are “trying to take over our way of life,” the newspaper quoted a salesman from Kabul as saying. “They came from the mountains, couldn’t understand our language and knew nothing about our culture.”

In the first phase after the fall of the old government, the Taliban tried to ban everything western: musical instruments were destroyed and people were no longer allowed to wear jeans and other western clothing. The Taliban now apparently see the Western way of life as less of a threat: The Washington Post report features an Afghan who was recently waved through by the Taliban with his friends at a checkpoint, even though they were listening to music in the car. Quite unusual for Afghan conditions.

Apartheid against women

However, such reports are merely isolated cases; in general, the Taliban have by no means become more moderate. Women in particular don’t notice that some of the terrorists are supposedly becoming more Western. For two and a half years they have only been allowed to walk around in public fully veiled, they are not allowed to study, women’s rights activists are arrested, and girls are only allowed to go to school up to the sixth grade. The Taliban leadership has made Afghanistan the most repressive country in the world for women, according to the United Nations in the third year after the terrorist group came to power.

The documentary filmmaker and initiator of the Kabul Airlift, Theresa Breuer, describes the dramatic living conditions, especially for women: “They are no longer allowed to study, are no longer allowed to work, are no longer allowed to contribute to the family’s income. They are no longer even allowed to travel alone without them Approval of a male guardian.”

The United Nations describes the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan as an apartheid regime against women. “That’s actually it. It’s become a life in prison for women,” comments Breuer.

Skyscrapers in Kabul?

The Taliban have big plans for Afghanistan and want to build a new, large city on the outskirts of Kabul, as well as shopping centers, parks and swimming pools; some of the terrorists even dream of skyscrapers like those in Dubai. But misogyny could become an obstacle. In any case, private investors from the West are anything but and for this reason they do not want to do business with the regime.

The Washington Post therefore asks: “Could the lure of expensive skyscrapers, impressive new mosques and pothole-free streets persuade the Taliban to compromise, as some Afghans hope?”

So far, apart from a few anecdotes from individual Kabul residents, there is no real glimmer of hope. However, moderate Afghans continue to rely on the Taliban becoming more moderate and that life in the city influences them more than the Taliban influences city life.