Five years of Taliban rule | Afghanistan on the brink

Women and their children wait for a food donation in Kandahar. Photo: AFP/JAVED TANVEER Every morning, Abdel Jabar stands in line to get water. “Today I have to spend a third of my income just on buying water and go into debt to do it,” he says. The 44-year-old runs a small bakery in the densely populated Silo district of Kabul. He earns around 11,000 Afghani (around 150 euros) a month and has to use it to support his four children and other relatives. »Thank God we still have bread at the moment. But water is catastrophically scarce. That means the bread could soon run out too.”

Most of Kabul's groundwater supplies are unusable. They contain harmful pollutants such as wastewater and arsenic and also have an increased salt content. According to forecasts by experts from the international organization Mercy Corps, Kabul could become the first capital in the modern world to run out of water by 2030.

Abdel Jabar's children also have to earn money. His eldest son, 14-year-old Sohail, shines shoes on the street. The youngest, eight-year-old Khaled, roams the streets selling tissues. Especially in the city center, you will see children in tattered clothes everywhere. Many beg for alms.

Making money is becoming increasingly difficult. This has further exacerbated the already existing hardship. The escalation of military relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the war in Iran have led to numerous Afghan refugees returning to their homeland. In total, more than 4.5 million Afghan citizens have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan since October 2023, increasing the population by around ten percent. However, there are no prospects for most of them.

24-year-old Abdulbashir is one of them. He has had to move three times in the past five years. He was born in the northern province of Panjshir, which has historically been hostile to the Taliban. In 2021, his family had to flee to Kabul and stay with relatives because of the ongoing fighting in the rebel region.

Abdulbashir did not have time to complete higher education. He works as a tailor, repairs clothes and sews suits - he learned the craft from his father. When Panjshir came under fire five years ago, he was killed. Since then, the responsibility for the entire family - his mother and his two younger sisters - has fallen on Abdulbashir's shoulders.

Three years ago he moved to Mashhad, Iran, with a friend. There he found work and used his wages to support his relatives in Kabul. But the Iranian authorities tightened the residency rules for Afghans. The country also suffers from a poor economic situation, inflation, unemployment and the consequences of two wars. Last spring, Abdulbashir was asked to leave the country. When things went well in Iran, he reports, he earned up to $350 a month. Now, in Kabul, there are no more than 150.

»All our lives, all our activities take place outside the law. We live in whispers. No, we live without a voice.”

The drastic decline in remittances from abroad is also hitting the Afghan economy hard. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan's economy grew by 4.8 percent in the 2025 fiscal year despite numerous shocks. But growth is not enough to improve the population's prosperity. Around a third of the population suffers from acute food shortages. At the same time, humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has declined sharply over the past five years and now amounts to just over a billion US dollars.

In the midst of this precarious economic situation, the restrictions imposed by the Taliban seem all the more ruthless. Women are particularly affected by this. After the declaration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, abolished the Ministry of Women's Affairs in September 2021 with one of his first decrees. In its place, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was revived - essentially a morality police.

As a result, more and more women are systematically excluded from social life. The Taliban did not keep their promise to reopen secondary schools for girls after the sixth grade. On the contrary: in December 2022, women were banned from attending universities. 24-year-old Fatana also suffers from this: »My life is over. Now I can neither study nor work,” she says. Four years ago she had to stop studying medicine at Abu Ali Ibn Sina University in Kabul.

In recent decades, it has been common in large Afghan families for women to work and contribute to the support of their families. As a student, Fatana was already working as a nurse and preparing to become a dentist. This would have enabled her to earn a small but regular income. She is currently forced to sit in a pedestrian underpass and sell pens and notebooks. “It doesn't make me any money at all. Some passers-by buy one or two pens from me out of pity,” she says. »Still, for me it's better than just sitting at home. I would go crazy there.”

The United Nations estimates that eight out of ten Afghan women are currently excluded from education and employment. Even in the Islamic world, the Taliban's decisions were met with outrage. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the decision to ban women from education as “inhumane and un-Islamic.”

The restrictions on women, especially the ban on education, are controversial even among the Taliban. Some officials in Kabul publicly criticized the supreme leader, who has his headquarters in Kandahar. The bans that come from there are not always fully implemented. At least in Kabul, about every second woman does not completely cover her face - formally she would have to wear a burqa with a small eye grille. There is a loophole in education for girls after the sixth grade: they are also allowed to attend madrassas (Koranic schools).

However, some parents choose a different route: they organize secret online or home schooling, even though it is not allowed. 39-year-old Hengameh is one of these mothers. She found a teacher for mathematics, physics and biology for her twelve-year-old daughter. Hengameh says her daughter dreams of becoming a doctor and saving people's lives. »I don't want my daughter to feel like she's in a cage. She has the right to determine her own destiny.”

Hengameh worked as a journalist for a long time until her radio station closed in 2021. After that, she decided to open a beauty salon. In Afghanistan, such salons have always been more than places for beauty care. They offered women the opportunity to come together and be among themselves. But in July 2023, the beauty salons were also closed by the Supreme Leader's decision.

Hengameh also had to give up her salon and retreated further. She has been organizing manicure and hairdressing appointments for women at her home for three years now. This means that it is technically breaking the law. Representatives of the morality police have already come to her twice and issued warnings.

Representatives of the Taliban government emphasize that all decisions made comply with Sharia, i.e. Islamic law. »In this way, we primarily care for women. “That is our duty,” explains an official from the Taliban Interior Ministry “nd” when asked. He did not answer the question of where exactly in Islam such treatment of women was enshrined.

The law on the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, which the Taliban passed in August 2024, shows how far this care extends. It prohibits women from visiting public places such as parks. They are also not allowed to speak loudly on the street. According to Taliban legal scholars, a woman's voice is "a source of sin and vice."

Hengameh says the law has changed her everyday life. »All our lives, all our activities take place outside the law. We live in whispers. No, we live without a voice.”

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