Inside Afghanistan: Four years under Taliban 2.0

The air of celebration was thick in Porakh on the final Friday of October as the Stanikzai clan, the village’s landed elite, marked a wedding with an elaborate banquet. After the meal, the three brothers between mid-sixties and seventies—Engineer Taher, Sadeq, and Ruhullah—escorted me through the heart of Porakh, at the centre of mineral-rich east Afghanistan’s Logar province; we were followed by a spirited troupe of cricket-loving boys.

The brothers represented a bridge between eras – one an Indian-educated agriculturalist, the other – Sadeq – a survivor of Najibullah’s prisons. The younger one Ruhullah is a farmer. They eventually guided me to the village perimeter, where the noise of the feast faded into the stillness of a secluded graveyard.

Like thousands of other Afghan villages, Porakh sits in the shadow of Mes Aynak—a monolithic, reddish-black mountain rich in copper and ancient Buddhist history, now under Chinese control. Amidst the local cornfields, Ruhullah knelt by a grave marked by a white Taliban flag. In a land where even the resting places of the dead are humble and overgrown, he silently cleared away withered leaves.

As I asked about the grave, the boisterous young cricketers fell still. Ruhullah stood, his hands gripping a rusted railing of the grave, and wept quietly. Later, in his mud and stone home, he revealed the grave belonged to his eldest son, 20-year-old Hamdullah, a Taliban fighter killed by a US airstrike at age twenty. His remaining sons displayed a polyester banner honoring his martyrdom, an Islamic tribute the villagers view as a profound badge of honour.

"My son's death was not in vain," Ruhullah whispered as we parted. "We have won."

Variations of the phrase ‘we have won’ are painted everywhere—from traffic signs and classrooms to the towering walls along highways. The same message on the fortified walls of the shuttered American Embassy serves as a reminder that the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate defeated its western adversaries in one of the century''s most brutal wars. According to Brown University’s ‘Cost of War Project’, approximately 0.6% of the population died in the conflict; other losses remain impossible to calculate fully. For millions of Afghans—particularly those in the countryside—the victory represents peace and freedom.

“For 15 years, every night the Mujhahids and the Afghan state and foreign forces fought on this black road. Every morning, one or two bodies were found,” said Engineer Stanikzai, standing on Porakh’s arterial road that connects Logar highway to Kabul.

The Islamic Emirate has arguably consolidated fragile peace. There are no more gunfights, suicide attacks or bomb blasts – except for the occasional cross-border firings from Pakistan. "Marriages and funerals are conducted without fear, guests like you can come," said Sadeq Stanikzai.

While Stanikzais are not particularly fond of the Taliban, they too acknowledged the Mujhahideen’s sacrifice: “Without boys like my nephew Hamdullah, we might have perished,” said Taher.

Mawlavi Muhajer Farahi, the Taliban’s Deputy Minister of Information, was quick to highlight the administration’s milestones. "Our primary achievement," he noted, "is national integration." He pointed out that previous presidents struggled to ‘control’ entrenched warlords who acted as provincial governors and self-styled administrators running respective fiefs with total autonomy. The Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostam even minted his own currency.

"Under the Islamic Emirate, we have established a single, unified government with a true 'centre' in Kabul," Farahi claimed.
Pausing to present a copy of his book, Memories of Jihad, which details the insurgency’s tactics, he shifted to domestic policy. Farahi cited a crackdown on drug abuse and corruption; alongside improved tax collection used for infrastructure and economic stabilization. Pointing to the exchange rate of 66 Afghanis to the dollar, he asked, "Is that not a currency’s strongest performance in South Asia?"

However, critics view this stability through a different lens, suggesting the US supports the economy to prevent a total collapse that could export terrorism and trafficking. Even a former minister, speaking anonymously, admitted that while the motives are debated, the management of the post-war internal frictions are ‘surprisingly reasonable’.

Fahim Sultani, once a scarred battlefield for Hazara and Taliban fighters, has transformed into Kabul’s most elite residential district. Despite lingering tensions between the Pashtun-led government and the Tajik and Hazara minorities, the Taliban leadership now appears to favour political diplomacy over raw military power. This restraint is a stark departure from their past; while they once executed President Najibullah, they now allow former rivals like Hamid Karzai and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to live freely in the capital albeit with significant security.

Professor Faiz Zaland of Kabul University observes that ‘Taliban 2.0’ has largely abandoned the ‘politics of vengeance.’ He points to his neighbour, former Karzai-era minister Farooq Wardak, who returned to Fahim Sultani and leads a reasonably peaceful life. Even Zaland—a known critic of the regime—has been allowed to retain his university post for the last four years.

To encourage such returns, the Taliban established a commission that offers former officials VIP treatment, including security and stipends, provided they settle all outstanding legal or criminal claims privately. In the context of South Asia’s often violent political landscape, Zaland considers this a significant evolution.

Syed Mujtaba Ali—the formidable Bengali polyglot, writer and journalist and one of the earliest Muslim students of Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati—once observed that while Afghans hold a profound love for Indians, Indians often fail to reciprocate. Following a three-year teaching stint in Afghanistan, exactly about a hundred years ago (1927), Ali penned his classic memoir, Deshe Bideshe (Home and Abroad), noting: “The day we learn to look with a broader perspective, we will realize that imagining India and Afghanistan as separate is a prejudice of a later age.”

During an 18-hour bus journey from Kabul to Herat, I experienced Ali’s point firsthand. I met Sardar Barakzai, a businessman in his mid-thirties, who insisted I stay with him when we reached Herat at midnight. “Where will you go at this hour?” he asked and offered his newly renovated office. “Its recently renovated, spacious, clean and safe,” he said.

I ended up staying in his home-cum-office for four days—treated royally and at no cost. This is the legendary "mehman nawazi" (hospitality), a warmth specifically extended to the guests that Mujtaba Ali so well chronicled.

During my stay, several explosions rocked Kabul; for these, the Afghans blamed Pakistan. When I visited the Interior Ministry in early October—the day after another round of blasts—to have my travel documents signed, I expected the Taliban security guards to be stressed as a mini-war was on in the capital and at various points on the border.

The guards could be a little brash, out of stress, I thought.

The Taliban security guards are the Mujahideens of the past who fought for decades from mountain hideouts. They are still a bit stressed; not very comfortable – as it appeared – with the civilians and the outsiders, especially if they are foreigners. The air of uncertainty is unmistakable.
Yet as the fighters turned security guards heard that I am from India, the stiffness melted.

"How is Sunny Deol, and what is he doing?" one asked, his face surprisingly serious. Deol is a Bollywood actor, who is half as popular in India as he is in Afghanistan I told them he was busy caring for his father, Dharmendra – the former superstar who was hospitalised at that point – and asked why everyone was so obsessed with Sunny Deol, who is not considered a top star anymore. The Taliban fighters—and later, school children—explained that Deol is the ultimate ‘fighter’.

After inquiring about the health of Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, they ushered me inside. But first, they insisted on taking selfies and even asked for my postal address, hinting to pay a visit. They didn’t even glance at my papers.

Later that night, as I walked through the lively, smoke-filled kebab stalls of Kabul’s Gulfroshi Street, I spoke with ‘OB’. OB, an Afghan expat truck driver in London who never gave his full name, was staying in my budget hotel on transit. Reflecting on my interactions with the local soldiers, OB noted that while the Mujahideens might joke, the Afghan affection for Indians remains profound—nearly equal to their own self-regard. "In London, I noticed you Indians don't seem to grasp how much they love you," he remarked. His words felt like a modern echo of the writer Syed Mujtaba Ali, suggesting that the perceived "separateness" between nations is largely a contemporary Indian bias.

A month later, the setting shifted to the quiet, wood-panelled Oriental Room of Kolkata’s Bengal Club. There, in the former home of Thomas Babington Macaulay, a retired Indian diplomat gave that very prejudice a concrete form. "Was it truly wise to provoke the Afghans now?" he asked, pointing to the controversy surrounding the new Hindi film Dhurandhar.
The movie had understandably irritated the Afghans, leading to an official ban and further straining a relationship that people like OB believe should be naturally close.

There, however, are other and more disturbing issues in Afghanistan.
"There is a need for education."

If enmity with Pakistan is the Taliban’s most pressing international challenge, then the colossal internal challenge is girl’s education.
While traveling toward the Islam Qala refugee camp, I shared a rickety taxi with forty-year-old Maulana Akhtar Jan, a unit commander of the Islamic Emirate’s border security. He spoke passionately about the twenty-year war and the Boska—the Taliban’s indigenous improvised explosive device—even urging me to write a book detailing under-educated Afghans' way with their explosives. “I will provide the details,” he said, arguing Afghans have known one thing for ages – “how to fight.”

However, as our three-hour journey drew to an end, he remarked that warfare was no longer the people’s main concern. Rather it has been replaced by something more mundane but way more serious.

"The school doors are closed for girls," he said.

Coming from a commander, the comment was startling. "It wouldn't be bad if those doors opened,” Jan asserted. In Afghanistan, girls are barred from school after the sixth grade. Commander Jan has two daughters who attended schools before 2021. If the ban were lifted, would they return to the classrooms, I prodded him further. "Of course," he replied.
"There is a need for education."

From Ruhullah Stanikzai in Porakh to Akhtar Jan, today’s Afghanistan stands in the long shadow of two fathers – one mourning a world that has slipped away, the other harbouring a deep misgiving about the world his daughters will inherit. The military struggle is over, but the responsibility for this second crisis rests with the Islamic Emirate.

The turning point, however, is the ‘Second Talibans’ possible realisation – to allow women to claim at least some share of the Afghan sky. But more on it later.