Taliban territory: Life in Afghanistan under the militants
Sixteen years after they were ousted
in the US-led invasion, the Taliban have fought their way back to
control swathes of Afghanistan. The country remains mired in conflict,
and recent months have seen a series of bloody attacks. In the south,
key towns are now Taliban territory. The BBC's Auliya Atrafi was invited
by the militants to spend four days behind the front line in Helmand
province witnessing life under their control.
In the town of
Sangin, two dozen men sat cross-legged inside a huge mud compound. Under
the full moon, their black turbans cast deep shadows over their
sunburned features.
These were the Taliban's special forces; the
Red Unit. They sat quietly as they listened to their commander Mullah
Taqi telling war stories, gently cradling their M4 machine guns. The
M4s, with their night-vision scopes, were one of the main reasons they
had captured nearly 85% of Helmand province from less-well-armed Afghan
forces.
But these victories had presented Taliban leaders with an unexpected challenge.
The
people they now ruled had lived with government services for more than a
decade. Schools, hospitals, development - residents had become
accustomed to them. So how could a group entirely focused on taking
territory evolve into one that could attempt to run it?
Who are the Taliban?
- The hardline Islamic Taliban movement swept to power in Afghanistan in 1996 after the civil war which followed the Soviet-Afghan war, and were ousted by the US-led invasion five years later
- In power, they imposed a brutal version of Sharia law, such as public executions and amputations, and banned women from public life
- Men had to grow beards and women to wear the all-covering burka; television, music and cinema were banned
- They sheltered al-Qaeda leaders before and after being ousted - since then they have fought a bloody insurgency which continues today
- In 2016, Afghan civilian casualties hit a new high - a rise attributed by the UN largely to the Taliban
Setting up our visit to Taliban territory took
months. It had been years since a journalist with international media
had secured such access. But in mid-May, we crossed the frontline in
Gereshk, following a boy on a motorbike. We drove on the main
Kabul-Herat highway towards Kandahar.
Just by an Afghan National
Army post, the boy suddenly turned left, leaving the highway behind, and
rode into scattered settlements. He handed us over to two Taliban
guards who were manning a makeshift base. One sat with us in the car,
while the other led us on a motorbike towards the Zanbulai area.
There, waiting for us. was Mullah Taqi, the head of Taliban special
forces. He stood with a group of his men, all nursing sophisticated
weaponry.
Throughout the visit we were accompanied by a Taliban media team who controlled what we saw.
We
were not allowed to film anything to do with opium. The opium trade is
synonymous with this region - Afghanistan produces about 90% of the
world's opium - and helps fund the Taliban.
I tried to explain to
their media head, Asad Afghan, the English concept of "an elephant in
the room". He put his hand on my shoulder and said: "Opium is our
economic necessity, but we hate it as much as you do."
The fact is the Taliban need the money they get from drugs - it buys arms and helps fund their fight.
Our first encounter with Taliban governance came in the market.
Sangin has been fiercely contested for more than a decade - hundreds of
UK, US and Afghan troops lost their lives here - and finally fell to the
Taliban in March this year.
The old Sangin bazaar had been
flattened in the battle for the city. We walked through its makeshift
replacement, a sea of tarpaulin and boxes. Two men were arguing by a
food stall.
"I can't read!" shouted shopkeeper Haji Saifullah.
"How was I supposed to know the biscuits were out of date?" He fidgeted
with his turban, pushing it to one side nervously.
The other man was the Taliban mayor of Sangin, Noor Mohammad. He
ordered Haji Saifullah to be imprisoned for three days and to pay a
fine.
Next on the mayor's list was inspecting petrol containers
to see if they had been altered to pour under the promised gallon. After
that came examinations for people who claimed to be doctors, but who he
suspected were lying.
Later we drove to Musa Qala, the Taliban's
de facto capital. Just short of the town, we stopped at a travelling
bazaar set up on a dry riverbed.
Musa Qala is famous for the opium trade but it is also a commercial
lifeline for the district. Traders come here all the way from the
Afghan-Pakistan border areas.
At the bazaar you could buy motorbikes, cows, ice-cream - and less conventional commodities such as ammunition.
Bullets
for an AK47 were 25 cents (15p) each. Bullets for a Russian machine-gun
used to be 40 cents each, but were reduced to 15 cents because -
according to the shopkeeper - too many of them had been captured from
the Afghan security forces.
While the Taliban focus on health, safety and
trading standards in Sangin was surprising, more discoveries awaited us
in Musa Qala. Despite it being the Taliban capital, the school and
hospital were still being funded by the government in Kabul.
Read more about the conflict:
- Can Afghan military turn the tide in Taliban fight?
- World powers jostle in Afghanistan's new 'Great Game'
- Mistrust and fear in battle for Helmand
- UK military deaths in Afghanistan: Full list
"The government recently did their
inspections; our schools were officially registered; our salaries that
were locked for a year were later released," said Abdul Rahim, the
government's head of education for Musa Qala.
He said the Taliban did not have any problem with government inspectors, and that the system was working.
"The
government give us stationery and everything else, we implement the
government syllabus and the Taliban don't have a problem with it," he
said.
But not everything was running smoothly. Across Afghanistan, about
40% of pupils enrolled in schools are female, according to US Aid. Not
in Musa Qala, however. No girls over the age of about 12 were being
educated in the Taliban capital. But girls were deprived of education
here even before the Taliban took hold, because it is a very
conservative area.
For the boys, meanwhile, there were not enough basic supplies.
"The
way our school is run is good, as in security, but we have one problem
and that's we don't have enough books," said one student, Dadul-Haq.
"One student will be missing maths, the other chemistry - not all pupils
have the same books."
It struck me that in education, at least,
the Taliban are tentatively experimenting by allowing wider access to
education - at least for boys - than during their earlier regime. Under
them, before 2001, many fewer boys went to school in the countryside.
But experiences like Haji Saifullah's - the biscuit seller in Sangin -
have made rural Afghans realise that education and literacy are
essential. They will not turn you into an infidel, as their forefathers
feared.
Now the Taliban appear to have realised that they cannot
fight the modern world forever, so some have opted to join it on their
own terms.
Asad Afghan, the Taliban's media co-ordinator, used a proverb to make
his point. "The fire may have burnt our house, but it made our walls
stronger," he said. He meant that the Taliban had learned from the past
mistake of isolating themselves from modernisation.
Many say the
Taliban have brought some security - albeit with limited freedoms - to
the countryside they control. Areas used to years of fighting between
troops and militants are now seeing a dramatic rise in trade. Many
people say they prefer the Taliban's swift - but flawed - system of
justice to the previous administration, which they say was riddled with
corruption and patronage.
We visited the district hospital which, like the school, was funded
by the government but run by the Taliban. It is meant to serve 120,000
people, but lacked many basic facilities. There was not one female
doctor; neither was there a paediatric specialist. It wasn't even
possible to get a chest X-ray.
To cater for women the Taliban had built a separate facility next door, run by female staff.
One
doctor said the dual system had created a responsibility vacuum and
opened the door to corruption. "I haven't been paid in the past six
months - not only me but also the entire staff of the hospital," he
said.
"[Government] supervisors write things on paper that don't
turn into reality. Our medicine for three months doesn't last us more
than a month and half… this is because sometimes the Taliban come and
want medicine for themselves."
We asked the Taliban's supervisor for health services, Attaullah, if we could interview a female nurse, but he refused.
Her
husband told him that he had no problem with the interview, but
Attaullah said: "It is your right to allow the interview and my
responsibility to stop it.
"What would be the difference between us and the government if we allowed interviews with women?"
During
the four days I was in Taliban territory, I only saw women in clinics
and being transported around by their male relatives. But men here have
always preferred women to stay at home out of sight. Even if the Taliban
were not here, it is unlikely things would be very different.
Some
activities were limited. In Musa Qala, using mobile phones and the
internet was banned for security and religious reasons - our Taliban
media handlers communicated via walkie-talkies. Filming and playing
musical instruments are also not allowed. One young man told me he was
given 40 lashes for watching a Bollywood film.
The Taliban have
cracked down on bachabaze - dance parties involving teenage boys that
can often end in sexual abuse. They also come down hard on
homosexuality, although it appears the Taliban legal process can be
influenced with a mixture of pulling strings and bribes.
Ireminded him that the Taliban also had a culture of obedience and
were disciplined, so didn't he think they would be able to direct their
devotion to war into the art of politics? He dropped his head, thought
for a moment and shook his head doubtfully. He didn't think so.
At night, we would dine with local Taliban leaders and discuss these themes.
One
evening a Taliban leader strove to convince us of the benefits of life
under the Taliban by contrasting it with the failings of the Afghan
government. But it struck me that the world they wanted to create was
too absolute for a human society.
I suggested that society was
messy, complicated and always in transition, and wondered how successful
any government would be trying put it in a fixed framework.
The
leader, Musavir Sahib, was a tiny man, with long beard and blue eyes. He
was adamant: "Our governance is based on sacred scripture; it is the
best solution for any human society.
"Afghans are adaptable
people," he added. "When we took over the country for the first time,
very soon people started dressing up like us. And then when the
Americans came, they started dressing up like the Americans. So surely
they will adopt our governance again."
He could not conceive that people could oppose Taliban rule and were coerced by them into doing what they wanted.
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