Afghanistan, five years on: our correspondent visits

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0:39Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

0:49Rosie Blau:Today on the show are correspondent reports from quake hit Colombia and celebrating the life of mountaineer near Mulpurja.

1:05But first...

1:15Rosie Blau:Five years ago saw the end of America's longest war, the one it had fought for two decades and then lost, in the mountains, deserts and cities of Afghanistan. I'm just going to stop there.

1:28Ann Wroe:What we're showing you, our viewers now, Rob, is images of the Afghan flag being taken down.

1:35Rosie Blau:America and its allies sent troops into the country after the September 11th attacks, 25 years ago. As America left, its proxy Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban returned. So what's happened to those left behind, the Afghan people? I'm here in Kabul, where it's five years since the Taliban returned to power. Tom Sass is our South Asia bureau chief. In some ways, the city life has returned to some kind of normality. You see lots of people out on the street selling things, lots of cars, the traffic is busy, the city is growing, and the city's got some kind of peace, actually. But in other ways, life in the city has changed.

2:22You won't hear any music coming out of the cafes. That's been banned by the Taliban. They've imposed quite strict codes on dress, both for women, they've got to cover themselves up, and for men who are supposed to grow beards. You won't see everyone following that, but you will see most people following the codes. And just around the corner from where we are, you'll find the government ministries. Just outside the ministries, you'll see a Taliban security official sitting in the top of an American Humvee with a big machine gun. So the reminders of the recent Taliban victory are all around you.

3:01But the question is whether the city can find more prosperity as well as peace.

3:09Rosie Blau:Tom, it sounds like an extraordinary trip. What particularly struck you? Yes, I was there for about 10 days and split that time between Kabul, Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south and ended up doing about a thousand kilometre road trip. So I got to see quite a bit of the country. I guess the first thing that really strikes you is actually it's quite safe. So violence has fallen really sharply. The Taliban have got a pretty tight grip on power. You see their flag waving in cornfields and town squares. There are checkpoints in and around big cities, but they're actually fairly light touch and cities feel calm.

3:52But you also do see signs of this pretty harsh rule. You see a lot of heavily armed men. You can see the vice and virtue police who go around enforcing the Taliban's moral rules. And also what you discover very quickly is that a lot of Afghans are doing pretty terribly. So apart from having peace, lots of them are in poverty, lots of them say that they're hungry, and lots of them are unemployed.

4:18Rosie Blau:So let's talk about the harsh rule you mentioned. The Taliban took over five years ago after the US troops withdrew. What's happened in terms of the shifts in power and control since then? So what's happened is really a consolidation in the power of the hardliners. And that's a faction within the Taliban headed by the emir Habatullah Akhansada, who is based in Kandahar. So that's in the south of the country. It's sort of the spiritual home of the Taliban. It's not where most of the government and the bureaucracies are based. That's in Kabul. But really what the emir has done is concentrated power.

5:00So he seized control of economic power by grabbing hold of mining contracts and other sources of revenue, which now go straight to him. And he started to build up a Praetorian force in Kandahar, which is now thought to be about 8 ,000 fighters separate from the army that are loyal to him. And he sent some of his loyalists to govern in provinces all around the country. And you've really seen more moderate Taleb's who do exist. There are lots of them who thought that the country would modernise gradually, they've not really been able to challenge this. They've either been too weak or too scared.

5:37And the few that have done so have been expelled.

5:41Rosie Blau:And Tom, what's daily life like for people? Lots of people are really struggling to get by. So I went to one village called Surubi up in the mountains east of Kabul. Lots of people there were struggling for food. I was speaking to one village elder, and he said, we have peace, but our pockets are empty. On top of that, you have a real crisis in healthcare. A lot of that was funded through humanitarian aid, which has been cut back, partly as a result of Western countries becoming more stingy, but partly because the Taliban has put in place these abhorrent policies. And another pressure on top of that is you've had almost 6 million Afghan refugees forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan, its neighbours.

6:30And lots of those people are really poorly off and have been pushed back over the border with nothing. So you've got a pretty difficult situation for most Afghans. And then, of course, there is the situation for women and girls who have seen their freedoms gradually restricted and crushed by decrees issued by the EMEA. They've been removed from many aspects of public life, banned from lots of workplaces, banned from universities. And then, of course, most controversially, there is the ban on girls going to secondary school.

7:04Rosie Blau:And are people prepared to talk to you? For the most part, people would talk to me so long as it was anonymous. So very, very few were prepared to be named or identified because they were scared about the consequences of that. But once you assured them that they wouldn't be, they were prepared to really tell you what life was like. And one of the most striking experiences I had actually, Rosie, was I went and visited a madrasa. So this is one of the workarounds that people have found as a way that girls of secondary age can go to school. And this was in Kabul. It was down a dusty side street. And I was able to sit there and talk to for young Afghan women who were sort of 16 or 17 years old about their experience.

7:49And they were able to get some schooling, which they were very happy about, but they pointed out that lots of their friends couldn't afford to go to that school. And actually their opportunities for the rest of their life were going to be very restricted. So they didn't have much hope for the future.

8:07Rosie Blau:Afghanistan is essentially a pariah state at this point. Has it found any allies? So the only country that's actually recognised the Taliban government is Russia. But most of the countries in the region, India, Turkey, China, the Gulf countries, Iran, they've established diplomatic relations. They work with the Taliban on issues like trade. China is quite involved in trying to do mining there, though I think the Chinese have also found the Taliban pretty tricky to work with. But the problem really is that these hardliners under the emir, they're not really interested in having that much engagement with the outside world.

8:48They're quite happy to shut Afghanistan off, to see foreign aid cut. They see many of the influences from the outside world as distracting or taking people away from the path of Sharia and God. So they have no problem with this kind of isolation and pariah status at all.

9:07Rosie Blau:And is there any room for Western countries to try and help ordinary Afghans or exert some kind of pressure on the government? So I think the West probably has to confront some hard truths at this stage. So, so far it's tried this strategy of coercion. So withholding diplomatic recognition, reducing aid, it's kept sanctions in place and it's kept Afghan's central bank reserves frozen, all with the hope that doing that might pressure the Taliban regime into moderating. And it hasn't. So I think now after five years, you see that the EU recently invited the Taliban to discuss migration. Germany is talking about returning Afghan refugees from Germany to Afghanistan.

9:55America and other countries cooperate with them on intelligence sharing and counterterrorism. So I think the West is starting to realise that it's going to be in it for the long haul and having to work out how it can work with these people.

10:10Rosie Blau:You've talked about five years of freedoms being squeezed, of the economy being crushed. What does the future look like? So in the near term, I think it's pretty bleak. One of those girls at the school that I mentioned, she said to me that her parents kept telling her that by the time she graduated, things would be okay. And she said, you know, I don't think things will be okay. I don't hope for any future. Pretty heartbreaking. These types of policies are hugely unpopular among Afghan people. I think the best that the outside world can do is try and keep engaging in the hope that over time, and it will be a long and gradual process, in the hope that they can empower some of these more moderate groups.

10:56If the West and the outside world can engage over time, you can hope that you can strengthen those forces. I think there are some pragmatic things you can do. You can keep humanitarian aid flowing and avoid cutting that further. That's really the best thing you can do to support Afghan people. I think there's also a strong argument for reforming the sanctions regime, which these sanctions were put in place on some of these Taliban fighters a long time ago. And it's now having the effect of starving the country of private investment. But yeah, the picture is bleak, and it's going to be a pretty long term project to try and get some positive change inside the country.

11:37Rosie Blau:Tom, thank you very much. Thanks, Rosie.

11:43Rosie Blau:You can hear a lot more from Tom and what life is like inside Afghanistan and the prospects for the country on this week's Insider, our video series that takes you behind the scenes of our newsroom. This week, Tom will be talking to Zannie Minton-Bedos, our editor-in-chief, and other colleagues about whether it's time to talk to the Taliban. It's a thorny debate. Western countries had hoped that isolating Afghanistan would eventually lead the regime to moderate. That has not happened. So is engaging with the Taliban the best way forward? If you're a digital subscriber, Insider is already part of your subscription.

12:23Rosie Blau:And if you're listening free, I've put a link in the show notes so you can watch extended clips.

12:51It's four days since a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Colombia, and the crucial 72-hour window, which is when most lives could be saved, has now passed.

13:05Rosie Blau:Claire McHugh writes about Latin America And around the country, hundreds of people have died And many more are missing

13:19In Francis de Assisi Hospital in the west of the country in Quipto Which is the capital of one of Colombia's poorest states I met Celia, a nurse and she told me about the trauma of having to rescue and personally look after a mother and her 23-day-old baby just after the quake, a wall had collapsed on the mother's back. She had to find them clothed to care for the baby, a toothbrush, sanitary towels for the mother and she said she was completely exhausted. She was explaining the kind of basic lack of resources that they have So the morgue, for example, doesn't have adequate space. And she told me the indignity of having to lay corpses on the ground so that they could save beds for the living.

14:14I also met Camilo Diaz Palacios, who showed me inside his house. He was devastated that his home of 25 years had cracks in the walls, the entire back wall had fallen away. He told me that he thought when the earthquake happened that this was the end of the world, that the earth had collided with something.

14:42The earthquake in Colombia was as powerful as the deadly pair that devastated neighbouring Venezuela in June. But it occurred ten times deeper in the earth's crust, reducing its destructive force. But it has still exposed cracks in the new government, who just three days into the job are unprepared. And as the crisis unfolds, it's now becoming politicised.

15:11Rosie Blau:Claire, how effective has the response been to this disaster? The government has reacted much faster than the regime in Venezuela did, for example. To his credit, Abelado de la Espriella was only sworn in as president on Friday, so just three days before the earthquake struck. Now, he has assumed personal command of the situation, and he actually visited Qipitó on Monday. It's the first day of the earthquake. But people are criticising his government already for making errors. So in Cali, which is the third largest city where lots of buildings have been destroyed, people are having to be rescued from under the rubble, People are wondering why are many of these rescuers volunteers doing it with bike helmets on and hammers?

15:59They're not trained professionals with the right equipment, which is incredibly dangerous. And a series of aftershocks since Monday have brought down even more buildings. So there is a feeling of anger on the streets. And some people are demanding to know why hasn't the national government allowed internationally trained search and rescue teams into Colombia? Now, a team from the US did arrive. There's a volunteer team from Mexico who've just been in Venezuela that arrived in Cali. Colombia has plenty of expert search and rescue teams, but it's about coordinating these around the country. And the effectiveness of the response has also varied.

16:39Rosie Blau:Is that criticism warranted? And in what way has the effectiveness varied? I think the first thing to say is the geography of Colombia makes getting aid and an emergency response to a remote area like Choco really difficult. Choco is a place with very, very few roads and some of those roads have landslides, meaning that it's difficult to get heavy machinery, the type of machinery that you need to remove these mountains of concrete that have resulted from the earthquake. So in the cities of Cali and around the coffee region, which are both much richer areas, the state's response has been much better.

17:21The government is relying on local governments to organise and to execute the response. Whereas in Chocó, for example, this is where multiple crises are converging. Many armed groups in that area extort the poor population, three quarters of which are Afro-Colombian. and I heard the words over and over again in Kipto that we've been abandoned. It's also a surreal feeling because there's people in Cali and in the coffee region in Choco who are staring at the ruins of their houses wondering what on earth they're going to do in the future. And meanwhile, in Bogota, the capital, life goes on as normal.

18:01People are in cafes, drinking coffee. It shows that this is a tale of two Colombias.

18:09Rosie Blau:Claire, thank you very much. Thanks, Rosie.

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18:55Ann Wroe:It took Nirmal Purja quite a long time to start climbing mountains. Anne Rowe is The Economist's obituaries editor.