Four Years after Taliban's Return to Power in Afghanistan, Life for Many has Worsened

0:01Today on State of the World, life in Afghanistan, four years since the return of the Taliban to power. You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close with their happening. It's Thursday, August 14th. I'm Christine Arismeth. After U.S. troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, the Taliban swiftly took over, changing life dramatically in the country. The Trump administration says Afghanistan's conditions have improved in recent years to the point where sending Afghan nationals back does not pose a threat to their safety.

0:43That's how members of the administration explain, in part, the end of temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Afghans who fled to the U.S. when the Taliban returned to power four years ago this week. But as NPR's Arazu Razvani and producer Hwagagani report, a person's safety in Afghanistan depends on who they are. 30-year-old Shukr wasn't always in the business of repairing shoes. But it's the only work this father of six can find these days. Life is so hard. There are days where I earn nothing at all. Shukr says he had a good life before the Taliban returned to power. He enlisted in the military at 18.

1:29He says he was trained by the Americans. He often carried out night raids in search of Taliban insurgents, a controversial and sometimes deadly tactic that turned many Afghans against the U.S.-backed government and anyone who helped them. But on August 15, 2021, it all came to an end. The Taliban takeover. Afghanistan falls to insurgents. Taliban fighters enter the presidential palace in Kabul. The Afghan president has fled. The U.S. embassy in Afghanistan is shuttered. The airport in Kabul is a mob scene. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of Afghans are trying to get out from there. That day, as Taliban fighters advanced towards the capital, the checkpoint Shukr was stationed at on the front line came under attack.

2:15People just surrendered all of these checkpoints, but I didn't want to leave mine. And then a rocket hit, and then another, and I thought we were going to die. Shukr lost both his legs in that attack. He gets around now with the help of prosthetics. Because he worked with the Americans, the Taliban, he says, still ask around for him, which is why we're only using Shukr's first name, for his safety. He's moved his family multiple times. They're now living in something of a shack in a remote part of Kabul, trying to avoid the Taliban. I've lived here for six months and they've come and asked for me twice.

2:49I just don't have the energy to keep hiding anymore. On top of everything, Shukr says he'll never get over how he feels the Americans abandoned him. I'm disappointed in them. I just still feel so betrayed. People who weren't disabled, they had a chance to catch a flight and leave when the evacuation happened. But people like me were left behind. When the Taliban first returned to power, they claimed they'd governed differently than in the past. They announced a general amnesty for members of the old republic. Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Afghanistan, says they haven't followed through.

3:23There are numerous reports, including from the UN mission in Afghanistan, which finds that those groups can be hunted down, detained arbitrarily without a trial, ill-treated, including being tortured, and some of them are killed. NPR reached out to the Taliban government for comment. They didn't respond. In a statement to NPR, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, quote, the Trump administration remains committed to protecting those who supported our mission in Afghanistan while ensuring rigorous security standards. Bennett, who has not been allowed back into Afghanistan since 2023 because of his critical human rights assessments, says the Taliban's explanation for cases of mistreatment usually goes something like this.

4:06They say, no, there is an amnesty, but, you know, maybe some of our soldiers might take it in their own hands, but it's not our policy. Some of those soldiers did take the life of 30-year-old Fariba's husband into their own hands. Like Shukr, we're only using her first name for her safety. Fariba's husband was the head of security for one of the ministries under the U.S.-backed government. For several months, he carried on working under the Taliban. She says they forced him to return. Then one evening, he didn't come home. We started searching for him. His mother, me, his sister, all of us. We would go and look for him at checkpoints, the prison.

4:48We looked for almost a week, and then we got a call from his number. They were laughing on the other hand and said, come, we killed him. Come and take his dirty body. Feriba now spends all her days at home with her four young children. And that's not by choice. The Taliban no longer allow women to go out without a male chaperone. She wants her kids to get an education while they still can, but she stopped sending them to school. Her boys were being followed, she says. Her daughter bullied. A lot of the Taliban's children were studying in the same schools. One girl in my daughter's class would tell her every day, you know, I'm going to send my uncle to your house and he's going to torture you.

5:35He's going to put his feet on your neck. It was devastating for her. She's teaching them what she can at home, the little English she knows. Persian poems. She's also slowly selling off their household items to get by. She says rank-and-file Taliban have taken over her house. When she went to the police to complain, and they learned her husband worked for the old republic, they taunted her. They started laughing, saying, oh, you've lived here long enough. In the four years since the Taliban's return, Fariba says she's lost a lot. her husband, her freedom, and her dignity. Arizu Razvani, NPR News.

6:23That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.