Life under the Taliban: ‘What’s important is that we are hungry’

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For Nurzia Rashid and her husband Rahatullah Qalandari, anxiety about the Afghan Taliban regime was overshadowed by more direct concerns: where found the next food for their six children.

Rashid and Qalandari, who worked as a caregiver and security guards, respectively at the Government of the Government in the Kabul capital before the Taliban Retook Power last year, unemployed. The family has reduced food, sells jewelry and depends on the charity of aid and neighbors.

It does not matter to me whether the return of the Taliban is good or bad,” said Rashid, who did not support the world view of the Islamic group. “What’s important is we are hungry.”

Life for 40 million Afghanists has changed significantly since the withdrawal of NATO forces and the victory of the Sunni militant one year ago, with a dramatic economic collapse that many Afghan citizens far poorer and more hungry.

I am very worried about the next winter,” said Hsiao-Wei Lee, Deputy Director of the UN World Food Program for Afghanistan. The country really needs food assistance and broader investment programs, he said: “We need an economy to breathe. . . So [Afghanistan] is not in the same position as now. “

The return of the Taliban has been experienced very different in all regions, ethnic groups and gender. For some people, relative calm after the Islamic rebellion for 20 years is a pleasant opportunity to rebuild life. Others live in fear of persecution or have lost freedom that is won with difficulty such as the right to education for teenage girls.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s before the US alliance led by the US invaded and overthrowing the regime in 2001, triggered their long campaign to reclaim power.

While the collapse of the government which was supported by the West last year limits the livelihoods of people like Rashid and Qalandari last night, some Afghan people welcomed the crush of the Taliban to corruption.

The battle forced Haji Hamayon to escape from his village in the Central Wardak Province more than a decade ago, moved to the outskirts of Kabul. The 56 -year -old trader said the Taliban had handled bribes that infected the import business of its consumers.

Like most Taliban, he also came from a large ethnic Pashtun group in the country and shared elements of Islamist beliefs. The four wives and daughters did not work and covered their faces in public.

I am very happy that I don’t even care whether I eat or not,” he said. “I like the Taliban because all the warlords, oppressors, and killers have left.”

After the conquest of the Taliban, the Western power tried to isolate the regime by imposing sanctions, seizing reserves of foreign currencies of Afghanistan $ 9 billion and cutting assistance that formed 75 percent of the previous government budget.

The UN development program estimates that gross domestic product dropped 20 percent in 2021 and will shrink 5 percent further this year. This estimates that acute food vulnerability affects nearly 20 million people.