In 2001, I spent part of a hard winter in a remote village near Bamiyan in the Afghan central highlands. The Taliban government had just fallen. The village was ringed with landmines. Neighbouring village had been razed to the ground by retreating militia, the roof-beams were charred, the buildings empty, and the survivors had fled to refugee camps in Iran. There was no electricity, no schooling for girls and little for boys. The nearest clinic was three days’ walk away and there were no medicines when you reached it. People made what little cash they had from archaeological looting and child labour.
When I returned to the valley, at the end of last year, it was difficult to recognise the place. For a start, I could drive there, rather than walk, on new roads that had been run up the valley. The mines had been cleared. The villages were three times larger. The refugees had returned. The lights worked. And girls were not only attending school – a number had graduated and gone on to Kabul University. Even more strikingly, carpet-weaving had moved from a dismal, low-paid activity, with a lot of child labour, in dark mud rooms, into weaving centres, with creches, producing extraordinary contemporary designs for top American stores.
And now everything has collapsed again. In just a few months, the electricity has ceased, the clinics have no drugs, the weaving centres have closed, the girls are no longer in university (Kabul University itself is shut). And the valley, reeling from a summer’s drought, now faces starvation. The lights in rural Afghanistan are going out village by village.
Some of this is the fault of the Taliban.
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