Mullah Naqibullah, a slender young Taliban fighter, threw his scarf over his shoulder and raised his rifle. He made his way from under an expanding mulberry tree to the patio of a small mud mosque in Sangesar, a small village in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, and entered.
He stood inches from a microphone wrapped in a colorful cloth to keep the dust at bay, and in a falsetto voice he called the faithful to prayer.
This is where Mullah Muhammad Omar founded the Taliban movement in 1994. The group went to take Kabul in September 1996 and establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which has introduced a narrow definition of Islamic jurisprudence that: excluded women and girls from working and going to school. Omar’s decision to provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda ultimately toppled his government after the September 11 attacks. But the Taliban never went away.
I first went to Afghanistan in 2009 to document the war. By this time, the United States was in the midst of a brutal conflict against the Taliban, who had mounted a formidable insurgency to regain control of the country.
In addition to the war, the United States tried to help form a government in Kabul, while the US military tried to build an Afghan army in its own image.
But for Afghans, this was just another chapter of foreign intervention in the country’s long history of struggles, which included colonialism, tribalism, monarchism, communism and strict Islamic law. The Americans didn’t realize how fragile the systems they created were until everything collapsed.
I went to Afghanistan in July 2021 to document the US withdrawal. When things started to collapse around me, I stayed. On the morning of August 15, I stood outside the US embassy, photographing US Chinook helicopters scrambling to evacuate staffers. That afternoon I photographed Taliban fighters as they marched into the city.
Before that day, Taliban fighters seemed like ghosts. I rarely saw them, but I always felt their presence. It was surreal to watch them roll through the blast walls erected to keep them out and converge under the graffiti left by American troops.
In May, I returned to see how Afghanistan had fared under the Taliban rule. Nine months after their stunning victory and takeover, they are still struggling to transition to a ruling political power.
I found a country that still doesn’t have a functioning economy. Crowds of women wait outside bakeries for handouts. Men who once had office jobs now have to sell vegetables in the market or peddle with used goods to buy a little food to take home. Traders have seen their customers dwindle as prices rise.
In the countryside, where the fiercest fighting took place, Taliban fighters now haunt the former military installations of the American occupation. They marvel at the luxuries their adversaries enjoyed as they spent years sleeping in the mountains, hiding from American drones.
The Taliban are all too aware of the fragility of their control. They championed a brutal style of government. The same battle can easily be waged against them.
Mohammad Usman Hamasi is a Taliban commander from Chak District in nearby Wardak Province. During the war, he trained as a suicide bomber, but was arrested before he could complete his mission. “I didn’t have a wife or kids then. I wanted 100 percent to carry out such an attack, but God did not want me to become a martyr,” he said.
Mr. Hamasi told me that he is frustrated by the management’s refusal to admit girls to school. “In fact, many mujahideen are not happy with the closure of the schools,” he said. “I’m here,” he explained, speaking of his hopes for the movement, “so that my sister or daughter can go to school and receive education under Islam, Sharia law and hijab.”
Afghan women have been the most victims of the return of the Taliban to power. Despite the Taliban’s promise to protect their rights, they have seen progress slow down.
Ogai Amil, an educator, journalist and civil society activist, watched the country fall back on the Taliban from her tiny apartment. She hoped it would be different this time. “People thought maybe the Taliban had changed and their takeover would be easier, governance would be better, security would improve and the country would become peaceful,” she told me. In May, women were instructed to: cover their faces in public and avoid leaving the house.
She told me that she has started talking informally with many Talib officials over the past year. “I say to them, ‘I am not your enemy, but I want you to lift all these restrictions,'” she said. “These are our human rights, given to us by God. Don’t take them from us.”
Initially, the Taliban assured Afghans that girls of all ages would attend public schools when they reopened last September. But since then they’ve gone back on that promise.
I met two sisters, Basma and Bahara Ahmadi, at their childhood home in a hilly neighborhood on the outskirts of Kabul. The uncertainty about the Taliban’s restrictions has shocked them.
Unable to attend high school, they spend their days taking English classes in the same room where the loom is where their family weaves carpets to make ends meet. They hope that the ability to speak perfect English will be their ticket to scholarships that will allow them to study outside the country.
The rapid collapse of the government that was building the West was a milestone in an ongoing, centuries-long struggle for self-determination that was thwarted by outside intervention. After more than ten years of reporting, I have come to understand that, as horrifying as the Taliban are to many, to some they are a repetition of this process and not a departure from it. Having lived under many regimes, many Afghans wonder how long this will last.
It is impossible to know what the future will hold for the country, but the next chapter must be written by the Afghans themselves.
Victor J. Blue is a New York-based photojournalist covering the legacy of armed conflict, human rights and the protection of the civilian population.