When he looks at himself in the mirror, Massiullah Sanehy (1) finds it difficult to recognize the young father of a family who, a year ago, looked like any European businessman. Finished the tie, forgot the pants or tight jeans. Place at salwar kameezthe traditional Afghan dress.
Another sign of a change of era, his cheeks are covered with a beard that he carefully lets grow. This is the price to pay if this NGO employee wants to avoid trouble on the way to the office, when he comes across the Taliban groups who have controlled Kabul since August 15, 2021.
Under the grip of the fundamentalists, the capital is no longer the teeming bubble that lived in international time. The city of 4.5 million inhabitants has taken on a provincial air, with its men in turbans, its women disappearing behind the burka, its restaurants closed, its traffic decreasing, its businesses struggling for lack of customers. “I feel like I have become a stranger in my own city”notes Massiullah Sanehy who watches worried, month after month, the list of prohibitions lengthen.
The time of hiding and secret parties
In his family, Friday picnics have ceased since a decree reserved the parks for men for this day off. Nor does he go to the café, where the Taliban hunt for young people. He could thus multiply the anecdotes. Last Sunday, he was invited to a wedding. After an hour, the music was cut off for fear of attracting a patrol from the Ministry of Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice. “To say that a year ago, we could still celebrate marriages without separating men and women”he sighs.
In Kabul, music is not banned as long as it remains confined to the private and family sphere. Musicians no longer take their instruments out into the street: cultural and artistic life has been reduced to nothing as soon as the mullahs return.
“Despite their promises, the Taliban want to impose their morals on us sums up the painter Behrang Ati. Her circle of friends resists the bans in her own way by organizing private parties where women are welcome. It is the time of clandestinity, that of secret parties and hidden schools for girls where we go with a knotted belly.
“I feel like in prison”
Like so many of his comrades, the artist will soon take the road to exile, despite the price of the visa for Pakistan, which flirts with €2,000. Why stay? Who needs paintings in the era of the mullahs? His gallery in Herat (west of the country) had to close. His controls collapsed. Without the help of his brothers, he would no longer eat. “Around me, many people are content with bread dipped in tea”, he testifies. More than half of the population suffers from hunger today, according to the United Nations.
Development agency service providers, NGO subcontractors, logistics companies, SMEs: entire sectors of economic activity have collapsed. A long-thriving sector, the media world has lost 60% of its workforce. Ishan Safi was fired in the fall from The Killid Group radio station in Jalalabad (east of the country) with seven of his ten colleagues. From then on, all his efforts to find work were in vain. “ We live in a very difficult time “, he slips, dodging questions about the new masters of the country.
How to adapt in times of crisis? Director Samim Rad left Kabul to open a hair salon in a town near Ghazni. At the end of his day, he has 50 Afghanis (€0.50) left in the cash box, enough to buy bread in these times of double-digit inflation. In order to supplement his meager income, he also sells SIM cards and watches for the money of his brother living in Iran. His vegetable garden, on the other hand, is no longer of any use to him. “We are experiencing an exceptional drought”, he sighs.
In the evening, Samim Rad avoids going out. “I feel like in prison”, he summarizes. As soon as he crosses the doorstep, he slips into his pocket a low-end phone emptied of all his contacts, photos and videos. His real smartphone, which contains his girlfriend’s number, never leaves the house. A common practice in Afghanistan. “Here, there are many Taliban supporters who do not hesitate to denounce those who do not respect the rules, he notes. I’m more afraid of the collaborators than of the Taliban themselves. »
Sharp cuts in the salaries of civil servants
A tenth of its income is taken by the Taliban administration and, to hear it, it never forgets to do so. A recent survey by the British study group Alcis Geo thus notes an improvement in levies and taxes, as well as a reduction in corruption under the current regime, which has made it possible to “save” 1.36 billion euros during of the past year. However, the sum remains largely insufficient to ensure the proper functioning of the State. Amputated by three quarters by the cessation of international aid, the annual budget was limited to 2.5 billion euros.
The fundamentalists have maintained the backbone and staff of the previous administration, with the exception of security and army officers, but have had to make drastic cuts in salaries. That of Professor Ramzan Habibullah was thus divided by nine. «Other civil servants complain of delays in income, he confides. To the point that former Taliban soldiers are leaving the army as the pay is meager. » Rather optimistic, this official believes that the government will eventually let the girls return to college and high school, a measure abruptly postponed last March.
The pro-Taliban insist on the marked decrease in violence against civilians in Afghanistan since the return of the fundamentalists, a reality attested to by the last report of the United Nations mission. Opponents of the new regime, whether local Daesh militants, who continue to carry out attacks, or the discreet armed resistance front of Ahmad Massoud, the son of the famous commander Massoud, do not seem able to change the report. of strength.
« For me, security has not really increased “, yet relativizes Freshta Safi. Previously, this middle-class Afghan woman graduate avoided dangerous places in Kabul. Now they are all around her, threatening to break through the doors of her sweatshop of artistic films. Inside, black fabrics draped over the windows block out the daylight. Under subdued lighting, a handful of women draw the boards of an animated film, sheet after sheet, without a computer. Freshta Safi asserts: “I cannot accept the law of the Taliban. »
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One year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan
The power was taken by. On August 15, 2021, the Taliban invaded the presidential palace in Kabul following a dazzling offensive that began in May following the start of the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan. President Ashraf Ghani flees abroad.
A non-inclusive government. On September 7 and 8, a government was appointed, largely trusted by historical leaders of the movement which had taken power from 1996 to 2001. There is no woman minister.
The exclusion of women. On March 23, 2022, the Taliban banned girls from going to high school and college, just hours after the reopening of schools, which had been announced for a long time.
Drought and earthquake. On June 22, an earthquake killed at least a thousand people in the south-east of the country, a region already hit by a severe drought, against a backdrop of widespread poverty.