An Afghan girl leans against the wall of the mud house shared by three families who fled fighting between the Taliban and the government in Kandahar province. The house is in the province’s Zhari district, January 2021. Charlie Faulkner for The National
An Afghan girl leans against the wall of the mud house shared by three families who fled fighting between the Taliban and the government in Kandahar province. The house is in the province’s Zhari district, January 2021. Charlie Faulkner for The National
An Afghan girl leans against the wall of the mud house shared by three families who fled fighting between the Taliban and the government in Kandahar province. The house is in the province’s Zhari district, January 2021. Charlie Faulkner for The National
An Afghan girl leans against the wall of the mud house shared by three families who fled fighting between the Taliban and the government in Kandahar province. The house is in the province’s Zhari dist


Afghanistan will go back to how it was when I went there in 2001


  • English
  • Arabic

August 20, 2021

Twenty years ago next month, a few days after the 9/11 attacks, I crossed the Amu Darya river from Tajikistan to Afghanistan. The country was still under Taliban control, and the borders were sealed, so I needed to find a way inside – and that way was on a crowded flat raft crossing the darkened river late at night, past Taliban guards.

In the days after the Twin Towers collapsed, Afghanistan was already in a state of transition. On September 9, 2001, the great Afghan opposition leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, also known as the Lion of Panjshir, had been assassinated in Takhar Province, where I was headed, by Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives posing as journalists. The murder was strategic; a harbinger to the US-led attacks on the Taliban that would follow within days.

Khwaja Bahauddin, the district where I began my journey to Kabul with the US-backed Northern Alliance who were attempting to unseat the Taliban, was like going back to what the Stone Age must have been like. Roads were dusty, unpaved and impassable. Villages were mud huts. Most of the people I met were illiterate, except for one extraordinary young girl who had somehow, despite a lack of books or education, learnt a smattering of English from the rare foreign healthcare workers the Taliban had somehow allowed into the country.

Health care was in a very poor state. Polio had not been eradicated. Poverty was rampant. There was little electricity, scarce water and one toilet in the village where I sheltered and which an American television network selfishly bought from the owners so that they could use it for their quickly growing team. The local population were literally sealed off from any kind of modern life. They lived as they probably had lived, in the Middle Ages. The average age was 15, women married at about 14 or younger, and the unemployment rate then was over 50 per cent.

Afghan anti-Taliban fighters leave the Tora Bora mountain area in December 2001. AFP
Afghan anti-Taliban fighters leave the Tora Bora mountain area in December 2001. AFP
Afghan opposition military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed just two days before 9/11. AFP
Afghan opposition military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed just two days before 9/11. AFP

By the time we reached Kabul two months after entering the country, the Taliban had retreated, shaved off their beards, gone into hiding or dispersed into the vast country. There were no cell phones or land lines but within days, a foreign entrepreneur rigged up a network and you could hear the Nokia chimes on foreigners' phones everywhere. The country was invaded by journalists and carpetbaggers eager to make a fortune off the misery of Afghanistan. Many did.

For the people, the transition from Taliban era to the one that followed was stark. I wore a hijab but not a burqa, and in markets and in small shops that finally opened, selling antiquated tins of food or stale Turkish sweets, men literally stared at my face as if I were a television set. In remote villages, hundreds of them would gather around me, gaping with their mouths open. They had not seen a woman’s face, let alone a foreign one, outside of their family, in the years of Taliban rule that had begun in 1996.

For the next two decades I returned to Afghanistan to monitor progress: women’s rights, literacy, governance, birth rates, medical treatments and opium eradication. Often I had optimistic trips – I will never forget attending a women’s luncheon of brilliant entrepreneurs – and sometimes I was in despair when I felt the level of corruption was unstoppable.

I visited provinces such as Helmand, where despite the best efforts from Nato troops, I felt the Taliban hangover was never going away. In the town of Sangin with young British soldiers, we got pinned down by an insurgent sniper I later found out was 14 years old. The Taliban mentality was getting to them very early on, despite the billions of dollars being poured into the country to reverse their brutal logic and tenets.

Taliban fighters in Wazir Akbar Khan in the city of Kabul. AP Photo
Taliban fighters in Wazir Akbar Khan in the city of Kabul. AP Photo
The money spent is gone, and the progress will be wiped out. The girls’ schools will be bulldozed

That Afghanistan has fallen back into Taliban hands is in some horrible way predictable. It is tragic and deeply worrying – on a regional and global level – but it is something most of us knew all along. While we thought tremendous strides were being made, the Afghanistan Papers, a set of assessments prepared by the US government that was eventually published in The Washington Post, tell us that senior American officials also knew that nation-building was going to be impossible.

What is astounding is the speed with which the Taliban retook the country. In Khwaja Bahauddin, there were repeated attacks on government positions that began in 2015. Between 2015 and 2017, there were more than 20 incidents, forcing terrified families to flee.

Still, money was poured into Afghanistan to train its security forces, to empower its women, and to support NGOs. Training programmes funded by various governments, including those in the EU. But here's the real tragedy: they always knew nation-building was going to fail. “Thinking we could build the military that fast and that well was insane,” one senior US military official told The Washington Post.

When we entered a Taliban-free Kabul in November 2001, the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was; but it was a terrified quiet, of people who still did not trust peace time. It was a stark contrast to the fall of Kabul this week, with frantic civilians rushing to the airport, pulling suitcases behind them, desperate to get on the last international flights out of the country.

Kabul was still shuttered in fear when I entered. People did not yet believe that the Taliban were really gone. Over the next few days and weeks, they emerged from their houses, particularly the girls – to go to the parks or to shop, something they had not done in the Taliban years without a male escort.

As much as I could, I tried to engage them, to talk about the dark years they had endured. I remember the first young women I encountered and how I teased them to remove their burqas. They told me they were afraid. “The Taliban aren’t really gone, are they?” they said. But they took me to their home where they cooked dinner for me (and ate in a separate room while I ate with their father and brothers).

The Taliban they had encountered is a different Taliban to the men who have returned to power. This is a generation of men who have embraced technology – they have had to – and who might have come of age in Pakistan or even Guantanamo Bay. They have a spokesman, someone to put a media spin to news (which is not surprising, given that ISIS, another extremist group, ran a brilliant social media campaign). And yet, for all their so-called modernisation, they won’t budge on human rights.

I think it’s too late to look back and see the countless mistakes the West made since 2001. The money spent is gone, and the progress will be wiped out over the next few weeks, as the people western forces trained and worked with will try to flee. The girls’ schools will likely be bulldozed.

Left behind will be fear and uncertainty; a return to the Khwaja Bahauddin that I encountered 20 years ago: people closed off from the world, from modernity, from any kind of freedom. We will soon be back to the terrified quiet I encountered when I walked into Kabul in 2001.

'How To Build A Boat'
Jonathan Gornall, Simon & Schuster

The biog

Family: Parents and four sisters

Education: Bachelor’s degree in business management and marketing at American University of Sharjah

A self-confessed foodie, she enjoys trying out new cuisines, her current favourite is the poke superfood bowls

Likes reading: autobiographies and fiction

Favourite holiday destination: Italy

Posts information about challenges, events, runs in other emirates on the group's Instagram account @Anagowrunning

Has created a database of Emirati and GCC sportspeople on Instagram @abeermk, highlight: Athletes

Apart from training, also talks to women about nutrition, healthy lifestyle, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure

How to help

Send “thenational” to the following numbers or call the hotline on: 0502955999
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Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
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LA LIGA FIXTURES

Friday Celta Vigo v Villarreal (midnight kick-off UAE)

Saturday Sevilla v Real Sociedad (4pm), Atletico Madrid v Athletic Bilbao (7.15pm), Granada v Barcelona (9.30pm), Osasuna v Real Madrid (midnight)

Sunday Levante v Eibar (4pm), Cadiz v Alaves (7.15pm), Elche v Getafe (9.30pm), Real Valladolid v Valencia (midnight)

Monday Huesca v Real Betis (midnight)

Company Profile
Company name: OneOrder

Started: October 2021

Founders: Tamer Amer and Karim Maurice

Based: Cairo, Egypt

Industry: technology, logistics

Investors: A15 and self-funded 

The specs

Engine: 5.0-litre supercharged V8

Transmission: Eight-speed auto

Power: 575bhp

Torque: 700Nm

Price: Dh554,000

On sale: now

If you go

The flights Etihad (www.etihad.com) and Spice Jet (www.spicejet.com) fly direct from Abu Dhabi and Dubai to Pune respectively from Dh1,000 return including taxes. Pune airport is 90 minutes away by road. 

The hotels A stay at Atmantan Wellness Resort (www.atmantan.com) costs from Rs24,000 (Dh1,235) per night, including taxes, consultations, meals and a treatment package.
 

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
While you're here
Banned items
Dubai Police has also issued a list of banned items at the ground on Sunday. These include:
  • Drones
  • Animals
  • Fireworks/ flares
  • Radios or power banks
  • Laser pointers
  • Glass
  • Selfie sticks/ umbrellas
  • Sharp objects
  • Political flags or banners
  • Bikes, skateboards or scooters
Scoreline

Bournemouth 2

Wilson 70', Ibe 74'

Arsenal 1

Bellerin 52'

The biog

Name: Younis Al Balooshi

Nationality: Emirati

Education: Doctorate degree in forensic medicine at the University of Bonn

Hobbies: Drawing and reading books about graphic design

What to watch out for:

Algae, waste coffee grounds and orange peels will be used in the pavilion's walls and gangways

The hulls of three ships will be used for the roof

The hulls will painted to make the largest Italian tricolour in the country’s history

Several pillars more than 20 metres high will support the structure

Roughly 15 tonnes of steel will be used

RESULTS

Cagliari 5-2 Fiorentina
Udinese 0-0 SPAL
Sampdoria 0-0 Atalanta
Lazio 4-2 Lecce
Parma 2-0 Roma
Juventus 1-0 AC Milan

Checks continue

A High Court judge issued an interim order on Friday suspending a decision by Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots to direct a stop to Brexit agri-food checks at Northern Ireland ports.

Mr Justice Colton said he was making the temporary direction until a judicial review of the minister's unilateral action this week to order a halt to port checks that are required under the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Civil servants have yet to implement the instruction, pending legal clarity on their obligations, and checks are continuing.

THE POPE'S ITINERARY

Sunday, February 3, 2019 - Rome to Abu Dhabi
1pm: departure by plane from Rome / Fiumicino to Abu Dhabi
10pm: arrival at Abu Dhabi Presidential Airport


Monday, February 4
12pm: welcome ceremony at the main entrance of the Presidential Palace
12.20pm: visit Abu Dhabi Crown Prince at Presidential Palace
5pm: private meeting with Muslim Council of Elders at Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
6.10pm: Inter-religious in the Founder's Memorial


Tuesday, February 5 - Abu Dhabi to Rome
9.15am: private visit to undisclosed cathedral
10.30am: public mass at Zayed Sports City – with a homily by Pope Francis
12.40pm: farewell at Abu Dhabi Presidential Airport
1pm: departure by plane to Rome
5pm: arrival at the Rome / Ciampino International Airport

THE SPECS

      

 

Engine: 1.5-litre

 

Transmission: 6-speed automatic

 

Power: 110 horsepower 

 

Torque: 147Nm 

 

Price: From Dh59,700 

 

On sale: now  

 

Reputation

Taylor Swift

(Big Machine Records)

The specs

AT4 Ultimate, as tested

Engine: 6.2-litre V8

Power: 420hp

Torque: 623Nm

Transmission: 10-speed automatic

Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)

On sale: Now

Updated: August 20, 2021, 7:40 AM`