Five years under the Taliban: Meduza reports from Afghanistan, where a war on drugs and greater security have come with mass poverty, unemployment, and the loss of women’s rights

In August 2021, after the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the Taliban, an armed religious and political movement, seized power in Afghanistan. Active fighting has since ended, but life has hardly improved for many Afghans. The Taliban established a Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and severely curtailed women’s rights. The authorities also tried to block internet access nationwide and ban officials from using smartphones. At the same time, the Taliban declared war on drugs, specifically opium, and it appears to be waging that war quite successfully.

In August 2026, Middle East scholar Ruslan Suleymanov traveled to Afghanistan to see how the country had changed over the past five years. He visited three cities and had dozens of conversations. Meduza has translated his report.

‘Russia? Welcome!’

“Get out of the car!” a Taliban fighter dressed entirely in camouflage tells me firmly, but without aggression, at one of the many checkpoints on the Herat–Kandahar highway. He asks me to follow him.

A local Taliban commander sits on the grass near the highway, surrounded by his aides. He takes his time examining my documents. When he realizes I have a Russian passport, his face lights up with joy, almost elation.

“Oh, Russia! Welcome!” the commander says in Pashto. Only a moment later do I notice that his left leg is missing. A prosthetic leg lies beside him.

He invites me to join him for tea from a thermos and even to stay the night. Hospitality is central to the culture of the Pashtuns, who make up Afghanistan’s ethnic majority and the backbone of the Taliban.

The roughly 500-kilometer (310-mile) journey from Herat in the north, considered Afghanistan’s cultural capital, to Kandahar in the south, where the Taliban movement originated in the mid-1990s, is much the same throughout: poor pavement — in places, very poor — document checks almost every hour, and enthusiasm at the mere mention of Russia.

That enthusiasm is understandable. Russia remains the only country in the world to officially recognize the Afghan government the Taliban formed in September 2021, shortly after seizing power.

For more than 40 years before the Taliban took power, Afghanistan’s roads were the scene of fighting, ambushes, and kidnappings. Today, long-distance travel around the country is relatively safe. Foreigners, however, are still better off traveling with someone local.

In 2026, Afghanistan ranks 11th in the world for terrorism risk, according to Australia’s Institute for Economics and Peace, which compiles the Global Terrorism Index. This is the first time it has fallen outside the top 10 since the ranking began.

In the first years after the Taliban took power, the main source of terrorism in Afghanistan was the Taliban’s bitter enemy, the Islamic State group — specifically its Afghan affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).

The group became known in Russia in March 2024 following the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, which killed 145 people. U.N. experts estimate that ISIS-K still has around 2,000 fighters. Afghans dissatisfied with the current authorities and people from Central Asia, mainly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, periodically join its ranks. Over the past five years, ISIS-K has recruited at least 600 volunteers from those countries.

In any case, improved security is one of the few achievements the Taliban can claim over the past five years. That is partly because, before August 2021, the Taliban itself carried out most of Afghanistan’s major terrorist attacks.

How popular is Taliban rule?

In nearly 300 years of statehood, Afghanistan has yet to develop a shared national identity. “We remain a deeply divided community, but we are not yet a nation. Everyone understands the word ‘Afghan’ differently,” Amin, a 31-year-old employee of the nationwide radio station Salam Watandar, tells Meduza.

The main divide is ethnic. Broadly speaking, the country can be divided into Pashtuns in the south and Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and others in the north. The government formed by the Taliban is almost 100% Pashtun. The Taliban’s reasoning is simple: the country is led by those who contributed most to the fight against foreign forces from 2001 to 2021. That means exclusively Taliban members and allied groups that fought most actively against the U.S. and its allies.

“Claims that our government supposedly isn’t inclusive are part of an agenda imposed by the West. Afghans are happy with their government,” an ethnic Pashtun employee of the Ministry of Information and Culture told Meduza, asking not to be named. But in private conversations with Meduza, members of six minority groups — Baloch, Qizilbash, Sikhs, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras — said they lacked equal rights and equal opportunities to pursue their ambitions in Afghanistan.

Ethnicity, however, is far from the country’s only dividing line. At least 74% of Afghans live in rural areas or are nomads; only 26% live in cities. In rural areas and mountain valleys isolated from the outside world, ways of life have remained unchanged for centuries. The village elder or mullah commands the greatest respect and generally has ties to the Taliban.

That is why, under the previous government, most Afghans heeded Taliban calls to boycott elections. The militants called the elections illegitimate and threatened to cut off the fingers of anyone who went to a polling station. Turnout in Afghanistan’s last presidential election, in September 2019, was less than 20%.

The Taliban’s propaganda about defending Islamic values or fighting foreign invaders, meanwhile, met with understanding, if not approval, among local people.

“The front line used to run through here. Shells were exploding. Today I can grow potatoes and fruit,” Najib, 57, who lives on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, tells Meduza.

Najib’s father was killed in the mid-1980s during the Soviet invasion. In the late 1990s, he lost his older brother, who fought for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance — a coalition of northern warlords led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. In 2006, during the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, his eldest son was killed after accidentally stepping on a mine on the road into Lashkar Gah.

“The war is over. For the first time in more than 40 years, we’re living in peace. That’s all I’ve asked the Almighty for in recent years,” he says. Like Najib, many Afghans are willing to forgive the Taliban for everything else because it has brought long-awaited peace.

‘We have to find a way to survive’

Before the Taliban took power, Helmand was known as Afghanistan’s leading producer of opium poppies. The province accounted for more than half of the country’s opium production.

In April 2022, Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered a crackdown on the drug trade. His decree said offenders would be punished under Sharia, or Islamic law. It did not specify how.

Over four years, the Taliban has achieved impressive results: the area planted with poppies in Afghanistan has fallen by roughly 95%, according to the U.N. In our conversation, Afghan Interior Ministry spokesperson Mufti Abdel Matin Qani went further, insisting that the figure was 98%.

As a result, around five million Afghans across the country have lost a steady source of income. So far, the Taliban has been unable to offer them another way to earn a living legally. Unemployment stands at no less than 75%. More than 90% of the population now lives below the poverty line, and more than 70% of Afghans depend on humanitarian aid.

“We all used to grow poppies. The Taliban themselves controlled the sales and made huge amounts of money from them. We just got what was left over. But we could survive on that,” Ahmad, 62, who also lives in Helmand, near the city of Gereshk, tells Meduza.

He says that now, like many former poppy growers, he has to grow fruit and vegetables and take them into town to sell. “I used to earn up to 20,000 afghanis a month [about $300 at the current exchange rate]. Now I barely make 10,000 [about $150],” Ahmad says.

For many Afghans, that is a substantial amount of money. The U.N. estimates that the country’s average salary is now around $100. Meanwhile, prices keep rising, and inflation had already exceeded 7.5% at the beginning of the year.

Gasoline in Afghanistan now costs around 84 afghanis ($1.20) per liter, liquefied gas costs 66 afghanis ($1) per liter, and beef costs 500 afghanis ($7.60) per kilogram (2.2 pounds). Monthly electricity bills come to nearly 1,000 afghanis ($15.30).

The huge influx of Afghan refugees and migrants from neighboring countries, primarily Iran and Pakistan, has made the situation worse. Over the past three years, more than five million people have been forced to return to Afghanistan at those countries’ insistence, increasing its population by 10%.

Two of Ahmad’s sons, ages 23 and 26, spent several years working in construction in neighboring Pakistan. But Islamabad’s tighter immigration policy forced them to return home in late 2024. They now help their father harvest his crops and sell them at the market in Gereshk.

“Life isn’t getting any easier. We have to find a way to survive. What matters most is that there’s no war,” Ahmad says, alluding to the periodic armed clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have become more frequent over the past couple of years.

How has the Taliban changed

When the first Afghan state emerged in the 18th century, Kandahar was its first capital. It was also here, in 1994, that graduates of religious schools known as madrasas, mostly from neighboring Pakistan, founded the armed Taliban movement. By 1996, it controlled most of Afghanistan, including Kabul.

Kandahar, now often called the country’s political capital, is home to the headquarters of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who also holds the title amir al-mu’minin, or “commander of the faithful.” He is consolidating his power, which rests on his high standing in the Taliban’s religious hierarchy.

Akhundzada relies on his own military guard and the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, effectively the morality police. The ministry was reestablished in September 2021 in place of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. It enforces his draconian laws and restrictions, including those imposed on women.

Over the past five years, girls in Afghanistan have been barred from attending school beyond the sixth grade and from pursuing higher education. Women are also banned from beauty salons, fitness centers, parks, and other recreational spaces. The Taliban’s supreme leader has prohibited women from working in government institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and U.N. agencies.

Some Taliban members, mostly in Kabul, do not share the rigid conservatism of their leader, who once turned his own son into a suicide bomber. During the movement’s 20 years underground, some militant leaders lived in countries such as Pakistan and Qatar. They saw that life in a Muslim country could be very different — certainly different from Afghanistan under Taliban rule in 1996–2001.

Some militant leaders are known to have sent their daughters to schools and universities in those countries. These experiences changed Taliban leaders, who became less radical than their predecessors. This is especially true of the movement’s younger generation, those born in the 1980s and 1990s.

In February 2023, for example, Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani sharply criticized the supreme leader over the ban on education for girls, accusing him of “usurping power.” He later had to leave the country for several months, reportedly because he faced the threat of arrest.

Another member of the Kabul-based Taliban leadership, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, also repeatedly called for girls to be allowed to return to school and young women to university. As a result, he was dismissed in May 2024 and later left Afghanistan altogether.

Kandahar itself is more conservative than Kabul. Most women here wear dull purple burqas that cover their faces completely. Boutiques and malls are rare, and most commerce takes place informally at simple stalls or carts on the streets.

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Over the past five years, many of the movement’s members most loyal to the supreme leader have moved to this birthplace of the Taliban. Among them is Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” and the Taliban’s public face.

Three years ago, we met in Kabul at the Ministry of Information and Culture, where he is deputy minister. This year, we met at a hotel in Kandahar.

“Education authorities are continuing their efforts. They are trying to create the conditions needed to resolve this issue, which is strictly an internal matter,” Mujahid says when I ask when girls in Afghanistan will be able to return to school beyond the sixth grade.

He says attempts to pressure the Taliban or force it to change any of its restrictions will never succeed. “We urge all countries not to concern themselves with Afghanistan. These are matters for our nation, and they do not concern other states,” Mujahid says, making his reluctance to discuss the subject clear.

He has more to say when asked about the “Islamic Emirate’s” relations with Moscow. “Russia has a very important role in Afghanistan. Russia also plays a very important role in our region, especially economically. You could say that Russia is needed,” Mujahid says. “Moreover, Russia’s recognition of the ‘Islamic Emirate’ government is a very important step that sets an example for everyone else. It shows Western countries in particular that there is no need to be afraid of taking such a step.”

The distance from Kandahar to Kabul is also roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles), but the journey takes a couple of hours less. The pavement is much better here, probably because Taliban officials themselves regularly use this highway.

There was once heavy fighting here, too, and kidnappings were frequent. In July 2007, for example, the Taliban abducted 23 Christian missionaries from South Korea on this road. Two were executed; the others were released more than a month later in exchange for Seoul’s commitment to withdraw its roughly 200 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Now, the only reminders of the war are the burned-out wrecks of cars and military vehicles occasionally visible beside the highway.

There are checkpoints roughly every 100 kilometers (60 miles), as well as at the entrance to Kabul. At the final checkpoint before entering the Afghan capital, security officers thoroughly inspect the car and record detailed information about every foreigner in a logbook.

As one might expect of a capital, Kabul is different from the rest of Afghanistan. Modern malls, fitness clubs, and fashionable coffee shops from before the Taliban’s return to power are still open. Before the Taliban’s return, those coffee shops were gathering places for Kabul’s cosmopolitan young people, hipsters, and LGBTQ people.

Strangely enough, the Taliban itself no longer shuns the trappings of Western civilization. This sets its members apart from their older comrades who controlled Afghanistan in 1996–2001. Back then, the militants banned music, confiscated photographic equipment and video recorders, forced people to follow a strict dress code, and held public executions in stadiums.

Today’s Taliban members happily take selfies, set up Facebook and Instagram accounts, watch the national cricket team’s matches, and order cappuccinos or lattes at coffee shops.

When Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered Afghanistan’s internet blocked in the fall of 2025 to “prevent immorality,” Taliban leaders in Kabul opposed the move, and service was restored after just three days. In June this year, the supreme leader ordered a ban on smartphones for government employees because, in his view, modern technology threatens Islamic norms and leads to “the destruction of the next generation.” From what I have seen, most officials, and not just in Kabul, still have smartphones.

Unlike in Kandahar, cafes and ordinary eateries in the capital also often show broadcasts from London-based Afghanistan International, the leading anti-Taliban TV channel run by Afghan exiles.

The militants in the Afghan capital also turn a blind eye to many of the restrictions on women imposed by the leadership in Kandahar. Roughly half the women in Kabul, for example, leave their faces uncovered and disregard the requirement to be accompanied in public by a male relative, known as a mahram.

Since August 2024, women in Afghanistan have officially been forbidden even to speak loudly in the street: the supreme leader ruled that “a woman’s voice is a source of impurity.” But this unrealistic rule is barely enforced either.

Perhaps the only thing women really cannot do in the streets is protest against Taliban rule. Immediately after seizing power in August 2021, the militants were shocked by the many protests by young women. Demonstrations took place in all of Afghanistan’s major cities, including Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Jalalabad. Typically, each drew between 100 and 300 young women.

This was largely a result of higher levels of education in the country. According to the U.N., primary school attendance among girls in Afghanistan rose from 0% to more than 80% between 2001 and 2021.

Now, at least 80% of the country’s 2.5 million women and girls of school age receive no education. In May and June this year, Afghanistan held entrance exams for public universities. A total of 120,000 applicants took them, without a single woman among them.

Nevertheless, an entire generation has grown up in the country with ideas about freedom, rights, and personal space that are completely different from those of the conservative Taliban. The Taliban, in turn, sees all of this as an intrusion by Western culture.

Can outside pressure influence the authorities?

“My life ended three and a half years ago. I’ll never forget that day. We were on our way to university classes, as usual, but people in uniform with assault rifles stopped us,” Shukriya, 24, tells Meduza, recalling the introduction of Afghanistan’s ban on university education for women in December 2022.

At the time, she was in her third year at Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna) Medical University in Kabul. By now, she could have been working and supporting her loved ones. During decades of unrelenting war, it became commonplace for girls and women to support an entire family financially. But the Taliban’s return to power has made life much harder for women.

“For the first year, I was deeply depressed and thought about killing myself. I couldn’t imagine how to go on living. Even now, I don’t know what will happen to me tomorrow or how to build a life for myself,” Shukriya says. Women now account for up to 80% of all suicides in Afghanistan. Every day, at least one or two Afghan women take their own lives.

She says what kept her from suicide was knowing that she needed to care for her sick father and help raise her two younger brothers. At first, she wanted to work in a beauty salon, but the Taliban banned those, too, in July 2023. These were places where many young Afghan women found work, met, and spent time together.

Only men’s salons now operate openly in Afghanistan. Even the men’s faces on posters advertising these businesses have been painted over. Women’s salons continue to operate only in private homes, and their customers visit in secret, afraid of the “morality police.”

Shukriya now makes dresses to order and sells them through social media. “The money I make barely covers food for the family. But I’m getting more and more orders, and I hope to save as much as I can so I can leave and bring my loved ones with me,” she says.

Education for women and girls is one of the clearest examples of the conflict between urban and rural Afghanistan. Even before the Taliban returned to power, women in rural areas wore burqas, and girls were often kept out of school beyond the sixth grade. While primary school attendance improved dramatically in 2001–2021, average secondary school attendance among girls across Afghanistan never exceeded 40%.

Another source of tension is the Taliban’s particular understanding of Islam. Officially, the Taliban professes Sunni Islam, but its interpretation also incorporates the rules of the Pashtun ethical code, Pashtunwali. Under that code, a woman’s place is “either in the home or in the grave.”

Despite their extraordinary hospitality, Pashtuns fiercely guard their culture against foreign influence. Graffiti on a fence outside the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Kabul reads: “The hijab is a shield against the intrusion of foreign culture.”

The Taliban’s draconian laws have baffled even the Muslim world. In January 2023, for example, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the ban on university education for women “has nothing to do with Islam.”

During the Taliban’s first period in power, in 1996–2001, three Muslim countries recognized its government: the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Today, even those countries do not. Nor does Qatar, which has hosted the movement’s political office since 2013.

At the U.N., Afghanistan is still represented by a diplomat from a state that no longer exists: the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Taliban spokesperson Mujahid told me this was because “the countries that waged wars in Afghanistan, the countries that occupied Afghanistan, have political influence over the U.N.”

Further isolation appears likely to make life even harder for Afghanistan’s population. Five years of ultimatums and attempts to pressure the Taliban have failed and instead led to a sharp reduction in international humanitarian aid, from $4 billion to $1 billion.

“We want the international community to cooperate with the authorities in Afghanistan, who have ensured security and eradicated corruption, drug trafficking, and other forms of crime,” Afghan Interior Ministry spokesperson Mufti Abdel Matin Qani tells Meduza.

For ordinary Afghans, particularly women and Kabul residents, all the Taliban’s achievements pale beside the restrictions imposed over the past five years. But they, too, see little point in trying to pressure the Taliban from abroad.

“The West was traumatized by its experience in Afghanistan and would rather forget about the country. All it does is try to lecture the Taliban. But they’ll never change. We need some other way to talk to them,” Shukriya says firmly.

“All I want is for people not to forget us or put all the responsibility on the Taliban. The world is responsible for us, too. Otherwise, our lives will become even more hellish,” she says.