Afghanistan. Five years after the Taliban came to power, their supporters celebrate in the streets
Hundreds of supporters of the Taliban leaders celebrated the fifth anniversary of their return to power in Afghanistan on Saturday in the streets of Kabul. On a roundabout near the former American embassy in Kabul, a crowd of men and children, but almost no women, waved black and white flags of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The atmosphere was festive, with selfies and music in the background. Motorcycles, buses, cars and rickshaws adorned with flags pass heavily armed soldiers perched on Humvees, vehicles abandoned by the American army and its Afghan allies during their withdrawal in 2021.
But other Afghans, including women subject to “suffocating restrictions”, according to the UN, remained cloistered at home. This is the case of this 35-year-old woman whose husband was killed by Taliban insurgents in 2021: “An immense pain overcomes me. To come to power, they made thousands of women widows and deprived thousands of children like mine of a father,” she testified anonymously to AFP.
Banned from many public spaces since the Taliban’s return to power, women were absent on the streets of Kabul on Saturday. Photo Sipa/AP/Nava Jamshidi
A country that remains in crisis
On August 15, 2021, 20 years after being driven out by the Americans, Taliban forces entered Kabul without resistance, causing the government to flee. Thousands of Afghans, fearing their ultra-rigorous vision of Islam, desperately tried to flee via Kabul airport, even clinging to planes as they took off. On August 30, 2021, the last American soldier left Afghanistan, ending the longest military intervention of the United States, launched in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Only recognized by Russia, the Taliban government prides itself on having improved security for a population traumatized by 40 years of war. This also allows “foreign countries to invest”, underlined Saturday in a message the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zia Ahmad Takal. Despite growth of 4.8% in 2025, living standards are falling due to the return of more than six million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan, according to the World Bank.
Global warming and the war with Pakistan, which has killed hundreds of civilians and disrupted trade, are worsening the crisis. Nearly 14 million Afghans are in acute hunger, according to the UN.
“Afghan women are abandoned”
“Over the past five years, Afghans have suffered the introduction and consolidation of suffocating restrictions in almost every area of their lives,” said Fiona Frazer, director for human rights at the UN mission in Afghanistan. Among them, the obligation to wear a beard for men, to cover themselves from head to toe for women, detention of journalists, corporal punishment, etc.
Girls and women face the worst restrictions, banned from parks, gyms and many jobs. Afghanistan is the only country in the world to ban them from secondary or university education. On Saturday, S., a 23-year-old student taking online courses, stayed at home in Kabul. Afghan women are “abandoned”, Zahra Joya, a journalist who fled Kabul in 2021, told AFP in London, calling for “solidarity”.
Two senior Taliban officials, including their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, are the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for “persecution” of women.
