The ones who got left behind: life in Afghanistan under the Taliban

Warning: Some content may be upsetting for readers.

In the gloom of a dank, cramped room, four young faces are in turn spotlighted by a bright torch. Their eyes tell a story of fear and panic, their bruised cheeks perhaps evidence of brutality that has happened before the camera was turned on.

This is the scene from a video leaked to Stuff; a snapshot of life in Bamyan, Afghanistan, under the control of the Taliban.

We can’t show you the video. It would identify the victims – two women thought to be 19 or 20, and two men in their early 20s, all from small villages in the province New Zealand military forces were based for a decade up until 2013.

The video is also too explicit: it depicts humiliation and an act which would be considered a sexual assault.

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The young people are prisoners of Taliban enforcers, according to sources.

Their supposed crimes? Breaches of new morality codes in place since August 2021, allegedly fraternising with the opposite sex.

That’s it – that’s what has led to this scene of terror.

It’s scenes like this that have spread fear across this mountainous, once mostly-peaceful land.

“I can say life is stopped,” one woman who now lives in hiding told Stuff. “The extremists have won a victory.”

Almost two years on from the return of the Taliban to this province with so many connections to Aotearoa – where the blood of 10 soldiers was spilled – Stuff has been investigating what has become of Bamyan.

Most people are just trying their best to get on with life, albeit enduring financial strain. Bamyan was never a place of riches, but the departure of many Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), the drying up of aid, and the collapse of the country’s economy has bit hard.

For the main, though, it’s as if there is a truce between the people and those who hold power, the second generation of Taliban rulers to take charge. Whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Taliban destroyed the town’s famous ancient Buddha statues and massacred many people, this time around the violence is more subtle.

Make no mistake, though: this is a very different place to the one New Zealand forces withdrew from. The hopes and dreams spoken of at that time – a world in which girls and women would enjoy education and freedom, and where human rights would be observed – vanish by the day.

The place once known as Kiwi Base, the fortified home of New Zealand’s Provincial Reconstruction Team, is now occupied by the Taliban army, according to sources. Stuff also understands a human rights office was used as a place to hold and beat opponents, and that a “jihadi school” has been set up in the town.

As the woman in hiding says: “I just feel fallen from the sky to the ground. There is no brightness for the future, I am going into the darkness every moment.”

In a military offensive that has surprised many with its speed, the Taliban has reportedly taken about 26 of the 34 provincial capitals. These newly-claimed provincial capitals include Bamyan province and town where New Zealand had a significant footprint with our Provincial Reconstruction Team. It fell to the Taliban today after officials are said to have abandoned the city – Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), Situation Update, August 15, 2021.

Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show how MFAT officials in Wellington kept a close tab as the Taliban swept back to power in 2021.

New Zealand had invested $68.5 million in development projects in Bamyan between 2004-2018. All the projects were finished before 2021 (although since then New Zealand has contributed $10 million in humanitarian funding to various agencies and NGOs).

But despite all the effort of so many countries, as the Taliban seized control even before the final withdrawal of the United States-led coalition of western forces, it was feared things would go backwards.

And those fears have proved correct in so many ways.

With the Taliban came the imposition of draconian laws and edicts. Women have been banned from studying or working – even for foreign NGOs. Parliamentary rule has been abolished, and the judiciary has been replaced, with power resting in Kandahar, the Taliban’s traditional base.

In provinces like Bamyan, where most of the population are Hazara people, local government officials have all been replaced by Taliban loyalists mostly from the Pashtun tribes.

A report this year from a United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, paints a dire picture.

Bennett, who visited several provinces including Bamyan, said the Taliban was ruling through “fear and repressive policies aimed at suppressing communities”. Punishments, including the death penalty, had been reintroduced for offences such as adultery and fornication.

Which brings us back to that video.

According to sources, it was filmed about a month ago, and the four young people had been arrested by Taliban intelligence officers and accused of being in inappropriate relationships.

They all have their hands tied behind their backs and are naked from the waist down. Their captors, who are never seen, shine a torch in their eyes and shout accusations. The replies come softly, and pleadingly: they are all fearful. One of the women says she doesn’t know the men.

Their eyes are wide open, their faces bruised.

At one point, the camera moves close to the genitals of each of the victims.

A large stick is pushed on the buttocks of one of the men, almost penetrating him. He is told the stick should enter him so he can understand how wrongly he has behaved.

The threats continue before the video ends abruptly.

It’s unclear why the video was filmed – sources say it was shared among Taliban officials.

No one knows what happened to the prisoners, and they have not been seen since they were arrested.

“It’s crazy – I can’t understand why they are doing this,” says one source.

Before the Taliban took over, Bamyan was less conservative than many other parts of Afghanistan. But it was hardly liberal – relationships between young people of the opposite sex outside of marriage were frowned upon, and if boys and girls went outside unaccompanied, especially in villages, they sometimes risked being abused or beaten up by those who found it offensive.

But the video shows there is a whole new level of danger, and it’s sanctioned (not to mention it hardly looks like justice is being observed – there’s humiliation and punishment, and no trial has taken place).

“Many people have disappeared or are put in prison without any reason or access to a court of justice,” one woman told Stuff . “I don’t feel safe any moment.”

The situation in Bamyan continues to deteriorate. Our contact there reported the Taliban are stealing cars, motorbikes and property and have begun to search houses. After an individual refused to give his car to the Taliban, he was shot and killed – Source: MFAT, Formal Message, August 20, 2021.

The woman who doesn’t feel safe and is in hiding applied to come to New Zealand on an emergency visa in 2021 but was rejected. (About 1400 people including some who previously worked for Defence were approved for the visas by May last year.)

The woman worked for a number of NGOs, including one which did work paid for by a New Zealand government agency – but it was deemed that since she didn’t work directly for the government, she wasn’t eligible for assistance.

Instead, she now lives in fear in a country she barely recognises. The Afghanistan she grew up in has been destroyed, she says.

“I had the right of freedom of speech, working to fulfil equal rights for women and men, the right to go to school, universities, government offices, sharing our ideas and thoughts of society … going to shops, the beauty salon, parks,” she says.

“Since August 2021, I have missed my friends and colleagues. I can’t work. I moved out of my province and am now living somewhere else in Afghanistan. My living situation is worse and worsening … no one can imagine.”

In June 2021, the woman was amongst scores of people who fled into the nearby Baba Mountains. The Taliban had taken control of two districts in the province and people feared what would happen next.

Many didn’t have warm clothes or shelter, and babies and elderly people died, she says.

“Most of them were without food … people were searching for vegetables in the mountains. Any moment those days come to my mind, I am not able to talk or write.”

She returned to the city in mid-July, but there was much uncertainty.

“On the morning of August 15, I decided to go to the market to purchase goods for daily necessities. I received a call from my brother and he asked me to escape immediately because the situation was changing and everything was going to end. That day was a horrific and black day and I will never forget it my whole life.

“It was a day of death for all the things we worked hard for over two decades – 20 years of effort were finished in one day.”

Soon after, the Taliban announced an amnesty for people who worked with foreigners, the previous government, or in the army.

“They said, ‘People should not fear us – let’s celebrate our victory over the Americans and their allies’,” says the woman. “But this was not a true amnesty.”

People have disappeared, been imprisoned, or killed, she says. This is backed up by the special rapporteur’s report which notes the killing and disappearance of former security officers and other officials, including the reported execution of 12 former prosecutors in one incident.

“The regime is looking at women who worked with international communities or NGOs and saying they are infidels who should be killed or removed,” says the woman.

Another woman sent Stuff a copy of a widely-reported speech made by a senior Taliban official in which he said those who caused disruption should be considered rebels and sentenced to death.

The woman says: “This is the radicalism, and this order is very dangerous.” Reflecting on the violence of the previous Taliban government she says: “Nothing has changed.”

One family today made the decision to travel from Bamyan to Kabul. The stress in the father’s voice as he made the difficult decision for his family and potentially be taken by the Taliban reinforced the real desperation people feel about their situation – Source: MFAT, Formal Message, August 22, 2021.

Scenes from Kabul’s international airport as the Americans withdrew in 2021 – people swarming the runway, or clinging to the undercarriages of aircraft – were the most obvious demonstration of people’s desperation to leave.

But for most people, even the prospect of getting to the airport then was too dangerous. With no flights available, the only route from Bamyan to Kabul was via road – a stretch long-considered hazardous because of insurgent threats.

So, for many people, the only option was to hunker down. One Bamyan man who Stuff has spoken to says he was terrified, partly because of what he and his family had experienced during the previous Taliban regime.

“In our village, there were people who could not get away who were beheaded,” he says of an incident he remembers from the 1990s. “They cut through them and left them to bleed like a chicken.”

That was part of the reason he worked in human rights and provincial government, to thwart such brutality and help instil peace and democracy.

When August 2021 came, he immediately felt in danger. “I moved to my sister’s house in another village,” he says. “I would just go outside for a small breath, but try not to show my face even to the neighbours. I was like a prisoner, and I was worried someone could easily come with a gun and do something.”

While in hiding, he kept tabs on developments, including when an office for human rights where he had worked was occupied by Taliban enforcers. “They were torturing people from the same building we had fought for human rights,” he says. In the MFAT documents, New Zealand officials received a report about the storming of this building, with one official describing it as “very concerning, very disturbing”.

When the man heard people were looking for him after about a month, he decided to leave for Kabul to find a way out of the country.

Previously clean-shaven, he grew a long beard, put his luggage and documents in one vehicle, and travelled in another, trying to keep a low profile. “It was very scary – I was seeing Taliban [at checkpoints] asking, ‘Where are you going? Where are you from?’.”

After several months of hiding out in Kabul, he eventually arranged for himself, his wife and young children and his parents to escape by road to Pakistan, travelling on a medical visa.

“We had a Pashtun driver who was very kind and knew the checkpoints.” Money changed hands to help them through, and eventually, in the middle of the night, they lined up at the border with Pakistan, along with hundreds of others.

At the moment he stepped across the border, there was relief, but also deep sadness. “I love my country and my people.”

After 11 months in Pakistan, the man and his family were accepted as refugees and he is now re-establishing his life in Europe.

But his heart remains in Bamyan. He keeps in touch with family and friends who are all suffering, especially because of the economic situation.

A person who is a security guard for the solar power system funded by New Zealand as part of its aid programme has told the man he cannot afford to get by on his wages and is looking to leave for Iran or Pakistan.

“So even people who have a job cannot survive,” says the man.

And then there’s the flexing of Taliban muscles – the arrests of people considered rebels, including recently two women who used to be teachers, accused of influencing young people with “infidel thoughts”, he says.

Recently a “jihadi school”, with a curriculum dedicated to teaching Taliban ideology, was opened in Bamyan at a former teachers’ training centre. (Other sources confirmed this.)

“This is now a training centre for new Taliban soldiers,” he says. “It’s the first time they have opened such a place in Bamyan.”

The current threat to New Zealanders and New Zealand-linked individuals in Afghanistan is assessed to be primarily from the unstable security situation, extremist groups such as ISIS-K, and isolated Taliban figures’ enforcement and application of their interpretation of Sharia law. Many New Zealand-linked individuals may have a confluence of factors which will increase their personal threat, including being of Hazara ethnicity, or having links with the previous Afghan government – Source: MFAT, Formal Message, 29 October 2021.