The end of the war was a relief for the residents of Afghanistan’s most violent region. Locals tell what made them support the Taliban.
SANGIN, AFGHANISTAN The journey towards the province of Helmand is bone-rattling. The asphalt is full of debris from roadside bombs by the extremist Taliban.
Helmand used to be known as the most violent province in Afghanistan. Many lost their lives on this southern highway.
Along the destroyed road stands the ruins of former Afghan government buildings. The bullet-holed walls have collapsed in a heap. In the middle of the destruction, the flags of the Taliban fly defiantly.
visited Helmand in January 2022. It has been easier for journalists to report to the region only after the fighting has ended. Therefore, the experiences of local people have not received much visibility in the past.
After a couple of hours of driving the Sangin valley comes into view. Small mud brick dwellings are dotted here and there along the roads. There are not many of them left after the war.
The bloodiest battles of the Afghan war took place in Sangin, which has about 20,000 inhabitants: first between the Taliban and the Western coalition, and from 2014 onwards between the Taliban and the Afghan army.
More American and British soldiers died here than anywhere else in Afghanistan, about a couple of hundred. Local numbers have not been kept, but estimates run in the thousands.
21-year-old Wakil Ahmad was only one year old when the United States invaded Afghanistan and killed the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden from the Taliban regime in 2001.
Now the long-haired Ahmad walks around the center of Sangin with an assault rifle on his shoulder and a traditional Helmand black turban on his head. Ahmad has a smile on his face.
When the Taliban came back to power a year ago, tens of thousands of people fled the Afghan capital, Kabul. Here in Sangin, however, the change of power was a relief for many.
Ahmad says that his cousin and uncle belonged to the Taliban. He himself joined the organization only five years ago, to take revenge for his relatives.
– They were tortured to death, Ahmad says from behind a blue shawl pulled in front of his face.
According to Ahmad, the bodies of his uncle and cousin were taken to the headquarters of the Afghan army in Helmand, and were not immediately agreed to be handed over to the family for burial.
– When we finally got the bodies, my uncle’s ears had been cut off.
has not been able to confirm Ahmad’s story.
It’s hard to find anyone in Sangin who hasn’t lost a relative or family member in the war. One of the small relative boys gathered around Ahmad is, according to Ahmad, the only survivor of his family.
A cemetery opens in the background. Hundreds of temporary tombstones were made there from small, pale stones as the fighting raged.
In the West, the war in Afghanistan was justified often with the pursuit of women’s rights, after all, in the 1990s, the Taliban regime ordered women under the burqa and within four walls.
Especially in the cities, women were able to breathe more freely during the past 20 years. Although the changes did not extend to everyone, at the individual level they could be large.
Now urban women are demonstrating against the Taliban’s oppression, after the extremist movement reversed its decision to let all middle school-age girls back to school, instructed women to cover their faces and violently broke up demonstrations.
However, about three out of four Afghans live in rural areas, where gender concepts are still often extremely old-fashioned, especially in the Pathan regions of the south and east.
The past 20 years in Sangin are remembered as very different from those further north.
A 40-year-old housewife is waiting in a smoky clay shack Gul Bibi. In Pathan culture, only female visitors are allowed into the houses, so it would not be possible for a male reporter to interview Bibi. Even now, the men in the family forbid photography.
Bibi gets up from the straw-covered floor where she has been lighting a traditional coal heater. He smiles kindly, even if the topic of conversation is difficult.
– The war destroyed our lives. We lost everything to the war: our house, our country. Two of my brothers died as martyrs, says Bibi.
The youngest brother spent ten years in prison until he was released after the Taliban came to power.
– We are satisfied with the Taliban, says Bibi.
It is possible that she cannot say anything else because it is difficult for her to speak freely in the area now controlled by the Taliban, within the hearing of her male relatives.
Freedoms or positive development were not even seen in such regions in 20 years. That’s why you won’t necessarily miss them either.
In Sangin, the Taliban are for the most part village residents: women’s fathers, uncles, brothers and sons.
That is why it has been difficult for some in the army to distinguish between ordinary villagers and members of the movement.
In my thirties Muhammad Isa too relatives had joined the Taliban. They are no longer alive, Isa says.
Before the war, the family had four houses in Sangin. Only one of them is still habitable to some extent.
Isa looks down from his house towards the valley.
– That area belonged to the Taliban, and they shot from there. We weren’t on their side, and we weren’t on anyone else’s side. We suffer in between, Isa explains.
According to him, anyone could have been a target when the Afghan army was patrolling the area.
– No one investigated or asked questions. This was a war zone, Isa says and points to the battered walls of his house.
Isa can’t afford to repair the damage. Still, he is now happy that after the end of the war he has finally been able to return to his home from the other side of the province.
Isa also has a clear understanding of why the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan.
– The government [ja ulkomaalaiset joukot] committed many atrocities here. That’s why the local people started supporting the Taliban, says Isa.
In areas like Sangin, it was the better of two bad options.
Watch the video: Born in the midst of great powers, Afghanistan has always expelled its occupiers
Read more about Afghanistan: