This Is Life in Rural Afghanistan After the Taliban Takeover |
 | By Jim Huylebroek |
Sixty bone-rattling miles southwest of Kabul, remnants of America's longest war are abundant. Pillaged outposts scatter the hilltops, and skeletons of burned-out police pickup trucks and Humvees litter the road that weaves through the valleys in between. |
The walls of a U.S.-built local government building in Chak-e Wardak, a district in Wardak Province, are pockmarked by the impacts of recently fired bullets and rockets. Holes have been carved out of the walls for shooting positions, and only a few of the glass windows remain intact. |
 | | A destroyed Afghan police pickup and a ransacked outpost outside Kabul, Afghanistan, last week.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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But the once-constant volley of rifle fire is no more. |
In recent years, driving out of Kabul, the Afghan capital, would evoke fear of pop-up Taliban checkpoints at which young fighters pulled passengers out of cars, looking for government workers or members of the security forces. Getting caught up in an impromptu shootout between the two warring sides was always a risk. |
But since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, most of Afghanistan's countryside has seen a substantial drop in violence. Where airstrikes and pitched battles would be commonplace, the guns have fallen silent. The checkpoints have mostly disappeared. |
In their place is a developing humanitarian crisis and a new Taliban government that at times seems just as unaccustomed to governing as many Afghans are to living in a period without fighting. |
Millions of Afghans are facing a winter of food shortages, with up to a million children at risk of starvation in the absence of an immediate international relief effort, United Nations officials say. |
Adding to the misery, prices for basic foodstuffs have risen sharply, and many Afghan families are being forced to make do with rice and beans instead of chicken and other meats. |
For now, though, in the Chak-e Wardak district, a patchwork of apple orchards and villages, and in many other areas of the country, there is widespread relief over the end of the fighting and the return to something like normal life. |
 | | The ransacked district government compound in Chak-e Wardak, Afghanistan, last week.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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But the question remains whether the movement, which has brutally suppressed protests in urban areas against its rule, can pivot to a solid governance structure soon enough to cope with the problems underlying the country's gathering humanitarian crisis. |
Outside the local government building, Fazl Ur-Rahman, 55, was adjusting the load of his small truck, piled high with hay. "Before, security here was very bad, we were suffering at the hands of the military," he said, referring to the Afghan army. "They were beating people, they were asking people to take water and food to their checkpoints." |
The situation has improved under the Taliban in recent weeks, he said, and people could safely return to work. "Before, people could not go anywhere at night, they would be at risk of being shot," he said. "It has been a long time now since a bullet hit our homes." |
Here are four stories you might have missed this week. |
 | | Afghan refugees at the beach in Albania. Enri Canaj for The New York Times |
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"We don't put people in camps. They are dehumanizing and where all the problems start psychologically." Albania, one of Europe's poorest nations, has committed to taking in more Afghan refugees than any other country. Many have been put up in beach resorts. [Read the article.] |
"This is a serious issue. It's real, it's affecting our officers, it's affecting others around their community and in government." The Pentagon is asking all military personnel, civilian officials and contractors to report any anomalous health episodes similar to those that have befallen diplomats and C.I.A. officers at the American Embassy in Havana, according to a new departmentwide message. [Read the article.] |
"We are more afraid of the soldiers than the snakes." Seven months after ousting Myanmar's elected government, the country's fearsome army, known as the Tatmadaw, is ramping up attacks on a largely improvised armed resistance, and on the villages where its members live. [Read the article.] |
"No one dares to ask the Taliban about their past wrongdoings and the atrocities they have committed." The Taliban promised to respect press freedoms, but the new government has already shown signs of repression, and has even physically assaulted Afghan journalists. [Read the article.] |
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