Most of village Porakh’s landowning elite, from the influential Stanikzai clan, gathered for a grand feast on October’s second last day of Jummah to mark a family wedding. Following a late lunch, the Stanikzai brothers—septuagenarians Engineer Taher Stanikzai, the middle one Sadeq, and Ruhullah, the youngest, in his sixties—took me for a walk around Porakh, the affluent village at the centre of south-eastern Logar province, local boys following us with their cricketing paraphernalia. Senior Stanikzai studied agricultural science in Dehradun around the time Sadeq spent years in prison during President Mohammad Najibullah’s rule.
The brothers guided me to a graveyard at the edge of the village—a quiet contrast to the afternoon’s festivities. Like any of Afghanistan’s about 40,000 villages, Porakh nestles at the foot of a monolithic reddish-black mountain, the Mes Aynak, with a generous scattering of Buddhist ruins and quality copper, and peppered with corn farms.
Ruhullah knelt by a grave with a white Taliban flag embroidered with the Shahada, clearing the dead leaves by hand. In a poor country, even the graves are poor—overgrown with bushes and rusting iron railings. As he whispered in Pashto, the once merry crowd of cricket players fell silent. Ruhullah, holding the crumbling railing for support, stood up, sobbing.
About a furlong from the grave, in the living room of his mud and stone house, Ruhullah said that the grave was that of his eldest son Hamdullah, killed by a US airstrike when he was 20 years young. Hamdullah was a Taliban Mujahid. Ruhullah’s other sons brought out a large polyester banner with Persian texts: “Our hero Hamdullah, may Allah accept your martyrdom.” It is an honour to have received a banner such as this, the villagers explained. “My son’s death didn’t go in vain.” Ruhullah paused, then said, “We have won,” holding my hand as we set to leave Porakh.
The Black Road
Variations of the phrase “We have won” are painted everywhere—from traffic signs and classrooms to notice boards and the towering walls along highways. The same message on the boundary walls of the shuttered American Embassy in Kabul serves as a reminder that the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate defeated its western adversaries in one of the century’s most brutal wars. According to Brown University’s ‘Cost of War Project’, approximately 0.6% of the population died; other losses remain impossible to calculate.
For millions of Afghans—particularly in the countryside—the victory represents peace and freedom. “For 15 years, every night the Mujhahids and the state forces fought on this black road. Every morning, bodies were found,” said Engineer Stanikzai, standing on Porakh’s arterial road that connects the Logar highway to Kabul.
The Islamic Emirate has arguably consolidated a fragile peace. There are no more gunfights, suicide attacks, bomb blasts—except for occasional cross-border firings from Pakistan. “Marriages and funerals are conducted without fear, guests like you can come,” said Sadeq. While he is not particularly fond of the Taliban, he too acknowledged the Mujhahideen’s sacrifice: “Without boys like my nephew Hamdullah, we might have perished.”
(Top) Ruhullah Stanikzai and his son with a banner proclaiming Hamdullah's martyrdom; (above) Taliban commander Akhtar Jan (R) and his nephew in Islam Khel.
Mawlavi Muhajer Farahi, the Deputy Information Minister in the Taliban government, listed other success stories. “The key one,” he said, “was to integrate the country.” He claimed that in the last decades, even presidents could not easily change warlord-turned-provincial governors who were deeply rooted in their base provinces. Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam printed his own currency notes.
“In Islamic Emirate, we now found one consolidated, unique government. We have established a ‘centre’ in Kabul, in four years,” Mawlavi Farahi claimed. He handed over one of his five books—Memories of Jihad—that outlined the tactics to win the 20-year war; he then cleared his throat and said other achievements included reducing drug abuse, fighting corruption, enhancing taxes and using the revenue “to build and repair roads, dig canals and stabilise the economy.”
“Each dollar costs 66 Afghanis. Isn’t that the best in South Asia?” he asked. Critics argue that the economic stability is ensured by America, to safeguard its borders. “The collapse of Afghanistan will escalate and export militancy, drugs and human trafficking,” said a former minister; he clearly does not want him to be named. Yet, he too could not deny that post-conflict handling of crises has been largely “reasonable”.
Beyond Vengeance
Fahim Sultani—an elite Kabul neighbourhood inhabited primarily by the Hazara minority—was once a battlefield where the Taliban and Hazara fighters engaged in fierce combat. Today, it has matured into the city’s most prestigious residential enclave. While the Tajik and Hazara minorities continue to challenge the Pashtun-majority government, the Taliban leadership is urging its officials to prioritise political settlement over military force.
This shift is most visible in their restraint: unlike predecessors who executed President Mohammad Najibullah, the 21st-century Taliban has permitted former rivals like Hamid Karzai and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to reside in the capital. Professor Faiz Zaland, a social and political scientist at Kabul University, acknowledged that Taliban 2.0 has “moved beyond the politics of vengeance”.
He cited examples of powerful former ministers of Karzai’s cabinet, like his neighbour Farooq Wardak, who left after Taliban 2.0’s arrival and returned later to live in Fahim Sultani. “I haven’t heard of him having any problems,” said Professor Zaland, who is more a Taliban critic than sympathiser.
“They even told me that I could continue my job at the university,” Professor Zaland said. “I have been doing so for the last four years, just as I did for the ten years prior.”
To facilitate returns, the Taliban formed a commission tasked with bringing back former ministers and officials to resolve their cases privately. According to Zaland, they receive full VIP protocols, including bullet-proof cars, security guards, and—reportedly—a monthly allowance, while a few have been arrested due to unresolved criminal complaints. Considering South Asia’s acrimonious political ecosystem, these are notable achievements, the professor concluded.
India In The New Afghanistan
Syed Mujtaba Ali—the formidable Bengali polyglot, writer and journalist and one of the earliest Muslim students of Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati—once observed that while Afghans hold a profound love for Indians, Indians often fail to reciprocate. Following a three-year teaching stint in Afghanistan exactly about a hundred years ago (1927), Ali penned his classic memoir, Deshe Bideshe (In My Country and Abroad), noting: “The day we learn to look with a broader perspective, we will realise that imagining India and Afghanistan as separate is a prejudice of a later age.”
During an 18-hour bus journey from Kabul to Herat, I experienced Ali’s point firsthand. I met Sardar Barakzai, a businessman in his mid-thirties, who insisted I stay with him when we reached Herat at midnight. “Where will you go at this hour?” he asked. “Stay at my office; it’s recently renovated.”
I ended up staying in his home-cum-office for four days—treated royally and at no cost. This is the legendary Mehman Nawazi (hospitality), a warmth specifically extended to Indians that Ali so well described.
This relationship has deepened of late as Afghanistan’s ties with Pakistan have hit rock bottom. During my stay, several explosions rocked Kabul; for these, the locals blamed Pakistan. When I visited the Interior Ministry in early October—a day after another round of blasts—to have travel documents signed, I expected the Taliban security guards to be curt. These were Mujahideen who had fought for years from mountain hideouts.
Instead, the moment they heard I was from India, the atmosphere shifted. “How is Sunny Deol, and what is he doing?” one asked, his face surprisingly grave. I told them he was busy caring for his father, Dharmendra, but I couldn’t help but ask why everyone was so obsessed with Sunny Deol. He was, after all, a somewhat faded star.
The Taliban fighters—and later, schoolchildren—explained that Deol is the ultimate ‘fighter’ who often ‘flattens Pakistan’ on screen. After inquiring about the health of Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, they ushered me inside. But first, they insisted on taking selfies and asked for my postal address. They didn’t even glance at my ID.
They had one parting request: “Tell the Indian government to give us weapons. Whatever ‘tightening’ needs to be done to Pakistan, we will do it right here.”
Later that night, walking in Kabul’s bustling kebab district on Gulfroshi Street, my next-door neighbour in the budget hotel, an Afghan expat named OB, reflected on my encounter with the soldiers. The Mujahideen might have joked with me, he concluded, and yet Afghans do love Indians almost as much as they love themselves. “However, I noticed in London that you people don’t seem to understand that.”
OB’s words were a contemporary echo of Syed Mujtaba Ali: the idea that our two countries are ‘separate’ is merely a modern Indian prejudice.
A month later, sitting in the serene Oriental Room of Kolkata’s elite Bengal Club—once the home of Thomas Babington Macaulay—a retired Indian diplomat gave that prejudice a tangible structure. “Was it really necessary for us to annoy the Afghans right now?” he asked, referring to the release of the recent Hindi film Dhurandhar.
-- Suvojit Bagchi
The author, a senior journalist based in Kolkata, travelled in Afghanistan for a month between October and November 2025
