Kabul, 2002
It was getting dark.
The warm summer sun of daytime lingered on the concrete. Kabul was in ruins. It was time to go back to the guesthouse and say goodnight. Suddenly I heard laughter approaching, and I turned around to see a cyclist passing. The bicycle was loaded with family members and newly bought vegetables. I ran next to it for a while, taking a few photos, before the group hurriedly disappeared, laughing. Five hopeful smiles cycling towards a brighter future. That’s what I thought then. There would be many more trips with a bulletproof vest in the luggage. Afghanistan’s geopolitical location is at the root of a lot of this evil. The presence of foreign armies has dominated the country’s history for many years. The latest full-blown occupation was Russian and ended in 1989. After the Russians left the war continued as a civil war between the government, supported by Russia, and the guerrilla groups. In 1992 the capital of Kabul finally fell, but the different guerrilla groups, led by so called warlords, started to fight between themselves, and another war broke out, lasting for nine years. The biggest devastation happened between 1993 and 1994, when large parts of Kabul were turned into rubble.
In 1996 the country was taken over by the fundamentalist Taliban movement. The Taliban ruled the country by force until 2001, when an offensive led by the Americans overthrew them. After the fall of the Taliban life slowly returned. Houses were rebuilt, roads were repaired and the education system, especially for girls, could be prioritized again. There was a striking shortage of schools to accommodate the huge amount of pupils. The existing schools sometimes worked three shifts a day. The fact that the schools had no windows or roofs didn’t matter. The country suddenly had a future, and money and businesses were flowing in. Even though the landscape to the south and west of the city centre still consisted of kilometer after kilometer of destruction and horrible memories, the ruins were starting to show signs of life. The primitive buildings built in sundried mud brick were refurbished, and sometimes demolished to make way for modern houses.