KABUL — Five years after the Taliban seized Kabul, Afghanistan operates under a government that has erased women from public life, cut its national budget by more than half and presided over a humanitarian emergency that has left more than 14 million people facing acute food insecurity this year.
The Taliban celebrated the anniversary Saturday, flying black and white flags along Kabul's streets. Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, in an interview in Kabul, pointed to security as the government's defining achievement. "The greatest achievement we have had over the past five years is security," Muttaqi said.
For families in Kabul's poorest neighborhoods, that claim sits alongside a different reality. Malika, 46, lives with her husband and four youngest children in Chihil Dukhtarān, one of the capital's most impoverished districts. Two winters ago, she and her husband married off their eldest daughter, Maryam, then still a teenager, for 200,000 afghanis — roughly £2,270 — because the family had run out of options. "God is my witness that during that winter, our food was almost nothing but dry bread and boiled water," Malika said. "Even that was often unavailable, and many nights we went to bed hungry."
Maryam knew what the marriage meant for her family. "My poor daughter cried in secret … [but knew] if she refused this marriage, all of us would die from hunger, cold and misery," Malika said. The dowry money has nearly run out. Malika's two youngest daughters, aged 12 and nine, can no longer attend school; they work alongside their 16-year-old sister in a clothing factory. Her husband pushes a handcart but often returns home with nothing.
The economic collapse is structural, not cyclical. The Taliban's most recent published budget, covering fiscal year 2023, totaled $2.44 billion — less than half the roughly $6 billion budget the previous government spent in 2021. Foreign trade has contracted sharply, with imports outpacing exports by a widening margin since the takeover. In 2024, the Taliban abolished Afghanistan's public pension system as part of efforts to manage the fiscal shortfall.
Inflation has compounded the pressure on households. After averaging 3.6 percent in 2025, it climbed to 7.6 percent by March 2026, driven by rising food costs. Economic output is growing, but not fast enough to absorb a population expanding rapidly — partly because Pakistan and Iran have carried out large deportation drives that have pushed millions of Afghans back into a country without the jobs to receive them.
The rights rollback has been total for women. Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, women have been removed from government employment, barred from universities and prevented from traveling without a male guardian. Girls above the sixth grade cannot attend school in most of the country. Aid organizations describe the restrictions as a systematic erasure of women from public life, with no negotiated exceptions and no announced timeline for reversal.
The humanitarian picture reflects years of compounding shocks. Successive droughts, the collapse of international aid flows following the 2021 takeover and the trade deficit have left millions unable to afford basic goods. Aid groups warned this week that the crisis is escalating, with nearly half the population — in a country of roughly 40 million — requiring some form of humanitarian assistance.
Tensions with Pakistan have added an external dimension to Afghanistan's isolation. Islamabad's deportation campaign has accelerated the return of Afghan nationals, straining border relations and adding to the flow of people entering an economy that cannot absorb them. The Taliban government has protested the deportations but has limited leverage; Afghanistan's international recognition remains effectively zero, with no major government having formally acknowledged the Taliban administration.
The isolation cuts directly into revenues. The $2.44 billion budget relies heavily on customs duties and domestic taxation, with none of the foreign grants that funded the previous government. International financial institutions suspended disbursements after August 2021, and Afghanistan's central bank reserves held abroad remain frozen. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have not resumed normal engagement with Kabul.
For families like Malika's, the government's five-year claim of stability is measured against a narrower scale. The dowry from Maryam's marriage kept the household alive for nearly two years. With that money almost gone and two more daughters old enough to be bargained away, the arithmetic is plain. Afghanistan's quiet emergency does not generate the headlines the war once did, but for millions of its people, the emergency has not quieted at all.
