The world’s most dangerous country is far from being top of most travellers’ must-visit lists – but three years on from the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the tourism trade is booming.
After decades of conflict, the hardline Islamist regime’s grip on power is now largely unchallenged, allowing them to fully impose their interpretation of Sharia Law, which includes public executions, floggings and almost zero rights for women.
But a quick search on TikTok and Instagram would suggest a very different situation in the country – with pictures showing smiling tourists posing next to beautiful lakes, mountains and vibrant markets.
Critics, including exiled Afghans, have condemned what might seem like harmless posts as actually ‘normalising’ the Taliban regime, and even doing their work for them as they seek to boost revenue from tourism.
Travel influencers, exposed to only the very surface of what life is like for locals, are being used as a PR weapon by the Taliban – and are heading to the country in their droves despite the detentions and even deaths of tourists in recent years.
Content creator Geenyada Abdi has been slammed by women’s activists in Afghanistan, who have branded the image she presents of the terrorist organisation as ‘appalling’
‘Solo female traveller’ Geenyada Abdi said visiting the war-ravaged nation was a ‘dream come true’ as she posed smiling next to AK-47-toting terrorists
Danger tourist Miles Routledge, aka ‘Lord Miles’, smiles as he poses for a selfie with his Taliban captors last year
Earlier this year, authorities publicly executed two men convicted of murder by machine-gunning them through the back in front of a crowd of spectators (pictured, an alleged murderer is executed in Kabul in 1998)
Taliban gunmen soak up the sun on duck boats as they ride around on Ban e-Amir lake in Bamyan province in 2022. The region is now being touted as a tourism hotspot
Westerners taken on tours by local guides have gushed about the country’s beauty, and often skim over the fact that the only local people visible in their videos and pictures are men.
Female foreign visitors are able to enter most establishments with their male tour guides, including the Band-e Amir national park, markets and restaurants.
Yet local women, who in most cases had full lives as students and professionals just a few years ago, are almost completely confined to the home, and forbidden from interacting with any men who are not their husbands or relations.
In their latest step towards completely stripping Afghanistan’s women of their rights last week, the Taliban issued a ban on women showing their faces or making their voices heard in public as part of their so-called ‘virtue laws’.
The announcement came after they confirmed earlier this year that sickening public humiliations and executions would be conducted across the country.
In a broadcast on the Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan in March, supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said: ‘We will flog the women… we will stone them to death in public [for adultery].
‘You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles,’ he said, adding: ‘[But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan.’
It marks a return to the darkest days of the 1990s, according to Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope.
‘With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,’ Arefi told The Guardian.
‘Now, no one is standing beside them to save them from Taliban punishments. The international community has chosen to remain silent in the face of these violations of women’s rights.’
Strikingly, more than 7,000 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan last year – up from 691 in 2021, and more than triple the number who went in 2022.
Abdi has travelled across the world on her own, visiting Somalia, Malaysia and India among others. Pictured: In Egypt
This is despite the country being named the most dangerous in the world for the sixth year in a row, according to the Global Peace Index.
The Foreign Office advises against all travel to Afghanistan, saying the security situation is ‘volatile’ and travel in the country is ‘extremely dangerous’.
It adds that its ability to help British travellers who find themselves in difficulty in the country is ‘extremely limited and support in person is not possible’.
Western tourists have recently been killed in the country – with three Spanish travellers gunned down in May when attackers opened fire on a group of international visitors and Afghans in Bamiyan.
The killings were claimed by Islamic State – a major rival of the Taliban government.
The terror group earlier claimed responsibility for an attack on a popular tourist hotel in central Kabul in 2022, which saw five Chinese nationals injured.
But these threats haven’t stopped British and American tourists from going to Afghanistan, nor have they deterred content creators from promoting the country in a way which is favourable to the Taliban.
US tourist and content creator Eli Snyder visited Taliban-controlled Afghanistan despite State Department advice warning against travelling there
American tourist Eli Snyder, 25, posted a video on TikTok revealing what tourists must do in order to ‘safely’ visit Afghanistan
Mohammad Saeed, who is in charge of the Taliban’s Tourism Directorate, said earlier this year that he dreamed of Afghanistan becoming a tourist hotspot.
‘The growth of the tourism industry has a positive effect on the country’s economy,’ a spokesperson for the Ministry of Culture declared.
Dr Farkhondeh Akbari, whose family fled the Taliban in the 1990s, told the BBC that ‘unethical’ tourists are exploiting her home country, while she is unable to return and her female relatives there are unable to live freely.
‘We are talking about 50 per cent of the population who have no rights… We are talking about a regime which has installed gender apartheid.
‘And yes, there is a humanitarian crisis: I’m happy that tourists might go and buy something from a shop and it might help a local family, but what is the cost of it? It is normalising the Taliban regime.’
Taliban soldiers ride a duck boat – with their guns aboard – at Band-e Amir national park in August 2022
Last week, a solo female traveller from the US was slammed for ‘fangirling’ the Taliban after an ‘appalling’ Instagram post about her trip to Afghanistan.
Geenyada Abdi said visiting the war-ravaged nation was a ‘dream come true’ as she posed smiling next to AK-47-toting terrorists in a post that is now pinned to the top of her social media.
Captioning one clip, she said: ‘I walked around Kabul, and the people were incredibly friendly. Though it’s mostly men everywhere, they showed me great respect.
‘They were curious about this Black Muslim girl so, they came to talk to me. Afghan people are hospitable; despite the language barrier, we still managed to laugh and interact.’
Responding directly to fury following her photo with the Taliban, she added: ‘I ended up asking for a photo and I did take a photo with them and I posted it on Twitter and it’s just outrage – like people are going crazy, “shame on you, you’re against women’s rights, women’s education, women’s jobs”.
‘That’s not the case – this photo was just to simply say this is my experience, this is what I saw, this is how they treated me.
‘I am for all women’s rights and I would love to see one day women getting educations and working and everything and I do understand my privileges, you know, but please don’t take everything out of context.
‘I’m posting so many beautiful things about Afghanistan, the culture, the people – don’t judge me for one photo.’
Dr Akbari, now a postdoctoral researcher at Monash University in Australia, told the BBC: ‘[Tourists think] it is just this backward part of the world, and they can do whatever they want – [they] don’t care.
‘[They] just go and enjoy the landscape and get [their] views and likes. And this hurts us a lot.’
She added that ‘unethical tourism with a lack of political and social awareness’, allows the Taliban to gloss over the realities of life now they are back in power.
Another content creator who courted fury for the content he shared was danger tourist Miles Routledge was lucky to escape the country the first time he was there – airlifted out as the Taliban swept to power in August 2021.
Taliban gunmen – including one seemingly snapping a selfie – riding a boat on the Qargha dam outside Kabul in 2021
A Taliban fighter looks on as he stands at the city of Ghazni, Afghanistan August 14, 2021
A self-professed fan of ‘dark’ and ‘extreme’ tourism, the foolhardy traveler returned in March 2023, but was soon detained.
He went on to spend months in prison after saying he had been captured by the Islamists.
The 24-year-old proudly boasted that he had become ‘best mates’ with the Taliban’s top commanders, enjoying ‘picnics and dinners with higher ups’, and described his detention as being like ‘a lovely holiday’.
The YouTuber, who calls himself ‘Lord Miles’, shared a selfie bragging that the ‘lovely lads treated me as a guest’ and claimed to have had the ‘best adventure I’ve had yet’.
A friend who took over his X account while he was in detention tweeted: ‘Miles is in a guesthouse and not an actual prison so he’s very comfortable.’
A man hangs from a balcony as he tries to escape from a gun attack at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in 2018
The anonymous friend added the ‘prison’ is more like a hotel, as Routledge had access to an Xbox, ordered takeaways and even had a ‘servant’.
His experience of the Taliban ‘justice’ system is in stark contrast to the hell that awaits Afghan men and women accused of crimes.
Thousands have been arrested, tortured, and even killed on various, often false, charges, which are often done merely to intimidate the population, according to observers.
Taliban judges have threatened punishments including cutting hands and legs off thieves and toppling walls on gay men as a form of execution.
Earlier this year, authorities publicly executed two men convicted of murder by machine-gunning them through the back in front of a crowd of spectators.
Women also continue to be stoned to death, with a woman sentenced to a public stoning as recently as last week for allegedly having ‘extramarital affairs’.
New laws, which have been approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, say that it is compulsory for all women to cover their bodies in public and that face coverings are essential to ‘avoid temptation and tempting others’ (pictured: Burqa-clad Afghan women walk on a road in Kandahar, Afghanistan)
Meanwhile Afghan prisoners face dire conditions, with inmates kept in overcrowded and unsanitary cells and subjected to physical and psychological torture.
Raw accounts of life inside a Taliban jail have also come from British national Kevin Cornwell, who languished in an Afghan prison for nine months.
The 54-year-old had been working for the UN refugee agency when he was arrested in January last year.
The ex-British soldier was arrested by secret police who had searched his room and found a pistol, for emergency use, in his safe.
Even though he had a government-issued licence for the weapon, they marched him away with a bag over his head and locked him up in solitary confinement for 11 days before even questioning him.
He went on to spend three months in a cell with extremist inmates who he said tried to ‘radicalise’ him ten hours a day.
‘I didn’t think I was coming out of there. At one point I thought I was going to be there and I wasn’t going home,’ he said.
Footage allegedly from 2015 shows the Taliban stoning a women to death, six years before their return to power in Afghanistan
He said that during the short amount of time he was allowed to speak to his wife Kelly on the phone, he was put ‘under duress’ and ‘told what to say.’
‘The rest of the time I just ignored them and said what I wanted to say to Kelly, just in case it was the last phone call that I had,’ he told the BBC.
He was taunted with the prospect of going home, and said he did not know until ‘the last minute’ that he would be freed as prisoners are often given false hope.
Mr Cornwell was eventually freed in October, along with Routledge, with friends saying the aid worker had suffered with sepsis multiple times during his time in jail, fuelling ‘very real’ fears that he might not make it home.
Mr Routledge (pictured) claimed to live in luxury while a prisoner of the Taliban
Despite the very real threats to their safety and the dire situations faced by locals, extreme tourists have defended visiting the country, arguing that it is better to witness what is going on with their own eyes than ‘ignore’ the people of Afghanistan completely because of a regime many did not choose.
Three years after it retook control of Afghanistan, the Taliban remains a pariah on the world stage, not formally recognised by any world power.
It is now seeking to project a new image, one which moves the focus away from the brutal repression of its citizens and onto the ‘peace’ they claim to have brought to the country – with influencers proving the perfect PR tool to help them do this.
‘Our pains and our sufferings are being whitewashed,’ Dr Akbari said, ‘brushed with these fake strokes of security the Taliban want.’
