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Seamus Murphy

The same perspective in April 2021, overlooking Maiwand Square with Jade Maiwand running west towards the mountain, and the Pul-I-Kishti Mosque on the right. Kabul has become one of the world’s fastest-growing cities. The toppling of the Taliban in 2001 and the hope of increased security and economic possibilities enticed many Afghans to move there: people displaced by fighting in the countryside, refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran, and hordes of labourers simply looking for a better life. The city, however, has been unable to keep up with such fast-paced urbanisation, and seems incapable of providing jobs and services to sustain all its newcomers.

An austere view of Kabul, Afghanistan, November 1994.

An internally displaced persons camp in Takhar Province in November 2000 houses Afghans who fled fighting between the Taliban and resistance fighters with the Northern Alliance in Kunduz Province. The Taliban never conquered parts of northern Afghanistan during their rule from 1996 to 2001.

A young girl in the village of Ghulam Ali near Bagram Airbase in central Afghanistan, in November 2001. Her village saw U.S. airstrikes and heavy fighting by the Northern Alliance to bring down the Taliban government.

A woman begs on the Jadah-ye Maiwand road in the old center of Kabul soon after the Taliban came to power in 1996 and banned women from working. The Taliban arose out of civil war among rival Afghan mujahideen factions in the 1990s.