Worlds Apart
The divide between Kabul – the city – and Afghanistan’s provinces has always been a significant one, historically and socially. While the court and the educated classes drew urban populations into different progressive or revolutionary turn-arounds during the past 140 years, the countryside often enough remained a world of its own. Tradition stood in the way. The gap is also due to geographical conditions that make it difficult to access remote district and in the absence tared roads.
Travelling through Bamian, Daikundi, Takhar, Badakhshan, Nangarhar or Nuristan, one can feel every single kilometer and the cultural gap to Kabul, considered as ‚the bubble‘. In mountainous Daikundi and its most northern district, I came across locals who had never seen any Taliban, Afghan security forces or ISAF military in the first ten years of this war. Instead they were complaining about regional warlords harassing them. The expansion of modern communication means throughout the country might have filled the gap somehow since, but much remains a story about two completely different worlds.