Inside the Taliban’s demolition campaign in Kabul
Maryam’s in-laws had owned their home in Kabul’s Khair Khana neighbourhood for the last five decades when the Taliban-run municipality told them it was time to leave.
In 2023, the Kabul municipality informed them that the house was in the path of a new road. They were given a year to vacate, but they say this year was quickly shrunk to a month, and then to just a week. In October 2023, they were forcibly evicted and their home demolished.
In the year since, they say they have struggled to get any compensation from the Taliban authorities. Maryam, 44, has been unable to work due to restrictions on women’s lives since the Taliban came to power in August 2021, so her family relies solely on her husband’s modest income repairing shoes. The majority of his earnings go on paying for the rental they now live in.
“His income cannot cover our living expenses,” Maryam told Zan Times’ reporters. “Every time we go to the Taliban offices for compensation, they make different excuses.”
Maryam is one of thousands of people impacted by the Kabul municipality’s land clearance campaign since the Taliban’s return to power. Kabul residents describe an increasing number of evictions and demolitions across the capital.
Zan Times has spent the last three months working with the Centre for Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project, Lighthouse Reports, Etilaat Roz and The Guardian to map the extent of the demolitions and understand their impact on the city’s residents.
Satellite imagery analysis, carried out by partners Afghan Witness, reveals that the Kabul Municipality cleared over 1.5 million square metres of land in the Afghan capital between 15 August 2021 and 15 August 2024, leaving thousands of families homeless. Some of the most vulnerable communities in Afghanistan – including women and marginalised ethnic groups – have been hardest hit.
The Taliban authorities say they are combating land grabbing, returning displaced communities to their home provinces and investing in infrastructure projects. The Kabul municipality’s social media posts celebrate many of the clearance projects as making way for new roads and better infrastructure.
However interviews with a dozen people whose homes have been demolished show a darker side of the development efforts, including homes bulldozed with children still inside and residents struggling to get compensation.
Satellite images showing the before and after of land clearance cutting across a dense residential area in PD 17. Imagery by Planet Labs PBC and graphic by Afghan Witness
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Vulnerable communities impacted
Data and graphic provided by Afghan Witness
While demolitions are city-wide – taking place in 15 out of Kabul’s 22 Police Districts (PDs) according to satellite analysis – they appear to be affecting vulnerable communities disproportionately.
Looking at the areas outside of informal settlements, we found that large-scale residential demolitions appeared to be impacting areas that are predominantly home to non-Pashtun ethnic groups.
For example, Police District 13, a predominantly Hazara district, lost the largest area of residential homes to demolitions since 2021 compared to other police districts in Kabul.
The Taliban say they have been demolishing residential properties to make way for infrastructure projects, often widening an existing road, or constructing a new one. The projects are allegedly part of the “Kabul City Master Plan,” a land design and planning framework that has progressed through five iterations since 1964.
Satellite imagery showing the before and after demolitions and land clearance of informal settlement in PD 5. Imagery from Planet Labs PBC with graphic by Afghan Witness
Partners Afghan Witness also found over a third of the total area of land demolished impacted informal settlements.
Satellite imagery examined for this investigation indicates that informal settlements have been demolished in the North, East and West of the capital.
Typically home to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and displaced Afghans returning from neighbouring countries, these settlements house some of Afghanistan’s poorest communities.
Ahmadullah*, who lived in an informal settlement in PD 4, described being woken up by the demolition in August 2024. “ I woke up with kids crying around me… My nephew came by, crying that her mom and brother were inside the house and the bulldozer was demolishing it.”
“We spent the whole day dragging our stuff under the ruins, “ he said.
Evicted residents told a humanitarian organisation that two children died from an eviction of an informal settlement in July 2023 .
Our team interviewed a resident who described violent scenes:
“Women, children and elderly men were begging for them to stop the destruction until we can find a shelter, but they wouldn’t listen…They had pipes and sticks in their hands and they wouldn’t let anyone say a single word.”
The evictions of informal settlements have a significant impact on women. “When displaced, women may lose access to essential services like healthcare, family resources, and education for their children,” Vincent Dupin, chairman of Camp Coordination and Camp Management Working Group, told Zan Times. “These evictions also disrupt community support networks, which are crucial for women’s stability and resilience.”
“Many households in the informal settlements are also headed by women, who are among the most vulnerable groups in Afghanistan and face restrictions on their movements and ability to work,” he added.
Figure: Satellite images showing the before and after of a demolition of an informal settlement in
PD 8. Imagery from Planet Labs PBC with graphic by Afghan Witness
Struggling economy
Afghanistan’s economy remains in crisis. Foreign assistance was largely suspended following the Taliban’s return to power and poverty rates have increased. According to a UN report in June 2024, nine out of 10 households in Afghanistan were struggling to feed themselves adequately.
In this context, the demolitions can be crushing for families.
Reporters from Zan Times and our media partners spoke to a dozen people whose homes had been demolished. Some said their homes were destroyed for the construction of roads, while others were evicted from informal settlements. Most are now living in rental accommodation and have struggled to recover financially.
Despite the Taliban authorities offering compensation schemes for homes demolished, our interviews suggest the system is not working.
Zan Times interviewed a woman whose husband moved to Iran to help ease their financial burden following the demolition of their home. She lost contact with him six months ago and is now the sole breadwinner, earning between one to three dollars a day offering door-to-door cleaning services.
She has struggled to get compensation. As a woman, she says she wasn’t allowed into the municipality office without a male guardian, but says that when women returned with their husbands “they still didn’t let us in, delaying us repeatedly.”
The woman stopped going to the office to ask for compensation when she could no longer afford the journey.
While the Taliban have reportedly said residents of informal settlements can return to their place of origin, Ahmad*, who lived in the PD4 settlement for the last 20 years, remains in Kabul.
Without the money to rent a house in the nearby areas, he is now living in an abandoned factory. His house was home to nearly 50 family members, including five brothers and all their wives and children. He claims a Taliban official had promised them shelter, but so far, there has been nothing.
“We don’t even have tents, we have just shelters that we made from plastic pieces…For some days, we don’t have anything to eat, we sleep with an empty stomach.”
While demolitions were frequent under the previous administration, residents say it was easier to challenge them.
Farhad*, who lived in his house in Kabul for 17 years describes the fear that spread through the community as homes were demolished: “They gave us very little time to leave… Over a hundred homes were destroyed, even those of powerful people.”
“When they didn’t resist, the rest of us were too afraid to stand up,” he told Zan Times.
“Most of these plans were part of previous government plans, but they were unable to be implemented because they couldn’t force people to evacuate the area,” said Fakhrullah Sarwari, an urban planning researcher who worked with the former Afghan government. “But now the Taliban doesn’t care about that.”
“We do need better mobility,” said Sarwari, reflecting on the road projects. “But with the majority of the population living below the poverty line, demolishing homes to build wider roads doesn’t address the underlying issues.”
Image of demolition shared with Zan Times
Kreshma Fakhri is human resource manager and senior journalist at Zan Times. Jessica Purkiss is investigations editor at Lighthouse Reports.
