Taliban house-to-house searches: “They even looked inside the water heater”

KabulIt was late at night when there was a knock at the door. The knocking was unusual. I don't remember the day or month, but I clearly remember the sound of the knocking and that it was eleven o'clock at night. The air in my house was thick with tension.

My brother opened the door and found two pickup trucks full of armed Taliban fighters, who told him they wanted to speak with my father. "What have you done with the vehicle and the weapon?" they demanded when they were standing before him.

My father was an officer in the Afghan army before the Taliban returned to power. When the previous government fell, the Taliban ordered all military personnel to surrender their weapons and equipment. My father did so and had an official letter confirming it. He showed the letter to the Taliban fighters who were at the door, but they weren't satisfied. My brother tried to argue with them, but my father stopped him. It was better not to argue so as not to make things worse. In the end, after quite a while, they left. That was our first experience of the Taliban in our home. Luckily, they didn't enter. We had that consolation.

A few months after the Taliban came to power in August 2021, small resistance movements were still active in different parts of Afghanistan. For example, clashes continued in Panjshir, a province north of Kabul where the majority of the population is Tajik. There were also occasional attacks in the capital. It was then that the Taliban began the first large-scale house-to-house searches across the city. Almost every home was searched. But not all neighborhoods were treated equally.

Differences between neighborhoods

I remember some of my friends who were Pashtun, the same ethnic group as the Taliban, telling me, "They didn't search our house. They just wrote 'searched' on the door and left." In the neighborhoods where most of the population are Tajik or Hazar, however, it was different. The searches were thorough, aggressive, and repetitive. In the Khair Khana neighborhood, where I live, we neighbors knew it was only a matter of time before our turn came. When the searches reached our area, at my house we tried to hide anything that might raise suspicion. Medals, awards, my father's documents—anything related to his past—seemed dangerous. So I put them in a bag and took them to my uncle's house, who lives in another part of Kabul that had already been searched. On the way, I had a strange feeling, as if this wasn't my country anymore, as if nothing was familiar. Then I went to work, but I couldn't concentrate. I called my mother three times. "Have they arrived yet?" I asked. "Not yet, they're on the next street," she replied.

When I got home, it was our street's turn. My brothers had brought my father to my uncle's house to keep him from being found. So at home, it was just my mother, my brothers, and me.

The Taliban knocked and came in. They weren't with any female police officers. They were all armed men with long beards, wearing local clothing, and with frightening faces. They searched everything: mattresses, pillows, under the rugs, behind the refrigerator, inside the closets... They even looked inside the bathroom water heater.

My mother and I were in my room, and they threw all my clothes out of the closet onto the floor. They showed no respect for privacy, for femininity, or for personal space. The way they searched the bedroom and the clothes of a young woman like me goes against our culture, but they did it without hesitation. With their dirty boots, they stepped on the carpets and clothes, and we looked at each other as if we were criminals. When they finished, since they found nothing, they wrote "searched" in Pashto on the front door and left.

This wasn't the last search. Our predominantly Tajik neighborhood has been searched two more times. The resistance groups opposing the Taliban are mostly associated with Tajiks, and the Taliban seem to assume that Tajik areas harbor fighters and hidden weapons. Each search was worse than the last. They even dug up people's yards. The fear grew stronger each time. It felt like collective punishment.

Some families couldn't take it anymore and left the neighborhood. One of our neighbors, an elderly man who lived with his wife and two young daughters, moved after repeated searches because he was afraid for his daughters: he feared that armed men would try to take advantage of the two girls. In other words, he wasn't afraid of the weapons. It was about dignity, safety, and the feeling of vulnerability that strangers could break into their home at any moment and abuse his daughters.

It's been about eight months since the last search, but the fear hasn't gone away. There are Taliban checkpoints all over the neighborhood. They stop vehicles and inspect them. We feel like we're being watched constantly.

New Penal Code

In early January, the Taliban also approved a new Penal Code, Article 23 of which states that anyone who has information about a government opponent and fails to provide it to the Taliban will be punished with up to two years in prison. Helping or sheltering such a person can result in a five-year sentence. This means the pressure is no longer just at the doorstep, but everywhere.

The trust that once bound communities together has been replaced by suspicion. Neighbors who once shared food and sorrow now choose their words carefully. Families are wary of visitors. Conversations stop when a stranger approaches. We are no longer just afraid of armed men searching our homes, but also of being pointed at by a relative, a neighbor, or anyone else and denounced to the Taliban.

It seems society now has ears; it's become a kind of surveillance system that monitors who we interact with, what we say, and what we think. Besides the fear of what they might find in our homes, we're afraid of what they might say about us.