Mònica Bernabé is one of the European journalists who best knows Afghanistan. She first went there in 2000, during the first Taliban regime, lived there between 2006 and 2014, and has returned on several occasions, the last one this August 2026, when it has been five years since the withdrawal of American troops. We speak with her about what she has seen, what they have told her, and how she has disguised herself to be able to narrate the reality of Taliban Afghanistan, a regime that does not want foreign journalists and makes it difficult to report on what is happening in the country.

Her home is on an unpaved street in Kabul, where cars have difficulty passing and where, logically, it is impossible to go by wheelchair. That is why Fauzia Emadi moves around with two wooden crutches. She is barely 1.40 meters tall, because her legs are as if shrunk, arched. She cannot move them. Her arms are also thinner than normal and it is impressive to see her hands: her fingers are deformed as if she were an elderly woman with arthritis, even though she is only 31 years old. According to her, all her joints hurt.

“What is your brother’s name?”, asks the guard on duty at the entrance of the Khyber Hotel, in Kabul, to a young Afghan woman dressed in strict Islamic attire, who says she is the sister of one of the thirty or so Afghans deported from Germany on July 28th. In theory, all the deportees had committed a serious crime, as the German government initially reported. But later, the German Interior Minister himself, Alexander Dobrindt, admitted that one of them had never been prosecuted. His only offense was not having his papers in order.

“Which floor are you going to?” asks a girl to a woman who is walking with a child by the hand, carrying a large travel bag and waiting for the elevator in the building’s entrance. “To the sixth,” replies the woman. Coincidentally, both are going to the same floor, and both are also dressed in a strictly Islamic manner: black tunic and headscarf, and a mask covering part of their faces. Inside the elevator, they don’t exchange many words either: like everyone else, they comment that it’s too hot in Kabul these days. When they reach the sixth floor, they realize they are not only going to the same floor, but also to the same place.

From the outside, it looks like a small venue, but upon entering, stairs lead down to a huge basement, carpeted and divided into different rooms with large curtains. There, dozens of girls, young women, and women memorize the Quran, sitting on the floor with crossed legs and in front of small plastic tables on which they rest the holy book. All of them wear their hair covered with a veil. Some also cover their faces with a mask, or with a black niqab typical of the Gulf countries, which only leaves the eyes exposed and which women in Afghanistan had never worn. The traditional veil was the burqa, blue or any other color, although the result is the same: being covered from head to toe. It was also not common for them to wear black gloves so that their hands would not be seen, but some young women who are sitting studying the Quran also wear them.

On August 15, 2021, I had to go to university like any other day. News was reaching us that province after province was falling into the hands of the Taliban, and fear was slowly taking hold of me. But I still couldn't believe that Kabul would fall. We thought that if the Taliban entered Kabul, it would be through an agreement with the central government and not through war or force. In our WhatsApp group, my classmates and I had agreed to go to class the next day.

Coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, after the hasty withdrawal of international forces after twenty years, ARA journalist Mònica Bernabé has returned to a country she knows very well to explain firsthand and from within what the situation is like. The result is a series of reports that offer a snapshot of the Afghan reality, from the current construction boom – with funding from the Gulf and China – to the discrimination suffered by women and the general climate of repression that prevails there.

On August 15, 2021, I had to go to university like any other day. News was reaching us that province after province was falling into the hands of the Taliban, and fear was gradually taking hold of me. But I still couldn't believe that Kabul would fall. We thought that if the Taliban entered Kabul, it would be through an agreement with the central government, not through war or force. In our WhatsApp group, my classmates and I had agreed to go to class the next day.

The arrival at Kabul airport was always chaotic: long queues that moved slowly as the officials on duty checked passports, pushing and crowds of passengers to pass luggage through the mandatory scanner before leaving the terminal, and spontaneous individuals who took over all the trolleys to carry suitcases and asked for money if you wanted to use them. This time, however, everything was much more agile: different queues for men and women for passport control, and efficient and fast officials. Smoothness in passing luggage through the scanner. And dozens of trolleys available for suitcases, without the need to pay.

"Every day that Asra goes to school, I am very happy…", says Anita with a broken voice, and she can no longer continue the sentence because she bursts into tears. Asra is the 13-year-old daughter who this year has completed the second year of the secondary education. If they had stayed in Afghanistan, if they had not been able to flee, Asra would now be confined to her home and would not have been able to start secondary education, because the Taliban have prohibited girls from studying from the age of 12. “In Afghanistan I have my sister, my nieces, my sister-in-law… They are there, unable to do anything”, laments Anita, who tries to compose herself while wiping away her tears. “Here we are fortunate”. That is why she does not miss any opportunity to work, study, get to know new places or even play football. She wants to enjoy every moment of her freedom. Because that is what she values most about being here: freedom.

I was seventeen when the first marriage proposal arrived at my home. I still remember that day. I had just returned from school and my mind was focused on the exam I had the following week. As always, my textbooks were scattered on the floor of my room. My whole world revolved around getting high grades to enter university, become a journalist, and build the future I had imagined for myself since I was little.

If someone had told me a few years ago that in the twenty-first century mobile phones would be banned in Afghanistan, I would not have believed it. But this is Afghanistan today, a country where even a smartphone has become a new target of the Taliban.

June became for me a month filled with fear. Not an abstract fear, but a very physical one, the fear of the street itself; of the road I pass every day, the same route that once felt ordinary, but now raises a single question at every step: will I return home safely today?

After months of uncertainty, it finally seemed that a door had opened for me. Following the reading of my chronicles in the newspaper ARA and learning that women in Afghanistan have no possibility of continuing our studies in the country due to the Taliban's restrictions, a Catalan businessman, an ARA reader, contacted me to offer to cover the cost of a journalism master's degree so I could complete my studies abroad. When I received the news, I felt that years of effort, hope, and resilience had finally led somewhere. For the first time in a long while, I allowed myself to imagine a future beyond survival.

I used to think the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice was the worst in the Taliban regime. The Taliban in this ministry are the ones who yell at women on the streets, question our way of dressing, and treat us as if the mere act of existing and being a woman were a crime. But last Sunday, when the Taliban intelligence service raided the media outlet where I work in Kabul, I realized they are still worse.

A long time ago I went to Qargha, a green area with a large lake on the outskirts of Kabul. There was a festival to fly kites, a very widespread practice in Afghanistan, and the outlet I work for asked me to report on it. It was Friday, the weekly day of rest in Afghanistan. It used to be common for families to go to this beautiful recreational spot to spend the day.

The school year in Afghanistan begins with the arrival of spring, because in winter it is so cold that it is then when the school holidays are held. Before the schools reopened on March 28, my journalist colleagues and I repeatedly asked Taliban spokespersons what would happen to girls’ education. We never received a clear answer. Still, there was a small hope that maybe this year would be different.

I have never traveled outside of Afghanistan. I do not know how life is elsewhere, nor what happens in the so-called developed countries when there's a major storm or earthquake. I assume people there can receive help or perhaps are alerted when something like that happens. In Afghanistan, you can expect absolutely nothing. Sometimes I think Afghanistan is at the very end of the world, a place where death returns in a new form every season: war, bitter cold, flood, earthquake. Each disaster feels sharper than the last, and each one reminds us of our vulnerability.

I saw it all with my own eyes: shattered skulls, severed limbs, bodies lying on the ground... The Pakistani bombing of a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul on the night of March 16 was devastating. I am a journalist and I know my job is to go to places, see, and report. But, in this case, what I saw has deeply disturbed me. I am 25 years old. I wonder how many young people my age in other countries have seen what I have seen.

“I will bury you right here”. That is what a Taliban officer told me on Valentine’s Day in Kabul. It has been nearly two weeks since February 14, but I am still carrying that day inside me.