In an investigative report, the Guardian described the Taliban's destruction of thousands of homes in Kabul as a catastrophic purge with an "ethnic motive".
In a report prepared in cooperation with four Afghan news organisations, it has been stated that large areas in mainly Hazara and Tajik-populated areas have been completely cleared.
According to the report, the Taliban's renovation programme in Kabul has left thousands of people homeless and an area of about 385 hectares has been destroyed.
When the Taliban seized power three years ago, the Taliban began a sweeping expansion programme in Kabul, with the justification that Afghanistan's historic capital needed to be modernised. However, a new study shows that the Taliban's reconstruction programme has left thousands of people homeless and has had horrific impacts on the most vulnerable communities.
Using satellite imagery, social media imagery, and testimonies from local residents, these findings provide the first comprehensive picture of the Taliban's ambitious reconstruction in Kabul, as well as its true cost.
Satellite analysis shows that 1.56 square kilometres (385 hectares) of Kabul city, equivalent to more than 220 football fields, were cleared between August 2021 and August 2024.
The British newspaper The Guardian, the Centre for Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project, Lighthouse Reports and the Afghan news outlets Zan Times and Etilaat Roz media outlets that carried out the research said that the evidence showed that the destruction was partly "ethnically related".
The satellite analysis, carried out by Afghan Witness, showed that of the six most-affected districts – where at least 50,000 sq metres (12 acres) of residential properties were demolished – three were areas populated by the minority Hazara community and two were populated by the minority Tajiks.
According to the findings of this study, the most damages are related to District 13 or Dasht-e-Barchi of Kabul, which is a predominantly Hazara area.
‘Horrific destruction of informal settlements’
The study also analysed the widespread destruction of "informal residential neighbourhoods”.
The findings of the study show that in some cases, the destruction of slums that usually house poorer communities displaced by war or climate change has been "so brutal" that residents said some were injured and killed.
Residents of at least two residential neighbourhoods claim that the houses were demolished while family members were still inside. In a large slum in Kabul's District 22, evicted families claimed that a four-year-old child and a 15-year-old teenager died during the demolition.
"Women, children and elderly men were begging them to stop the demolition until we could find shelter, but they didn't listen," said one resident, who spent a decade in the neighbourhood after being displaced from Pakistan.
He claimed that after the demolition, his young niece also died in the summer heat due to a lack of shelter after their home was demolished.
Residents who tried to film such demolitions were reportedly beaten.
‘Challenges of Women Heads of Households’
It is said that many demolition projects are carried out in residential areas to build or enlarge roads.
Fakhrullah Sarwari, an urban planning engineer who worked with the former Afghan government, told the Guardian, "Most of these plans were part of the previous government's plans, but they were not implemented because they could not force people to evacuate the area."
"We need better mobility, but given that the majority of the population lives below the poverty line, demolishing houses to build wider roads will not solve the fundamental issues," Sarwari added.
Human rights groups also say women are particularly vulnerable after being evicted from their homes, warning that this could increase gender-based violence.
A woman who spoke to Zan Times revealed the problems of female-headed families.
The woman, who earns between $1 and $3 a day by providing house cleaning services, has struggled to get compensation from the Taliban after her home in a residential area north of Kabul was demolished. However, according to the Taliban's law for the promotion of virtue, she is not allowed to enter the Kabul municipality offices without a male guardian.
Another woman who lost her home in the same area is no longer able to work due to Taliban restrictions. Her family, who have been deprived of compensation, must rely only on her husband's meagre income, who is a shoemaker.
Of a dozen people evicted who were interviewed for the investigation, only one has been able to find a permanent home. Residents say fear is deterring them from protesting against the demolition of their homes.
"At first, they told us that they would compensate us and would not make us homeless, but when the houses were demolished, no one listened to us," said a woman whose 40-year-old home was demolished in August 2023.
According to the Guardian, when the woman's family could no longer afford to pay the bus fare, she stopped going to the municipal offices to ask for compensation.
The devastation comes months after the UN warned that Afghanistan's economy had "fundamentally collapsed" due to widespread food insecurity and the displacement of 6.3 million people inside the country.
Officials in the Taliban's municipality in Kabul have not commented on the findings. They have previously justified the demolition of informal settlements as reclaiming stolen land acquired by “opportunists and usurpers”. They also said that residential areas are often demolished for infrastructure projects.