Inside the Taliban’s Most Notorious City (Afghanistan) 🇦🇫

A day on foot in Kandahar, the city where the Taliban were founded and where the leadership lives, and the fullest single account of Afghanistan in the bundle.

It sets two things against each other without resolving them. The hospitality is extraordinary — a butcher who goes out to buy tea he doesn’t have, a jeweller who refuses payment for a ring, a stranger who buys him a drink — and Harry ends by saying that of 40 countries this is now the most hospitable he has been to, displacing Pakistan.

And the other half: a child in a madrasa who has studied nothing but religion and wants to be a fighter, children under ten who have already worked a full day, a man of 72 doing manual labour in the heat, and a population that largely cannot read.

Key moments

• [00:00] Kandahar as the Taliban’s home city — where the movement was formed and where its leaders live.
• [00:32] A madrasa student, buying a Quran. He wants to be a mujahid.
• [01:06] What a madrasa teaches: religion only. No maths, science, English or computing.
• [01:40] Harry’s response — the child has never been taught anything else.
• [01:40] The Pashtun south: famous for hospitality, fiercely tribal, and the guest treated as God. You have to be Pashtun to be Taliban.
• [02:44] A butcher with no tea in the shop goes out and buys some rather than not offer it.
• [02:44] Far more conservative than the north: not a woman on the street.
• [04:35] Kandahar as one of the oldest settlements in the world.
• [05:05] You can’t tell who’s Taliban — everyone wears the same hat, and the guns are the only tell.
• [05:05] Asked if he’s Muslim, he says no and notes he probably shouldn’t advertise it.
• [05:37] Mud-walled houses, and families out on a trampoline in a park.
• [06:38] The range of faces — Indian, Pakistani, Iranian, Central Asian, and some he says look English.
• [07:47] Uncovered sewers, which he’s never seen anywhere else.
• [08:55] 500 afghani, about £5, buys every child present a turn on the trampoline.
• [12:00] The children’s faces tell him half of them have worked all day, under the age of ten.
• [12:33] The boys pushed to the front, so he asks the owner to let the girls on next — and doesn’t film them.
• [12:33] The owner whips the children off the trampoline. Harry objects on camera and says he doesn’t agree with it.
• [14:07] Dried sugar cane, handed over free.
• [15:16] Tea, also free, and a crowd forming — his rule in a foreign area is to keep moving.
• [16:30] Transporting goods by wheelbarrow as a job you can simply start doing.
• [17:02] A jeweller gives him a ring and flatly refuses payment.
• [17:02] His verdict on the city: the most intense he’s been to, and the kindest.
• [17:38] Ice kept under insulation instead of refrigeration.
• [18:09] Military walls and watchtowers everywhere, and he films none of them — it gets you in trouble.
• [18:40] Naswar, a legal tobacco held under the tongue. He’s warned it makes first-timers sick, and it stings straight away.
• [19:46] They won’t take money for it either.
• [20:16] A nomadic camp on the outskirts — he didn’t know Afghanistan had nomads.
• [20:56] The head of the tribe receives him in a clay house that stays cool in the heat.
• [21:28] There’s no plan to a day; they go out and find out what they earn.
• [21:59] Land disputes when they stop somewhere happen often.
• [22:29] The children don’t go to school — his guide’s translation is that they don’t see the worth of it. No expectations of the future, and content with the life.
• [23:10] Asked about his own life, Harry says he was lucky where he was born, and that he films here to change the perception that Afghanistan is dangerous, because tourism brings money to people like his host.
• [24:11] He leaves about $100.
• [24:49] The flour mill, worked almost entirely by hand.
• [25:19] A 49 kg sack sells for around 1,700–1,800 afghani, about $22.
• [25:19] The boy working there doesn’t go to school.
• [25:50] A 72-year-old doing the heavy work in the heat, not complaining.
• [26:23] His line about it: people here are too busy to think about happiness at all.
• [27:24] Persian in the north, Pashto here.
• [27:56] A man selling smelling stones to ward off spirits. Harry gives him 500 afghani and is told that’s a full day’s pay.
• [28:30] Most people can’t read or write in any language.
• [29:02] The tomb of a saint outside the city, said to have performed miracles.
• [30:25] A government guest house destroyed by a suicide bombing, now rubble.
• [30:55] Pomegranate juice by hand press and sugar cane by machine — with a Taliban flag on it — from the same seller.
• [33:05] NFC, the Afghan KFC, and mantu: dumplings with yoghurt and tomato, which he calls the best he’s ever eaten.
• [34:00] A stranger at the next table insists on buying him a drink.
• [34:38] The verdict: 40 countries in, Afghanistan is number one for hospitality, and Pakistan has been knocked off the top.

Extracted pages

• Place: Kandahar
• Country: Afghanistan
• Tips: Travel with a local guide, Don’t film private moments