A year after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the BBC returns to see how people's lives have changed.
Taliban sniper Ainudeen is now the Director of Land and Urban Development in Balkh province
A few months later, with the Taliban government freshly established, sitting over a meal of fried fish by the Amu Darya river dividing Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, Ainudeen told me he had been a Taliban sniper. He had killed dozens of members of the Afghan security forces, he estimated, and had been injured on 10 different occasions.
Most of the staff Ainudeen oversees were first employed during the previous government. Elsewhere in the city however, we hear some complaints of residents having their jobs taken by former Taliban fighters."We received both a military education and a modern one," he says, "Even though we are from a military background and are now working in this field, you can compare the results with the previous government, and see who gave better results.
We visited the village of Padkhwab in Logar Province, south east of Kabul, shortly after the Taliban takeover. Residents were eager to show us the signs of a war that until a few weeks ago had overshadowed their lives."The situation used to be very bad," said Samiullah, a tile-maker. "We couldn't do anything, even go to the shops or bazaar. Now thank God, we can go everywhere.
But Afghanistan's economy has been collapsing since the US withdrawal, as foreign grants which accounted for around 75% of public spending were slashed and international banks largely stopped processing transfers, fearing they would be breaching rules on sanctions. Open criticism of the Taliban is becoming increasingly rare in the country, but for some, their victory has helped improve their lives. Many others, however, feel the country they helped build is disappearing in front of their eyes, and they're deeply concerned about what it's being replaced with.When Taliban fighters began entering Kabul last year, many residents were terrified. The group had for years carried out suicide bombings and targeted assassinations in the city.