ARCHEOLOGY

Why are there so many shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea?

A 17th century shipwreck recently found in Lübeck is one of many well-preserved wrecks at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Why do they hold up so well there?

The roughly 400-year-old wreck of a 17th-century Hanseatic ship in Lübeck will now be salvaged

During a routine inspection of the Trave River in the northern German city of Lübeck last year, divers discovered the wreck of a nearly four-hundred-old sunken ship from the Hanseatic era.  For the city, it was a sensational find and an important testimony to its own history. The wreck, which is partially exposed, faces a serious risk of erosion and divers have noted how the exposed parts were infested with shipworm. Thus, the city administration has now decided to salvage it. 

However, discoveries of wrecks in the Baltic Sea are not uncommon, says underwater archaeologist Florian Huber. 

"According to estimates, there are between 10,000 and up to 100,000 shipwrecks" scattered in the Baltic Sea. The wreck's find is sensational for two reasons: for its location in the western Baltic Sea and because it dates back to the end of the 17th century, the heyday of the Hanseatic city's maritime trade. "We don't know that many ships from that period," Huber told DW.

The Hanseatic league was a network of trade and merchant cities across northern Germany and around the Baltic Sea. 

Model of a fluyt ship — a historical Dutch-made cargo vessel —

 and which the Lübeck ship resembles

'A giant, ice-cold museum'

From a scientific perspective, such a find is "particularly exciting, because you can learn how ships were built back then, what technology was behind them," explains Huber, who has been exploring the world's oceans since 1992. He says the 150 or so barrels discovered on the Lübeck ship are equally important evidence of the past. "We learn something about the cargo that was traded at the time." 

But why do wrecks and other long-sunken treasures hold up so well in the Baltic Sea? There are several reasons. Large parts of the inland sea of northern Europe are low in oxygen, cold, dark, and have a low saltwater content.

Underwater archaeologist Florian Huber has been a certified research diver since 2002

"The Baltic Sea is like a giant ice-cold museum — like a refrigerator that just preserves everything that falls in there," Huber says. Often, he says, it's not just the wood that's preserved, but the cargo as well. "Remnants of leather and textiles are often found." You often still find the goods — "sometimes the dried fish is still in the barrels. You find bones. Anything organic preserves very, very well underwater," Huber explains. And indeed, traces of quicklime, an important building material traded during the Hanseatic era, were discovered in the barrels of the Lübeck wreck as well.

"Wine, champagne, and beer bottles have been found in the Baltic Sea. Of course, they weren't that old, but I'd say 100 years, 200 years, and they were still edible. The champagne was auctioned off for tens of thousands."

Shipworm: biggest enemy of wooden wrecks

But the cold and dark don't just act as preservatives, they also help repel one of biggest fiends of shipwrecks namely, the shipworm, Teredo navalis. This particularly benefits the wooden wrecks slumbering on the Baltic Sea floor. Shipworm prefer oxygen-rich salt water. The further east you go in the Baltic Sea, the more fresh water accumulates there. "At the Gulf of Bothnia around Finland and Sweden, there is almost only fresh water, so there is only very little salt, and accordingly, the shipworm can no longer survive there."

That's why exceptionally well-preserved wrecks are usually found there. "In the Baltic Sea, there are sometimes wrecks that are two, three, four, or five hundred years old — and they are still standing upright with the masts. That's unique in the world."

This also explains why the ship parts found in Lübeck already look a bit "pitted." Lübeck is located in the western part of the Baltic Sea. In pictures published by the city of Lübeck, clear traces of the shipworm can be seen in the wood of the wreck. "In addition to the shipworm, however, wrecks are also threatened by climate change, fishing trawlers, and looting," Huber explains. 

Traces of shipworm can be seen on remnants of the wreck

A press release from the Hanseatic city on the sensational find states that ocean currents and the shipworm are massively endangering the wreck. It is, therefore, necessary to protect and preserve the discovery because it is classified as a "unique and outstanding find for the history and archaeology of the western Baltic Sea."

Preserving wrecks is difficult

Conserving the wreck once it's salvaged will be a mammoth task facing the city of Lübeck. After all, anything that comes out of the water can't just be dried somewhere and then placed in a museum, Huber points out.

Wood, in particular, continues to work. After centuries of slumber on the seabed, it is saturated with water, and that needs to be brought out slowly. The water "has to be replaced with a liquid plastic so that the wood cells don't collapse. The process is complex and expensive."

One of the most spectacular finds in the Baltic Sea to date: the 17th century Swedish warship 'Vasa'

Other salvaged ships, such as the English Mary Rose or the Bremen cog, are impressive examples of the complexity in conserving old wrecks. In 1961, Sweden salvaged the warship Vasa, which had sunk in the 17th century, from the Baltic Sea and built a museum especially for it. The wreck had to be impregnated with polyethylene glycol for 17 years to prevent the wood from shrinking or cracking as it dried.

"It always has to be considered whether you can afford it and whether you want it," says Huber.

The city of Lübeck is determined to resurrect the wreck from the Trave River. "It should be salvaged and conserved as quickly as possible so that it can then be preserved as part of the history of the Hanseatic League and preserved for the future in all its authenticity."

This article was originally written in German. 

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European food companies break their plastics promises

Two-thirds of pledges to go greener on plastic fail or are dropped, a DW investigation has found. Here's how European food and drink companies break their own commitments, and how legislation might hold them accountable.

The food and drinks industry is among the biggest plastics polluters in the world

The French food giant Danone made an ambitious promise back in 2008: Within one year, 50% of the plastics used in the company's water bottles would be made from recycled materials. Danone's sustainability report called the measure "a lever for reducing packaging weight and decreasing CO2 emissions."

It would have been a step in the right direction in the fight against global plastics pollution. Plastic is not only one of the main products made from fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas: It's also one of the most enduring. Plastic bottles, for example, can take up to 450 years to break down. The resulting pieces of microplastics harm animals and humans alike — polluting oceans, soil and even the air. And the food and drink industry is one of the biggest plastics polluters in the world.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 79 million tons of plastic waste were released into the environment through terrestrial or aquatic leakage, open-pit burning or dumpsites in 2019. That represents over one-fifth of the global total.

Have companies followed through on promises to clean up their act? DW and the European Data Journalism Network researched some of Europe's biggest food and drink companies to find out.

Danone, for one, did not. By 2009, the company's target on recycled plastics had shifted: "The group aims to achieve 20-30% in 2011," its 2009 report reads. "And 50% eventually." When the company failed to meet that target, as well, it shifted the goal post again. And again. In 2020, Danone still used only 20% recycled PET in its water bottles worldwide. And, for 2025, 16 years after its first self-imposed deadline, Danone has set itself a familiar goal: 50% recycled plastics in water bottles.

Poor track record

Danone did not respond to requests for comment on these discrepancies.

In total, DW and its partners identified 98 plastics commitments from 24 food and drink companies headquartered in Europe that were made during the past 20 years. More than half of these pledges were only made in the past few years, with most offering the stated aim of 2025.

In the case of 37 pledges that should have already been delivered on, the track record is not good: 68% either clearly failed or were never reported on again. When companies fail to meet their pledges, they usually don't mention this openly. Instead, they silently drop the goal or shift its scope or target year.

Where targets where not verifiable, DW contacted the company responsible and, where clarification was provided, updated the relevant data. If companies did not comment further on targets, they remained labeled as unclear.

These figures are in line with studies for other industries: In 2021, the European Union investigated green claims on company websites from sectors such as garments, cosmetics and household equipment and found that 42% of claims were likely exaggerated, false or misleading.

Of the goals that were supposedly achieved, some were more marketing ploys than long-term improvements. There is, for example, the Belgian brewery Anheuser-Busch InBev, the company behind such beers as the American Budweiser, Corona and Beck's. In 2017, AB InBev announced that it had pledged to "protect 100 islands from marine plastics pollution by 2020."

In practice, the company did not engage in long-term protection. Instead, AB InBev organized 214 one-time beach cleanups in 13 countries, and then declared the efforts a success one year ahead of schedule.

"A lot of companies use beach cleanups to promote themselves," said Larissa Copello, a policy campaigner with the environmental NGO Zero Waste Europe, based in Brussels. "But they are the ones that are putting all this waste at the beaches in the first place." Zero Waste Europe argues for "turning off the tap" to reduce packaging waste at the source.

Just 19 of the 98 pledges DW found offered pledges to reduce the amount of plastic used in packaging or the amount of virgin plastics — and most of those won't be delivered on until the future.

DW found commitments from 24 companies, 16 of which pledged to produce packaging with recyclable plastics. But that does not guarantee that the plastic will be recycled.

"If there is no infrastructure to collect these products separately, then they can't be recycled," Copello said. The same goes for supposedly degradable or compostable products. "At least here in Belgium, we don't have a separate collection for compostable or biodegradable items," Copello said. "They just end up in the mixed-waste bin." Plastic producers especially have long lobbied against effective recycling systems.

In one-third of the documented pledges, companies committed to including more recycled plastics in their packaging. That would be an improvement, Copello said.

And some small steps have been made. Italy's Ferrero, for example, started increasing the amount of recycled PET used in secondary packaging back in 2010. The Swiss Coca-Cola bottling company Coca-Cola HBC launched a bottle made from 100% recycled PET for four of its water brands in 2019, after announcing it the year before.

Voluntary commitments are not enough for change

Overall, demand for recycled plastics remains low and prices high, meaning that it is mostly more profitable for companies to use freshly produced virgin plastics.

Voluntary initiatives aren't enough, said Nusa Urbancic, the campaigns director at the Brussels-based Changing Markets Foundation, which works to expose irresponsible corporate practices and lobbies for more comprehensive legislation on plastics.

"Instead of using their power, money and resources to drive solutions, very often companies do the opposite," Urbancic said. "They are hiding behind voluntary commitments to not make the changes they would need to make."

In fact, she said, voluntary commitments are often a conscious tactic designed to delay and distract from progressive legislation.

Legislation drives push for recycled PET

Despite pressure from plastics producers, the European Union has recently passed ambitious plastics legislation. Under the Single Use Plastics directive, for example, disposable items such as plastic bags, cutlery and straws cannot be distributed within EU markets anymore. This follows the lead of African countries such as Eritrea, which banned plastic bags in 2005, Rwanda (2008) and Morocco (2009).

The EU directive also includes a target of incorporating at least 25% recycled plastic into PET bottles by 2025 and 30% in all bottles by 2030.

The new legislation is likely part of the reason for the rapid increase in plastics commitments. "It has made companies realize that they need to ramp up their efforts to meet those targets," Urbancic said. Now, she said, companies themselves are even calling for better recycling systems to help them meet their legal obligations.

Voluntary commitments can enable greenwashing

More initiatives are also collecting companies' voluntary pledges in public databases. The EU compiles commitments on the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform, and the UK-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation collects signatories' plastics initiatives in its Global Commitment program.

Pledges made to the foundation vary widely in their ambition. Unilever, for example, has stated its aim as reducing the use of newly produced plastics by 50% from 2020 to 2025, but Ferrero pledged only 10%, and the French wine and spirits company Pernod Ricard has offered just a 5% reduction.

Zero Waste's Copello and Urbancic, of the Changing Markets Foundation, consider voluntary commitments such as those solicited by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation less effective than legislation. Urbancic called such strategies "all carrot, no stick."

"Companies are not obliged to even reveal basic information like their plastic footprints. And the data that gets published is not independently verified," Urbancic said. Like other voluntary schemes, she said, this runs the risk of being used as a smokescreen to facilitate greenwashing and delay actual change.

Slowing the rise of plastics production

Changing Markets recommends that, at a minimum, voluntary initiatives set ambitious targets for participation, make sure members report their progress and hold companies publicly accountable for their performance.

In the next few years, the EU is planning to implement more thorough plastics legislation under the Circular Economy Action Plan, which will include targets for plastics recycling and measures to avoid packaging waste. And change is badly needed: Global plastics production is still growing and forecast to keep doing so in the next few decades.

In order to even slow this increase, other countries would need to follow suit. The data show that companies only change their tactics when pressured through legislation, public accountability and consumer demand. The next litmus test will come in 2025, when companies will have to deliver on their current set of plastics promises. Some of those are now mandatory — at least within the EU.

Julia Merk contributed research to this investigation.

Edited by: Milan Gagnon, Sarah Steffen, Gianna Grün

This project is a collaboration among several media outlets in the European Data Journalism Network. While DW was project lead, Alternatives Economiques, EURACTIV, Interruptor, OBC Transeuropa, Openpolis and Pod crto were contributing partners.

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German Catholics reject Vatican's abortion stance — report

A majority of German Catholics don't approve of Pope Francis and the Vatican criticizing abortion, according to a survey commissioned by a Catholic weekly.



Pope Francis has modernized the Catholic Church, but remains a staunch opponent of abortion

A new survey reveals a large gap between German Catholics and church leaders when it comes to abortion.

The survey, conducted by INSA Consulere pollster on behalf of German Catholic weekly Die Tagespost, asked the responders for their stance on the following sentence: "It is good that the pope and the Church speak out against abortion."

Only 17% of surveyed Catholics said they agreed with it, compared to 58% who oppose it.

The same survey also showed that only 13% of Protestants were in favor of the anti-abortion statements. Over two-thirds of Protestants disagreed with anti-abortion comments made by Pope Francis and Catholic leaders.

The pollsters questioned a total of 2,099 people in late July and early August.

Church changes, but only to a point

Pope Francis has moved the Catholic Church in a more liberal direction since taking over as pontiff in 2013. He has taken a tough stance on priests involved in child abuse and chastised Western governments for not welcoming migrants, called for more help for the poor and more efforts to preserve the environment. Publicly, he has worked to reduce prejudice against LGBTQ people, reassuring them that God "does not disown any of his children" and endorsing same-sex civil unions.

POPE FRANCIS VISITS IRELAND AMID OUTRAGE OVER CHURCH ABUSE

Church 'failure' in abuse scandal

Pope Francis began his papal visit to Ireland by acknowledging the "repugnant" sexual abuse of children by clergy and admitted the Catholic Church failed to address the scandal. He later silently prayed in front of a candle commemorating the victims of abuse in St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin.

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However, the 85-year-old has also disappointed some of his more liberal supporters by rejecting the blessing of gay marriages. He has also refused to shift from the Church's traditional stance on celibacy for priests, and most notably, abortion, which the Vatican sees as an act of murder.

Pope's stance on abortion: 'Is it right to hire a hit man?'

In an interview with the Reuters news agency last month, Pope Francis restated his controversial view that having an abortion is akin to hiring a hit man.

"The moral question is whether it is right to take a human life to solve a problem. Indeed, is it right to hire a hit man to solve a problem?" the pope said.

The abortion issue is not the only one where the Vatican faces pushback from Germany. Less than three weeks ago, the Catholic Church spoke out against the progressive German Catholic movement known as the "Synodal Path," warning them they do not have authority to instruct church leaders on matters of morality and doctrine.

The movement has previously called for allowing priests to marry, women to become deacons, and for same-sex couples to receive the Church's blessing.

COACHING IS ABUSE
Toni Minichiello handed lifetime ban by UK Athletics over sexually inappropriate conduct

Jack Rathborn
Tue, August 9, 2022 

Toni Minichiello at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (Getty Images)

Toni Minichiello has been given a lifetime ban by UK Athletics over sexually inappropriate conduct.

The coach, who famously guided Jessica Ennis-Hill to gold at the London 2012 Olympics, will not be permitted to train athletes following an investigation, which revealed that he engaged in sexually inappropriate behaviour, emotional abuse and bullying.

Multiple breaches of trust were found and UK Athletics labelled the findings as “the utmost seriousness”.

After being suspended last year before an investigation, Minichiello has been found to have breached his coaching licence over the course of 15 years in many ways, according to the Independent Case Management Group. The investigation found that Minichiello:

1) Made inappropriate sexual references and gestures to athletes.

2) Failed to respect the athletes right to a private life by making intrusive enquiries and personal comments about their personal lives

3) Engaged in sexually physical behaviour, namely inappropriate and unwanted touching of athletes to whom he owed a duty of care

4) Engaged in inappropriate and sometimes aggressive behaviour, bullying and emotional abuse.

The statement added: “They amount to a large number of breaches of the UKA coach licence terms over a 15-year period. They constitute gross breaches of trust by Mr Minichiello which have had severe consequences for the mental health and mental wellbeing of the athletes under his charge.”

With Minichiello’s coaching licence already expired, a suspension or sanction was not possible, but action has been taken in the form of not entertaining future applications for a UKA coach licence “in perpetuity”.

“It is noted that during the process of these disciplinary matters, Mr Minichiello’s coaching licence expired and therefore cannot be suspended/subject to a sanction,” UKA added.

“Therefore, UKA has decided that it will not entertain any future application made by Mr Minichiello for a UKA coach licence in perpetuity.

“The issuance of a UKA licence to a coach is essentially a representation on behalf of UKA that the coach in question can be trusted with the athletes under his charge,” it added. “UKA is firmly of the view that there will never be a time in the future at which it would be appropriate to grant that assurance and issue such a licence.”

OVERLOOKED HERITAGE

'Total art': Inside France's vast video game archive

Vu(m) AFP|Update: 09.08.2022 

Laurent Duplouy wants the collection to be the largest in the world / © AFP

In the bowels of an imposing modernist tower in Paris, Laurent Duplouy carefully handles a pristine copy of "Tomb Raider" before slotting it back on the shelf alongside thousands of other classic video games.

Duplouy oversees a huge archive of games at France's National Library (BNF), one of the longest-running efforts to preserve a part of global heritage that is often overlooked by cultural institutions.

"The video game can be regarded as total art, because it combines graphic art, narrative art and a narrative structure," Duplouy told AFP.


The 1990s glass and steel structure, a short hop from the banks of the River Seine, houses room upon room of archived books, where researchers and students quietly go about their business.

The Magnavox Odyssey from the early 1970s is among the most treasured artefacts / © AFP

But Duplouy is adamant the video game collection is not out of place in the august surroundings.

"For the BNF, video games are as precious as the other documents deposited here," he said.

"We pay the same attention to them. It is cultural heritage in its own right."

The treasured collection now holds some 20,000 titles in all possible formats, from cartridges to diskettes and CD-ROM, and adds a further 2,000 samples each year.

A team of 20 looks after the collection, empowered by a 1992 law on the preservation of multimedia documents.

While the law did not mention video games specifically, its wording is wide enough to be interpreted that way, making it one of the oldest pieces of legislation of its kind anywhere in the world.

The US Library of Congress only began its efforts to preserve digital media in 2000, and there are many other initiatives led by enthusiasts across the world.

- Emulator hunt -

The video games are stored on darkened shelves at a constant temperature of 19 degrees to protect them from humidity.

A few floors above, there is also an enviable collection of vintage gaming consoles -- from the earliest examples such as the rare Magnavox Odyssey from the early 1970s, to the Atari Lynx and Sega Saturn, all the way to the Nintendo Game Boy, the ultimate 1990s icon.

The Nintendo Game Boy was an icon of 1990s design / © AFP

"We are keeping these consoles to give future researchers, decades or even hundreds of years from now, an understanding of how to play these video games, what hardware was used," said Duplouy.

While the consoles and physical games can be stored on shelves and behind glass, there are huge challenges with many games that can no longer be found in physical form.

For these, the library relies on communities of enthusiasts who re-create old games on modern computers.

"We have two engineers in the multimedia department who are constantly monitoring these issues to find emulators, make them work and make them compatible with our collections," said Duplouy.

The archivists also face a problem that many games are now played in the cloud and never exist in physical form.

Duplouy said the library was locked in negotiations with publishers and platforms to find a workaround.

Ultimately, he said, the ambition is to hold the largest collection in the world.

"It would be great for French heritage," he said.

Endangered sharks, rays caught in protected Med areas: study

Demand for fins and meat has driven an estimated 71-percent decline in ocean sharks and 

rays since 1970.

Endangered sharks, rays and skates in the Mediterranean are more frequently caught in protected than in unprotected areas, according to research published Tuesday highlighting the need for better conservation for critically threatened species.

The three types of elasmobranch are among the species most threatened by overfishing.

While often landed as by-catch—or caught in nets of boats seeking to land other species—demand for their fins and meat has driven an estimated 71-percent decline in ocean sharks and rays since 1970.

Although they are among the oldest marine species on Earth, their slow growth rate and late maturity mean one third of elasmobranchs are categorized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as at risk of extinction.

While dozens of nations have banned large-scale fishing of endangered shark, ray and skate species, true global catch figures are likely to be hugely underestimated as 90 percent of the world's fishing fleet is made up of small-scale boats.

Researchers in Italy wanted to get a better idea of how species fare in the Mediterranean's partially protected areas, which allow some fishing with restrictions.

They used photo-sampling and image analysis to compile a database covering more than 1,200 small-scale fishing operations across 11 locations in France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia and Greece.

Protected areas

The team then used statistical models to demonstrate that catches of threatened species were higher in partially protected areas than in areas with no protection at all.

"People assume that it is large-scale trawlers that are impacting biodiversity, which is true and there's a lot of evidence for this," said co-author Antonio Di Franco, from the Sicily Marine Center.

"There is less research on small-scale fishing's impact and our research shows that there is this potential."

The team found that catches they analyzed in partially protected areas landed 24 species of shark, skate and ray—more than a third of which are endangered.

This is likely in part due to the species' preference for coastal waters, where most small-scale fisheries prefer to operate.

"We don't know the activity of small-scale fisheries in general, we don't know how many nets they actually fish or where they fish," said Di Franco.

Overall, in the partially protected areas studied, 517 elasmobranchs were caught compared with 358 in non-protected areas.

In terms of mass, the weight of shark, ray or skate species caught in partially protected areas was roughly double that in non-protected areas.

More than 100 countries have committed to increase the amount of protected oceans worldwide to 30 percent by 2030.

Di Franco said there were a number of steps countries could take to help threatened species, including fitting smaller fishing boats with GPS trackers and ensuring that protected areas were joined up, allowing the species to more easily change living regions.

"Protected areas are a great potential benefit to biodiversity but the point is to look at management," he told AFP.

"But often countries don't have the capacity to properly manage stocks."Two-thirds of species in global shark fin trade at risk of extinction

© 2022 AFP

The women desperate to work in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan


By AFP
Published August 9, 2022


The Taliban have squeezed Afghan women out of public life, imposing suffocating restrictions on where they can work, how they can travel, and what they can wear - 

Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA

Lillian SUWANRUMPHA

Since their takeover a year ago, the Taliban have squeezed Afghan women out of public life, imposing suffocating restrictions on where they can work, how they can travel, and what they can wear.

There is hardly a woman in the country who has not lost a male relative in successive wars, while many of their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers have also lost their jobs or seen their income shattered as a result of a deepening economic crisis.

AFP took a series of portraits of women in major cities — Kabul, Herat and Kandahar — who are trying to keep households together by whatever means they can.

“During these hard times, it is my job that has made me happy,” 40-year-old baker Shapari told AFP.

“My husband is jobless, and staying at home. I am able to find food for my children.”

Women have been barred from most government employment — or had their salaries slashed and told to stay at home.

They are often also first to be sacked from struggling private businesses — particularly those unable to segregate the workplace in line with Taliban rules.

Some jobs remain open, though women face far steeper obstacles than male colleagues.

– ‘Queen of the honey bees’ –

Tahmina Usmani, 23, is one of a few women journalists who have been able to continue working in the sector.

In order to circumvent a Taliban order to cover their faces while on the air, she and others at Afghanistan’s news broadcaster TOLOnews wear a Covid face mask.

“I was able to join TOLOnews and be the voice for women in Afghanistan, which makes me feel great,” she said.

Ghuncha Gul Karimi, another woman photographed by AFP, grew her beekeeping business to produce honey for sale after her husband left the country.

“I’ve taken up two extra jobs and bought a motorcycle to drive myself from the honey farm and back,” she said.

“I am determined to become the queen of honey bees.”

Even before the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan was a deeply conservative, patriarchal country with progress in women’s rights limited largely to major cities.

Women generally cover their hair with scarves, while the burqa –- mandatory for all women under the Taliban’s first regime, from 1996 to 2001 –- continued to be widely worn, particularly outside the capital Kabul.

Earlier this year, the religious police ordered women to cover themselves completely in public, preferably including their faces.

‘They beat girls just for smiling’: life in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban’s return

Bibi Asya visits her uncle and aunt at their home in the village of Ismail Khel. Two of her family members were killed in the house by an airstrike before Bibi Asya was born.

 Photograph: Nanna Muus Steffensen/The Guardian

Despite their promises of peace and stability, the country is on its knees, and its people are desperate

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

Sun 7 Aug 2022 

Maryam* is near the top of her sixth grade class in Kabul, which under Taliban rule means that her education should be ending in a few months.

But the 10-year-old, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, has a strategy to stay in school for another year, and her eyes dance with satisfaction as she explains her plan. “I will make sure I don’t answer too many questions right. I have decided to fail, so I can study sixth grade again.”


This is Afghanistan nearly a year after the Taliban seized control of the country in a lightning advance, moving so fast to take Kabul they surprised even their own leadership.

The country’s brightest young citizens are harnessing their intelligence to self-sabotage, because in a twisted system the group has created, that gives them more hope than success.

In their campaign for Afghanistan, and in international talks with the US, the Taliban offered an implicit promise, that in return for a slightly tempered version of their puritanical extremism, they would at least bring peace and stability to a country racked by decades of war.

Women had an Islamic right to education and to work, their envoys said at international conferences, and without constant war the Afghan economy would have more room to grow. As hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled, many others welcomed the silencing of the guns with hope.

A girl participates in a class at a secret school in Afghanistan. 

Photograph: Nanna Muus Steffensen/The Guardian

Nearly a year on, that vision looks increasingly hollow. Talking about the seismic shift last August, Taliban refer to before and after “the victory”. Ordinary Persian-speaking Afghans in the capital speak about life before and after “the fall”, or “the collapse”, suqut in Afghanistan’s Dari dialect.

The Taliban are an isolated pariah state, not recognised by a single country, even erstwhile allies. Their embrace of their old, violent allies was dramatically exposed last week when the US killed the leader of al Qaida in the heart of Kabul’s elite Sherpur neighbourhood.

Before that though, they had spent months out of the global spotlight. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a gift to the Taliban, drawing the world’s attention away as the group cranked up their extremist policies.

Women face harsher restrictions here than anywhere else in the world, barred from secondary education and most work outside healthcare and education. They are forced to be accompanied by a male guardian for all but short journeys and required to cover their faces in public.

Restrictions are enforced intermittently but, particularly for poorer and more vulnerable women including those without a guardian, the fear of enforcement alone can be crippling.

“Three times now I’ve seen women being beaten in the market by Taliban. Some were wearing trousers they thought were too tight, you should have seen how broken they were afterwards,” said Farkhunda*, 16, who had to stop school in September and has been battling depression.

“Another time they beat girls just for smiling and talking too loud. It’s a natural thing to chat about dresses you are buying and things,” she said.”

She doesn’t have Taliban-regulation long, black abaya and the family can’t afford to buy one. “Since then I’ve even stopped going to study at the madrassa [religious school], it’s better to be at home than run into these animals,” she said.

Members of the Taliban greet each other outside the district governor’s compound in Jalrez.

 Photograph: Nanna Muus Steffensen/The Guardian

Economic collapse

The economy has collapsed by at least a third, after international sanctions on the Taliban cut trade, the aid that had sustained the last regime dried up, and a militant group ill-prepared to shift from fighting an insurgency to running a government stumbled in their management. “We weren’t politically linked to the last government, but the Taliban are just taking revenge that we were here doing business,” said one major entrepreneur who has laid off almost 500 staff after equipment was confiscated and licenses suspended across several sectors.

He is frustrated but also baffled by the authorities’ short-term approach. His businesses sit idle although the new regime knows from experience how lucrative they can be. “I had paid them over $3m in forced ‘taxes’,” before they took over, he said. “So many businesses have already collapsed, and if things continue, more will go.”

For the previously rich, the downturn has brought an end to luxuries, but many of the former middle classes have been plunged virtually overnight into poverty and hunger. At least half the population now rely on food aid, if they can get it.

Sardar* and his wife had government jobs in the security forces, and earned enough to buy land and build a house. They were both fired when the Taliban came to power. Today, she sits at home while he touts for manual labour by the roadside and is lucky to get a day’s work in a week, for 200 afghanis ($2).

“I’ve never done this in my life and it’s tough for me because I am not used it, but I have a family to support,” he says, as his four children play at his feet. “I swear that currently I don’t even have 1,000 afghanis in the house, my mother has diabetes and we don’t have money for her medication.”

At times the country’s new leadership has been stunningly callous about this suffering, telling Afghans they should trust in God to feed them, not their government. But they are also aware the crisis is eroding any trust they may have.

“They are losing domestic support and very aware of it,” said an Afghan analyst with connections to senior Taliban, who asked not to be named speaking about internal issues within the group.

The Taliban were always going to struggle with the transition from running a decentralised rural insurgency to taking over the administration in Kabul.

Rahmanullah, 12, applies for aid at the district governor’s house in Jalrez in the province of Wardak. Rahmanullah’s father was killed just after he was born and as the only child he provides for his widowed mother. On the wall, the Taliban has written the name of their unit. 

Photograph: Nanna Muus Steffensen/The Guardian

“Running a government is the biggest nightmare they should have. They were surprised with all the development,” said an Afghan source with close Taliban links, who said the leadership were out of their depth after they arrived in a capital that had been transformed from the city they abandoned in 2001.

“They are traditional rural forces, they have come to cities, but instead of integrating themselves, they want the cities to be integrated to them, they want us to look like them, have beliefs and hobbies like them.”

An entire generation of educated Afghans has fled, or is looking for a way out. The desperation to leave was not surprising, given that the Taliban had targeted professionals across media, civil society and government for assassination for years. While the widespread orgy of killing some feared the Taliban would unleash on Kabul never took place, dozens of people have been assassinated because of their links with the previous government and its security forces.

One former member of the intelligence service told the Observer how he had surrendered the day the Taliban reached his town, but had been arrested three times subsequently while trying to work. Now he barely leaves his home.

The brain drain has made running the country even harder. The central bank, struggling with frozen reserves and sanctions, has kept on only mid and low-level staff, with the most experienced senior managers fleeing abroad, one banker who has been involved in months of crisis talks told the Observer.

One area where the Taliban registered some success was battling the obscene levels of graft that have scarred the administrations of the past 20 years, but their progress there is slowing.

“Corruption is not as bad as under [former president Ashraf] Ghani, when you entered an office to sort something out and everyone from A to Z wanted something. Now there are just a couple of specific people, but it is expanding,” the businessman said.

A flag painted with a rose, a tulip and a drone releasing bombs flutters flutters over a small cluster of graves in the village of Ismail Khel. 

Photograph: Nanna Muus Steffensen/The Guardian

Violence renewed

Between the apple groves of Ismail Khel village, barely an hour’s drive southwest of Kabul, a flag painted with a rose, a tulip and a drone releasing bombs flutters over a small cluster of graves.

To the right are the abandoned ruins of a house, where 14 years ago, at least eight women and children died in an airstrike. They were buried beside their home.

To the left, Haji Yahyah, 66, still lives with his wife and a niece in the patched-up wreckage of their home, hit by a second bomb that killed his daughter-in-law and his nephew. They never got compensation from American forces to rebuild, and stayed because they had nowhere else to go.

Villagers say those were the only aerial attacks on this farming community, but for over a decade the area was racked by death and violence, as foreign and government troops would land in helicopters and storm through the houses.

“We have four graveyards in this village. Twenty years ago we had just one,” said Ainullah, 53. “A charity came to the village recently, looking for kids who had lost a parent, to help them with food. They could hardly find a house in the village without at least one.”

Every man stopped by visiting journalists (women rarely speak to strangers in a conservative rural area) had a harrowing story of losing civilian brothers, cousins, uncles, killed during these raids, sometimes in front of their children, always within earshot.

These night raids and the deaths of civilians were powerful recruiting sergeants, and one reason the west and its allies lost their war.

“Many, many people joined the Taliban because of the pain of these cases. If your father or son is killed in front of you, wouldn’t you want to take revenge? And the way to do that was to join the Taliban,” said Mohammad Habib, 26.

“When people heard the choppers at night they would do their ablutions, so at least they would die clean, and get dressed so their corpses would be decent.”

Mawli Jannat Gul, who was injured by a mine during the American war in Afghanistan, has come to apply for aid at the district governor’s compound in Jalrez. 

Photograph: Nanna Muus Steffensen/The Guardian

In parts of the country like this, where the guns have finally fallen silent after a decade, or even two, villages are coming back to life. Schools are opening in some districts of southern Helmand and Kandahar where security – including threats from the Taliban – made education impossible.

But there are also places that were quiet over the past two decades which are now ravaged by violence and abuse, including slaughter of civilians, night raids, looting and commandeering of civilian infrastructure such as clinics and schools.

From Panjshir province in the north, in Baghlan district and in Balkhab in central Sar-e Pol, videos and reports are emerging of atrocities like those that once fuelled the Taliban. Civilians have been killed, schools have been commandeered as military bases, mosques have been desecrated and homes raided.

Widespread violence across the country or a new round of a civil war that began with the Soviet invasion in 1978 seems impossible for now, but many felt the same 21 years ago. The US was convinced that a crushing military victory in 2001 meant it could impose its political will on a diverse country, where the austere extremists had a real constituency.

“The notion the Taliban movement could be swept away by US military might proved to be yet another case of wishful thinking,” Jolyon Leslie and Chris Johnson wrote in a 2004 book on the troubled new order, Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace. Their startlingly prescient analysis was widely dismissed as gloomy and out of touch at the time of publication. Now the Taliban may be repeating the same error, mistaking their own crushing military victory for a political mandate to control a diverse country.

“The Taliban are representing the Taliban, not Afghanistan. Half of the population has not been represented in government at all in the past nine months,” said the Afghan analyst. As in 2001, whole ethnic, religious and cultural communities have been excluded from a government dominated almost entirely by Pashtun Taliban extremists.

Those groups have a long history of fighting and, if the Taliban cannot ease Afghanistan’s political and economic crises, may too easily be persuaded to pick up guns again.

“Only 2% of Afghans are over 60, and 45% are under 14,” said one veteran of several of Afghanistan’s many civil wars. Give a boy $100 and a Kalashnikov and you have a fighter. We are living with human timebombs. They grew up with weapons and don’t need two weeks’ training: one hour will be enough.”

* Names have been changed

Additional reporting by Lutfullah Qasimyar

This article was amended on 7 August 2022 to refer to killings rather than executions, which is a term reserved for a legally sanctioned death sentence.

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