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The capital Kabul has been firmly in the hands of the Taliban for almost two months.
The reporters Christoph Reuter and Thore Schröder have been reporting from the metropolis since the beginning of the new rule.
Less than six weeks after taking power, they want to go to the provinces, to the heart of the country, to research the consequences of the upheaval for the rural population.
But it quickly becomes clear how difficult it is to report from remote regions of this country.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
»In Kabul we tried to find out how long it would take us to get the route? How is the road What hardly anyone knew to then realize: We don't need a day and a half, we need two and a half days for a single route. And what is marked as a road looked and ran more like dry river beds. Some of them were dry river beds and some of them were not dried up river beds, where we had to drive through the water of the streams and rivers. "
The research trip to the western provinces leads from Kabul via the Bamiyan Province and along the foothills of the Hindu Kush Mountains to the Daikundi Province in central Afghanistan.
Here, the predominantly Shiite Hazara minority fears ethnic and religious persecution since the Taliban came to power.
But it will take time for the reporters to get here.
Encounters along the way:
“Alleman, everyone. … Inshallah! "
They ask the journalists whether there is still a place in the minibus for one of them.
There is rarely a possibility for a lift here.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
»
In this country, if you move out of Kabul and the few big cities, the path is the story itself. We and our Afghan companions passed through areas they had never driven through, where pitch black ones Slate and granite blocks alternate, with vermilion mountain ranges that look like you are leading through the Grand Canyon. "
But there are always breakdowns on the way.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
»
We replaced a broken gasoline pump, a striking gasoline line, and changed the car after the exhaust completely gave up its ghost. With the next vehicle, which was already a so-called flying coach, a minibus for hard routes, we had a spring break on the rear axle after a few hours in the middle of the night and then had to wait. While three little boys rode towards us on a donkey at four in the morning, two of them masked and demanding, wore a monster mask that you know from the toy store, but which you would not expect with small children at four in the morning in the mountains of East Daikundi. All in all, it was a surreal, absurd journey through incredibly beautiful landscapes. "
- which, however, are not easy to traverse:
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
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Once one of the drivers said there was a new track that was only built a few years ago. That is good. We could take it. We then drove them. And it was a cruel jolting slope. And above all, it led because it was so narrow and led all the time along the slope until we avoided looking to the right, where the mountains opened up, where a grandiose panorama opened up. Just one wrong steering movement by the driver and we would have plunged into this magnificent panorama. Whereby what scared us all - including the Afghans - the most were the ancient wooden bridges. They were bridges with steel cables and some steel elements. But the overlay consisted of poplar trunks that were painstakingly scarcely barked and that had been put together and tied up. And that crunching soundwhen you drive very slowly over this bridge in a two-ton minibus with a total of eight or nine people, it is bloodcurdling. "
Driver
"I hope the bridge will hold, I hope it will ..."
After two and a half days of driving, the destination is finally reached.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
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We're pretty much at the end of the world on the Helmand River between Uruzgan and Daikundi
- and behind us it looks like paradise. It is paradise. It is so heavenly here that hundreds of farmers from the Shiite Hazara community are to be evicted here. Armed Taliban have appeared in their villages along with corrupt landowners. They were told: You have 15 days to leave your country, your houses, everything. You have to get out of here. A reason is usually not given. The background to this is that many of those who want to get rich are either with the Taliban or are using the Taliban. Mostly Pashtuns, but even large landowners from their own Hazara ethnic group, who are now taking the opportunity, after the Taliban seized power, to take advantage of the cultivated land, the gardens, the fields that have been painstakingly irrigated over the years,to tear under the nail. "
The flags of the new rulers are also present in the remote villages. The brutal land grabbing has already begun in the neighboring Tagabdar Valley and the surrounding villages. A conflict is looming here in Daikundi that could lead to displacement and armed conflict across the country if the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, feel empowered by the Taliban's victory to take land and rights from minorities.
All the more important are reports from on the ground so that the new rulers of the country know: The world is watching here too.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
»We took cover from the Taliban.
We have been invited by the Taliban to have bread, soup and green tea.
And all in all - yes, the way or being here in this country is so complicated, but also so incredibly exciting because you meet people you would never have seen in Kabul.
Because you experience stories by the wayside that you would not experience in the city. "
In large cities like Kabul, the Taliban continue to act as a conciliatory partner who ensures security.
They tend to show their true colors where hardly anyone can go.