There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.
These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.
They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated - a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.
Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.
There was a lot wrong in Afghanistan but it wasn’t the use of force. The people there absolutely wanted a chance to get out from under the Taliban. Bush fucked it from the beginning though, trying to give them the world’s most corrupt western style government, lying about reports of the Taliban resurging, and letting the DEA loose on their cash crops. You could easily see just how badly the country wanted the Taliban back with the massive waves of people fleeing them. We failed them badly, but not in the way you guys think.