In recent months, however, he has visited it repeatedly, going to meet his family, inspect their ancestral lands, or simply for a day out with friends. “Before it was impossible. . . People were afraid of being kidnapped,” he said. “Now I can travel anywhere.” The end of Afghanistan’s 20-year war last August, when the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government, led to a significant drop in violence on the streets, if only because the group – which had long threatened travel as insurgents – is now largely uncontested militarily. Amid this change, the Taliban’s control of the road network has become one of the most important ways to consolidate their power, from imposing control over trade and the economy to promoting their draconian ideology by restricting women’s freedom to travel. In the Hazara-dominated Dasht-e-Barchi district, many women do not cover their faces and still wear colorful clothes © Oriane Zerah/FT “These roads and routes have always been central” to power in Afghanistan, said Graeme Smith, a senior adviser at the Crisis Group. Roads are “the lifeblood of the country and fundamental to how Afghans see their own government.” In addition to barring teenage girls from school and ordering women to cover their faces in public, the Taliban have begun ordering women to travel with mahrams, or male escorts. A 21-year-old woman living in Kabul made several trips out of the city alone or with female relatives after the Taliban took over, only to become increasingly agitated as the militants aggressively interrogated her at checkpoints. “They asked us, ‘Where’s your man?’ Where is your landlord?’ he said. Before, “security wasn’t good, but we weren’t afraid of what to wear,” he added. Now, travel is “difficult and it’s terrible to go anywhere alone.” To avoid scrutiny when traveling by bus or shared taxi, she sometimes wears a burqa and asks a man to pretend to be with her. Landlocked Afghanistan, which has no alternatives such as railways, has always relied on its roads. Cities like Kabul or Herat were important stops along the ancient Silk Road trade routes that facilitated the spread of goods and ideas, from gold and spices to Buddhism and Islam. Taliban checkpoint in Kabul © Oriane Zerah/FT Militant Islamists in southern Afghanistan formed the Taliban in the 1990s, in part to wrest control of the roads from warlords who used checkpoints to extort and extort locals. But after being ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001, the Taliban adopted similar strategies, using makeshift roadblocks to tax trucks and attack traveling government officials, troops or foreigners. For international organizations in Afghanistan, travel during the conflict often involved negotiating with warring sides to safely cross battle lines with supplies such as food and medicine. Traveling anywhere was dangerous, said Philippe Kropf, head of communications for the UN’s World Food Program in Afghanistan. “They should know we’re coming with a food convoy that needs to get through. . . that we are not military,” he said. Between January and May, the UN recorded a nearly 80 percent drop in armed conflicts, explosions and other security incidents compared to the same period a year earlier, according to a June report submitted to the organization’s Security Council. After a devastating earthquake in June, WFP was even able to travel at night—previously unthinkable—to speed up aid delivery. However, parts of the country, such as Panjshir province in the north, remain destabilized by a latent insurgency against the Taliban. Livestock on the road to the Chinarak coal mine in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan © Oriane Zerah/FT Control of the country’s roads is also central to the Taliban’s economic plan. Since coming to power, they have begun dismantling the extensive network of police and military checkpoints that dot highways and are used to extort traders and travelers. A study funded by the UK Foreign Office last month estimated that these checkpoints collected around $650 million a year in bribes. This helped facilitate trade in lucrative commodities such as coal, boosting tax revenue for the cash-strapped Taliban government. It also removed opportunities for local commanders to amass independent wealth and power through smuggling, limiting their ability to challenge the group’s authority. For traders and truck drivers, the checkpoints “created a degree of uncertainty, in terms of not only the cost [of bribes] but also the potential for violence,” said David Mansfield, researcher and author of the study. Now “they are not shaken . . . There is this consistent message that the roads are safer.”

But another, more mundane obstacle remains: Afghanistan’s poor infrastructure. Truck drivers and locals must navigate potholes to bomb craters as they travel. The Taliban have pledged to upgrade transport networks. “Our roads have been destroyed all over Afghanistan,” said Esmatullah Burhan, a spokesman for the mines ministry. “First, we have to raise the money to build it.” But it is not clear how – if ever – their internationally sanctioned government will find the funds. “Roads will be key to the economic recovery that is so needed,” Smith said. “It really is a matter of life and death. They have to build these roads to move these trucks.”