Taliban Seeks to Encourage Tourism in Afghanistan

The Taliban junta is putting some effort into reviving tourism in Afghanistan, which seemed like an unlikely vacation getaway even before a band of hardcore Islamist fanatics took control of the country in 2021.

The Associated Press (AP) on Tuesday marveled that Afghanistan does have a functional tourism industry, even though its current rulers are “pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls.”

The AP reported:

The economy is struggling, infrastructure is poor, and poverty is rife. And yet, foreigners are visiting the country, encouraged by the sharp drop in violence, increased flight connections with hubs like Dubai, and the bragging rights that come with vacationing in an unusual destination.

The outlet noted that a certain “buzz” has developed around Afghanistan as a venue for extreme tourism.

Although the tourist population remains small, it is increasing dramatically with every passing year — from 691 in 2021 to some 7,000 in 2023. Unsurprisingly, many of these tourists come from China, which has developed extensive business interests with the Taliban regime.

“They’ve told me they don’t want to go to Pakistan because it’s dangerous and they get attacked. The Japanese have said this to me also. This is good for us,” Mohammad Saeed, head of the Taliban’s tourism directorate, said of his Chinese customers.

Saeed said the Taliban wants to increase tourism to present a more positive image of its rule to the outside world.

“I have been sent to this department on the instructions of the elders. They must trust me because they’ve sent me to this important place,” he declared.

“Afghanistan’s enemies don’t present the country in a good light. But if these people come and see what it’s really like, they will definitely share a good image of it,” Taliban Information and Culture Minister Khairullah Khairkhwa told Al Jazeera News in April.

The surprising resurgence of Afghanistan tourism is even more surprising because getting into the country is very difficult, even for Chinese visitors, and getting around inside Afghanistan on its dirt roads is also challenging and dangerous. The Islamic State still seeks to destabilize and topple the Taliban by staging horrific terrorist attacks across the country. The terrorist group just claimed responsibility for a shooting rampage at a mosque in western Afghanistan that killed six people.

The Taliban’s primitive extremism is also a hurdle. The regime set up a “training institute” for hospitality workers in Kabul, but only men are allowed to attend it. Women are not allowed into many of the country’s public attractions. The best hotel in Afghanistan has grudgingly re-opened its spa and salon to females, but only if they can produce ID that proves they are foreigners.

The few travel agents who provide services to Afghanistan say they are making an effort to avoid amenities controlled by the regime, steering their clients to smaller family-owned operations and locally managed attractions.

Al Jazeera News spoke to an American tourist named Oscar Wells while he was visiting the Blue Mosque in the northern province of Mazar-i-Sharif. Wells said he arranged the trip through an outfit called Untamed Borders, which also offers tours of war-torn Syria and Somalia.

Wells said he chose to visit Afghanistan because his son was a soldier who fought there, and he felt bad about the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021.

“I really felt we had a horrible exit; it created such a vacuum and disaster. It’s good to help these people and keep relations,” he said.

Another American tourist, a 53-year-old woman named Stefanie Meier, said she was able to travel across Afghanistan without too much trouble despite being an unaccompanied woman. Her strongest impression of the country was “disbelief that people have to live like this.”

“The poverty, there are no jobs, women not being able to go to school, no future for them,” she lamented.

The founder of Untamed Borders, James Willcox, told Sky News in March that “quite a number of tourists” are flocking to Afghanistan as a “dangerous and edgy destination.”

“They want to experience somewhere that’s culturally different, with different food and architecture,” he said. “One of the things that appeals when you go to Afghanistan, is you don’t see life through the prism of tourism. There’s something much more authentic about it.”

Willcox added that in his assessment, tourism in Afghanistan is actually easier under the Taliban than it was under the toppled U.S.-backed civilian government because “we can visit places we couldn’t visit before, and the overall security situation has generally improved.”

Several other “adventure tourism” companies told Sky News that bookings to Afghanistan are surging, and it has become one of their most popular Central Asian destinations.