A former US citizen in Kabul runs the city under Taliban watch

These days, the 66-year-old mayor of Kabul is the most prominent official in the fallen Afghan republic to remain in office since the Taliban returned to power on August 15.

Every morning, Mr. Sultanjoy, saluted by the municipality’s uniformed guards, climbs the stairs to the same sprawling office he now shares with a senior Taliban official.

“I am not involved in any of their politics, but I am here because I am responsible to the people of Kabul, and I have decided to stick to it,” says Mr. Sultanjoy, sitting at his desk as municipal workers pass him. Do the paperwork to sign. “It’s a responsibility you can’t throw away trivially because you just say, ‘Oh, I don’t like these people’.”

A day after the fall of the Afghan Republic, as thousands of desperate members of the former government tried to flee a US-controlled airport, the Taliban contacted Mr. Sultanzoy, telling him they had guaranteed their safety.

His return to office ensured that some important municipal services in the capital, such as garbage collection and sanitation, remained uninterrupted.

The mayor’s unusual and precarious position exposes the complexities of Afghanistan’s transitional period, as well as the Taliban’s attempt to move from a brutal rural insurgency to a government that could manage a country of 40 million and its modern cities such as Kabul. where there is one. Eight Afghans.

Asked whether his continued service helped the Taliban increase their legitimacy, Mr Sultanjoy scoffed.

“I’m not helping. I was assigned to serve this city, and I’m still serving this city,” he says. When people think of the Taliban, they think of the past and are shaken, he added. “But I find them more tolerant. I’m not saying that everyone I’ve met, I’m sure there are other elements. But the people I’ve met are very polite, very understanding.”

The new acting administrator of the Taliban of Kabul, who shares Mr Sultanzoy’s office, Hamidullah Nomani, served as mayor of the Afghan capital and cabinet minister in the Taliban regime before the 2001 US invasion.

With nearly all of the municipality’s employees dressed in traditional Afghan clothing since the Taliban takeover, Mr Sultanjoy stubbornly continues to wear suits – the only Afghan official to do so, he quipped.

Mr. Sultanjoy first came to the US in the 1970s to study aviation at the University of Miami, at which time Afghanistan’s national airline, Ariana, was an affiliate of Pan Am, and later became a US citizen. After attending the 2001 Bonn Conference, which outlined Afghanistan’s political future, he returned to the country to represent his family’s territory, now part of the south-eastern Ghazni province, in the new Afghan parliament.

He gave up his US passport to run in Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential elections, but received only 0.46% of the vote. Of his citizenship, Mr. Sultanjoy says, “Abandoned, not abandoned.” “America has been good to me, and I give up on nothing.” President Ashraf Ghani, the winner of that election, appointed him mayor of Kabul in 2020.

Mr Sultanjoy’s adult children and his wife, a TV host who was crowned Miss Afghanistan in 1972, are all US citizens, and keep in touch with her from the US through daily WhatsApp messages. “Of course they’re worried,” he says. “But they are very supportive of the decision I made not to run away.”

More than 100,000 Afghans, many of whom were members of Kabul’s educated elite, fled the country after Mr. Ghani left the capital and the Taliban entered the city unopposed on 15 August. Thousands of others tried and failed to enter the US-controlled airport to jump on last month’s evacuation flights.

Escaped from the ravages of urban warfare, Kabul remains a vibrant, functioning city with traffic-jammed streets, open restaurants, shopping malls, and markets full of produce.

It is a stark contrast to Kabul that the Taliban took over in 1996: a city that turned to rubble after years of artillery exchanges and street fighting between rival mujahideen factions. “There were dogs roaming the streets eating human flesh,” says Mr. Sultanzoy. “The Taliban have come again to a city that did not exist. This time, they have come to a city that does exist.”

Mr Nomani, the Taliban-appointed acting administrator of Kabul, agrees. “The difference between that Kabul and Kabul today is like the earth and the sky,” he says. “At that time, we inherited a barren land. Now, we have been handed a Kabul that has been rebuilt and resettled.”

Mr. Nomani, a senior member of the Taliban leadership, says the country’s new masters need the skills of professionals like Mr. Sultanzoy. “We are not paying attention to political issues,” he says.

“Anyone who has served faithfully and has a good record, and that includes the mayor, deputy mayor and other directors are all our friends, we have not changed these positions,” Mr. Nomani says. “Our arrival here was not aimed at stopping work. As long as work goes smoothly, we will work together and maintain this friendship.”

Some two-thirds of Kabul Municipality’s 8,000 employees are on the job again, Mr. Sultanjoy says. These are all men: women, who make up 5% of the workforce, have been asked by the Taliban to stay home. No one, including Mr Sultanjoy, has received a salary for the past three months as Mr Ghani’s government first delayed payments and now the new Taliban administration is facing a cash crunch.

The US and allies dumped nearly $9 billion in Afghanistan’s central bank reserves last month and suspended most aid and access to international lenders, triggering a run on Afghan banks. The country’s financial system was confiscated, meaning that hardly anyone in Kabul pays their municipal taxes.

Mr. Sultanzoy cataloged the projects he was working on when the city could still spend its $200 million budget: replacing Kabul’s sidewalks with local permeable stone; Green Energy Initiative; Beautifying the capital’s so-called TV Hill mountain that was disfigured by ugly antennas; 10 new economic corridors; Digitization of revenue collection.

However, all these initiatives as well as permit issuance and hiring stopped in mid-August. With no money to pay for catering to serve lunch to employees, most municipal workers go home at noon for the day.

“None of these plans are progressing now because we are at the stage where we have to revisit everything and see what the new political leadership does,” says Mr. Sultanjoy.

“I don’t know what will happen to these plans,” he adds. “I don’t expect to be here very long.”