Women and children have turned Kabul’s intersections into a stage of desperation, begging for survival under Taliban rule despite a major crackdown that officials now admit is faltering.

Begging in Kabul, the Afghan capital city, has become a norm, most visible in the recently concluded holy month of Ramadan. It has brought into sharp relief a humanitarian emergency that officials in Kabul had once hoped to contain.

According to the Taliban’s own Commission for the Collection of Beggars and Prevention of Begging, nearly 75,000 individuals – 74,968 to be precise – have been rounded up from Kabul’s streets since the nationwide campaign began in 2022. Of those, roughly half were classified as “eligible” for aid and referred to the Afghan Red Crescent Society for monthly bank transfers, while others were directed toward medical care or supposed job placements through the municipality.

Yet residents report that the numbers on the streets have surged again. Deputy prime minister for economic affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar recently instructed the commission to intensify operations, hold monthly meetings and file regular reports, acknowledging that early successes in reducing visible begging have reversed. Many of those briefly removed from street corners received only 2,000 afghanis – barely enough for a family’s basic needs – and soon returned, driven by the same grinding poverty that first pushed them out.

Streets Become a Stage for Desperation

Walk through any major intersection in Kabul and the scene is unmistakable. Women wrapped in faded chadors sit beside bakeries, infants in their laps, calling out in voices cracked by hunger: “My child, it is Friday… I have orphans, I have no breadwinner… We have nothing.”

Children as young as five weave between slow-moving cars, small hands outstretched, eyes wide with rehearsed sorrow. Residents say the wailing and pleading have become a daily soundtrack.

Local resident Sitara described the scene with quiet anger. “These days, in various corners of Kabul, especially in the evening hours, women and even young and elderly men are resorting to begging for help from others. Women often sit near bakeries and beg. Is it right that instead of studying and working, women should be looking into the pockets of others?”

Another Kabul resident, Saber Saberi, pointed to the visible shift: many of the women now begging once held jobs in government ministries before sweeping Taliban restrictions barred them from public-sector work.

Economic analyst Qutbuddin Yaqubi listed the interlocking causes: the collapse of economic infrastructure after the 2021 takeover, years of war, corruption, natural disasters, crop failures and mass displacement. “Many people have lost their breadwinners and have no employment opportunities available to them,” he said. The result is a visible explosion in begging. Ramadan’s emphasis on charity amplified this.

Women Bear the Brunt of Taliban Restrictions

The faces behind the pleas are overwhelmingly female. Widows, wives of disabled husbands and sole breadwinners who once supported families through teaching, health care or civil-service roles now find themselves with no legal pathway to work. Taliban decrees have banned women from most government jobs, restricted their movement and kept girls out of secondary schools and universities. Fereshta, a former office worker who asked for a pseudonym, told reporters she lost her position when restrictions tightened further. “There was a time I could provide,” she recalled, “but now I cannot meet even the most basic needs.”

Lailuma, another woman forced onto the streets, echoed the same collapse of dignity. The public nature of begging brings fresh humiliations – harassment from passers-by, dismissive glances and occasional physical threats. Children dragged into the trade lose schooling and childhood; their days revolve around collecting coins instead of learning to read. Under the previous government’s penal code, forcing children to beg constituted human trafficking, punishable by imprisonment. Today, such laws are unenforced, and the practice has become normalised.

Psychological Toll and Public Frustration Mount

The constant encounters weigh on ordinary citizens. Shopkeeper Amin said the sight of begging creates “great psychological pressure… When people see that begging goes unchecked, they are naturally encouraged to engage in such behaviour themselves.” Others complain that ‘professional beggars’ – those the commission labelled as non-eligible – have eroded public trust, making genuine cases harder to help. Some beggars now approach homes directly or use handcarts to move between neighbourhoods, turning quiet evenings into confrontations.

Taliban officials maintain that eligible families receive support and that “professional” beggars are being deterred. Yet on the ground there is little evidence of sustained employment schemes or long-term solutions. The 2,000-afghani monthly stipend, unchanged regardless of family size, fails to cover rising food prices or rent in a city still reeling from international sanctions and frozen assets.

Deeper Crisis Threatens a Generation

What began as a post-takeover economic shock has hardened into a structural emergency. Female-headed households, once rare, now crowd the pavements. Girls barred from classrooms beyond sixth grade face futures with few options besides early marriage or street survival. International aid organisations have warned repeatedly that poverty, unemployment and the exclusion of women from the workforce risk reversing decades of fragile progress.

Kabul’s streets remain a stark tableau of contradiction: calls to prayer echo alongside cries for alms while mothers clutch hungry children, and Taliban patrols occasionally sweep corners only for the same faces to reappear days later.