The Afghanistan They Left Behind | RT Documentary

Five years after the chaotic US withdrawal, Afghanistan has largely disappeared from the world’s headlines. With “The Afghanistan They Left Behind”, RT returns to a country transformed by Taliban rule to ask what life looks like after the foreign armies, international aid and global media moved on.

Traveling from Kabul to remote villages and former NATO strongholds, the documentary gains rare access to Taliban officials, fighters, farmers and ordinary Afghans still living with the consequences of two decades of war. It captures the contradictions of the new Afghanistan: bombs no longer fall over many rural communities, yet women have been pushed almost entirely out of public life; the Taliban have eradicated poppy cultivation, yet farmers have lost a crucial source of income; relative security exists alongside hunger, economic isolation and strict social control.

With access to a Taliban anti-narcotics unit, a rare interview with the regime’s chief spokesperson, and intimate encounters with families shaped by the war, the documentary offers an insight into Afghanistan five years after one of the defining geopolitical reversals of the 21st century and asks - what remains after a superpower leaves, and who bears the cost when the world moves on?