Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is, for once, peaceful

The cafés on foreign-ministry road in the heart of Kabul’s government district used to blare out Afghan pop to attract a gossipy crowd of civil servants. No music comes from them now—or from anywhere else. It is banned. Men bustle along the street in traditional shalwar kameez, sporting long beards. Where a colourful mural used to be there is now a giant slogan in Dari, the local dialect of Persian: “There is no god but Allah”. Next to it a man in black fatigues lounges in the turret of a captured American Humvee, fondling a machinegun and keeping a lazy eye on the lunchtime traffic.