Rahmatullah Nabil Slams Taliban Over Collapse of Showpiece Infrastructure Project in Khost

RASC News Agency: The recent collapse of a newly inaugurated infrastructure project in Khost province has once again cast a harsh spotlight on the Taliban’s inability to execute even the most basic public works. The failed structure a water dam in Gurbuz district, which had only been opened days earlier was destroyed following seasonal rains and flash floods, raising serious concerns over the competence and transparency of the Taliban’s so-called development agenda. Former Afghanistani intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil delivered a scathing response to the incident, framing it not as an isolated engineering failure, but as a powerful metaphor for the inevitable collapse of an unscientific and authoritarian regime. In a widely shared note titled “From Inauguration to Humiliation,” Nabil wrote:
“It was not just a dam that crumbled it was the symbol of a system built on ignorance, hypocrisy, and the absence of technical expertise. Regimes governed by slogans and superstition, rather than science and accountability, will ultimately collapse under the first wave of public consciousness just as the Lija Dam collapsed under the weight of floodwaters.” The dam, which reportedly cost over 55 million Kabuli rupees, was one of several public relations projects the Taliban had recently promoted as part of their infrastructure initiatives. Its catastrophic failure, so soon after its unveiling, has sparked widespread ridicule and outrage across Afghanistani social media platforms, where citizens are calling out the regime’s consistent reliance on unqualified personnel particularly the appointment of clerics and ex-combatants to highly technical positions.
Nabil went further, describing the Taliban’s administration as “the dam of religious despotism,” and warned that the collapse of such poorly conceived projects serves as a harbinger of the broader structural failure of a regime built on ideological absolutism and institutional illiteracy. “The downfall of hollow, unprofessional projects is merely the prelude to the fall of systems constructed on oppression and ignorance,” he stated.
Images of the destroyed dam quickly went viral online, with users questioning the Taliban’s decision to sideline qualified engineers in favor of loyalist mullahs and battlefield commanders. One viral post read:
“When warriors build what only engineers should, the result is national humiliation and wasted millions.”
Observers argue that the collapse of the Gurbuz dam is emblematic of deeper systemic issues under Taliban rule: the absence of professional oversight, lack of financial transparency, and total disregard for modern administrative and technical standards. Despite the Taliban’s efforts to portray such projects as national achievements, these incidents continue to expose the regime’s incompetence and growing public disillusionment. Analysts say the event has reignited critical debate around resource management, project accountability, and the broader failure of the Taliban’s administrative structure. The dam’s destruction has not only damaged physical infrastructure but has also undermined what little credibility the Taliban still claimed on matters of governance and development.
In a country already suffering from institutional collapse, economic freefall, and humanitarian despair, such preventable failures further highlight the dangers of allowing an untrained, ideologically rigid regime to operate in the vacuum of legitimate statehood. For many Afghanistani citizens, the dam’s collapse is not merely a technical issue it is a tragic symbol of the country’s ongoing descent under Taliban rule.