RASC News Agency: As thousands of unemployed young Afghanistanis queued for hours in the sweltering summer heat, clinging to the hope of securing work abroad, the Taliban abruptly halted the registration process for Qatari work visas a move that sources now confirm was triggered by widespread corruption and entrenched patronage within the Taliban’s own ranks. Reliable sources across multiple provinces, including Khost and Paktia, have reported that the suspension of the program was not merely logistical. Instead, it was the direct result of deep-rooted Taliban interference and the manipulation of visa quotas. According to these sources, access to registration was never meant to be equitable. Only individuals with connections to Taliban officials, or those preselected through opaque internal networks, had any real chance of making it onto the official lists.
From the outset, the process was marred by chaos and disillusionment. While hopeful applicants arrived with valid documents and dreams of a better future, they were met with long lines, absolute bans on photography or filming, and an atmosphere of confusion. Yet, the disorder was not incidental it was performative. Insiders at the Taliban-controlled Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs have revealed that senior Taliban figures had already drawn up lists of favored candidates well before the public announcement of registration. The public rollout, it now appears, served as little more than a smokescreen an exercise in deception designed to cloak a corrupt and pre-determined allocation process in the illusion of transparency.
Qatar had allotted only 2,000 labor visas for Afghanistan. But the staggering turnout of jobseekers in provinces like Khost, Paktia, and Logar created scenes of desperation, with lines stretching for hundreds of meters. For many of these young men, the event marked not just another lost opportunity but the final collapse of their dwindling hope under Taliban rule. This episode has once again laid bare a painful truth: in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, even the pursuit of employment beyond the country’s borders is ensnared in a web of nepotism and systemic abuse. Justice and meritocracy remain elusive, sacrificed at the altar of Taliban favoritism and internal patronage networks.
For a generation struggling to reclaim agency in their lives, the collapse of this process is more than just a bureaucratic failure it is a brutal reminder of the iron grip the Taliban maintains over every fragment of opportunity, and the cost that ordinary Afghanistanis must continue to bear.
