RASC News Agency: A devastating fire tore through the main market of Khwaja Bahauddin district in Takhar Province, reducing more than 40 shops to rubble and leaving local traders destitute. The incident, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday, September 7, has once again laid bare the fragility of Afghanistan’s economic life under Taliban rule. Eyewitnesses reported that the flames spread rapidly through the marketplace, consuming merchandise, wood workshops, and wheat depots. Despite the growing scale of the disaster, Taliban authorities failed to dispatch fire brigades or provide even the most basic assistance. Instead, the blaze raged unchecked for hours, with residents forced to battle the inferno themselves using buckets of water and improvised tools. The fire was eventually contained, not by state intervention, but by the sheer determination and resilience of the local population.
Preliminary assessments indicate that each shop sustained financial losses ranging between 500,000 and 600,000 Kabuli rupees, pushing the overall damage into tens of millions. For many traders, this catastrophe has obliterated a lifetime of savings, destroying livelihoods that supported extended families and entire communities. Local residents have voiced anger and despair at what they describe as the Taliban’s deliberate neglect of public welfare. “When disaster strikes, the people are left alone. There are no fire trucks, no emergency teams nothing,” one shopkeeper said. His words reflect the broader sentiment in Takhar, where citizens increasingly view the Taliban not as rulers, but as absentee power brokers more interested in consolidating control than in protecting society.
Social and economic analysts argue that the Khwaja Bahauddin fire is emblematic of a deeper systemic collapse. Markets and commercial hubs in Afghanistan remain highly vulnerable to disasters, largely due to inadequate infrastructure, lack of safety regulations, and the erosion of public institutions since the Taliban’s return to power. In place of effective governance, the population faces a vacuum in which every natural or man-made disaster magnifies poverty and despair. Observers further warn that the Taliban’s fixation on policing society and tightening ideological control, rather than investing in governance and service delivery, has left Afghanistan dangerously exposed. “What we are witnessing is not just a fire in Takhar it is the burning away of Afghanistan’s social fabric,” one Kabul-based economic expert told RASC.
Merchants have urgently appealed for assistance to rebuild the market, pleading for measures to compensate for their losses. Yet skepticism runs deep: many fear that the Taliban will neither provide support nor allow independent humanitarian agencies to act freely, effectively leaving survivors abandoned in the ruins of their own livelihoods. This tragedy stands as a stark reminder of the Taliban’s inability to safeguard even the most basic needs of the population. While ordinary citizens bear the costs of destruction, the regime’s indifference further erodes Afghanistan’s already fragile economy, deepening poverty and despair across the nation.
