It was his first day as the Taliban-appointed mayor of Kunduz, and Gul Mohammad Elias was on a charm offensive.
Last Sunday, the insurgents seized control of the city in northern Afghanistan, which was in shambles after weeks of fighting. Power lines were down. The water supply, powered by generators, did not reach most residents. Trash and rubble littered the streets.
The civil servants who could fix those problems were hiding at home, terrified of the Taliban. So the insurgent-commander-turned-mayor summoned some to his new office, to persuade them to return to work.
“I said that our jihad is not with the municipality, our jihad is against the occupiers and those who defend the occupiers,” Mr. Elias told The New York Times by telephone.
But day by day, as municipal offices stayed mostly empty, Mr. Elias grew more frustrated — and his rhetoric grew harsher.
Taliban fighters began going door to door, searching for absentee city workers. Hundreds of armed men set up checkpoints across the city. At the entrance to the regional hospital, a new notice appeared on the wall: Employees must return to work or face punishment from the Taliban.
Just a week after the fall of Kunduz — the first in a series of cities that the Taliban seized with breathtaking speed — the insurgents are now in effective control of Afghanistan. And they now must function as administrators who can provide basic services to hundreds of thousands of people.
The experience of those in Kunduz offers a glimpse of how the Taliban may govern, and what may be in store for the rest of the country.
In just days, the insurgents, frustrated by their failed efforts to cajole civil servants back to work, began instilling terror, according to residents reached by telephone.
“I am afraid, because I do not know what will happen and what they will do,” said one, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. “We have to smile at them because we are scared, but deeply we are unhappy.”
Three days after the Taliban took control in Kunduz, Atiqullah Omarkhil, a civil servant, received a call from an insurgent fighter telling him to go to his office. The mayor of Kunduz wanted to speak with him, he said.
Mr. Omarkhil had been staying home since the retreat of government forces, as insurgents flooded into the streets and a sense of unease gripped the battered city. He had experienced a similar moment twice before, when the Taliban briefly seized Kunduz in 2015 and again in 2016. Both times, the insurgents were pushed back with help from American airstrikes.
But this time, days after the Taliban took control, the entire Afghan Army corps charged with reclaiming the city surrendered to the insurgents. They handed over their weapons and vehicles in a stark sign that Kunduz would not be rescued.
When Mr. Omarkhil arrived at the municipal office, the sprawling compound looked…
Read More: A Week Into Taliban Rule, One City’s Glimpse of What the Future May Hold