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Entering Kandahar | Afghanistan's Most Surprising Capital – Transcript
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- Drew Binsky travels to Kandahar, the former capital of Afghanistan, which recently became safe enough to visit.
- Drew Binsky visits local pomegranate farms and learns that Kandahar is known as the pomegranate city.
- Drew Binsky explores the ancient citadel of Kandahar, which dates back to the time of Alexander the Great.
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so we're we're now on a zone where you osama bin laden and mulamar the leader of taliban used to stay here so it was the base for them during the taliban regime they were staying right here yeah those walls you see like inside those compounds crazy he was like right there yeah he used to control the 95 percent of afghanistan from here this is called the sranjama or the red mosque this is a place where the leader of taliban he used to come here
often and pray at this area makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable but still cool to see see all these sites kandahar is a former capital of afghanistan and is located in the southern part of the country the city
rose to prominence when osama bin laden and muhammad omar set up their base here in the 1990s to start the taliban a sunni islamic fundamentalist political movement and military organization that's basically a fancy way to say a very scary terrorist organization who are currently controlling over 50 percent of all the land in afghanistan over the last 25 years kandahar has been home to a lot of attacks and destruction
and it just became safe enough to visit last year i repeat it just became safe enough to visit last year i was nervous as hell to come here because any situation with the taliban is game over for me getting kidnapped is my biggest fear and that's exactly what could happen but i was so curious to see what kandahar was like because i know that there is another side to the story among
its 1 million residents so off i went into the unknown for probably the most daring travel adventure of my life all right we are now pulling up at the airport heading to kandahar in the south of afghanistan long lines all right let's go to kandahar
uh we're at kandahar air force we have made it to kandahar afghanistan i truthfully never thought i would make it here the city's been off limits for almost decades yeah but we're here and really excited to see what's going on it's a crazy like fortification system everywhere is like super secure super secure these like
huge walls crazy military checkpoints just to leave the airport but despite all these tense feelings it didn't take me long to realize that there is certainly another side of the kandahar story and frankly speaking it's beautiful salaam alaikum and welcome to kandahar aka the pomegranate city of afghanistan i got extremely lucky to visit kandahar right at the peak of pomegranate season and in case you didn't already know
afghanistan has some of the world's finest fruits all right so we're just rolling up now to a pomegranate farm out here in kandahar this is all filled with pomegranates for some reason the weather in kandahar is kind of perfect for for pomegranates and since i was very young i was hearing always about pomegranates of kandahar even there are very famous songs really yeah like uh they say that they're like the best
pomegranates in kandahar and so all the pomegranates in kabul come from here yeah exactly all the pomegranates in kabul they're from kandahar you can imagine like probably like two days ago did they eat the packs you saw they're only two days ago guys literally like straddling the entire tree just to pick these pomegranates in the u.s like pomegranates are a huge thing and everybody wants to have them and drink the juice but we don't we don't
produce them so it's really cool to come to afghanistan and see the whole production aspect yeah all i'm witnessing in these pomegranate fields are pure happiness from the locals i mean wouldn't you be happy too he just ate that entire pomegranate in like 20 seconds ask him
get this fresh pomegranate these kids just hang out in the pomegranate fields and they just eat pomegranates all day literally literally they have pop and granite stains all over their mouths they're so cute they're following us around now my name is drew what's your name my name is bilal ahmad nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you
you like afghanistan yes how about you yes people in kandahar automatically they just like pomegranates and they just cult with pomegranates everywhere yes um for real this is the best pomegranate i've ever had oh yeah yeah it's like straight from the source look how fresh it is yeah this is wild
literally i'm in a pomegranate field in afghanistan dude is so cool so we're on our way out and what just happened yeah this this guy just wanted to give us some some pomegranates so look at this yeah he thinks that we're guests here and then uh it's it's not good to get out of this garden without any pomegranates so what else is happening in kandahar besides pomegranates it's time to explore the city
hey welcome to afghanistan thank you bro thank you thank you bye-bye so we are taking a tuk-tuk ride because that's the thing to do here in kandahar whoa fancy fancy all right have you ever ridden one of these in kandahar first time first time first time for noor that makes me happy if it's his first time yeah sure
it's always great to get in uh some kind of public transportation when you arrive somewhere just to kind of scope out the city and door do you think there's any other tourists here i'm sure there is no no 100 sure yes yeah probably there are some ngo workers but they're not tourists it's really special to be here to see a city that the world really doesn't know about yeah our first stop the market we're now
walking through the many bazaars here the oldest bazaar in kandahar right in front of us this place feels extremely old like a time machine yes like wow i can't even get the words out of my mouth i simply cannot visit any city without seeing the market because that's how i can wrap my head around its culture and the overall society but this one here is pretty special nowhere i've been a lot of places in afghanistan and this is probably my favorite but yeah yeah i
just think the life here in this market is insane i'm happy to hear that it's just so cool like everything's made of mud bricks yeah and you feel like it's so old but nothing in here has become modernized nothing it's super authentic and look at these shops that's one of the best things about kandahar actually it's so cool man and the women have different color uh chowdery usually it's always blue but here is all different colors i've learned to let you
cross first because i almost got hit by a car earlier today sometimes the best thing you can do in a busy market is just get lost on purpose because after all the best experiences in life come from being spontaneous whoa look at this place where are we right now this is cool yeah we're in the very backgrounds of kamehameha so we went in some like some back alley here
near the main market so we're up here on the top level of the market and you can see it's made of like truly these mud bricks like literally the definition of a mud brick is this you know bricks and it's made from mud and it's super old these walls were not made yesterday that's all i know okay we had a beautiful minute right up there much to our surprise we found a shop so
we went inside to check it out we made it up to the second level here and we found this taylor shop and this really friendly man who's got really cool posters on the wall uh gave us some tea and it's totally letting us stay up here and get some shots of the city such a nice guy just so awesome from up here to be able to see the life happening below us and we're really the only people up
here there's not like a second level really it's just it's just us it's going to ask you about kandahar it's my first time here so what do you enjoy about the city he says kandahar is nice i was born here in kandahar and raised here and i never went anywhere i like the city he says like my kids are went to school i saw them
grew here and now they're having families are having a big family in kandahar yeah the only thing is that this security a little bit bothering us we're happy with our life and belongings and everything in kandahar the only thing is that sometimes the security type of issues bothers all the people including me what do you mean the security is wrong what's wrong with the city i'm not with us
oh it says i i always pray to god for the for the security well he says i know the the inside the city is fine a little bit with the security but around kandahar like like in the outskirts and far areas like villages and districts people doesn't really have a secure life out there and he says i'm also bothered when i see my fellow countrymen and friends not having a good life around kandahar
so he says i hope one day the security comes and that's the only thing we're missing well it's a pleasure to be here thank you for having me and thank you for letting us in your shop says you're very welcome here it's also a pleasure to me and you you just came into my little shop here it's it's just a pleasure and uh i i pray to god to welcome any other
type of people like you and it would be a pleasure to honor people like him what an experience that was well we stayed up here for a good half hour getting all these shots and the guy was super friendly to let us uh stay nowhere i think we hit the jackpot on that one yeah wow that was the coolest market i think i've
ever been doing my life whoa man it's so hard to leave that place i could stay there all day it's like kabul's different it's just different like there's more people on their phones it's more modernized yeah there's there's you know the shops are more modern in kabul yeah you know here is like if you remove the cars from the streets you've entered the year 1835.
right exactly it was time to visit the many famous shrines around town because noor tells me that they're all amazing we're here at the tomb of the shrine of midwives hutak the emperor of the hotak dynasty during 17th century in kandahar he was against the safavids of iran who was ruling over these areas and then he fought against them and he brought the freedom for this area and for
kandahar at that time and when was the shrine made the shrine was made at the mid 17th century and everything i'm looking at is original everything is raining these shrines are one of the shrines that survived during the wars and nobody has touched these areas from the outside it was a little bit rude but from the inside everything's okay this place is so beautiful it's not that often where i've seen these like this kind of architecture this kind of
paintings these different colors um all in one spot and it's i can't believe that these are like 400 years old it's really really beautiful to walk in here as we were making our way onwards to the next shrine we found out some bad news noor accidentally left his phone in the tuk-tuk that we were in and i'm really hoping we're going to get it back because this guy needs his phone his whole business is run on his phone and
how can i text you without your phone man it's just my fault i just forgot it i really hope we're gonna get it back our drivers been on the phone all day trying to call people and show the picture of our driver so hopefully we can get it back and we will see in any regard we made our way to the next landmark and all our problems were gone so beautiful this marble incredible