When the Taliban recaptured Kabul, and with it the nation from which it had been forced out 20 years earlier, there was in some corners a feeble but desperate hope that this would be a more moderate regime than it had been before the United States invaded in 2001.
In anticipation of what would become a demoralising and chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan three years ago, there were voices within the Islamist militant group who tried to persuade the watching world that a so-called 'Taliban 2.0' would leave the ultra-conservatism of its past and seek legitimacy in formal government.
The withdrawal of Western support plunged the country into a crisis as the national economy shrank by 35 per cent in the year that followed, according to the World Bank. But while the Taliban tried to secure the nation's economy, whatever hope there was that Afghanistan would be safer for its estimated 40 million citizens was quickly snuffed out.
Afghanistan is the only country on earth where education is strictly forbidden for girls and women aged over 12. In August, it was estimated that as many as 1.4 million Afghan girls have been deliberately deprived of education.
As many as 3.7 million children are out of school, more than half of whom are girls, according to Unicef data, as an entire generation of students has had their education disrupted and deprived by war, crisis and hardship.
More than 17 million people are starving, and economic progress has stalled. Two-thirds of the population was in dire need of humanitarian assistance in 2023, according to the European Commission - the executive body of the European Union.
Since retaking power, the Taliban has ordered judges to enforce their rigid and violent interpretation of sharia - the Islamic moral law. Extrajudicial killings, violence and public floggings increased. Forced marriages increased. Women and children are routinely assaulted. The rights of women and girls have been obliterated, and almost all Afghans in the country live in poverty.
On August 21, almost three years to the day since the Taliban returned to power, the group enacted a strict morality law effectively enshrining the brutal control it has exerted over its people. It empowered the country's leaders to monitor, censure and punish citizens who violate it. Music has been banned, and women are forbidden from singing or reading aloud in public.
Even if dissent were possible, the population lives in fear of the Taliban's rule and the repercussions of speaking out.
"We knew that the Taliban would never change," Sami Zakhil tells Weekender. "For me, I had zero hopes for their return."
Mr Zakhil, a former interpreter for the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan and an advocate for the rights of women, children and justice in his home country, sought asylum in 2019 and now lives in Newcastle, where he works to empower young migrants in the region.
When Kabul fell, many of his siblings and his parents were forced to flee. Armed militants surrounded their home. His brothers and parents were beaten.
"People have no choice to rise or speak against them," he says. "They want a government that is for everyone ... (but) if they speak up for that, they go to jail, and the next day they send their dead bodies to their houses."
Mr Zakhil, pictured above, fears that if the Taliban is recognised by the international community as a formal government - even a condemned one - the effect would be to legitimise its brutality and the oppression of its people.
"Recognising the Taliban as a government means recognising all the attacks and killings they have done for the last 21 years," Mr Zakhil said. "That means recognising the women that are now locked in their homes and are not allowed education or work."
Early Thursday morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said Australia would join Germany, Canada and the Netherlands in condemning the Taliban's treatment of women as a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination.
Earlier this week, Mr Zakhil's brother-in-law, who fled the Taliban to Iran when they swept back into power, was granted a humanitarian visa and arrived in Australia.
"I received my brother-in-law who was working with me, shoulder-to-shoulder, in Afghanistan," he says. "I received him with half a leg, still injured, still in plaster with steel in his legs ... this is another gift of the Taliban to me.
"This government is not a government - they just grew up in the mountains; they grew up killing people from the age of 11 or 12. They don't like peace. They just like violence and war."
Australians born into a country governed by a functioning democracy, where the transfer of power has always been peaceful, cannot fully comprehend the trauma of living under an oppressive regime in the way that Mr Zakhil, his family, and countless others have experienced. But, he says, it is exactly that safety and tolerance that needs protection.
Mr Zakhil appears with six other Newcastle refugees in a New Annual video installation, running for the entirety of the local arts festival, sharing his story and his determination to preserve the freedoms and the culture of his adopted home.
"It is good that you have never been in that kind of situation," he says. "The life of opportunity you have is beautiful."
"I don't want the war and what happens overseas to bring an impact on our local community here. ... We have a peaceful and safe country, a safe environment here, and we want to keep it.
"We don't want another Afghanistan in Newcastle ... we want Newcastle. We want Australia. We want safety, and we want to keep it."
Belongings opened at Watt Space Gallery on Aukland Street on Friday at 10am. New Annual runs through October 6.
