Kabul 2018: twenty-five responses to 'crisis'

Afghanistan is often largely forgotten now that international geo-strategic attention has moved elsewhere, but 2018 saw some of the highest incidences of terror attacks since 2001 in the capital Kabul, a city of up to seven million people. By anyone’s definition that would seem to represent a condition of crisis, but how do Afghans see these conditions? Drawing on a pilot study on responses to risk under conditions of high incidence of terrorist catastrophe, Dr Simpson presents some responses on crisis from a series of recent interviews with Afghan residents of Kabul.

How do Kabulis define ‘crisis’, and how do they cope with the conditions under which they live? Highlighting responses from Afghan women and non-elite Afghans in particular, Dr Simpson draws on concepts from the sociology of risk in presenting some preliminary findings on the everyday-life experience of people living with catastrophe.