Rise of Taliban Tourism: YouTube, Tiktok posters visiting Afghanistan

Nolan Saumure, a 28 -year -old Canadian YoutuberHas entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last summer. He spent a week to travel through the country controlled by the Taliban with a local guide and a camera in order to show what he called “the other side of Afghanistan” – natural beauty, warm hospitality and good moments which, according to him, are not represented in Western media.

Saumure, whose YouTube channel, Seal on Tour, has 650,000 subscribers, is in a way a zoomer of Jock Shock Anthony Bourdain: his popular videos include “48 hours of life in the largest slum in India”, “” “Trying the most addictive of the Filipino substance” and “Boy White becomes Jamaican in the city center of Kingston”. Travel to Afghanistan, he played the unique travel experience to spend time exclusively, drawing a 35-minute video “Afghanistan has too much testosterone”. Camera. “It is a full sausage festive here,” he adds, turning the camera to show the crowds around him.

At one point, he meets girls who play outside. He says that after childhood, “everything is removed from them”, which, according to him, makes him sad. But in most of his YouTube videos, he presents the “Sausage Fest” like an explosion, while he and the Afghan men go to the parks, go up to a pedal-skateau in a crystal blue lake in the strip-Emir, eat ice cream and look at the massacre of a goat.

Along the way, he comes across the men he and other travel vloggers call the “talibros”, who patrol the streets with rifles attached on their shoulders. Saumure discusses with several men that he says to be members of Taliban, showing one of them how to download Duolingo so that he can practice his English.

Saumure has been one of the many travel content creators that have been to Afghanistan since the United States ended its longest war and evacuated the country. They are mainly men – sometimes traveling in groups during boys’ trips. For a certain type of manosphere influencer eager for the advantage in the economy of attention, Jalalabad is the new Nashville.

In the summer of 2021, a 21 -year -old British student named Miles Routledge went to Afghanistan after seeing him on a list of the most dangerous places in the world. (He had already visited Chernobyl.) In particular, Routledge was blocked during the fall of Kabul in August and had to be evacuated by the British army. Upon his return in 2023, he was imprisoned by the Taliban for several months. He claims that he was well treated, watching films and playing Xbox with members. “It was a good configuration,” he said in a video. “Basically, I relaxed.” Routledge did not respond to a request for comments.

The predominant feeling of these videos is that Afghanistan is poorly understood, depicted by the West as hostile and dangerous when it is in fact warm and welcoming. “F * @ k the media: I went to Afghanistan!” A traveler entitled his video; Another clip is called “Afghanistan is not what you think!” Some have beautiful mountains and mosques and detail the warm interactions with the inhabitants. There are more shocking dishes, like “I went to shoot with the Taliban” or videos on the exploration of abandoned Russian tanks old several decades. A YouTuber called Arab who runs a chain with 1.8 million subscribers calls an adventure traveler, but says in a warning that he goes to journalistic purposes. His wacky and lively videos include “The Young Taliban Train Me For War”, where he plays with children dressed in camouflage and holding toy pistols, and “I spent 7 days living with the Taliban”. He did not respond to an interview request.

These creators also wade in a country to which many Western governments warn against travel, which has been ravaged by war and which is now under an elected oppressive government. Freedom of expression and religious practices which do not comply with Sharia law or Islamic law are limited; Girls have to leave school at 12; And the members of the Taliban attacked queer people. In 2024, three Spanish tourists and three Afghans were killed during a shooting in a bazaar – the Islamic State claimed the responsibility of the attack. In January, two Americans were released in an exchange of prisoners for a member of the Taliban. At the end of February, the Taliban arrested a British couple in the 1970s, although the Taliban described their detention as a “misunderstanding”. The American State Department advises citizens not to go to Afghanistan, invoking “civil disturbances, crime, terrorism, the risk of unjustified detention, kidnapping and limited health facilities”.

You have somehow starting to disengage from all level four warnings that your government could say about travel in these places and not trust your own government.
Nolan Saumure, Travel Youtuber

Many of these travelers are not foreign to a certain sense of danger. Afghanistan offers the type of exclusive certain content to attract eyes, especially if vloggers can interact and embroider with a notorious extremist group.

Saumure tells me that after having traveled in several “dangerous” countries, including Iraq and Pakistan, you are starting to disengage from all level four warnings that your government could say on travel in these places and simply not trust your own government and go according to what other travelers say. “”

But he has always witnessed the country’s deep root problems. “Even if the West may sell a very sensational story, I have always seen the oppression of the first hand as far as women who were not authorized in certain parks and laws on modesty,” he said. “It’s a delicate subject. I just wanted to say to me:” That’s how it is here “instead of driving in my beliefs.”

The growing interest in living from first -hand places – or at least watching another amateur doing it – highlights an increasing distrust of institutions and authority. In an investigation in 2024 of the Pew Research Center, about one in five American said that he had obtained their news from influencers on social networks. This figure increased to 37% for respondents under the age of 30.

As dangerous as Western governments say that Afghanistan, the country wants tourists, in particular those who show a different side of the country as reports, and it announces tourism on its websites. The Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan has not responded to my request for comments. Taliban officials told New York Times last year that some 14,500 foreigners had visited Afghanistan since 2021, most of them. Several tourist companies and travel agencies have appeared to help travelers wishing to sail in the country. The change of brand of Afghanistan has been underway for years – shortly after the fall of Kabul, Taliban fighter videos became even, showing them stupid activities like riding a carousel. Some researchers were worried at the time that content could help soften the image of the group.

Carrie Patsalis, a 48 -year -old British travel vlogger, tour in Afghanistan with a guide for 10 days in May. “The world has a really funny story and a really funny idea about the countries you should flee according to the non-elected diets,” she said. She maintains that staying away from the country’s economy – UN officials have estimated that around 85% of Afghans live with less than $ 1 per day – and the Afghan people who may not support the Taliban domination.

She thinks that travel vloggers should show both the beauty of the country and its oppression. Patsalis tells me that she wanted to look for women during her trip. She tells me that even if women could not be seen on the camera, she wanted to let them know that “I see you, I know you are here, and it’s for me how you live.”

In the end, going to Afghanistan is a good deal for creators of travel content competition for the eyes in an online world full of travel recommendations. Harry Jaggard, a 27 -year -old British player who has been making videos for three years, said that his series in Afghanistan in 2023 was the most successful. He tells me that he goes to North Korea next month. “To be the best, you sometimes have to push the limits,” he said. “Everyone wants to see it, and few people go there.”

In his series, Jaggard travels with a guide and meets men who, according to him, are members of the Taliban on the street. (He says he learned to say it by looking at their clothes and asking his guide.) He says that even if he was worried, he found that the Taliban members were shocking. “They are very nice outdoor – that’s how they win your confidence,” he said to me. But he didn’t want to highlight Taliban too much in his videos; He said he focused on meeting citizens, which he described as among the most hospital people he met in the dozens of countries where he traveled. He says it is a reminder that “a government and his people are two different things”.

Videos also fill a gap in traditional travel journalism. “Frommer would never cover travel in a place as dangerous as this one,” explains Pauline Frommer, the publisher of Frommer’s Guidebooks, the series of popular guides that has existed since the 1950s. While encouraging other people to go to places like Afghanistan despite government warnings is dangerous, there are ideas to be gleaned by watching Vloggers First hand, and many people can learn by looking at them. “I don’t see anything wrong with the videos on less visited games in the world,” said from from. “I find the value to look at what daily life looks like.”

For the moment, Afghanistan is not exceeded in selfie sticks in monuments and tiktors bulging local restaurants. But the need to keep the content interesting is to push these creators in more controversial and dangerous places, because curious viewers want to see more worlds of which they are not part. But how many wishes will you want to follow their traces to make their own content?

Amanda Hoover is a main correspondent at Business Insider covering the technological industry. She writes on the largest technological companies and trends.