Dashti Barchi

In the name of Dashti Barchi Dashti Barchi is located on the western side of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. It is the most populated part of Kabul city, and the majority of its population is consist of Hazaras. After the presence of the international community in Afghanistan in 2001, Barchi had more opportunity and room for settlement, economic, cultural, and social prosperity than any district of Kabul. However, the central government and municipality purposefully neglected the development and the excluded Barchi from the the urban master plan of Kabul city. As a result, Barchi turned into a slum area. Since there are no accurate statistics in Afghanistan, the population of Dashti Barchi is estimated to be over one and half million. Yet this throng population condensed in a small area does not have the minimum municipal and government services. In the past years, Barchi is remembered with urban mushroom development, alleys full of mud, lack of water and impure drinking water, lack of government health centers, urban isolation, hours of waiting for access to transportation, difficult winters with thick smoke of coal and car tires. Dashti Barchi is also remembered proudly for publication, library, girls' schools and highest scorers of Kankor, the national exam for university entry. After 2014, Barchi is more famous for the area where with the targeted attacks against Hazara women, men, children, students and ordinary people takes place. Every few months, Barchi witnesses explosions and human disasters caused by suicide attacks in mosques, sports clubs, maternity hospitals, schools, educational centers, and sticky bombs in transportation cars. At the end of 2020, every now and then, one of the transportation cars operating in Barchi was being targeted by terrorists, and these cars were turned into ashes in a fraction of a second. Most of the victims were young people who had not lived any of their dreams. We tasted the bitter taste of death every day on this road and we were waiting for the sound that would have turned us into ashes. I got lucky and survived, but many of my friends were burned to ashes in Barchi, the west of Kabul. This collection is a souvenir of my life in Barchi. A souvenir from 2012 to 2021. Barchi cannot be understood in words, so I tried to narrate parts of Barchi and life in Barchi with photos in this collection. All Photos are Copyrighted www.naseerturkmani.com