Margaritta, a 33-year-old travel influencer from Germany, embarked on a three-month solo trip through Afghanistan in May 2024. Despite a “media echo that Afghanistan was not safe,” she said, “I was not scared.”
She “felt fantastic,” Margaritta, who asked that only her first name be used for security reasons, told NBC News. “I was treated like a queen.”
The trip was “one of those amazing experiences that also pushed me,” she added in a post on her TikTok channel, @margarittasworld, which has over 18,000 subscribers.
Margaritta is among a handful of travel influencers who have gone to Afghanistan since the Taliban took power following a chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in 2021.
They are seen exploring the country’s landlocked, mountainous terrain and its tribal culture in videos posted online, contesting perceptions that the country is unsafe and hostile to women. While thrilling for the influencers and their followers, critics accuse these carefully edited travelogues of whitewashing the harsh realities of life in Afghanistan, particularly for women, and rehabilitating the country’s autocratic rulers.
Internationally renowned Afghan activist and scholar Orzala Nemat, currently a visiting fellow at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said that the surge of foreign influencers in Afghanistan was deeply concerning.
“What we’re seeing instead is a curated, sanitized version of the country that conveniently erases the brutal realities faced by Afghan women under Taliban rule,” Orzala told NBC News.
The Taliban has effectively barred Afghan women from many aspects of public life, including access to education and jobs. In July, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two of the Taliban’s top leaders, accusing them of persecuting women and girls in Afghanistan, which the group dismissed.
Influencers continue to go to Afghanistan despite clear warnings from the U.S. State Department that Americans should not travel to the country “for any reason” and that “there is a risk of wrongful detention of U.S. nationals.”
The European Union and Britain have issued similar travel advisories, while none of these countries have operational embassies in Afghanistan, limiting the provision of consular assistance to citizens.
Margaritta, while acknowledging that the Taliban had imposed strict laws on women, said she viewed them instead as a sign that “women have value, and they are valued as precious.”
Her comments were echoed by 31-year-old Zoe Stephens, a British travel vlogger and tour guide from Liverpool, England, who has visited Afghanistan three times.
“All we see of the women in Afghanistan is shapes behind burqas,” she told NBC News. “But when I got there, I realized that … there’s a lot more nuance to it.”
Having spent time with some Afghan women behind closed doors, she added that much of this was not on video or photographed because “it’s very private.”
Stephens regularly shares her experiences in Afghanistan and North Korea, the other destination covered by her travel company Koryo Tours, with over 70,000 followers on her Instagram accounts, @zoediscovers and @zoediscoversnk.
Like Margaritta, Stephens said that during her time there, she saw that “the strength of the Afghan women is that they don’t have to just show it.”
In one of her posts, Stephens appears dressed in a headscarf and an abaya, a traditional robe, as she holds a selfie stick on a tour bus as it zooms through rugged landscape. The video cuts to show her laughing with local Afghan women as she explores lakes, mosques and mountain trails.
Her caption reads: “It might surprise you to hear that travelling Afghanistan as a woman is actually often safer than travelling as a man. Why? The things to watch out for in Afghanistan is not the government and what it controls; rather, what it can’t control.”
Still, Stephens then lists a few safety tips for women that include dressing appropriately, exuding modesty, avoiding crowded spaces and not making one’s location public in real time.
Orzala, of RUSI, said that while influencers with Western passports “roam freely, pose for photos and gain online fame,” those privileges are denied to Afghan women, who are barred from schools, jobs or even walking freely in public without being accompanied by male guardians.
There are also moral and ethical dilemmas, she added, because profits from tourism risk indirectly legitimizing and financially sustaining a regime that has institutionalized “gender apartheid.”
As for videos from influencers that show Afghan women smiling in the background, Orzala said, “This should never be confused with contentment or consent to the current reality.”
“This is not cultural exchange; it’s neocolonial tourism dressed up as adventure,” she added.
Visitors to Afghanistan are still in the low thousands as the war-torn country tries to rebuild its image under strict Taliban-run Islamic laws and customs. Nearly 9,000 foreigners visited in 2024, while nearly 3,000 visited in the first three months of this year, according to a report from The Associated Press.
Along with travel influencers, some tourism companies are creating jaw-dropping videos that have since been reshared by Taliban accounts on social media in a bid to attract more visitors.
One outlandish 50-second video made by vlogger Yosaf Aryubi begins with an eerie scene of three people with bags over their heads, presumed to be held hostage by the men standing behind them, who are dressed like the Taliban with rifles slung over their shoulders.
“We have one message for America,” one of the armed men says, before pulling the bag off one of the hostages, only to reveal a grinning tourist who gives a thumbs-up and says, “Welcome to Afghanistan!”
The video then cuts to male tourists diving into scenic lakes and walking through waterfalls, and even holding M4 rifles that are revealed to be replicas.
Not every influencer sees Afghanistan in that way. In another video, YouTuber Nolan Saumure, whose channel Seal on Tour has 650,000 subscribers, acknowledges that he only interacted with men during his trip there.
In a 35-minute video titled “Afghanistan Has Too Much Testosterone,” Saumure spins the camera around to show a large crowd of Afghan men swarming him.
“It’s a complete sausage fest in here,” he says.
Caroline Radnofsky and Jay Ganglani contributed.
Great Job Astha Rajvanshi | NBC News & the Team @ NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth Source link for sharing this story.
