Yi-Pin Lin, a tourist from the United States, and his Afghan guide, Hijrat Ullah Sahak, visiting a mountain lake in Band-e-Amir national park in Bamiy

Ignoring Warnings, a Growing Band of Tourists Venture to Afghanistan

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2024-12-30 18:00:05

Yi-Pin Lin, a tourist from the United States, and his Afghan guide, Hijrat Ullah Sahak, visiting a mountain lake in Band-e-Amir national park in Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan. Credit...

But there was one country he had always dreamed of visiting, only to be frightened off by decades of war, kidnappings and terrorism: Afghanistan.

With the end of the Afghan war in 2021, the country’s new Taliban rulers began encouraging tourists to visit. So last month, Mr. Lin packed his bags, paid $130 for a visa and boarded a flight to Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Mr. Lin, 43, is part of a small but growing vanguard of venturesome tourists making their way to Afghanistan, disregarding dire warnings issued by their governments. The State Department advises Americans not to travel to Afghanistan “due to terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, civil unrest, kidnapping and crime.”

Over the past three years, Taliban officials say, 14,500 foreign tourists have visited the isolated, poverty-stricken nation. They have arrived with hard currency that Afghanistan desperately needs.