KABUL – The Taliban have opened a “Jihad Museum” in northern Jawzjan province that displays explosives, including barrel bombs, explosives vests, and other items, a move that rights groups and residents say amounts to the public glorification of violence and risks normalizing instruments used to kill and maim civilians during Afghanistan’s long conflict.
The museum was inaugurated by the Taliban’s provincial governor, who described it as an effort to “preserve historical and wartime heritage.” Taliban information officials said the exhibits aim to teach future generations about the country’s past.
Critics, however, say presenting improvised explosive devices and equipment linked to suicide attacks as relics of pride can retraumatize victims and promote a militant narrative.
The Jawzjan display follows similar exhibitions in other parts of the country. In Mazar-e-Sharif and other northern centres, the Taliban have already shown rockets, hand grenades and improvised explosive devices in museums and at shrines, sometimes alongside cultural artefacts, drawing public criticism.
Taliban authorities in Kabul have previously signalled a broader campaign to create “jihad museums” and archives across provinces to institutionalize the group’s version of recent history.
Analysts say the displays sit within a wider effort by the Taliban to valorize their insurgency.
During the two-decade conflict and the more intense fighting around the 2021 withdrawal of foreign forces, Taliban tactics, including roadside bombs, suicide attacks and indiscriminate strikes, caused large numbers of military and civilian casualties. UN reporting documented sharp rises in civilian deaths and injuries in periods of intensified fighting, underscoring the human cost of the insurgency’s tactics.
Rights groups warn that memorializing the tools of that violence risks whitewashing or celebrating actions that devastated communities.
The Taliban’s leadership enforces a rigid and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and has repeatedly used public ceremonies, parades, monuments and educational messages to promote its ideological narrative.
Human-rights organisations and residents quoted in local reporting say the presence of explosives in public displays can provoke fear and trauma, particularly for civilians who lost family members to bombings.
