I walked around the streets every day without any problems. Most people said hello or ignored me. Some kids swore at me for fun a couple of times. I was only asked for my passport once by the police the whole time I was there. I met women who went out in the daytime alone but wouldn’t do that at night (same in London, right?). I didn’t hear anyone say they were going out less, but there was a general feeling that things were getting slowly more restrictive. Of course, many people I met were under heavy security protocols and couldn’t go 20m down the road without an armoured car… but that seemed to be overcaution rather than an accurate assessment of the risks. As my friend said, “security guys never decrease security, they just increase it”.
I was in Kabul for ten days in March 2010, and because we were there for such a short time our group had relative freedom to move around the city then. However, I've been hearing that security has been deteriorating since then to the point where westerners go out even less than they did when I was there. Did any of the westerners you met who live there full time say anything about that? Also, the one thing we weren't allowed to do was walk around on the streets. Did you do that much, or encounter any problems if/when you did?
— Asked by whywanderlost
