Kabul

Kabul exemplifies primate city dynamics at extreme scale—a single urban center that dominates its nation's political, economic, and cultural life to a degree that distorts national development. With approximately 4.95 million residents in 2023, Kabul hosts over 40% of Afghanistan's urban population. This concentration creates both power and vulnerability: the city determines national politics while facing critical water shortages that experts warn could materialize within five years as groundwater levels plummet.

The geographic logic of Kabul's dominance is ancient. Sitting at 1,790 meters in a Hindu Kush valley, the city controls natural routes connecting Central Asia, South Asia, and the Iranian plateau. Invaders from Alexander to the Mughals to the Soviets all recognized this: whoever holds Kabul holds Afghanistan. The modern ring road project—95 kilometers designed to reduce congestion—represents infrastructure investment in a city that has grown faster than its systems can support. Rapid urbanization has outpaced planning.

Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Kabul has become the stage for Afghanistan's contradictions. Real GDP has declined 26% since 2021, yet 2025 projections show 4.3% growth driven by returnees from Pakistan and Iran stimulating services. The February 2024 acknowledgment by Deputy PM Abdul Ghani Baradar of banking liquidity problems revealed the stress beneath official optimism. Pakistan's October 2025 airstrike targeting Pakistani Taliban leadership within Kabul demonstrated the limits of Taliban territorial control. Like an organism that has grown too large for its resource base, Kabul concentrates Afghanistan's problems and possibilities in a single, overcrowded space.