KABUL—After attending the funeral of a fellow United Airlines pilot who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Daoud Sultanzoy decided to return to his native Afghanistan and help build its post-Taliban government. These days, the 66-year-old mayor of Kabul is the most prominent official from the fallen Afghan republic to remain in his job after the Taliban returned to power on Aug. 15. Every morning, Mr. Sultanzoy, saluted by the municipality’s uniformed guards, runs up the staircase to the same spacious office he now shares with a senior Taliban official. “I’m not involved in any of their politics but I am here because I am responsible to the people of Kabul, and I’ve decided to stick to it,” Mr. Sultanzoy says, seated at his desk as municipality staff pass him paperwork to sign. “This is a responsibility that you cannot throw away frivolously because you just say, ‘Oh, I don’t like these people’.”
In Kabul, a Former American Citizen Keeps Running the City Under Taliban Watch
KABUL—After attending the funeral of a fellow United Airlines pilot who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Daoud Sultanzoy decided to return to his native Afghanistan and help build its post-Taliban government.
These days, the 66-year-old mayor of Kabul is the most prominent official from the fallen Afghan republic to remain in his job after the Taliban returned to power on Aug. 15.
Every morning, Mr. Sultanzoy, saluted by the municipality’s uniformed guards, runs up the staircase to the same spacious office he now shares with a senior Taliban official.
“I’m not involved in any of their politics but I am here because I am responsible to the people of Kabul, and I’ve decided to stick to it,” Mr. Sultanzoy says, seated at his desk as municipality staff pass him paperwork to sign. “This is a responsibility that you cannot throw away frivolously because you just say, ‘Oh, I don’t like these people’.”