A British man has defended his decision to visit Afghanistan for a 'lads holiday' and says that the Taliban are so keen on tourism, they were treated well.

Kieran Brown is a full time travel blogger with a dream of visiting every country in the world - even the ones which most people steer well clear of.

The 29-year-old has been to 98 countries so far and by the time he turns 30 he will have cracked 100, which he said will mark a huge milestone for him. However, his most recent jaunt has a few people up in arms.

Brown recently posted a video which has since gone viral, encouraging people to go on a “lads holiday” to Afghanistan, where he spent eight days travelling through the Taliban-controlled country with several friends.

Following the Taliban takeover in 2021, locals - especially women and girls - have been under an increasingly restrictive regime at the hands of the terroristic government, but Kieren said those who have criticized him have “probably never left their hometowns”.

Public executions and floggings are enforced by the Taliban, music is forbidden and women and girls live under what Amnesty International describes as a “draconian regime”, where their education and freedom are heavily impinged upon.

Kieran told the Star he has always been “intrigued by countries that Western media deem dangerous”.

“Afghanistan was one of them. Whenever I go to these sorts of countries, I meet the nicest and most genuine people and less travelled countries are a lot more interesting for me," he said.

Kieran stressed he was not talking about the Taliban, but rather the locals who were “really nice and friendly”.

Brown went on to say he did not entirely believe media reports that women are forbidden from driving or going to school, as during his time he saw women driving and exiting universities carrying books.

Single unmarried women in Afghanistan are subject to strict rules about where they can go and what they can do. Although there are no official laws about male guardianship, the Taliban have decreed women cannot travel without a man who is related to her by blood or marriage.

Women are banned from gyms, parks, high school and university. They are also required by law to wear burqa - a full moderate dress which covers them from head to toe, revealing only their eyes through a mesh screen. - and any woman who is found to not be wearing this correctly faces arrest and inhumane treatment at the hands of the Taliban's "morality police".

Stories about the treatment of women detained for "wearing bad hijab" are horrendous and detail rampant sexual abuse, torture and even murder - the Taliban denies all these allegations against them.

Brown said interactions with the Taliban were constant during his eight days in Afghanistan. There are checkpoints everywhere across the country, and every time you enter a new part of the region you must register your passport details with the Taliban so they can track your whereabouts.

Despite this constant presence he said there were no problems at any of the checkpoints - even for women.

“I think because they want tourism, they're treating tourists with a lot of respect, and that's male and female. There were a couple of female travellers that we actually met in the country, and I spoke to them and asked how their perception of the country was," Kieran added.

"The Taliban treats female tourists a lot better than the actual female citizens of their country.”

He added that despite their niceties he never felt as though the Taliban soldiers were being genuine, and he expected a problem to arise at any turn.

“There were two Americans [travelling with them] and we kind of had the assumption that because we were travelling with Americans, there was going to be an issue because they were at war for the last 20 years.”

Brown said although he enjoyed his time in Afghanistan, it’s not a country he would be interested in visiting again.

“I spent a month in Pakistan prior, and I would 100% visit that country again but I felt like with Afghanistan, it wasn’t that it was unsafe, it was just one of those things where if you did something wrong, you wouldn't be safe.”

On the backlash he has received for promoting Afghanistan to his 37,000 followers, Brown said he has no regrets.

“At the end of the day, this is my job. I make travel videos regardless of what country I go to with the good and the bad. It's my own platform, in which I share my own opinions and a couple of videos went super viral so you're going to get hate comments regardless.

He added that the people criticizing likely had narrower viewpoints than he did.

“A lot of the hate comments I'm getting are people that have, like, never left their hometown, and they kind of have a shallow mindset because even if I post like a random other country like in Europe, people will say it's unsafe.”

The Daily Star  UK