"In the blue haze of hookah smoke that filled Kandahar’s Cafe Delight on a recent weekend afternoon, it was easy to forget there’s a war outside."

"Young male professionals with well-groomed beards and mullet cuts, slumped in plush chairs, sipped espresso drinks beneath flat-screens that pulsed with racy Turkish and Indian music videos, the bare midriffs of women blurred by channel censors. This was still Afghanistan, a conservative Islamic society. But the patrons belonged to a more permissive, urbane generation that came of age after the fall of the Taliban, with vague to no memory of the oppressive, fundamentalist regime, born in this southern city, that banned television, music, and cinema; forbade men from trimming their beards; and forced women to wear head-to-toe burkas..... [A café owner] monitored closed-circuit TV cameras he had recently installed to thwart 'sticky bombs'—crude explosives triggered by mobile phones—that were targeting officials, activists, minorities, and journalists, as well as random civilians, part of the extremists’ strategy to eliminate dissent and project fear deep into urban centers. Emboldened by a February 2020 agreement with the United States that sidelined the Afghan government and paved the way for the withdrawal of American forces by the end of August, the Taliban had established their grip on rural areas and were closing in on cities at breathtaking speed. Still, with its eucalyptus-lined streets, luxury villas, and shopping plazas lit by nearly round-the-clock electricity, the Ayno Maina gated community offered an atmosphere of suburban normalcy for middle- and upper-class Afghans, many on a government payroll. 'We have no worries here,' said Suleiman Aryan, 28, an English teacher who works and lives in the complex with his wife and two children. That was then. The calm has been shattered."

From "As the Taliban return, Afghanistan's past threatens its future/The freedoms Afghans have gained since 2001 are in jeopardy as extremists complete their takeover of the nation, spurred by U.S. exit" (National Geographic). 

At the link, you'll see lots of beautifully lit, ultra-flattering photographs of highly attractive Afghans, many (or all of which) bear captions that tell you the person has been killed. I found the article because I was trying to answer my own question how many people did the Taliban kill in their sudden, sweeping takeover of the country. 

Was it surprisingly few? This Washington Post article — "Afghanistan’s military collapse: Illicit deals and mass desertions" — gives the impression that there was skillful, sustained, widespread deal-making by the Taliban —"a series of deals brokered in rural villages between the militant group and some of the Afghan government’s lowest-ranking officials":

The deals, initially offered early last year, were often described by Afghan officials as cease-fires, but Taliban leaders were in fact offering money in exchange for government forces to hand over their weapons, according to an Afghan officer and a U.S. official. Over the next year and a half, the meetings advanced to the district level and then rapidly on to provincial capitals, culminating in a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces, according to interviews with more than a dozen Afghan officers, police, special operations troops and other soldiers.

Within a little more than a week, Taliban fighters overran more than a dozen provincial capitals and entered Kabul with no resistance, triggering the departure of Afghanistan’s president and the collapse of his government. Afghan security forces in the districts ringing Kabul and in the city itself simply melted away....

The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces realized they would soon no longer be able to count on American air power and other crucial battlefield support and grew receptive to the Taliban’s approaches....

Some police officers complained that they had not been paid in six months or more. “They saw that document as the end,” the officer said, referring to the majority of Afghans aligned with the government. “The day the deal was signed we saw the change. Everyone was just looking out for himself. It was like [the United States] left us to fail.” ...

"Without the United States, there was no fear of being caught for corruption. It brought out the traitors from within our military,” said one Afghan police officer....