The Department of State urges Americans who must remain in Afghanistan to exercise caution. All U.S. personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were evacuated in 1989 and no other diplomatic mission represents U.S. interests or provides consular services. U.S. citizens who choose to travel to Afghanistan despite this warning should exercise extreme caution, particularly in those areas that have been recently or repeatedly contested or mark the dividing lines between competing armed groups. Military operations, sometimes involving intense fighting, frequently take place especially around Kabul, and in Takhar, Kunduz, and Baghlan provinces in the northeast and Faryab and Badghis provinces in the northwest. Westerners remain vulnerable to politically and criminally motivated attacks and violence, including robbery, kidnapping and hostage-taking.
Land mines are still prevalent throughout the countryside.
Close to 10 million land mines and unexploded ammunition pose a danger to all visitors to Afhganistan. Travelers should also be aware that Islamic Sharia Law, enforced in most of the country, prohibits alcohol, video tapes, recorded music, television, and social activities between the sexes. All U.S. personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were evacuated in 1989, and no other diplomatic mission represents U.S. interests or provides consular services. The current civil war has pitted the Taliban militia, which controls the southern two-thirds of the country, against an alliance of opposition forces in the north. High mountains and desert make for extremes of climate.