Kabul, Afghanistan

Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan and was the main centre of Afghanistan's Sikh trading community. The Australian Institute of International Affairs dates Guru Nanak's journey to Kabul to around 1520. How many Sikhs there were, and are, depends on who counts. The Los Angeles Times put them at about 50,000 in the early 1990s and 372 families in 2018. AFP wrote in January 2022 of about 100,000 in the 1970s, and of community figures of 240 in 2021 and about 140 that month. A UK Home Office note of February 2026 says around 100 remained by 2025.

Key moments

• Mid-1990s: in the civil war, warlords seized most of Kabul's solidly built gurdwaras. The Los Angeles Times reports that the fighting destroyed seven of the eight, along with a Sikh school that taught 1,000 students. Under the Taliban's earlier rule Sikhs had to wear yellow patches and fly yellow flags over their homes and shops.
• 25 March 2020: gunmen attacked Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib in Shor Bazaar. Al Jazeera reported 25 killed. ISIL claimed it, Afghan government sources blamed the Haqqani network, and an explosion went off near the funeral procession the next day. Har Rai Sahib and the Dharamshala gurdwara have since been abandoned.
• August 2021: the Taliban took power again. India offered exiled Sikhs priority visas and the chance to apply for long-term residency, but not citizenship. Gurnam Singh, caretaker of the last gurdwara, said families were leaving "out of sheer hopelessness".
• 18 June 2022: a blast and gunfire hit Gurdwara Karte Parwan in the Bagh-e Bala area, with about 30 people inside. The Interior Ministry said a Sikh man and a Taliban fighter were killed and seven hurt; community leader Charan Singh Khalsa named a devotee, Savinder Singh Ghazneci, and a gate guard. The Islamic State claimed it, saying it was revenge for insults to the Prophet.
• October 2025: a delegation of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs met Taliban officials in Delhi and asked for the restoration of religious sites, the Home Office note says.

Today: Karte Parwan, built about 60 years ago according to a community elder, is the last Sikh temple still in use in Kabul. For the Panth, Kabul is a city of Guru Nanak's journey and of one of its oldest communities abroad, now nearly gone.