‘Made in Afghanistan’ Once Symbolized Hope. Now It’s Fear.

Haseeb Rahimi, a 30-year-old Afghan entrepreneur, and his younger sister, Rahiba Rahimi, a designer, had big plans for 2021.

It was going to be the year they took Laman, their five-year-old fashion brand, international. Already, they’d staged a catwalk event at the American embassy in Kabul, outfitted the contestants for “Afghan Star” (a local version of “American Idol”) and had a runway show in Milan in 2019. Bringing their designs to Oslo (where Mr. Rahimi was in business school and planned to open a showroom), Dubai and beyond would mark the next stage in their dream of creating Afghanistan’s first modern luxury brand — one that would combine the aesthetic heritage of the country with contemporary styles, using the language of fashion to recast the image of their country in the global imagination.

The siblings had developed a network of 500 craftspeople, with 50 at the headquarters in Kabul, all led by a woman. They wanted the label “made in Afghanistan,” sewn into every piece they sold, to mean something new both within the country and outside.

But on Aug. 15, the day the Taliban marched into Kabul, they told their staff that they were closing.

“It is all wiped out,” Mr. Rahimi said by phone from Norway, referring to the company’s equipment, inventory and investment. (Ms. Rahimi and her family fled to Turkey earlier in the summer, and she was experiencing “severe depression,” he said.) “This is what happens when you dare to hope in a hopeless place.”