AN OASIS OF INTELLECT AND SOPHISTICATION at the Kandahar Starbucks:

Customers say it is a meeting place for friends to exchange thoughts over a steaming coffee.

“I wait so eagerly for the coffee shop to open every evening so I can meet my friends,” said one, Abdullah Shehwar.

“It is so wonderfully quiet and only the educated come here. We can talk to our heart’s content.” . . .

Saifullah Habibi is a regular customer who has hardly missed a day since the coffee shop opened.

“You have no idea how happy I feel here,” he says.

“By late evening, I find myself dreading the moment it will close for the night.”

Customers say the coffee shop has spawned its own community of sorts.

“Conflicts and war have robbed us of our thinking. We need a space where we can think about how to deal with the label of terrorism and Talebanisation that has been slapped on us,” Mr Habibi says.

It’s a great and good place. Bring on the comfy-chair revolution!