( CNN ) It is a city transformed , swollen in size but shrunken in scope , anxiously awaiting what comes next . On Kabul 's streets , you can easily find the uneasy legacy of America 's longest war . Outside one mosque -- mixing with other men desperate for a day 's worth of casual manual labor -- are five men who months ago had one valuable skill NATO depended upon : they speak English . Now however , their world has turned upon them . They were , each for a different reason -- each for a reason they do not understand -- all fired from their jobs and then blacklisted , they say , meaning they can no longer get work with other government groups or NGOs here . The skill they once thrived off has left them isolated , and fearing reprisals . They sleep in market stalls , and avoid traveling to see their families in case the threats they face are visited upon them . `` My family is still living in the provinces , '' one of the men tells me . `` I can not go there . I am living in a market , in one of the empty shops . '' Another adds : `` My family , everybody , give up on me , they are nervous . '' A third man -- all requested anonymity -- says : `` Right now I sleep here , on the street , in this mosque area . '' `` We are in prison in Afghanistan , '' a fourth says . The U.S. Embassy and NATO declined to comment for this story . EXCLUSIVE : The last Americans in Afghanistan . Helicopters still buzz around the capital . Its population is five times what it was when NATO arrived here , even by the most conservative estimates , and the violence in the provinces means people swell it further still -- arriving in Kabul 's dusty , mountainous bowl of a city in order to avoid the fighting . Neighborhoods that were once massively over-priced cliques of foreigners living in `` poppy palaces '' -- villas allegedly bought from profiteers of the opium trade -- are now empty . One road , forever pot-holed in the past decade , is now being covered over by Afghans who , it seems , are finally reclaiming that street . Even Chicken Street , the hackneyed pedestrian shopping road where new Western arrivals would buy carpets or local trinkets , is more or less deserted . One shopkeeper says it could be the embassy security warnings that are keeping people away now . It is the same for the restaurants here that used to brim with contractors and NGO workers . They are now empty , the sound of their heavy metal doors echoing across deserted tables . It is immeasurably different to three years ago when I lived there . Drive out east -- past the women in burqas who sit on road bumps , holding their children , hoping drivers will slow enough to throw them change -- and you see roads lined with the detritus of America 's war here . Huge lines of excavators , cherry-pickers , and forklift trucks sit idle . At times it seemed there was little America would n't do , or try , to meets its often fluid goals in the country . Yet today , the machines that could have once moved small mountains do little more than gather dust . EXCLUSIVE : Afghan woman forced to marry her rapist . Further down the road too are more winners-turned-losers of the NATO presence here . Vast supply chains once kept 120,000 troops fed and watered . Trucks lined the roads and climbed up to the military bases . Now the bases are gone , and the trucks that once supplied millions sit still . Their bosses may have fled abroad with their winnings , yet the drivers have been left behind , stuck with vehicles that cost them $ 30,000 to buy -- and $ 1,000 a year just to keep on the road -- but that would fetch just a tenth of that price now . `` The contracts were with big businessmen and commanders who were giving us very little and made themselves very rich and are now living comfortably in Dubai , '' one truck driver tells us . Yet still the wedding palaces proliferate . Along one stretch of road their endless , multiplying lights throb . Each night the houses seem packed -- the commitment to the future still is popular here , despite the uncertainty -- even if the lights that decorate them seem more and more like a symbol of leaving . One set actually replicates the shape of an expensive hotel in Dubai . The city 's lights do shine staggeringly and often constantly -- something the Taliban never achieved during their rule here . NATO 's efforts to keep them on are reported to have involved diesel power stations that cost billions but were barely switched on . The question many surely ask here -- as the last American troops prepare to retreat inside the U.S. Embassy by the end of next year -- is how much longer the lights will continue to glow . READ MORE : Nick Paton Walsh answers your questions about Afghanistan .
Kabul faces uncertain future as NATO presence -- and the money that came with it -- fades away . The Taliban have been fighting for years to topple Afghanistan's Western-backed government in a conflict they say is part of an anti-Western conspiracy against Islam.