KABUL, Afghanistan — Every big city has at least one street that’s a must-see for visitors: King’s Road in London, Stary Arbat in Moscow, Paseo del Prado in Madrid, Via Condotti in Rome.

Kabul has Chicken Street.

Only two blocks long, this shabby lane full of competing aromas, lined with shops selling jewelry, antiques, knickknacks, artworks and, especially, Oriental rugs, has been a magnet for generations of foreign visitors looking for Afghan exotica. For decades, about the only thing missing has been chickens.

Now it is also missing foreigners.

Customers of any sort are thin on the ground. Most of the scores of shops have zero patrons at any given moment; one is unusual, two is a crowd.

But foreign visitors, once Chicken Street’s mainstay, are so rare that their arrival creates a sensation. On some days it’s so bad, even the beggars don’t bother to come to work, and the touts scarcely stir from their stoops.