The Taliban promised a kinder, gentler rule when they seized power last summer – with more freedom for everyone, especially women.
What happened next has been perfectly predictable.
The hardline religious extremists just reneged on a promise to allow girls to return to school past the sixth grade, claiming they still need to remake the education system under “Sharia law and Afghan tradition,” according to the BBC.
There was an immediate international outcry, and the World Bank quickly froze more than half a billion dollars in aid programs.
In addition to preventing girls from getting an education, they’ve also banned women from airplanes unless accompanied by a male relative and added gender discrimination to public parks, where men and women are now confined to different areas.
It might be easier for guys.
But not by much: Men in government positions have been booted from work for not having a beard and turban.
The Taliban also cracked down on the media, banning foreign dramas from TV and shutting down international news outlets such as the BBC.
In other words, it’s the same old brutal and repressive regime.
At least one Afghan insider said there is a battle taking place within the hierarchy.
“The younger among the Taliban do not agree with some of these edicts,” Torek Farhadi, an analyst who served as an adviser to previous Afghan governments, told the Associated Press. “But they are not comfortable contradicting the elders.”
As a result, any possible reformist element within the hardline group is being pushed down and the extremists are quickly taking control – the same kinds of moves that once made Afghanistan home to the world’s most brutal regime.
The Taliban also turned the nation into a safe haven for terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, which cooked up the 9/11 attacks there. That set the stage for a war with the United States that finally ended last year with President Joe Biden’s disastrous U.S. withdrawal from the nation.
At the time, U.S. officials estimated it would take the Taliban years to consolidate power.
It took days.
They quickly moved to reassure the international community that things would be different this time around.
“Animosities have come to an end and we would like to live peacefully, without internal or external enemies,” a Taliban spokesman said at the time. “We will be witnessing the formation of a strong, Islamic and inclusive government.”
The Biden administration has even indicated they could work with the Taliban.
Instead, they got played: The Guardian reports that officials believed the Taliban’s promise of equality for girls and women.
“U.S. diplomats had been so optimistic that the Taliban would make good on the promise that a joint event had been planned ahead of this weekend’s Doha Forum in Qatar that would have set the process in motion to grant diplomatic recognition to the group,” the newspaper reported.
They naively reserved a seat for a Taliban representative at a panel on education for girls.
The meeting was canceled – and U.S. diplomats were left with egg on their faces.
Amazingly, they still want to give the Taliban a chance.
“I believe hope is not all lost,” Thomas West, the US special envoy for Afghanistan, told the Guardian.
He thinks the Taliban will reverse the decision.
But even if they did, their actions this week prove they can’t be trusted to keep even the smallest of commitments.
“The chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal eroded U.S. security and credibility,” the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial, “but spare a thought for the Afghans now ruled by barbarians. They will suffer most.”
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.