Taliban fighters sit in the cockpit of an Afghan Air Force aircraft at the field in Kabul on August 31, 2021, after the US pulled its colors out of the country.
(CNN) The Taliban are the most doubtful of socialists brutal, myopic, the epitome of dogmatism.
During five times in power until 2001, they banished women to their homes, banned music and utmost sport and assessed pitiless corrections on malefactors. Adulterers were sharpened in public; stealers had their hands reattached. Culprits were hanged for all to see.
Anything that did not fit their austere interpretation of Sharia was a target. They blew up the centuries-old Buddhas of Bamiyan, because they saw art that depicted the mortal form as an poke to God.
The Taliban came from a pastoral, deeply conservative setting– where their perception of religious chastity and pious artistic traditions overbalanced anything the ultramodern world could offer education, technology, converse, the veritably idea of choice.
That was Taliban1.0. How Taliban2.0 will rule, two decades latterly, is far from clear– but there are a many straws in the wind. And they suggest the Taliban see little need to change.
They believe their success was God- given. Anas Haqqani, a member of Afghanistan’s most important family, told CNN that the Taliban” succeeded against 52 ( countries). It isn’t due to the worldly plan; it’s because of the blessing of the faith.”
It followed that running the country would have but one alleviation. Khalil Haqqani– Anas’uncle and a minister in the interim government– told a ethnical peak in Kabul”The end was to produce a pure Islamic government in Afghanistan, a government which is centered on justice and whose laws are godly. It’ll be grounded on one book, that of God and his prophet. That book is the holy Quran.”
The Taliban also see themselves as the vanguard of a public insurrection in which Afghans threw off an alien culture assessed by nonnatives. Anas Haqqani told CNN that the West”must not try to put its culture and studies/ beliefs on Afghans.”A nipping communication for the numerous Afghans who valued the freedoms of the last 20 times.
The Taliban truly believe they defeated America– and that is tremendously empowering for their testament. Haqqani compared the Taliban to George Washington, telling CNN he’d” liberate (d) his motherland; he’d defeated the British; he’d gained independence from them. Then our elders are icons for their nation. they’ve liberated their land; they’ve defended their religion and honor.”
Claiming popular roots
The Taliban’s spokesperson said on August 15 as the group moved into Kabul that they might have surprised the world but not themselves”because we’ve roots among the people.”
In their southern heartlands and among small growers, this is true. In the metropolises, and especially Kabul, less so. For all the corruption and nepotism of US- backed governments in Afghanistan, the health, wealth and education of Afghans bettered by nearly every metric in the 20 times since the Taliban were last in power. A vibrant independent media expressed a wide range of views; private universities flourished. A whole generation of Afghans tasted freedom.
As they surged from one fiefdom to another, the Taliban floated the possibility of a further tolerant reincarnation. The word”inclusive” tripped from their prophets’s lips; they let most dogfaces go home rather than kill them. They promised remittal for all adversaries.
The day the Taliban swept into Kabul, Suhail Shaheen, now the Taliban’s proposed envoy to the United Nations, assured CNN that girls would be educated up to university age.
And in the days after they ousted the former government, there was a big show of talking to former President Hamid Karzai and former Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. There were ethnical gatherings in Kabul.
The reality has looked veritably different. The addresses with Karzai and Abdullah faded. Their particular security remains tenuous. The caretaker government was grazed with expert hardliners. There were no women in the government, nor in any public position; the Ministry for Women came the Ministry for the Protection of Virtue.
Veritably snappily demurrers were suppressed– and outlawed unless cleared by the Ministry of Interior. Afghanistan’s nimrods made for the exits, by the dozen.
The Taliban offered rather the pledge of security– in answer to the instability they had themselves created. Their rearmost publication is entitled”Security and Stability Prevail Throughout Afghanistan.”
As Anas Haqqani asked rhetorically of the times of civil war” Was it better that 200 people were getting killed every day?”
