Taliban: From Caves To Full-Fledged Emirate

Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, September 8

Since the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban has made strides and took over the capital city of Kabul. At the same time, the movement has sought to rebrand itself as a moderate organization that differs from the terrifying images the world has come to associate it with over the past twenty years. But let’s make no mistake: The Taliban committed massacres against Afghan civilians, burned fertile croplands and destroyed thousands of homes; banned all forms of arts and culture in the country; harassed women and schoolgirls; destroyed historical and cultural artifacts (Recall the bombing of the famous Buddha statue in Bamiyan, which dates back more than 1,500 years.). However, there are those who seek to reconstruct and rewrite history in order to protect the Taliban. One political pundit recently described the Taliban as a “legitimate” movement that simply sought to expel the American occupier from its lands. Now, with the withdrawal of US troops, the movement completed its mission and pushed the Afghan people one step closer toward freedom. In this pundit’s view, the Taliban will now foster democracy, governance, development and human rights in Afghanistan. Similar opinions are being voiced around the world in an attempt to distinguish between the Islamic State and the Taliban. But the fact remains that both entities, ISIS and the Taliban, have been promoting flagrant hostility to Western democratic concepts such as equality between men and women, respect for minorities, pluralism, human rights and freedom of expression. They grant themselves the absolute right to apply penalties to those who violate their approach and ideology, whether by public execution, amputation or stoning to death. The problem is that the West understands this reality very well but refuses to act upon it. Whether we like it or not, the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan will not turn the Taliban into a peace-seeking movement that believes in liberal democracy and respects human rights. The only change we’ll see is that the movement’s leaders, which once hid in caves, now sit in the presidential palace and government buildings of the emirate they de facto established in Afghanistan. – Suad Fahad Al-Mojil (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)