Don’t look away
When Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban announced Dec. 20 that women in that country would henceforth be forbidden to pursue higher education, a few women ventured protests in the streets of Kabul, which authorities quickly crushed. But a male professor, Ismail Mashal, found a way to spread their message more widely: In the middle of a live television show on Afghanistan’s TOLO News, he ripped up his own diplomas as a show of solidarity.
Mr. Mashal spoke for many, in Afghanistan and the world, who feel similar fury and frustration at the Taliban’s systematic breaking of their promise, upon seizing power 18 months ago, to be “inclusive” and respectful of women’s rights, “within the framework of Islam,” as one spokesman put it at the time. The implication was that the Islamist movement had learned from experience and would not reimpose a repressive theocracy such as the one it operated during its previous reign from 1996 to 2001.
It is now abundantly clear, however, that there is no “new” Taliban and that a kind of darkness is descending upon the country from which the last United States and other Western troops withdrew on Aug. 30, 2021. The ban on higher education for women came in addition to previous bans on girls attending middle and high school, and a new males-only rule for parks, gyms and public baths.
Meanwhile, the regime has also reinstituted public executions and floggings, which were an ugly hallmark of its previous stint in power.
Taliban abuses have alienated not only the United States and its Western allies, but also Russia and China.
Yet the Taliban’s crackdown on women shows that movement leaders care far more about enforcing their extreme version of sharia law than the opinions of other nations. The reality is outsiders lack leverage over a Kabul regime with which many governments, including the United States, maintain diplomatic contacts, but none officially recognizes.
If diplomatic pressure works at all, it might be by taking advantage of disagreement within the Taliban’s own ranks over the regime’s repressive drift. During February, two top Taliban officials, Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob and Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, have made indirect but clearly critical references to these policies.
Mr. Haqqani is no moderate. The United States holds him responsible for several bloody terrorist attacks during the Afghan War, including against U.S. personnel. And yet his words are what passes for pragmatism in Kabul these days. If he wants to back them up, he could start by freeing Mr. Mashal, who was arrested by Taliban fighters while continuing his protest on the streets of Kabul on Feb. 2 and has not been heard from since.