As 9/ 11 marked, flag of Taliban flies over palace
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN >> The Taliban raised their iconic white flag over the Afghan presidential palace Saturday, a spokesman said, as the U.S. and the world marked the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The banner, emblazoned with a Quranic verse, was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the Taliban interim government, in a low-key ceremony, said Ahmadullah Muttaqi, multimedia branch chief of the Taliban’s cultural commission.
The flag raising marked the official start of the work of the new government, he said. The composition of the all-male, all-Taliban government was announced earlier last week and was met with disappointment by the international community, which had hoped the Taliban would make good on an earlier promise of an inclusive lineup.
Two decades ago, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a heavy hand. Television was banned, and on Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the horrific attacks on America, the news spread from crackling radios. It took the U.S.-led coalition just two months to drive the Taliban from the capital and by Dec. 7, 2001, they were defeated.
Twenty years later, the Taliban are back in Kabul. America has departed, ending its “forever war” two weeks before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and two weeks after the Taliban returned to the Afghan capital Aug. 15.
Some things have changed since the first period of Taliban rule in the 1990s.
This time, the gun-toting fighters don’t race through the city streets in their pickups. Instead, they inch through chaotic, clogged traffic in the city of more than 5 million. In Talibancontrolled Kabul in the 1990s, barbershops were banned. Now Taliban fighters get the latest haircuts, even if their beards remain untouched in line with their religious beliefs.
But the Taliban have begun issuing harsh edits that have hit women hardest, such as banning women’s sports. They also have used violence to stop women demanding equal rights from protesting.
Meanwhile, hundreds of women, many wearing fulllength robes, their faces obscured by black veils, filled the auditorium of a university in Kabul on Saturday holding signs many of them in English in support of the Taliban and its strict interpretation of Islam, including separate education for men and women.
The Taliban said the demonstration at Shaheed Rabbani Education University was by Afghan women demanding equal rights and organized by female university lecturers and students.