From bad to worse
One year of Taliban control nears
FROM THE moment it seized power in Afghanistan in the wake of the American military’s withdrawal, the Taliban has lived up to its reputation, or down to its reputation, violently enforcing its extremist religious agenda with women and children, especially, in the crosshairs.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reports up to 700 civilians killed and times-two wounded since the Taliban wrested control of the country last August. Those numbers likely are much higher, and many can be attributed to the Islamic State’s affiliate group in the country, the Taliban’s rival, according to reports.
Acts of barbarity are common. In April, Taliban terrorists tortured and killed a midwife, amputating her legs before stabbing her and shooting her 12 times. Girls above sixth grade are forbidden to go to school. Ethnic groups are being targeted— arrested, tortured, forcibly displaced and killed, one nonprofit reported.
One male student was tortured—his ear cut off and his eye shot out—before being thrown off a mountain for not knowing (or perhaps, not revealing) the location of National Resistance Front bases. The NRF represents those antiTaliban freedom fighters still loyal to the former presidential republic.
The former Associated Press bureau chief in Kabul was told by the Taliban to publicly retract previous articles she had written or otherwise be jailed.
As reported in The New York Times, freelance war correspondent Lynne O’Donnell chose the first option, and was able to safely leave the country: “In one of the coerced tweets, posted on Tuesday, Ms. O’Donnell wrote: ‘l apologize for three or four reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders. This was a premeditated attempt at character assassination and an affront to Afghan culture.’”
In another, she said: “These stories were written without any solid proof or basis, and without any effort to verify instances through on-site investigation or face-to-face meetings with alleged victims.”
Not all journalists have been able to leave the country. Six are known to have been killed by Taliban or Islamic State forces, and 173 more were the victims of human rights violations, the UN said. One hundred and seventy-three!
Meanwhile, in the wake of global sanctions aimed at forcing the Taliban to relent, the Afghan economy has contracted an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent since last August, the UN reported. Either way, it seems, Afghans lose.
The number of households actually receiving pay for services performed has dropped 50 percent, and an estimated 25 million Afghans are living in poverty, more than double the number in 2011.
Proving that these people can’t get a break, Afghans have been forced to deal with a recent earthquake that killed more than 800, and the country’s worst drought in 30 years.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called the UN report false, claiming it was “baseless and propaganda.”
Unfortunately, and not unexpectantly, the minutes from the recent UN Security Council meeting read like a Kubrick screenplay. Delegates, from the United States to Ghana, advised Taliban leaders, essentially, to play nice. (The UN’s terminology for the Taliban is “de facto leaders.”)
The delegate representing Afghanistan’s exiled government called for a “national dialogue among all Afghans, organized and facilitated by the United Nations, and including representatives of the Taliban and opposition groups.”
Earning legitimacy, he said, “requires winning the minds and hearts of all Afghans.”
If only it were that easy. It appears the “de facto leaders” are too busy shooting and cutting out the hearts and minds of the Afghan people to win them.
ON CUE, the Russian delegate denounced U.S. and NATO “hypocrisy” for “shifting responsibility to the international community for today’s crisis and recovery from it, forcing destitute Afghans to pay for the 11 September 2001 attacks for which they had no responsibility.”
We can only imagine what the Red Chinese delegate had to say. The minutes record him as speaking, but don’t include the remarks. But we’re confident they didn’t reflect well on the United States.
Afghanistan, as the old Soviet Union warned, is a quagmire. Left alone, it surely will descend back into a breeding ground of active, global terrorism. For now, the resident terrorists are too busy fighting each other.
But one day, they’ll set their sights on targets outside their country. Once again. And the world, which allowed Afghanistan to fall into chaos again, will have to be shaken awake. Once again. As many of us were one Tuesday morning in September, more than 20 years ago.