Why the Taliban’s promises of peace and modernity in Afghanistan are not credible

At a press conference in Kabul last week, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid asserted that today’s Taliban were no longer the group the world remembers last time around. he came to power at the national level.

“No one will be injured in Afghanistan,” he said. “Of course there is a big difference between us today and 20 years ago.”

Observers were quick to see signs of compromise and divergence from the hard line that marked Taliban attitudes towards the role of women and girls: women journalists returned to the screen the day after Kabul fell, and even interviewed a Taliban official on live television. The spokesperson for the Taliban Politburo tweeted a video of a Taliban-aligned academic advising hospital workers to continue their work.

These times would have been hard to imagine during the country’s previous Taliban rule, which lasted from 1996 until the 2001 invasion by US-led forces.

But it was not the first time that the Taliban tried to present a reassuring face. Some of the official assurances that accompanied the group’s rise in 1996 had a similar tone.

On September 27, 1996, Taliban forces captured Kabul overnight, arriving from all directions after a 15-day sweep of the country. (In August 2021, it would take 10 days.) The insurgent group encountered little resistance from government troops. “The apparent ease of the Taliban’s military victory intrigued many observers here,” wrote Kenneth J. Cooper of the Washington Post on October 6, 1996.

At the time, the Taliban were “little known” in the United States, according to a newspaper headline To post September 28, 1996. Geopolitically, the nation was “off” Washington’s radar.

“We will do everything possible to ensure that all the rules and regulations of Islam are applied on the ground,” Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, acting deputy foreign minister of the Taliban, announced in 1996. “But to the best of our ability, we want to establish an Islamic government that is not opposed to the modern world.” Currently, Stanikzai is the head of the Taliban political bureau.

The Taliban have preached the rule of law and the return of order, and even made promises of peace through crackling loudspeakers. Afghans were fed up with years of infighting and bloodshed in the country’s civil war, amid the collapse of the Soviet-installed Communist government. Through their messages, the Taliban leaders have positioned themselves “not only as defenders of Islam, but as saviors of Afghanistan,” Cooper wrote on October 6, 1996.

About 250,000 Kabul residents – mostly educated and wealthy people – fled to the northern territories of the country and to Pakistan during the week of the seizure. Corn Taliban leader Mohammad Omar urged fearful Kabul residents to stay, suggesting they were safer with militiamen patrolling the streets.

At once, a Taliban commander named Musa declared an amnesty for all officers and soldiers of the government to surrender: “The Taliban will not retaliate. We have no personal grudges. If people find someone responsible for crimes in the past, we will try them under Islamic law. “

More than two decades later, on August 17, 2021, the Taliban would again announce a general “amnesty” for “compatriots” who had previously served as interpreters or in the military and civilian sectors. “We don’t want to take revenge on anyone,” Mujahid said. “No one is going to knock on your door to inspect them.”

The next day, a confidential threat assessment at the United Nations stated that the Taliban intensified their hunt, to go from house to house, establishing checkpoints and threatening those close to Afghan security officials, as well as US and NATO collaborators.

Two decades ago, despite messages suggesting otherwise, anticipated revenge was on the surface, far more so than it is today.

In the hours following the group’s seizure of power in 1996, the swollen and battered body of former President Najibullah hung, along with his brother’s scarred corpse, from a rope suspended from a control platform. 6-meter traffic, as reported by Kathy Gannon for La Poste.

This time, President Ashraf Ghani has fled. “If I had stayed there, an elected president of Afghanistan would have been hanged again in the very eyes of the Afghans,” Ghani later said in a video on Facebook.

In 1996, within days, the Taliban broke their promises. Taliban leaders promised to cut off the thieves’ hands and feet, and they did. Dos mujeres que llevaban ropa que les cubría todo menos los ojos caminaban por una concurrida calle comercial cuando los militicianos talibanes saltaron de un vehículo utilitario y golpearon a las mujeres con la antena de la radio del coche, informed The Post el 3 of October 1996 . “Because? Why, brother?” One of the women shouted, carrying a baby.

The next day, the militiamen caught two men stealing candy. As punishment, they “blackened the faces of the culprits with smoke, stuck Afghan coins in their ears and noses and drove them around town in the back of a van,” he said. Cooper writes.

“For the women of Kabul, it has been a week of fear and virtual incarceration,” Cooper wrote on October 7. The Taliban had closed all girls’ schools. Squads of “morality police” from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Elimination of Vice have carried out draconian punishments to enforce the codes of modesty on beards that are too thin or exposed ankles.

“There is no problem for Afghans living freely in our regions,” Cooper said, quoting then Deputy Foreign Minister Stanikzai.

Later, the fundamentalist Islamist government would ban tapes and live music, as well as applause after football goals., as William Shawcross wrote for The Post in November 1997.

“Women, say the Taliban, ‘must walk smoothly at all times,’” Shawcross wrote.

Taliban leaders told a press conference on October 1, 1996 that restrictions on women and girls would only be maintained until rules were developed allowing their employment and education in a manner consistent with Islam. A spokesperson said, however, that it could “take a while,” Cooper reported on October 3 of the same year.

Indeed, it took a long time. Girls’ schools were only reopened after the invasion of US forces and the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Less than a month after taking power in 1996, the Taliban’s strict Islamic fundamentalism had become largely unpopular. “The Taliban are no longer seen as they were in the beginning. They were welcome, “said Mohammed Ghaus, then acting foreign minister, on October 19, 1996.” (Now) they have lost all the support of the people. The Afghan people realize that the Taliban cannot rule the country. “

“Ever since they started their armed campaign to take control of Afghanistan, the Taliban have promised that once they have the previously chaotic and lawless country, they will ease their severe restrictions,” Pamela wrote. Constable of the Post in September 1998. “Instead …. The crackdown has intensified.”

For now, the future of life under the Taliban remains difficult to predict. But many cling to the hope that they find that a more liberal lifestyle can persist, at least in some ways.

The representative of UNICEF in Afghanistan, Hervé Ludovic De Lys, noted in a press release of August 18 an “encouraging sign”: schools have been opened for children, including girls, in Herat and Marouf.

But some still don’t take the Taliban at their word.

“I can go crazy when I meet these people who are trying to convince themselves that the Taliban have changed and are keeping their promises and aligning with their political statements.”Hosna Jalil, who was 9 when the Taliban fell in 2001, told The Post.

Jalil remembers years of brutality, beatings, humiliation and living in fear when he went to the mosque. Years later, she became the first woman raised to a senior position in the Interior Ministry in Afghanistan.

“For me, as an Afghan, if I lived under the regime, if I spent my childhood under them, I fought, I fought with them for the last 20 years for a great cause” , she said. “I fought for the future of our girls and our boys. I tell you that they have not changed ”.

Omar Sadr, a political scientist at the American University of Afghanistan, told The Post that “watching (the Taliban) from 1996 to today, they are a hypocritical, hypocritical movement in the sense that their statements do not coincide with their deeds and actions. “

(c) 2021, The Washington Post – By Sammy Westfall

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