But Afghanistan isn’t the same country that it was 20 years ago. Although progress has been imperfect and largely concentrated in urban areas, since 2001 Afghan women have been attending school, running businesses, serving in the police and military, and holding public office. While Afghan society itself remains deeply patriarchal and conservative, many of its people belong to a more permissive generation. Those who inhabit the country’s more affluent and educated city centers, in particular, will not so easily revert to the pre-2001 status quo. As the main beneficiaries of the past 20 years, young people “are going to be all the more concerned about how much worse things could get,” says Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “And they’ll be that much more skeptical of the Taliban’s claims that things will be different.”
In an apparent bid to win over this younger generation, and to placate the departing Western powers, the Taliban has pledged that it will not return to violence and repression, including guarantees that the group will respect the rights of women (albeit within its strict interpretation of Islamic law) and will not seek reprisals against those who fought against it. The group has also vowed to support the Afghan media, so long as their broadcasts do not contradict Islamic values or the Afghan national interest.
These promises have so far rung hollow in Kabul, where posters depicting women were painted over and where women have been instructed to wear burkas, lest they be subject to beatings. Revenge killings, forced marriages, and other brutal tactics have been reported elsewhere in the country. Several of the Afghans I reached out to for this story declined to speak with me due to fear of retaliation. Others were simply too busy trying to find somewhere safe for their family to go.
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