Afghan rebel Taliban has taken control of Kabul, the country's capital, on the 15th. Everyone expected that the Taliban surrounding Kabul would eventually take some military action, but such a terrible end would have been unexpected for experts. The Biden administration, which pushed ahead with the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, said that it did not anticipate such an end, and the outlook is being scrutinized. (Photo quoted from Yahoo’s image)

There are concerns both inside and outside Afghanistan whether the Taliban's former rule of harsh rule under "Islamic law" will be restored. The Taliban are introduced as a force based on Islamic fundamentalism, but in fact they place the highest priority on the "Pashtun rules" called "Pashtunwali". The phrase *, which Afghan researchers allegedly heard from Taliban officials, "half of our scriptures are in the Quran and the other half are written by ourselves," is a good indication of the relationship between Pashtuns and Islam.

The Taliban aims to revive the country by building a country based on the tradition and order of the Pashtun tribe in the past. The "emirate" that the Taliban is trying to revive is a country that is made up of such a balance of power of the Pashtun tribes. 

Among the upcoming Taliban rule, the most worrisome is the status of women. There is pessimism about this, which is to return to the state of being deprived of all rights as in the past, and optimism that Afghan society has changed.

Pictures of women in miniskirts walking in Kabul in the 1970s are often referred to as a comparison before and after the Taliban rule. However, at that time, only a part of the city was able to enjoy such "freedom", and in the rural areas, which occupy most of Afghanistan, there was almost no freedom or rights for women. The Taliban has only legally stipulated the same way of women as before, in accordance with the Pashtun rules mentioned above.

Twenty years after the collapse of the Taliban administration, it is true that women's social advancement has progressed in rural areas as well. Although only a few in the country as a whole, there are women who have taken weapons to fight the Islamic State, women who have volunteered for the military, and women who have taken weapons against the Taliban. 

There is no doubt that the Taliban's reinstatement will be a significant obstacle to women's social advancement, which has finally begun. However, in areas where women have already taken part in social activities, it is doubtful that women can be excluded from all of them. Under the emirate system that the Taliban will revive in the future, it seems that the treatment of women will be entrusted to each region.

The main reason for the Taliban's growth was solely the work of the Northern Alliance-centered government, which was established with the support of the United States. The Northern Alliance, officially the "Afghanistan Rescue and Islamic United Front," is a neighborhood of ethnic minority groups such as anti-Taliban warlords and Uzbeks. The government's incompetence is also evident in the collapse of the administration due to the escape of President Gani, who was frightened by the Taliban's entry into Kabul.

The former warlords play a central role in maintaining local security. Many of the warlords were more ruthless than the Taliban and helped maintain order. It was also a social problem that these warlords treated many boys as "sex slaves". It is said that many of the boys treated as sex slaves of warlords and influential people became Taliban suicide bombers for revenge. It is not hard to imagine that many people choose the Taliban-dominated order, even in the prehistoric times. The Taliban itself once launched an armed struggle to break the disorder of these warlords.

Also, the root cause of the failure of the United States is that the former Bush administration could not find a reliable partner before the start of the war, and could not develop a strong ally in the process of subsequent occupation rule. Iraq, where the withdrawal of US troops continues, is also considered a failure of the United States, but it can be said that the collapse of the Saddam administration has made the Kurds in the north firmly established and become a reliable ally of the United States.

The Kurdish forces in Syria have become even more powerful and credible companions than those in Iraq. The war against Islamic State in the United States has been successful thanks to the Kurds. This time, the sight of a flood of people seeking to escape from Kabul International Airport is likened to an escape drama from the rooftop of the US embassy just before the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. The failure of the United States in Vietnam was also due to the corruption and loss of public sentiment of South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem administration.

The concern with the Taliban's seizure of power is that in the process of the offensive, there may not even be any force left to oppose its domination. The base where the former Northern Alliance Command was located fell early. Mazar-i-Sharif, a key point in the north, has held up for two years since the last Taliban administration, but this time it fell prior to Kabul. During the former Afghan civil war, the city was under the control of the warlord Dostom before the Taliban took control, allowing women to walk around the city without a veil and selling alcohol.

It was too late when the Gani administration tried to bring Dostom back to the front without worrying about the stigma of "war criminals." The hasty withdrawal of the US military was the dew of the Taliban's national domination.

* "History and Culture of Afghanistan" (World History Series) Willem Forhelsang (Author)

Roni　Namo

Ethnic writer living in Tokyo. Since he encountered the Kurdish problem while attending college, he has continued to cover and analyze political movements of ethnic minorities, mainly Kurds. He was taught Kurdish (Kurdish) by Kurds and is probably the only Japanese who can use Kurdish. He has completed the translation of a Japanese novel into Kurdish (unpublished). Currently focusing on learning Arabic. He has also learned Persian and Turkish. He is training to become a multilingual journalist.