Last Saturday, September 11, a black and white Taliban flag* flew over the presidential palace in Kabul, becoming the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after a 20-year hiatus
The Taliban held no ceremony, just got down to business and governing their country in a matter-of-fact way.
The first good news from a liberated Afghanistan: taxation has been stopped. Under the occupation, shopkeepers and bazaar-owners had to pay bribes every day – to the police, to officials, to people with guns. Bribes had been an integral part of life in Afghanistan for the past 20 years. Suddenly this burden of bribery disappeared as if it had never existed. The Taliban have stopped corruption with a firm hand. Now bribes are neither demanded nor paid, said the Russian ambassador in Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov.
The news from Bagram is even better. This huge NATO base used to be a terrible prison. Its gates are now open to journalists. English Sky News showed the monstrous conditions under which prisoners were held – for years, without trial, by the US military. They lived in iron cages, like animals in an old-fashioned menagerie, 30 people in a cage, without beds, without fresh air. From here they were taken out to be tortured. Yes, under NATO rule in Bagram the worst torture was practised – on a daily basis. The courts could not intervene, no one could protect the Afghans who found themselves in this branch of hell on earth.
This must be remembered when liberals lament the “end of civilisation” and the “new enslavement of women” in Kabul. “American-style civilisation” for the Afghans was not only and not so much cocktails at receptions for privileged enge engeoches. It was also torture chambers for the husbands and sons of ordinary Afghan women. It is the hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans – as more than two hundred thousand Afghans have died at the hands of the occupiers and their local enablers. On the last day of the American presence, an entire Afghan family and its many children were killed by their drone. The victims were not Taliban supporters, but rather the head of the family, who worked for the Americans and was about to fly overseas with them. The drone operators simply saw a gathering of people and sent a missile there.
The remaining liberals in the country are acting as a fifth column. Their TV channel TOLO-News (the Afghan version of “Rain” **) already says that “the introduction of NATO forces in the country allowed to form the first democratic government, prepare a constitution, create more than 1,000 media outlets, ministries for women’s affairs and more than a hundred political parties. They do not mention the horror of life for ordinary Afghans, as do Russian liberals when they praise the “glorious nineties” without mentioning the plight of the people.
But ordinary Afghans, unlike the Soros liberals, look forward with hope and do not regret the departure of the occupiers.
In an attempt to undermine the new government, feminists, the local Pussy Riot, take to the streets to protest, and their colleagues avidly film footage of these privileged nomenklatura ladies confronting rural men from the countryside with rifles. Unfortunately for them, blood does not flow in the streets. The authorities have now temporarily banned unauthorised rallies and marches, just as they are banned in Paris and Berlin.
In Europe, police are not shy about hitting protesters – in Afghanistan, passions have not yet run high. But there is no sympathy for the feminist protestors because for years NATO troops have explained their presence, bombings, torture and arrests by the need to protect these women from their own people. There have, however, been demonstrations by women in support of the Taliban.
It is too little time to judge the new order, the Russian Foreign Ministry says, but the Taliban’s initial moves offer grounds for cautious optimism. High-ranking officials from the former government – former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, head of the National Reconciliation Council – remain in Kabul. No one has arrested them, as unscrupulous journalists have claimed. They are building contacts between the Taliban and the country’s ethnic minorities. Judging by how quickly the cities in the north fell into Taliban hands, the Uzbeks and Tajiks there found common ground with them. The current government is called the caretaker government and is composed mainly of Pashtun Taliban. It may be joined soon by other forces. It is unlikely to become as inclusive as demanded abroad. In Israel, however, there are virtually no Palestinians in the government – and that does not prevent everyone from recognising an Israeli government based on only one ethnic and religious community. Nor should the Taliban be asked to do more at this stage.
On Sunday, Karzai and Abdullah met with the Qatari foreign minister to discuss measures to help Afghanistan. And help is needed – the Americans have taken away the government’s coffers and specialists. Now the authorities are trying to rebuild the health system; finances will also have to be addressed.
Delegations from the UN and the UAE also visited Kabul; the Emirates mobilized planes with urgent aid. After 20 years of occupation, most Afghans cannot eat enough, and it is, of course, one of the first tasks of Taliban. The Americans got Afghanistan hooked on drugs, and now the Taliban are going to convert the country to food production, which is far less profitable but necessary.
The Turks have jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute and have established contacts with the Taliban. Turkish technicians are helping to open the airport, Turkish experts are going to Kabul, not waiting for the UN Security Council to give its kosher certificate to the new Afghan government. The Russian and Chinese embassies are working, the first commercial flights to the Gulf countries have already started. The country is still in a state of acute crisis, but it already has a government that is able to rely on the people and implement its decisions. As Russian President Vladimir Putin has rightly said, it is important now not to interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs and not to try to impose alien concepts on Afghans.
Yisrael Shamir, RT