The Taliban have not moderated

When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, some observers suggested that their approach to governance might prove more moderate this time around. Twenty years had elapsed since the group was last in charge. The country had transformed dramatically, and with the fight against the United States over, tasks like collecting garbage and keeping the lights on now seemed largely nonideological in nature.

The Taliban’s initial actions in office, however, quickly dashed those hopes. The group has embraced a narrow, repressive rule, barring more than one million girls from school and reinstating the notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—one of the Taliban’s most powerful institutions of social control—on the premises of the now-defunct Ministry of Women’s Affairs. This should come as no surprise, given the movement’s past record and the means by which it returned to power. The departure of U.S. troops, followed by the Afghan government’s abdication, cleared the way for the Taliban to assume control without conceding much of anything.

The Afghan people will pay the steepest price for this draconian, regressive rule. But foreign governments should not assume they are immune to events on the ground. Civil war could be possible, and the ensuing chaos could create a breeding ground for still more militant extremism. It is also worth remembering that it was on Afghan soil, under Taliban control, that Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks. Having defeated the world’s most powerful state, the Taliban have begun their second reign in a position of extraordinary symbolic strength. If they consolidate their power, even for a little while, Afghanistan may become an even more formidable sanctuary for extremism than it was in the 1990s.