After the return of the Taliban to power, on August 15, 2021, no wise observant from Afghanistan believed that they could have changed. All skeptics were right. Despite initial promises aimed at reassuring, the new leaders were quick to close certain timidly ajar doors.
A year later, this resettlement in power is already weighted with a dark assessment. Women are now prohibited from education and they can only move with a mentor, veiled from head to toe. Any form of freedom of expression has been muzzled, and many former employees of the overturned regime are harassed, forced to hide or go into exile.
After having suggested that adolescent girls could study, contrary to what had happened during their first experience of power (1996-2001), the Taliban brutally turned on March 23 by closing the schools of Secondary for girls only a few hours after their reopening.
If this change of foot undoubtedly reflects nuances, even possible tensions between the main factions of the new authorities, the decision was nonetheless fraught with consequences for young Afghan people in cities. They had used, after the fall of the first Taliban regime, to receive an education and to follow their own path.
The vain promises of the new Kabul masters were undoubtedly intended to facilitate the recognition of their regime. No country in the world, not even Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, has taken the plunge. These same promises, which were also vague, were also sent to donors, while billions of dollars in reserves from the previous government have been blocked abroad since its rout. Because to say that the economic situation of the country is also disastrous falls under the litote: whole regions of Afghanistan are on the verge of famine.
The impasse is therefore total: the non-recognition of the regime does not encourage the latter to give signs of openness and its extreme ideological tension offers no prospect of diplomatic advances on the part of the international community …
In these times of global instability, while the war in Ukraine and Chinese aggressiveness towards Taiwan mobilize attention, the sad fate of Afghanistan has been relegated to the background. As if, after the initial indignation aroused by the return to Kabul of the most obscurantist Islamist regime in the world, the interest in this country had suddenly vaporized in the fog of other conflicts.
Only good news for Afghanistan: since the Soviet invasion of 1979, which has given the start at four decades of permanent wars, the country had never known such a lull. The only punctual skirmishes oppose the Taliban to supporters of the fallen regime, or to the local franchise of the jihadist movement of the Islamic State, but, in the long term, even this calm could not be sustainable.
In the meantime, and even if the recognition of such a regime is not an option for an overwhelming majority of countries, the urgency nevertheless commands to expand and strengthen humanitarian aid granted to droppings, for Prevent an bloodless country from switching to good in the abyss. The Afghan people do not have to pay such an exorbitant price for the return of the Taliban.