Updated August 16, 2021 at 9:29 AM ET
With the Taliban now back in full control of Afghanistan two decades after being ousted in a U.S.-led invasion, experts are fearful for the country's future.
In recent weeks, the insurgents seem to have followed much the same script as they did in 1996: a methodical push to capture the countryside, followed by a final blitz on the capital.
Everywhere in their wake, the Taliban appear to have brought the populations they control the same repressive policies and harsh brand of Islamic justice that were hallmarks of their previous rule.
But 20 years is a long time, and the question remains: how will the Taliban govern this time around? The experts NPR spoke to in the days leading up to the Taliban takeover agree on an answer — not much differently.
"I think everyone is trying to read some pretty sparse tea leaves here," said Laurel Miller, the Asia program director for the International Crisis Group.
The Taliban are pursuing a revamped foreign policy
When the Taliban last held power, in 2001, their treatment of women — who were denied education and employment and forced to wear the all-encompassing burqa — as well as minorities, such as Afghanistan's mostly Shiite Hazaras, earned the country a sort of international pariah status. Only Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would even recognize the Taliban government.
The Taliban are keen not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In the weeks leading up to their victory in Kabul, they reached out for allies and to reassure past adversaries, dispatching high-level delegations to Russia, China and Iran in hopes of gaining legitimacy, if not outright support, from powerful regional players, Miller said.
"They are currently pursuing a fairly savvy foreign policy," she said, pointing to last month's visit to Beijing by a delegation of Taliban led by the movement's second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
The Taliban "have been very eager for public displays of their acceptance by governments around the world," Miller says.
Baradar also sat across the table from then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year to discuss a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Despite viewing Washington as the enemy, Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, got a world stage to bolster the movement's standing, she said.
The leadership is seeking international legitimacy
For the Taliban, these high-profile photo ops bestowed legitimacy — but it goes further than that. Beijing has reportedly promised big investments in energy and infrastructure projects, including the building of a road network in Afghanistan.
Earlier, a Taliban delegation visited Russia, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979, setting in motion events that have led to 40 years of conflict there. The Kremlin's concern is security for the Central Asian states along its southern border, says Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2011.
"Russia, China and Iran have for the last several years taken an interest in Afghanistan only to ensure that the Americans leave and leave in an embarrassment," said Haqqani, who is director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute.
Both Russia and China are concerned about "spillover," he says — Russia doesn't want the Taliban to embolden unrest in Central Asia, and Beijing wants to make sure Afghanistan doesn't become a base for Uyghur separatists from China's Xinjiang region.
By casting their net wide in an effort to gain international recognition, the Taliban will be less reliant on Pakistan, with which it has had relatively close, but nonetheless frequently strained, relations.
Having Pakistan as an ally "is less important to the Taliban now than it was in the 1990s, when it had very few governments recognizing it," said Madiha Afzal, the David M. Rubenstein fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
Pakistan is keen to avoid a civil war in Afghanistan that could trigger the type of outflow of refugees that has destabilized its western border region in the past, Afzal says. It also wants to keep the deadly Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, in check. Although the group's attacks have waned in recent years, the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban could reinvigorate it.
Reports of atrocities on the ground
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged concerns over the rapid progress of Taliban fighters as the U.S. was in the midst of its withdrawal. "We've also seen these reports of atrocities committed by the Taliban in areas that it's taken over that are deeply, deeply troubling and certainly do not speak well to the Taliban's intentions for the country as a whole," he said during a news conference in India.
Little has changed from the time the Taliban methodically fought off — or bought off — warlords in the countryside in the lead-up to their 1996 victory over the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Haqqani said. Even before Kabul was seized on Sunday, the areas where the Taliban had taken control showed their conduct "is exactly what it was before."
"They have not changed at all ideologically," he said.
Much like they did in the runup to their 1996 takeover, the Taliban implemented their own style of local government based on their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law wherever they have grabbed territory.
"They have conducted summary executions. They are beating up women. They are shutting down schools. They are blowing up clinics, and they are blowing up infrastructure," Haqqani said.
Women in regions controlled by the Taliban cannot study or even step out of the house unless they are wearing a burqa and are accompanied by a male relative. Voice of America reports that the Taliban have handed out leaflets in some areas they control, ordering locals to follow many of the strict rules imposed under the previous Taliban regime.
Despite this, the Taliban leadership has made vague promises to the contrary, the Crisis Group's Miller says.
"They say women can have jobs and education, that it's consistent with Islamic principles and Afghan traditions," she said. "Well, who's going to be the judge of what Islamic principles and Afghan traditions mean and what kind of limitations that would impose?"
The extrajudicial killing of Afghan comedian Nazar Mohammad Khasha in July sparked widespread anger. "Taliban forces apparently executed [Khasha] ... because he poked fun at Taliban leaders," Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "His murder and other recent abuses demonstrate the willingness of Taliban commanders to violently crush even the tamest criticism or objection."
It's also not certain how much control the senior leadership has over rank-and-file militia members, Brookings' Afzal said.
"The political leadership presents one face," she said. "The soldiers on the ground look different."
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