There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.
These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.
They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated - a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.
Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.
Yeah, but if you go back to the 80s it doesn’t make sense to say we bombed them so much that the Taliban was a better option than Western values. Unless the USSR is being counted as part of the West.
I was just pointing out that the Taliban was already in charge when the US started wrecking up the place, so they aren’t really a response to the US occupation. More a return to the status quo of the 90s.
Which is not to say that the US is blameless. I have a good enough handle on the situation to remember when the Taliban were the good guys in a Bond movie. But I’m not going to claim to be an expert on the region.