After its rout of Afghan government forces in July and August, the Taliban had good reason to present a moderate face to the world. It was desperate for cash. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had suspended payments to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, and the central bank's reserves had been frozen in the United States. The claim to reinvention was never credible, however. And now that its position is secure, the Taliban is rapidly dispensing with the pretence.
The provisional Afghan cabinet, which began work on Wednesday, is dominated by hardliners and religious ideologues, including some who appear on UN sanctions lists, and contains no women and no members of rival factions. The US and other western powers had urged the Taliban in vain to include women and political opponents. The interior ministry is now led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted by the United States on terrorism charges.
In one of his first moves, Haqqani this week issued a decree banning any demonstrations that do not have official approval. The ban follows the violent suppression of a sequence of protests that have taken place around the country since the Taliban took control, many of them led by women. Despite the Taliban’s claim that women’s rights would be respected, the UN and others warn that local Taliban leaders are preventing them from working or accessing education, as it did when it was in power in the 1990s.
The crackdown will make it more difficult for western capitals to be seen to deal with the new regime in Kabul. But they do not have any good options. The West has little leverage over the Taliban, and is fully aware that China and Russia see opportunities to pursue their geostrategic interests in Afghanistan now that the Americans have left. As winter approaches, rising food prices, prolonged drought and the internal displacement of millions of refugees are creating a pressing need for humanitarian aid. Delivering that assistance will be impossible without some level of cooperation with the Taliban.