Consider This from NPR - Eight Months Later, A Look At The Taliban's Broken Promises

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

After taking control of Afghanistan last summer, the Taliban made promises for more inclusive and less repressive leadership in Afghanistan. Many of those promises involved maintaining women's rights. But now, education for girls has become more limited, and other restrictions have been placed on women. NPR's Diaa Hadid reports on what the uneven implementation of those policies suggests about Taliban leadership. And Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press reports on how the Taliban backtracking on some of its promises bodes for Afghanistan's future.Additional reporting in this episode also comes from NPR's Fatma Tanis.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Fifteen-year-old Mariam from Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan remembers the first day she went to school last August. It was about a month after the Taliban took over her country. The Taliban entered our class and most of the girls ran to the back of the classroom and turned around.

They didn't want to see their faces. They don't want to see the Taliban. We're only using Maryam's first name so she can speak freely. She told NPR that she refused to run away when Taliban officials entered her classroom for regular monitoring. I didn't want them to know I was afraid of them. I just sat there and refused to look at them. About 300 miles away in Kabul, 17-year-old Fatima Sadat said she's dreamed of being a psychologist, but she hasn't been to school since the Taliban took over. She's been very worried about her future. We were all afraid that the Taliban closed the schools and do not want to

open them again. Also, we were not given any books to study, so we were left to our own fate. Sadat's fears were soon realized. See, the Taliban had promised girls would be allowed to go to school. But when hopeful girls across Afghanistan actually showed up to their classrooms three weeks ago, many were turned away. That's 18-year-old Sakina Jafari in Kabul. She says, some of my classmates began weeping. We were so excited to return, and now we don't know what will happen to us. That echoed another schoolgirl who spoke to Afghan news outlet Tolo.

That schoolgirl also asked, what is our crime? That we're girls? But access to education for girls is only one of the many promises the Taliban has walked back. There's a great deal of uncertainty. There's a great deal of fear among people about what is to come. Consider this. Last summer, the Taliban promised a more inclusive, progressive Afghanistan. Now, eight months later, many of those promises have been broken. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Monday, April 11th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Afghanistan has now been under Taliban rule for almost eight months. It was August 15th of last year when Kabul fell. You might recall that not long after, in those early days after seizing control, the Taliban held a press conference and made all kinds of promises. The Islamic Emirate is committed to the right of women within the framework of Sharia.

Our women have the same rights. They're going to be working shoulder to shoulder with us. We want to assure the international community there will be no discrimination against women, but of course, within our religious framework. Fast forward to today, and girls are banned from school after the sixth grade. Women can't board planes without a male relative. But the policies aren't being implemented consistently. Those mixed signals may suggest that hardliners within the Taliban are flexing their power. NPR's Dia Hadid reports.

In this video shared by an Afghan feminist, about a dozen girls demand to go to school. Ibrahim Bahes, an analyst with the Crisis Group, says the Taliban's about-face on this promise came after senior officials held a meeting with the group's leader, Hebertullah Akhanzada, the night before the girls were meant to return. A very small minority within the leadership council of the Taliban decided to oppose this decision. Bahez says Akhanzada agreed, perhaps to avoid fermenting dissent within the group. Ashley Jackson is a researcher on the Taliban and co-director for the Centre of the Study of Armed Groups. The floodgates have opened. Whatever was holding these more aggressively retrograde Taliban clerics at bay is no longer holding them back. In the days after the girls were sent home,

a crop of other rules governing women were announced. Entry to Kabul's parks was divided by gender. Men get four days a week, women get three. The Associated Press reported, some women were taken off planes because they did not have a male guardian. Local language programming for a German channel, the BBC and Voice of America were pulled off air. Two Afghan radio stations were shut down. And this doctor, who works at a public hospital, explains another new rule. He says men were ordered to grow beards and wear traditional Afghan clothes, no Western suits.

He requested anonymity because he doesn't want to anger his new bosses. He tells NPR's Kabul producer Fazal Nallar Kazizai that some beardless doctors who turned up weren't allowed to sign in, which means they can't get paid. He says others weren't allowed to enter. Jackson, the researcher, thinks this trend will escalate. I think it's going to be an incredibly difficult few months. It's kind of a battle for the future of the Taliban and the future of Afghanistan. For many, it comes as no surprise that the Taliban would start implementing harsh rules, akin to those it had when they were last in power in the 90s.

But it contradicts what Taliban officials promised before the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. The deputy leader, Sirajid Hakani, even wrote that his movement believed in equal rights, for an editorial in the New York Times. Some worry these new hardline rules might dissuade donors from providing more aid, which is desperately needed. The U.N. says few Afghans get enough to eat, nearly a quarter face starvation. Heather Barr focuses on Afghanistan at Human Rights Watch. There's no easy way for governments to explain to voters that even though the Taliban are denying girls access to education, it's urgently important that we should give money to Afghanistan. So far, the UN has only raised $2.4 billion for its operations this year, just over half the amount it requested. And for one feminist who stayed on in Kabul, this only heightens the urgency.

Nawida tells me she has to resist the Taliban, because if they continue governing like this, Afghans are going to starve. NPR international correspondent Dia Hadid. While the Taliban is now passing laws that are reminiscent of their conservative rule in the 90s, there seems to be a disconnect within their leadership that might explain the gap between what they promised eight months ago and the restrictive edicts we're seeing now. There is a generation, a newer generation, within the Taliban leadership that is more pragmatic.

That's Kathy Gannon. She's reported on the Taliban for decades. She's news director for Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Associated Press. Gannon spoke to my co-host Mary Louise Kelly last week. The younger generation or the newer guard, they certainly do believe in education for girls and beyond grade six. Their own girls are being educated often in Pakistan, where they still might have some families. And they certainly don't object to education.

Of course, it must be segregated. Of course, it is conservative, deeply religious society before the Taliban and now with the Taliban. There are women working, for example, at the airport at passport control in full, you know, hijab with the scarf, a face exposed, but certainly with the scarf. Women at the health ministry, women at the education ministry. But there are restrictions, and women have been largely the target of these repressive restrictions. Since it is the Taliban that is now running the country, what do they say when the gap between what they promised on many fronts last summer and the reality of today,

when that is pointed out? Sure, you're absolutely right. And when you talk to those who are on that pragmatic side, for example, in terms of the education of girls beyond grade six, none of them will say that they oppose it. They will all say they support it. But, you know, you have to go slowly because it has to be an edict that goes countrywide. And countrywide, it's not supported. In the deep rural areas, there is a can allow girls to go to school in the cities, in vast areas of the country. So I think that it is more about the leadership of the Taliban, trying to figure out who will dominate, whether it will be the more hardliners, more older generation rooted in tribal tradition and tribal mores, or the younger, more pragmatic that understands that Afghanistan needs to engage with the world,

that it needs to give to the women and the girls the rights that their own religion dictates, and they say dictates. You have reported for a long time on the Taliban. I'm curious, what has surprised you in these last eight months, if anything, watching them come back, watching them try to figure out how are we actually going to run this country? I think the biggest change for me that I see, not a lot of surprises, you know, I mean, but I guess it's the leadership struggle. In the last time they were in power, Mullah Omar was the final word and no one could challenge it, the council. And I remember when they destroyed the Buddhas and somebody I knew on Taliban on the leadership council, he said to them, you know, don't do it. It's like cutting the throat of my son. You're destroying Afghanistan's legacy. But nobody could once had made a decision, challenge it. That's not the case today. You have a lot of strong leaders and groups within the

leadership that it is interesting to me and unknown to me how that will play out. And that certainly will impact how Afghanistan looks going forward. Where do you see the country going? I mean, are we looking at endless internal political struggle? Or do you think this new Taliban at some point will manage to speak with one voice to get its act together as it were? Yeah, I mean, you know, again, it's only been eight months. I think it's premature to predict one way or the other. But I think there certainly is an effort on their part to try to get to a position where they're actually governing the country. How they will get there and what it will look like is still unknown. And that's really difficult for Afghans because they're struggling with that uncertainty.

But it's not an easy thing to govern a country of 38 million that's been at war for four decades, more than four decades, all the money dried up once they came in in August. And 80% of that country's budget was provided by international donors. And that's gone, all the development projects gone. So, so it's a difficult ask of them. And there's, there's many things that they themselves have to struggle to find out how they're going to speak with one voice that will move their country forward. That was Kathy Gannon, News Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Associated Press, speaking with us from Islamabad. Earlier in the episode, you also heard reporting from NPR's Fatma Tanis. It's Consider This from Nabad. Earlier in the episode, you also heard reporting from NPR's Fatma Tanis. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.