The Daily - The Taliban Takeover, One Year Later

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

One year ago this week, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, they promised to institute a modern form of Islamic government that honored women’s rights.That promise evaporated with a sudden decision to prohibit girls from going to high school, prompting questions about which part of the Taliban is really running the country.Guest: Matthieu Aikins, a writer based in Afghanistan for The New York Times and the author of “The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees.”Background reading: After barring girls from high school — and harboring a leader of Al Qaeda — the Taliban risks jeopardizing the billions of dollars of global aid that keeps Afghans alive.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroa. This is The Daily. One year ago this week, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, it promised to institute a moderate form of Islamic government that honored women's rights. But that promise evaporated with its decision to prohibit young women from going to school. Today, my colleague Matthew Akins on what led to that decision

and what it reveals about which part of the Taliban is really running Afghanistan. It's Tuesday, August 16th. Matt, you were in Afghanistan a year ago as the Taliban took over. Remind us what our expectations were at the time for how things might play out. Well, I can remember last summer as the previous Afghan government's forces started to collapse around the country as U.S. troops withdrew, that there was this mounting sense of panic in Kabul, that the Taliban were going to come in, they were going to arrest and kill people who had worked

with the foreigners, that there would be a return to the 90s where they were whipping women and men without beards in the streets, and that there would just be this bloodbath, this brutal repression. And at the same time, the Taliban were promising that they would not kill people if they surrendered. And that was a big factor behind their success. That's why they were able to take so much territory so quickly. And that was one of the reasons why me and my housemate decided to stay and report on the fall of Kabul. Right. I remember you came on the show and you had interviewed the spokesman for the Taliban right after the takeover. And it sounded like he was trying to reassure you and maybe the world that all of those fears wouldn't actually come to pass.

That's right. I sat down with Zabiel Al-Mujahid and he was trying to show a new face of the Taliban to the world. And he promised that there would be this general amnesty, that the war was over, that people would be forgiven for the past, and that there wouldn't be a return to that kind of violence that we'd seen in the 90s. And he, in fact, promised that the Emirate would be respecting people's rights. Okay, so he makes those promises, but what's actually playing out

on the ground? Well, I think it was a very mixed, uneasy situation. Everyone was kind of waiting to see what they would do. And while there weren't massacres, there were people being arrested, journalists being beaten, there's allegations of people being killed. The more we heard these allegations, the more skeptical it made people that the Taliban had really changed. But even skeptics of the Taliban, I think, acknowledged that the country had changed so much that the Taliban, in the very least, would be forced to deal with a new reality. And of course, one of the biggest changes since 2001 was that millions of Afghan girls have been allowed to go to school. They've been educated, their families have seen the

benefits of that education. It's a big change in Afghan society. Now, after the collapse of the republic last August, all the schools were closed, boys and girls. The next month, the Taliban reopened them, but they didn't allow girls to go back to high school, just elementary. And that, of course, stirred outrage, both within Afghanistan and among the international community. But the Taliban insisted that this was just temporary until they could get additional measures in place so that men and women, boys and girls, didn't mix in a way that was at odds with their strict interpretation of Islam. And so as the first day of classes approached... The Taliban in Afghanistan is due to lift its ban and allow girls to return to secondary

school classrooms. We started hearing statements and even promises from the Taliban that teenage girls would finally be allowed to go back to school. And it's also, you know, one of the demands of the international community for the Taliban to protect and safeguard the rights of girls and women to go to school. They planned a ceremony in Kabul. They invited the few ambassadors still remaining in the capital. Now this is what's coming from the leadership,

but I think we really have to see on the ground whether in March we do see those schools opening up. So on March 23rd, all these Afghan teenage girls wake up, they put on their uniforms, went to class. For these students in the west of Kabul, returning to school felt particularly poignant. Of course, the media showed up to cover these girls arriving at school. Thank God the Taliban are also like the previous government. Now I don't have any concern about what I have to wear or whether to go to school or not. My family has... Hopeful that they'll finally be allowed to continue their education. It was going to be a very hopeful And then all of a sudden, word went around that the schools aren't opening after all.

And the ones that were open closed down, and those girls had to go home. I was outside the country at the time watching the news coverage of these girls being sent home from school in tears. I feel really hopeless for my future. I don't see a bright future for myself. It was heartbreaking, but also baffling. Why would the Taliban do this? Why announce the schools would reopen

only to reverse themselves the last minute like this in a way that's so damaging for the Taliban standing not just with their own society, but also with the international community who at this moment is scrambling to find billions of dollars to stave off a massive humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan. Didn't make any sense. Yeah, we covered this on the show. The humanitarian disaster unfolding in Afghanistan has really only been kept at bay by all of this international money.

Exactly. And so this sudden decision to keep girls' high schools closed put all of that international money. Exactly. And so this sudden decision to keep girls' high schools closed put all of that at risk. So I decided to go back to Afghanistan in order to find out why the Taliban had reversed course at the last minute with so much at stake. I fly back to Kabul in May. much at stake. I fly back to Kabul in May. Regular flights have resumed to Dubai and Islamabad. And there's a new sign at the airport terminal. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan desires peaceful and positive relations with the world. And some life has returned to the streets of Kabul. And so I went around to different ministries to talk to the Taliban. So what's it like inside those ministries? Well, it's the same ministries, of course,

and many of the low- and mid-level bureaucrats at the ministries are the same officials who served in the republic. But instead of suits and ties, now they're wearing traditional robes. You don't see a lot of women anymore. And in the offices, you know, their bosses are the Taliban appointees, who are, for the most part, religiously trained men in turbans who are now in charge. So I went to the education ministry and I sat with a senior Taliban official

who asked to remain anonymous because of how sensitive the issue was. And I asked him, why weren't the Taliban allowing girls to go to high school? Well, he was eager to point out that they were already allowing girls to go back to elementary school. They were allowing women to go to university, girls to go to private high schools. And even in some rural areas, girls' attendance was up. private high schools, and even in some rural areas, girls' attendance was up. Huh. It kind of sounds like he's saying that in some places, access to education for girls might actually be improving.

But I'm wondering what he said about the decision to close the high schools for girls. Well, he said something that I really wasn't expecting. He said that he thought it was a complete mistake and that he was hoping they would reopen. Yeah. What was surprising was he wasn't the only one who told me that in Kabul. I met with a lot of Taliban officials who were very frustrated by the decision to keep girls out of school, not only because they saw it as being against their own self-interest, but because, you know, they wanted their daughters to be educated. It sounds like the view inside the Taliban is actually very similar to the view from outside that girls should be going to school. Well, that was the view from Kabul, at least, where these officials had been preparing to bring girls back to school. But as the first day of class approached, they learned that this wasn't their decision to make.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Matt, if it wasn't government officials in Kabul who could decide whether to reopen schools, who could? So to understand how power works in the Taliban today, you have to look at their government in the 90s, when in addition to the formal government and cabinet in Kabul, you had a second, more powerful shadow government 300 miles away from Kabul in the southern city of Kandahar. That's where the Taliban first got started. And that's where their supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, lived. and he presided over a leadership council, the Shura, which operated on consensus. That was what led the insurgency over the last 20 years.

And when the Taliban suddenly captured power last year, this old structure was grafted onto the new government. And one of the things that I learned on this trip was that it was still very much in charge. Even today, you're saying that you have one government in Kabul, and you have this entirely separate decision-making body in Kandahar. How does that work exactly? Well, for the most part, the government in Kabul gets to run the day-to-day affairs. But really important issues have to be decided by the supreme leader, who's currently Sheikh Haibatullah Ahunzada, and his leadership shura.

And that's what happened with the girls' schools. The education minister and the rest of the cabinet, many of whom are also on this shura, were summoned to Kandahar for a meeting. And over the course of several days, where they also debated other issues, they just couldn't get to an agreement on the school's reopening. There were a number of hardline clerics who couldn't be convinced. And if there was no consensus and no decision from the Supreme Leader, then the girls' schools wouldn't reopen. And it wasn't until 11 at night on the day before classes that the call came from Kandahar to the education ministry, and they were completely blindsided by it.

Did this shadow government in Kandahar give any explanation for its decision? Well, the meetings, they're sure are off limits to journalists. And it's surprising how opaque some of this decision-making is. I found a lot of the Taliban that I spoke to were confused about the reasons and who was really behind this decision. But basically, for the hardliners in Kandahar, their resistance to girls' education

comes from this very traditional view of life in the village, where women don't leave the house. And not long after the closure of girls' high schools was upheld in March, the Taliban came out with another very controversial decree saying that the Taliban has ordered that any woman going out in public will have to wear a burqa. Afghan women should cover their faces in public when they're around unmarried men. And they should either wear a full face veil or even better, a burqa, and that the best hijab of all is to not even leave the house.

This new rule is one of the most severe restrictions on women since the Taliban regained control last August. So that feels like an escalation to me. So that feels like an escalation to me. Like the Taliban is making an even sharper turn toward a more conservative version of Islam. Absolutely. I think on one hand it is kind of a sop to the hardliners, the traditionalists who just want to see very strict rules against mixing between men and women implemented and would rather see women at home. But for others, including the education minister, who was one of the religious scholars who signed this decree, this is kind of setting the groundwork, in theory, for girls to go back to class, for women to go back to offices, to have them veiled or separated from men. They say they want girls to work,

but only if they are veiled when they're in public, according to what they say are the principles of Islamic law. So it sounds like they might have different reasons for it, but the moderates and the hardliners are both kind of in favor of this decree. On the level of religious ideology, yeah. But you know, it was also surprising to me how many of the Taliban officials that I spoke to weren't happy with these decrees. They didn't see it as pragmatic to focus on these kind of culture wars when they're trying to rebuild their country, they're trying to govern, they're trying to rebuild their country. They're trying to govern. They're trying to feed a population that's struggling with catastrophic levels of hunger.

And as we discussed, one of the ways that people are being kept from starvation in Afghanistan is through international aid. And the largest donor to those aid efforts is the United States. And the Taliban has been working pragmatically with the U.S., with the international community to give access to aid groups on the ground. You know, over the winter, they were feeding half the population. And so these kinds of provocative moves around veiling and the burqa and especially the girls' schools, that just makes all of that harder. Right. I mean, I wonder, Matt, if those more pragmatic voices within the Taliban government don't have a point. I mean, if Afghanistan is so dependent on international money,

it seems unwise to piss off those donors. I mean, is there any more charged issue to throw in the face of the West than the issue of girls being able to go to school? No, there's not. So on the one hand, it's quite provocative. But, you know, on the other hand, I think the Taliban realize that the West is giving humanitarian aid to Afghanistan,

not because of anything they do or don't do, but because the West doesn't want to see Afghans starve. They don't want to see Afghans migrate to other countries and to Europe. They don't want to see collapse in the country. So in a sense, they're willing to call the West's bluff and govern their way in the knowledge that there will be humanitarian assistance. So when you say the Taliban is calling the West's bluff, it's basically like you say you care about girls being able to go to school,

about these social issues, but are you really willing to cut off humanitarian aid if we move in the opposite direction? Yeah, you know, I think a year out from the collapse of the Afghan Republic last summer, which had seemed like such a massive disaster, there is a kind of quiet satisfaction in Washington and other Western capitals

that the crisis has been contained. You know, you haven't had massive flows of refugees to Europe. You haven't had famine in the country. And part of that is because the Taliban has played a stabilizing role by cooperating with the U.S. and humanitarian agencies. There aren't a lot of good options in Afghanistan. And it seems to me that the Biden administration's strategy is,

you know, as one U.S. official described it, keep Afghanistan off the front page. I think a lot of people in the U.S. government would like to forget about Afghanistan. But there are certainly some things the Taliban have done that have provoked a response from the U.S. What do you mean? Well, we saw the other day when the U.S. targeted the leader of al-Qaeda with a drone strike in downtown Kabul, right by where I used to go jogging in the mornings. He was living there in a house apparently sheltered by the Taliban. And so this tells us that if Afghanistan again becomes a threat

to the world and to its neighbors, like it did in the 90s, then the world will intervene. I mean, in other words, you can kind of imagine that there are actually some decisions from the Taliban that the United States and other Western countries aren't just going to tolerate. Yes. And I think that that's what the pragmatists in Kabul understand. But the question is whether the hardliners in Kandahar do. And what we've seen from the decision to keep Afghan high school girls out of class is those hardliners around the Supreme Leader who still hold power within the movement. But the Taliban is not a monolith.

And there is a process of coming to grips with the country that's happening right now. There is an internal debate. happening right now. There is an internal debate. And ultimately, the reason why the Taliban should allow girls to go back to school is not because that's what the international community wants, or not because that's how they're going to get money from the West. It's because it's the right thing to do for their country and for their daughters. And that's what some of the people I spoke to in Kabul understand. This is the demand of the majority of the Afghan population. Afghan girls and their families who've been demonstrating, who've been standing up for this. We now know that there are divisions in the movement over this

and that there's pragmatists in Kabul who want to move forward on this. But right now it's the hardliners who have the power in Kandahar. The question really is, is that going to stay that way? Or can it change going forward? Matt, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

Prosecutors informed Rudy Giuliani that he was a target in a criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia, a sign of intensifying legal pressures on former President Donald Trump and his allies. Identifying Giuliani as a target suggests that prosecutors think he could be indicted in the case, based on the evidence they've seen. The news came on the same day that a federal judge rejected efforts by another key Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham,

to avoid giving testimony in the Georgia case. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Will Reed, and Muj Zaydi, with help from Stella Tan. It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains original music by Rowan Nemisto and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Natalie Kittrow. See you tomorrow.