Afghanistan crisis: The Taliban statement we should be scared about

The Taliban have already made their intentions very clear - and what they plan to do next is even more chilling.

In all the rhetoric spewed by the Taliban leadership over recent days, there was just a single sentence yesterday should send shivers done the spines of global citizens.

“We want all foreign forces to leave before we start restructuring governance,” a Taliban leader said.

And it is exactly that “restructuring” that is likely to a return of this beautiful country return to the medieval pariah that it has been for more than two generations.

The Taliban has also proved its contempt for decency and humanity when it brutally attempted to erase its cultural history and conducted murders on an industrial scale to anyone who stood in their way.

They impost a strict form of sharia law that saw women and girls pulled out of work and schools, crushed other forms of religion and destroyed any notion of civil society. During their rule in the 1990s the UN found they denied food supply to more than 160,000 starving citizens, as part of their destruction.

Taliban fighters are spreading throughout Kabul. Picture: AFP

And critically gave al-Qaeda and other terror networks like the Taliban sponsored Haqqani Network the rights and freedoms to launch terrorist assaults from bases there.

That’s what brought the West to war in the first place land sees US President Joe Biden condemned now for his pulling out of US forces, the catalyst for the Taliban conquering.

It was what he said the American people wanted but not what the Afghans wanted nor what coalition allies expected. He called for a power share with the Taliban but then announced a rapid withdrawal while those terms were still being thrashed out. Who knows what another six months of 12 could have done.

The Taliban inside presidential palace in Kabul Afghanistan. Picture: Al Jazeera

Republican politician Michael McCaul summed up yesterday the costly failure.

“We are going to go back to a pre-9/11 state, a breeding ground for terrorism,” he said.

The West achieved a routing of al-Qaeda during 20 years of war and gave the Afghan people some semblance of what life could be like, but like the speed of the Taliban they will now regroup in their country and begin the “restructuring”.

Originally published as Afghanistan crisis: The Taliban statement we should be scared about