Interviewtimes 
As India celebrates its 75th year of independence on August 15, neighboring Afghanistan celebrates the first anniversary of the second coming of the Taliban.
On this day last year, in the wake of America’s troop withdrawal, the Taliban seized power and wrapped the country in a dark cloak of oppressive obscurantism. The day leaves Afghans with much to long for, not to celebrate. Today, half of the population lives below the poverty line. Even the foreign aid that helped feed the millions disappeared after the Ukraine war began and the West found a new villain in Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Hardly a promise made by the Taliban to restore civil liberties compared to their brutal rule in the 1990s – in order to gain international recognition – has so far come true. The Afghan economy is expected to shrink by more than 20%, partly because women have been phased out of the workforce following the reintroduction of the strictest interpretation of Sharia law. A recent protest by a small group of courageous women demanding bread, jobs and freedom was brutally crushed in Kabul.
The internal security situation in the countryside is a mess, because the trigger-happy Taliban militias only believe in the law of the jungle. Trained government officials were eliminated by the hundreds, depriving the administration of its skilled workforce. Dozens of journalists were also shot. Perhaps the only thriving enterprise is terror, another Taliban pledge to control it. The recent killing of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri at a safehouse in Kabul owned by an aide to the Haqqani brothers – part of the Taliban government – has shown how intertwined the roots of the terrorist groups are.
