Though the Taliban claim to have mellowed since they first ran the country in 1996-2001, many of them plainly have not
THE PAST week has been grim in Afghanistan. Many girls had looked forward to going to secondary school on March 23rd. But the Taliban broke an earlier promise and barred them, citing their supposedly immodest uniforms. As if that were not bad enough, Afghan women who venture far from home will now need male chaperones, making it impractical to hold down a job and needlessly hard to visit a hospital. Parks are to be segregated by sex, to preserve public morals.
The Taliban may have changed dispiritingly little in the past two decades; but Afghan society has changed a lot. The share of girls who attended primary school rose from zero in 2001 to 85% by 2019. For secondary school it was a less impressive 40%. A generation of Afghan women has tasted a measure of freedom. Their voices have not entirely been silenced. Street protests have erupted in Kabul against the closures of girls’ schools. Activists lamenting them have appeared on local television.
Some donors hope that economic pressure might persuade them to change. Certain kinds of foreign assistance have been made conditional on girls being allowed to go to school. American officials have pulled out of talks with the Taliban in Doha, where funding for education was to be discussed. The World Bank has put $600m of development projects on hold. However, history suggests that making aid conditional on better behaviour by an unwilling regime seldom works.
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