Taliban’s Latest Cruelty Creates Surprising Cracks
Reports of divisions in the extremist group — coupled with growing protests over its crimes against women — should prompt a surge in global support for a population under siege.
Taking a stand.
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Are we seeing the first real cracks in the Taliban’s veneer of absolute power?
The extremist group’s cruel obsession with denying women and girls any agency over their lives has condemned Afghanistan to exist on the margins — a fundamentalist, Islamist patriarchy devoted to removing any trace of the female gender from the public eye. Women and girls had already been excluded from secondary schools, as well as government jobs, and in November, from parks, gyms and swimming pools. But with their recent bans on women attending university and working for non-governmental organizations, which play an abnormally large role in the economy, perhaps even the Taliban have gone too far.