Taliban Invades Afghanistan

    If you have not been following the recent world news, there has yet again been another crisis involving the Middle East. The Taliban, a military extremist group that once took over Afghanistan in the late-1990s, has invaded once again. Over the past few days, the group was successfully able to capture major cities, marking the final stages of their full takeover. Although the group was ousted out of the country after the 2001 US Invasion, due to the government's recent collapse, they were able to take control at the country's state of vulnerability. The Taliban has been advancing to gain control of Afghanistan since last year's deal when the former US president Donald Trump agreed to a complete withdrawal of US military forces by the end of August, ending the longest war between the US and Afghanistan. President Biden released a statement earlier claiming that he does not regret his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan despite how rapid and chaotic the withdrawal has been executed. As the deadline approaches, the Taliban were able to seize towns, cities, throughout the country, all the way to the capital, leading to the fall of Kabul. 

To exacerbate the country's political crisis even further, the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country as the Taliban swept through, creating even more turmoil for Afghans who are left without a leader and a collapsed government. If the Taliban regime is successful, this will be a major human rights issue across the Middle East, causing many casualties and an entirely new order. The Taliban rule could also mean a major setback in women's rights in Afghanistan, which is still fairly conservative in its laws on gender equality. Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S, warns the NPR, that so far, the Taliban "have been executing people summarily, they have been lashing women, they have been shutting down schools. They have been blowing up hospitals and infrastructure." In addition, a Taliban-takeover could lead the way for other extremist groups, such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and more. The future of Afghanistan and its inhabitants is hard to assess at the Taliban remains, but it is important that we recognize that this is a humanitarian issue as well as a political one. 

 

Sources:

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-kabul-bagram-e1ed33fe0c665ee67ba132c51b8e32a5

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/14/1027375958/taliban-afghanistan-takeover-the-world-humanitarian-china-pakistan

https://www.vox.com/2021/8/15/22626082/kabul-capital-fall-afghanistan-government-taliban-forces-explained

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-to-afghanistan-drop-dead-taliban-11629151994