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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Reminiscent of their previous harsh rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have already begun to wipe out some of Afghanistans gains of 20 years. Theyve denied women a seat at the Cabinet, beaten journalists into silence and enforced their severe interpretation of Islam, on occasion violently.

And yet there seems little the international community can do about it.

The world will need to engage with the Taliban to some extent, despite disappointment with the new all-Taliban Cabinet that defied earlier promises it would be inclusive.

The U.S. needs Taliban cooperation to evacuate the remaining Americans and to fight an increasingly brazen Islamic State affiliate, considered the greatest terrorist threat against America emanating from Afghanistan. In recent weeks, the IS flag has been seen flying from several districts of the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Meanwhile, a humanitarian disaster that threatens millions of Afghans has the world scrambling to respond. On most days, Qatar is flying in food and medical supplies. Pakistan has announced it is sending planeloads of aid to Afghanistan.

The United Nations has launched a $606 million emergency appeal to help nearly 11 million people in Afghanistan, or nearly one-third of the population. They are deemed to be in desperate need as a result of drought, displacement, chronic poverty and a sharp increase in hostilities as the Taliban swept to power last month.

Even before the Taliban takeover, nearly half the population needed some humanitarian aid and more than half of all children under the age of 5 were expected to face acute malnutrition, according to the U.N. report that accompanied the emergency appeal.

The economic challenges are steep. Most Afghans live on less than $2 a day, 80% of the countrys budget was covered by international funds over the past 20 years, and no industries of note have emerged to provide employment to a mostly young population. Tens of thousands of Afghans have fled, most of them members of the educated elite.

Yet despite such dependence on international support, the Taliban sent a message with their Cabinet lineup this week that they intend to run Afghanistan on their terms. They named a government filled with veterans of their 1990s rule and the subsequent insurgency against a U.S.-led military coalition. Their Cabinet includes former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and perhaps one of the most eyebrow-raising appointments Sirajuddin Haqqani, wanted by the FBI for questioning in several deadly attacks, as interior minister.

They also forbade protests without prior authorization in a new attempt to silence dissent and reportedly banned some womens sports.

The Taliban would seem to want it both ways to run Afghanistan according to their harsh interpretation of Islam, while maintaining some level of cooperation with the international community.

In portraying their Cabinet as a caretaker administration, the Taliban signaled there is still room for change and that other nations can do business with this government without recognizing it first.

In a three-page policy statement that accompanied the formation of the government, the Taliban also addressed concerns of the region and the larger world. They promised Afghanistan would not be used as a staging arena for attacks on other countries. They said they would not interfere in the affairs of other nations and demanded the same in return. And they pledged to allow Afghans to leave the country, provided they have the proper travel documents.

I imagine the use of the term caretaker is very strategic, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center. The idea is to create an impression that at some point the government will change and become more inclusive, and therefore more amenable to the West.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, directing his words at the Taliban, warned Wednesday that any legitimacy, any support will have to be earned. He spoke after hosting a virtual meeting of ministers from 22 countries as well as NATO and the European Union.

Its unlikely, however, that the Talibans top leadership will change anytime soon. Its tens of thousands of fighters will have to be brought under a single Afghan National Security Force banner, even integrating some of the previous military personnel into the mix. But that wont happen without the likes of Haqqani, the new interior minister, or the Taliban founders son Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the defense minister.

In time, economic necessity might prompt the Taliban to loosen their grip and allow women and non-Taliban into the administration, but likely in secondary roles. For women, this might mean work in the traditional fields of health and education.

The Taliban need to open the door and trust non-Taliban in governance. They need to bring technocrats ASAP to get the economy going, said Torek Farhadi, an adviser to previous Afghan governments.

The Taliban face a number of challenges to their rule.

Prolonged economic stagnation could lead to protests by the countrys growing poor who might eventually decide they have little to lose by openly challenging the hard-line rulers. Afghans of 2021 are not the compliant population of 1996 a time when the Taliban had little trouble imposing their uncompromising edicts.

There are also debates and differences within the movement and no one among the Taliban has absolute authority, unlike in the past, under the late founder Mullah Mohammad Omar who had the final word.

The West and Afghanistans regional neighbors hope to use money and recognition as leverage to influence the Taliban.

Wednesdays ministerial meeting signaled that the U.S. and Europe will be watching the Taliban closely.

Kugelman, from the Wilson Center, said others, such as Pakistan, China and Russia, might eventually set a lower bar for formal recognition of a new Afghan government. China has already promised to stay engaged and mine Afghanistans vast mineral resources while helping rebuild the war-ravaged nation. Still, Kugelman said, the Taliban badly need access to billions of dollars in foreign reserves that the West has denied them.

The announcement of its very non-inclusive Cabinet will put those funds further out of reach, he said.

___

Gannon has covered Afghanistan for The Associated Press since 1988. She is the APs news director for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kathygannon.

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Analysis: Taliban hard-line path worsens Afghanistan dilemma - Associated Press

A woman carries a child as passengers board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 24, 2021. Picture taken August 24, 2021. U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/Handout via REUTERS

Sept 15 (Reuters) - It has been a month since the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, seizing the capital Kabul with barely a fight. read more

Following are the main events in Afghanistan over the last month:

Aug. 15 - Taliban fighters enter the capital Kabul, completing a lightning offensive that saw provincial capitals fall to the insurgents like dominoes. The speed and ease of their conquest surprised even the Taliban.

- There is an immediate scramble by foreigners and Afghans to leave the country, leading to chaos at the international airport. Several people are killed.

Aug. 17 - U.S. President Joe Biden breaks his silence on the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan which presaged the Taliban's return to power. Desperate scenes at the airport lead to recriminations against Washington from around the world.

- Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid gives the first press conference by the Taliban since their victory. He seeks to reassure Afghans and the international community, saying women's rights will be respected and there will be no reprisals.

Aug. 18 - Anti-Taliban protests erupt in the eastern city of Jalalabad. At least three people are killed.

Aug. 19 - Scenes of chaos at Kabul airport persist, dominating global headlines. Several more people are killed as Taliban members open fire and people stampede.

- Despite Taliban assurances, reports of former enemies being rounded up for questioning persist and journalists complain of beatings and, in the case of some women, being turned away from work.

- Anti-Taliban protests break out in Asadabad and Kabul.

Aug. 21 - The Taliban say the group will investigate reports of atrocities and protect people's rights. They also say the airport chaos is not their fault and that they are trying to provide a smooth exit for those with correct paperwork.

Aug. 23 - Haji Mohammad Idris is named acting governor of the central bank amid economic turmoil. Many businesses and banks remain shut and prices for staples climb rapidly.

Aug. 24 - The World Food Programme says millions of Afghans could soon face starvation, given the security situation, COVID-19 and drought.

Aug. 26 - A suicide bomb attack near the airport in Kabul kills scores of people, including 13 U.S. troops. Some Western media reports put the final death toll at nearly 200. The attack was claimed by a local offshoot of Islamic State.

Aug. 27 - The U.S. military says it launches a drone strike against an Islamic State "planner".

Aug. 29 - A U.S. drone strike targets a suspected suicide bomber who the Pentagon said was preparing to attack Kabul airport. The Taliban later condemn the attack and say there were civilian casualties.

Aug. 30 - U.S. General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, announces completion of the U.S. troop withdrawal, ending the 20-year war.

- The Taliban declare independence for Afghanistan.

Aug. 31 - Long queues at banks, rising prices for staples and people taking risky land routes to try to leave Afghanistan are among the first challenges for the Taliban.

Sept. 3 - The Taliban say they have seized control of the mountainous Panjshir province north of Kabul, the final holdout held by anti-Taliban fighters. The self-proclaimed resistance movement says they are still fighting.

Sept. 4 - Kabul airport reopens for aid flights and domestic services.

Sept. 7 - The Taliban announce their new government, ending weeks of talks and speculation. Veteran members of the movement dominate the new cabinet, including several who were held in Guantanamo Bay and a minister on a U.S. terrorism wanted list.

Sept. 9 - The first commercial international flight under the new Taliban government leaves Kabul carrying more than 100 foreigners.

Sept. 13 - Donors pledge $1.1 billion for Afghanistan as aid dries up and countries remain wary of dealing directly with the Taliban.

Sept. 14 - Thousands of people protest in the southern city of Kandahar over Taliban plans to evict families from a former military colony.

Compiled by Mike Collett-White

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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The dramatic first month of the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan - Reuters

Sapp: Having watched the arc of the conflicts and being one of the first guys on the ground, I first started questioning things in probably December '02. I know that seems kind of early. But all of a sudden, they were doing the conference in Bonn and they were talking about [writing an Afghan] constitution and so forth. And I thought, wow, that sounds kind of Jeffersonian. But you've got to understand, the attitude of the time was very upbeat and very optimistic. And we had been successful. It was clear that things were shifting to Iraq. I went into Iraq in '03. We were focused on Iraq, and that was also indicative of the overall look of the Defense Department at the time.

When I came back to Afghanistan [in 2011], it was a very, very different paradigm. The IED techniques had migrated from Iraq. You couldn't drive anywhere. When I was [in Afghanistan in 2001], we were on horseback or we're on foot or we're in light-skinned vehicles. Now, you couldn't get from A to B without being in an armored vehicle or flying a helicopter.

But the biggest problemthe big point where I said, things aren't going as well as I had hoped for was dealing with these district governors, whom I dealt with frequently. They didn't have a long view. They were not invested in the central government. There were a lot of reasons for that. Every day was a new day to them and it was a fight for survival. They had no incentive to build these relationships that we designed for them.

For example, we were paying nine and a half dollars per gallon to ship gas from Karachi to outlying districts. And when I approached the district governor'Hey, you need to learn how to use your own bureaucratic requisition systems'he said, 'Why should I do that when you're doing it for me?' And he was dead serious. And of course, he died a couple of months later, as probably 60 percent of the guys who I worked with did on the Afghan side.

You feel like a little piece in the game and not someone who's able to see the whole board.

Jess Gonzalez

Dempsey: I actually want to push back just a tad. It's absolutely truethe [Afghan] commandos are successful. But they're successful when we provide air support, planning, high-tech weaponry and a ton of in-depth training. And frankly, the question we have failed to ask is: Why are the commandos and everything that we've given them, why are they necessary for defeating a force that's for the most part equipped with AK-47s and flip-flops? It's because we became enamored with [creating] a force that looks like us and is effective by our measures.

What we miss is that the Taliban are actually playing the long-term political game. They're not getting money hand over fist, month after month that would incentivize them to be a client of the Americans. They're working inch by inch, working politics. We may not like it, but they're damn effective. And they're much more effective, unfortunately, than a force that we prop up to be tactically efficient in our image, but politically illegitimate and unable to win the battle for hearts and minds in a lot of these villages that are on the edge.

Matisek: The thing that became pretty apparent that kind of shocked me, but I guess it really shouldn't have: We had been there almost two decades. I'm talking to Afghan troops about, well, how do you get jobs in the Afghan military? Theyre just like [makes money gesture with hand]. So you mean to tell me that there is no record-keeping in the Afghan military about what you're qualified to do or what you can do? And they're just like, no [makes money gesture again]. You get around the military and get new jobs and promotions just by virtue of paying somebody off.

That's insanewe've done all this for almost two decades and we couldn't get them to do a basic personnel system to make it at least halfway meritocratic. Yeah, that's a bad sign.

If you want to give give props or credit to the Taliban, they did a great job with the green-on-blue attacksthey were able to basically keep turning Afghan troops and policemen against U.S. and coalition forces in a way that didn't really happen in Iraq. Really did a number on the way we tried doing military operations in Afghanistan.

The Taliban seemed to have moved into a phase, by the time I was leaving, of being able to approach government forces and not just kill them and basically make a deal that they couldn't refuse. So, for example, there was an Afghan army NCO [non-commissioned officer] down at Kandahar that had been approached. He came into work the following day and hes like, 'Hey, guys, it's my last day at work. Taliban came by my house. They basically offered to pay me double. They won't kill my family and I'll just go maintain their vehicles at the Taliban maintenance depot shop.' And he was like, 'Goodbye, guys.' It was sort of like, this is the way it is. And everyone saw the writing on the wall.

Gonzalez: You know, its those little things that everyday junior enlisted guys had to deal with that were always these big moments for me within my deployment. I was expecting to go for a six-month deployment. One of the admin guys was like, 'Hey, where do you want to go for R&R [rest and recuperation]?' 'Oh man, Im not going on R&R. Im only here for six months, R&R is for people here for 10!' And theyre like, Nope, youre on the year list.' Things like thathow disconnected a lot of the times a junior enlisted is from the decisions that are made within our own lives. It's funny looking at it down the line.

There was a big controversy around the time I was leaving about a giant building that was getting built on Camp Leatherneck, a multimillion-dollar facility [at a time] when the Marine Corps was supposed to be somewhat pulling out of Afghanistan. That was always the big talkhow the Afghan National Army wasn't able to use that facility because we had set it up for American power. There were a lot of logistical problems that junior enlisted heard about through thewe call it the lance corporal underground.

Caruso: We made a lot of efforts to pacify villages that were more hostile to us. And we succeeded in some cases by putting an Afghan National Police checkpoint in a village that didn't have one to help deter the Taliban from launching rockets at the base. [In one instance] we convinced a village elder, who was a Ghilzai Pashtun, to support us, which was a big deal because many of the people to whom he had tribal ties were Taliban supporters.

But he was assassinated. Then his brother stood up and took his place and said, 'We'll stand with the government, the Americans.' And he was assassinated. By that point, the Taliban had essentially regained control of the village. I spoke to one gentleman on the side of the road one day, and he was subsequently beheaded for talking to me and made an example of.

I saw through that that some of these things were almost Pyrrhic victories because we were doing the things that, [per] the counterinsurgency manual, doctrinally, we were doing the right things. And we were succeeding in some cases. But at the end of the day, the sacrifice and the loss of trust in the villages was starting to hamper our effectiveness in getting people to want to work with us, to follow our goals and objectives, to cooperate with us and to resist the Taliban and ultimately for us to succeed. I think they were going to have to resist them on their own. We couldn't maintain a permanent presence of U.S. forces indefinitely to keep them safe or to deter the Taliban.

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We Never Got It. Not Even Close: Afghanistan Veterans Reflect on 20 Years of War - POLITICO

The Talibans takeover of Afghanistan is a shattering earthquake that will shape the Middle East for many years, a senior Gulf official has said, warning that despite the groups promises of moderation the militant group is essentially the same as last time it was in power.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official also said that the rapid and chaotic US withdrawal also raises serious questions for Gulf states about the value of US promises of security over the next 20 years.

Afghanistan is an earthquake, a shattering, shattering earthquake, and this is going to stay with us for a very, very long time, the official said on Monday. He added that the episode marked a complete break with the outdated Carter doctrine a commitment that an oil-dependent US would use military force to defend its interests in the Gulf.

Can we really depend on an American security umbrella for the next 20 years? I think this is very problematic right now really very problematic.

He suggested that 20 years of warfare, supposed to be a battle against those who had hijacked Islam, had left no legacy in Afghanistan, and predicted that the Talibans seizure of power would prompt concern among leaders in West Africa and the Sahel about the rise of a newly confident Islamic extremism.

The official added he had no expectation that the Taliban would behave differently from when it was previously in power, saying, They are essentially the same, but just more world-savvy.

The biggest surprise, the official said, was the sheer incompetence of the US operation and the signs of bureaucratic infighting that marred US thinking.

Afghanistan, he said, will probably come to be seen as a Pakistan victory, and a Chinese opportunity with the US playing a minimal role. If there is a geopolitical struggle over Afghanistan, we will see Pakistan and China on one hand and India, Iran and Russia on the other hand, the official said. And I dont think the Americans are going to be a part of the geopolitical struggle over Afghanistan.

Many Gulf states have already begun recalibrating their foreign policy to take into account declining US dependence on oil and the growing popular insularity of the US, but the official said he now expected that process to speed up, leading to realignments in alliances and a desire for some historical rivals to establish more pragmatic relations. The general aim will be to de-escalate tensions in the region, the official said.

The official added that he expected to see greater discussions between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the future, as well as between the United Arab Emirates and Iran. The official also pointed to the signing of a defence agreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia as a sign that in a post-carbon age, the Gulf states wanted to diversify their sources of security away from the US.

Iran, under its previous government, led by Hassan Rouhan, had started to hold discreet talks with Saudi Arabia at an intelligence cooperation level, but that may now become more open. Bahrain has already been seen to look for new alliances in the region including through the Abraham Accord with Israel, and in the UAEs case by restoring diplomatic relations with Syria.

The emphasis will be on trying to make this region less of a pressure cooker.

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Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will reshape Middle East, official warns - The Guardian

In October 2001 just about 20 years ago the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to the attacks of September 11. It's been the longest war in the history of the United States. It's been going on for so long, that this war that killed so many Afghan people and U.S. military personnel rarely made front page news anymore. But when Afghanistan did make the news, it was mostly a country defined by the ongoing military occupation and by violence.

But that's not the full story not even close. Afghanistan has a long, rich, complex history and culture. A lot of it flies in the face of what those of us in the U.S. are exposed to, or is in direct opposition to the stereotypes that we do see portrayed.

So this week, we're sharing an episode from our play-cousins at Throughline. They spent some time unspooling the history of Afghanistan its art, its culture, its people and they used the stories that Afghans have told about themselves through the ages to do it.

By the way, if you listen to this episode and find yourself wanting more, you are in luck. The Throughline team is coming out with part two of the series about the rise of the Taliban later this week.

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The Making And Remaking Of Afghanistan : Code Switch - NPR