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The Taliban’s Western Defenders Have a Consistency Problem

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A video recently circulated of an Afghan mullah expressing frustration with the Taliban. His complaint was not about foreign policy or ideology. It was about poverty and hunger. While millions of Afghans struggle to survive, he said, some Taliban officials appear more concerned with personal privileges — including taking additional wives — than with easing the suffering of ordinary people. It was a small but revealing moment. A religious figure from within the Taliban’s own environment was saying what many Afghans quietly say: those who promised to restore justice have failed to address the daily struggles of the people they rule. This raises an uncomfortable question: if the Taliban cannot protect their own citizens from poverty and despair, how can their system of rule — especially its restrictions on women and girls — be defended abroad? To be fair, sympathy for the Taliban among some Western writers and analysts does not usually come from cruelty or indifference. Many have focused ...
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Badakhshan's Revolt is a Warning the Taliban Cannot Afford to Ignore

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  Badakhshan's Revolt Is a Warning the Taliban Cannot Afford to Ignore By Wahab Raofi Just after dawn on July 17, fighters from the newly formed Homeland Soldiers Front (Sepah-e Mihan) launched a coordinated assault on the district headquarters of Yaftal in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan Province. Within hours, the insurgents had overrun Taliban positions, seized government offices, and briefly raised their own banner over the district center. Although Taliban reinforcements later retook the area, the battle marked the first time since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 that an organized anti-Taliban force had temporarily captured a district headquarters. Militarily, the clash changed little. Politically, however, it may prove to be one of the most consequential events of Taliban rule. The significance of the Badakhshan uprising lies not in the territory briefly lost or regained but in what it reveals: nearly five years after reclaiming power, the Taliban still...
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  The Hijab Is Vanishing from Iran's Streets—and So Is the Mask of the Mullahs A Stark Warning to the Taliban: The Wind of Change Is Coming for Them, Too. By Wahab Raofi The hijab is falling from the heads of Iranian women—and in the same moment, the mask of the mullahs is falling too. The upheaval sweeping Iran since 2025 has not only given women the courage to remove their headscarves; it has unmasked a regime that is no longer the force it once was. Decades of institutionalized gender restrictions have made women the unlikely catalyst for the Islamic Republic's deepest crisis of legitimacy in its 45-year history. Across the country, women are publicly casting aside their hijabs, defying a dress code that has been enforced by law and by force since the revolution. This is not a fashion statement. It is a generation refusing to accept the terms their parents were forced to live under. An Iranian woman writing under a pseudonym in Persuasion magazine recently descr...
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The Extraordinary Meeting of Heaven

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  The great hall of Heaven was filled with angels. Gabriel, the Trustworthy, struck the gavel and announced: "Honored angels, today's agenda is an important address from the Almighty." He then turned toward God. "Almighty Lord, the floor is yours." God smiled and began: "Thank you all for gathering here. At our last meeting, I heard rumors circulating among some of you. Apparently, there are those who believe I have grown old and that it may be time to replace me with another god. To be honest, such rumors do not offend me. I have heard many like them before. But today I want to clarify something once and for all. Listen carefully. I am less a person than I am a symbol—a symbol of the order and the laws that govern the universe. I have neither created a Heaven nor a Hell. Those who, throughout history, have claimed to be my representatives on Earth were never appointed by me. In fact, I do not even know many of them. I have never called any human being my s...
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  ده هزار سال بعد فرشتگان در تالار بزرگ آسمانی گرد هم آمده بودند. جبرئیل امین، پس از نواختن زنگ آغاز جلسه، گفت: «حضار گرامی، دستور جلسه امروز این است که ذات اقدس الهی درباره موضوعی مهم با شما سخن خواهند گفت.» سپس رو به خدا کرد و گفت: «ذات اقدس الهی، بفرمایید.» خداوند لبخندی زد و گفت: «از حضور همه شما سپاسگزارم. در جلسه گذشته شنیدم که شایعاتی در میان بعضی از فرشتگان رواج یافته است؛ شایعاتی مبنی بر اینکه گویا من پیر و فرسوده شده‌ام و عده‌ای در فکر انتخاب خدای دیگری هستند! راستش را بخواهید، این حرف‌ها مرا نمی‌رنجاند. من از این گونه شایعات بسیار شنیده‌ام. اما امروز می‌خواهم حقیقتی را برای همیشه روشن کنم. خوب گوش کنید. من بیش از آنکه یک شخص باشم، یک نمادم؛ نماد نظم و قانونی که بر سراسر هستی فرمان‌روایی می‌کند. من نه بهشتی ساخته‌ام و نه دوزخی. کسانی که در طول تاریخ خود را نماینده من بر زمین معرفی کرده‌اند، هرگز از سوی من مأموریتی نداشته‌اند. من حتی بسیاری از آنان را نمی‌شناسم. من هیچ انسانی را «بنده» خود نمی‌نامم؛ زیرا نه به بندگی کسی نیاز دارم و نه به عبادت او. من همه آفریدگان را یکسان ...
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The Taliban Check Point. A short story

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  PROLOUGE   The Checkpoint   In a searing summer, when the heat melted the asphalt, the smell of it hung in the air. A line of trucks and buses and passenger cars inched along, waiting to pass the Taliban checkpoint. A group of young boys ran alongside the moving traffic, tapping on windows — some offering bottled water, others chewing gum and maswak toothbrushes. A tall man with a long beard and long black hair resting uncombed on his shoulders, half-naked, wrapped only in the Taliban banner, ran up and down the line, tearing at his own hair, his face bloody, the blood dripping down and staining the white banner red. He had been fine a few days before. He was the commander of this checkpoint. Later, one of his mujahideen brothers described the story this way: The road between Kabul and Kandahar ran straight through Maidan Wardak, and on that stretch stood a checkpoint that had been there long enough to look like it had grown out of the ground — half mud...
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The Taliban's Real Enemy Is the Taliban

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  Juma Khan Fateh's rebellion grabs the headlines. The deeper threat is a government that has never earned its people's consent. Juma Khan Fateh is not the Taliban's real problem. The regime is. For the past month, Fateh, a former Taliban commander from Badakhshan, has dominated headlines after breaking with the group. A farmer, warlord, and opportunist, he took to the mountains and is said to command hundreds of fighters. His refusal of the deputy governor post in southern Zabul Province — he chose to go home instead — has been read by anti-Taliban observers as a major security threat, the start of a political earthquake in the non-Pashtun north that could, in time, bring the regime down. In a country with five decades of war behind it, anything is possible. But I don't believe Juma Khan is the greatest threat to this regime. The greater threat comes from the Taliban's own hands. Their policies are weakening the foundation of their rule the way rainwater seeps into...
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