Flashpoint Afghanistan

All scenarios point to further turbulence

Now that the United States has unceremoniously exited Afghanistan, after spending over $2 trillion and at a cost of over 170,000 lives, what sort of future is in store for the country under the returning Salafi jihadist dispensation? As a pointer to the future, the Taliban’s late 1990s governance record is scarcely reassuring. Some Taliban leaders, concerned perhaps at the grim economic situation in the country they now rule, have sought to reassure the West that human rights, including the rights of women, would be respected. Since the same leaders have admitted that these “rights” were subject to Sharia law,