Taliban Weaker Than They Look After 3 Years In Power

This includes the Taliban's abysmal treatment of women and girls, who continue to be denied education and most jobs. According to UNESCO, 2.5 million school-age girls have been denied their right to education . The group also banned women from beauty parlors and national parks last year, cruel steps that remove women from most public spaces.

Women also face a culture of extreme violence. In March, the Taliban declared that stoning as a punishment would return to Afghanistan. The group ordered the stoning of a woman in Balkh province only last week. The Center of Information Resilience 's Afghan Witness project, reporting over 300 cases of women killed by men since the Taliban seized power, claims that is the“tip of the iceberg” when it comes to gender-based violence.

The situation for women in Afghanistan is so bad the United Nations declared it the“worst globally” and accused the Taliban of gender apartheid . Frustratingly for the Taliban, their treatment of women continues to be a barrier to wider recognition. Even China has balked at legitimizing the regime until it improves the ways women are treated.

The Taliban have also been unable to solve Afghanistan's dire humanitarian crisis , largely because they remain economically isolated. This has left half the population in poverty and needing urgent humanitarian support.

The country remains heavily reliant on the international community – with Washington the largest donor , providing $2.6 billion since 2021. The US also still holds billions in frozen assets from Afghanistan's central bank, which the Taliban says“belongs to Afghanistan.”

This is another weak point for the Taliban, being hostage to Western governments that provide enough aid to keep Afghans alive but not enough to rebuild the country. It makes the Taliban's military parade an empty spectacle, nothing more.

Afghanistan has also become a hot bed for terrorism under the Taliban, burning the fingers of countries seeking to invest in Afghanistan and causing dangerous rifts with neighbors.

In March, a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a dam project in northwest Pakistan, killing six people. Pakistan accused a Taliban-affiliated group of being behind the attack, something the Taliban deny . This comes after Islamic State attacked a Kabul hotel popular with Chinese nationals in 2022 and threatened to bomb the Chinese embassy last year. Both are attempts to isolate the Taliban from Beijing and add to the factors that make investment in Afghanistan a risky prospect.

The surge in terror attacks has also caused a rift between the Taliban and Pakistan, long seen as close allies. The Taliban-funded TTP – or Pakistani Taliban – has carried out several attacks in Pakistan , killing civilians and military personnel. Islamabad's response has been to conduct airstrikes on Afghan soil and to forcibly push thousands of Afghan refugees back across the border, violating Afghanistan's sovereignty and embarrassing the Taliban. This has made the Taliban look weak both at home and abroad.

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Afghanistan has always had its problems. But the Taliban cause their own problems by brutalizing women, harboring terrorists and picking fights with neighbors. While the humanitarian crisis can also be blamed on the West, the Taliban's refusal to bend on human rights shows it is unwilling to solve the problems Afghans face.

It is this attitude that eats away at the group's legitimacy. Look closer and the Taliban are a paper tiger, relying on brutality to compensate for bad governance. The recent killing of four Taliban militants in Kabul by the Afghanistan Freedom Front is a timely reminder that the Taliban is far weaker than it appears and that it has opponents in Afghanistan.

Regimes lacking legitimacy do not last long in Afghanistan before they are swept aside by domestic challengers or foreign powers. The Taliban's own history of rise, fall and reemergence confirms that power is always fragile in Afghanistan.

The Taliban should remember this as they enter their fourth year back in power. To get the legitimacy they crave and need, they need to earn it by governing responsibly and humanely. If the Taliban do not learn this lesson, they might find their group challenged and in trouble.

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