Journalist Ahmed Rashid on the Taliban’s Return to Power & What Comes Next for Afghanistan !

"Well, I was one of the first journalists to meet with the Taliban in ’92, the autumn of ’92. And even then, they wanted to be seen as a very pious group who were fed up with the civil war that the elders were fighting with each other, and they wanted an Afghanistan at peace. And they had two claims when they launched themselves. They said, “We will disarm the population,” a highly popular move at that time, “and we will bring peace to Afghanistan.”

And they did, initially, I mean, the first year or so, when they conquered most of the south, again, without firing much of a shot, because people were so fed up with the civil war and the brutalities of the warlords that they easily succumbed to the ideas of the Taliban and supported them. It’s later, when the Taliban went up to Kabul to try to conquer Kabul, they changed their political stance very drastically. Before that, they had been saying, “We do not want power. We will not take power. We will disarm the population, bring peace, and then ask our elders to choose a new government.” Now, that was something quite noble at that time. But once they captured Kabul, they went back to becoming yet another warlord, saying, “We will now rule Afghanistan according to our own principles,” which were a form of a Sunni sect called Deobandism."

read the interview for Amy Goodman​

Journalist Ahmed Rashid on the Taliban’s Return to Power & What Comes Next for Afghanistan | Democracy Now!