Taliban flag rises over seat of power on fateful anniversary

KABUL – The Taliban raised their emblem implicit the Afghan statesmanlike palace Saturday, a spokesperson said, arsenic the U.S. and the satellite marked the 20th day of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The achromatic banner, emblazoned with a Quranic verse, was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the premier curate of the Taliban interim government, successful a low-key ceremony, said Ahmadullah Muttaqi, multimedia subdivision main of the Taliban’s taste commission.

The flag-raising marked the authoritative commencement of the enactment of the caller government, helium said. The creation of the all-male, all-Taliban authorities was announced earlier this week and was met with disappointment by the planetary assemblage which had hoped the Taliban would marque bully connected an earlier committedness of an inclusive lineup.

In a tweet, Afghanistan's archetypal president to travel the 2001 illness of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, called for “peace and stability” and expressed the anticipation that the caller caretaker Cabinet that included nary women and nary non-Taliban would go “inclusive authorities tin beryllium the existent look of full Afghanistan.”

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He marked the 20th day of the 9/11 attacks connected America with a gathering of tribal elders connected his high-walled compound successful the Afghan superior wherever helium has remained with his household since the August instrumentality of the Taliban to Kabul.

Two decades ago, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a dense hand. Television was banned, and connected Sept. 11, 2001, the time of the horrific attacks connected America, the quality dispersed from crackling radios crossed the darkened streets of the Afghan superior of Kabul.

The metropolis seldom had energy and hardly a cardinal radical lived successful Kabul astatine the time. It took the U.S.-led conjugation conscionable 2 months to thrust the Taliban from the superior and by Dec. 7, 2001, they were defeated, driven from their past holdout successful confederate Kandahar, their spiritual heartland.

Twenty years later, the Taliban are backmost successful Kabul. America has departed, ending its ‘forever war’ 2 weeks earlier the 20th day of 9/11 and 2 weeks aft the Taliban returned to the Afghan superior connected Aug. 15.

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Some things person changed since the archetypal play of Taliban regularisation successful the 1990s.

This time, the gun-toting fighters don’t contention done the metropolis streets successful their pickups. Instead, they inch done chaotic, clogged postulation successful the metropolis of much than 5 million. In Taliban-controlled Kabul successful the 1990s, barber shops were banned. Now Taliban fighters get the latest haircuts, adjacent if their beards stay untouched successful enactment with their spiritual beliefs.

But the Taliban person begun issuing harsh edits that person deed women hardest, specified arsenic banning women's sports. They person besides utilized unit to halt women demanding adjacent rights from protesting.

Inside a high-end women's store successful the city's Karte Se vicinity Saturday, Marzia Hamidi, a Taekwondo rival with ambitions of being a nationalist champion, said the instrumentality of the Taliban has crushed her dreams.

She was among the women attacked by the Taliban and called “agents of the West” during 1 of the caller protests. She said she's not amazed astir America's withdrawal.

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“This twelvemonth oregon adjacent year, they had to permission eventually,” she said. “They came for their ain involvement and they near for their interest.”

Hamidi is hoping the Taliban volition relent and easiness their restrictions, but with a glimpse toward the store owner, Faisal Naziri, she said “most men successful Afghanistan hold with what the Taliban accidental astir women and their rules against them.”

Naziri nodded, saying preserving the rights of women is not a origin that volition bring Afghan men connected the streets.

On Saturday, the Taliban adjacent orchestrated a women's march of their own. This 1 progressive dozens of women obscured from caput to toe, hidden down layers of achromatic veils. They filled an auditorium astatine Kabul University’s acquisition halfway successful a well-choreographed snub to the past 20 years of Western efforts to empower women.

Speakers work from scripted speeches celebrating the Taliban triumph implicit a West they charged was anti-Islam. The women marched concisely extracurricular the halfway grounds, waving placards saying “the women who near don’t correspond us,” referring to the galore thousands who fled successful fearfulness of a Taliban crackdown connected women's rights. “We don’t privation co-education,” work different banner.

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Outside the hall, the Taliban manager of higher education, Maulvi Mohammad Daoud Haqqani, said 9/11 was the time “the satellite started their propaganda against america calling america terrorists and blaming us” for the attacks successful the United States.

At a dusty publication store successful Kabul's Karte Sangi neighborhood, Atta Zakiri, a self-declared civilian nine activistic said America was incorrect to onslaught Afghanistan aft 9/11.

He blamed the penetration that followed the 9/11 attacks for creating different procreation of hardline Taliban fighters.

“The Taliban should person been allowed to stay. Why didn't we enactment with them? Instead they went to fight,” helium said." And present we are backmost to wherever we were 20 years ago.”

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