Afghanistan Peace CampaignKathy Gannon
Substack
August 16, 2025
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Another Afghan carpet telling its tragic history. This one with the date of the Taliban’s return to Kabul in 2021. It shows the Afghans falling from a departing U.S. plane so overwhelmed with fear that even as the American pilots knew Afghans were hanging on to the plane they took off. . Its not clear why they were so afraid the pane was secure so Afghans could enter but also the airport was swarming with soldiers. Why not just turn off its engines and wait for the army to restore order?
Everybody loves an anniversary and none more so than the media.
Yet the anniversary cannot be told without exploring the impact on today’s Afghanistan of the U.S and NATO defeat, its failed 20-year experiment with civil society and its failed isolation policy
After mostly ignoring Afghanistan for much of the last five years, most media outlets these days are competing to tell the story of this devastated nation and offer a glimpse of the 42 million Afghans abandoned five years ago. Why? Because it is an anniversary __ five years of Taliban rule. Yup, five years since the Taliban handed the U.S. and NATO a humiliating defeat and returned to power in Kabul, almost 20 years after being thrown out in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
The attention won’t last, but still there is much that is interesting in the telling of the anniversary.
It is not surprising, yet interesting how most media outlets are framing their anniversary stories as five years since the Taliban’s return to power, rather than the more accurate framing which is: Five years since the Taliban handed the U.S. and NATO a humiliating defeat, returning to power in Kabul nearly 20 years after being thrown out.
Regardless, Afghanistan is at least being remembered.
The anniversary stories will rightly remind us of the Taliban’s outrageous ban on girls from school and women from work, the result of the ludicrous interpretation of Islam by the most powerful in the Talban’s leadership, an interpretation shared by no other Muslim nation.
Some stories might elude to the kaleidoscope of militants that have found or retained space in Afghanistan. There will be some that explore the impacts of sanctions, even some with a more nuanced approach looking at what might be working. Some might even give a mention to the increased safety many Afghans feel since the Taliban’s return, even as they pay a heavy price in lost freedoms for that safety.
Others might explore the amazingly brave work being done by Afghans who stayed in Afghanistan, even as they had the opportunity to flee in 2021. It’s unlikely, however, that those stories will explore the failed 20-year experiment at building an Afghan civil society, most of whom were among the tens of thousands of Afghans evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021.
Their desperate departure and evacuation gave the Taliban the opportunity to brand them Western puppets, and that branding hurt those left behind, those who sought to fight for a better future, regardless of the rulers.
In those early days following the Taliban’s return it was the women who found the courage to speak out, demand change through street protests, but they were leaderless. Still they persisted, coming out on the street, braving threats and attacks, occasionally encouraged by leaders from afar. But eventually as the Taliban crackdown tightened and with only distant support to sustain them, they stopped their protests and Taliban edicts became increasingly harsh.
Those August 2021 evacuation flights that followed the Taliban’s return to power robbed Afghanistan’s 42 million people of some of the country’s most educated, its health professionals, teachers, many of its most promising minds. More than 124,000 Afghans were evacuated by the U.S. while tens of thousands fled through alternative routes. Left behind were 42 million Afghans, half of whom are women and girls, left to rely on support and help from afar.
The most devastating blow, however, has been the international community’s abandonment of Afghanistan. After spending 20 years promising Afghans a brighter future and insisting they would not be left behind, many of those same countries retreated to Doha, a costly, yet comfortable retreat, leaving behind a trail of broken promises.
On April 15, 2021, months before America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan, the then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met Abdullah Abdullah, who was then chair of Afghanistan High Commission for National Reconciliation.
In that meeting Blinken promised that America would “use our full diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian toolkit to support the future the Afghan people want, including the gains made by Afghan women,” according to a U.S. State Department spokesman.
Then America left.
Dr, Abdullah is still in Afghanistan, refusing to leave and even returning to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after a visit with his family in India, while America is nowhere to be found, unless you look in Doha, the comfortable, yet costly capital of the middle Eastern State of Qatar.
On May 12, 2021, less than a month after President Joe Biden announced the troop withdrawal, another broken promise was made, this time at the House Armed Services Committee hearing entitled “An Update in Afghanistan..”
“But the United States is not abandoning Afghanistan. We will maintain a diplomatic presence there, maintain an embassy there and the Department of Defense will continue doing what we can do, you know, through an embassy presence to be able to support our partners and, as I’ve indicated, address the terrorist threats that, you know, if and as they emerge,” Helvey said.
They terrorists threat has emerged and the U.S. is long gone from Afghanistan, safe and secure in Doha.
The singularly most important story and the one most often ignored about the Taliban’s past five years in power is the devastating impact of the U.S.-led decision not to return to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, but instead choosing to isolate the country and its new rulers—the same approach Washington used during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001.
That approach was a spectacular failure. It gave Al Qaeda room to plan the September 11 attacks, did not change Taliban rule, and failed to persuade or pressure then-leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to alter Taliban policy by opening schools for girls or allowing women to work in exchange for international recognition.
Yet Western governments have doubled down on this failed policy, and as a result have empowered the Taliban’s most hardline leaders, who benefit from isolation, sustaining it with escalating restrictions on women and girls.
For Hibatullah, international isolation provided the ammunition he needed to convince rank-and-file members that the West sought only to destroy Islam and Islamic rule in Afghanistan. Hibatullah also used the isolation to weaken those Taliban leaders, who favored engagement with the international community, casting them as weak and willing to betray Afghanistan’s commitment to Islamic rule for international recognition.
A look at the gradual timing and impact of some of the Taliban’s harshest edicts against women and girls suggest that Hibatullah first tested his authority, then as time passed broadened the restrictions by framing Afghanistan’s continued isolation as against Islam allowing him to consolidate his power and weaken internal dissent.
The initial edicts were ambiguous. The wordings suggested they were temporary, seemingly to reassure Afghans and the international community that it was a changed movement and for some within the movement it was. They would quickly be silenced..
The first edict issued on Aug. 24, 2021 ordering women off the job was presented as temporary until arrangements could be made to ensure their safety. It was permanent, except for health workers, who have since been allowed back to work.
On Sept. 11, 2021 finance ministry workers were ordered home and again it was suggested it was temporary until arrangements could be made for their return, but for most it was permanent,
On Sept, 17, 2021 the Taliban abolished the Women’s Affairs ministry and in its wake resurrected the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, tasked with implementing the Taliban’s edicts, particularly those targeting women and girls.
In September 2021 high school girls were not allowed to return to school, and again the edict presented it as temporary. It wasn’t.
In November 2021 Taliban restricted the appearance of women on television dramas and other programs. In December an edict was issued telling women they could travel only a short distance without the accompaniment of a male relative.
By the time 2022 rolled around the restrictions became more frequent, more harsh and the ambiguity was gone. Hibatullah clearly felt more confident, more entrenched, showing less regard for dissenting voices within the movement’s leadership.
In March, 2022 just hours before schools were to reopen for all girls in all grades, the Taliban leader, Hibatullah, rescinded the Taliban’s promise to open the schools and ordered them closed.
This move was particularly telling because had the school opening proceeded as promised, it is almost certain the U.S. and other Western countries would have returned to Afghanistan. They might even have given the Taliban rulers recognition.
Clearly Hibatullah neither cared about recognition nor wanted their return.
Additional restrictions in 2022 included an edict ordering airlines to refuse to board women passengers without a male companion. Other edicts demanded women wear the full hijab, preferably the burqa, but not required.
And the edicts continued: Women TV presenters were required to cover their faces, flight attendants were removed from their jobs, and women were barred from parks and gyms and provided only limited acces to amusement parks.
In August 2022 female university students were ordered to cover their faces in the classroom and by December 2022 they were no longer allowed to attend university classes.
The outcries and threats from the international community did nothing to change a single edict, nor did the promise of international recognition move Hibatullah.
Quite the opposite.
As 2023 began so did more edicts from the Taliban leader.
In early April 2023, the Taliban banned women from working in any United Nations office, a clear indication that Hibatullah was unmoved by the sanctions that had been imposed on Afghanistan and uninterested in international recognition. Instead, the ban appeared to be a deliberate effort to push the international community further away.
To his advantage—and to the detriment of Afghans, especially women and girls—the international community obliged the Taliban leader by staying their futile course
The U.N. ban which was issued in April 2023 was distinct from the earlier December 2022 edict barring women from working at all NGOs, underscoring how Hibatullah gradually escalated his campaign against women and girls.
By the time 2023 ended the Taliban ordered all women’s beauty salons closed, eliminating a rare source of income for women as well as issuing an edict banning girls access to private education courses.
In many ways, 2024 was worse. The Vice and Virtue Ministry codified sweeping restrictions on women’s dress, movement, and public participation. By December, 2024, the Taliban had barred women from medical education, including nursing and midwifery.
In March 2024 the Taliban announced that public flogging and stoning to death would be enforced for women violating the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia or Islamic law. Since then there have been numerous instances of such punishments reported against women.
In 2025 a new decree on marriages and women’s rights in marriages was a rare offering of protection for women, reaffirming women’s rights in marriage, including prohibiting forced marriage and stating that a woman’s dowry belonged to her. It also provided a mechanism for girls/women to complain to a court if male guardians violated their marriage rights. It did not ban underage marriage.
In January 2026 the Taliban issued a new Criminal Procedure Code for Courts instituting sweeping laws to formalize everything from criminal punishment to gender discrimination, according to a March 2026 Amnesty International report.
The new code “institutionalizes torture and other ill-treatment through corporal punishment and allows the death penalty for a wide range of offences. Additionally, the regulation entrenches discrimination based on gender, religion, belief, and social status,” said Amnesty International.
An August 2026 United Nations Women’s report on the state of women’s rights since the Taliban’s return to power said the Taliban rulers have issued more than 100 decrees targeting women and girls.
While Afghanistan may have vanished from Washington’s headlines, but every day that Washington clings to isolation, Afghans living under Taliban rule are left to carry the cost of a policy that punishes the vulnerable, more than the powerful.
The five years of Taliban rule shows that Washington’s policy of isolation stands as a spectacularly costly failure: rather than weakening the Taliban government, it has empowered its hardliners and left women and girls to bear the heaviest consequences.
If Washington is serious about standing with Afghans, it must stop mistaking punishment for policy and choose engagement by returning to Afghanistan __ which does not require recognition. As many as 17 embassies are open in Afghanistan, and none, but Russia has recognized the Taliban government.