The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

Both the Saudis and Pakistanis assured us that the Taliban would moderate their views as they gained experience. This was wishful think- ing. The Taliban were determined to rewrite 1,400 years of Islamic history and take Islam back to the 7th centu- ry. In their warped world view, Shariah (Islamic law) strictly gov- erned both the state and personal behavior. There was no sense of social justice, openness to foreign ideas, or science — all part of the first centuries of Muslim belief. Within 24 hours of taking Kabul, the “students” imposed sweeping changes. All women were banned from work, and since they represent- ed one-quarter of the civil service, the majority of Afghan health-care providers, and most teachers, the social impact was devastating. Schools for girls were closed and a strict dress code instituted for women. The U.N. estimated that 50,000 widows with children were unable to work or even walk the streets without being beaten by the religious police. The restrictions on men were less onerous but still real; men without beards, for example, were subject to beatings and impris- onment. Meanwhile, 1996 was an election year in the United States. Secretary of State Warren Christopher had barely mentioned Afghanistan in the past four years, and unpopular inter- ventions in Bosnia and Haiti had left the Clinton administration gun shy of any entanglement that the public would not support. The assistant sec- retary of State in charge of the region went so far as to declare: “We do not favor one faction over another.” The U.S. Agency for International Development had closed its humani- tarian aid office in Kabul early in the Clinton presidency. Our interest in the country appeared to be limited to construction of a gas pipeline through it from Turkmenistan to Pakistan under a U.S. consortium headed by Unocal. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. belat- edly came to the conclusion that Osama bin Laden, 17th son of a Saudi billionaire, was a serious threat. We pressed Sudan to expel him. The D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 57 Despite the recent progress, the country’s prospects are clouded by four mutually reinforcing problems.