Afghanistan Back To 7th Century

 Afghanistan had socially barely stepped into the mid 20th century by  ....

Afghan Women 1950s - 1970s - 2025 - A Decline In Freedoms

..... the beginning of the 21st century.

But the retaking of the country by the Taliban in 2021, has consigned even those tenuous and fragile social gains and semi-enlightenment, into the dustbin of history again. 

In the few years that they have retaken control, they have banished females over age 12 from all education including midwifery, and removed courses on human rights and sexual harassment from education classes. Women are even banned from parks and amusement parks, all in the name of Sharia law.

Books written by women are banned, and recently the Internet was closed down (for reasons of morality they say .... they said that a new method of access would be made available), which also brought down much of the telephone system. Literally plunging the country into a new dark ages which is where they want the country to be .... but after a day the chaos proved to be too much and the Internet was turned back on, but its not entirely clear if that was for the whole country or just a few major cities.

Child and women's mortality rates are rocketing, as childbirth is now as risky to both as it was in the Middle Ages. Malnutrition is now a major cause of death as foreign food donors (via the World Food Program) have withdrawn since the Taliban return in 2021, many because of the Taliban's treatment of women and lack of any human rights. 

Corporal punishment through public floggings and group-enforced executions are back in use, and they have said that they will reinstate the stoning of women to death for alleged adultery – a Taliban punishment on women that allegedly was never fully eradicated even during the U.S/NATO control. 

Politically the country is turning to the amoral Chinese (they don't care about women's rights or human rights), who have an embassy and are negotiating or have signed mining and mineral deals with the Taliban under their Belt and Road initiative. Minerals like lithium, copper, iron, gold and uranium are abundant in Afghanistan and the US didn't exploit them when it controlled the country, a mistake it is now regretting, as they apparently also do the loss of Bagram airport, which the Chinese and Russians are looking to exploit.

The Taliban have also apparently nothing from their last period of power, because they are allowing al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to use Afghanistan as a base of operations again, by running training camps in 13 out of the nation’s 34 provinces. They also offer al-Qaeda religious schools, and safe houses for their leaders and their families who transit between Afghanistan and Iran, as well as weapons storage facilities, although the Taliban leadership have claimed that Afghani soil will not be used to attack anyone. 

However If al-Qaeda go on to attack the mainland USA again, from or via Afghanistan, in a 9/11 repeat,  I suspect the Taliban may find the US more likely to bomb the country even further into the stone age, rather than invade again. You can't help wondering if Afghanistan will ever become even a semi-normal Muslim country, let alone a civilised one.