KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: Ali Ahmad Alizai has no choice but to obey when the Taliban come knocking on his door demanding food, shelter or a slice of his hard-earned harvest to fund their insurgency.
“The Taliban run a dictatorship here. They have their own laws. We have some security, but no freedom,” the farmer told AFP by telephone from a militant-controlled district of Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province.
Alizai is one of millions living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, where the group controls more territory than at any time since being toppled in 2001 by US-led forces.
As momentum for peace talks builds, with a fresh round of negotiations between the Taliban and Washington set to begin in Doha on Monday, testimonies from Afghans like him paint a picture of what life might be like should the militants return to power as the US exits its longest war.
In some ways Taliban governance appears to have evolved, with the insurgents open to some small compromises as Afghans refuse to part with their hard-won freedoms.
But zeal for the harsh brand of Islamic justice that defined their former regime is unwavering, and remains pivotal to enforcing obedience today in countryside under its influence.
Abdul Bari, who abandoned his home in an insurgent fiefdom in Uruzgan province three months ago, spoke darkly of life under the white flag of the Taliban.
“They would stage public executions from time to time,” the 66-year-old told AFP in Kandahar, where he fled with his family.
“Their fighters would decide the fate of people.”
Taliban courts preside over justice in huge swathes of the country — even areas ostensibly under government control, said Ashley Jackson, a research associate with the Overseas Development Institute.
Verdicts under their own strict interpretation of Sharia law are swift, and punishments severe, from limbs amputated for theft to condemned prisoners hung by roadsides as a warning.
“People are terrified of them,” said Sayed Omar, who escaped Taliban brutality in Uruzgan.
“They have not changed, they are the same as they were during their rule.”
Mohammad Qasem, a shopkeeper who spoke to AFP by phone from another Taliban bastion in Kandahar, said the militants had banned smartphones and confined women to the home — effectively reversing the clock to 1996, when they stormed to power.
But they were “a bit easier” on men having shorter beards — a floggable offense under their former regime.
The Taliban have told AFP they want to establish “an Islamic system” as opposed to the democracy built since 2001, but that they have modified their stance on some issues including dropping a ban on the education of women and girls.
AFP was unable to speak to any women currently living under Taliban rule.
Human Rights Watch senior researcher Heather Barr said in some areas the militants now allow girls to attend primary school, “if it was segregated by gender, the teachers were female, and the Taliban controlled the curriculum.”
However, it was “ridiculous and harmful” to suggest that proved the Taliban had softened their stance on women, she said.
“Limiting girls to primary education is an extreme form of misogyny ... Too many men are in a rush to argue that a Taliban deal will be fine for women. Women know better — but is anyone listening to them?“
Qasem said the restrictions were unpopular. Times have changed since the Taliban were deposed, he added.
“This time, if they don’t change, it might create a backlash,” he told AFP.
There are some signs the insurgents are listening.
Phone use is permitted during the day and televisions watched without fear of punishment, a far cry from the violent Taliban purges against technology in the past.
“What they say is don’t listen to music, listen to sermons and religious programs. But there is no smashing of TV sets anymore,” Thomas Ruttig, from the Afghanistan Analysts Network, told AFP.
The Taliban are also keen to show they can govern a modern nation.
In territory where control is split with the government, the militants ensure teachers and clinic staff show up for work and prod electricity providers to fix power outages.
Jackson said this Taliban “shadow government” exists partly to embarrass corrupt local politicians, but also to exert soft power and demonstrate competence.
“It’s both carrot and stick. I think they realize they have to provide... some tangible benefit,” Jackson said.
Mullah Rauf, a former Taliban commander, said the insurgents had evolved.
“They can’t have a hard-line government anymore. Nowhere in the world do such governments exist,” he told AFP by telephone from Panjwaee, a Taliban district in Kandahar.
As America pushes for a peace deal, many Afghans want to know the Taliban’s intentions once foreign troops leave.
The militants say they do not want to rule by force, but share power with other parties.
Taliban justice is one area “where compromise will be the hardest,” Jackson said.
Ruttig said the militants had not abandoned their ideology, but know “they cannot rule against the population,” and therefore might be open to some compromise.
“But whether that’s good enough for most Afghans — who now have tasted completely different freedoms than what they had under the Taliban — that will be up to the Afghan population,” Ruttig said.
The Taliban have not changed, warn Afghans living under their rule
The Taliban have not changed, warn Afghans living under their rule
- “The Taliban run a dictatorship here. They have their own laws. We have some security, but no freedom,” a farmer said
- As the US pushes for a peace deal, many Afghans want to know the Taliban’s intentions once foreign troops leave
Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran
- The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war
Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.
President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.
The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.
The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the US against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.
“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.
An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker’s colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump’s mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico’s Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn’t hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN’s Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth’s briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth’s rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News’ Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he’s wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve.”
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth’s former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
