Giving the Taliban International Legitimacy Would Be a Disastrous Mistake
by Con Coughlin • September 14, 2021 at 5:00 am
European plans to forge closer ties with Kabul are, though, being severely undermined by the conduct of the new Taliban regime which, rather than living up to its promise to mend its ways, instead appears to be reverting to its old, uncompromising approach.
Recent reports claim that at least four elite Afghan counterterrorism agents have been hunted down and killed by the Taliban during the past three weeks, in one case pulling out all the victim's fingernails before shooting him.
"We have to stop pretending that the Taliban have changed," warned Mr McMaster . "Our self-delusion has led many to embrace an Orwellian reversal of morality in which they view jihadist terrorists as a partner.... The Taliban are determined to impose a brutal form of sharia on the Afghan people and are intertwined with terrorists determined to continue their jihad..." — HR McMaster, former US National Security Advisor, The Sunday Times, September 12, 2021.
Naïve attempts by a number of leading Western powers to foster relations with the newly-installed Taliban regime in Kabul are being undermined by the uncompromising attitude the new Islamist regime.
Following the Taliban's dramatic seizure of control of Afghanistan last month, a number of prominent Western leaders have indicated their willingness to work with the new Afghan regime, following claims by some Taliban leaders that they want to establish a more moderate form of government than the former Taliban regime that terrorised the country in the late 1990s.
