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Speaking of not educating women, how is Afghanistan doing these days under the Taliban? This is not a rhetorical question. I want to know what things are actually like on the ground over there.
I have multiple friends who visited recently. I can PM some travelogues, instagrams etc. if you're really curious. (You can e.g. enter by land from Tajikistan and just enter with a US passport, no issues.)
Tl;dr: Ok, for men outside capital. "Ok" means better than the impoverished half of humanity in Africa and India, but way worse than Colombia, El Salvador or such (and far more expensive for luxuries). They're trying but we shouldn't expect economic growth or anything since the huge subsidies disappeared.
The capital's facing a water shortage, which will probably lead to mass deaths. International agencies were transporting supplies and subsidizing life in the capital, whose metro population doubled or tripled (depending on source) since 2000 while the aquifers sunk 100ft. The Taliban aren't particularly competent, but worse: They don't receive massive subsidies.
Pakistan's bombing the capital because the Afghani Taliban are harboring some group.
Otherwise, life in the North is "ok". Some Ismailis are being forced to convert. Beauty salons, women on TV etc. have been banned (but only after a few years). There's a "Fachkräftemangel" since women can no longer work in many fields (but are still common in medicine, education...), while the previous government exerted great effort to train them in particular. (I know some Afghan women in e.g. Indonesia or Turkey, now.)
Much criminality, drug use, pedophilia etc. have been eradicated. Thefts may or may not be up.
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Tangentially related, and very funny, but the lads over there are discovering that it was way more fun to live life with an AK47 and a holy purpose than it is with a laptop and a rush hour commute.
https://time.com/6263906/taliban-afghanistan-office-work-quiet-quit/
Genuinely hilarious
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Though it's hardly perceptible through a Western overton window, the Taliban moderated immensely to win back power while in exile. In essence, they purged any extra-Quranic elements of their organization (such as the unspoken Pashtun supremacism) to broaden the tent. This has had undeniably stabilizing effects (the semi-permanent anti-Pashtun rival army that had held out in the north for decades failed to reform this time as non-Pashtuns are represented at the highest levels) and some wish-washery that seems to please no one (the New Taliban likes modernity enough to force mujahids who just want to run around the desert shooting shit to get office jobs but not enough to keep schools open for Kabul's women). I've seen some conflicting evidence on whether they've managed to staunch Afghanistan's US-induced freefall in birthrate but it's probably too soon to tell.
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