The sins committed by Taliban are too ghastly. I hope the forum members all look at the various attacks and abuses done by Taliban all these years. For the Afghans under occupation (especially women), US and Afghan government have been objectively better than Taliban. That is indisputable.
I hope you are willing to spend some reading time to dig deeper on what you perceive. And I think you are quite narrowly over focusing on the women issue. Afghanistan is
facing so many pressing social-economic and health issues after being under occupation for twenty years! And your sticking to the perception that today's Taliban is just the same as the one prior to the United States' 20-year occupation is questionable.
Geopolitics, Profit, and Poppies: How the CIA Turned Afghanistan into a Failed Narco-State
The war in Afghanistan has looked a lot like war on drugs in Latin America and previous colonial campaigns in Asia, with a rapid militarization of the area (2021)
A recent poll conducted by Gallup found that Afghans are THE SADDEST people on Earth, with nearly 9 in 10 respondents “suffering” and zero percent of population “thriving,” in their own words; rate their lives out of a score of ten, average answer of 2.7.
Taliban eventually emerged as dominant force in Afghanistan and attempted to gain international legitimacy by stamping out Opium trade. They're remarkably successful. A 2000 ban on opium cultivation by Taliban led to an almost overnight drop to just 185 tons harvested the following year.
The effect of the US occupation was to expand drug production to unprecedented new proportions, Afghanistan becoming, in Prof. Alfred McCoy’s estimation,
the world’s first true narco-state. McCoy notes that by 2008, opium was responsible
for well over half of the country’s GDP. By comparison, even in Colombia’s darkest days, cocaine accounted for only 3% of its GDP.
Prof. Alfred McCoy, author of
“The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade”
Today (June 2021), UN estimates that around 6,300 tons of opium (and rising) is produced yearly, with 224,000 ha — an area almost the size of Rhode Island — planted with poppy fields.
The
opium-addiction effect on the Afghan population has been nothing short of a disaster. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of adult drug users jumped from 900,000 to 2.4 million, according to the United Nations, which estimates that almost one in three households are directly affected by addiction. While Afghanistan also produces copious amounts of marijuana and methamphetamine, opioids are the drug of choice for most, with around 9% of the adult population (and a growing number of children) addicted to them. Added to this has been a spike in HIV cases, as users share needles,
Professor Julien Mercille, author of
“Cruel Harvest: U.S. Intervention in the Afghan Drug Trade,” told MintPress.
What is important to understand is that one of the key strategic objectives of the 2001 war on Afghanistan was to restore the opium trade following the Taliban government’s successful 2000-2001 drug eradication program which led to a 94% collapse in opium production.
“In 2000-2001, Taliban government –in collaboration with the UN– had imposed a successful ban on poppy cultivation. Opium production declined by more than 90% in 2001. In fact the surge in #OPIUM cultivation occurred AFTER THE DOWNFALL of Taliban regime.
How the US would love the world to believe that Talibans are some sort of terrorists...
