We must never forget the Taliban horror

Saying "troops out of Afghanistan now" is based on shocking levels of short memory. How is letting the Taliban death-cult in through the back door supposed to be progressive and left-wing?

This blog has always unequivocally opposed the Iraq war and its mismanagement. Afghanistan, however, offers a radically different picture.

The recent US air-strike and the controversy over the number of civilian casualties in the province of Farah have reminded the world that thousands of Western troops are still bogged down in that country and that no end is in sight.

However, it would be difficult to deny that if NATO troops left Afghanistan tomorrow, it would probably take five minutes for the whole country to be regained by the Taliban. For some people, this isn't our problem.

Sure, "liberated" Afghanistan is still struggling with deeply entrenched misogynism and a terrifying series of problems. But as much as each US air-strike going wrong may feel like a disgrace and more should be done to avoid civilian casualties, it is also impossible to feel any sympathy for the supporters of a regime who made "WE LOVE DEATH MORE THAN YOU DO LIFE" their call to arms.

The Taliban regime that held Afghanistan hostage between 1996 and 2001 is possibly one of the most disgusting ones in living memory. Drenched in ideology, its basic tenet was an utmost state of paranoia and obsession with vice and virtue that were used to justify a mind-boggling series of prohibitions. Life in Taliban Afghanistan must have felt like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a succession of people pointing the finger at other people the other side of the road, shouting that they were not "pure and virtuous" enough.

As part of their war on women, the Taliban decided that even the Iranian chador was to be banned as "stimulating" and "sexually attractive". Women were only allowed to wear the burqa. Kept in a state of apartheid that would make 1970's South Africa look liberal by comparison, women were banned from working and even from receiving any kind of education. Households were required to blacken their windows so that no woman could be seen from outside. They couldn't even speak loudly in public lest a stranger should hear a woman's voice. All Afghani females could do was to be used as reproductive machines. Nothing more.

The feast of prohibitions, however went further. Movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and beard trimming. Satellite dishes, cinematography, stereos, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards. In 2001, the Taliban also issued a decree ordering non-Muslims to wear distinctive yellow patches.

It doesn't take much of a logical leap to conclude that implementing such a regime must have required industrial doses of violence, death, terror and brutality.

As recent as December 2008, the Taliban controlling the areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan issued official death threats towards any girl attending school. In the process over 100 schools were blown up and 17,000 students deprived of education.

Short memory is integral to human nature. And it must be this, and a nice set of blinkers no doubt, that is prompting some people on the left to cry that the Americans cannot and "should not bring Afghanistan into submission with bombs". The Stop the War coalition says that "only the Afghan people themselves can generate a political solution to their country’s problems".

Except that they don't explain how. So perhaps they mean the same way millions fled the Taliban regime throughout the 90s. Or a repeat of the Hazara Afghanis running for their lives. Or the way women weren't allowed to receive medical treatment.

Should we let them sort it out by themselves? Why doesn't John Pilger talk about it? Why doesn't George Galloway? Tony Benn? Lindsey German?

The question of what would happen if Western troops left tomorrow is obviously not part of their preoccupations. They've obviously forgotten that the whole country was already humiliated into submission, that the Talibani created - to quote Amnesty International - "the world's largest single refugee group", and that millions of women were treated worse than animals in a laboratory and that no American war blunder is worse than a genocidal death cult with absolutely zero respect for any human life.

To find out more about the oppression of women under the Taliban regime, visit the Feminist Majority Foundation website.