Taliban mark Afghan independence as challenges to rule the country rise
Kabul: The Taliban celebrated Afghanistan's Independence Day on Thursday by declaring they beat the United States, but challenges to their rule ranging from running a country severely short on cash and bureaucrats to potentially facing an armed opposition began to emerge.
With many ATMs out of cash and worries about rising food prices in this nation of 38 million people reliant on imports, the Taliban face all the challenges of the civilian government they dethroned without the level of international aid it enjoyed. Meanwhile, opposition figures gathering in the last area of the country not under Taliban rule talked of launching an armed resistance under the banner of the Northern Alliance, which allied with the U.S. during the 2001 invasion.
Still, it was not clear how serious a threat they posed given that the militants overran nearly the entire country in a matter of days with little resistance from Afghan forces. Many fear the Taliban will succeed in erasing two decades of efforts to expand women's and human rights in Afghanistan and remake the country. The Taliban so far have offered no specifics on how they will lead, other than to say they will be guided by Shariah, or Islamic, law. They are in talks with senior officials of previous Afghan governments. But they face an increasingly precarious situation. A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is unfolding before our eyes, warned Mary Ellen McGroarty, the head of the World Food Program in Afghanistan. Beyond the difficulties of importing food, she said that drought has seen over 40% of the country's crop lost. Many who fled the Taliban advance now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul. This is really Afghanistan's hour of greatest need, and we urge the international community to stand by the Afghan people at this time, she said.
Thursday marked Afghanistan's Independence Day, which commemorates the 1919 treaty that ended British rule in the central Asian nation. Fortunately, today we are celebrating the anniversary of independence from Britain," the Taliban said.
"We at the same time as a result of our jihadi resistance forced another arrogant power of the world, the United States, to fail and retreat from our holy territory of Afghanistan. Unacknowledged by the insurgents, however, was their violent suppression of a protest Wednesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad, which saw demonstrators lower the Taliban's flag and replace it with Afghanistan's tricolor."
