Weeks after it came to power following a rapid country-wide offensive, the Taliban has finally taken the first step in announcing a new caretaker government for Afghanistan. As predicted, the cabinet positions are filled with the Taliban old guard with not a single woman included in this caretaker government. Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, long-time head of the Taliban's 'Rehbari Shura' (leadership council), will be taking over as the head of the government. Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban's political office, will be the deputy leader and Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the founder of the infamous Haqqani Network, has been named as the interior minister. To round off the other important positions, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob has been named as the new defence minister, Hedayatullah Badri has been named as the acting finance minister and Amir Khan Muttaqi, a Taliban negotiator during the Doha peace process, has been named as acting foreign minister. In total, 33 members of this caretaker government were named this week by the Taliban in a government that it continues insisting will be as 'representative' of the people of Afghanistan as possible. Naturally, given that an overwhelming majority of the members being announced are Pashtun, claims of being 'representative' are questionable at best. But besides being a group lacking in diverse representation, this cabinet also presents significant challenges to foreign governments who may be looking to engage the Taliban in the future. Almost every major member of the cabinet is either on a UN Sanction list or is on the list of FBI's most wanted criminals. Understandably, this does not make the Taliban's job of gaining international recognition any simpler at this point with countries like India not likely to take kindly to the inclusion of figures who have been outrightly antagonistic to its interests in the past. Currently, it is unknown how long this caretaker government would last though the new government already has its work cut out for it. Afghanistan is in the middle of several intersecting crises that the Taliban has no experience or proven capability of handling. Severe drought in the country is causing a major food insecurity crisis in the country with more than 12 million Afghans or around a third of the population facing an extreme food crisis with crops failing and basic food prices spiking without end. The Afghan economy, propped up by foreign aid, is now in freefall with the country no longer having access to the development funds that drove a significant portion of the nation's public spending. In anonymous interviews, Taliban commanders have admitted that the group does not have the money to pay government salaries at the moment and that it was unprepared for the Kabul government to fall quite so soon as it did. Afghanistan doesn't even mint its own currency with specialist firms overseas sending large deliveries of notes to the country which are obviously no longer forthcoming. With a less than stable grip on the structure of governance and the vast mechanisms of bureaucracy that run a nation, everything from a sustainable flow of electricity to COVID prevention measures, vaccination, etc., is at risk of collapse in the country. Migration and 'brain drain' from the country are expected to increase in the coming days with an estimation of 5,00,000 refugees leaving the nation from various routes by the end of the year. Last time around, the Taliban maintained control of the country in a scattered fashion, acting more as a religious militia than a group that supposedly controlled the country. This time around, an existing system of governance is forcing the Taliban to struggle with the realities of running a modern nation that it is not equipped to deal with as a militant group. Even if the Taliban should choose to lean on foreign powers such as China, Turkey, Pakistan, etc., as some say, it is unlikely that the group would be able to solve all of the many existential challenges the nation is facing at the moment. Yes, Chinese investment may be forthcoming in the future as China looks to exploit Afghanistan's storied mineral wealth but a foreign mining operation can't exactly be considered a near-term solution for the country's problems. The group absolutely needs international aid to flood in from all quarters to prevent any further disaster but this seems difficult as the Taliban has been less than successful in selling an image of moderation and modernity to the international community. Evidently, the course of future for the Taliban-led Afghanistan is not so encouraging.