As Taliban members gathered near the abandoned US embassy in Kabul today to celebrate the second anniversary of their dramatic return to power, the rest of the world remains in rare agreement: two years on, not a single country has formally recognised Afghanistan’s ruling government.
This lack of foreign recognition is hardly surprising. The Taliban has abandoned its initial promise to govern less harshly than during its previous stint in power. Instead, its leaders have imposed what the UN labels a “gender apartheid” – with women once again banned from education and most of public life. And, through its crackdown on the arts, it has also inflicted a cultural poverty, where the sale of musical instruments, for instance, is now deemed a punishable offence.
