“But if you push the Taliban from the outside, knowing their mindset, they will just put up defences. “Eventually Afghan women, the Afghan people, will assert their rights. Khan however insisted that change had to come from within Afghanistan. One year on, women remain excluded from the Afghan workforce and girls over 14 are still banned from attending school. He defended the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls, describing it as a local “cultural norm” and noting: “Every society’s idea of human rights and women rights are different.” “So the anger I understood, but you can’t justify what happened.” ‘The Afghan people will assert their rights’Ī year ago, Khan caused consternation in the west and among many Afghans when he welcomed the Taliban’s seizure of power, saying it was “breaking the chains of slavery”. He knows the love, respect, reverence of a prophet that lives in our hearts. “Rushdie understood, because he came from a Muslim family.
