Four years have passed since the Taliban returned to power, ending two decades of international efforts in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021. While the Taliban celebrated the day as the “conquest of Kabul,” non-Taliban groups, including members of Afghanistan’s diaspora around the world, marked the anniversary with events to reflect on yet another traumatic and regressive turn in the country’s tumultuous history. During a recent conference in Melbourne on the Taliban’s deepening human rights repression, I found myself in conversations about how the past four years passed so quickly. Those conversations left me with lingering questions about whether people under the Taliban’s rule could have experienced the lapse of the past four years with the same speed. In a stable, developed and Western context, time is compressed between the busy routines of personal and professional lives, marked by regular events, including holidays and work deadlines, as well as major global conflicts and crises. Therefore, it is easy to let Afghanistan and its people recede from individual and collective consciousness.
The Experience of Time and Tyranny Under the Taliban in Afghanistan (Niamatullah Ibrahimi – Just Security)
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