From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban outlawed almost all forms of art while looting and destroying museums. With their resurgence, Australia must strengthen measures to stop trafficking of antiquities.
Segregation and other measures being introduced by the Taliban’s hardline new government are being greeted with widespread protests, many of them led by women.
There are many reasons to be wary of the returned Taliban, but given our investment in the region the Australian government will have to find a way to deal with it.
The caretaker leader for Afghanistan represents a compromise candidate for Taliban factions, but his reactionary past has drawn concern over the fate of minority and women’s rights.
As Friday’s attack by an ISIS sympathiser in a New Zealand supermarket shows, ISIS’s extreme ideology still holds strong appeal for some disaffected Muslims living in the west.
Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A second plot was planned on 9/11, but there were too few terrorists to carry it off. Twenty years later, al-Qaida and its offshoot the Islamic State group still have trouble attracting recruits.
The potential failure of the US military to protect information that can identify Afghan citizens raises questions about whether and how biometric data should be collected in war zones.
Indonesia, as well as many other countries that will see an increase in Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, will be put to a test of humanity and will have to act quickly.
An ‘orderly departure program’ similar to the one set up after the Vietnam War could offer a vital pathway out of Afghanistan for refugees over the next several years.