THE NEW GUYS TALIBAN
New friends and old enemies
Jason Burke, page 14 →
On Tuesday, the last US troops left Kabul and the day had broken on a country entirely controlled by the Taliban, the last shadow of American threat banished.
It is still uncertain what this second iteration of the caliphate will look like, but with foreigners finally gone, the shape of the new Afghanistan will come into sharper focus.
The Taliban have made clear they want to avoid a repeat of their 1990s rule when they presided over an international pariah state, mismanaged the economy and increased repression as discontent spread. What is less clear is whether they can achieve that, or
