America abandoned this fight before the Afghans did

The bravest woman I ever met was a schoolteacher in Afghanistan. She was a tiny figure in a black abaya and headscarf, but during the dark days of Taliban rule she had turned her home into a secret classroom for women and girls. Every lesson there was a victory against the odds. It was very difficult for her pupils even to leave their houses; usually they had to go out with a male relative. She would teach her class in whispers, everyone waiting for the sharp rap on the front door that would mean they had been discovered. When British soldiers arrived in her part of Afghanistan, Helmand Province in the south, she opened a proper school. On the day I visited, there were computer classes, paid for by the British taxpayer. The sound of women’s laughter spilled out of the doorway and into the dusty street. I wonder what has become of her now.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, told me earlier this year that the ‘Islamic Emirate’ would respect women’s rights. ‘Islam grants good rights for women,’ he said — for men and children too. We were speaking about the murder of a prominent woman journalist in Jalalabad, shot dead as she left the television station where she worked. Not us, Mujahid said, that was Isis.

He might have been telling the truth about that particular incident. The Taliban leadership has been trying to create a more respectable image, as hard as that might be to believe. The White House was much mocked for saying — as Kabul fell — that the Taliban should seek the international community’s good opinion, at least if they wanted aid. But a former minister in the 1996 Taliban government told me once that their biggest mistake had been in dealing with the West.