20 years after 9/11 attacks, the Taliban raises its flag over Afghanistan’s presidential palace
- The Taliban has begun issuing harsh edicts that have hit women hardest, such as banning women’s sports. They have also used violence to stop women demanding equal rights
- Taliban’s director of higher education said 9/11 was the day ‘the world started their propaganda against us calling us terrorists and blaming us’ for the attacks in the US
The white banner, emblazoned with a Quranic verse, was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the Taliban interim government, in a low-key ceremony, said Ahmadullah Muttaqi, multimedia branch chief of the Taliban’s cultural commission.
The flag-raising marked the official start of the work of the new government, he said. The composition of the all-male, all-Taliban government was announced earlier this week and was met with disappointment by the international community which had hoped the Taliban would make good on an earlier promise of an inclusive line-up.
In a tweet, Afghanistan’s first president to follow the 2001 collapse of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, called for “peace and stability” and expressed the hope that the new caretaker Cabinet that included no women and no non-Taliban would become an “inclusive government that can be the real face of the whole Afghanistan.”
He marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America with a meeting of tribal elders on his high-walled compound in the Afghan capital where he has remained with his family since the August return of the Taliban to Kabul.
Two decades ago, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a heavy hand. Television was banned, and on September 11, 2001, the day of the horrific attacks on America, the news spread from crackling radios across the darkened streets of the Afghan capital of Kabul.
