WHILE at university in Glasgow in the early 1980s I met a guy called Bill (not his real name) in one of my social sciences classes who both fascinated and captivated me. He proudly told me that a few years earlier he had spent 18 months fighting the Soviets with the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

After initial scepticism, I checked the names of the places he mentioned and some of the local leaders he had met and marvelled at a photograph he showed of himself wearing shalwar kameez against a dusty backdrop. I decided he was indeed a freedom fighter to be admired and respected by the rest of us hapless students who were all talk and no action.

While we wrung our hands at the thought of the Soviets invading Afghanistan to prop up Najibullah’s communist government that wanted to promote the secularisation of Afghan society, he had actually got on a plane to Pakistan and crossed the border to be enlisted by the mujahideen at Jalalabad. Absolute legend, we all thought, fighting those commie Bs.

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In the last few days I’ve thought about him a little and wondered what he would have made of the situation in Afghanistan some 40 years later.

Many of those who he fought with – at least those who haven’t perished – will have joined the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s and a few may now even be in positions of power. Then, schools for girls were closed, women who worked at offices were sent home, artefacts at the national museum were hidden, the statues of the Bhuddas of Bamiyan were destroyed.

It was a grim period for women and minorities in the country when some of the firepower the West had given them was turned against them. But, some argued, at last Afghanistan was free of foreign invaders – a rare, rare moment in the country’s history. I’m hearing some of those arguments again today, so instead of shutting them all down I’ve decided to consider them.

From the Mughals in the 16th century to the American coalition at the start of the 21st century, the Soviets’ stay in Afghanistan, and then the Americans' involvement, are part of the continuum of the bloody chapters in its history.

A pawn in the so-called Great Game between Britain and Russia in the 19th century, Afghans for generations have lived under the heavy hand of foreign involvement and control. The weariness of the ordinary Afghani people is systemic and centuries-long. Their need for peace and, frankly, to be left on their own, overrides everything else including it seems their need for women to be allowed to study, work, or run their businesses.

The Herald: A Russian mother embraces her son as he returns from Afghanistan in 1988A Russian mother embraces her son as he returns from Afghanistan in 1988

Could this be one of the reasons in a risk benefit analysis that Afghanis have concluded that women’s education, women’s place in the workplace and the introductions of some elements of sharia law in return for peace might be a sacrifice worth making?

There certainly doesn’t seem to have been any meaningful resistance from ordinary people to the Taliban as they wandered into the capital. The interview by the BBC with the Taliban spokesman at the weekend was also designed to comfort ordinary Afghans. ‘Women can have access to work and education’, ‘people’s properties, their lives are safe’, ‘no-one should leave the country’, ‘come and work with us’ softly spoke the man from Doha. The hundreds of people frantically clinging onto aircraft wings at Kabul Airport tells us that the ordinary people perhaps know something very different.

But yet there are those who are still saying – let’s wait and see. Maybe they are different from the Taliban of the 1990s. Maybe they will concentrate on the economy. Maybe they will respect women’s rights. The problem is, it is easy for a spokesman in Doha to say our ‘policy’ is to keep schools open, that taking revenge against those who worked with the American-coalition is not ‘policy’, but the reality is that the Taliban is not a uniform body. Early indications from other provinces show examples of retribution against those who were seen to have worked with the coalition, and a rolling back of women’s rights: bodies in the street; women being told not to return to their universities in Herat; the white-washing of women’s images in advertising hoardings.

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The symbolism of what it represents in terms of the failure of US and British foreign policy will have widespread repercussions but at the same time, there does seem to be a tiny bit of hope.

The veteran pro-Afghan government resistance leader Ismail Khan – the 75-year-old Lion of Herat – was captured by the Taliban three days ago, and allowed to travel to Iran, unharmed. So far the command structure seems to be holding – the leaders told the fighters to wait outside Kabul and they did, until it was clear the government had disintegrated and fled.

Can we believe even a little of what Taliban Mark 2 are saying? Experience teaches us to be very wary. They may have made a commitment that they won’t allow people from other countries who want to use Afghanistan as a site to launch attacks against other countries into their country, but maybe they have simply evolved to be slicker, and more palatable to our Western sensibilities.

There is some evidence that the Taliban have changed. This time they realise they need big player pals regardless of whether they are Muslim-friendly states or not. They have announced that they see China as a ‘friend’ and are hoping to have conversations with Beijing about investing in reconstruction work as soon as possible. No solidarity, however, for the million or so Uighur Muslims who China incarcerated and the alleged genocide suffered by that community in Xinjiang province.

Ultimately whether we believe their words or not, there are bigger repercussions. We have shown authoritarian rulers around the world that the West has to all intents and purposes given up enforcing its values on regimes that actively hate those values. Whether it’s in Myanmar and the appalling treatment of the Rohingyas, China in Hong Kong and Xinjiang or Lukashenko in Belarus, it’s clear that there are some things we just don’t have the will to fight for any more.

Instead of feeling hopeless all we can do is protect those values in our own country, in our own communities and families, and help, through humanitarian measures, those who flee persecution in those countries.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.