There is a young woman sheltering under a tree between two busy roads clutching a pile of documents to her chest.
These pieces of paper are more important to Bibi Nazdana than anything in the world: they are the divorce granted to her after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride.
They are the same papers a Taliban court has invalidated - a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.
Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month.
If we had installed a tribal council with a few elected positions to counterbalance it; not let the DEA burn cash crops, (buy it and give it to the pharma companies); and installed basic corruption controls, (including among our own reporting lines); the Taliban would never have been allowed back into the country. They were the best alternative in 1991 and remain so in the people’s eyes. They have been ripped apart by fighting since the late 1970’s, they’re tired and want the peace more than they want rights. They would have taken both if we had been even halfway competent and not hellbent on creating USA II: The Middle Eastening.