In other news, 9th Century tribesmen
Are acting like it's the 9th Century
In today’s news the bleeding hearts of the United States have discovered that the Afghanistan Taleban are … acting like Taleban.
Huh. Couple of Womxn’s Studies types are all a-twitter because the Taleban have announced a permanent ban on the education of women.
Oh, darlins, where the hell have y’all been the last four years? I ask, because that — 2021 — is when the little bugsnipes started enforcing the ban which has y’all’s jimmies all rustled. Four years later.
What is new, but seems to be quietly overlooked by the pastel-coiffed types, is the updated Penal Code rolled out by the Taleban on 04 JAN 2026.
For the life of me I can’t understand why that’s being ignored — in favour of something that’s been going on for four (4) years — because it’s a real doozy.
While slavery is a de facto part of life1 in the Middle East, the new Taleban Penal Code makes it a de jure fact. Let me re-phrase that: they have acknowledged and written the status of slave into their law.
In something that should be a surprise to absolutely no-one, they have also legally ranked their entire society (outside of slaves, of course) into four castes: 1) scholars, 2) elites, 3) middle class, and 4) lower class.
I’m sure y’all will be absolutely shocked to learn that criminal punishments vary according to which social class you’re in.2
The really fun part — the part that should make their neighbors to the West nervous3 — is that the law makes the Taleban’s particular cult of Islam to be the only True and Righteous Musselmen4, and everybody else is a damned dirty heretic — especially those filthy Twelver apostates.5
That’s one potential rathole for fleeing Iranian mullahs off the menu.
Looks like the patience of the Paki ISI6 and the Jamiat Ulema-e Islam (but I repeat myself) has paid off in spades. Ugh.
There are other fun parts — any Taleban male is allowed to punish any heretic, and definitions of “heresy” are broad enough that sneezing at the wrong time probably counts — but I linked a precis above, so read at your leisure.
What does this mean to the United States? Honestly, short term, not much.
Other than beating — metaphorically, yet often and continually — Joe “Bubbles In His Think Pudding” Biden, Kamala “Cackles” Harris, and the entire sodding Democratic National Committee over the head regarding the fact that the craptacular Mongolian Charlie Foxtrot they called a “Successful Withdrawal from Afghanistan” left the Taleban in possession of several billions dollars worth of military equipment they could use in carrying out their new laws, of course.
Long-term? That’s more hazy. Globally? If the Iranian mullahs are toppled, Pakistan becomes the Undisputed #1 State Sponsor of Terrorism. Will that actually change anything? Probably not — Iran’s networks (Shi’a) won’t take too easily to working with Pakistanis (Sunni).
Regionally? If Iran goes secular, expect cross-border bushwa by Taleban religious fanatics. China will get their slimy meat-hooks on the natural resources of Afghanistan.
Locally? I’m sorry, but it’s going to suck to be a majority part of the population of Afghanistan … but that’s not a United States problem, nor a problem for the West as a whole.
This is, and will be, Afghanistan’s — the “Graveyard of Empires” — problem, with any solution to said problem needing to come from the people of said Graveyard.
Ian
Yes, it is. I’ve seen human beings being bought and sold in a Dubai souq, and I’ve walked through an open-air slave market in Tripoli.
Guess which class gets the kid-glove treatment for everything. Go on, guess!
Iran.
Yes, I realize that’s rude. That’s why I used it. New here?
A Latin phrase that means “The Iranian mullahs”.
See footnote 4, above.
Just love your use of bugsnipe. I think i remember a senior NCO use it back in 80's when i was in. Kinda nostalgic!
Hear, hear!