Meanwhile, girls’ schools are still closed despite a promise they would open on March 23, causing disquiet even among some senior Taliban figures. Men and women, courtesy of Akif’s ministry, are now forbidden from mixing in Kabul’s parks. Rifts at the top of the Taliban’s emirate have emerged in recent weeks as the new government struggles to reconcile the parameters of classical Islamic governance with the twin challenges posed by modernity and running a country that has undergone immense social, cultural and political change in the past 20 years. Used to a life of secrecy, waging jihad over a smartphone and via the occasional foray into combat, he would soon find himself devoid of cover and with a highly public profile as the spokesperson for the government’s most controversial department: the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice - Amr-bil-Ma’roof. This time, however, with the promise of peace on the horizon, he was openly entering the capital as a Talib. Disguised as a student, he had often infiltrated Kabul during the war. “The first thing we did was step out of the car, walk through the city and perform ‘sajdat ash-shukr’ at every turn.”įor rural Afghans who make up the majority of the population and from whom the Taliban draw their strongest support, the Afghan capital has historically been a remote entity. “I cannot explain how I felt,” Akif told me recently. Across the city, fluttering in the summer wind, was the Taliban’s white flag. Taliban control there was tenuous and the surrender of a regional CIA-created militia, the notorious Khost Protection Force, was still being negotiated.
An insurgent propagandist who had been chronicling the frantic last days of the war on Twitter, he was over 60 miles to the southeast, in Loya Paktia. Muhammad Sadiq Akif was not in Kabul as the city fell to the Taliban last August.
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