Hassan Abbas is a professor at National Defence University in Washington, D.C. He says the Taliban right now are divided between hardliners in Kandahar and more moderates in Kabul. It is the hardliners outside of the capital who are winning even if he says they don't quite know what they are winning. They're going through a very complicated and difficult transition from being an insurgent group and a terrorist group to a group responsible for running the government.
When the Taliban took power, it promised a place for women in its new Afghanistan. Now, hardliners are embracing policies that do the opposite.
This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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