US officials accepted anti-democratic Taliban rule as geopolitically workable
Evidence
One US diplomat expressed the logic and the underlying lack of regard for women’s rights: “Taliban will develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 1136
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Cancels the surface rationale of war as liberation; echoes themes in The Reluctant Fundamentalist about America’s cynical engagement with the region.
- SEED: Essay angle: how US ‘can live with that’ pragmatism toward authoritarian Islamism mirrors Cold War toleration of brutal allies.
Related
- US officials in the 1990s accepted Taliban rule as a workable Saudi-style partner (similarity 0.92)
- US policymakers accepted Taliban-style dictatorship as a tolerable analogue to Saudi Arabia. (similarity 0.92)
- US officials expected Afghanistan under Taliban rule to mirror Saudi subordination (similarity 0.91)
- The US forged relations with the Taliban to access Caspian energy resources (similarity 0.83)