US officials in the 1990s accepted Taliban rule as a workable Saudi-style partner

Evidence

57.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, 1153

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter-15 claim that US policymakers accepted Taliban-style dictatorship as tolerable, treating oil access as outweighing democracy and women’s rights — this is the concrete quotation evidencing that policy stance. — connects to: US policymakers accepted Taliban-style dictatorship as a tolerable analogue to Saudi Arabia. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 1136; US officials accepted anti-democratic Taliban rule as geopolitically workable; US officials expected Afghanistan under Taliban rule to mirror Saudi subordination — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 1153 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Loose fit to the ‘grafting & growth’ trees-as-infrastructure article only via Saudi oil-for-security logic; stronger as evidence for the reader’s machine-recoils thread showing how US commercial-dictator alliances (Saudi model) prefigured the good-vs-bad imperial frame later turned on Taliban.

Broader Connections

• US officials accepted anti-democratic Taliban rule as geopolitically workable #corroborates (0.95)
• US officials expected Afghanistan under Taliban rule to mirror Saudi subordination #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 1153