@LALegault @naturalgasbad

Here’s a VoA article on the matter:
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-president-receives-afghan-ambassador-taliban-seek-recognition-from-russia-iran-/7463837.html

Just… yikes. Let me list off some Taliban highlights for you:

During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. The Taliban and their allies committed massacres against Afghan civilians, denied UN food supplies to 160,000 starving civilians, and conducted a policy of scorched earth, burning vast areas of fertile land and destroying tens of thousands of homes.

The Taliban prevented girls and young women from attending school, banned women from working jobs outside of healthcare (male doctors were prohibited from treating women), and required that women be accompanied by a male relative and wear a burqa at all times when in public. If women broke certain rules, they were publicly whipped or executed.

they have also committed a cultural genocide against the people of Afghanistan by destroying numerous monuments, including the famous 1500-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan

The group is internally funded by its involvement in the illegal drug trade which it participates in by producing and trafficking in narcotics such as heroin, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom.

the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians […] “These are the same type of war crimes as were committed in Bosnia and should be prosecuted in international courts”

On 8 August 1998, the Taliban launched an attack on Mazar-i-Sharif. Of 1500 defenders only 100 survived the engagement. Once in control the Taliban began to kill people indiscriminately. At first shooting people in the street, they soon began to target Hazaras. Women were raped, and thousands of people were locked in containers and left to suffocate. This ethnic cleansing left an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people dead.

Several Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders ran a network of human trafficking, abducting ethnic minority women and selling them into sex slavery in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Brutal repression of women was widespread under the Taliban and it received significant international condemnation. Abuses were myriad and violently enforced by the religious police.

the Taliban imposed restrictions on modern education, banned the education of females, only allowed Islamic religious schools to stay open and only encouraged the teaching of the Qur’an. Around half of all of the schools in Afghanistan were destroyed. The Taliban have carried out brutal attacks on teachers and students and they have also threatened parents and teachers. As per a 1998 UNICEF report, 9 out of 10 girls and 2 out of 3 boys did not enroll in schools. By 2000, fewer than 4–5% of all Afghan children were being educated at the primary school level and even fewer of them were being educated at higher secondary and university levels.

On 11 August 1998, the Taliban destroyed the Puli Khumri Public Library. The library contained a collection of over 55,000 books and old manuscripts, one of the most valuable and beautiful collections of Afghanistan’s cultural works according to the Afghan people.

According to a report from Oxford University the Taliban made widespread use of the conscription of children in 1997, 1998 and 1999.

These are not stable people. They are drug traffickers, kidnappers for profit, slavers, employers of child soldiers, rapists and mass murderers, who justify their criminal behavior with religious extremism.

They are not a government. They are the chaos. They are the bloodshed. Nothing good can come of legitimizing their rule.

At this point US military involvement is out of the question. If they get cash for minerals from Xi, they might get to some welfare state condition similar to Saudi with plenty of repression but at least some prosperity to show for it. Might be preferable to their current state.