“The Taliban’s reign of terror has pushed Afghanistan back into the Stone Age.”
Ah, the Stone Age. 5,500 to 1,600 BC. Young! Stone Age.
Here we go back…
The Taliban must have existed as early as 1600 BC. Look how early this Mohamed started! He was able to draw on more than two thousand years of Taliban history.
If you fill the tank with goblins and drive to cities hundreds of thousands of miles away, you don’t have to worry about the difference between the Stone Age and the Middle Ages.
Such a Middle Ages begins around 476 (end of the Roman Empire) and, according to the usual reading, ends in 1492 with the (re)discovery of America.
The beginning of Islam in the early 7th century fits in very well with this.
Perhaps those in Afghanistan simply want to live by their own values, rather than have Western values imposed on them.
75,000 Taliban defeated about 300,000 state soldiers and police. This is only possible because the Afghans do not want to live according to Western values. The Taliban have a majority there and that applies. In Iran it is different with the mullahs.