A graveyard waits

Today, a more complete dominance by the Taliban looms with the impending pull-back of US troops. The Chinese will maintain ‘hard-borders‘ given their own vulnerabilities with the Uighur uprising, and the pandemic-fatigued Iran will struggle to offer any meaningful opposition to the Taliban. Potentially, the Taliban could crush all opposition and become the ‘export hub‘ of its puritanical-revisionist impulses, for which the first porous destination would be Pakistan.