Struggling outside the cities of Afghanistan (country, people, areas, versus)

[Cida]

Seems like very different situations in the city versus in rural areas. And I think that American troops didn't really get that. The Taliban seem to have understood that better.



The Other Afghan Women
Late one afternoon this past August, Shakira heard banging on her front gate. In the Sangin Valley, which is in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan, women must not be seen by men who aren’t related to them, and so her nineteen-year-old son, Ahmed, went to the gate. Outside were two men in bandoliers and black turbans, carrying rifles. They were members of the Taliban, who were waging an offensive to wrest the countryside back from the Afghan National Army. One of the men warned, “If you don’t leave immediately, everyone is going to die.”
Not long afterward, the mujahideen toppled the Communists in Kabul, and they brought their countryside mores with them. In the capital, their leaders—who had received generous amounts of U.S. funding—issued a decree declaring that “women are not to leave their homes at all, unless absolutely necessary, in which case they are to cover themselves completely.” Women were likewise banned from “walking gracefully or with pride.” Religious police began roaming the city’s streets, arresting women and burning audio- and videocassettes on pyres.
https://madisonvfp.org/new-yorker-th...n-anand-gopal/

[Bettafish]

This is not really news. Many people have already known the fact that the locals hate western troops, although it does not fit in the narrative of mainstream media.