Submitted by: Chuck Baumann
Source: AP Photo/Mohammad Asif Khan
In a nearly thirty minute interview between Jenna Lee Babin of SmartHER News and Holly McKay who is on the ground in Afghanistan, McKay offered some particular insight about the Taliban and their takeover.
As of Sunday, McKay had been in an area controlled by the Taliban, though she was safe.
I cannot say too much right now… but I will say that I have traveled to many places in the world. But I have never fallen in love with a place the way I fell in love with #Afghanistan. The Afghan people are my light on the darkest days. ???? my heart is broken. ?? @jakesimkinpic.twitter.com/
— Hollie McKay (@holliesmckay) August 15, 20217L3nLHVdP5 She explained that when the Taliban came in, they came in on bikes, with "a lot of celebration" and "without any resistance, so there you go." McKay emphasized "there was no fight to this," with "very little gunfire that we heard." Taliban members, McKay believes, had been able to get ahold of police cars and were "enjoying the sirens." She emphasized that it was a "very different vibe."
McKay reminded that Mazar-i-Sharif on Thursday had been "full of life" and she thought reports about northern provinces had been "completely exaggerated," with there being "no imminent threat" where she was. It changed in a matter of days, with by Saturday it becoming a "ghost town" and people lining up to empty bank accounts.
Mazar fell very quickly on Saturday. McKay offered some insight as to why that might be.
"From my understanding of talking to people," McKay said, "the level of corruption within the Afghanistan military and the government, that's how the Taliban run a lot of this. They pay the commanders off to surrender a city before. So those who genuinely do want to fight, and there are a lot of men, a lot of people who genuinely want to fight, they were basically kept in the dark and ANA commanders had been paid off by the Taliban in advance to surrender the city, and they were just left with, you have no choice but to basically run."
Such corruption, McKay said, has "enabled the Taliban to come back to power." She called it "mind-blowing," especially when it comes to weaponry from the Afghan military, paid for by the United States, ending up with the Taliban.
Afghanistan is what McKay called a "classic example" of where corruption is actually the primary problem and terrorism is the secondary one.
The strength and advantages the Taliban has is in their numbers, especially since they're not particularly skilled, McKay offered. She pointed out it was "a real numbers game, in addition to the bribery and paying people off."
A particularly tearful subject was McKay to discuss what will happen next for women. She shared that she had seen only one woman outside, and she was fully covered. McKay "very aware" that Afghanis, particularly women, don't get to leave and go to the United States, like McKay does when she'll get to go back home.
Putting it in perspective, McKay shared that Kabul was "very modernized," and that there was "an entire generation of women, 20 years old now, that have been able to go to school and become doctors and become lawyers and live their lives, and work, and be independent." Under the Taliban, though, "they will never leave the house again, and if they do, they will be completely covered, they will have to have a male escort, they will not go to school." Through tears, McKay said she does "not see that particular situation changing any time soon" and that "that's the end," with the women "having the most to lose."
McKay has written further about Afghani women in "Dispatches from Afghanistan: The future of women in a fallen nation."
Meanwhile, MSNBC's Joy Reid on Saturday had the gall to claim that the plight of women under the Taliban was a "cautionary tale" for what the Christian Right wanted to do to women in the United States.
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