Al Qaeda‘s top leader was hiding out inside the country with no apparent fear of arrest. Women and religious minorities face systematic oppression, international aid groups say, as the government rolls back basic human rights and steadily imposes a media blackout to cover it up.
That description seems to fit Afghanistan today just as well as it did in the late 1990s when the Taliban‘s first reign created one of the world’s most repressive societies and a sanctuary from which Islamic terrorists led by Osama bin Laden launched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.