Have the Taliban changed a lot, or did we have it wrong?

It was known that the Taliban, which had for some time been advancing in Afghanistan by capturing all the cities, was at the same time continuing negotiations with the US and the government in Doha. While these negotiations were continuing, the Taliban's advance and its most recent entry into Kabul, faster than anticipated, was at first glance a contradiction. Whereupon all the familiar clichés about the US came back into play.

There must again be a US plan at work in the event. It evidently left Afghanistan to the Taliban, and there must be far deeper and far more insidious calculations concerning this abandonment.

What could this calculation be, for example? That the Taliban's well-known wild appearance, with the plentiful terrifying images it will produce around the world in the name of Islam and sharia, would create a legitimate atmosphere for new Islamophobic wars?

But for such a scenario, was it worth it for the US to risk, before the eyes of the whole world, let alone its honor and dignity, the razing of its own charisma, credibility, prestige and image?

Whatever anyone says, an image of clear rout has formed for the US. Plentiful visual scenes in which the American legend completely collapsed have been engraved in the world's mind. Not only its own soldiers but the images that everyone who had cooperated with it over the 20-year process gave at the airport and at the country's borders made the whole world say that cooperating with the US, trusting it, against one's own country has a price that will sooner or later be paid dearly. From this point on, who can dare to cooperate with the US against their own country?

This is a very striking and important dimension of the matter. But some people can still make comments on the US withdrawal and the Taliban's clear victory that will feed the US legend even further. Yet Biden in fact explained this withdrawal and the Taliban's entry into Kabul in a far more reasonable and far more convincing way: "The US gave the Afghan government everything it needed. We had 300 thousand Afghan soldiers trained and a regular army established. These could have fought against 75 thousand Taliban forces. It was not inevitable that they would surrender or flee without fighting. The Afghan political leaders surrendered and fled the country, and the Afghan army refused to fight. American forces should not fight and die in a war that Afghan forces refuse to fight." What more is there to say?

In fact, what both the US and the elements of the Afghan government trusted in the negotiations held in Doha, what the Taliban too took into account as a force, was the existence of this 300 thousand-strong army. This army was keeping the Taliban from advancing a little further, and was regarded in the negotiations as a trump card for the other side. But what neither the US nor the Taliban itself expected was the psychological collapse into which this army fell, instead of fighting, in the face of the ever-advancing Taliban.

Before taking Kabul, the Taliban had captured nearly 30 city centers, including Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. But its capturing these places did not mean it would march on Kabul too. The movement there during the negotiations was in fact to advance as far as it could until the expected signing of a ceasefire and, with the ceasefire, to have the upper hand. But when news spread in the face of this movement that the President, the interior minister and many other ministers had left the country, the Taliban's advance on Kabul too became inevitable. Even the Taliban spokesman himself had to say, "we too were not expecting to enter Kabul."

This outcome was a situation that US President Biden definitely could not foresee either. Of course the idea was to leave Afghanistan to a new political formation of which the Taliban would also be a partner, but leaving it entirely to the Taliban was not in the calculation.

What was not in the calculation became real. From whichever side you look, this picture emerged, for the Taliban, as the result of a 20-year patient and determined resistance. Without paying much attention to the perception campaigns produced about itself, the Taliban quietly succeeded in drawing the great majority of the Afghan people to its side against the unrest the Afghan people were experiencing within themselves, the consequences of the occupation, corruption and bad governance. That is why it did not enter any city by force. It entered all of them as easily as it entered Kabul. Because where it entered, the great majority of the people received it with acceptance. And in the cities it entered it did not, as some expected, carry out massacres and shed blood; it neither spread terror and fear nor made any serious change in the administrative cadres. It wanted everyone to continue their work from where they had left off.

Even on interference with women, over which it gained the worst reputation, it gave completely unexpected messages. Let alone shutting women up at home or punishing them barbarically, it even announced that they could work in government.

Contrary to what might normally be expected from a movement that has achieved a military success on this scale, there was no security vacuum, looting, rape or excess in the city. On the contrary, the Taliban commanders and soldiers who captured the presidential palace listened there, in all their reverence and humility, to Surat al-Nasr being recited in tears.

Evidently we are at a point where everyone needs to forget everything they have heard and known about the Taliban.

Once again, of course, we will go on watching with amazement the Taliban, which has entered our agenda again at full speed and to our surprise. Probably in the meantime we will either say that the Taliban has changed a great deal, or perhaps each time we will see with amazement what kind of victims we have been of the many perception operations produced about the Taliban.