While the Taliban continue to alienate the Afghan people with their hardline policies, certain media outlets still portray scattered and lackluster gatherings of exiled groups as the “opposition to the Taliban”, as if these few familiar faces were the sole embodiment of a nation’s collective anger and defiance.
The reality, however, is far broader than these staged events. The Taliban have no genuine supporters, except for a small circle of beneficiaries and loyalists whose interests are tied to the survival of the current system. From their strict ideological stances to the continued closure of schools and universities for girls and the brutal suppression of any form of dissent, the Taliban have lost favor even among many of their former allies.
Yet, each time a handful of people gather in some European venue, take the podium, and discuss “solutions for Afghanistan,” the media rush to label them as the “Taliban opposition”—as if millions of Afghans living under Taliban rule in Kabul, Herat, Mazar, and Kandahar do not exist and as if dissent is an exclusive privilege of a select few exiled politicians.
On the other hand, the Taliban deceive themselves by believing that their only adversaries are these familiar figures attending international conferences. But they must acknowledge the truth: if all of the Taliban’s opponents were to gather in one place, the conference halls of Europe would be too small, and the event would have to be held in sports stadiums instead.
Vienna, rather than being a platform for unity and strategy, has increasingly become a fruitless social gathering—where the same recycled faces, with their predictable rhetoric, sip Austrian coffee, argue among themselves, and eventually conclude the session with the all-too-familiar phrase: “We must take action!”
Meanwhile, history watches in silence, waiting to see whether these gatherings will ever move beyond slogans—or remain trapped in the endless cycle of grand speeches and hesitant steps.
