What a difference a week makes! Shortly after basically walking into Kabul and taking over, the Taliban were making some pretty encouraging promises about the way women would be treated under their reign:

Taliban vow to respect women, despite history of oppression

Just a few days later, they're kinda sorta doing a soft backpedal on that one:

A Taliban spokesman urges women to stay home because fighters haven't been trained to respect them.

Ah, okay, got it: So the whole we-promise-not-to-brutalize-women thing was contingent upon the soldiers adhering to that protocol. But the soldiers didn't get the memo, if even a memo was issued at all.

But don't worry, the stay-at-home order is totally a 100% temporary suggestion that won't become permanent or anything:

Things will turn around just as soon as the soldiers can attend a rigorous three-day diversity seminar and be educated in the extraordinarily difficult art of...not harming women. Not a month into the Taliban's rule there, things are looking up in Afghanistan!

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