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Uniformed Taliban fighters march on the street in Qalat, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in this still image taken from a video uploaded to social media on Aug. 19. (Reuters/Yonhap News)

The Taliban occupied Kabul even before the US had finished withdrawing from Afghanistan.

That outcome has made several things clear. First, the Taliban emerged victorious from two decades of war against the US. Second, the Taliban achieved victory despite their inferior military power because they had the support, albeit passive, of a large number of Afghans. Third, the Taliban are left with the task of recovering from the wars that have racked Afghanistan for more than 40 years since the Soviet invasion in 1979.

That doesn’t mean that Taliban rule is desirable or that the Taliban have the absolute support of the Afghan people. The Taliban aren’t a good alternative for the Afghan people; at best, they’re the lesser evil.

But if we refuse to recognize that Afghanistan has chosen the lesser evil of the Taliban, our only option is going back to war.

Afghans have seen brutal fighting as five governments have held power during the wars of the past 40 years: the socialists, the mujahideen, the Taliban, a pro-American government, and then the Taliban again. The current confusion and troubles are basically the result of those wars.

The Northern Alliance, which played a leading role in ousting the Taliban during the US military invasion in 2001, had earlier massacred 3,000 Taliban fighters in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The most pressing issue for the international community since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban is women’s rights. Ironically enough, the suffering of Afghan women has been a source of power for the Taliban.

One of the major motivations for the Taliban movement was the kidnappings and sexual abuse of women perpetrated by the warlords after the Soviet withdrawal. Taliban founder Mullah Omar created a legend when he put to death a warlord who had raped a girl.

Afghans were forced to choose the Taliban because they preferred order, even if oppressive, to anarchy.

The Taliban were divinity students and lowly clerics who mediated disputes under Islam’s Sharia law in Afghan tribal society. Coming to power meant not only their traditional governance of that society but also the adoption of their system of justice.

The Taliban’s insistence on radically conservative Sharia law may have been a reaction to the anarchy and chaos of war. A Pentagon report at the time said that the Taliban had restored a crude form of law and order. Their system of justice was harsh, but it was still governance, the report said.

A Canadian intelligence analysis also asserted that Afghans accepted the Taliban’s cruel imposition of Sharia law as the price of peace and stability.

When the Taliban marched into Kabul 25 years ago, all infrastructure in the country had been laid waste by the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed. It was under those conditions that the Taliban set up their anachronistic rule, under which even toothpaste was banned.

But as the Taliban return to Kabul more than a generation later, they’re now posting their propaganda on social media. They’re also inheriting basic infrastructure that the US spent so much money to build.

Even if the Taliban are putting on a charade when they say they will allow women to work in public, that charade itself reflects how much circumstances have changed.

The Taliban are an evolving movement, says Felix Kuehn, editor of “The Taliban Reader,” a monumental work of research that compiled primary sources from the Taliban. Kuehn argues that trying to interpret what the Taliban have wanted since 2001 through the lens of what they wanted before 2001 leads to an extremely skewed perspective on their movement and goals.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, which ended the Vietnam War, many Vietnamese sought to flee Vietnam by boat. Many of these “boat people,” as they were called, were overseas Chinese. Relations between China and Vietnam deteriorated in subsequent years, leading to the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. That led to a massive displacement of Chinese, who were leaders of the merchant community.

While this was a reprehensible humanitarian tragedy, it’s no reason to reject the legitimacy of the US military’s withdrawal from Vietnam and the end of the Vietnam War. Had the war continued, it would have given rise to even greater tragedies.

Richard Holbrooke, who was appointed by former US President Obama as the US special representative to Afghanistan and the head of peace talks with the Taliban, once said, “We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country.”

The chaotic scenes of Afghans trying to escape from the Kabul airport and the Taliban’s feudal oppression of women and other vulnerable groups when they were in power two decades ago are troubling. But demonizing the Taliban and blaming them for everything, denying the legitimacy of the decision to withdraw American troops, and calling for an armed struggle against the Taliban do little for those trying to get out of Afghanistan. That’s just calling for the war to resume.

The number one priority for Afghanistan today is bringing the war to a complete end. The international community needs to be involved in forming an inclusive government and in the postwar reconstruction of the country. And that won’t be possible as long as we reject the Taliban.

By Jung E-gil, senior staff writer

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]