Next weekmarks the fifth anniversary of the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban as US coalition troops were evacuated from the country. That’s five years for the terrorists to have consolidated their grip, so now is a good time to reflect on what the “coalition of the willing” left behind.

Through vindictive edict after edict, these five years have brought an ever-escalating repression of Afghan girls and women – with far too little done by any outside authority to speak up or stand up against the most egregious denial of girls’ rights in the world today.

Barely reported was the shocking massacre in June by troops who fired on a group of women’s rights protesters as they demonstrated against girls’ exclusion from education and the enforcement of strict dress codes. They were marching under the banner “Azadi”, meaning “freedom”. Two people, including a young boy, were shot dead and several were injured.

In the most medieval of ways, the Taliban are also imposing even harsher laws to legitimise child marriage and provide legal exemption for domestic violence perpetrated by husbands, including against school-age girls.

According to UN observers, these girls, often sold into marriage or forced to become child brides, are victims of a new form of crime: gender apartheid. Historians will look back and ask why it is that, after landing more than 1 million coalition troops, suffering more than 3,500 deaths and 23,000 injuries and spending in excess of $1tn, we have been unable to prevent the Taliban destroying the most basic of rights. But perhaps more important, and with the Taliban entrenched in Kabul and religious leaders regularly sending........

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