Taliban are trying to look and sound legitimate

After so many calls from the US, including from Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, the Taliban must be congratulating themselves that their former enemy is now desperate to do business. The calls will make them feel legitimate governors of Afghanistan. But they are still a long way from any form of legitimacy. So they've announced an interim government and have declared that unlike their previous sojourn in Kabul between 1996 and 2001 they are now here to stay. For good. Well, again we will see. They haven't started well by telling all women they need to be escorted by a man whenever they go out and cannot ever be expected to be in any meaningful role in the gpvernment. They have also fired tear gas at women protesting about their rights in Kabul. The only thing that Blinken seems to be concerned about at the moment is to persuade the Taliban to reopen the airport and allow more Americans out of the country. I suspect the Taliban will want some quid pro quo. "We'll allow more Americans out but in return stop freezing what limited assets we have to run the country." Thanks to wholesale corruption by the previous Kabul governments and mismanagement of finances on a vast scale, there's not a lot left in the government kitty. Things are going to get desperate. Maybe I have missed it but where is Abdullah Abdullah, the former chief executive and deputy leader of the previous government? Did he run off to Qatar as well, like President Ghani? I guess he must have done. So the Taliban are going to have a bash at governing without any treasury funds. I pity the average Afghan as winter approaches. Meanwhile the Taliban claim to have seized the "last remaining" province from anti-Taliban resistance fighters - in Panjshir Valley - and that therefore the whole country is now under their control. Perhaps they are forgetting the province of Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan where 2,000 Isis fighters remain alive and well and rebellious and very very anti-Taliban. The Taliban can't claim to control the whole of Afghanistan while that militant and dangerous rabble are still around.