[MHGinTN]

This comment is just plain wrong and belies shallow scholarship, casting the entire piece in an agenda-driven light:

The most tyrannical regimes, the communists of North Korea and the Taliban of Afghanistan, got that way by being as separate from and hostile to the people as they could.

[The Taliban had to have a fairly large following of the people, otherwise their efforts to incorporate the other political groups in Afghanistan would not have succeeded so well.]

[A.J.Armitage]

Having had or even currently having a large following doesn't preclude being hostile to the people. In the case of the Taliban, their being hostile to half the population, females, is pretty well established. (Over half of the population, actually, since so many men have been killed in the various wars, which is why prohibiting women from working is particularly stupid. They need women working, just as we did during WWII.) If reports in the press are to be believed(perhaps not, but trusting the press is better than conjecture) most people supported the Taliban at first since they brought order, and by the time they saw what that order involved it was too late.