You may wonder how a relatively small number of fundamentalist fighters, with zero experience in running a government, are going to govern Afghanistan. Here is how it will work:
- The Taliban have had effective control over much of the countryside for some time. Their existing structures will remain in place.
- Parts of the countryside are populated by ethnic minorities with little sympathy for the Taliban. Here, the new government will be forced by its lack of resources to make deals with the existing leaders. These deals will be fragile, at best.
- The toughest task will be to run Kabul, which is essentially a large island of blue people in a sea of red (think Austin here). Large, cosmopolitan cities cannot governed without the assistance of experts. Failure in Kabul would endanger the regime; the problems must, therefore, be addressed. The Taliban will respond by using a mixture of carrots and sticks to force government employees back to work. In the short run, this will be difficult; in the longer run, they will succeed, because the employees will have no better options.