Since the Northern Alliance rapidly overran most of Afghanistan last week, Afghan citizens have openly celebrated the Taliban's loss of control, shedding their burqas, shaving their beards, and playing music. Taliban officials have expressed amazement at their former subjects' lack of appreciation.
"We freed women from any concerns about work, education, or fashion, and protected them by brutally abusing any woman attempting to lift herself above her place, yet no one respects us. How can this be?" asked Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, from a cave near Kandahar. "We took away their music, movies, and television - what more could the people ask from a despotic government? While our armed soldiers were in every town enforcing our whims, no one complained - how were we to know there was no true loyalty to us?"
Asked about the foreign militants who appear to be the only people in Afghanistan now supporting the Taliban, Omar replied "We've gone to the trouble of importing vicious killers from throughout the region, and our own people don't appreciate our efforts. I don't know why we even bother trying any more."
Omar and his friend and colleague Osama bin Laden are currently working with their travel agent to find a nation which would welcome having its women treated as chattel, and all forms of joy prohibited. The task has proven surprisingly difficult.