Middle East expert Carsten Wieland does not share the fear that Syria could develop into a second Afghanistan. “The radicalism with which the Taliban appear in Afghanistan cannot be compared with the way Idlib was recently governed,” he told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” with a view to the Syrian region, in which the Islamist HTS has long been active In charge: “Idlib does not have a liberal government and is certainly not a democracy. But there was a government that did not simply ignore social resistance, but responded to it.”
Last year, for example, the government in Idlib wanted to pass a moral law that provided for gender segregation in public spaces, added the former advisor in the UN peace process on Syria: “There was resistance to that. The law did not come into force. If we look soberly, we see many women in Idlib who work, take part in public life, and sit in cafes. This is no comparison to the Taliban at all.
