Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports

Educated women in Afghanistan on Saturday marched in support of radical Islamic regime in the country, pledging commitment to the Taliban’s hard-line policies on gender segregation.

The march for Taliban support came as thousands of American families marked the anniversary of the terrorist attack that used United States’ commercial flights to attack twin tower World Trade Center in one of the country’s deadliest onslaught by Islamic fundamentalists.

The support rally in support of the dreaded Taliban regime came barely a week after other Afghan women who marched to demand fundamental human freedom and inclusion in government were violently dispersed and punished for the effrontery.

However, the afghan militants provided support for the latest march in favour of the Taliban regime and its Islamic laws. The women numbering over 300 and wearing full face veils and covered head-to-toe waved Taliban flags, condemned the western powers that occupied the country for 20 years nd expressed support for the Taliban’s Islamists policies.

The women’s support for the Taliban came in sharp contrast to global sympathy for women rights in the country where the Taliban regime imposed extreme suppression of the female population between 1996 and 2001. Until the invasion of the country by allied forces after the September 11, 2001 attacks by Taliban sponsored terrorists, women were restricted from moving freely in public, going to school and working.

With the pull out of the allied forces and its subsequent retake of the country, the Taliban has pledged to relax some of the restrictions on women, saying that they would now be allowed to attend university as long as classes are segregated by sex or at least divided by a curtain.

Part of the conditions attached to the Taliban’s pledge is that the women must cover themselves with sharia compliant abaya robes and niqabs.

The developments in Afghanistan continue to question the rationality of the long and costly occupation of the country by the Western powers after dislodging the Taliban government and neutralizing terror threats incubated in the country notorious for global supply of narcotics as major source of national income.

Moreso, the budding support for the Taliban government by local women at a time Americans mourn victims of September 11 terror attacks tends to mock over 3000 people killed within hours of the fateful day.

The Oracle Today reports that Saturday was 20the anniversary of the attack that spurred the administration of President George Bush to invade Afghanistan in search for late Osama Bin Laden who was pin pointed as the mastermind of the terror hit.

Although Bin Laden was spotted and taken out at his hiding place in Pakistan, the campaign in Afghanistan cost America so much and achieved very little as nearly another 3000 soldiers died in the mission and trillions of dollars and military facilities and equipment also went into the retaliatory campaign.

Saturday, President Joe Biden who is currently under fire for shoddy and disorganized troop withdrawal from Afghanistan joined families of the victims at three separate locations in what he may have hoped would prove a rare moment of national unity.

The September 11 attack by the al-Qaida terrorist network linked to Osama Bin Laden has remained legendary in design, boldness and scale of destruction. And many American journals vividly recall the event.

“In a crystalline blue sky, al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, a symbol of America’s financial might in downtown Manhattan.

“People from all over the world were killed in the initial explosions, jumping to their deaths or being pulverised by the collapsing twin towers, a spectacle that horrified audiences on live television.

“The hijackers rammed another plane into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US military near Washington, tearing a hole in its side. A fourth plane – possibly heading towards the US Capitol – crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers heroically fought back.

“A total of 2,977 people were killed – 2,753 of them at what became known as Ground Zero in New York – a bigger toll than the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor in 1941.”

President Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, attended solemn ceremonies at all three sites on Saturday to honor and memorialize the lives lost.  They were joined by former president Barack Obama, who oversaw the killing of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

The president earlier performed the wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon.

The Taliban are now back in control of Afghanistan, just as they were on 9/11, raising fears that the country could once again become a terrorist hub.

Former president George W Bush, who launched the retaliatory war in Afghanistan in 2001, also spoke at a memorial service in Shanksville where the names of the passengers and crew members, who were all killed were read out, each with a tolling bell.

Former president Donald Trump also reportedly visited the 9/11 memorial Saturday afternoon. He missed the ceremonies performed by President Biden who had left the city.

There were six moments of silence, each for the time each tower was struck and the time that each fell; the moment when the Pentagon was attacked; and the time that United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.

Earlier Friday, remembrance activities were held where the Secretary of States, Antony Blinken, described the ceremonies as demonstrations of profound humanity, compassion, strength and courage 20 years after the dark moments of the terror attack.

“Above all, it showed our remarkable resilience. It showed our capacity to defend the pluralism that has long been one of our country’s greatest strengths, including by embracing our Muslim American brothers and sisters. It showed the risks that so many are willing to take to save the lives of complete strangers. So today, we remember all that, and more,” local media quoted him.