OUR SAY: Hope lost in regime's return to power in Afghanistan

We understandably bemoan the lost connections with family that have come our way at various times during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But we also know that, eventually, those links will be restored.

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The NSW lockdown and the consequences of this are, of course, now being experienced in the Albury region.

Nothing we have gone through these past 18 months though could be given even a moment's thought as being in anywhere near the same realm as that faced by those who have made Australia home after leaving Afghanistan.

Much of that centres on the ruthless application of Sharia, or Islamic, law in Afghanistan by the Taliban between 1996 and the 2001 US-led invasion.

Since then, the country has opened-up considerably, but most especially for women.

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Girls could go to school - and with the realistic goal of bookending that with a university education and profession - and women in general could enjoy freedoms that had been savagely denied.

It remained an inherently conservative country, but still one where woman had a relatively equal role.

Since taking back control of the country, confirmed with the swift move on its capital, Kabul, the Taliban has tried to reassure the world, with forked tongues mind you, that it won't regress to its old self.

But no one could realistically think this uneducated rabble from the Dark Ages could be anything other than a a repeat version of their former selves, ones who stoned women to death for adultery.

It is no doubt a dispiriting scenario that weighs heavily on all those Afghanistan war veterans, many from the Border region, who invested so much effort during their deployments.

But it's heartbreaking and frightening for those Afghans on the Border who still have relatives back in their former home, such as "Waly", who shared his story with The Border Mail.

We can only hope that the fallout does not match such fears.

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