I can’t watch what’s happening on the Pakistan–Afghanistan border without feeling both anger and heartbreak. Anger at the Taliban a barbaric force that has dragged an entire nation back to the Middle Ages and heartbreak for the innocent people who will pay the price of yet another war they didn’t start.

It’s 2025, yet in Afghanistan, women are being treated worse than cattle. The Taliban’s idea of governance is to lock women indoors and call it “virtue.” They’ve banned girls from secondary school and university, stopped women from working, and ordered that no woman can travel without a male guardian. In July this year, dozens of young women were arrested in Kabul for wearing colourful clothes. Their so-called “vice police” humiliate and beat them for what they wear. The United Nations calls this gender apartheid and it’s hard to argue with that.

Nearly eight out of ten young Afghan women are excluded from education, jobs, or training. Hospitals are turning away female patients who come alone. Pregnant women die because they’re not allowed to travel without a man.

And now this tyranny is spilling over into Pakistan. In October 2025, heavy fighting broke out along the frontier in Kurram and Chaman. Pakistan says 23 of its soldiers were killed when Taliban-linked fighters attacked border posts. The Taliban claim they’ve killed 58 Pakistanis in return. Whatever the truth, one thing is certain civilians are dying on both sides.

Markets have shut. Villages are emptying. Families are fleeing through the night. Those who can’t escape huddle in their homes, praying the next shell doesn’t land on them.

But I understand why Pakistan has lost its patience. For years, militants based in Afghanistan particularly the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have terrorised Pakistani towns and cities. I’ll never forget the images from Peshawar in 2014, when 132 schoolchildren were murdered by the TTP. Or the mosque bombing in 2023 that killed 84 police officers during prayer. Just a few months ago, in June 2025, a suicide bomber in Mir Ali killed 16 soldiers and injured dozens more. Pakistan’s critics often forget: this is a country that’s buried tens of thousands of its own citizens because of terrorism.

But I’ll be honest Pakistan helped create this monster too. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, its generals thought they could use the Taliban as “strategic depth” against India. They armed them, trained them, and looked the other way as extremists spread. Western governments, including our own, played along during the Cold War. We all did this. And now, the same monster we fed has turned on its maker.

It’s even more bitter now that the Taliban are courting India sending diplomatic feelers to New Delhi while allowing anti-Pakistan militants to operate freely. It’s no wonder Islamabad’s patience has snapped. But when shells fall on border villages and children start dying, it’s hard to call anyone a winner.

The Taliban love to pretend they’re defending sovereignty. But the truth is they can’t even defend humanity. They’ve turned Afghanistan into a laboratory of cruelty. They flog women in public squares. They stone people for “moral crimes.” They shoot girls for going to school. They ban music, ban art, and ban hope. They talk about Islam while breaking every moral code the faith stands for.

And what makes me furious is how quickly the world forgets. We were all outraged when they took Kabul in 2021. We said we’d never accept their rule. Four years later, most countries have quietly moved on. Aid has been cut, attention has drifted, and Afghan women are left to suffer in silence.

I look at the border today and I see something deeper than a military clash. I see a fight between civilisation and barbarism. Between a country trying however imperfectly to protect its people, and a regime that thrives on fear.

Pakistan has made mistakes, yes. But it’s also the one bleeding now. Its soldiers, not ours, are dying in Mir Ali, in Chaman, in the tribal belt. Its children are the ones bombed in mosques and schools. Its border communities are the ones losing everything.

Some might say it’s none of our business. But it is. Because when a regime like the Taliban thrives, the world grows darker for everyone. Their oppression is not just an Afghan tragedy it’s a stain on all of us who claim to believe in human rights, in equality, in decency.

If we truly care about those values, then we must have the courage to call evil by its name. The Taliban are not freedom fighters. They are not a legitimate government. They are a scourge on society and they should be treated as such.

And for the families huddled tonight along that border the farmers, traders, mothers, and children I can only hope that the world finally remembers them. Because when civilisation fights barbarism, it’s always the innocent who pay the first and highest price.

* Mo Waqas is a vice chair of the Liberal Democrats' Racial Diversity Campaign and was the PPC for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East.