EDINBURGH – As we enter a new year, 2.13 million primary-school-aged children remain out of school in Afghanistan, while 2.2 million girls have been excluded from secondary education since the Taliban’s 2021 ban, part of a broader campaign to erase women from public life. But despite this egregious abuse of human rights (which Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has labeled “gender apartheid”), countries have begun resuming relations with the Taliban regime.