A young woman fleeing a forced marriage has crossed into a neighbouring state, her asylum claim based on the undeniable fact that the country she escaped from now bans girls from education. This is not a humanitarian footnote. This is a strategic indicator of systemic state failure and a looming security vacuum.
The Taliban's decree on female education is a force multiplier for radicalisation and instability. It creates a demographic of disenfranchised, uneducated women who are vulnerable to extremist recruitment. The refugee flows are not just a moral challenge; they represent a logistical strain on border security and intelligence screening.
Hostile actors exploit these chaotic migration patterns to insert operatives. Our intelligence community must treat every such case as a potential intelligence breach. The hardware question is: do we have the biometric screening capacity at these checkpoints?
The strategic pivot must be towards pre-empting these human intelligence failures. Every woman denied education is a potential asset for a rival state. This is a chess move by the Taliban, and we are reacting, not acting.
