Civil society in Afghanistan is a significant actor, but it is a very vulnerable actor as well. Something like three-quarters of the Afghan population is under the age of 30. These people have very often been influenced by forces of globalization that no previous generation had encountered. The positive sign is that one meets many people right across the board who don't carry the baggage of prejudices that some earlier generations carry with them.
At the same time, there has been something of a disposition in recent months for people in western countries to say that because civil society is so vibrant in Afghanistan, this will provide a bulwark against the worst kind of policy setting that the Taliban might seek to implement if it were to return to power.
I think this is a misconception that's actually shoved civil society activists right to the front line, where they are now being assassinated by the Taliban. Civil society, of course, was extremely vibrant in the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but a vibrant civil society is also vulnerable and subject to decapitation.
In Afghanistan, for example, civil society thrives on the basis of social media, which provides connections between different people. It would be relatively easy for a repressively minded state to shut down communications of that sort. Civil society is, certainly, something to support in Afghanistan, but it is not a magic bullet that can be used to address the problems of repression that other kinds of groups are putting on the agenda at the moment.