"The Ayatolah and the Taliban, who let whole orphanages of children die rather than allow the women who had been caring for them to work outside the home."

I'd doubt if you'd find an example of that happening in Iran - which isn't to say it's all fine there, and women haven't had their rights attacked and reduced. But the differences between the regimes in Iran and Afghanistan are comparable to those between Vietnam and Cambodia under Pol Pot.

And it's a lot more complicated than the Taliban being the expression of a culture's resistance to enforced liberalisation. As with Cambodia, it's more to do with an unexpected side-effect of the Cold War, and the attitude that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".