We interrupt our coverage of the State Department’s quest to defend pronoun choice to inform people that the Taliban are murdering women … again … and gruesomely. The murder of a player on the Afghanistan national girl’s volleyball team got confirmed this week by the Taliban itself. They posted pictures of Mahjabin Hakimi’s decapitated body, clearly intended as a warning to other women who participated in public life during the brief period of relative freedom women enjoyed:

An Afghan volleyball player on the girls’ national team was beheaded by the Taliban — with gruesome photos of her severed head posted on social media, according to her coach.

Mahjabin Hakimi, one of the best players in the Kabul Municipality Volleyball Club, was slaughtered in the capital city of Kabul as troops searched for female sports players, her coach told the Persian Independent.

She was killed earlier this month, but her death remained mostly hidden because her family had been threatened not to talk, claimed the coach, using a pseudonym, Suraya Afzali, due to safety fears.

Images of Hakimi’s severed neck were published on Afghan social media, according to the paper, which did not say how old she was.

The message has been received, the International Business Times notes. Other female athletes have gone into hiding, and a few have managed to escape Taliban-controlled Afghanistan — but only a few:

Only two players from the Afghan women’s national volleyball team, which was established in 1978, were able to leave the country prior to the takeover.

Female athletes left in Afghanistan, especially members of the Afghan women’s national volleyball team who have competed in foreign and domestic competitions as well as appeared in media programs, are under serious threat, Afzali said.

“All the players on the volleyball team and the rest of the women athletes are in a bad situation and in despair and fear,” the coach was quoted as saying.

And that’s just what the Taliban are doing to female athletes, whose only “crime” appears to have been not being subservient to male relatives and dressing immodestly. Imagine what the Taliban will do to the women who served as civil judges in the previous legal system. Actually, we don’t need to imagine it, do we? If Hakimi got beheaded for her participation in athletics, the women who judged men in court are likely facing much harsher treatment on their way to certain death.

Instead, we should imagine what the Taliban will do to Americans — citizens and legal permanent residents (LPRs) — abandoned by Joe Biden in his disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. How many are there? On Monday, the most recent press briefing at State, Ned Price disclosed that 129 Americans and 115 LPRs have successfully been exfiltrated in one manner or another. Several weeks ago, Price and Antony Blinken estimated that no more than 100 American citizens remained in the country, so … this doesn’t add up at all:

QUESTION: On Afghanistan, last week this department said the latest figures for U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents leaving Afghanistan with American assistance were 129 U.S. citizens, 115 LPRs. Do you have a figure or an approximate figure of those Americans who are leaving without U.S. assistance on these occasional charter flights? And also, do you have an update on a figure, an approximate figure, on the number of Americans who remain in the country and want to leave?

MR PRICE: Sure. Well, you cited the numbers as of last week. It was 129 U.S. citizens, 115 lawful permanent residents the U.S. Government had directly facilitated since August 31st. I can confirm that yesterday, October 17th, another Qatar Airways charter flight with both U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents departed Kabul and landed in Doha. We haven’t been able to update our tally just yet because we are still processing those passengers as they deplane in Doha. But when we do have an updated figure, we’ll be happy to pass that along. …

In terms of a number of American citizens, this is a figure that, as you know, is not static. It is not immutable precisely because as Americans in the country – some of whom may be identifying themselves to us for the first time – see that we are able to effect the safe departure of Americans and LPRs and others from Afghanistan, that their calculus has changed. They have determined that they do with to depart the country. That range has been anywhere from below a 100 – right now it is somewhere in between 100 and 200 given that some Americans have – additional Americans have raised their hands, seeing our ability to effect their safe departure.

It’s not “static” because so far the State Department has consistently denied having a number at all. That’s nonsense, however; people didn’t just float in and out of Afghanistan willy-nilly, not even during the most secure periods of the US occupation. Entry requires visas and reports on entries and exits, which the State Department should have tracked at least in general terms.

This question becomes even more acute with the gruesome murder of young Mahjabin Hakimi. This exposes the nonsensical platitudes about the Taliban being ready to govern and being relatively moderate in comparison to other terrorist networks as nothing more than self-serving horsecrap from the Biden administration to justify its disgraceful exit. This is a murderous, radical, and totalitarian regime bent on wholesale slaughter of its opponents, no matter how innocent and hopeful they might be.

Update: The headline was incorrect — Hakimi played on the volleyball team, not the soccer team. My apologies for the error.