Maybe they don't want people using it as an abbreviation for As Fuck. high.af

Didn't the Taliban finance their holy war by selling opium? Seems like they probably aren't the scrupulous type.

The taliban has generally been against opium and banned the poppy farming again as soon as they took over. Poppy farming financed the other powers, against the taliban.

I didn't realize their culture was so Americanized!

I don't think that is a real concern for the Taliban.

I would rather ask: why would they? Are we expecting Taliban to consider giving out registrations? To foreigners?! What would be their motivation to streamline this in any way at all?

Do we assume that they even care?

The motivation would be money. Lots of people would pay for awesome.af, dope.af etc if it was easy enough to do so.

You're assuming the Taliban think like you

I think it's safe to assume the Taliban like US dollars

That domain is currently being used

Even before the government collapse the ministry of comms showed little interest in licensing it to a third party operator for widespread use. They get more revenue from a small customer prepaid credit loading tax on the four LTE/gsm/3gpp band mobile phone operators.