KABUL, Afghanistan —

       The Taliban has blown up the statue of a Shiite militia leader who fought against the group during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, according to photos circulating Wednesday, sowing further doubt about the group’s claims to have become more moderate.

       The former insurgents’ every action in their sudden sweep to power is being watched closely. They insist they have changed and won’t impose the same draconian restrictions as when they last ruled Afghanistan, all but eliminating women’s rights, carrying out public executions and banning television and music.

       They also promised not to seek revenge against those who have opposed them.

       But many Afghans remain deeply skeptical, and thousands are racing to the airport and borders to flee the country. Many others are hiding inside their homes, fearful after prisons and armories were emptied during the insurgents’ blitz across the country.

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       On Wednesday, groups of fighters carrying long guns patrolled a well-to-do neighborhood of the capital, Kabul, that is home to many embassies as well as mansions of the Afghan elite. The Taliban has promised to maintain security, but many Afghans are as afraid of them as they are of potential chaos.

       In a rare, early show of resistance, dozens of people gathered in the eastern city of Jalalabad and raised the Afghan national flag in an anti-Taliban demonstration, according to Salim Ahmad, a local resident. He said the Taliban fired in the air to disperse the crowd. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.

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       Afghan women faced an uncertain future this week as U.S. forces withdrew and the Taliban consolidated control.

       The Taliban has raised its own flag — a white banner with Islamic inscriptions — in the territories it has seized.

       As Afghans and the international community look to see if the Taliban will make good on its promises, photos circulated on social media of the destroyed statue. It depicted Abdul Ali Mazari, a militia leader killed by the Taliban in 1996, when the Islamic militants seized power from rival warlords. Mazari was a champion of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazara minority, Shiite Muslims who were persecuted under the Sunni Taliban’s earlier rule.

       The statue stood in Bamiyan province, where the Taliban infamously blew up two massive 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha carved into a mountain, shortly before the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that drove them from power. The Taliban, which adheres to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, said the Buddhas violated Islam’s prohibition on idolatry.

       Another Taliban promise being closely watched is the group’s vow to prevent Afghanistan from again being used as a base for planning terrorist attacks. That was enshrined in a 2020 peace deal with the Trump administration that paved the way for the drawdown of American troops, the last of whom are supposed to leave at the end of the month.

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       When the Taliban was last in power, it sheltered Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda while they planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. U.S. officials fear Al Qaeda and other groups could reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan now that the Taliban is back in power.

       The Taliban has pledged to form an “inclusive, Islamic government” and has been holding talks with former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official in the ousted government. Mohammad Yusof Saha, a spokesman for Karzai, said preliminary meetings with Taliban officials would facilitate eventual negotiations with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the top Taliban political leader.

       Photos circulating online Wednesday showed Karzai and Abdullah meeting with Anas Haqqani, a senior leader in a powerful Taliban faction. The U.S. branded the Haqqani network a terrorist group in 2012, and its involvement in a future government could trigger international sanctions.

       Meanwhile, the head of Afghanistan’s Central Bank said the country’s supply of physical U.S. dollars is “close to zero.” Afghanistan has some $9 billion in reserves, Ajmal Ahmady tweeted, but most of that is held outside the country, with some $7 billion held in U.S. Federal Reserve bonds, assets and gold.

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       Ahmady said the country did not receive a planned cash shipment amid the Taliban offensive.

       “The next shipment never arrived,” he wrote. “Seems like our partners had good intelligence as to what was going to happen.”

       He said the lack of U.S. dollars will likely lead to a depreciation of the local currency, the afghani, hurting the country’s poor. Afghans have been lining up outside ATMs for days, with many pulling out their life savings.

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       Ahmady said the Taliban would struggle to access the country’s reserves because of international sanctions.

       The “Taliban won militarily — but now have to govern,” he wrote. “It is not easy.”