For the generic answer, see Reich "The Mass Psychology of Fascism."
For the other generic answer, write your own book/article explaining why minority men, in general, vent on their women and children. The recent "Kings of Comedy" offered some fairly nauseating sketches on the same.
Because it is not only the Taliban. Travelling through Italy in May of 2000, I happened upon an article in the International Herald Tribune which described the "traditional" punishment of "erring" women in Pakistan and how the judicial system was beginning to intervene in these situations. The front page showed a picture of a woman whose husband had hacked off her ears and her nose and put out her eyes in punishment for an alleged act of infidelity. The man had not harmed the correspondant--just the wife. The blinded, mutilated woman was holding her two year old child. This is a picture I will never forget.
The husband had been imprisoned for this act and was awaiting trial. This was hailed as something new and different in Pakistani society. Normally, nothing would be done and it would be considered that the man had merely defended his "honor."
For me, this question extends far beyond the Taliban. It certainly embraces India and China and Africa and the middle east, and, in different ways, the western nations. Though I am a socialist and consider class divisions far more important than gender-based divisions, we absolutely need to understand this hatred of women and the subsequent symbolic transformation of everything on earth that supports life into an object of contempt... while destructive forces are worshipped.
Joanna Bujes