Where is Afghanistan Three Years into Taliban Rule?

How bad is the human rights situation, particularly regarding the Taliban’s approach to justice and civil liberties?

Belquis Ahmadi: Since taking control, the Taliban has issued over 100 decrees aimed at restricting the rights of women and girls to education, employment, healthcare and mobility, among other things. The Taliban’s latest vice and virtue law consolidates previous edicts and introduces harsher restrictions, including classifying a woman’s voice as awra — an intimate element that must not be heard publicly. The law marks a new phase in the Taliban’s systematic efforts to erase women from all aspects of Afghan society. If it is enforced, women will disappear from television and radio broadcasts, public employment and will be further restricted in getting an education.

Just as women’s fundamental rights are being eliminated, Afghans’ ability to seek justice has deeply eroded. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan’s justice system has been transformed from a system that, while imperfect, was grounded in the rule of law with civil society playing a crucial role in ensuring that decisions were consistent with the country’s legal framework, to one in which unqualified clerics can apply their own (mis)interpretations of Shariah. In one of their earliest actions after seizing power, the Taliban suspended the constitution, a document that, while recognizing the primacy of Shariah, also acknowledged the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enshrined the principle of equal rights before the law for both men and women.

Women face significant barriers in accessing justice, noted Richard Bennet, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, in a 2023 report. Obtaining legal aid and counseling is particularly challenging, as women often need to rely on a mahram (a male guardian) to access the courts. In some cases, the mahram may be the very reason the woman seeks justice, complicating the process further. The Taliban dismissal of female legal actors combined with restrictions on interactions between men and women, exacerbates these challenges and leaves women in a desperate situation.

How has the security situation evolved for Afghans over the last three years?

Joyana Richer and Jill Baggerman: Armed conflict has decreased now that the Taliban has ended its violent insurgency. Though threats of violence and terrorism remain, the Taliban can accurately demonstrate that large-scale violence is at its lowest level in decades. Afghanistan’s streets are clean and “safe” in some respects — as long as the Taliban’s harsh restrictions on women are heeded. Tourism is up and kidnappings are down.

However, the absence of armed conflict represents only a negative peace. Broader human security has decreased for much of the population due to increased poverty, hunger and the Taliban’s repression and structural violence. Human rights advocates, former government officials, and people who break the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law are subjected to extrajudicial killings, disappearances and floggings. The regime enforces it policies through fear, coercion and discrimination.

The current low level of violence shouldn’t be conflated with peace nor become a distraction from addressing remaining sources of conflict. Afghanistan’s history is marked by deep-seated grievances, cycles of revenge and resource disputes. The Taliban’s current approach to security suppresses these issues, but those long-standing divisions will persist until they are resolved in a way that meaningfully benefits all of Afghanistan’s diverse population. Throughout Afghan history, political exclusion has often led to armed resistance, frequently fueled by foreign patrons of different factions. Avoiding this cycle of repression and violence will require collaborative efforts between local communities and external actors, who could potentially leverage this stage of domestic physical safety to address long-standing root drivers of conflict.

What about the Afghan economy and humanitarian situation?

William Byrd: Over the past three years Afghanistan’s economy has gone through three phases, with a drastic initial economic shock stabilizing at a low-level equilibrium that shows little prospect of improving any time soon.

1. Free-fall in the months following the Taliban takeover, precipitated by the cut-off of some $8 billion per year of aid and large international military expenditures in-country, exacerbated by stoppage of foreign financial transactions, freezing of Afghanistan’s $9 billion of foreign exchange reserves, and other shocks. Afghanistan’s GDP fell by more than a quarter, unemployment and underemployment increased, inflation soared and personal incomes fell, with tens of millions of people dependent on humanitarian aid. The urban service sector (bloated by foreign inflows of money) shrank greatly. Afghan women suffered disproportionately due to Taliban gender restrictions. Rural areas saw improvements in security with the end of the war, but any economic “peace dividend” was overwhelmed by the aid cut-off and other shocks.
2. Subsequent stabilization of the economy at a low, arguably below-subsistence level supported by humanitarian support and better-than-expected Taliban economic management. Inflation fell back, poverty and unemployment seem to have stabilized albeit at high levels, the exchange rate improved, imports recovered, exports grew and revenues were effectively collected despite the weak economy. Humanitarian aid funding reached a peak of $3.8 billion in 2022, and associated U.N. shipments have in the past two and a half years injected $3.8 billion in cash into the economy. Human capital development, however, is being decimated by the prohibition against women and girls’ education and many boys dropping out to seek work.
3. Current economic stagnation with downside risks and little prospect for robust growth. Exports and revenues seem to have plateaued, and the World Bank projects limited growth in coming years. The Taliban’s opium ban has devastated millions of rural households previously dependent on poppy cultivation to make ends meet, while not stemming flows of opiates out of the country from existing inventories. Humanitarian aid funding was halved in 2023 (to $1.9 billion) and is unlikely to increase in 2024. Basic development assistance, perhaps amounting to several hundred million dollars per year, will not offset this decline. Moreover, development projects currently underway and envisioned will not contribute much to overall economic growth. Most of the projects, which could be labeled as either humanitarian or development, will require money on a recurrent, in many cases, yearly basis. So, there will be little or no reduction in aid dependency, and overall a bleak economic picture.

How does the international community see the Taliban’s rule three years on?

Baggerman: The international community lacks consensus on how to engage with the Taliban. No state has officially recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government. However, China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, multiple Arabian Gulf countries and a few others have cautiously moved toward a realpolitik acceptance of Taliban rule.

International actors’ core dilemma centers on principled versus pragmatic engagement. Many civil society groups and U.N. human rights bodies take a principled stance, focusing on promoting human rights, especially for women and girls. Pragmatic or tactical engagement — seen by the U.N.’s Doha meetings and humanitarian efforts — addresses immediate needs, but tends to normalize Taliban authority.

Most global engagement with the Taliban centers on counterterrorism. Taliban rule has created a safer haven for terrorist groups that threaten regional and international security. The Taliban has not expelled al-Qaida members, and ISIS-Khorasan (while opposed by the Taliban) has managed to secure a foothold in the country from where it has conducted recent attacks in Moscow and Iran. Pakistan is deeply threatened by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which the Taliban have given safe haven.

What does this mean for U.S. policy?

Scott Worden: Afghanistan has largely disappeared from high-level foreign policy debates as more acute crises like Gaza and Sudan and more strategic challenges like China and Russia have come to the fore. Afghanistan has taken a back seat in U.S. foreign and defense policy and neither presidential campaign has put forward detailed policy proposals about how they plan to deal with the country’s challenges if elected. The current administration has also avoided significant discussion about Afghanistan policy beyond condemning women’s rights violations and noting the absence of terrorist attacks on the homeland despite having no troops on the ground. In the background of all this silence is an uncomfortable sense that there are few good ideas on how to change a frustrating and depressing status quo.

U.S. policy toward Afghanistan is also hampered by the same tensions between a principled vs. pragmatic engagement approach discussed above. On one hand, maintaining a functional relationship with the Taliban is needed to achieve core U.S. interests of counterterrorism cooperation on ISIS-K and individuals that have been wrongfully detained. On the other hand, the U.S. condemns the Taliban’s women’s rights restrictions and does not want to be seen as “rewarding” the Taliban for their authoritarian behavior. Economic assistance is caught in the middle. Sanctioning the Taliban and withholding development assistance is a normal response toward an adversarial regime — yet it ultimately hurts Afghans the U.S. wants to support and increases humanitarian needs. Essentially, the Taliban’s human rights violations provide a low ceiling for U.S. engagement and the need to mitigate terrorism and migration risks put a floor on the degree of isolation the U.S. can afford. Policy will likely fluctuate within this middle band for the foreseeable future unless and until some surprising security shock like a foreign terrorist attack jolts the system.