Afghanistan Peace CampaignFour years after returning to power, the Taliban regime has become a model of totalitarian rule, using the state as an instrument of total control, promoting a radical ideological agenda, and centralizing authority around a singular leader with a cult of personality. The regime pushes for a utopian society in which women are stripped of their agency, political violence is glorified, modern education is discouraged, and cultural expression is suppressed. Despite this oppression, Afghan society exhibits resilience in various forms, including survival, subtle resistance, and covert defiance, which require support from the international community.
In Afghanistan today, the Taliban has effectively enforced a gender apartheid, where women are not only banished from public life but are also legally confined to their homes and windowless rooms. The regime has even outlawed and prohibited women’s voices. Girls’ education has been banned, and fundamental human rights are being violated. Thousands of new madrassas (religious seminaries) have opened, promoting indoctrination that fosters radicalization.
The media faces a total blackout. Only regime-approved books and literature are published and circulated. The state has transformed into a moral entity with the mission of enforcing “true” or “pure” theocratic rule. Through its morality law, the regime has effectively eliminated any personal space. Without a constitution, the state operates on the decrees of the Taliban supreme leader, the Amir ul Momineen, who is seen as the ultimate arbiter of “divine rule.” The state and its bureaucratic machinery operate to enforce the regime’s ideological agenda, where resistance and dissent are swiftly and brutally suppressed.
Since reclaiming power in Kabul four years ago, the Taliban regime has been relentlessly pursuing a dystopian social transformation. Its ideological aspirations, combined with the full mobilization of the state to enforce a harsh social order, have led to a systematic descent into totalitarianism. These actions by the regime necessitate an active response from the international community. The first step should be to recognize the regime not merely as authoritarian, but as a dystopian totalitarian one.
Totalitarianism in the Twenty-First Century
By the end of the twentieth century, the relevance of examining totalitarianism had lessened due to the decline of communism and the globalization of a norm-based international order. However, as the contemporary crisis of this norm-based international order deepens, tendencies and aspirations towards totalitarianism have emerged in various regions. Amid this crisis, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan stands out as a notable example of totalitarianism.
Although the regime is often depicted as authoritarian, its ideological and political contours align more closely with those of totalitarianism. The conceptual distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian rule has often remained blurred. Although both are non-democratic, they embody fundamentally different dynamics between the state and society.
Totalitarianism is the most extreme version of the subordination of people to the state and a questionable homogeneous societal structure. Classic literature, including intellectual work by Carl Friedrich and Hannah Arendt, characterizes totalitarianism as a ruling ideology seeking to create a utopian or perfect society, governed by a centralized power structure led by a singular figure. It employs an oppressive state apparatus, including bureaucratic machinery, to enforce social transformation.
Totalitarian regimes maintain a monopoly on information and communication, using fear and violence as tools of total control of people and their lives. Although such subordination may seem remote from the political realities and normative standards of the twenty-first century, it is essentially occurring under Taliban rule.
How is the Taliban Rule Totalitarian?
Under the Taliban, Afghanistan has emerged as one of the most oppressed nations in the world. The regime has transformed the state into an instrument of total domination, closely aligning with its ideological mission, and it has waged a war against fundamental human rights, freedoms, and agency. The relationship between the state and society under Taliban rule is characterized by total submission.
Since regaining power, the Taliban has begun to establish a system in which the entire state apparatus exerts control over citizens and their lives, and is dedicated to serving the interests of the regime, grounded in an all-encompassing ideology centered around a singular paternalistic figure. This process involves dismantling institutions that traditionally maintain a balance of power among different branches of government and provide essential checks on government authority, such as the media, legislative bodies, independent judiciary, human rights and electoral commissions, and civil society.
Moving toward totalitarian rule, the Taliban has implemented a centralized system of oppression marked by extrajudicial violence, executions, and the brutal suppression of dissent and resistance. This system is defined by a pervasive ideological orientation led by the Taliban clergy, who direct and lead all state institutions, including technical and bureaucratic apparatus.
The regime has shifted the state orientation toward a wholly paternalistic model, reliant on the whims of the supreme leader, who positions himself as the ultimate arbiter of divine rule. For the regime, the state is viewed as a moral entity with a divine mandate, where politics is not merely a mechanism for serving the populace or defining the relationship between the state and its citizens; rather, it is used as a tool to establish self-proclaimed “divine rule.”
The head of the Taliban’s supreme court claims that the state’s mandate is to implement “divine rule.” He characterizes the regime as a “government of guidance,” whose functions include establishing a “pure Islamic order,” continuing jihad, and eradicating vice. This understanding of the state’s role influences the relationship between the state and society.
The regime prioritizes its ideological goal of total social transformation over the rights-holder and duty-bearer dynamic between society and the state. It obliges the state to seek the salvation of the society on the “righteous path,” which makes the right-based contract with the society irrelevant and secondary to the overarching ideological goal of the regime. To promote its ideological agenda, the regime justifies its actions as “the rule of the divine,” ultimately guided by the supreme leader.
The regime’s supreme leader wields unmatched moral authority, directing politics toward the ultimate goal of establishing the “rule of the divine.” The Taliban supreme leader argues that the regime’s mission is to guide the people in following God’s rule while criticizing modern politics for prioritizing self-interest and materialism. In 2023, he abolished the Attorney General’s Office, creating a high directorate to enforce his directives, effectively positioning himself as the regime’s constitution and ultimate authority. This realignment aims to make mundane politics serve the state’s divine mission, positioning Amir ul Momineen as its ultimate arbiter. The move has blurred the lines between the regime, the state, and society, undermining institutional independence, including the judiciary, which now prioritizes the regime’s ideological mission over justice.
Totalitarianism is defined by the blurring of lines between the state and society, with the aim of unifying the populace under a single ideology. The Taliban aims to fundamentally transform Afghan society by enforcing its moral directives. Although religion is deeply ingrained in Afghan culture, the regime undermines traditional religious institutions and scholars critical of the regime’s radical ideology, making them unable to resist the prevailing totalitarianism without facing brutality and violence.
Like any totalitarian regime, the Taliban aims to moralize its ideology to such an extent that domestic opposition becomes highly improbable. The moral framing of its mission demonizes political dissent, resistance, and differing ideologies, portraying them as corrupt and justifying violence against them.
Resistance to the Taliban
Although the regime’s brutality may have stifled popular revolt, the character of perseverance and resilience within Afghan society is slowly but surely emerging. Afghan resistance may differ from Western notions of revolt and protest; instead, it manifests through survival, subtle resistance, and covert defiance.
Resistance through survival means valuing and living life as people desire, within the limits of what is possible. Subtle resistance manifests in various forms, including art, activism, and social media. A dynamic Afghan diaspora is organizing, including Afghan scholars. Traditional religious scholars, often at great personal risk, are opposing the regime’s interpretation and ideological stance. Meanwhile, women are challenging the regime’s rules by engaging in income-generating activities and small businesses to support their families. Additionally, society mobilizes covert defiance in various ways, such as establishing not only hidden schools for girls but secret beauty salons.
While Afghan society resists the totalitarianism of the Taliban in a brutally oppressive context, the international community has both a political and moral obligation to oppose the regime. The first step is to recognize the Taliban regime as a totalitarian entity, as it meets all the criteria associated with such a rule.
The political history of the twentieth century demonstrates that normalizing a totalitarian regime for strategic or self-interest can contribute to the spread of totalitarian ideologies in other regions. As liberal democracies in the West grapple with their own authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies among certain political groups, legitimizing Taliban-style totalitarianism could empower similar paternalistic and dystopian narratives elsewhere.