The Doha meeting will be held behind closed doors, with Secretary-General Guterres hosting Special Envoys for Afghanistan. The list of participants has not been released, but is expected to include countries from the region and the major donors, with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and her deputy for political affairs coming from Kabul. Finally, after much speculation in the media about whether the Taleban would take part, the Secretary-General’s spokesperson confirmed that, unlike the last such gathering, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in July 2022 (media reporting here), “The Secretary-General has not extended an invitation to the de facto authorities.” (See transcript of the 28 April press briefing here.)

The meeting is an opportunity for international actors, both interested nations and the UN, to discuss how to deal with the Taleban.

This report first lays out why dealings between the Islamic Emirate and the rest of the world has been so difficult and perplexing, both for the Taleban and other countries. It looks at how relations deteriorated after the takeover and at the strange and uneasy modus vivendi that has developed, involving sanctions, aid, non-recognition and minimal engagement, and at how that has been thrown into confusion by the Taleban’s decision to ban Afghan women from working, first with NGOs (on 24 December 2022) and then the UN (on 4 April).

The report then looks at how the UN responded to the extension of the ban on Afghan women working, which had been widely anticipated, but which it had apparently not prepared for. It looks at how the extension has complicated the agenda for the already-planned Doha meeting. It also details recent remarks made by various senior UN personalities in the light of the ban and ahead of the Doha gathering, which have stirred up controversy, including comments by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed which appeared to suggest that recognition of the Emirate might be on the table – something which has been denied, but which sparked a media and social media storm.

The report explores, a little, the reasoning of those advocating greater or less engagement with the Taleban, before concluding with the little that is known about the agenda at the Doha meeting and what can be expected from it.

Why are relations between the Emirate and the rest of the world so difficult?

Relations between the Taleban and many of Afghanistan’s Republic-era allies have deteriorated since the Taleban took power in August 2021. In the early months after the fall of the Republic, even though the Taleban had taken power by military force and after – as many international actors saw it – they broke a promise to negotiate with other Afghans, there was still some appetite to deal with Taleban rule as a fait accompli. Discussions with the Taleban in Doha in 2020 and 2021 before the takeover had engendered some hope that, this time, the Taleban might behave differently, respect the rights and freedoms of the Afghan people – women and girls, the media and protestors, that a Taleban government would be a pluralistic one, not made up exclusively from its own ranks, and that an official amnesty given to former officials and military would be respected. Re-opening embassies, beginning ‘constructive dialogue’ and resuming development aid were all on the table at this time.

None of that happened. No country has recognised the Emirate as Afghanistan’s government, although a handful of embassies ^[1] are now in the hands of Taleban appointees, and some countries have opened missions in Kabul. ^[2] Afghanistan’s reserves, held in the United States and Europe, have remained frozen since the takeover. US and UN sanctions, which applied to the Taleban or individual members before the takeover, now apply to the country they govern. Those sanctions have been subject to multiple waivers that should enable most trade, remittance flows and aid, but they still have a chilling effect on business and other financial interactions because foreign correspondent banks, which act as intermediaries between domestic and international banks, are reluctant to deal with Afghan banks. Meanwhile, the money which had poured into Afghanistan as aid and military support (estimated by USIP economist William Byrd to have been about eight billion dollars a year) and the plentiful spending of foreign armies was cut off overnight in August 2021. It has been replaced by a much smaller, but still significant amount of humanitarian aid – Byrd calculates about three billion dollars a year, or a fifth of Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), itself far smaller since the takeover and the economic collapse it precipitated.

From a Western point of view, any improvement in relations has been successively set back by Emirate policy decisions that Western governments found untenable: the appointment of an administration made up exclusively of Taleban, with few non-Pashtuns and no women in September 2021 (AAN reporting here); the decision to re-close secondary schools for girls just after Nawruz 2022, 72 hours ahead of a major international conference on aid to Afghanistan (AAN reporting here); the discovery that the leader of al-Qaeda was living in Kabul (Ayman al-Zawahri was killed by a United States drone on 31 July 2022, see this AAN report) which, reportedly scuppered discussions on how to reactivate the Central Bank as an independent entity (which could have eased the liquidity and banking crisis); and finally, in December the banning of girls from university and Afghan women working for NGOs. The Taleban decided to extend that ban to the UN, despite the UN having announced its operations were on a “trial period” while it monitored the ban’s impact on women working for NGOs.

For the Taleban, who believe they are the rightful rulers of Afghanistan through God’s grace and the defeat of foreign armies and their Afghan ‘puppets’, this refusal to recognise their regime and to stymie economic activity through sanctions, is perplexing and enraging. How they deal with Afghan women and whom the Supreme Leader chooses to appoint are all internal, domestic issues and no one else’s business. As to Zawahri, they condemned his killing, saying it was “a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement” and would harm “mutual interests” (for more detail, see this AAN report). They also believe that as the government of Afghanistan, they are best placed to deliver aid to their people.

The result of all this has been a strange modus vivendi. Western donors provide huge amounts of off-budget aid to Afghanistan, but it is overwhelmingly humanitarian, which is ‘apolitical’ and, therefore, more palatable domestically, but neither cost-effective nor aid effective. The aid is channelled not through the Taleban government, but largely through an unwieldy and expensive mechanism which sees UN agencies devolving funding to NGOs (with the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund or ARTF adding another layer of bureaucracy to some of it). Since August 2021, that support has saved millions of Afghans from even worse hardship and helped the economy limp along. The dollars needed to pay for humanitarian efforts (flown in by the UN, but the effect would be the same if they arrived by bank transfer) also help keep the economy afloat, supporting the domestic currency, the afghani, keeping inflation down and boosting many national and personal incomes.

Humanitarian aid, by its very nature, is short-term assistance to help the most vulnerable members of a society facing an acute humanitarian crisis – to save lives, relieve suffering, and protect human dignity until the government or other actors can step in with long-term sustainable plans. It is not intended to act as a long-term solution to address, let alone resolve, a complex humanitarian crisis like Afghanistan’s. It is especially problematic, writes Byrd, when it is “a primary source of external financial support propping up the economy.” The aid, delivered so as to bypass the Taleban does also inevitably help sustain the Emirate: it keeps the economy afloat, indirectly fund domestic revenues from the collection of taxes and customs from individuals, businesses, traders and NGOs, and means that some of that revenue that might have had to be spent on services, such as healthcare, can be reserved for other aspects of government, especially security. Few think this situation is ideal or even healthy.

Meanwhile, engagement between foreigners and the country’s supreme leader has not happened at all: requests to meet by those based in or coming to Afghanistan have been turned down, which means outsiders do not get to talk to the real holder of power in the country. Western diplomats also generally meet Taleban officials outside the country, typically in Doha. That has left humanitarian actors on the ground as the Emirate’s main international interlocutors. Yet, they have no say over the policy of Western states, especially over what is important to the Taleban – sanctions, Afghanistan’s frozen assets and recognition.

This unsatisfactory modus vivendi suddenly and radically deteriorated yet further on 24 December 2022 when the Emirate announced that NGOs were banned from employing Afghan women. That ban left NGOs and their UN and donor partners with uncomfortable choices, summed up in a recent AAN report on the ban as: comply, fudge, or boycott. Scores of NGOs suspended some of their operations in the immediate aftermath of the ban while they tried to find compromises and workarounds.

The ban touched off a succession of visits by high-ranking UN officials in hopes of persuading the Emirate to overturn it and allow women to continue working for NGOs. The first of such visits was that of the UN’s top-ranking woman, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed (see media reporting about her visit on 20 January here and here). Her two-week trip included “consultative visits” to Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf states, where she also met diplomats based in Doha before travelling onwards to Afghanistan and visits to Kazakhstan, the UK and the European Union afterwards.The consultations, she told a press conference on 25 January on her return to New York (transcript here), were important because “the international community needs to have that unified response.”

She wanted “to see if there was any opening, any momentum that we could have on the political track.” At that press conference, she also made a case for engagement:

[The Taleban] have these two mantras. One is called self-sufficiency and the other one’s called alternatives and I think that that’s really difficult to deal with, because within the region, which is why we must engage with the region, there is engagement. Even while we were there, there were announcements to some countries of some of the investments that they were dealing with. So I think they will go to where they can get an engagement and resources will come. This is a well-functioning mindset that zero tolerance for corruption. Absolute take the max tax so they can take out of anyone to make sure the coffers are full, and they do have trade. I mean, they trade. So I think that we’re up against, you know, looking for the leverage we have to bring them to the international community, where the respect for women and girls’ rights, human rights are right up front. And that’s why I think the pressure for us to continue engaging not to leave a vacuum that will be filled by something else that will take us back decades.

One such leverage, she said, was recognition “because [the Taleban] talked about it all the time,” she added: “I went into Afghanistan thinking perhaps the most conservative of them didn’t care about recognition; they do. Recognition is one leverage that we have, and we should hold on to it.”

Meanwhile, back in Kabul, the ban had derailed the launch of the critical 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP). It outlines Afghanistan’s needs for the year and was due to make a multi-billion dollar funding appeal on behalf of humanitarian organisations working there, in January. The HRP’s launch was delayed until March while intense discussions took place between humanitarian actors, and with the Emirate about the ban. Those discussions included another visit to Kabul later in January by members of the UN’s highest-level humanitarian coordination forum, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), led by its chair, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths (see his press conference on returning to New York on 30 January 2023 here).

In the end, the ban did not alter the Humanitarian Response Plan; it still requested USD 4.6 billion in assistance for Afghanistan in 2023 to support 23.7 million people in need, with a little over half, USD 2.66 billion, going on food security and agriculture. However, the IASC mandated an “operational trial period” for humanitarian activities during which, according to the HRP, “based on the outcomes of… monitoring and related advocacy efforts,” the UN would review operations comprehensively and, if required, revise the plan. ^[3]

Yet those advocacy efforts resulted not in a resolution of the ban on NGOs employing Afghan women, but a doubling down by the Taleban and an extension of the ban to UN agencies. (For more detail on the plan and the delay, see AAN’s report from 19 March, Two Security Council Resolutions and a Humanitarian Appeal: UN grapples with its role in Afghanistan.)

The Doha meeting, the women working ban and confused UN officials

One important outcome of the senior UN visits to Kabul in January was that Amina Mohammed in particular came away feeling that a ‘political approach’ and the establishment of a political track with the Taleban was needed, something which she spoke about in her January press conference:

So it’s not black and white. It’s not cut and dry. There’s lots of grey areas and weaving that we have to do, but always keeping our women right at the centre of this. Right upfront and centre. If we keep that focus, I can tell you we will go much, much further ahead. If we start to get involved in the why we can’t do it, then we won’t do it. Now we must do it because these women matter. And they are a reflection of what is happening to women’s rights around the world. And if we drop it on Afghanistan, we will drop it on many more rights of women.

Mohammed’s sense that there needed to be a political approach to the Emirate was, AAN was told by sources from invited countries that the genesis for the 1-2 May meeting in Doha, where envoys and UN officials could discuss and perhaps flesh out what that might look like. AAN was told by an official from one of the invited countries that, in parallel and feeding into the drive to explore complementary approaches to the Taleban, were the complaints of humanitarians on the ‘frontline’ in Kabul that they were neither equipped nor authorised to deal with the Emirate politically.

It was hoped that the gathering would be held soon after UNAMA’s mandate renewal in March, but the Secretary-General’s other commitments delayed it. ^[4] When the Taleban extended its ban on women working to the UN on 4 April, the UN responded by announcing that all staff, male and female, would work from home wherever possible while it reviewed operations: the end of that review was timed to end just after the Doha meeting, on 5 May. The extension of the ban has, of course, complicated the agenda at Doha. Also complicating what people understand the meeting to be about, and what UN policy in the wake of the working women ban might be have been remarks by senior personalities within the UN speaking at cross-purposes.

First, on 18 April 2023, UNDP’s global chief Achim Steiner told AP that the UN (not just UNDP but the entire UN family) was ready to take the “heartbreaking” decision to pull out of Afghanistan in May if it could not persuade the Taliban to reverse the ban on women working:

[I]f I were to imagine the U.N. family not being in Afghanistan today, I have before me these images of millions of young girls, young boys, fathers, mothers, who essentially will not have enough to eat.

Steiner said they were approaching “a very fundamental moment.” Their “hope and expectation is that there will be some common sense prevailing,” but right now, the “entire United Nations system [is] having to take a step back and re-evaluate its ability to operate there. His remarks came the same day as UNDP published a bleak assessment for the coming year, “Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023”, and possibly in an attempt to influence the UN’s internal review on operations due to end on 5 May.

Dujarric was left later that day trying to downplay Steiner’s remarks at the daily press briefing. He claimed there had been a “misinterpretation or misunderstanding” and insisted: “We are staying in Afghanistan. We are committed to do whatever we can to deliver for the people of Afghanistan.” Pressed repeatedly by journalists, he said the UN was “committed to doing whatever we can in Afghanistan,” that he was “not aware that the full pull out of the UN is an option” and that they were busy trying to “thread the needle” of how to deliver humanitarian aid in an impartial way according to our principles, respect International Human Rights Law and the UN charter.

The Secretary-General’s spokesperson was back clarifying UN policy on Afghanistan the following day after another senior official sparked fresh controversy. This time, he was responding to remarks made by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed in a talk at Princeton University in the US and reported by the media (see for example, Voice of America). She spoke about the first meeting of envoys from “the region and internationally” with the Secretary-General:

“And out of that, we hope that we’ll find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition [of the Taliban], a principled recognition,” Mohammed said. “Is it possible? I don’t know. [But] that discussion has to happen. The Taliban clearly want recognition, and that’s the leverage we have.”

VOA reported that Mohammed had said the Taleban had told her during her visit in January that they had implemented laws protecting women from gender-based violence and ensuring women’s inheritance rights according to sharia, and had eliminated corruption, but that the ‘international community’ had not allowed her to engage to know if these claims were true or not. Mohammed said engagement would help hold the Taleban accountable for their actions: “We cannot allow that they continue to get worse, which is what happens when you don’t engage.” Regional economic engagement was already happening, she also said, with the aim of ensuring Afghanistan did not implode and plunge into chaos: “We either engage and pull them to the right side, or we don’t and see where it drifts. We must dine with the devil with [a] long spoon.” Mohammed also reportedly compared the Taleban to COVID, calling their actions unpredictable: “We don’t know what they’re going to do or how they’re going to react.”

While the transcript of her speech at Princeton has not been released, the words quoted do recall what she said during her press conference back in January. Back then, she was not proposing that the Emirate should be recognised, but that recognition was one thing that the Taleban had been clear about desiring and as such, it might be used as valuable leverage to obtain concessions. In that sense, there was nothing new about what she was reported to have said at Princeton. However, the very mention of ‘recognition’ stirred up horror and hope – depending on a person’s hostility towards, or support for, the Emirate. Any number of tweets, articles, blogs and opinion pieces were triggered by the Princeton talk, mainly to attack, but some to support putting recognition on the table, despite the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson’s clarification the very next day, 19 April, when he told reporters:

So let me be clear. First of all, on the topic of recognition, that is clearly in the hands of the Member States. And it’s a fact, it’s according to the Charter, and there’s no question on that.

The spokesperson then tried to put Mohammed’s remarks in context.

I think in her remarks in Princeton, she was reaffirming the need for the international community to have a coordinated approach regarding Afghanistan, which includes finding common ground on the longer-term vision of the country and sending a unified message to the de facto authorities on the imperative to ensure that women have their rightful place in Afghan society. She was not, I think, in any way implying that anyone else but Member States have the authority for recognition.

Dujarric’s attempts to tell reporters what the Doha meeting was about were mystifying – at least to this author who is not fluent in UN-speak. He said the aim of the gathering was to:

[R]einvigorate the international engagement around the common objectives for a durable way forward on the situation in Afghanistan. The Secretary-General has said and continues to believe that it’s an urgent priority to advance an approach based on pragmatism and principles, combined with strategic patience, and to identify parameters for creative, flexible, principled, and constructive engagement. It is his aim that the discussions, which will be held behind closed doors, can contribute to a more unified consensus regarding the challenges ahead.

The following day, 20 April, UN deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq, was still trying to clarify the nature of the Doha meeting after “several countries have sort of expressed some concern, and maybe slight confusion” that it was about recognising the Emirate. He insisted this was not the case.

Meanwhile, back in Kabul, on 19 April, UNAMA Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Humanitarian Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov urged the international community to “stay the course [and] maintain the humanitarian response in the current operating environment to the best extent possible, avert famine, prevent disease outbreaks & avoid excess mortality.” In a series of tweets, ^[5] which appeared to be in response to, and contradicting, UNDP boss Achim Steiner’s remarks that the UN might be leaving Afghanistan, he said:

3/4 While the Taliban de-facto authorities have taken a series of decisions that have negatively impacted the ability of humanitarian actors to mount a full-scale response, this is not the time to turn our backs on the people of Afghanistan. They need everyone’s solidarity.

Western officials who spoke to AAN were all privately perplexed by the mixed messaging from these senior officials. The outcry against Mohammed’s reported remarks meant some had had to privately clarify what the aims of the UN’s Doha meeting ‘really were’ to their ministers, while some have also felt the need to re-state their governments’ position publically. For example, US Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls and Human Rights Rina Amiri tweeted on 25 April:

I have received a number of messages expressing concern regarding recognition of the Taliban. We remain clear. There will be no normalization of relations with the Taliban without respect for the rights of all Afghans, especially women.

The conflicting remarks have been a comms disaster for the UN, stirring up controversy and concern. Perhaps more worryingly is how they pointed to the UN having collectively had its head in the sand over the possibility that the Taleban might extend the ban. On 4 April, after the extension to the ban became evident, the Secretary-General made clear, via his spokesperson, that he found it “frankly, inconceivable.” Yet anyone involved in Afghanistan had assessed the extension of the ban as probable, indeed, likely. It was a possibility that was also mentioned by his deputy, Amina Mohammed, back in January:

There was the notion that a third edict may come out that would take out international women from the international organizations, the embassies.^[6] The author was told that some embassies have indeed been affected by the ban on employing Afghan women. I mean this was talked about. I have to tell you we went with, in our back pocket, three responses to that. It hasn’t happened so far, touch wood and the tree of knowledge. I don’t say that it won’t, but clearly the pressure that we’re putting on has stopped that roll back as quickly.

The utter confusion displayed by senior officials has given every impression that the UN had carried out no scenario planning during the more than three months following the announcement of the ban on women working for NGOs as to what it would do and say if the Taleban extended the ban. It took a week for the ‘UN in Afghanistan’ to come up with a policy and a statement, published on 11 April. Different UN agencies have different interests, mandates and priorities, as well as perennial squabbles over finances and resources. Yet, this should have been one time when planning, coordination, and unity of messaging, won out.

The controversy and confusion caused by the varying remarks of senior UN officials have exacerbated what was an already difficult situation facing the UN and NGOs on the ground. It has further muddied already muddy waters over international policy towards the Emirate. If Taleban are now discussing splits in the UN and the ‘international community’ and wondering what their ‘real aims’ are, it would be no surprise.

Is greater engagement a good idea?

For both the UN and other international actors, deciding what to do in the face of both the bans on working women in particular and dealing with the Taleban in general, is far from easy – for all the reasons explored here and in another recent report by the author, “Bans on Women Working, Then and Now: The dilemmas of delivering humanitarian aid during the first and second Islamic Emirates”. One interviewee in that report with experience working in Afghanistan in the 1990s and today described the dilemmas as “fundamental, complex and largely irresolvable,” which means that whatever choices are made “will feel at least partially wrong. In a situation this complicated, a good choice doesn’t really exist.” The very difficulty of the situation makes the need for clarity and profound thinking obvious.

There are thoughtful proponents of both greater and lesser engagement. Former US ambassador to Kabul and senior career diplomat Ronald Neumann, for example, has pointed out that the “current approach of sanctions, demands and restricted contact with the Taliban is not working” to progress US goals. He made practical and thoughtful suggestions in a piece, “Why, when and how America should engage the Taliban”, published on 6 April in The Hill, which included being mindful of the mistrust, misconceptions and ignorance about the other party’s intentions and interests, and taking “a more limited approach based on certain principles.”

One [principle] is to limit goals for much smaller steps designed to slowly make some progress and, perhaps, build Taliban confidence that negotiations can be useful. A second principle is that every step must have a clear something given by them for something concrete from us. We should not advance based on promises; that approach led to the failure of the Doha withdrawal agreement. We withdrew U.S. troops. The Taliban gave virtually nothing.

Others are adamant that the Taleban need to amend their policies first, before they are ‘rewarded’ with any positive change in relations, or believe the Emirate is actually incapable of change and engagement is pointless and counter-productive. This position has been cogently argued by former Deputy Head of the Independent Directorate of Local Governance and former senior analyst with Crisis Group, Timor Sharan, in a piece published in Just Security on 20 April.

[I]nternational engagement with the Taliban keeps hitting a brick wall and has mainly proved ineffective, including on women’s rights. The United States and its allies are dealing with a regime on a radical mission, making any meaningful engagement very difficult beyond technical discussion over the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The carrots the international community has proposed so far subject to Taleban’s improved policies towards women – broader engagement and potential development assistance in specific areas – such as salaries for teachers or in the healthcare sector – is of secondary importance for the Taliban core leadership. They are driven and motivated by a puritanic mission and elements of a shared ideology. Indeed, they would rather see the Afghan population starve to death than undermine this mission.

The Doha meeting, and a new UN resolution

The extension of the ban to women working for the UN raised the bar for foreign governments to present a united front. Just a few days ahead of the Doha meeting, on 27 April, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution condemning the ban. It took six drafts and 17 days of heated negotiations to finalise the content and language of resolution 2681 (2023). (For a readout of the negotiations in the lead-up to the vote, see UN Security Council Report here).

According to a UN press release, the resolution condemned the Taleban ban on Afghan women for UN, saying it “undermines human rights and humanitarian principles” and called for “the full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women and girls in Afghanistan.” It also called on the Taleban to “swiftly reverse its policies and practices restricting women and girls’ enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms — including those related to their access to education, employment, freedom of movement and participation in public life.” (The resolution will be publicly available as document S/RES/2681(2023) in due course.)

Speaking before the vote, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, ambassador to the UN for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the penholders on Afghanistan (these are the council members who lead the negotiation and drafting of resolutions on a particular issue – the other current penholder on Afghanistan is Japan), said her country was:

[P]leased to be joined by over 90 co-sponsors, not just from the Council, but also from Afghanistan’s immediate neighbourhood, the Muslim world and all corners of the Earth…. The cross-regional support for this resolution makes our fundamental message today even more significant: the world will not sit by silently as women in Afghanistan are erased from society. (See video here and UN press release here).

The Taleban were quick to react, with foreign ministry spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi telling Turkey’s Anadolu news agency the ban was “an internal social matter of Afghanistan that does not impact outside states,” adding that the Emirate “remain[s] committed to ensuring all rights of Afghan women while emphasizing that diversity must be respected & not politicized.” Emirate spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid also weighed in: “The only solution to address all the problems of Afghanistan,” he said, “is to have engagement, dialogue and understanding. They should not block the route for engagement and dialogue, it is very harmful.” Finally, senior Taleban member, Anas Haqqani, called on the UN Security Council to stop chasing “its failed policies” and instead of passing resolutions, concentrate on removing political, economic and banking sanctions, which he said amounted to the “collective punishments of the Afghan people.” Balkhi did, however, say parts of the resolution were positive: “[Its] acknowledgement that Afghanistan faces multifaceted challenges is welcomed…. Afghanistan has suffered from decades long conflict often imposed by foreign powers. The path to post-conflict recovery requires the unconditional removal of UN, multilateral, & unilateral sanctions & restrictions, in addition to the provision of humanitarian & development. Assistance to the country.” (For more media reporting, see ToloNews and BBC Persian.)

It is following the world’s unequivocal condemnation of the Emirate’s working women ban that special envoys and UN officials will start arriving in Doha. The original purpose of the meeting, to come up with a practical approach to engagement, was already difficult enough, given the diverse nature of the participants. The Taleban’s ban on women working for the UN has further complicated matters, as that issue will inevitably loom large, skewing the conversation and taking up airtime – although fleshing out of a common position would be useful, as would backing for whatever the UN does: pull out, suspend, restrict or carry on with its operations.

Many would prefer to shelve any discussion on possible engagement with the Taleban until after the Emirate changes its policies on women, political participation and other freedoms, but for those who advocate political engagement, however limited, the Doha meeting could be an opportunity to start discussing preliminaries: How might the outside world influence Taleban policy? Are there common interests despite bigger differences? Should UNAMA have a role, and if so, what could it look like? How does one engage when even the most senior UN officials, globally, do not get to meet the Kandahar-based leadership?

People from three nations or organisations that have been invited to Doha have told AAN the agenda is limited – “skeletal” was the word used by one. All said that ambitions and expectations were low. It appears the meeting will focus on deliberating international concerns over the Taleban and exploring to see if there are any tools to influence them, or any common ground for better relations between the Emirate and the world – in other words, the very ‘baby steps’ that Amina Mohammed was talking about when she spoke at Princeton. We should not expect an outcome statement, they said, nor a final communiqué, nor a press conference.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Jelena Bjelica

Students of the Afghan National Institute of Music in exile perform at a mixed musical evening of Portuguese Fado and Afghan songs in Lisbon. Photo by Fabrizio Foschini, 5 April 2023

At the political level, any debate on the lawfulness of music may be considered to have stalled. In the absence of strong pressure, either internal or external, for a change, the Taleban hardly need to clarify their stance or make it official. As in the repression of other activities or behaviour considered reproachable from a religiously ultra-conservative point-of-view, Taleban authorities do not have to engage in systematic ad hoc persecution. To make sure that music is repressed, and the de facto ban implemented, they can also count on religiously conservative networks in society and mechanisms of self-censorship activated by the population as a survival strategy. This can amount even to participating in the denouncing of musicians. As for the forms of this repression, despite hints by the Taleban that they would seek to enjoin people engaging in sinful acts to cease doing so with reasoning, it seems clear that the punishment for playing music can take extremely violent and disturbing shapes.

A look at one of the videos documenting the Taleban’s active targeting of musicians reveals several ‘culprits’ being publically punished, disgraced and humiliated, as they are forced to undergo haircutting, clothes-rending and self-shaming, and see their beloved instruments destroyed. The scene looks closer to a mob lynching than organised state violence. This, and the remote border location, Zazai Aryub district of Paktia province, where the footage originates, should not suggest that such a punishment is to be considered an outlier with respect to Taleban official procedures. Rather, it represents a form of state repression made more effective by the memory of old-time punishments, such as those meted out to individuals who ‘had gone astray’ by tribal or religious institutions invested by local elites with normative authority. Such types of community violence have usually been more effective and to-be-feared than forms of government repression in Afghanistan. The fact that these punishments are not inflicted regularly but seem to depend on the whim of local Taleban commanders and Amr bil Ma’ruf officials^[2] does not leave the musicians in a better situation.

As detailed in the previous AAN report, one of the major yet most underrated problems of the Taleban ban on music is how it has undermined the social status of musicians and others connected to music making. Afghan musicians were traditionally classed as members of a clearly defined – and typically, looked down upon – social group. Until the 1970s, the great majority of musicians were associated with low-class, largely endogamous communities (ie they formed their own clan or ‘tribe’). Being a musician was hereditary and bore an economic and cultural stigma. Exceptions were made for some of the greatest names of Afghan music, who featured on radio programmes and were endowed the status of stars by the public, and for a few connoisseurs of music who belonged to the educated elites and were not dependent on performance for their income. The decades of war and religious radicalisation after 1978 saw a further erosion of musicians’ status inside Afghanistan; meanwhile, prominent musicians fled the country and settled abroad. This elite diaspora, also thanks to its connections with the modern ‘world music’ scene, was able to retain its stardom status in the eyes of the Afghan people, especially after 2001. For the traditional musicians who had remained in the country or emigrated to nearby Pakistan or Iran and then returned, the process of emancipation from the old stereotypes proved much slower and harder.

However, in the years following the 2001 change of regime, change came, slowly but surely. Pursuing a career in music was no longer only an option for the scions of musician families, who had put up with social stigma forever. Earning one’s bread through music, even traditional music played on ‘old’ instruments, began to be considered not a low-class and low-income occupation but potentially a respectable, professional career choice. It also became connected with national heritage and pride in being Afghan. Musicians were becoming a more composite group, with young talent from different walks of life adding to the wealth of knowledge and experience stashed in traditional musical preserves like Kabul’s Kharabat neighbourhood.^[3] The Emirate’s de facto ban on music has eroded musicians’ hard-earned respect, throwing them back, once again, to the moral margins of society and destroying their ability to earn money and support a family. As a group, musicians have effectively been criminalised.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that so many musicians left the country shortly after the Taleban takeover, and that almost all those remaining are trying to follow suit. However, despite the widespread interest that the return of musicians to Afghanistan after the first Emirate triggered, the disaster befalling this social group now has not been fully appreciated internationally.

Some media reports have thrown light on the economic plight of musicians forced into joblessness in Afghanistan and the problems faced by those still trying to leave the country. The Emirate’s attack on Afghans’ cultural rights and the abuse of musicians also featured in the first report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan to the UN Human Rights Council, published on 9 September 2022. There have also been some brief mentioning of the music ban by human rights groups.^[4] However, as with so many other issues facing Afghans, the persecution of the nation’s musicians has so far failed to trigger a coherent or comprehensive response by international players. In fact, after the early sound and fury of the evacuation in the second half of 2021, the organisations^[5] dedicated to facilitating the relocation of musicians or supporting economically those remaining in Afghanistan have actually started facing problems in gathering the needed attention and funding from donors.

Whatever attention the dire situation of Afghan musicians receives often originates from the musical events periodically organised in the countries hosting refugee musicians in relevant numbers and within the framework of organised relocation programmes. These events, which serve the purpose of raising both awareness about the ban on music in Afghanistan and funding for the support of musician exiles and those who stayed back in Afghanistan, certainly provide a rare occasion for advocacy and a vital form of support (see here a brief list of events organised by the International Campaign For Afghan Musicians – ICFAM).

Some more consistent media coverage has been received by the once Kabul-based, but now exiled Afghan National Institute of Music (ANIM) by virtue of its unique relevance to the Afghan musical scene and its extraordinary tale of survival, which entailed the relocation of a great number of students and teachers first to Qatar and finally to Portugal, where they strive to resume the institute’s previous activities fully (see here; here and here. ANIM musicians are also trying to make the best of their misfortune by eagerly joining every chance to perform music and exploring collaborations with other musical traditions and instruments, as the author was delighted to discover when attending an evening of mixed Fado-Afghan musical entertainment in Lisbon in April 2023 (pictures of the event feature in this report).^[6]

However, the fates of the many individual musicians, both inside the country and abroad, constitute precious threads of Afghanistan’s music world, which is under threat and at risk of being lost for good. In order to highlight the very diverse situations in which members of this special class of Afghans find themselves, AAN sought to give voice to some of them who are, more or less, now on their own.

AAN interviewed five Afghan musicians of different ages and backgrounds. Four are Kabulis (though one of them hails originally from Ghazni), and the fifth is Herati. Three were evacuated through international programmes and are currently in Europe – in Germany, Albania and Portugal. Another has fled Afghanistan on his own and is currently living as an undocumented refugee in Pakistan, while just one, the most senior, has remained in Kabul. Among those who relocated to Europe, two were students of ANIM, while the third had cooperated with the institute on various occasions. The other two musicians were active in the traditional musicians’ community centred in Kharabat in the Afghan capital.

The interviews took place in February 2023, and each began with the musician recalling what happened to them immediately after the Taleban takeover in August 2021. They are presented below, with interviewees grouped by age and clustered around specific events and aspects of their lives after that fateful turning point.

The new generation of musicians: fresh enthusiasm, and an iron determination

The first two interviewees belong to the newest generation of musicians: born after the fall of the Taleban’s first Emirate, they grew up in an environment which, however harsh and uncertain, offered at least the dream of a bright future in music, and some key opportunities to cultivate it. 18-old viola player, Rohullah, currently living in Germany, recalled studying at ANIM in Kabul:

I was 10 when I first went to study at ANIM. It was amazing: ANIM was trying to teach us music in the way a real academy would do: Western, Indian, Afghan music, theory and practice.

The other, Shokria, is only slightly older at 19. Originally from Ghazni, she lived in an orphanage in Kabul, where she also attended classes at ANIM. There, she studied classical guitar and the qashqarcha, a stringed instrument from northern Afghanistan, and played with the Zohra Orchestra (Afghanistan’s first all-female musical ensemble). She currently lives in a refugee camp in Albania, waiting to be relocated to the United States.

Both recalled vividly the moment they had to stop going to the institute and start making emergency plans for their future, as in Rohullah’s words:

Before the Taleban arrived, none of us had entertained the slightest idea they could take the city. The day they got into Kabul, I was at school. We were rehearsing for the music we’d perform for a national festivity; also because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we hadn’t been able to go to school for a long time in the previous months, and we needed to rehearse together hard.

Then suddenly, the police came to the school and told us the Taleban were in Kot-e Sangi [an area of PD6 not far from the ANIM premises, also located in west Kabul], and they were raising their flags there. It was sudden. It came as a shock: I rushed out, took a taxi, went home and started to pack my things, realising I had to leave the country immediately. Then Dr Sarmast [the director of ANIM] called and told me there was a plan to bring us students abroad with the support of foreign countries.

Or in Shokria’s recollections:

After the 15th of August [when the capital fell to the Taleban], the situation in Kabul was very bad. The stories we were hearing and the videos we were receiving from all sides were very scary. Also, we knew who the Taleban were. Because of their previous record when they’d been in power, because of the war they’d been waging in the provinces for years, they were known to us. We could never have believed they’d come to power and conquer Kabul. When this happened, a majority of the people living in Kabul tried to leave the city out of shock and fear. 

The wait that followed was fraught with fear and anxiety for both of these young musicians: evacuation seemed a mirage scarcely to be grasped and, if available to ANIM students themselves, then not to most members of their families – as Rohullah recalled:

While I was waiting, I stayed mostly at home. I was so afraid of the Taleban, I didn’t go out to see how they were at close quarters. My family was pushing me to leave, saying, “You have toiled so much for the past few years, you even managed to travel abroad and give concerts, all this can’t end in nothing, you have to leave here and finish what you started.” After some weeks, I received the call and was taken to the airport: we students stayed [outside the airport] for one whole night, but, that time, it didn’t work. The flight was postponed, and we came home. And then the airport was bombed, so we had to remain in Kabul much longer. 

For Shokria, the frustration was made more acute by the additional obstacles she had already had to overcome as a girl.

I [finally] left two months after the arrival of the Taleban. Two months I spent shut in my room. I was always in fear they’d come searching for me. A few days after their takeover, the BBC announced that music had been forbidden in Afghanistan. [The Taleban] had barely had the time to come to power and already they’d banned music!

Music is my profession, and in Afghanistan, it’s very hard to carry on with your life, to make a living for yourself and your family with music, especially as a girl. As if this was not enough, the Taleban arrived and ruined everything.

Finally, ANIM students were airlifted to Qatar in October 2021 and from there to Europe. Most went to Portugal, where the school was eventually re-established. Some, including Rohullah, did not stay:

Once in Europe, I asked to be reunited with my father. I was still a minor and this helped speed up the procedure. My father had been living in Germany for several years and I hadn’t seen him for a while. So, it’s eight months now since I moved to a small town in Bayern. I study in the local high school and I’m also learning German: English is useful here, but only up to a certain point. Once I get a diploma, I’ll continue my music studies. Luckily, I didn’t have to stop learning and practising my instrument. For three years, I’ve been a student of an American professor of viola who came to Afghanistan to teach, and luckily even now, I’m able to receive his online classes. 

Others, like Shokria, are still in limbo:

I arrived in Albania at the end of October 2021. My family has remained in Afghanistan. There are many Afghans living here, waiting for visas to get to Canada or the US. Our life here is comfortable compared to other refugee camps: the place has good facilities, we don’t face food shortages and the refugees are free to move around; it’s not a closed camp. We’re taught various classes, but mostly English. Kids go to school and adults are active too, so they don’t get too depressed. I’m waiting for a US visa, but nobody knows how long it’ll take. I want to go to the US, go to college and continue my education. I want to pursue a career in music because I wish to remain a musician, but I also want to study another subject besides music. 

According to their rather different current circumstances, Rohullah and Shokria both keep looking for ways to connect with other musicians and put their musical skills to play:

I was a member of the South Asian Orchestra between 2018 and 2020 when its activities were suspended because of the Covid-19 pandemic. They gave a concert in September last year [2022], but I’d just arrived in Germany and was still waiting for my documents, and I couldn’t travel abroad to perform with them. I hope this year to be able to do so. More recently, I managed to get in touch with the Passau University Orchestra and they offered me to join them, so I hope that in a few months I’ll start playing with them. (Rohullah)

When I arrived here in the camp, in less than a month, I managed to find a guitar. But I couldn’t find any other Afghan who played music. So I’m alone, but I have started teaching Afghan kids. UNICEF manages a school here and I arranged to teach those who are interested in music. (Shokria)

This determination to pursue their musical careers arguably stems from an inner certainty that their travel into the world of music is just beginning. Even highly traumatic events such as the Taleban takeover and their subsequent exile have come to represent the start, potentially, of a new phase in their personal path of learning and performing. These words, respectively by Rohullah and Shokria, show that the Taleban takeover and de facto ban on music has not robbed them of their identity as musicians:

The life of a musician is different from all other professions, but I hope that despite all the difficulties, I will manage to remain essentially a musician and bring back the meaning of music, its message of peace, of culture, of hope, to the people of my country. At any rate, until now, there were no professional viola players in Afghanistan. If nothing else, I hope at least to be able, when Afghanistan gets well again, to bring back this specific skill and learning to my people. (Rohullah)

Now musicians like me are scattered abroad. It’s a very hard situation for them. They’re always concerned about their families, left wondering what’s happening inside their country and whether they’ll ever be able to return. But we are in touch, we former students of ANIM, and other Afghan musicians as well, keeping in touch even if we’re spread far and wide, in order to get together whenever possible and keep bearing testimony to the world of the continuing existence of Afghan music. (Shokria)

A generation caught in the middle: a grim awakening for musicians in their prime

When I was a child, the Taleban took power for the first time. Back then, my father was in the army and he had to flee to Iran, while I had to stay back in Herat. I gave up my childhood because of the Taleban: I had no father, I couldn’t study, I couldn’t play. I grew up with my uncle’s family until I was eleven. Only when the US toppled the Taleban and the Karzai government came into being could my parents return from Iran. 

Fazel, now exiled in Portugal, comes from Herat. He is 32 years old and has spent all his life “studying, researching and teaching music.” He plays different stringed instruments such as the rubab, dotar, tambur and sitar;^[7] and has also studied singing. His approach to music is grounded in the rich traditional world of Herati musicians, but he sought avidly to expand his horizons and deepen his understanding of music, and managed to do so, thanks to the opportunities offered by post-2001 Afghanistan:

My uncle was a veteran rubab player who used to work for RTA [Radio Television Afghanistan, the state broadcaster], after having been a shagerd [disciple] of the Khushnawaz family of Herati rubab maestros. I started learning music as his student. After 2001, I also strived to study music more formally, but unfortunately, there was no adequate musical institution in Herat, so I got a diploma in Persian Literature instead.

From 2010, I started taking part in the winter academy organised by ANIM in Kabul, where they invited music students from other provinces. There, Afghan and foreign teachers would also give lectures on the theory of music. In Herat, there were many famous musicians and great performers, but they had no theoretical depth. In Kabul, I could finally learn the theory of Western and Indian musical systems. 

Another musician, Faruq, had believed music to be his lifelong profession and destiny. 43 years old and a virtuoso of the rubab, he was also a member of the music ensembles of various TV channels. He is now living in Quetta, Pakistan, though he originally hails from Kharabat, the musical heart of Kabul:

Music plays a huge role in my life. It’s my daily bread. In my family, there has always been music and I have continued this tradition from my childhood until now. And it’s because of music that now I had to flee Afghanistan and come live in Pakistan. The Taleban threatened us, saying we musicians put Islam in danger. During the past two decades, we have toiled to rebuild and enrich Afghan music. That is what we did. Every day, I would exert myself for 10 to 12 hours on the rubab, the sarod, the guitar. And, if I can’t be a musician, there is no other job I can do in Afghanistan. 

Faruq and Fazel’s generation of musicians witnessed the destruction brought to Afghan culture and society in the 1990s by the, by then, already decades-long conflict before participating in the reconstruction and rejuvenation of Afghanistan’s musical traditions, facing many obstacles and oppositions in the process. Now, the Taleban takeover has caught them, and scores of other musicians and music teachers who are in the prime of their professional and creative lives, as an unforeseen doom, forcing their projects and careers to an abrupt end, as Fazel recounted.

Back in Herat, I contributed to the founding of the Honarestan-e Tarana Academy and became the director of musical programmes there. With the help of ANIM, I also tried to expand the teaching of music curricula to other schools. Unfortunately, I faced many problems: on the one hand, there was a lack of professional music teachers and, in state schools, also of available budgets. Only in the last few years, some private schools had started to develop their own music groups to perform at festivals such as Nawruz. Moreover, Herat is a religiously conservative place and the influence of some religious leaders against our activities was very strong. They even managed to get some concerts by famous Afghan music stars cancelled.

When Herat fell, my problems were not with the incoming Taleban, but with certain circles – those around Mujib al-Rahman and his people.^[8]They were the ones who came after me when the Taleban conquered the city: they came to the academy and destroyed our musical instruments. I didn’t have sufficient contacts with foreigners to gather support, as I’d never travelled abroad. I managed to reach Kabul and get in touch with the French embassy who said they could help me, but not my students or the school. Then the Taleban took Kabul as well. I managed to flee to Qatar where I stayed for three or four months, and in December 2021, I was able to reach Portugal together with the ANIM students who were being relocated there.

Faruq also recalled difficult experiences.

Before coming here, to Quetta, we lived in Kabul under the Taleban for a while, but my face was too well known because I’d often performed on TV during the Republic. After the Taleban came to power, I stayed at home in PD8 for four months, barely going out at all. Then somebody – well, actually it was the wakil-e gozar [the representative] of my neighbourhood – who informed the Taleban about me, telling them that “this guy used to play music on TV and so on.” The Taleban came to my house, I owned a lot of instruments, also sarods and guitars, besides the rubabs. They scolded me and they destroyed some of [my collection]. After that, I decided to quit my home and I went to live in hiding in a rented house in Khushal Khan (in PD5 of West Kabul, the other side of the city) for another four to five months, until we managed to leave the country. 

In those days, to bring you to Pakistan, smugglers would normally ask for 50,000 Pakistani rupees [around USD 270 at the time, in May 2022]. I had to pay triple the amount, 150,000 PKRs [around USD 810], because the smugglers could tell I was some sort of fugitive. They thought I must have been someone in the military or a government official, or anyway somebody with something to hide from the Taleban, so they raised the price as they pleased. 

For men of Faruq and Fazel’s age, to suddenly lose the social status and economic stability achieved after great efforts in difficult environments – respectively a social background considered a ghetto, albeit a musical ghetto, like Kharabat, and a conservative, though learned, provincial city such as Herat, was a particularly heavy blow. Added to that, covering even the basic economic needs of a family was suddenly a nightmare, especially for Faruq, a refugee in Pakistan, shorn of rights and, unlike Fazel, with no international support.

It’s now ten months since my family and I arrived here in Quetta. Life is very hard – from an economic point of view, to understanding the language, to having access to public services. I’m very concerned because my kids can’t go to school – my daughter should be in class 11, and my sons in classes 7 and 4. Government schools won’t accept them as we’re undocumented here, and private schools are too expensive. 

I opened a vegetable stall to earn money for my family. However, all I earn goes on expenses: 20,000 rupees (around USD 78 at today’s exchange) for the monthly rent, other house expenses and bills – here they bring water in tanks and you have to buy even that. Out of ten months, I managed to make ends meet maybe two or three times. For the rest of the time, we’ve been using the last of our savings. I registered with UNHCR, but we haven’t received any help so far.

Whereas younger students see in the learning of music both an existential goal and a set of skills that qualify them and allow them to progress in life, older musicians in exile now struggle to be allowed to employ their musical skills to make a living:

Here in Portugal, I’ve had only a few occasions to play at concerts; once with Orquestra Todos, a very big ensemble from Lisbon, when their sitar player was absent. Thanks to friends and acquaintances, I obtained a pair of old tablas and repaired them; I also acquired a harmonium in order to give some concerts. I went to many restaurants to propose an evening performance, but very few accepted and then they paid little money, around 50 euros per night. With this sum I need to pay somebody who plays percussions with me and cover transportation as well. Even if I played every night, I couldn’t earn a living this way! And, I have no place to perform or teach. I live in a room in a refugee centre and there’s no spare room to practice, so I have to do it outside. I tried to give music classes. I once found some students, some master students of a music faculty from Slovenia that were researching the music of Afghanistan and had come all the way to Portugal to meet the Afghan musicians exiled here. I ended up teaching them in a park outside the refugee centre. (Fazel)

In Quetta, there is music. Local people like music, but their music is different; it has different characteristics, I cannot play it. Of course, I play Pashtun folk music, but Afghan Pashtun music. Pakistani Pashtuns and Baluchis have different musical tastes and patterns. Afghan refugees, especially the newly arrived like me, but even those who have lived here for long have a lot of problems and cannot afford the luxury of organising musical events. Since I arrived, I’ve played only once for a gathering. With time, I could learn the characteristics of the local music and start to play it, but for the moment, I have not even tried.

Our biggest problem here is that we’re living illegally, without documents. As long as we stick to our neighbourhood, Gawalmandi, where many Afghan refugees live, the police won’t disturb us, but as soon as we leave it, we risk being arrested, held in jail for some months, or brought to Spin Boldak and pushed back to the Afghan side of the border. The Pakistani government doesn’t want Afghan refugees to become too many or travel to other parts of Pakistan. I’ve received several proposals to go and play in Peshawar or Islamabad, but I had to turn them down for fear of being arrested or deported because that would leave my family unprotected. (Faruq)

Their situations may be very different, but the words of both interviewees featured something they share with many Afghan refugees – uncertainty about the future. At this stage, with both the future of music in Afghanistan and their own fate on hold, they are stuck in a slowly deteriorating situation. Uncertainty over the future has grown so strong that they question even their lifelong pursuit of music, or it provokes dreams of, for now, an impossible return to their homeland:

Initially, I didn’t plan to remain in Portugal, I wanted to go to France, but eventually, they convinced me to stay in Lisbon and be hosted by a local NGO together with some other single men.^[9] Unfortunately, the support they’ve provided us isn’t adequate and, anyway, it is due to be terminated next July. Now I like Portugal very much, I have spent more than one year in this country and its people have been nice to me, but it doesn’t seem to be the right place to get a job, and finding a house to rent is also difficult. When I came here, I entertained hopes that I could continue my studies, complete a PhD, and one day return to Afghanistan as somebody able to carry forward the music traditions in my country. I’ve now realised that in this world, music is an extra, something for people who are in love with it, like me. There’s no chance for me to live on music here. 

Many Afghan musicians in exile have been forced to change their lives: they work as cooks, waiters, mechanics. I’m afraid I will also be forced to leave the musical profession and search for other livelihoods. I was recently in touch with a French music scholar in Nice. I’ll go there in the next weeks for a concert. It’s a benefit concert for refugees and I’ll sing there. But he already warned me that, even in France, there’d be hardly any chances for long-term cooperation or funding on musical projects. I’ve also developed some health problems, as of late, so I really need to find a place and an income anywhere as soon as possible. (Fazel)

I don’t have long-term plans, my long-term plan is to go back to Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the best place for us, Afghan artists should belong there, and Afghanistan is a country that all people in the world are friends with.

If there is a chance, I will go back to Afghanistan. I played with different Afghan TV stations and I know all the people of the trade there. For Afghan artists, there’s no place as good as Afghanistan. (Faruq)

The future of music in Afghanistan: full circle with the 1990s?

The return to an Afghanistan where music is again allowed may seem an idle dream born out of desperation and disbelief about what has happened, but some of the younger interviewees, such as Rohullah, hold it as a likely outcome:

All in all, I don’t think the Taleban can manage to silence music in Afghanistan this time. It’s an impossible task. They can try and take music away from the people with all their means, but people will nonetheless listen to it. Music is in the blood of the people, and, the same as blood, they need it to live. And our people have progressed; the new generations won’t let this happen again. A few people in power cannot stop major trends in society: the Afghan people won’t give up their music. 

His optimism was balanced by a more cautious appraisal by his age-peer, Shokria:

I don’t think the Taleban will ever relent on their ban on music. They have a lot of problems with music, especially with the teaching of music and the idea that people can be professional musicians. They’ll never allow people to study music. You see, they don’t allow girls to study at all.

In my opinion, the situation in Afghanistan is so bad now, especially economy-wise – we see people forced to sell their daughters to feed their other kids – that there’s no chance at all, there’s nothing that the international community can do for Afghan music. That has to come a long way, the defence of Afghan music, of all parts of Afghan culture, that is still very far away. 

Older musicians such as Fazel from Herat compare the present situation with previous times of crisis, and the defence of music with that of other human rights:

This is not the first time of the Taleban. The previous one was even worse: every musician was in danger. The very existence of Afghan music was in danger. The quality of the musical tradition got affected very badly. Much was lost. [After the fall of the first Emirate and, previously, in the diaspora], all sorts of people started to call themselves musicians and make a business out of music. But what we see today is also worrying: Afghan music is at risk of going down the same path as it did twenty [sic] years ago.

Music is the human right of everybody. We see in Afghanistan nowadays that not only music but also many other human rights are forsaken: the Taleban don’t even let the girls study. As for all other human rights, pressure must be brought onto the Taleban to change their policies on music so that the rights of the Afghan people aren’t trodden upon. Even the Taleban make use of music for their own purposes: when I was in Kabul after their takeover, I saw them riding around in big government cars, playing loud music. And in the Islamic world, there’s not a single Muslim country where music is forbidden. Haven’t the Afghans the same right as all other Muslims to live their lives with music?

His words were echoed by Faruq from his Pakistani exile:

Every country has its culture, and music is a part of it. Even the Arab countries, which represent Islam to the world, have it. The world must not forget that the youth, that all people need music, when they are tired from work, when they are sad because of some problem they face. 

However, another musician, our last interviewee and the only one who has so far remained in Afghanistan believes the problems of the Afghan people have grown way beyond the need for music. He asked not to be named. Here we refer to him as ‘Bismillah’.

An older musician’s perspective: poverty is stronger than even the decree of the Taleban

A rubab ustad (maestro) in his seventies, Bismillah has lived through all the different phases of conflict and misery that Afghanistan has endured since 1978. He now sees the social plight of his compatriots as beyond recovery and their ability to stand up for music as mortally compromised:

You know me, I’ve grown old with my music, spent all my life living inside it. Only now, in these days, do I find myself not surrounded by music. This is for a number of reasons. Yes, the Taleban banned music; bravo to them. But poverty is stronger than even the decree of the Taleban. People don’t have money, don’t have a place in their lives for music now. In the past two years, almost all classes of people have been reduced to begging; everybody is trying to sell what he has and leave this place. The people already have more than enough problems, so they think, “Why should I get in trouble with these Taleban over music?” So there are no concerts, not even people inviting a few friends to their homes to enjoy an evening of music. 

So, nowadays, I only play during the day, at rush hour, when there is traffic, when people move to and fro there is noise in the streets and my music cannot be heard from without. I don’t play in the evening or at night, nor on Fridays. Life is the opposite of what it used to be.

Kharabat is empty. The Kharabatis who could afford it have left the country. All the others are busy pulling carts across the city to scratch some money to eat and stay alive, or they have turned their music workshops into food stalls. What else could they do? Music is food for the soul for those who listen, but what’s the use of it if the performer himself starves?

I keep imparting lessons to my students, secretly. Sometimes they can visit me with some excuse or another. Other times, if needed, I send them recordings of lessons on video via the phone. But many of the younger ones are giving up their passion for the rubab. They don’t see a future for it. The hearts of the people have turned black to music. They have no place for it in their anguished hearts.

One and half years ago, I applied for family reunion – part of my family has lived in Germany for many years. Now they’ve asked me to send documents proving my achievements as a musician. We will see if they accept what I have done in seventy years. The last time the Taleban took power, I had to go to Pakistan and spend a few years there in order to survive as a musician. I did not believe I would have to go through this again in my life. Anyway, this world goes, this life also goes, everything passes very quickly. Soon, we will see.

What the musicians’ stories tell us

The first thing apparent from these very diverse interviews is that all but one of the interviewees are still, after more than one and a half years of Taleban rule, in transit, or limbo, and currently unable to tell where they will be and what life will bring them. Another constant is that the trauma of the fall of a social and political order which guaranteed them incomes and rights and of the total takeover by the Taleban endures. It could not be otherwise for a social group that was specifically targeted by the new victors and was hurt so conclusively by the changed situation. Indeed, one of the first details to come out from many of the interviews was the recollection of their sense of bewilderment, of disbelief at the Taleban conquest of Kabul, followed by the fear and uncertainty of having become, all of a sudden, possible targets.

Despite this, a sense of hope, enthusiasm and strong individual motivations are quite apparent in the words of the youngest interviewees. They are young, in their late teens, people for whom music has already often meant finding their way, getting social recognition and self-affirmation in an otherwise harsh and uncertain life: even the present dire situation cannot prove bleak enough to cause them to despair about their future as musicians and their ability to contribute to the preservation and furthering of Afghanistan’s musical scene.

Their undaunted determination is balanced by their seniors’ more pessimistic attitudes. For musicians in their mid-thirties and forties, their formative and active professional lives coincided with the difficult, gradual re-establishment of music in Afghanistan and its transformation from a marginal and disreputable activity to a socially acceptable profession and even a cherished form of art and an expression of national pride. They naturally thought the worst was over for Afghanistan’s musicians, and the achievements to which they had contributed were long-lasting: things could only get better. Consequently, they now feel the reversal of the nation’s fortunes, full force.

Their passion for music and consciousness of their own artistic and professional worth are still very much alive in their words, but there is also a bitter realisation of the fragility of their status, when torn away from the society where it had been gained, with so much effort. That has taken its toll. Pressing economic woes and uncertainty are forcing many like Fazel and Faruq, not only those in Pakistan or Iran, but many also who made it to Europe or America, to seek alternative livelihoods, despite the fact that they still cling to the idea of a return to their previous profession and to their country.

The oldest generation of musicians is now experiencing a second, double exile, from their country and from music, in less than three decades. Pessimism among them is even more pronounced: the elderly ustad interviewed sees Afghan society as having lost all care for or interest in music amid the maelstrom of its economic and political woes.

Some (bitter) conclusions

The lack of options and the economic constraints encountered by many musicians who ‘made it’ out of the country represent more than a mere call for humanitarian action and renewed economic support. They trigger some necessary reflections.

Afghan music is thriving in the diaspora was the headline of one report in The Economist. As we mentioned in our previous report, the fact that in the past, musicians joined the mass of other Afghan refugees in diaspora communities abroad was not solely detrimental. Musicians who ended up being physically absent from their country for one or even two decades did not lose their connection to Afghanistan and, when it was again possible, returned, or at least visited to help restore the presence of music in society or enhance its quality. Meanwhile, they had been able to establish a place for ‘traditional’ Afghan music on the international stage and to secure useful liaisons with foreign institutions and scholars. However, a full appreciation of the usefulness of this diaspora experience could be made only after their return, and because, in their case, a return was eventually possible.

In 2023, two elements advise pessimism when making comparisons with the earlier period of exile. Firstly, the hostile attitude towards music by the Taleban and other religiously conservative elements, and the political and economic crisis that has forced society into a mode of survival strategy risk being long-term features of Afghanistan. In 2001, the reversal came about only because of a completely unlooked for international intervention, which it is difficult to imagine being repeated. Secondly, in the absence of Afghanistan again becoming a home to Afghan musicians, the avenues of dialogue and interaction between the Afghan musicians now in the West, those who managed to relocate only to the neighbouring countries and those remaining inside Afghanistan would need to increase and solidify in the future – and that is not a given. Moreover, even if that interaction did strengthen, would it ever be enough?

A ‘national music’, however it is conceived, can hardly fail to include the role of the human environment in shaping musical forms, whether urban pop trends or regional folk revivals. In the past, Afghan music production had already shown trends towards fragmentation, depending on the target audience, with very different records being made for foreign listeners and for the home public (as noted by Professor John Baily in this essay). In the future, the risk is of an even more confused and fragmented musical landscape emerging.

Ultimately, the continued existence of an Afghan music scene will depend to a large extent on the variety of sources contributing to it and on fair levels of accessibility by the Afghan public, at home and abroad. The inability of Afghan musicians to visit, perform and reside in Afghanistan for any prolonged period puts this very possibility at stake.

The emptying of the musicians’ neighbourhood, Kharabat, can be taken as a symbol of the risk of losing, if not Afghan music altogether, some specific interactions, networks and practices which together formed the backbone of the knowledge and performance of music in Afghanistan.

The remarkable achievements of a number of musicians who continue to keep up, and even refine, the country’s musical traditions from abroad will not be sufficient by themselves. Without a foothold inside the country, they cannot prevent a smaller-scale repetition of what happened in the 1990s. Then, many original folk repertoires, patterns, techniques, if not whole instruments, were lost forever, and the void filled, in the music of the diaspora and of the first years after 2001, with imported replacements that were often of questionable musical value. To avoid this, the contribution of every Afghan musician, with his or her approach to an instrument or a type of music, formal or informal education, and performance-driven experience, will be vital. Thus, every musician’s voice that goes unheard in the critical days we are living in will inevitably impoverish the Afghan music of the future.

Edited by Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark