By Franz J. Marty

The Diplomat

October 19, 2021

In Kamdesh, Nuristan, where U.S. forces withdrew more than a decade ago, the American presence is a distant – and negative – memory for many locals.

KAMDESH, NURISTAN — In the dead of night on August 30, 2021, the last U.S. forces stepped off the tarmac of Kabul Airport onto a plane and left Afghanistan. It was almost 20 years after the first U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, to go after al-Qaida and topple the Emirate of the Taliban that sheltered them. In a twist that would have been unimaginable back in late 2001, by the time the U.S. left the Taliban again held sway in the capital Kabul and practically in the whole of Afghanistan – a feat that they did not even achieve at the prior height of their power in September 2001.

What the future holds for Afghanistan is difficult to predict and depends on what exactly the Taliban and the international community will do in the next weeks and months. However, the situation in one remote corner of Afghanistan offers a peek into the future of the whole country.

Where the U.S. Left Long Ago

While the final departure of U.S. forces literally happened overnight, and without any fanfare or even a clear announcement, the full U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan was a long goodbye. Some provinces and outposts were already abandoned years ago, like Combat Outpost Keating in Kamdesh, a district in the eastern Afghan province of Nuristan, which was vacated by U.S. forces over a decade ago, in 2009.

In several aspects, Kamdesh epitomizes the whole U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Going to Afghanistan meant going to one of the most remote parts of the world and going to Kamdesh meant going to one of the most remote spots in Afghanistan. U.S. soldiers called Kamdesh “the dark side of the moon,” and Keating was arguably the most remote outpost in the whole U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. And while the mission in Kamdesh and the larger Nuristan-Kunar region was initially to hunt down al-Qaida and their allies, it turned, over time, into something that no one could exactly describe. Indeed, a U.S. military investigation into the final days of Combat Outpost Keating concluded that “the mission devolved into one of base defense and by mid-2009 there was no tactical or strategic value to holding the ground occupied by COP Keating.” Although focusing on other valleys in Kunar and Nuristan, this devolving of the mission is excellently dissected in Wesley Morgan’s book “The Hardest Place.”

In any event, as the United States had no clear objective in Kamdesh anymore, Combat Outpost Keating had already been earmarked to be abandoned by the summer of 2009. However, logistical reasons delayed giving up Keating – and provided the Taliban with an opportunity. On October 3, 2009, an estimated 300 Taliban fighters launched a full-blown attack against Keating and, temporarily, even breached its perimeter. U.S. soldiers manning Keating, with heavy air support, eventually managed to repel the Taliban. However, with eight U.S. soldiers killed and 22 more wounded as well as over 150 Taliban casualties, it was one of the bloodiest U.S.-Taliban battles of the whole U.S. war in Afghanistan and became the subject of books (see e.g. here and here) as well as the movie “The Outpost.”

In spite of the heavy casualties the Taliban suffered, when U.S. forces abandoned Keating soon after the Battle of Kamdesh, the Taliban were again in control of almost all of Kamdesh and felt victorious – a feeling now echoing through the whole of the country, and still persistent in Kamdesh.

The U.S. Legacy

Although the United States deployed troops to Kamdesh at least once more, for a very short stint in 2012, U.S. involvement in the district practically ceased to exist there more than a decade ago, meaning that what is playing out in the whole country now already happened years ago in Kamdesh.

By now, barely anything of the prior U.S. involvement remains in Kamdesh. Indeed, when The Diplomat visited the site of Combat Outpost Keating in early August 2021, the few shells of Soviet armored personnel carriers left rusting there for over three decades were more prominent than anything the Americans left behind. The former Combat Outpost Keating was practically invisible. What the U.S. bombardment that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Keating did not destroy back in 2009 is now overgrown by ferns and bushes whose leaves quietly rustle in the wind. The small peninsula protruding into the white water of the Landay Sin River, where once U.S. resupply helicopters landed, is now covered in small trees.

And while one might assume that the sturdy beton bridge spanning a tributary to the Landay Sin River, connecting the place of the former combat outpost with the former helicopter landing zone, was constructed by the Americans, this is not the case. “The bridge was built during the [first] Taliban era [before September 2001] by a non-governmental organization,” explained Mawlawi Abdul Reza, a teacher at a madrassa, a religious school, who hails from Ormor, the village only a stone’s throw away from what was once Keating. Another resident of Kamdesh confirmed this.

“The Americans built nothing here; only their base which they later destroyed,” Reza added with scorn in his voice.

The latter is not entirely true, as several other solid cement bridges – one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in valleys cut through by fast flowing mountain rivers – were built in the early 2000s with U.S. aid. “Since these bridges in the early 2000s, there have been no development projects at all here,” Obaid Rahmon, a resident of Kamdesh, told The Diplomat. This is not hard to believe. Roads in the district remain unpaved and bumpy, winding through difficult terrain. Basic clinics are far and few between, and the ones that exist and are open are regularly short of doctors and medicine.

In 2020, the then-government of Afghanistan, which was largely funded by the U.S., started to build several schools in Kamdesh and Barg-e Matal, the district located upstream from Kamdesh, as Rahmon acknowledged. However, the school building that The Diplomat visited in early August 2021 remained an empty, unfinished shell and with the current uncertainties it is questionable when, if ever, it will be completed.

According to residents of Kamdesh, other promised development projects never materialized. “The Americans said they would construct a pipe system for drinking water for our village, but they never did,” Abdul Jalil an old school teacher from Ormor, told The Diplomat. “Back when the Americans where here, there were jobs here and a lot of money, but no security,” Jalil and other men from Ormor said, sitting on a wooden bench surrounded by the steep slopes peppered with small trees from which the Taliban used to regularly attack the Americans in Keating.

The Diplomat has heard similar feelings – disappointment over lack of basic developments and complaints about insecurity – in many other places across Afghanistan during the past months and years. Based on that trend, it seems likely that little of the existing U.S. investments in Afghanistan will be remembered in a few years from now.

An Elusive Peace?

“With the Americans gone, the money stopped and nothing was left behind; but the security problems continued,” Jalil added, which was seconded by the others. Given that the forces of the now toppled Afghan Republic did not vacate Kamdesh along with U.S. forces, clashes between the Republican forces and the Taliban continued in Kamdesh until the complete fall of the district in early August 2021. However, when the men from Ormor mentioned their concern regarding insecurity, they were not only referring to clashes between Republican and Taliban forces in the past.

“In the past 11 years, a total of 40 houses were burnt down in Ormor. The last incident only took place 15 days ago [in late July 2021],” Jalil stated. “No one knows who is behind these incidents and why they burn down the houses,” the residents of Ormor claimed.

“The U.S. presence here has split the local people,” one man from Ormor said, “and this split exists still now, long after the U.S. left.” While his comment implied that such a split is the reason for the numerous acts of arson in Ormor, in a country like Afghanistan where longstanding violent personal, clan, or tribal enmities are frequent, there are many alternative potential explanations. Either way, there are no indications that these arson attacks will stop now after the full Taliban takeover.

That said, not everyone is concerned about the security situation in Kamdesh. To the contrary, other people who live in parts of Kamdesh that have been de facto controlled by the Taliban for a decade stated that their villages are safe and that they don’t face any security issues. In view of this, the victory of the Taliban across the country will mean security in certain, maybe even many, parts of the country, but a complete end of violent acts will likely remain elusive.

Locals’ Problems With the Taliban

There are people in Kamdesh that are not too happy with the Taliban. Some people in Kamdesh contrasted the existence of job opportunities and money when Americans were around with the economic hardship they face under the Taliban.

“The extreme inflation of prices for common goods is all the Taliban’s fault,” one man with a short-cropped black beard and a pakool, the region’s traditional round felt hat, exclaimed. Given that the price hike in Kamdesh in August 2021 was mainly caused by the fact that a historic flash flood cut the only road into the district from lower Kamdesh, which disrupted supplies for the rest of Kamdesh and Barg-e Matal, this criticism was to some extent unfair. However, as examples from other areas that have been long under Taliban control show, a contracting economy and the lack of job opportunities are indeed frequently heard problems of life under Taliban rule and are now also reported countrywide.

The fact that the Taliban apparently only have limited financial resources was corroborated during the response to the flood in Kamdesh. “Some aid arrived from non-governmental organizations, but nothing from the Taliban,” a victim of the flood in the village of Mirdesh in lower Kamdesh told The Diplomat.

Other residents of Mirdesh mentioned that the Taliban had promised to help the flood victims with “5 million,” but this money had, at least as of mid-August, never arrived and it was not even clear whether the Taliban meant 5 million afghanis or Pakistani rupees. (The use of Pakistani currency is, despite an official ban, still common in a few border areas of Afghanistan.) A Taliban official was even inviting NGOs to help, while remaining silent on what the Taliban themselves would do to respond to the emergency.

Some residents of Kamdesh also complained about intrusive Taliban laws. Apart from the little island of the district center that was, until early August 2021, controlled by the former Republic, the Taliban have prohibited TVs, smoking, and music for over a decade in Kamdesh.

“While smoking and music are in theory outlawed, some Taliban smoke themselves and I and others listen openly to music without the Taliban interfering,” a resident from Kamdesh qualified this.

“However, with TVs and satellite dishes they are strict. I have asked several times to be allowed to have a satellite dish to get satellite-based WiFi, but they don’t let me,” the man added. “And this is despite the fact that the Taliban themselves regularly use the satellite-based WiFi of a shopkeeper in the center of Barg-e Matal,” which was until early August under the control of the former Republic.

This shows that Afghans are – contrary to Taliban claims – not living blissfully under Taliban rule. Given that residents of Kamdesh have been living under the Taliban for over 10 years, their voices show that complains and worries about the economy are not mere transitional issues.

The district center of Kamdesh, Nuristan province, perched high above the main valley on a mountain slope (August 12, 2021). Photo by Franz J. Marty.

Outlook

In view of all this, it is likely that, as in Kamdesh, little of the U.S. investment from the past two decades will remain across Afghanistan – and what does remain won’t be remembered as having been provided by U.S. aid. Instead, if Kamdesh offers any preview, Afghans across the country will probably continue to blame the United States for not having fulfilled its promises and – among Afghans who were amenable to the U.S. intention to develop Afghanistan into a modern state – for having abandoned them.

That said, while some are already appreciating or will appreciate the level of security provided by the Taliban, others affected by continuing acts of violence will not. And while Afghans are already worrying about the tumbling economy, this will likely further increase in the months and years to come, with the Taliban continuing to rely on international aid to fund basic services rather than try, at least partly, to tackle such problems themselves.

“We had a chance to develop our homeland, but we missed it and now more difficult days lie ahead,” one resident from Kamdesh said, by way of summing up the situation. Many other Afghans no doubt feel the same way.

Franz J. Marty is a freelance journalist based in Afghanistan; he tweets

Opinion by Shabana Basij-Rasikh

Furniture being sold on the streets of Kabul by desperate, cash-strapped families. Farmers in Afghan provinces walking a T.S. Eliot-esque wasteland of withered crops and soil turned to dust. Afghanistan, my homeland, is staring into the eyes of its worst humanitarian crisis in well more than a generation — a monster with multiple heads.

Our people are enduring an economic meltdown spurred by the Taliban’s takeover in August, coupled with an ongoing drought some experts classify as our worst in 35 years, one that has already put a third of our population into a state of food insecurity. One that is prompting some parents, out of work and out of options, to sell their daughters to pay off debt.

Imagine writing that last sentence about your own country. Imagine what that feels like.

Last week, I watched the members of the Group of 20 pledge humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan to the tune of more than $1 billion. Although the pledge-makers will not recognize the Taliban’s government, they acknowledged that there is no realistic way to get this full assistance to the Afghan people without involving the Taliban in some way.

This is the same Taliban whose return brought about this financial ruin. The same Taliban that opened schools for boys in grades 7 and up, but not for girls.

I listened to powerful language from leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said “to stand by and watch 40 million people plunge into chaos because electricity can’t be supplied and no financial system exists, that cannot and should not be the goal of the international community.”

No, it cannot. The goal must be to give a nation’s people the necessary assistance to allow them to build equitable and self-sustaining structures of resilience, structures that can then be strengthened by the alloy of international will.

In this geopolitical “Sophie’s choice,” it is difficult to see the G-20’s decision as anything other than an abhorrent but necessary one. But I also see it as one that must encourage global policymakers to seek out new solutions to head off economic and environmental crises before they can metastasize.

My suggestion to them is two words: Educate girls.

Extremists know the economic power an educated girl can wield; policymakers know — or should know — it, too. A girl who completes secondary school and enters the job market can earn almost twice as much as a girl who never receives an education. This girl becomes a woman with a true level of financial independence: a woman with agency in any male-dominated society.

Educated girls are far less likely to be married at early ages and are far more likely, when they do marry, to raise smaller and healthier families with a smaller environmental footprint. Their ability to weather and withstand the shocks of climate change increases, and they pass these skills on to their children. Climate scientists have known these facts for years, and activists, including me, have written about them regularly.

Educated girls can heal economies and heal the planet. They can spin the world in new directions, becoming teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs. Sometimes they can become the chancellor of Germany.

In Afghanistan, families with nothing to fall back on are ripping themselves open, selling their daughters because these girls are the last valuable asset they have. It’s not due to the employment they may someday hold or the societal change they may someday make. It’s due to the children they may someday bear.

Tell me: What is the value of a girl? What is her education worth?

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres recently warned that if the international community did not “help Afghans weather this storm, and do it soon, not only they but all the world will pay a heavy price,” adding that he was “particularly alarmed to see promises made to Afghan women and girls by the Taliban not being honored.”

I share that sense of alarm. This storm may be weathered with humanitarian assistance, but future storms will be diverted by ensuring those promises are kept.

When we educate a girl, we create economic and environmental benefits that go far beyond the boundaries of her family. They go beyond the boundaries of her nation. They are benefits that all of us, every woman and man, every citizen of Earth, can share.

Millions of girls are out of school in Afghanistan. At least 130 million girls are out of school worldwide. This cannot continue.

Educate girls. Two words that must become a central pillar of global policymaking. Two words to change the world.

Shabana Basij-Rasikh, a Washington Post Global Opinions contributing columnist, is co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan.

Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapoir

Afghanistan Analysts Network

9 October 2021

In this second part of this interview, former Minister of Finance Khalid Payenda talks to AAN’s Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour about the reaction of the Republic’s leadership to his plans to get the economy back on track and fight corruption and whether it was already too late to effect meaningful change. He gives a candid account of his interactions with president Ghani, including what ultimately led to his resignation, and speculates about the veracity of rumours that Ghani fled Afghanistan with 169 million USD in cash. He looks at how much the Taleban could potentially raise in customs revenues, the future outlook for the Afghan economy and what can be learned from the donors’ engagement over the past 20 years. He discusses the fragmentation, the short-termism and how some of their policies sustained the inclusion of grafters in the country’s leadership structures.

Khalid Payenda addressing the Government of Afghanistan and United Nations joint humanitarian appeal on 11 July 2021. Photo: Khalid Payenda Twitter (@KhalidPayenda), 11 July 2021

Khalid Payenda announced that he was stepping down as minister of finance after only seven months on the job on 10 August 2021, in what turned out to be the dying days of the Republic. While he was criticised at the time for abandoning the government at such a critical time, he told AAN he had no idea that the government was about to fall. In this part of the interview, he recounts a last-ditch effort to get the economy back on track and explains why he decided to resign. His insider’s view on why reform efforts failed and how donors were sometimes part of the problem are important for not only understanding what went wrong with the Republic but also the dynamics that powered the previous government’s engine. This, in turn, helps draw important and nuanced lessons from the past that can help inform the future as Afghanistan enters a new era of Taleban rule.

This is part 2 of our interview with Khalid Payenda. Part 1 can be found here.

AAN

Do you know if there is any money left in the treasury? I just wondered how much the Taleban may have to play with now.

Khalid Payenda

Before the collapse, there was around six or seven billion afghanis [approximately 90 million dollars] of unrestricted money. But then there was some restricted money, meaning money in ‘special accounts’ that the government could not spend until the respective donor okayed it. It was mostly for security by CSTC-A [Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan] and World Bank projects. I don’t know the exact amount; about 260 million dollars of the World Bank/ARTF’s [Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund] money, mostly project funds. This money was sitting in designated [bank] accounts waiting for documentation and invoices so that the funds could be released [to the project partners]. In total, the World Bank had to receive documentation and reporting for almost 600 million dollars from the government, but only 260 million was in cash with the treasury. The rest [of the money] had already been disbursed, but the documentation and reporting had not yet been sent to the World Bank [when the government fell]. The World Bank was very worried about it. I believe they are still worried about making sure the money is accounted for.

So in total, there was around 260 million dollars of the World Bank/ARTF and six or seven billion Afghanis of unrestricted funds, as the treasury [reported] to me, so based on that [the total] estimate would be around 350 million dollars.

AAN

I’m asking because I’m sure you’ve seen the Twitter thread that [former governor of the Central Bank] Ajmal Ahmady posted. ^[1] According to Ahamdy, on the day of his departure, DAB had nine billion dollars in assets, mostly (seven billion dollars) on deposit at the US Federal Reserve.)) Is that a realistic accounting?

Khalid Payenda

Yes, it’s close enough. He’s talking about the international reserves, but the six or seven billion Afs [approximately 90 million dollars] of the government’s [money] on deposit with the Central Bank is also part of the nine billion dollars [accounted for by Ahmady]

AAN

Does the government have deposits elsewhere, other than the Central Bank?

Khalid Payenda

We shouldn’t, but I know that a few ministries had accounts with private commercial banks. The government has money with the state-owned commercial banks; I don’t know how much. It depends on how you define ‘government’. If it is the central government and on-budget ^[2] [funds], then mostly no. But if you include broader government, the state-owned enterprises, for example, DABS [Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, the national electricity provider], Afghan Telecom and Ariana, and municipalities, then yes.

AAN

What do you think the state of the customs revenue will be for the Taleban?

Khalid Payenda

The Taleban were not implementing the [official] tariffs initially. They used a very simplified rudimentary tariff for how much should be collected per truck. Let’s say you were trading in fuel; you would have had to pay, for example, 50,000 afghanis per fuel tanker. I have heard that they started implementing the official tariffs as of 11 September [2021]. Which should bring in significant customs revenues, assuming the trade doesn’t shrink significantly and that there is no corruption and collusion with the traders.

A while back, I said that if there were no trade diversions [smuggling] and all goods were assessed with 100 per cent transparency, then customs could potentially collect up to seven or eight million dollars a day. But now, with the economic collapse and uncertainty, trade has drastically reduced to basic necessities, food and fuel, so the potential custom revenues have also gone down. I would say, if the old [tariff] rates are used, customs revenues could potentially amount to at least 200 to 300 million Afs [about 2.5 to 3.7 million USD] a day. I hear that, right now, the Taleban are collecting between 100 to 200 million afghanis [about 1.2 to 2.5 million USD] per day. I am not going you give you dollar figures; when the banks closed [on 15 August], the official rate was around 81 afghanis to the dollar. The more the afghani depreciates, the more customs collections increase because imports are mostly in US dollars.

AAN

You launched an ambitious PFM [public financial management] ^[3] plan to get the economy on track when you were a director-general and then a deputy minister. This plan was disrupted when Qayoumi became minister and you left the finance ministry. I know one of your priorities was to get this back on track, with anti-corruption being one of the main components. I heard that you presented a plan to the president and others, including the first VP and that the reaction was quite startling. Could you tell us what happened?

Khalid Payenda

We had developed an extensive diagnosis for national accountability based on one of the ten state functions that the president identifies in his book Fixing Failed States. ^[4] It was aimed at seeing corruption through a public finance lens and by following the money through the budget cycle to see where and how misuse happens. ^[5] We wanted to present it to the president first and then to everyone else in his core team. But he called for a meeting in July with all of them, and even a wider [group] than that. I think we were a bit too technical, so maybe understanding it was an issue, but we did not get the support [we expected]. It was seen as a plan to reform the Ministry of Finance. But it wasn’t about reforming the Ministry of Finance. I tried to explain, but the president would not allow it. The reaction was that it’s the Ministry of Finance’s problem and they told me to go fix it. They said: If you don’t have the political will, don’t complain to us. It was a weird meeting. I don’t know what was going on in the president’s mind. He was under a lot of pressure from the security sector. The first VP said some well-intentioned but completely irrelevant [things]. Our presentation was named “A Ceasefire on Corruption”. After the meeting, the Chief Justice said: Remove this title. It has a very bad connotation, it means there hasn’t been a ceasefire on corruption for the previous 20 years. I responded: Sir, this is exactly what we meant by that title.

After the meeting, I met with the president and he said: You were too technical. I’m with you. We’ll fight this, but you [have to] work on communicating this better. I get his point, but it wasn’t too technical. Most of these people knew what we were talking about, but I think they thought: [It’s] not my problem. We could see that it was going to be extremely difficult to create political consensus. It was our last effort to save the Republic, but I think the seriousness wasn’t there. They either did not see [corruption] as an existential threat or had their escape plans ready or had already given up. Maybe they saw the handwriting on the wall; I don’t know. But I still believe that the president was caught off guard. He sincerely wanted reforms, and on most issues, he was a staunch supporter of reforms regardless of the political costs, but he did not know most of the realities and the facts and the overall environment was very tough and he was under pressure.

AAN

Do you think it was already too late anyway by then?

Khalid Payenda

I don’t know. But I don’t think it was too late – we still had control over almost all the provinces, at least their centres, and all the border crossings. However, I did not see any urgency in my colleagues’ ‘business as usual’ approach or maybe they did now show their emotions. It was 20 years late, but not too late. I still believe that the situation could have been salvaged. The moment I thought it was not doable, that’s when I resigned. Let’s not forget that the US government’s deal with the Taleban without the involvement of the Afghan government had already sealed the fate of the Republic.

AAN

You said you feared being scapegoated. What exactly did you think that would involve – just reputational damage or something worse?

Khalid Payenda

One of the issues with the president, unfortunately, was that it was never his fault. When he was the minister of finance, it was all Karzai’s fault. When he became the president, it was [Eklil] Hakimi’s fault, then it was Qayoumi’s fault, then it was Arghandiwal’s fault and it was going to be my fault. In my first meeting with the president, I told him my reservations about the unrealism of the budget, especially the unrealistically high revenue target. I also told him I didn’t think it was the right time to make substantial changes to the budget because it had already been rejected twice by the parliament. My game plan was to adjust it downwards in the mid-year review. He agreed.

Then in my last week in office, he criticised my team and me for the budget that he himself had prepared at the start of the year. He was proud that he had chaired all the budget hearings, but now he was criticising the budgeting process and calling the budget an eftezzah [catastrophe]. People who were not involved in the details [of the process] saw me as the problem. The midyear review had come at a difficult time when we had lost 3 or 4 key custom houses. We had extensive discussions on the budget and the mid-year [budgetary] review. We discussed different scenarios with him. He chose the worst-case scenario, the one with almost no custom revenues for the rest of the year. He said: Assume that all your custom offices will fall and you won’t have revenues, slash the development budget and leave me some room for additional security sector spending. We did that. Before tabling the mid-year review budget at the cabinet, I sent him a ten-page document, with every major decision, for him to approve, not approve, and provide guidance. This briefing detailed the impact of the midyear review on the NTA [National Technical Assistance] staff, ^[6] reducing the development budget, stopping payments against contracts with contractors and accumulating arrears. He read and signed every single one and told me to go ahead. It was going to be tough. We would have had to lay off 12,000 to 13,000 NTAs across the government. People would not have received [their] salaries on time. We would have had to cut the development budget to zero and give priority to security spending. He said: Fine – this is a matter of our existence and we must make these tough choices. However, the following week, when we stopped payments as we were running out of cash, he was shouting: Why have you stopped payments? I said: But you knew we were stopping payments; we will run out of cash otherwise.

At the same time, the reforms were starting to take hold. The treasury, while it still had massive problems, had never been as effective, efficient or transparent in the previous 20 years. I could share with you the system-generated reports that we gave to the president. 96 per cent of payments were made on the same day. You could bring your payroll [to the ministry] and it would be paid by the end of the day. Everything was either paid or, if there were problems [with the documents], rejected within 72 hours. 98 per cent of all payments were [processed] within two days. Only two to three per cent were rejected. But in the very last meeting that I had with him – the deputy finance minister and aid management director were there – he said: We lost 40 commandos in Herat because of the Ministry of Finance. I thought he’d completely lost it because they had never had any budget issues in Herat and the finance ministry had nothing to do with commandos.

He also asked about an invoice from this Lebanese company that had not been paid for one and a half years, Khatib & Alami. ^[7]) This was a problematic payment. People said the firm had links with Rula Ghani and her brother, who had brought this design company [to Afghanistan]. I believe somebody had complained to the First Lady’s office and that’s why the president was angry. But the invoice was not with the Ministry of Finance; it was stuck [first] at the Ministry of Urban Development and Land and then the AoP [Administrative Office of the President]. But he said: You guys are damaging my reputation. Actually, he said something sad and funny. He said: You’re damaging my reputation back home. He was referring to Lebanon, and here I was thinking that he was Afghanistan’s president and not Lebanon’s.

My dad, who is not a PFM [public financial management] expert, told me: You’ve lost all your custom offices. What kind of a finance minister are you [going to be] from now on? Leave this job. No matter how well you perform, you will be scapegoated. People will be angry and who are they going to be angry with? The Minister of Finance.

But the situation was totally out of my control. The security sector did not even make an in-vain attempt to re-take one of these customs offices – not Islam Qala, not Torghondi, Aqina, Shirkhan Bandar or Farah. I knew I was going to be scapegoated because, with the president, it was never his fault. It was always somebody [else] who’d done him wrong. Unfortunately, he never took responsibility. We saw this in his speech from exile. There was still no remorse, no apology, nothing. He justified and rationalised his escape by saying that he was taken out, not even allowed to wear his shoes. All nonsense. It’s true that some of these people around him misused [their positions], but he was a dictator. He didn’t listen to anybody, so for him to say he was pushed out or say that the minister of finance did not provide him with the right information is hard to stomach.

It’s horrible that the Republic collapsed. In retrospect, I should have been very clear [about] why I resigned – publicly. But I did not want to damage the government which was already in a fragile situation. I kept silent. I said that it was personal priorities, but it wasn’t entirely personal priorities. I should have said that the president and his close group [of advisors] were the issue. We all pay the price of our loyalty. I did too.

AAN

If you had an opportunity to say why you resigned, what would you say?

Khalid Payenda

I knew the challenges that the job entailed before I took it [and I stayed] as long as I had the president’s backing. But in the very last week, I felt that [his] support was not there anymore. The trust that the president had in me had been eroding. He didn’t see me as his minister. I think he saw me as a competitor and compared what he did as a [finance] minister against what I was doing. The punch in the gut came from the president’s office asking for the corrupt deputy minister that I had fired to be made CEO of the state-owned airline. I no longer believed the president was incorruptible. Interference from the Palace and a lack of urgency and seriousness on corruption reforms were also getting tiring. The president’s micromanagement in personally following up payments of the Lebanese company and blaming MoF for the death of 40 commandos in Herat was the final nail in the coffin. Then and there I decided that I could not work one more day and that is why I sent my resignation that night. I also sent a personal note to the president. I wrote that I was sorry that I could no longer do the job or fulfil his expectations. Maybe I didn’t even know what his expectations were or maybe what he was expecting was unrealistic.

AAN

Almost immediately after President Ghani left the country, there were allegations and media reports that he had taken 169 million dollars with him. ^[8] This was followed up in recent days with reports that the Taleban had recovered vast sums of money, I think over 12 million dollars, from the homes of former senior officials. ^[9] Do you think there is any truth to these reports? And if true, why would somebody have that amount of cash on hand?

Khalid Payenda

There are two parts to this question. First, I want to clarify the 169 million [dollars] which, based on what I know, could not have come from the national budget. It’s a very large sum. Even [the budget’s] contingency code 91, which was at the president’s disposal, carried only a billion [afghanis, or approximately 12 million USD] at the start of the [financial] year. So 169 million [dollars] is far more than what would have been available in contingency code 91. Also, there is no other place in the budget where this [amount of] money could have come from. I signed off on all major payments until I left and I don’t recall anything of this magnitude. Four or five days after I left, my successor made one payment to the National Directorate of Security for two billion afghanis. It was for the fight in the provinces – the Popular Uprising Forces – but that money should have gone to the NDS, and it was not more than 30 million dollars. If the 169 million dollars figure is correct, it could not have come from the budget even over one year.

Assuming that the 169 million figure is correct, there might be other sources, like some of the shady appointments and problematic contracts. A lot of funds were channelled from [line] ministries to the National Development Corporation ^[10] that had serious transparency problems. But honestly, until the day he left, I never thought the president would leave everything and flee, and I also never thought he could be financially corrupt. A part of me still strongly believes that the president would not be involved in financial corruption. It could be that he took some money because, if based on the manifest disclosed by some media channels, 53 people left [Afghanistan] with him, ^[11]) he would have needed some money to sustain expenditures when abroad. The fact that he first went to Uzbekistan tells me that he did not know where exactly he was going. So, he needed some money, but 169 [million dollars in cash] is a bit of a stretch.

To answer the second part of your question about the sums of money [recovered] from officials’ homes. I have doubts [about] the money they [the Taleban] say was recovered from Amrullah Saleh’s house in Panjshir. Even if he had access to that sort of cash, he would have taken the bag of money [with him] when he fled. I think it’s part of Taleban propaganda to defame him. Regardless of what he did in the government and how he played the game, I think his move, even if it was symbolic, to show resistance, salvaged his reputation. I think the Taleban and the ISI [Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence] wanted to damage his reputation. I don’t believe that the amount of money that they reported was right. They also reported, for example, that they recovered many bottles of wine from a cellar in Rabbani’s house; it turned out to be a western embassy. ^[12] So this is part of a propaganda campaign. But having said that, people who were involved [in corruption] were very savvy. [They would] not have kept large sums of cash in [their homes] nor [would they have] used the banking system. The money was already transferred [out of the country], possibly through the money service providers, the sarafs [hawaladars or currency brokers] who would keep it for them.

AAN

A lot has been said about the role of the donors – proponents point to the achievements of the past 20 years and detractors argue that ill-conceived donor policies and programmes were largely to blame for the failures of the past 20 years, including corruption. Where do you land in this discussion?

Khalid Payenda

In the immediate wake of the tragedy, let’s not forget that a lot was achieved in Afghanistan in 20 years with the help of donors that has not been achieved elsewhere when you look at it globally. Obviously, when you have 40 donors and everyone has their own interests and beliefs and thinks their approach is the right one, it becomes very difficult to have a coherent overall strategy even with the best intentions. Having said that, I believe the amount of money that flew into Afghanistan with few checks and balances in place was obviously going to be difficult to account for. The effectiveness of aid and making sure that it [was used for its] intended purposes could have been improved. The ownership could have been improved. One important thing, while it’s all over now, it’s still important to note that not every donation that came to Afghanistan went through the government. So, holding the government accountable for all of it, which is mostly the case, is unfair.

Donors chose to funnel large sums of development assistance outside government channels. This not only undermined the legitimacy of the government but also caused serious issues with alignment with national priorities, priorities that were prepared in consultation with and endorsed by the donors. While on-budget financing was put under so much scrutiny, off-budget was not subject to the same level of examination. A few years back, the Ministry of Finance carried out an institutional assessment with USAID to help identify the problems and weaknesses in our systems to be fixed, so that more budget could be channelled through the national budget. SIGAR got a hold of this assessment and this was used as an excuse not to channel funds directly through the national budget, instead of it being used as a baseline to build upon and improve.

There were programmes [about which] there was clearly no consultation or engagement with the government. The donors chose to do it through their contractors. What comes immediately to my mind is the 300-million-dollar USAID women’s empowerment PROMOTE programme. ^[13] The government introduced a 20-million-dollar national programme for women’s empowerment [which was] presented and endorsed by the donors at a big conference. But the US had already started PROMOTE and its funds went through off-budget mechanisms, which meant that the [government’s programme] was not funded and neither programme achieved very much. ^[14] So donors also bear part of the blame.

At times, the government was confused between fighting corruption and the coalition [building] that the big donors stressed. Some people, especially the warlords whom the government was encouraged to bring in, had a background of corruption, abuse and human rights violations, and most of it was overlooked – for example, the strongmen in the north or south and their role in siphoning off revenues. But [the donors] still pushed for them to be part of a coalition, even though they all knew how corrupt and involved in illicit trade these men were. Coalitions forces, in some cases chose to overlook allegations of child abuse made against some Afghan allies because they were staunch supporters in the fight against the Taleban.

The more structural issue, which I think was a missed opportunity, was caused by focusing more on the prosecution side of corruption rather than system-building, which could have prevented most of it [the corruption] from getting a foothold. We talked of accountability and reporting, but not much was done to develop the government’s capacity to report, audit and hold people to account in a holistic manner. The donors chose to sort of ringfence their own donations and financing that they channelled through the government. But trying to ringfence [part of the funds] in a bigger budget doesn’t really work. For example, in a four or five billion dollar budget, it didn’t mean much when the ARTF monitoring agent only looked at ineligible expenditures for [their own] one billion dollars.

In all my ten years of engagement with the World Bank, I don’t recall them telling us: Okay, let’s talk about fixing the whole accountability system so that [in the future] we will not need the monitoring and supervisory agents. I think building better systems should have been part of it. We advocated looking at corruption through a public finance lens. The donors were interested in projects rather than [fixing] the whole system. So fixing some parts of the budget process, amending the external audit law was all the donors wanted to do. They did not see the entire picture – how things worked and did not work – and whether it [the system] worked for the people. These things were overlooked and it was where the donors could have played a stronger, more assertive role.

Some donors tried to ‘projectise’ institution-building based on their own internal organisational arrangements and priorities. For example, there was a time when the ministry of finance had four different projects financed by the World Bank/ARTF – one department at the World Bank managed the treasury and audit [project], another department the customs [project], a third department oversaw civil service reforms and administration and a fourth worked with the budget department. Each department had its own PIU (project implementation unit) working with the relevant department. This [approach] caused a lot of fragmentation and did not help us create state institutions that functioned as a whole. With so many different donor projects, government institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance, had become a collection of fiefdoms. But this was the case in nearly all key ministries. For example, in 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture had around 48 PIUs. The Directors-General saw the World Bank’s TTL (Task Team Leader) or the UNOPS Project Director, not the minister, as their immediate supervisor.

In 2016, we eventually managed to convince the World Bank and the ARTF donors to support a holistic government approach covering all of the finance ministry and even the Supreme Audit Office and the National Procurement Authority. But it quickly became evident that the World Bank’s different departments were not very good at getting along with each other – every TTL wanted [his or her] own separate project.

Key appointments were also a place where a more assertive role [for the donors] was warranted. Unfortunately, all these 20 years, some people, some ministers, with bad reputations were tolerated by the donors, especially since their salaries were coming directly or indirectly from donor funds. I know that it’s really difficult for some donors and they [don’t want to] overstep into political issues. Still, their embassies who deal primarily with politics could have [taken it on] and given feedback to the government that this person is not acceptable or that person has an issue in his background. These were the things that the donors unfortunately tolerated in Afghanistan.

AAN

What about all the incentives from the donors, the mutual accountability frameworks and the conditionalities? Were they effective or helpful in addressing these issues?

Khalid Payenda

Some programmes were very effective, for example, the World Bank’s ARTF Incentive Programme. It was isolated from wider politics, focused on key reforms and conditioned financing to [achievements]. Doing it for not one year only, but over three years, allowed us to take a systematic, chained and sequenced approach to reforms. If you wanted [to implement] a big reform that needed three steps, it was possible to use an ARTF incentive programme because you could deliver the first condition in year one and then build on it in the second and third years. The IMF was also very important. They supported a limited area – macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal stability and some  specific anti-corruption measures, such as asset declarations of senior government officials. The EU’s [European Union] State and Resilience Building Contract is another good example.

But when it comes to the big conferences and aid based on mutual accountability [frameworks], that’s when things started to get murky because some of these benchmarks and indicators were too vague and became a bit meaningless. They were political. When we look at the very last one in Geneva, ^[15] you read the [commitments] and it’s difficult to understand how you would measure them and if you can’t measure [something], then it’s vague and not useful. So, the accountability [framework] and conditioned financing was a mixed bag. In some places, specific ones worked brilliantly, but it became a bit difficult when politics got involved.

AAN

If you had to do it all over again, what would you recommend to the donors? How could they be more effective in their support to system building, fighting corruption and getting state institutions on track?

Khalid Payenda

Honestly, I don’t know how to give an answer that takes the entire picture into account. Anyone who says that they have an across-the-board answer to this [question] is deluded. One thing that is not primarily an aid or development issue but a prerequisite to getting it right was the political structure after [the 2001] Bonn [conference]. ^[16] Leaving out the Taleban and giving it all to the Northern Alliance was a big, missed opportunity. That could have been the basis for a more inclusive [government]. The cost of development with an ongoing conflict became incredibly high. Another critical area was decentralisation of authority. The presidential system in Afghanistan gave so much power to the centre and the presidency. On fiscal matters, the provinces had little or no say in the revenues collected or allocation of budgetary expenditures. Everything was controlled from the centre. Governors were appointed from the centre. But when you come to these specific issues, I don’t think anyone [in the international community] thought they would be engaged in Afghanistan for 20 years. So, the programming was usually very short-term. For most donors, programming was seen from within their assignments – a USAID chief wanted to see results by next July when he was leaving. In retrospect, you can see that [while] we had 20 years, we did not have the longer horizon thinking and perspective that I think was needed [because] when you have that perspective, you invest more in state institutions and try to fix systems rather than create parallel structures that become problematic in the long-term because they siphon capacity away from existing institutions.

In the first few years, a lot of money flew into Afghanistan and the problem was how to spend it – the burn rate was an issue. Maybe keeping it in a trust fund such as the ARTF or another pooled fund [for the long-term], rather than trying to burn as much as you can in the short-term, would have been a better idea. Too many priorities were pursued in an incoherent manner with every donor doing it themselves. Some of these are lessons that you [can] pick up from any international aid development [text] book. Unfortunately, [these lessons] – building systems of accountability, investing in the government, holding the government to account – were not applied, or applied too late, in Afghanistan. Just to summarise, a long-term perspective was needed.

AAN

Do you know how much of the aid was off-budget? What percentage?

Khalid Payenda

We don’t know the exact amount because the off-budget was never fully reported, but it was always more than the on-budget [support], which never went above 50 per cent [of the total amount]. Some years, the [combined] ODA [official development assistance] and defence expenditures were 100 times more than the national budget, for example, during the surge in 2009 and 2010, the US spent 108 billion [dollars] on security in Afghanistan but [contributed] less than 3 million to the [national] budget. In recent years, it’s been maybe 40:60, with 60 per cent off-budget.

AAN

I think the question on everybody’s mind is the future of aid to Afghanistan. Since the government fell and the Taleban took over, Afghanistan assets have been frozen and the donors have suspended aid. They’re re-thinking the scope of their assistance to Afghanistan. 1.2 billion in humanitarian aid has been pledged, but development funding hangs in the balance. How do you think the donors should proceed with their future support to Afghanistan?

Khalid Payenda

We are facing an unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan. So many people have been plunged into poverty. Let’s not forget the harsh impact of Covid-19, particularly in the third wave, the drought and [conflict] displacement all hitting the country at the same time and finally, the total collapse of the state. It’s a really bad situation. Some of our achievements and the gains, the ones we’ve been saying should be preserved and built on – the human development indices for education and health – were entirely dependent on donors. The basic package of health services that [provides medical] care to all Afghans in all 34 provinces and the education services to get nine to ten million Afghan kids into schools were all financed by donors. I believe those need to be continued. Any disruption will harm ordinary Afghans. They [the donors] do not have to go through the Taleban government. The community development, health services and education could still be done through non-governmental organisations. The government only supervised and made payments [using] ARTF funds. This could still be done by the World Bank directly or maybe by a UN agency. I think it’s very important to keep these.

But on the reserves and monetary issues, I have a slightly different view than many experts, who think funds and assets should be unfrozen. I don’t support an immediate unfreezing of all assets because I don’t see a clear and direct link to the people and their wellbeing. Then there is the morality of giving our country’s assets to an organisation [many of whose] members are designated as terrorists and are on watchlists.

Given that the donors and West seem to have abandoned Afghanistan, our reserves and financial assistance are the only leverage we have [in the absence of] soldiers and a military. These [funds] should be released against some measurable benchmarks that relate to [improvements for] the Afghan population and, in particular, women’s rights. For example, why are girls not allowed to go to school? We could unfreeze a portion of the aid and reserves based on the Taleban’s willingness to restore those rights. The inclusivity of the government, which was apparently agreed between the US and the Taleban, is another issue. You could use [the funds] for that as well.

These key services, like getting food and medicine to people, are critical, and you don’t need to go through the government or the Taleban. What you need is an assurance that they will not hinder your operations as service providers. If they give you these assurances, then we should get food, healthcare and [other] key services to the population. That is what the international community should do, but I’m a bit sceptical about what percentage of the 1.2 billion will eventually benefit the recipients – because the overhead costs of these operations are sometimes unreasonably [high]. So much goes on procuring Land Cruisers, big salaries and flights first and only what’s left goes to the people. It is crucial to have a mechanism to ensure transparency.

Also, I need to look into the details of the pledges – for how long and for what purpose. But when a national budget of three to four billion and another four to five billion in off-budget security and development spending have totally collapsed, then 1.2 billion is sufficient only for a few months. But it’s a start before more could come. Afghanistan still has, I believe, the commitments from Geneva that could continue. It’s only the matter of changing the modality of [the aid].

AAN

In your opinion, what’s the future outlook for the economy in Afghanistan in the short and medium-term?

Khalid Payenda

I think it’s going to get worse because everything is slowing down. I haven’t run any forecasts, but it would not be an exaggeration to say there will be a 30 to 40 per cent contraction in the economy this year. Next year could be worse. A thriving economy cannot run on subsistence imports and donations from neighbouring countries. There has to be more than that. Purchasing power is an issue, people don’t have money and they are going to suffer. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before in the late 1990s. If you visited Kabul, then, as I did during the Taleban regime, you would have seen extreme poverty and destitute. We could expect the same but hope that the humanitarian assistance continues and that the international community uses its leverage to make sure that some sort of a coalition government that is acceptable to Afghans and the world is built. Otherwise, the current trajectory does not provide for an optimistic forecast for the future.

AAN

Do you have any regrets?

Khalid Payenda

Yes, taking the job. But I also think had I not taken the job [of finance minister] I would have had regrets later at an old age and it would have been too late by then. At the end of my life, I would have thought that I could have done something for my country and I didn’t. At least I won’t have that regret. I tried to do as much as I could in the six or seven months [I was minister]. But when you look at it now, I failed. We started a lot of fundamental reforms that needed time and the results were not yet visible. The customs and also budget reforms were crucial and fundamental. We had a digitalisation project to integrate our fragmented systems. We had a new revenue system to replace SIGTAS [Standard Integrated Government Tax Administration System] and a new AFMIS [Afghanistan Financial Management Information System] ready to go, fully developed by Afghans. My team worked with NSIA [National Statistic and Information Authority] for hours, my team and I did a lot of technical work that had not been done before by my predecessors. We were going to fundamentally overhaul the budget process to address serious rent-seeking opportunities and ensure that the budget worked for the people and not the elite. The new budget process for 2022 was going to introduce unprecedented transparency and accountability. We had recently abolished repetitive processes that caused confusion and provided opportunities for corrupt practices such as the allotment process. ^[17] We abolished the allotment process and reduced the payment process from 18 steps and many weeks and months to a few days and just four steps.

The Ministry of Finance was starting to set an example for public access and accountability by an open door [policy] and walk-in public meetings for the minister and the leadership group to hear people’s complaints and address them on the spot. I had dedicated Tuesday evenings to do live Facebook sessions and answer questions from citizens. But we have nothing to show for it. It was all undone in a matter of days and weeks. It does not mean there weren’t issues at the ministry; the corruption in revenue collection, the quality and speed of service delivery and the corporate backbone all needed a lot of improvement.

When I see the bigger tragedy, I think the importance of my work and my team’s work pales in comparison – people are losing their lives, people are losing their rights. Millions went from a respectable living standard to into abject poverty overnight.

My heart is shattered for the youth of Afghanistan. These bright young women, who had ambitions and were going to make a difference for the whole country, are now confined to their own houses. In one week, they suddenly went from young hopeful Afghan females to nobodies who cannot go outside without a chaperone. It’s devastating. By choosing to flee, the president might well have secured a particular hatred in history for himself, but we all bear responsibility. Everyone who had a hand in the affairs of the past 20 years bears a responsibility. It’s true, the end was shockingly fast and unpredicted, but it was in the making for 20 years. Every donor agency, every political office, every minister and governor had a role to play. I see myself as part of the problem, part of a corrupt bureaucracy that had 20 years and all the world’s attention to secure a better future for Afghanistan but instead betrayed its people.

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 13 Oct 2021

Zahir Sherazi

By Jan Egeland

Oct. 12, 2021

When I was traveling around Kabul a few weeks ago, the city felt worlds apart from my last visit in 2019 — and not just because a 20-year war had finally ended. The economy is spiraling out of control. And unless money starts flowing soon, a total economic collapse will plunge Afghans into a humanitarian catastrophe.

The desperation is everywhere. Mothers I sat down with in makeshift tents told me their families have no income and no reserves, and they’re worried that their children will starve and freeze to death this winter.

I met teachers, health workers and water engineers who have not been paid since May. They can no longer support their extended families or keep vital public services afloat. Without functioning banks and liquidity, ordinary Afghans are cut off from their life savings and have no way of surviving.

When the Taliban toppled Afghanistan’s government in August, the country suddenly lost access to more than $9 billion in central bank reserves, frozen by the Biden administration. This sent shock waves through the banking system and prompted capital control measures by the new Taliban leaders, leading to bank closures and halting the economy.

The political conflict with the Taliban must not punish the civilian population. The international community must urgently broker multilateral agreements to stabilize the economy and fund public services. This means finding safe payment channels to get aid flowing and safeguarding humanitarian action from international sanctions and other counterterrorism financing measures.

Our organization, the Norwegian Refugee Council, is one of many trying to provide assistance in this new and challenging environment. We have been unable to securely move aid money into the country to buy emergency supplies for families who face homelessness and hunger this winter. The banking crisis has left several Afghan banks closed and others operating at limited capacity. This has left us struggling to pay our staff and suppliers in Afghanistan. Instead, we are forced to purchase tents, blankets and food in neighboring Pakistan.

Now imagine this dilemma multiplied for every employer across Afghanistan.

In addition to the liquidity emergency, a donor funding freeze has contributed to crippling public services. Some 75 percent of Afghanistan’s public expenditure had in recent years been funded by foreign aid. This lifeline has been largely cut off because the international community is grappling with how to work with a Taliban-run government — including ministers on international sanctions lists.

New mechanisms need to be urgently launched to directly pay hundreds of thousands of municipal and state public servants by channeling the frozen World Bank money through United Nations agencies. This is what I raised in a letter to the heads of the United Nations and the World Bank urging action — suggesting that U.N.-administered trust funds be set up to pay public workers directly. Since the resources already exist within the World Bank and the trusted U.N. channels already are available in the country, these types of transfers can be established quickly.

We need more out-of-the-box thinking, so that banks can reopen and social services can restart.

The World Bank suspended $600 million in funds that form the backbone of the country’s health system. If doctors and nurses are not paid, hospitals will be forced to shut their doors. The alliance recently formed by key aid groups to address the health crisis is a step in the right direction. A special agreement was signed by four agencies to set up mechanisms that would allow direct funding to hospitals and clinics in Afghanistan — but that won’t be enough. Aid groups have nowhere near the capacity to plug the enormous gaps that remain in the health system.

We also need financial instruments that enable donors to pool large sums of relief money, to help us navigate the complexity of international sanctions and restrictions that make it hard for our aid to reach those who need it most.

Even before the latest seismic political shift in Afghanistan, the country faced a dire humanitarian crisis. More than 18 million people urgently needed humanitarian aid. Some 3.5 million Afghans were internally displaced. Failed rains drove hunger levels up — one-third of the people did not know where their next meal would come from.

Some countries and individual actors have suggested that the Taliban must meet certain conditions in exchange for funds. As a humanitarian organization, we do not advocate the conditionality of aid. We are not here to weigh in on political issues or political solutions to the current crisis. We need the international community to realize the urgency here: The economic crisis will only exacerbate humanitarian needs.

I told Taliban leaders I met with in Kabul that for humanitarian action to be most effective, we need both our female and male colleagues to have equal rights, just as it’s important for both girls and boys to be able to go to school. We have been given verbal assurances on these issues in most parts of the country — and will continue to press the Taliban to adhere to humanitarian principles and ensure we can reach those in greatest need.

Whether we will succeed in our race against time to scale up before winter will depend not only on the Taliban’s willingness to turn their words into action, but also on the international community.

Trillions of dollars were spent over the past two decades on the war in Afghanistan that ended so monumentally when the United States evacuated, leaving some 40 million people to fend for themselves. While many were caught off guard by the rapid change of power, the international community cannot continue to stand idly by and watch the country’s free fall.

We must avert Afghanistan’s full economic meltdown, regardless of who controls its territory. Otherwise millions of Afghan children, women and men will pay the heaviest price.

Jan Egeland (@NRC_Egeland) has 30 years of experience in human rights, humanitarian crises and conflict resolution. Currently the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, he previously served as a United Nations Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs.

By John Sifton

Foreign Policy in Focus

October 6, 2021

By Amanda Taub

The New York Times

October 4, 2021

For Afghanistan’s new rulers, keeping the clamps on women is a kind of marketing. But it may still cost them dearly.

Why are the Taliban stripping away so many of Afghan women’s hard-won freedoms?

That may seem like a facetious question. When the Taliban ruled the country in the 1990s, after all, their regime was known for having some of the world’s harshest restrictions on women. The group still adheres to a fundamentalist vision of Islamic society.

But ideology is only part of the story.

Every group has a range of beliefs, and not all of them become priorities for governance. Some Taliban officials, particularly those who conducted peace negotiations and favored international engagement, have suggested that this iteration of Taliban governance might be less restrictive toward women. And there are certainly economic incentives, as the resumption of international aid would be based at least in part on human rights considerations.

None of that has seemed to make a difference thus far. Though some Taliban officials continue to say that conditions will improve, women are still being kept from workplaces and schools. Each week seems to bring a new report of restrictions.

In that light, the Taliban’s decision to restrict women’s freedom begins to look like a political choice as much as it is a matter of ideology. Understanding why the Taliban might see that choice as rewarding, experts say, offers insight into the group’s state-building efforts, and to the nature of the society they now rule again.

The Insecurity of Taliban Security

“I did not for a minute believe that the Taliban had changed,” said Muqaddesa Yourish, a former deputy minister of commerce who fled to the United States with her family when the Taliban took power. “If anything has changed about them, it is that they know how to deal with the West.”

Less than two months after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, their promised allowances for women in the workplace and schools have yet to appear. Most women are still banned from going to work, a supposedly temporary measure the Taliban claim is necessary for security.

The leadership is using the same wording in describing when women might be allowed to attend public universities. And when secondary schools reopened this month, the Taliban directed boys to return to the classroom but said nothing about girls, which families across the country understood as a directive that girls should stay home.

Groups like the Taliban often struggle to make the transition from violent insurgency to actual governance, said Dipali Mukhopadhyay, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who studies rebel governance in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere.

They do not have the experience, funding or personnel to deliver sophisticated government services. Instead, their main strength is controlling security — using their status as the country’s most powerful violent group to operate a kind of country-level protection racket, exchanging public safety for obedience.

“We shouldn’t buy this narrative that they are an alternative to the previous government because they are providing security,” said Metra Mehran, the co-founder of the Feminine Perspectives Campaign, which sought to bring women’s voices into peace negotiations. “They’re not providing security; they’ve just stopped killing us.”

Dr. Mukhopadhyay echoed that sentiment. “That’s the cornerstone of understanding what the Taliban is offering: security and also the threat of force,” she said. “But people, particularly women, know that form of security comes with an ideology attached to it.”

Viewed through that lens, restricting women’s freedom serves as a powerful demonstration of the Taliban’s power. When women and girls vanish from offices and schools, it shows that the Taliban have enough power — and implicitly, enough capacity and willingness to use violence — to dramatically re-engineer public spaces.

Dr. Mukhopadhyay noted that the Taliban had not only dismantled the Ministry for Women’s Affairs, but had also replaced it with the Ministry for Vice and Virtue, the feared religious police known for their public beatings of women who went out without a male relative or were dressed in something other than a burqa.

“That’s a very potent symbol of who’s winning within the Taliban right now,” she said.

‘The Talib in Every Man’

But marketing is only part of the story. Despite support and funding for gender-equality efforts during 20 years of U.S.-backed governments, Afghan women’s freedoms have always been fragile.

Ms. Yourish said she has always sensed that many Afghan men were uncomfortable with women in public life. Although her own father and husband were supportive of her career, she said, they often seemed like outliers.

In the final days before the Taliban took power, Ms. Yourish said, she and her friends traded stories of how “the Talib in every man is coming out,” she said. Male strangers approached her and other women on the street, shouting cryptic threats like “your days will be over soon,” she said. She could sense women’s progress crumbling, she said, even before the previous government fell.

On paper and in the tables of foreign aid budgets, gender equality was a priority for two decades. And there were substantial improvements for many women, especially those who were educated and lived in more urban areas.

But Afghanistan remains a deeply patriarchal society. The Taliban’s promise to return to “traditional” values, in which women are subordinate to their male relatives, is an attractive offer to many Afghan men.

Alice Evans, a researcher at King’s College London who studies women’s economic and social progress, said women’s rights were caught in a “patrilineal trap.”

Societies where family wealth passes through the male line traditionally place a high value on brides’ chastity, Dr. Evans said. “Girls are then closely policed to improve their marriage prospects and family honor,” she said, and norms develop that keep women out of public life.

Women in Ghazni, Afghanistan, last month.Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The dynamic is self-reinforcing: Families do not want to risk deviating from social norms on their own, so everyone ends up stuck in a system in which women have to stay close to home.

To get out of that trap, women’s wages have to become high enough that the benefits of working outweigh the risks to family honor, Dr. Evans said. In East Asia, for instance, rapid industrialization raised women’s potential earnings, effectively buying them out of the honor-based rules that constrained them to the home.

That did not happen in Afghanistan, where economic productivity and employment languished despite the influx of aid. Women’s wages did not rise enough, in enough places, to outweigh their families’ honor-based concerns, or to transform social norms.

That may strengthen the Taliban. Rebel groups that are seen as grounded in local communities and values tend to be more successful, Dr. Mukhopadhyay said. For conservative Afghans, particularly men, restricting women’s freedom may be a way for the Taliban to claim they support local values.

But it could still backfire, Dr. Mukhopadhyay said, if restrictions are so extreme that Afghans see them as overreach by leaders who do not understand how the country has changed. For decades, “the Talibs were living across the border in Pakistan,” she said. “Their perceptions of Islam, and modernity, are not the same as those of people in Afghanistan.”

Women’s employment did become widespread enough that many families relied, at least partly, on their income, said Manizha Wafeq, the co-founder and president of the Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Their earnings have vanished in recent weeks as a result of Taliban restrictions, and that could cut into the public’s acceptance of their rule.

“It’s already an economic crisis for the whole country,” Ms. Wafeq said. “People are already trying to figure out how to feed their families.”