The Afghanistan inquiry is getting into gear at the Royal Courts of Justice. Led by the judge Charles Haddon-Cave, this public inquiry was convened to investigate about 80 killings allegedly committed by the SAS in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013. Proceedings took a dramatic turn last month when the minister for veterans’ affairs, Johnny Mercer, gaveevidence.
It was astonishing to watch. Mercer stated that he had heard from “trusted sources” shocking accounts of serial murder and attempted cover-ups by SAS personnel in Afghanistan. Once he became the minister for veterans (part of the Cabinet Office), he expressed his deep concerns about them to the then defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who asked him to get to the bottom of these well-publicised allegations. Mercer made great efforts to do so.
Mercer didn’t want the allegations to be true; he said that he tried to find evidence to disprove what he had been told. But after extensive discussions with senior officers, he was forced to conclude that information was being withheld from him (the counsel to the inquiry, Oliver Glasgow KC, suggested he was being lied to) and that there was “something not right here”. “I don’t want to believe it,” he said, “but at every stage I have tried to find something to disprove these allegations but I have been unable to.” Mercer painted a picture of a combination of offhand arrogance from senior officers and a lack of interest and accountability on the part of ministers. When a serving minister states under oath – as Mercer did – that he had “very little faith that the MoD had the ability to hold itself to account”, we have a serious problem, whether the reason for it is dishonesty, ignorance or incompetence.
One major problem is that special forces are seen, and see themselves, as untouchable. It was the same in Australia. Until, that is, the 2020 Brereton inquiry, in which Australian special forces soldiers were found to have committed dozens of murders of unarmed Afghan detainees and civilians. After publication of the report, the head of Australia’s special forces, general Adam Findlay, summoned his troops and delivered an address. In it he blamed the many war crimes committed by his units on “poor moral leadership” and “self-righteous entitled prick[s]” who believed the rules of the regular army didn’t apply to them. In other words, a culture of impunity.
This culture goes right to the top. Mercer’s evidence indicated that if senior military officers don’t want ministers to know something about special forces because it is embarrassing or reflects badly upon them, they can stonewall or gaslight and expect no further action or scrutiny. All of this demonstrates with crystal clarity the dangers of having an important part of our armed forces acting without continuous and effective democratic oversight.
UK special forces, including the SAS, claim a unique position in Britain’s defence and security structures. They are accountable only to two people: the defence secretary and the prime minister. This is unlike GCHQ, MI6 and MI5, which are all subject to some degree of scrutiny by the elected members of the intelligence and security committee of parliament (ISC) – composed of nine security-cleared members drawn from both houses of parliament. All of those organisations deal with matters at least as sensitive as the SAS and similar units. The ISC is a largely trusted and respected component of the national security framework. The army, navy and air force, including highly secret and sensitive strategic capabilities such as the nuclear deterrent, receive effective and often robust supervision from the House of Commons defence select committee.
Most of our major allies, such as Denmark, Norway and France, place their special forces under some form of oversight. The US firmly places them under congressionaland government accounting office supervision. Reports on accountability in Britain, including one in 2023 commissioned by a cross-party group, have urged action. In 2018, Malcolm Rifkind, the former defence secretary and chairman of the ISC, echoed the view of many when he said: “It is unanswerable that there should be some form of oversight of special forces.” No remotely convincing reason for the UK’s uniqueness in this respect has been presented in parliament or elsewhere. As always, the answer is “no comment”.
The SAS are reported to be operating in 19 countries including Syria, from where a murder allegation emerged on Tuesday. Up to 50 of them are said to be operating in Ukraine. It is clear that this small force of only a few hundred are overcommitted and overstretched, and often given inappropriate tasks that other troops could do as well or better, such as certain forms of intelligence gathering, training or advising on planning and strategy. Of course, without democratic oversight, prime ministers or the ministry of defence can commit special forces as much as they like without debate, scrutiny or control. This is now becoming dangerous. Any renegade behaviour in Ukraine – against nuclear Russia – could have disastrous consequences for us all. Effective oversight mechanisms are vital. Right now, we don’t have them.
Frank Ledwidge is a barrister and former military officer who served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of Losing Small Wars and Investment in Blood
What the explosive testimony of a minister reveals about Britain’s war in Afghanistan – and its rogue special forces
When the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan returned to power in August 2021, thousands of Afghans who were working for NGOs left Afghanistan, fearing harassment by Afghanistan’s new rulers, or just taking an opportunity to start a new life elsewhere. Many have already found their way to Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Others are still waiting in third countries, such as Pakistan, for their asylum applications to be reviewed and the next chapter of their lives to begin. In the latest instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from an Afghan man who has been living in Islamabad with his young family for nearly two years. He told us how they are coping with the wait by studying, improving their skills and cherishing the small joys life has to offer. In February 2022, I got an email from the US State Department telling me that my family and I should go to a third country so that they could process our evacuation applications, which would take 12 to 14 months. It was one of those cold winter days in Kabul. My wife was sitting near the bukhari (woodburning stove) reading a story to my two daughters. I handed her my phone so she could read the email. She took a deep breath and nodded in the direction of our already-packed bags. They’d been carefully packed and waiting for the past six months – four suitcases, one for each of us, with all the things we’d need to start our new life in America. There was also a backpack with our documents – passports, marriage and birth certificates, degree certificates, employment records and, most important of all, family photographs and keepsakes. Tomorrow, we’d say our goodbyes to the few family members and friends still living in Kabul and begin making arrangements for the overland journey to Islamabad. A month after the letter came, we joined the hundreds of other Afghan families waiting in Islamabad to be evacuated to the United States.
The old life in Kabul
I was born in Kabul, near the military high school in Pul-e Sukhta, in 1996. I grew up in a rented house in the same neighbourhood with three brothers and two sisters. Ours was a happy middle-class family. My parents put a lot of stock in education and pushed us not to settle for a mere high school diploma, but to strive for a university degree. They also made sure we learned English and how to work with computers, the skills that, they said, would stand us in good stead when we entered the workforce and started our professional careers. They were wise indeed. The English and computer skills my parents insisted on helped me pay for my university education. I taught at a private institute and did some tutoring on the side to earn enough money for the tuition at the private university where I studied for a Bachelor in Business Administration degree. In 2012, with my degree in hand, I started working as a finance officer for an NGO that offered English classes to university lecturers and students; it had funding from the United States.
Those were happy days. I used to wake up early and have breakfast with my family before heading to work. I had a deal with a taxi driver who’d pick me up every morning and drive me to the office. In the evenings, after work, I used to walk home with a colleague who lived in the same neighbourhood. We wanted to get a bit of exercise after sitting behind a desk all day to stay healthy and keep our weight in check. During those long walks through the streets of Kabul, we’d share a piece of warm bread and talk about our plans for the future.
I had a good salary and my brothers worked too, so we were able to increase our savings. Soon, there was enough money for each of us, brothers and sisters, to get married, one after another. I got married in 2015 to an educated woman who taught at a private primary school. My wife loved teaching young kids. She worked at the school during the day. In the afternoons, working at home, she prepared the next day’s lesson plans and marked her students’ homework. When she had time, she helped my brothers’ wives with chores around the house. In time, my brothers and I saved enough to realise my parents’ long-held dream – we bought our own house, although sadly, it was too late for them to see it.
But they did get to meet my two beautiful and intelligent daughters – one is seven years old and the other is five. Like my parents, I had a lot of plans for my children’s future. I wanted them to study, excel in school and have their own families. Most importantly, I hoped they’d become successful career women and serve our people. But the best-laid plans are often at the mercy of forces beyond our control and decisions made by men in faraway rooms can scatter even the tightest-knit of families to the four corners of the earth. This is what happened to my family. All my siblings have already left Afghanistan with their families. I am the youngest and was the last one to remain in Afghanistan, hanging on to the hope that one day we’ll all be together again living in our house in Kabul. But all that is in the past now. Today, I wait with my family in Islamabad for an aeroplane to take us to a new life in America, far from everyone and everything we know.
Time to leave Kabul
By the time the Taleban entered Kabul, I was already worried for our safety. Even before the fall of the Republic, my brothers and I had received threats because we worked on US-funded projects. It wasn’t long before we started hearing rumours about people being detained [by the new authorities]. Then, one day, armed men came to our house looking for me and my brothers. Luckily, I wasn’t home and both my brothers had already left Kabul before the fall. Living in Kabul had become risky not only for me but also for my family. So, like many others, I applied for the US government programme to be evacuated. We sold our family home and moved in with some relatives who had a spare room. We started selling all our belongings in preparation for our departure from Afghanistan. We kept some money to live on and sent the rest to my brother in Europe.
The six months we spent waiting to hear about our application were tense and gloomy. The NGO I worked for had closed down, so I had no job to go to and nothing to distract me from my perilous situation. We spent our days at home, helping around the house, tending to the children and trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves in the neighbourhood where we were staying with family.
Waiting for the future to begin
Life here in Pakistan hasn’t been easy. I have no job here, and we must make do with what little money my brothers can send us. It has taken far longer than 12 to 14 months for the US government to process our application. In fact, we‘ve only just received our case numbers – 21 months after we arrived in Islamabad. Time passes slowly when you’re waiting for the future to start, and the uncertainty takes an emotional toll on the whole family. But we can’t go back to Kabul.
For one thing, there’s no one left in Kabul to go back to. All my siblings and their families have already left Afghanistan. There’s also my wife’s well-being and my daughters’ future to consider. In Afghanistan, my wife can’t work and my girls can’t go to school after they finish primary school. In Islamabad, the girls are in school and my wife is taking English and computer courses. But we’re living here on expired visas and the Pakistani government has started a campaign of rounding up Afghans and deporting those without visas – and sometimes even those with valid visas. In November, the US embassy gave us letters to show to the Pakistani police if we’re stopped on the street, so they do not deport us.
Making lemonade in Islamabad
They say when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade. That’s exactly what my family and I have been doing in Islamabad. We’re trying our best to take advantage of the opportunities available here so we don’t spend our time in idleness. We enrolled the girls in a local private school, where they also have two hours of English instruction every day, and my wife is taking English and computer classes. But there isn’t enough money for me to also take courses, so I spend my time improving my English and learning new skills online. It’s important for my wife and daughters to be proficient in English when we arrive in America so they can hit the ground running.
We live in a pleasant neighbourhood in Islamabad, where many other Afghan families also live. It feels like home having so many Afghan neighbours; most of them are in the same boat we’re in. In the mornings, I walk my daughters to school through the bustling streets, which are full of people on their way to work. I enjoy my morning walks, especially through the park after the rain, where the air is delicate and smells of wet grass. On my way home, I usually stop at one or two of the shops that cater to an Afghan clientele to pick up some provisions for my wife and catch up on the neighbourhood gossip and news from home. This morning ritual makes life interesting and keeps me connected to something outside our stagnant life – thriving, lively and filled with possibilities.
We live on a very tight budget and must be careful with money. I can’t work here in Pakistan, so we rely on the generosity of my siblings, and we can’t take that for granted. It’s enough to pay the rent, my daughters’ school fees, my wife’s courses and our living expenses, but there isn’t much money for entertainment. Sometimes, when we have the time and some spare cash, we visit one of the many beautiful religious, cultural or historical sites in Islamabad, but mostly, we spend our free time in the park near our house. The important thing is that we’re all together in a safe place. We have a roof over our heads and the girls can go to school.
For now, this should be enough. It has to be. There’s nothing else to do but wait. And while we wait, life goes on and there are precious days and moments we’ll never get back – time passes and children grow up. We can’t give in to despair. The only thing to do is to make the best of the hand we’ve been dealt, make good use of our time and plan for the future. Our children will learn by our example that no misfortune is insurmountable and that the taste of lemonade – sour and sweet – is an inescapable part of life.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
The Daily Hustle: Waiting in Islamabad for evacuation
BY ALBERT TORRESOPINION CONTRIBUTORThe Hill03/03/24 4:00 PM ET
While the Taliban reap the benefits of their grand corruption, Afghanistan appears to be reverting to pre-9/11 conditions as it once again becomes a hotbed for terrorism.
The Taliban maintain strong relationships with al-Qaida, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and the Tehrik-e-Jihad Pakistan. By offering such terrorist groups financial and logistical support — all within Afghanistan’s borders — the Taliban have reemerged as a vital threat to U.S. and international security.
The Taliban continue to use a totalitarian system that prioritizes repression and self-benefit above all else, resorting to brutality and fear to maintain control over Afghanistan, a recent report from the George W. Bush Institute shows. The Taliban’s strategy involves stripping the country of its resources and increase their access to finances to strengthen their hold on power. This rampant corruption is occurring hand in hand with the Taliban’s insistent marginalization of women and girls.
As a global leader, the United States has a responsibility to confront the threat to international security and democracy posed by the Taliban’s transnational corruption. In partnership with global allies, the United States must hold the Taliban accountable for their tyranny and kleptocracy. Afghanistan has been captured by a self-serving radical extremist group and, without action, more catastrophic consequences are sure to come.
The Taliban have found several ways to access the income they desperately seek. While Afghans struggle to live on less than one dollar a day, the Taliban have made over $2 billion by siphoning humanitarian assistance, trafficking weapons and drugs, and employing new means of extortion on the struggling population.
The Taliban are also actively attempting to establish partnerships with foreign governments that they hope will bolster their international presence and claims of legitimacy. With their newfound access to approximately $1 trillion of natural resources, the Taliban’s ability to partner with foreign actors has only strengthened.
What happens in Afghanistan matters to us here at home. That includes the nefarious actions of the Taliban, who eagerly exploit populations and resources for the expansion of their abusive power and personal wealth.
President Joe Biden has been adamant that his administration will hold unscrupulous governments liable for their offenses, as displayed in the first-ever U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption released shortly after his inauguration.
The U.S. Treasury has a “commitment to holding accountable those who seek to exploit their privileged positions for personal benefit,” Brian Nelson, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, has said, and the Treasury must do more to fulfill its obligation and stop the Taliban.
Tools already exist that can make a difference.
With cooperation from the State Department, Treasury should expand anti-corruption sanctions and designate Afghanistan as a Primary Money Laundering Concern to increase scrutiny from the financial sector. This will allow the U.S. to invoke Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act and block the Taliban’s illegal financial activity.
However, an isolated solution is not enough when foreign actors are actively endorsing or willfully ignoring the Taliban’s activity.
Therefore, the United States should designate the Taliban as a foreign terrorist organization and utilize the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program with the European Union to process and share financial messaging data on cases that likely involve the Taliban and their associates.
The United States should also lead initiatives that encourage international cooperation from ally and regional countries, institutions, and organizations, including support for independent media active in Afghanistan to fill current information vacuums.
Taking these measures will put the Taliban on the defensive and challenge their ability to continue looting the country. Failing to address the severity of the situation in Afghanistan would be a critical misstep.
U.S. leadership is incumbent. However, we must act with others. It’s vital that the international community remain in lockstep to promise a better future for the people of Afghanistan.
Albert Torres is Program Manager of Global Policy at the George W. Bush Institute.
The US must do more to hold the Taliban accountable
BY JAMES DURSO OPINION CONTRIBUTORThe Hill02/27/24 11:30 AM ET
On Feb. 18 and 19, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened a meeting in Doha, Qatar, to discuss the “evolving situation” in Afghanistan and future engagement with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban declined an invitation to the meeting after the U.N. refused their conditions, including recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Guterres reported that the attendees’ “creation of a contact group with a more limited number of states able to have a more coordinated approach in the engagement with the de facto authorities” might include “the P-5 with a group of neighboring countries and a group of relevant donors.” Guterres said he is starting consultations on the appointment of a special envoy “to coordinate engagement between Kabul and the international community.”
The Taliban rejected the need for a special envoy, but Pakistan supported it and specified the envoy must be a “Muslim, experienced diplomat, and from the region.”
Though the West is fixed on the issue of Afghan women and girls, the world needs to engage with the Islamic Emirate on other issues, including water rights, migration, narcotics trafficking and counterterrorism. In many instances, neighbors are already talking directly to the emirate, such as Tashkent’s low-key discussions with Kabul over rights to the water of the Amu Darya, which rises in the Pamir Mountains.
Other countries will also prefer to deal directly with Kabul. China recently appointed a new ambassador to the emirate; Russia will continue its engagement with Kabul; and the Central Asian republics, Iran and Pakistan, as neighboring countries, will not feel the need to use the offices of the envoys, though it will be useful if it can “me-too” their existing positions.
The envoy’s task may be “promoting dialogue between the extremist group and exiled opposition political figures” — that is, the guys the Taliban defeated despite America’s two-decade, $2 trillion sponsorship. In fact, the Taliban and ordinary Afghans are concerned that power sharing will entail the return of the warlords and corrupt officials of the ousted Islamic Republic, according to Obaidullah Baheer of the American University in Afghanistan. If this includes warlords and former Islamic Republic officials, the Taliban’s job will be made much easier.
On the issue of women and girls, the Taliban recently approved female high school graduates to enroll in state-run medical institutes for the new academic year beginning in March, showing that change will come at the Taliban’s pace and will be the result of negotiations between the capital, Kabul and Kandahar, the base of the hard-liners.
The acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and Mullah Yaqoob, acting defense minister, recently warned Hibatullah Akhundzada, Afghanistan’s supreme leader, that reforms must be quickly forthcoming or else there would be consequences. The opportunity to split the Taliban between reformers like Haqqani and Yaqoob and hardline leader Akhundzada may be tempting to Washington, but fostering a civil war will damage Central and South Asia and demonstrate conclusively that Washington is humiliated and spiteful, not patient and constructive.
The envoy may find the going easier if he joins hands with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC has an action plan that addresses the participation of women in all areas of public life; in 2023 the organization announced, “The [OIC] Secretary-General also affirmed the OIC’s determination to continue constructive dialogue to empower Afghan women and guarantee their right to access education at all levels and participate in public life.” The OIC participated in the U.N.’s Doha meeting on Afghanistan.
The OIC can address Afghan women’s rights in an Islamic context and may make better progress than Western governments, which the Taliban consider “the guys we defeated.” With the OIC in the lead, it and the U.N. may be able to convince the Taliban hardliners that women’s rights and education is an Islamic virtue by highlighting women’s contributions to the growing economies of Indonesia and Malaysia, but without taking sides in the Kabul-Kandahar tension.
As to the envoy, though Pakistan would like to fill that role, fraying ties between Pakistan and the Taliban may limit his effectiveness. A better candidate would be from Central Asia, which has diplomats experienced in dealing with the Taliban, or Turkey, the only NATO member with a diplomatic presence in Kabul.
Uzbekistan has strongly supported the Trans-Afghan railway and recently secured Qatar’s financial support for the project. In 2018, Tashkent publicly encouraged the Taliban to start peace negotiations with the Afghan government, and it recently offered technical assistance to the emirate’s Qosh Tepe Canal and warned the Taliban of the potential for leaks. (The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation found that each dollar spent on canal maintenance saves ten to twelve dollars of water.) And the Uzbeks were right: in December 2023, the canal walls apparently failed and spilled enough water to form a nine-kilometer lake in the desert.
Turkey never cut off relations with Afghanistan and has increased engagement since August 2021. Ankara has hosted visits by senior Taliban officials and provided emergency aid to the emirate; it also encouraged an inclusive government in Kabul, and education for girls. In 2022, Turkey completed the second phase of the Kajaki dam hydropower project. Ankara has also maintained trade links with the emirate (2022 exports were just under $270 million.)
The envoy will have to fight to get on the Taliban foreign minister’s calendar. Seventeen countries maintain embassies in Kabul, the latest being Azerbaijan, which officially opened its embassy on Feb. 15. And, on Jan. 29, the emirate convened a conference in Kabul attended by representatives of 11 countries, including Russia, India, China, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The conference underlined the fact that, while the U.S. and Europe are staying away, Afghanistan’s neighbors are pragmatically seeking to engage the emirate.
Successful engagement with the Islamic Emirate will be a group effort and, if the U.N. envoy materializes, a sure path to success may be via a partnership with the OIC.
James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. He served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The world is willing to negotiate with the Taliban and help solve Afghanistan’s problems but, first, the de facto rulers must cut ties with al-Qaeda and address rising terrorism
Islamic extremism is on the rise again in Afghanistan, with terrorists flourishing under Taliban rule. With the international community recently meeting in Doha to consider steps to legitimise the Taliban, it could not have come at a worst moment for the de facto rulers of Afghanistan. In particular, the UN’s report on Afghanistan released last month revealed a disturbing rise in activity by al-Qaeda.
The report said the terrorist group had re-established itself in Afghanistan and “continues to pose a threat to the region, and potentially beyond”. Al-Qaeda has reportedly built eight new training camps, runs safe houses in Kabul and Herat, has stockpiled weapons in the Panjshir Valley, and operates five madrasas in the east of the country.
While the UN report found that al-Qaeda lacks the capability for a large-scale attack, it still harbours global ambitions and is rebuilding its strength in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda’s re-emergence is a big concern globally. Under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, the group used Afghanistan as a base during the Taliban’s last stint in power between 1996 and 2001. This led to the Taliban being internationally isolated and enabled al-Qaeda to carry out devastating attacks around the world, including September 11.
The Taliban is also connected to smaller groups Tehreek-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehreek-i Jihad Pakistan (TJP), which have carried out terrorist attacks in neighbouring Pakistan. This includes a bombing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province last year that killed 23 soldiers and injured many more. Over 400 Pakistanis, including security forces, have reportedly died in insurgent suicide bombings and attacks since the start of last year.
All three groups are supported by the Taliban, which offers them protection in Afghanistan. The UN report says the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship “remains strong” and operates under a system of Taliban patronage. The Taliban is also “generally sympathetic” to the TTP and supplies it with weapons and equipment. The report reveals that Taliban members have joined the TTP and that the group’s members receive aid packages from the Taliban.
The Taliban has denied these allegations, claiming the UN is “always spreading propaganda” and that “there is no one related to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan”.But the Taliban’s support for al-Qaeda has been known for some time. In 2022, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by a US drone in a house in Kabul. The property was owned by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interior minister. The discovery and death of al-Zawahri was deeply embarrassing for the regime.
Still, ahead of the Doha meeting to discuss Afghanistan’s future, the Taliban had expected progress on international recognition as the Afghan government.
The deputy minister for political affairs, Mawlawi Adbul Kabir, recently claimed the group had met all the conditions for recognition and said: “We have been assured that the coming meeting of Doha will aim at encouraging the world to engage with the Islamic Emirate”.
Such recognition, and Afghanistan’s UN seat, would mean legitimisation of the group and its harsh interpretation of Islam, which has seen it pilloried for its severe treatment of women and minority groups.The problem for the Taliban is that, since its return to power, most countries have demanded that Afghanistan must not be used as a terrorist haven – particularly its neighbours, who fear regional instability and attacks.
Pakistan urged the Taliban last December to “take strong action” against terrorist groups and said it expected “concrete and verifiable steps to prevent the use of Afghan soil by terrorist entities against Pakistan”.
China has raised similar concerns, telling the Taliban it needed to “take the security concerns of its neighbours seriously and take stronger measures to counter various terrorist forces within Afghanistan”.
This position has not changed and was reiterated in Doha on Monday, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres outlining proposals to ensure Afghanistan did not become a “hotbed” of terrorist activity.
The Taliban appears stubborn and unwilling to budge on a range of issues, including its links to terrorist groups. This was made clear when the group said it would not be attending the Doha meeting, deeming it “unbeneficial”.
For a group obsessed with recognition, the Taliban’s stance is not just counterproductive, but also a bad look, especially when the international community is willing to engage to help solve Afghanistan’s problems. The Taliban’s flat-out denial of its links to al-Qaeda also reconfirms to the world that it is not to be trusted.
The Taliban cannot have it both ways. If it wants to be recognised, it needs to assuage – rather than alienate – Afghanistan’s close neighbours. This means combating terrorism and cutting ties with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
This can only benefit the Taliban. The regime will be able to meet – at least in part – the criteria for recognition and the benefits that come with it, like legitimacy, influence and greater investment in the nation.
It will also make Afghanistan and the wider region safer. This would be welcome news to the Taliban’s neighbours – particularly Pakistan and China – who have legitimate concerns about the spread of terrorism at home and abroad.
The Taliban has a choice, one that may determine the future of Afghanistan. It can repeat history and choose terrorism and isolation, or it can decide to govern responsibly and accept the demands of the international community, which could lead to a safer, more prosperous Afghanistan.
The Taliban should choose wisely.
Chris Fitzgerald is a freelance journalist and project coordinator for the Platform for Peace and Humanity’s Central Asia Programme
If Taliban wants legitimacy in Afghanistan, it must renounce al-Qaeda
Afghanistan is back on the world’s agenda. The UN Security Council has met behind closed doors to hear about the recently held United Nations-convened meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan in Doha, which the Islamic Emirate decided not to attend. The current rulers of Afghanistan, the Islamic Emirate, decided not to attend the Doha gathering and are adamantly against the planned appointment of a UN Special Envoy to coordinate and facilitate the world’s engagement with the country, as foreseen by the UN Security Council’s latest resolution on Afghanistan. Ahead of the Security Council’s meeting to renew the mandate of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which is due to expire on 17 March, AAN’s Roxanna Shapour looks at what is known about the ‘Doha II’ gathering, at the debate among the emerging political blocks about the shape of future engagement with Kabul and how Afghans themselves view a seemingly hamstrung political process that is happening in faraway meeting rooms behind closed doors.
The second meeting of the Special Envoys on Afghanistan held in Doha, Qatar, on 18-19 February 2024 took place without a much-anticipated delegation from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA); whether it would go or not was an outstanding question right up to the final hours before the gathering began (see AAN reporting). The meeting was followed by a closed-door session of the United Nations Security Council, ostensibly for a briefing on the outcome of the gathering in Doha, especially with regard to the controversial decision to appoint a UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan.
In this report, we look at what, if anything, were the outcomes of the meeting in Doha and the subsequent session of the UNSC. We try to make sense of what the apparent emergence of a regional block of nations might mean for future international engagement with Afghanistan. We try to make sense of the IEA’s position concerning the special envoy and why, in the end, it decided against participating in the meeting in Doha. We try to make sense of what Afghans themselves are saying about the world’s engagement with their country. Finally, we look at what might happen in the future and, if there is no progress over an UN-appointed special envoy, whether Afghanistan’s foreign interlocutors will be able to make headway on other, arguably more important, issues that would help improve the lives of the Afghan people.
Why did the special envoys meet in Doha?
On 16 March 2023, following weeks of complex negotiations over Afghanistan and the annual renewal of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) mandate, the UN Security Council passed two resolutions on Afghanistan – one (Resolution S/RES/2678(2023) extended UNAMA’s mandate until 17 March 2024 and another (Resolution S/RES/2679(2023) asked the Secretary-General to conduct an independent assessment which would provide recommendations for “an integrated and coherent approach among different actors in the international community in order to address the current challenges facing Afghanistan” (see AAN report which looked at the politics behind this move in detail). On 25 April, it was announced that the UN Secretary-General had appointed senior Turkish diplomat Feridun Sinirlioğlu as the Special Coordinator to conduct the assessment. It was just after this, that Guterres hosted the first meeting of special envoys in Doha, to which the Emirate was not invited (see AAN’s reporting about that gathering, held on 1-2 May 2023). Guterres’s aim with the first Doha Special Envoys meeting was “to reinvigorate international engagement around key issues, such as human rights, in particular women’s and girls’ rights, inclusive governance, countering terrorism and drug trafficking” (see UN press release). The special envoys also discussed their expectations from the independent assessment report.
The Independent Assessment Report, submitted by Sinirlioğlu to the Security Council on 10 November 2023, identified five key issues and priorities: human rights, especially of women and girls; counterterrorism, counternarcotics and regional security; economic, humanitarian and development issues; inclusive governance and rule of law and; political representation and implications for regional and international priorities (concerning the lack of recognition of the IEA).
It made several recommendations for a “performance-based roadmap” for advancing its stated goal – “An end state of Afghanistan’s full reintegration into the international system.” These include engagement with the IEA, starting with the economy, which would see international assistance expand to include development assistance, particularly in the banking sector; security cooperation, including on counterterrorism and counternarcotics; political engagement, including an intra-Afghan dialogue and on Afghanistan’s international obligations.
Finally, it proposed three mechanisms to coordinate these efforts: a UN-Convened Large Group Format (which already exists – this was the group which met in Doha in May 2023 and also on 18-19 February); a smaller and more active International Contact Group and; an UN Special Envoy, complementary to UNAMA which would focus on “diplomacy between Afghanistan and international stakeholders as well as on advancing intra-Afghan dialogue.” It has been that last mechanism, the appointment of a special envoy, which has ended up eclipsing the rest of the Assessment, with the Emirate logging its strong opposition to the idea from the very start (see AAN’s analysis of the Assessment report and the debate around it).
On 29 December, its last working day of 2023, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2721. It encouraged “member states and all other relevant stakeholders to consider the independent assessment and implementation of its recommendations” and asked the Secretary-General to “appoint a Special Envoy for Afghanistan” (see AAN analysis). Importantly, the Resolution was adopted by 13 votes in favour, with China and Russia abstaining, rather than using their power as permanent members of the Security Council to veto it (see UN press release). The Resolution welcomed Guterras’ initiative to organise the second Doha meeting and requested him to appoint “in consultation with members of the Security Council, relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders, including relevant authorities, Afghan women and civil society, as well as the region and the wider international community” a Special Envoy. The second meeting of the Special Envoys on Afghanistan in Doha on 18-19 February 2024 should be seen in light of this requirement, as well as being part of the process that started with the extension of the UNAMA mandate and the UNSC asking for the independent assessment in March 2023.
What happened at Doha II
Even as 25 special envoys and representatives on Afghanistan started arriving for the Doha II meeting, the IEA’s participation was still very much in doubt.[1] The Emirate’s foreign ministry, which initially asked for clarifications on the agenda and invitees (see media report), finally released a statement, the day before the gathering was due to begin, outlining its conditions for attending the meeting. It noted that while the meeting was a good opportunity to have “frank and productive dialogue,” the IEA had two conditions for its participation: 1) that it would be the only representative of Afghanistan, meaning that civil society representatives and members of opposition groups would not be present; and 2) that its delegation would meet the UN at a very senior level. Reportedly, the ask was for a meeting between IEA acting Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi and UN Secretary-General António Guterres. These conditions were rejected by Guterres, who told reporters on 19 February:
I received a letter with a set of conditions to be present in this meeting that were not acceptable. These conditions, first of all, denied us the right to talk to other representatives of the Afghan society and demanded a treatment that would, I would say, to a large extent be similar to recognition (see video here and transcript here).
A document, unpublished but widely distributed (AAN has seen a copy), which is purported to be notes from a briefing by an ‘expert on Afghanistan’ who was present in Doha, also lists other difficulties for the Emirate, to do with protocol and what the agenda said about the UN’s view of the IEA’s status: special envoys had been given plenty of time to meet the Secretary-General, while Afghans in general had not, and adding insult to injury, the IEA appeared to have been accorded the same status as Afghan civil society actors. Whatever the reason behind the decision not to go to the meeting, the gathering in Doha proceeded in the IEA’s absence. Many believed an opportunity for rapprochement between Kabul and the West had been missed or, for those opposed to engagement, narrowly avoided.
While not much is known about the sessions at Doha II, which were held behind closed doors, AMU TV, whose CEO, Lutfullah Najafizada, was among the civil society representatives present, did post the following schedule:
The two-day event includes four meetings. Monday’s agenda begins at 09:00 am (Doha time) with remarks from the UN Secretary-General, followed by a 15:30 meeting between special envoys and Afghan civil society representatives.
A scheduled 17:30 meeting with the Taliban delegation was canceled following their refusal to participate. The day’s schedule includes:
Special envoys of countries and organizations meeting.
Working meeting among special envoys.
Remarks by the UN Secretary-General.
Meeting between special envoys and Afghan civil society representatives.
Canceled meeting with the Taliban delegation.
On their first day in Doha (18 February), the special envoys’ time was taken up with a throng of bilateral meetings between special envoys from various countries as well as consultations between foreign delegations and Afghan civil society representatives.[2] The IEA had been vigorously opposed to their participation, a fact which was stressed by its envoy to Qatar, Muhammad Naeem Wardak, who told BBC Persian that the Emirate was the sole representative of the Afghan people and inviting other people is “against all principles and regulations.”
In line with the wishes of the Islamic Emirate, Russia refused to participate in meetings with “so-called Afghan civil activists,” saying they had been selected “non-transparently, behind Kabul’s back,” according to a statement issued by its embassy in Kabul (see the Russian News Agency Tass). China and Iran also, reportedly, refrained from meeting civil society representatives, but did not issue a statement about it (see ToloNews). The UN Secretary-General criticised Russia’s decision during his press conference, held after the meeting:
Indeed, it is true that the Russian Federation issued a communiqué saying that we should not meet the civil society. I am terribly sorry, but I am in total disagreement. I think it will be very important to meet with the de facto authorities. But I think it’s also very important to listen to other voices in the Afghan society.
This sentiment was echoed by US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller in his 20 February press briefing: “The Taliban are not the only Afghans who have a stake in the future of Afghanistan. We will continue to support giving all Afghans, including, of course, women and girls, a voice in shaping their country’s future.”
Miller’s statement drew a strong reaction from IEA Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed, “Washington has already tasted the results of [its] intervention in Afghanistan and has seen the consequence over the past 20 years,” he told Afghanistan’s state broadcaster, RTA, as quoted by Ava Press, adding that “America should learn from the past and not repeat its mistakes…. Whether you like it or not, the Islamic Emirate represents Afghanistan and its people.”
Nevertheless, and despite the IEA’s opposition to their participation, civil society representatives were, for the most part, upbeat about the impact of their participation at the meeting. In various media interviews and online briefing sessions, they said their presence signalled the resolve of Afghanistan’s interlocutors to engage with a broad base of Afghan stakeholders and presented an apt opportunity for them to raise the voices of the Afghan people to international fora. Two representatives, Shah Gul Rezai and Metra Mehran, released their statements publicly (see Rezai’s here and Mehran’s here). Mehran said the Independent Assessment Report was “unduly conciliatory towards the regime” and urged participants not to “compromise our rights for your regional and international political rivalries.” Echoing the frustrations she and other Afghan women felt, she said:
Our trust in all of you has been severely tested; as women and people of Afghanistan, it feels like we are fighting on multiple fronts – against the Taliban and also to convince the international community to not turn away or ignore our plight. We are being eased [sic] from our own society as the whole world watches. During these talks, and as you go forward, you have the opportunity to ensure that this erasure isn’t legitimized, downplayed or perpetuated. I urge you to heed the calls of women and ensure that the outcome of these talks is grounded in, and center, women’s rights and agency.
Disagreements at Doha hamper consensus
Despite the Emirate’s snub and disagreements among the participants, Guterres put on a brave face during the press conference held after the two-day meeting, on 19 February. There was consensus among the participants, he said, concerning the assessment report’s “programmatic proposals” as well as the “end game” (see UN Web TV and a transcript of the press conference). The UN Secretary-General defined this unanimous vision as:
Afghanistan in peace with itself and peace with its neighbours. Able to assume the commitments and international obligations of a sovereign state and at the same time, doing so in relation to the international community, the other countries, its neighbors, and in relation to the rights of its own population. At that same time an, Afghanistan fully integrated in all the mechanisms, political and economic, of the international community. This is the objective, the endgame.
Guterres, however, stressed that the group of envoys had been deadlocked on an “essential set of questions,” leaving Afghanistan with a government that is not recognised internationally, on the one hand, and with a perception among special envoys that inclusiveness in government had not improved, the situation of women and girls, and human rights in general, had deteriorated, and “problems of the fight against terrorism are not entirely solved.” He described “a situation of the chicken and the egg,” with the Taleban calling for recognition and asserting that the issues raised by the international community are “not their business” and “the international community thinking that there is no progress in relation to its main concerns.”
Guterres said that all the participants had agreed that meetings of special envoys and special representatives on Afghanistan should continue in the future, but not without the Emirate’s participation. He also said the UN would appoint a special envoy, but only after “a serious process of consultations” to pave the way for the IEA to agree to the appointment. Finally, a contact group would be established, and while it was up to member states to decide the particulars, Guterres said he had put forward a personal suggestion that this group should be made up of the permanent members of the UNSC, also known as the P-5 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), a group of neighbouring countries (this would include Iran and Pakistan) and a group of “relevant donors.” On the face of it, this composition sounds like a good idea, but it might prove to be a non-starter. While it is not unheard of, one can only imagine the wrangling involved in getting the United States and Iran to agree to sit down together at the same table.
To many, these plans may seem like low-hanging fruit, but reaching an accord on the mechanisms for engagement among some 25 nations and international organisations, each with its own priorities – even before the wishes and possible red lines of the IEA are taken into account – will be no small feat.
In AAN’s last report, ahead of Doha II, we wrote about the possibility of an emerging regional block, with a consensus position on Afghanistan, which would place strengthening ties with Kabul at the centre of its agenda. That dynamic appeared to be proven true by events at Doha and there now appear to be three rough groups of countries, each with its own ideas about the best way to engage with the IEA. First is the nascent regional block, which includes China, Russia and Iran, which have increasingly closer ties with Kabul and are seemingly advocating for the IEA and its positions. A second group of countries are taking an isolationist approach, most notably France (another permanent member of the Security Council) and Germany, both of whom are very critical of the Emirate and its human rights record and want to see the IEA deliver on all its obligations. The third group, spearheaded by the US and UK (also permanent members of the SC), favours a more pragmatic approach, which would see member states engage with the Emirate and try to persuade them to take positive action in fulfilling Afghanistan’s international obligations in exchange for more engagement and progress towards Afghanistan’s reintegration into the world community. In this light, there is a vast gap between the varying positions of Afghanistan’s interlocutors, and the impasse could prove a significant hurdle to reaching a consensus. Finally, the importance of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as an integral part of this complex puzzle cannot be overlooked, for even if there was an unequivocal consensus among all the other countries, it would be hollow if it failed to gain buy-in from the IEA.
Returning to Guterres, there was more of interest at his 19 February press conference. Responding to a question from Al-Jazeera about reports that the reason for the IEA decision not to attend was because of a “lack of proper communication,” he said: “If the reason was lack of communication, I’m very happy because I can then make sure that the next time, there will be perfect communication, and then the problem will not exist.” Guterres downplayed the absence of IEA representatives from the meeting, saying: “It was not damaging because the meeting was very useful, and we absolutely needed to have this discussion,” referring to the recommendations of the Independent Assessment, and expressed hope that discussions with the Emirate will “happen in the near future.” In fact, he confirmed that the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary di Carlo, who is widely expected to take over the Afghanistan file at the UN, had met with “a representative of the Taliban in Doha” earlier that day. “So, the contacts are moving on, and they will move on,” Guterres said. “I hope we are not discussing the divorce but we are discussing, as I said, a failure of communication.”
Other reactions to the meeting in Doha – from China, Russia and other Afghans
Not everyone was as positive as Guterres about the outcome of the meeting, with regional countries leading the way in the criticism of the gathering and its failure to engage with the IEA. China’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Yue Xiaoyong was quoted in media reports as saying: “It’s a pity that the Doha meeting on Afghanistan once again failed to have a dialogue with the interim Afghan government or the ruling party as China and regional countries have been calling for”(see this Ariana News report).
While neither Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, nor their Special Envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov made a statement about the Doha meeting, the criticism came from a spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova. She said that plans to appoint a special envoy and a small contact group were added to the agenda “without proper elaboration,” adding that any such initiative was “doomed to failure without the support of Kabul and regional states. She went on to defend the Emirate’s refusal to take part in the meeting:
The delegation of the Afghan government refused to participate due to the humiliating conditions associated with the fact that it was allowed only to minor events involving fugitive emissaries of the so-called Afghan civil society (see Turkey’s Anadolu Agency).
Notably, representatives of Afghanistan’s political groups had not been invited to Doha. Several of these groups issued communiques commenting on their absence from the table. For example, former Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani’s party, Jamiat-e Islami, noted “the non-invitation of Afghanistan’s political parties and movements to this meeting as a serious flaw,” but nevertheless welcomed it as a “notable step, which signaled a return of regional and global attention to the situation in Afghanistan (see this post on X). The communique said the only acceptable political system is one based on the vote of the Afghan people and cautioned against “a distortion of the concept of inclusive government to include certain individuals in a political structure with the Taliban at the helm,” which it said amounted to “a trick to legitimize the Taliban.”
The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, led by Ahmad Massud, also issued a statement that made no reference to the fact that it had not been invited to Doha II. Instead, it applauded “the Secretary-General’s refusal to accept the Taliban’s unreasonable conditions for attending the Doha meeting.” The statement was strongly supportive of UN plans, including the special envoy and called for the person who is appointed to be “an impartial, credible, and unmanipulable envoy of a high international stature, who is fully familiar with the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan” (see this post on X).
Inside Afghanistan, people concerned about the future of their country are following developments closely. Since the publication of the Independent Assessment Report, evening discussion programmes on Afghanistan’s airwaves have dedicated the lion’s share of their news agenda to pundits and political commentators deliberating every development – the assessment report, what has come to pass at the UN, the debate among Afghanistan’s foreign interlocutors and the IEA’s reactions. For example, on 25 February, the evening before the UN Security Council was due to hear about what happened at Doha II, former Afghan diplomat and former advisor to the Republic/Jamiat-e Islami politician Abdullah Abdullah, Omar Samad, and ranking member of Hezb-e Islami – Gulbuddin, Amin Karim, joined ToloNews’ Farakhabar programme to talk about what might be expected at the meeting in New York, a world away from the daily lives of Afghans.
Both men praised UN efforts to support Afghanistan and agreed that a special envoy to act as a coordinator and facilitator was necessary to move the world’s engagement and negotiations with the Emirate forward. Karim cautioned the Emirate[3] against banking on the region’s goodwill, saying that “Iran, China and Russia’s views had diverged from the view of the others. They [Iran, Russia and China] want to increasingly remove the US’s hand from Afghanistan, but they don’t pay for 80 per cent of the aid coming into Afghanistan – the West does that.”
Similarly, Samad said that it was to Afghanistan’s benefit not to become a pawn in the “machinations and rivalries between various blocks, regions or world powers.” It would be best for Afghanistan to keep well away from these rivalries, keep the country’s interests in mind and press forward with engagement.” He also commented on the growing rift in the Security Council – between Russia and China on one side and the US on the other, which he said could have a negative impact on the Emirate’s aspirations for recognition as well as humanitarian aid flows at a time when the Afghan economy was struggling to get back on its feet.
Both men cautioned that the IEA must take a balanced approach that furthers relations with both the region and the West and keeps all international parties onside in order to avoid one faction blocking progress in favour of its own interests. “The region alone cannot solve the problems of Afghanistan, but the problems of Afghanistan cannot be solved without the region,” said Karim. It’s in Afghanistan’s interests to engage with the world, he said, politics is “the art of give and take… You can’t say this is what I’m doing – take it or leave it.”
Talking about the UN special envoy, they agreed that the appointment was necessary and appeared to be a red line in the eyes of Afghanistan’s Western interlocutors. They argued that Afghanistan’s progress toward re-integrating into the world community rested on the appointment and stressed that while the IEA had the right and obligation to negotiate on the mandate and the person, it should not rule out a UN special envoy altogether. This, Karim said, would lead to economic ruin and a deepening humanitarian crisis for a nation that was already enduring significant hardship.
Turning their eyes toward the Security Council meeting, which was due to take place the next day, Samad said, “The UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary di Carlo, is expected to brief the Security Council on the outcomes of the special envoys meeting and also her meeting with members of the IEA liaison office in Doha.” Three issues will be discussed, he said, the appointment of a UN special envoy (which Samad believed could eventually take on another name and a modified remit), who will be part of the small contact group and the next steps for the special envoys or “large format” group (which is tentatively scheduled for May 2024). He pointed to the possibility of another Security Council resolution on Afghanistan in the coming days – at the latest by 17 March, when UNAMA’s mandate is due to be renewed.
The Security Council meets, again
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC)[4] had a private meeting (these types of meetings are held behind closed doors) on Monday, 26 February 2024, to be briefed on the outcome of consultations conducted at Doha II, as mandated by the Security Council’s Resolution 2721. Ahead of the meeting, the independent website Security Council Report ran a brief that included details on how the Doha gathering had gone and how Sinirlioğlu’s recommendations might be acted upon, especially in the matter of the special envoy.
Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric would not be drawn on that issue: “That process is ongoing. My years of experience here have taught me not to pretend that I have a timeline. But I know the issue is being taken very seriously and expeditiously,” he said during his regular press briefing on 26 February.
On the day of the Security Council meeting, acting IEA Deputy Foreign Minister, Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai, reiterated its position on the appointment of a special envoy in an interview with ToloNews, with perhaps the best articulation so far by any Emirate official on the subject:
A UN special envoy is always appointed when there is a crisis or a problem in a country. In Afghanistan, there are no problems. At the same time, UNAMA is active here and there is a UN representative. They are cooperating with us both in political and humanitarian affairs. Therefore, we don’t see a need for another UN envoy, which would create another problem.
In an apparent reference to the participation of civil society representatives at the meeting in Doha, he said:
Sometimes people who have no role in the government, no authority from the government and no legitimacy among the Afghan people are invited to meetings in order to portray the Islamic Emirate as weak and to create controversy (see ToloNews here).”
Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the UN Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, reads a statement on behalf of the Signatories of the Shared Commitments to the Principles of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) on the situation of women in Afghanistanahead of the UNSC meeting.
Photo: United Nations, 27 February 2024
Meanwhile, at the UN headquarters in New York, the President of the Security Council for February 2024, Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the UN Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, read out a joint statement (see UN Web TV), on behalf of the Signatories of the Shared Commitments to the Principles of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) on the situation of women in Afghanistan[5] ahead of the private UNSC meeting. Rodrigues-Birkett stressed the group’s commitment to what she called an inclusive political process and to improving the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan:
It must be underscored that sustainable peace, stability and development in Afghanistan can only be achieved if there is an inclusive political process underpinned by respect for the rule of law and the human rights of all Afghan people a process in which the rights of women and girls are fully–respected and the voices of all Afghans are represented.
We strongly condemnthe Taliban’s continued systemic gender discrimination and oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan and demand that the Taliban immediately rescind all policies and decrees that repress women and girls, including restrictions on education at secondary and tertiary levels, women’s right to work, freedom of movement and freedom of expression. Women and girls must have full exercise of their human rights and fundamental freedoms in public, political, economic, cultural and social life.
Meetings behind closed doors fuel speculation
The Security Council meeting on 26 February had no apparent outcome, and the world body did not comment on the proceedings at its conclusion. It was not expected to. But the lack of transparency – the mere fact that the world continues to meet to discuss Afghanistan behind closed doors – is something that many Afghans have long commented on with dismay (see for example, this Hasht-e Sobh report from 2 May 2023 and this 26 February 2024 Voice of America interview with Afghan human rights defender Hoda Khamosh). Once again, Afghan pundits speculated in the media about what might be happening behind closed doors and why the meetings have not yielded any tangible results.
Regular commentator on international affairs in the Afghan media Wali Forouzan told Salam Watandar, for example: “In these meetings, countries want to use Afghanistan as a tool to pressure each other. These countries want to secure their own place in Afghanistan and keep Afghanistan from coming under the influence of their rivals.” Afghan human rights defenders and women’s rights activists, who have repeatedly pinned their hopes on various UN meetings and other diplomatic efforts, only to see them dashed, are starting to lose confidence, as Holda Khamosh told the same outlet: “If these meetings had any positive results,”, “we would by now have seen the opening of schools and universities to girls and would be witnessing Afghan women accessing employment opportunities.”
The Emirate, for its part, was quick to dismiss the gathering as a “failure.” Emirate spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed told ToloNews:
In our opinion, the Security Council meeting did not have any notable results. There was no agreement on the issue of Afghanistan, and secondly, when a meeting fails, the members may rush to highlight very small issues as a pretence [to present them] as the meeting’s outcome.
Even before the February meeting in Doha, many were of the opinion that the emergence of a regional block and of mounting tensions between the US and Russia could prove to be an intractable barrier to reaching a consensus. Andrew Watkins from the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) said this could be especially so, given the growing divide and “the tense geopolitical climate” between the US and Russia and China in the Security Council. In a Q&A piece co-authored with USIP’s Kate Bateman, he compared US support for the appointment of a special envoy with Russian and China’s “lukewarm” position on the issue. He argues these factors may also prove a stumbling block for US attempts to “rally allies and partners around a common position” (read the USIP piece here).
Still, while acknowledging the apparent lack of progress precipitated by the region’s support of the IEA position against the appointment of a UN special envoy, many Afghan commentators caution against dismissing the UN-led process as a failure. For the time being, disagreements among the permanent members of the Security Council, with Russia and China on one side and the US and Face on the other, have led to a standstill: “But this is not the end of the road for UN efforts,” Afghanistan’s former acting Ambassador to Canada, Muhammad Daud Qayumi, said on ToloNews’ Farakhabar programme on 27 February.
Doha II not the end of the road
Afghanistan will certainly figure prominently on the UN and world agendas in the coming weeks and months. The day after the Security Council meeting, US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken spoke at an Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience Summit which was hosted by Boston University. Blinken spoke strongly against the Emirate’s restrictions on Afghan women and girls, particularly in education and employment, and restated international commitments to support them:
Countries from around the world, though, are determined to support Afghan women and girls who want to learn, who want to go to school, who want to pursue their educations, who want to work. Countries like Indonesia and Qatar, which have coordinated international efforts to expand educational opportunity for Afghan women, or the more than 70 countries – more than 70 countries in the Middle East, from Asia, from Europe, from the Americas – who came together in a joint statement at the United Nations calling for, and I quote: the full, the equal, the meaningful participation of women and girls in Afghan society.
Two other key meetings are on the Security Council’s schedule this month. First is the regular quarterly report of the Secretary-General on Afghanistan, which is due to be presented in a meeting in the first week of March, and second is a meeting on the renewal of UNAMA’s mandate, which is set to expire on 17 March. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, has also now presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. It pulled no punches, as was expected (the report, A/HRC/55/80, is listed here and Bennett’s presentation was streamed online).
Two and a half years on from the fall of the Islamic Republic, Afghanistan is still ruled by a government that is not recognised and is still under sanctions. The Independent Assessment Report offered a broad roadmap aimed at moving beyond the impasse caused by international condemnation of the Emirate on the one hand and the Emirate’s determination not to ‘bow’ to outside pressure on what it considers sovereign issues on the other. Appointing a special envoy was intended to be a mechanism to facilitate engagement and discussion. Yet, as the rest of the world continues to wrangle over the appointment of a special envoy, which should, at best, be a procedural matter, the well-being of the Afghan people hangs in the balance.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
28 special envoys and representatives of multinational organisations were originally said to be participating in the meeting, but the number was later reported as 25, possibly because it excludes representatives from the three multinational organisations. The original list was: Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Pakistan, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uzbekistan, in addition to the European Union (EU), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
↑2
The five Afghan civil society representatives at the Doha meeting were: Lutfullah Najafizada, founder and CEO of US-based broadcaster Amu TV; Metra Mehran, US-based gender equity and human rights activist; Shah Gul Rezai, Norway-based former MP from Ghazni province; Mahbouba Seraj, Afghanistan-based women’s rights defender and recipient of Finland’s International Gender Equality Prize and; Faiz Muhammad Zaland, Assistant Professor at Kabul University. Another two civil society representatives from inside Afghanistan reportedly cancelled their trip to Doha after the IEA declined to participate. Former Deputy Foreign Minister and cousin of the Republic’s first president, Hamid Karzai, Hekmat Karzai, was also in Doha, although it is unclear in what capacity (see his post on X).
↑3
Karim, who is very close to Hezbi leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, referred to the “Tanzim-e Emarat-e Islami-ye Taleban,” (the Taleban’s Islamic Emirate Movement). His intention, with this unusual choice of name, was unclear: Was he implying that the Emirate was a political party, rather than a government, or trying, implicitly, to downgrade its status?
↑4
The UN Security Council is currently composed of the following 15 Members: Five permanent members – China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and United States – and ten non-permanent members that are elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly –Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland (see UNSC website). Japan is the current Penholder for Afghanistan, meaning that it will take the initiative on Security Council actions and drafts documents, particularly resolutions, that it negotiates with the permanent members before sharing the text with elected members (read about the Penholder system here).
↑5
The signatories of the Shared Commitments to the Principles of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) are Ecuador, France, Guyana, Japan, Malta, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
From Doha to Doha: The contest over a UN Special Envoy lingers as discussions and disagreements drag on
Disabled Afghans — particularly women — have been among the hardest hit by the Taliban’s rollback of human rights.
In Afghanistan, obtaining accurate data on the number of persons with disabilities — including gender-disaggregated information — has always been a challenging endeavor. But based on the data we do have, it’s clear that more than four decades of violent conflict have left a considerable portion of the Afghan population grappling with various forms of disabilities, both war-related and otherwise. And the pervasive lack of protective mechanisms, social awareness and empathy surrounding disability continue to pose formidable challenges for individuals with disabilities, with women being disproportionately affected.For years, the prolonged insecurity caused by the Taliban’s insurgency hindered a thorough understanding of the challenges faced by disabled Afghans. And now that the Taliban have returned to power, there are even fewer opportunities to gather accurate assessments regarding disability in the country, particularly regarding women with disabilities.
Attempts to Account for Disabled Individuals in Afghanistan
This hasn’t stopped many from trying, with varying levels of success. In one report released by the Afghan government in 2018, the estimated number of Afghans with disabilities was cited at 1.2 million, with 41 percent being women. However, approximately half of the country’s population resided in areas controlled or disputed by the Taliban at the time, so conducting surveys in those regions was impractical and therefore not pursued.
Meanwhile, the Asia Foundation’s 2019 Model Disability Survey reported that a staggering four-in-five Afghan adults and one-in-five children had a physical, sensory, intellectual or psychosocial disability. And citing a 2005 government report, Human Rights Watch noted that roughly one-in-five Afghan households (equivalent to 1.2 million households) included a family member with a severe disability, while two-in-five households had some form of disability.
The Recent History of Disability in Afghanistan
Despite enormous shortcomings and challenges during the Afghan Republic, initial strides were made toward advancing the rights of persons with disabilities in Afghanistan — including constitutional articles that prohibited discrimination and allowed for the provision of financial aid to disabled people.
The enactment of the National Law of Rights and Benefits of Persons with Disabilities in 2010 marked a pivotal moment, opening doors for their participation in social, political and economic spheres. Furthermore, the ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, along with its Optional Protocol in 2012, underscored the country’s commitment to recognizing the rights of disabled persons.
However, during the Republic era, there was a distinction made between individuals who acquired disabilities due to war injuries and those who were born with disabilities or developed them unrelated to war. Those with war-related disabilities were entitled to social assistance, while those with non-war-related disabilities often faced marginalization.
Additionally, any support earmarked for the latter group was irregular and heavily reliant on personal connections within the government ministry responsible for distributing disability aid. This led to even more discrepancies and discrimination, as many disabled women in west Afghanistan with non-war-related disabilities were denied government assistance while others with similar disabilities in some northern provinces received consistent social support from the ministry.
Since taking control in 2021, the Taliban have introduced measures aimed at monitoring the distribution of financial aid to disabled individuals irrespective of the origin of their disabilities. While this might seem as though the Taliban have expanded the scope of support for disabled individuals, in truth, the Taliban have simply swapped one bias for another: Resource allocation under the Taliban heavily favors disabled Taliban members above all others.
The Taliban have adjusted the total amount for welfare payments. Currently, a disabled Taliban member receives between 60,000 Afghanis ($820) and 180,000 Afghanis ($2,460) annually. Meanwhile, a non-Taliban disabled person who sustained war-related injuries during the Afghan Republic era is paid between 36,000 Afghanis ($490) to 96,000 Afghanis ($1,315) — roughly 53 to 60 percent less than their Taliban-affiliated counterparts.
These changes fail to sufficiently address the needs of non-Taliban disabled individuals. And while payments are promptly disbursed to disabled Taliban members, the same cannot be said for others.
The Disproportionate Challenges Facing Disabled Afghan Women
Disabled women face particularly egregious discrimination, isolation, insult and humiliation within Afghan society, enduring unfair blame for supposedly bringing shame to their families solely due to their disabilities. This has led to increased anxiety and depression, as every day, disabled Afghan women must grapple with stigma, discrimination and exclusion, leading to a compromised sense of dignity and quality of life.
And for those with disabilities from birth, the challenges are even more pronounced. To protect their disabled family members from societal humiliation and scorn, many families find themselves compelled to conceal their severely disabled family members from the outside world entirely. This predicament is notably prevalent in cases involving girls with mental disabilities.
With the Taliban back in power, the various restrictions and bans on women’s employment have also left disabled women unable to make their own income. A 25-year-old woman from a northern province in Afghanistan shared her story, revealing that she and four of her siblings have been visually impaired since birth. Despite holding a university degree, she struggles to secure employment. She lamented, “My family invested in my education to enable me to lead an independent life and contribute to my sustenance. However, the Taliban’s ban on women’s employment has shattered my dreams and those of my family.”
The ban on women’s employment, combined with the absence of a comprehensive support program for disabled individuals, has forced many disabled women to resort to begging on the streets, enduring deplorable conditions. But Human Rights Watch reports that the Taliban’s requirement for women to be accompanied by a mahram — a close male relative — has further compounded the challenges faced by women and girls with disabilities, as even the harrowing and dangerous act of begging is now no longer an option for many as they are excluded from all public life.
In speaking with a 24-year-old woman that lost her leg in an explosion, she told me that not only is she unable to find employment for a dignified income — she also lacks a male blood relative to accompany her outside the home. This has left her feeling helpless and hopeless, as she expressed: “I am a prisoner at home because I am a woman and have disability. I don’t have a father or brother to accompany me outside.”
Meanwhile, the inconsistency of disability assistance payments under the Taliban has forced many families to borrow money from friends and relatives to cover their living expenses while awaiting the next payment. Borrowing money becomes particularly arduous for women, as they have limited access to employment opportunities and stable income streams to repay such loans.
One woman from western Afghanistan spoke of the challenges of being a single, visually impaired individual in the country. Despite receiving an education and working under the republic government, she now faces unemployment under the Taliban. She currently receives an annual sum of 60,000 Afghanis (equivalent to $820) in two installments at the beginning and middle of the year. She revealed that during the intervals between payments, her family resorts to borrowing money from neighbors and relatives, and often struggle to afford enough food.
Another disabled Afghan woman, a former law student, told a similar story: “Every six months, the de facto government provides me with 18,000 Afghanis ($260), but in between these payments, my family is forced to borrow money. Given the widespread poverty, it is very hard to even borrow money these days.”
Closing the Door on Disabled Women and Girls’ Future
The former law student’s story also touches on another particularly troubling trend under the Taliban: The expulsion of female students with visual and hearing impairments from schools tailored to meet their specific needs, as well as the prohibition on NGOs providing vital awareness-raising and mental health services.
By also cutting off access to education, the Taliban are not just leaving disabled women and girls in a dire and destitute financial situation, they’re closing the door on their future as well. As the former law student told me, her aspiration is simple yet powerful: To earn an income in a dignified manner. She firmly believes in the capabilities of her mind, stating, “I did not choose my disability and I am not entirely without use.”
This goal to provide for oneself was a common refrain among the women I spoke with. One woman who became paraplegic at the age of seven due to polio said she completed her education up to the third grade — but still aspires to attain a higher education and acquire employable skills, envisioning a future where she can support both herself and her family.
Another woman in her late twenties, born with a paralyzed leg, mentioned she’d made it to her second year of university before the Taliban banned university education for female students. Despite this setback, she revealed her dream is to become a physicist.
Given the opportunity to develop their abilities, individuals with disabilities can contribute to the workforce, earn income and support their families. However, the current situation in Afghanistan often makes them feel like a burden on their families, leading to various forms of depression and anxiety, compounded by the uncertainty of having enough food to eat.
Empowering Afghans with Disabilities
But what can be done to help create more opportunities for disabled Afghans, especially women and girls? The mother of a young woman with a physical disability had a message she wanted me to convey to the international community: “I urge the authorities and the international community not to ignore the challenges faced by people with disabilities. Don’t treat them as if they are invisible or devoid of needs and interests,” but instead provide employment opportunities based on the skills and abilities of those with disabilities and acknowledge their capabilities.
Or as another disabled Afghan told me: “We do not want to depend on charity.”
Of course, the Taliban are a major obstacle to this goal — and they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Likewise, the United States, and the international community more broadly, are still debating how to engage with the Taliban regime going forward. But there are actions that can be taken today that can help alleviate the burdens carried by disabled Afghans. These include:
Humanitarian aid organizations can prioritize special programs aimed at providing aid to persons with disabilities, with a particular focus on women and girls who face additional constraints due to their disabilities and Taliban-imposed restrictions.
Ongoing vocational training and income generation projects should be carefully crafted to accommodate the diverse needs and abilities of persons with disabilities.
And as policymakers continue to develop the contours of a relationship with the Taliban regime, it is crucial to effectively advocate for disabled individuals’ basic right to dignified living conditions and ensure that they receive the support they need to thrive. To do so in their dealings with the Taliban, policymakers should keep several key points at the forefront of their mind:
The Taliban have been outspoken about their ability to collect revenue from tax and customs. The Taliban’s confidence in their revenue collection should be leveraged by the international community to pressure the Taliban into providing adequate financial and living conditions for persons with disabilities.
The Taliban must allocate dedicated funds to improve the financial and living conditions of persons with disabilities regardless of their gender or cause of disability. While they have made some gestures toward rectifying past biases regarding non-war-related disabilities, the Taliban must be pushed to put this into practice, expand its scope to include women, and cease its preferential treatment of Taliban-affiliated individuals.
The Taliban should ensure that women with disabilities have unrestricted access to education and vocational training. This is already a point of contention between the Taliban regime and the international community, but its importance to the future of disabled Afghan women and girls should only strengthen policymakers’ resolve on the issue.
Benazir Habibzadeh fought for the right to education in Afghanistan; she writes a letter recounting her experience under the renewed Taliban regime.
The Wilson Center
MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM
MIDDLE EAST WOMEN’S INITIATIVE
My dreams were not much: just to have an Afghanistan where everyone—men and women alike—has equal rights and obligations and where there would be no such thing as violence against women.
I am writing this letter from prison. I am in a prison ruled by the Taliban. I am an Afghan girl, and I have been in prison for more than two years, deprived of all basic rights like education and work. Like hundreds of millions of girls around the world, I had hopes—hopes for a better life and for a better tomorrow. I do not just think of myself but of all the women in this country who suffer similar pain, and I understand their suffering.
My dreams were not much: just to have an Afghanistan where everyone—men and women alike—has equal rights and obligations and where there would be no such thing as violence against women. But with the arrival of the Taliban, everything has been destroyed.
When the Taliban first took control of Herat, I was terrified. I imprisoned myself in my house, and, out of fear, did not even step into my backyard for several weeks. I could not return to my normal state. In shock, I was unable to comprehend how our collective dreams went to hell overnight.
But when I regained my composure, I realized that I could not be silent. In every situation, I had to be a voice for all the girls who could not raise their own. As was expected, after the Taliban entered Afghanistan, girls fell silent and watched. Everyone was waiting, expecting resistance and defiance from the other, but no one took the initiative.
So, I decided to take the lead. I picked up my phone, called several of my classmates, and asked them not to remain silent. We prepared ourselves, trembling with fear. We put on our masks and went outside. Horror was visible in our eyes; we felt everyone watching us.
But later, I felt like a gladiator fighting against the injustice and tyranny of the Roman Empire. I felt like Spartacus, rebelling against slavery and humiliation. I felt unstoppable. Eventually, we reached our school. No one allowed us in, but we did not need anyone’s permission. We went anyway.
We shouted in front of the Taliban, calling for education for Afghan girls, and entered the school courageously like revolutionaries. We returned to our classroom. The Taliban threatened the school administration, recorded our names, and prevented them from sending teachers. The Taliban threatened to imprison us, but we did not give in. We tried to study, but we understood that nothing was like before. Not only was there no effort to improve the lives of Afghan women, but the Taliban actively impeded women’s progress and systematically organized to neutralize the resistance efforts of people like me.
We stayed in school for the entire day and then returned home as usual. The Taliban prepared for our return. They threatened the school administration, our teachers, our families, and every one of us in different ways. My classmates were afraid of being abducted by the Taliban—they did not dare accompany me afterward. I waited, hoping things would get better.
But I came to understand that the Taliban are an affliction, like cancer, that grows stronger with time. Their impact on Afghan society, especially on women, has become more evident. They use the power of the gun, the media, religious ideology, foreign money, and organized diplomatic propaganda to marginalize women and blow away our hopes. I love my dreams and miss them dearly.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not express the official position of the Wilson Center.
This piece is part of the “More to Her Story” series with Enheduanna. This series spotlights the voices of women and girls from the Middle East & North Africa region and offers a platform for their rarely told stories.
When the Taliban roared back to power in Afghanistan in 2021, education activist Pashtana Durrani had some 7,000 girls enrolled in her organization. The schools were shuttered and Pashtana was forced to flee. She’s now living in exile in the U.S. and still working to educate girls back home. Amna Nawaz spoke with her about her remarkable story told in her new book, “Last to Eat, Last to Learn.”
Read the Full Transcript
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
Amna Nawaz:
When the Taliban roared back to power in Afghanistan in 2021, education activist Pashtana Durrani, then just 24 years old, already had some 7,000 girls enrolled in her organization called LEARN Afghanistan.
The schools were shuttered. Pashtana was forced to flee. And she’s now living in exile here in the U.S., still working to educate girls in secret back home.
I spoke with Pashtana earlier today about her remarkable life story told in her new book, “Last to Eat, Last to Learn.”
And I began by asking her about the title.
Pashtana Durrani, Author, “Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women”: It’s basically about the daughters or the first daughters who are always choosing the last ones to be the ones who eat the last because they have to do all the chores. They have to pick up after everyone and they have to take care of everyone.
And then the same methodology with me and my co-author, we thought about it, and we were like, they’re also chosen the last ones to actually learn, because they have to take care of everyone before they choose themselves to learn. So it’s basically a dedication to all of them, especially girls, young girls, because they’re chosen last to do everything.
So it’s last to eat, last to learn.
Amna Nawaz:
This is your message to all of them out there in Afghanistan.
Pashtana Durrani:
Yes. Yes.
Amna Nawaz:
But that wasn’t how you were raised. Your father made sure you were raised very differently.
Pashtana Durrani:
Yes.
Amna Nawaz:
Why?
Pashtana Durrani:
I mean, because that’s, again, the thing.
I was — the day I was born, my dad was like, oh, no, this is going to be my son. So I had all the privilege as a son. If I was raised as an elder daughter, I would have definitely been one of those girls. So, for me, it was very different. But, then again, I witnessed all of that throughout my life. And, consciously, I had to make that choice to make sure that this is talked about.
But, personally, I was raised in a very privileged life, and I was raised very nicely, and I talked over everyone, and I was pretty loud, yes. I was a very spoiled kid, yes, definitely.
Amna Nawaz:
Even though you spent much of your life growing up in a refugee camp in Pakistan, you made the decision to go back to Afghanistan. Your father had been going back and forth.
And you started an organization so that other girls could learn, the same way you did. Tell me about that organization and why that was important.
Pashtana Durrani:
When I was in high school, that was the first time I realized that we are in a refugee camp. Like, this is not the country that we were supposed to be in, you know?
And the discrimination came with it and everything came with it. And we were seen differently, wearing a scarf, or the way my father used to dress up in a turban or something. That was all seen differently. And then, most importantly, it was probably me following him wanting to go back to Afghanistan.
But, at that point, I was so crazily in love with Afghanistan, I was like, I need to go back. Like, I want to go back. Then, at the same time, when I ended up in Afghanistan, the first thing I saw was like, even in our own country, we didn’t have access to the rights that we are entitled to, that the Constitution entitled us to.
So, for me, the most important thing was with that group that I resonated most with was those young girls, my own cousins. And we say in Pashto or in Islam that charity begins at home. So we had to start at home with all the efforts. And that’s how LEARN came into being, because I really wanted my cousins to go to school.
I wanted my family members to end up accessing the same education that I had or the people in refugee camp had. So that’s why.
Amna Nawaz:
And when the Taliban reclaimed power in 2021, you had to shut down your schools. They banned most girls from going to school after a certain grade. You had to flee because you yourself were targeted.
But you’re still running the organization from afar. How? How many girls are you still able to teach and how are they able to study?
Pashtana Durrani:
Oh, it’s an effort.
(Laughter)
Pashtana Durrani:
It’s an effort.
I — in the middle of the night, we’re sometimes talking to the students. Sometimes, we have to do meetings at 3:00 a.m. even today. But at the same time, I think it’s so rewarding. It’s so rewarding. We do a lot of our work in person. More than 300 girls go to school every day, walk to school every day. So that’s a big thing. More than 30 teachers every day teach in person. So that’s a big deal for me.
And then more than 40 people are employed right now who are doing something amazing like this, which is banned in Afghanistan, but whatever.
But…
Amna Nawaz:
But it is banned.
Pashtana Durrani:
Yes.
Amna Nawaz:
I mean, are you worried for their safety?
Pashtana Durrani:
Most of the time, yes. I get extremely worried and paranoid sometimes, and I cannot sleep.
But then, other times, like, I just call them and I talk to them, and they have become part of the family. But then, at the same time, it’s important for me because, in the next 10 years, there might be not a person, or even if I am, might not be this young to be able to do everything.
So I would want more girls to get that empowerment and have that sort of access to opportunities and become the people that they are. My goal is, by the end of like 2030, we have more than 3,400 leaders who are all young girls, who are all in those provinces, and they lead a movement that could hopefully rebuild Afghanistan from where it has been destroyed.
Amna Nawaz:
What about your goals for yourself? And then we should disclose here, I was actually part of the team that did help you to evacuate. It took months to get you out of Afghanistan.
Pashtana Durrani:
Yes.
Amna Nawaz:
I met you at the airport in Boston when you arrived, help you get settled at Wellesley College, where you have built a life. You have graduated. You’re getting your master’s degree from Harvard. You continue your work.
I mean, what does the future hold for you?
Pashtana Durrani:
Immediately, I want to get graduated from Harvard immediately.
(Laughter)
Pashtana Durrani:
But also, at the same time, I want to build 34 schools by the end of 2025, which is a personal goal.
Amna Nawaz:
OK.
Pashtana Durrani:
Big personal.
I’m also working on this nonprofit incubator that is supposed to sustain humanitarian efforts and educational efforts in conflict zones in all different regions of the world, especially Middle East and Central Asia and South Asia. So, I have been working with that, at Wellesley on that, especially focusing on women.
And then, hopefully, I will continue doing what I do. And I love what I do, so yes.
Amna Nawaz:
What do you think your father, who I know you lost a few years ago, what do you think he would say if he could see you now?
Pashtana Durrani:
I think he would be extremely proud. Like, I can say that now confidently.
But then, at the same time, I’m like, I hope — I wish he could see it, and I hope he could see it now. But he definitely would be proud, yes.
Amna Nawaz:
The author is Pashtana Durrani. The book is “Last to Eat, Last to Learn.”
Pashtana, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for being here.
Pashtana Durrani:
Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Afghan activist’s memoir details her inspirational fight to educate women
The central highlands of the Hazarajat are gearing up for a third year of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) managing one of the most polarising land conflicts in the country, that between Hazara villagers and Pashtun nomads, the Kuchis. The re-establishment of the IEA in 2021 allowed the Kuchis to return, after 40 years, to what they regard as their summer pastures and to revive claims to property and land. There began a process of adjudicating claims and ruling on compensation for alleged losses. While major outbreaks of violence were prevented last year, abuses and intimidation of individuals and communities, mostly by Kuchis against Hazaras, still occur. Winter has offered the occasion for Fabrizio Foschini (with Rama Mirzada’s help) to recap the developments of last year and reflect on where Kuchi-Hazara land disputes might go in 2024.
A flock of Hazara sheep in Yakawlang district, 2012 – photo by Fabrizio Foschini
The Kuchi-Hazara dispute flares up every spring when the nomads travel from lower altitude provinces like Khost and Nangrahar to spend the summer in the central highlands, which are inhabited year-round by Hazaras (and also Sadat, more on whom below). This, they have been able to do for the past two years, after having been prevented from accessing most parts of it by the war and the armed opposition of locals almost continuously since 1978. With their newly found access to the region, they have vigorously renewed claims on lands they used to own and pastures they had been granted rights to, historically, helped by the political turnover that Afghanistan experienced, which completely reversed the balance of power in Hazarajat.
Many Pashtun Kuchi households and clans have, throughout the years, supported the Taleban insurgency and have thus found themselves on the ‘winning side’ of the war – unlike the Hazaras. In the 1990s, some of the Hazara mujahedin factions fought the Taleban as part of the Northern Alliance, with the Taleban retaliating with collective punishments against civilians in the Hazarajat. After 2001, Hazaras turned out to be broadly supportive of the new institutions. Hardly a privileged socio-economic group under the Republican government, the Hazara villagers of the central highlands had at least seen members of their community in government and parliament. They had also, largely, been able to prevent the return of their former landlords, the Pashtun Kuchi nomads, who had enjoyed politico-economic superiority over them for eighty years before the Soviet invasion stopped their seasonal transhumance in the late 1970s. If in other parts of the country the Taleban takeover of August 2021 has resembled a return to the mid-1990s, in Hazarajat it has represented a veritable travel even further back in time, to the monarchic Afghanistan of the early 1970s. And, if this is a distant era that only some among the elders can now recall first-hand, most young Hazaras nurture a radically different idea about it from that of a golden age of peace idealised by some other Afghan groups.
The Kuchis, in turn, lost their affluent and socially prominent status because of the Soviet intervention and the following conflict. This resulted in the loss of their wealth of flocks in war or exile and, while the more prominent families had already started to invest in other business ventures and some eventually emerged as Afghanistan’s most prominent businessmen, the majority ended up as an impoverished group, particularly those settling down as returnees in informal settlements around major Afghan cities.
Roughly a year ago, AAN reported on the first summer in the Hazarajat under the new government. We have now taken a look at what changes the second year of the new era has brought, speaking to twelve key informants from the main provinces affected: Bamyan (three Hazara interviewees and two Kuchis), Ghazni (three Hazaras and two Kuchis) and Maidan Wardak (one Hazara and one Kuchi). Summarising, we have noted in particular that:
Already in 2022, Kuchis were able to go to most areas of Hazarajat. Compared to the previous year, it was mostly single men who travelled to the innermost parts of the region in Bamyan province, while their families and livestock, for reasons of security and obeying a government request, stopped their course in parts of Hazarajat which are more accessible and where their claim to the use of pastures had been given the green light by the local authorities.
Episodes of violence were not as widespread as under the Republic, when the Kuchis’ frustrated attempts at pushing into Hazarajat and the polarised political loyalties between the two groups, both of whom had members and supporters in the government and in parliament, caused major casualties and destruction. The IEA has been able to enforce overall security, although this came at the cost of local residents widely perceiving it as supportive of the Kuchis.
Subtler types of violence and foul play are widely employed, however. Kuchis have been able to intimidate and coax Hazaras, both in day-to-day interactions and in the seats of power, while the latter have resorted to non-cooperation tactics, evading or refusing outright to participate in the institutional mechanisms (joint commissions for dispute resolution) set up by the IEA to solve disagreements.
Trust and acceptance of the dispute resolution mechanisms available, such as joint commissions and courts, have varied depending on the area, the type of dispute and the profile of the individuals involved, frequently causing the parties to try and have their cases shifted to a different area.
From a legal point of view, the situation has reached an impasse. While some disputes concerning private land and houses have been adjudicated, implementing the verdicts is proving problematic. More decisions have been made on compensation for past murders and loss of livestock suffered by the Kuchis, putting economic strain on impoverished Hazara communities, while at the same time tempting more destitute Kuchi households to advance further claims. The major issue of the rangeland of inner Hazarajat and the right to its use as pasture is still pending and the Islamic Emirate, despite its reassurances to the Kuchis, seems reluctant to tackle this thorny matter.
Main features of the Kuchi presence in the Hazarajat in 2023
Kuchi access to Hazarajat has changed significantly over the past 50 years. In the 1970s, the nomads enjoyed rights to use the rich summer pastures there as grazing areas for their animals – granted to them from the 1890s onwards after they had helped Afghanistan’s rulers quash Hazaras’ autonomy. Moreover, acting also as an economically and politically prominent class of traders, who supplied the isolated Hazarajat with much of its needed ‘imports’, they had progressively bought up many lands, which they then rented to local labourers for cultivation (for more background on this and subsequent developments, read AAN’s 2022 report and also this longer paper by the author).
Central Afghanistan, showing the main routes used by Kuchis to reach Hazarajat in 2022-23, based on open sources and interviews by the author, by Roger Helms for AAN
Between 1979 and 2021, Kuchis were largely barred from accessing the region, apart from during the few years of the first Islamic Emirate (1999-2001), which, however, saw bitter fighting and widespread destruction. During these four decades, in general, a number of Kuchi landlords were able to receive payments from their tenants in Kabul or by occasionally visiting the region, but for the majority of Kuchis, the region remained off-limits. However, for a number of years between and until the very end of the Republic, they attempted to force their way in, only to clash with the resistance of local Hazara villagers and provoke the intervention of the central government (read AAN reports at the time here and here). Besides deploying security forces, the latter would regularly bribe the respective groups’ leaders to help defuse the conflict.
The failure of the Republican institutions to seek other than temporary solutions for the issue and the long string of violence contributed to raising the stakes of the confrontation, transforming it into a primary marker of identity for Hazaras even beyond those living in the region and affected by the Kuchi claims, a veritable symbol of their struggle as a disadvantaged group for equal affirmation in Afghan society. Many Kuchis too, by now one of the Afghan communities that lag behind in economy, education and other social indicators, attribute all-encompassing importance to regaining their ‘lost rights’ in the Hazarajat. Both in terms of household perspectives and as a communal rallying cry, many Kuchis have come to link what they perceive as the long-delayed redress of their loss with the expectations of a return to their pre-war wealth and status.
Now, the balance of power in Hazarajat has been dramatically overturned: the Hazara communities find themselves vanquished and disarmed while the Kuchis, usually on better terms with IEA security and administrative officials who are often fellow ethnic Pashtuns and, like the Kuchis, also come from outside the region, are allowed to carry weapons in self-defence. In 2022, a large number of Kuchis coming from various provinces of the south and east of Afghanistan (when not from their Pakistani exile) took their chance to travel to Hazarajat in order to find grazing opportunities, inspect or reclaim past family properties and exact the payment of many years of arrears of the ejara (the rent) from their former Hazara tenants or sharecroppers.
2023 saw the continuation of the overall trends of the previous year. Kuchi households started moving to the highlands in springtime, before the start of the month of Saur (hence by mid-April), many retracing their steps only at the end of Sunbula (late September). The number of Kuchis who travelled to Hazarajat has again been significantly high, although compared to the previous year, some areas reported diminished numbers.
In the vast Nawur district of Ghazni province, for example, one Hazara informant reported that the number of Kuchis was less than that of the previous year; it was mostly Kuchi families who did actually have a history in the district during the King’s time who arrived, unlike 2022, when, he said, many ‘alien’ Kuchis from northern Afghanistan or Pakistan came. However, he concurred with other interviewees from the same district in saying that these Kuchis had brought big flocks of animals[1] and that, this year, they let them graze over all the available land in the district, including non-irrigated fields (lalmi) planted by local people and pastures also used by locals. According to the Hazara interviewees from Nawur, no pasture at all was left for villagers to use. Local Hazaras had to use crops to feed their own animals, and those who could not afford to do so were forced to sell them. Though this situation did not lead to serious episodes of violence, this was mostly due to the locals’ feeling forced to accept it, as Kuchi shepherds were allowed to go armed and displayed a very assertive and predatory attitude towards the local resources.
A Hazara member of the High Shia Commission, originally from Behsud of Maidan Wardak, told AAN that only a minority of the Kuchis who travelled to his district in 2022 were members of families or clans who had used to do so in the King’s time. Rather, most were unrelated people who acted as shepherds for livestock they had rented, or which anyway belonged to other people and arrived under the name of ‘Kuchi’ in order to claim the right to graze. He cited their being utterly unfamiliar with the region’s geography as proof. He also said that in Behsud, Kuchi livestock had caused severe shortages of fodder for local livestock.
There is no doubt that, during the warm season, Behsud has come to host a great number of Kuchi households whose original destination would probably have been areas further inside Hazarajat. In the past, it would have been a staging point for many Kuchis on the road to the higher pastures located in the province of Bamyan, particularly in Waras and Panjab districts. However, as Kuchi elders interviewed by AAN related, they were asked by the government not to enter Bamyan province with their families until the issue of the pastures had been solved and so a number of Kuchis aiming to reach Waras and Panjab may have found themselves bottlenecked in neighbouring Behsud.
One of AAN’s Kuchi interviewees, currently a member of the commission for the resolution of disputes in Maidan Wardak, but representing a group of 800 families, many of whom claim rights to areas in Panjab district, complained about the government preventing them enjoying these rights. He claimed that some families had actually travelled to Panjab early in the warm season, but after a few days, had been sent back to Behsud by government officials. Most of his tribe eventually settled in Behsud, Jalrez and other highland areas of Wardak for the summer before travelling back to Logar and then to Khost.
Another Kuchi interviewed by AAN, the head of the Commission for Dispute Resolution in Bamyan, stated that there was some variation in government orders: it had given back to Kuchis the right to the use of pastures for which they had the King’s farman (decree) in some areas, such as Behsud, where they should, in his words, “use pastures jointly with local residents,” However, he said this permission had yet to be given in Bamyan because of “some problems still to be solved” over the use of rangelands there.
All the interviewees concurred that it was mostly single men who travelled furthest, into the central part of Hazarajat, in Bamyan province, and that they brought only a fraction of their livestock with them. In Yakawlang district in 2023, Kuchis had also appeared to be mostly men travelling alone, bringing no animals at all except to two areas, Foladi and Kham. Reportedly, most of those going toYakawlang were mainly interested in ‘reclaiming’ lost properties, not pasturing their livestock.
In 2023, in Waras district, the Kuchis did not bring their families nor any livestock and their number, albeit greater than the previous year, was still comparatively small. Reportedly, a few dozen individuals travelled to each area where they owned some land. Many did not stay throughout the summer, but rather visited the district twice, at the beginning of spring and then again in October, in order to get rent paid from Hazara tenants. Others, who had disputes over private properties to follow, probably commuted between the central areas of Bamyan province and the district.
An initial influx into Panjab district in 2023 of whole families with livestock was stopped. Thereafter, it was single men without flocks who moved into the district. However, given the high incidence of land disputes in this district, their number was larger than in Waras and their presence extended over a longer period.
Many legal cases raised last year are still awaiting adjudication, and the Kuchis involved arguably returned to follow the proceedings. Moreover, this year, new cases arose, with Kuchis who had not shown up last year coming to claim properties or compensation, while some disputes that had apparently been solved had to be reopened when more heirs of the original Kuchi landlord or creditor appeared and claimed their share of the compensation paid out in 2022. During the summer of 2023, the commissions and the courts took several decisions regarding land ownership and compensation, and their implementation was attempted. We will take a closer look at these developments in selected areas of Bamyan and Ghazni provinces.
A follow-up from 2022: Adjudication of cases, attitudes by the conflicting parties and the authorities
Bamyan province
Panjab is arguably the district of Bamyan where Kuchis have claims to the most and best plots of land, as much as one-third of the district’s arable land, according to the claim of a Kuchi elder interviewed by AAN. The amount of property already retaken or still claimed by the Kuchis in the district and the fact that some of them belong to particularly prominent members of the Kuchi community raised the profile of the Kuchi presence and spurred a higher degree of involvement by the provincial authorities. For this purpose, Abdullah Sarhadi, the governor of Bamyan, visited Panjab three times during last year’s warm season. The first was on 20 Saur 1402 (10 May 2023), when he arrived with Salim Naeem, son of the late Naeem Kuchi.[2] As many as 400 armed Kuchis also came, both as delegates of each Kuchi group with interests in the district and as bodyguards to Salim, who, after his father’s death in 2020, has risen to a paramount position among the Kuchis wintering in Logar and Loya Paktia.
At the time of this high-profile visit, the Commission for Dispute Resolution was the sole institutional mechanism working on cases in the district, as Panjab did not have a court. Kuchis had been complaining about their lack of representation on the Panjab commission; all its six members were chosen among Hazara residents, as the Kuchis had no accommodation or were unwilling to stay for longer periods in the district. They had instead been regularly referring cases to the Bamyan court, or even, when unsatisfied by this, to the provincial Commission for Dispute Resolution in Bamyan city. In 2023, according to a former member of the Panjab commission, Salim Naeem impressed this complaint upon Governor Sarhadi and it was decided that a court should be set up in Panjab to rule on cases for it and neighbouring Waras.
The court was established in July and was staffed by four judges, Sunni Tajiks from Kahmard and Saighan districts in northern Bamyan. Soon, the situation from the previous year was overturned: if in 2022 the Kuchis were asking that cases from Panjab be sent to the court in Bamyan, this year, they preferred to have all cases adjudicated by the ad hoc court in Panjab and refused Hazaras’ requests to refer some cases to the Bamyan court. The Commission for Dispute Resolution in Panjab, deemed by the Kuchis too partial to Hazara interests, was eventually disbanded. According to a former member interviewed by AAN, it had at most been able to advocate for a mitigation of the compensation to be paid by Hazaras, for example invoking their past struggles to defend the district, including the lands belonging to the absent Kuchis, during the jihad against the Soviets.
Among the first decisions by the Panjab court were those on the claims by Kuchis to the land in Pushta Ghorghori and a few other areas,[3] which it ruled in the Kuchis’ favour, ordering the eviction of the people living on the land, which had been left vacant by the Kuchis since 1979 and since developed by local Hazaras. The former member of the disbanded commission summed up the court’s decisions:
There are 44 land disputes in Panjab and 16 have been settled. All 16 disputes were resolved by the court. Eight of those were in Pushta Ghorghori, five or six in Dara Mandi and two in Derazqul. The people’s houses and lands were given to Kuchis. The value of the houses was also counted and it was decided to be given to the Kuchis as part-payment for the 43 years of back rent [ejara] due to them.… Fifteen houses have been taken in Pushta Ghorghori, as well as land belonging to eight houses in Dara Mandi and another four in Derazqul.
The people in Dara Mandi, Derazqul and Kerman had built the houses themselves. None could believe that the land belonged to Kuchis when they saw how people were living there, how they had built houses and planted many trees.… The Kuchis did not come to Panjab for 43 years, so some of their tenants were using the lands and some tenants had sold the Kuchi land to other villagers and now the sellers were not here.… The people have no option but to accept the court’s decision because during the kings’ time, the Kuchis were getting the land documents and sharia (ownership) letters from the Hazaras’ fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, and now they still have those documents.… There was no clash or violence because the government warned that if someone started a fight, the security forces would suppress it.
A small protest organised by locals went largely unheard and some of the residents of Pushta Ghorghori have since left their homes, relocated to Kabul or gone abroad, while those in the other areas retaken by the Kuchis have seen only their lands seized. Those who have left seem to have been mostly tenants, while parts of the families of the Hazara owners were still living in Pushta Ghorghori as of February 2024.
Hazara livestock near Sadbarg, on the road between Yakawlang and Kerman, 2012 – photo by Fabrizio Foschini
Neighbouring districts, such as Waras and Yakawlang, saw an increase in new legal cases where Kuchis claimed private land. In Waras, the outcome of a major land dispute regarding an estate in Band-e Kusa, which includes three schools and a bazaar with around 200 shops, is still unclear at the time of writing: a first ruling in 2023 went in favour of the Kuchis, however, local sources reported to AAN that in February 2024, the district authorities were arguing with the Kuchis that the schools and the bazaar plots were public property. In Yakawlang, a major dispute revolved around plots of lands in Firuz Bahar that were reportedly bought by the Hazaras from the Kuchis some forty years ago, but that the latter claim had simply been usurped. Our Hazara interviewee from Yakawlang, personally involved in this dispute, reported episodes of violence, intimidation and attempted kidnapping suffered by locals at the hands of Kuchis, which he claimed took place in the provincial administrative centre, Bamyan city:
The court in Bamyan decided that the Firuz Bahar case should be sent for investigation to the Yakawlang court. The Kuchis got angry at this decision, so they attacked us in front of the court and wanted to take us with them by force. They didn’t want the case to be sent to Yakawlang because we have documents and witnesses to prove that we bought those lands and they know they will lose the case in Yakawlang.… They attacked us physically in front of the court in Bamyan on 12 September. They attacked us three times. Once it happened in the dispute resolution commission. Then they attacked us in the bazaar and, for a third time, in front of the court.… They wanted to kidnap us and carry us off, so we shouted loudly, the people gathered, the police arrived and they couldn’t [take us] in front of the court in Bamyan city. We were eight people and they wanted to kidnap two of us, me and another.… In the bazaar, I was alone. They slapped me three times and wanted to lock me inside a shop, but I escaped. The day they attacked us in front of the court, the Taleban were unable to control them. The Kuchis were using force, they slapped a police officer and wanted to seize the gun of another, until many people gathered and restrained them. On the day when we had a clash with them inside the commission, they drew guns, but the police of PD1 of Bamyan city came and rescued us.
On 9 September, six Hazara members of the central Bamyan Commission for Dispute Resolution resigned, to protest at the unilateral decisions made by the Kuchi members of the commission and the pressures and threats they had been subjected to. The head of the commission, a Kuchi, gave AAN a different explanation for their resignation:
After we [the commission] had checked the deeds and lease documents and wanted to make a decision about the lands whose claimants were known, those six members left the commission and then they didn’t come to any more meetings.… They said they’d received threats from different directions. They say they’ve been threatened with death by Khalili and Mohaqeq.[4] and other Hazara elders who are out of the country. They were told to leave the commission and not to take part in its meetings, or they would be considered enemies. Therefore, they were forced to leave the commission.… Initially, they didn’t say anything. They participated in meetings, but were hiding when decisions were made. We asked them many times to attend the meetings and, in their absence, we told the governor about it. Finally, they confessed and said they couldn’t attend the meetings because Hazara elders had threatened them.
Whatever the ultimate reason behind the resignation of the Hazara commissioners, it all looked similar to the strategy resorted to by other Hazaras involved in legal suits with Kuchis – absconding.[5] Hazara representatives and defendants have often made themselves absent to avoid being forced to officially sign over lands – in Pushta Ghorghori and other places. Such was eventually the case in Firuz Bahar as well, as related by the interviewee from Yakawlang:
We are eight people who are in dispute with the Kuchis. All have escaped now except for two or three of us. People are escaping because the Kuchis want to get their signatures by force.… They escape because a decision cannot be made in the absence of one of the sides.
The absence of six out of 20 members left the Kuchi head of the dispute resolution commission of Bamyan complaining about decisions not being implemented and the government not giving its support:
Since the beginning of the year, the commission has made approximately 35 decisions.… 14 members of the commission made their decision about those lands, but practically nothing has happened. I mean, the lands have not been given to the Kuchis because the Hazaras don’t accept the decisions and the governor doesn’t push them either. We didn’t have the force to implement the decisions we made. Therefore, we stopped doing our work.
The commission activities had indeed stopped by the end of September 2023, but the local government did actually try to push for the implementation of the decisions made by it and the courts. According to reporting by independent organisations, on 10 September, General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) officials arrested two Hazaras in Pushta Ghorghori on the grounds that they were preventing Kuchis’ access to their farmland. On 3 October, in the administrative centre of Panjab district, IEA security forces arrested nine Hazaras and subjected some of them to a lashing at the district governor’s office, with the purpose of forcing them to put their fingerprints on a document stating that they handed over their farmland to the Kuchis (also reported by Etilaat-e Roz).
As related to AAN by a Hazara interviewee, governor Sarhadi returned to Panjab shortly after this incident to invite the locals to comply with the decisions about lands and houses to be given up and compensation to be paid. He said that if Hazaras did not comply, their prayers would become invalid and they would stop being considered Muslims. This injunction to abide by the decision of an Islamic court and not breech an earlier commitment arguably represents a much milder form of pressure compared to arrest and torture, but it can become easily charged with a more sinister and threatening meaning to members of a religious minority that has often been subjected to stigmatisation and even open persecution.
Ghazni province
Nawur district of Ghazni province sits on the road that Kuchis use to approach the higher areas of Hazarajat. Because of this, it has frequently witnessed armed confrontations between incoming Kuchis and Hazara villagers during the past two decades. Compared to Bamyan, where the Kuchis hold many claims to land ownership, legal cases adjudicated in these districts include a higher proportion of requests for compensation for alleged losses of lives or property during earlier years. As such, cases can date back several decades, specific perpetrators often cannot be found and relatives or indeed whole village communities have been held responsible.
Many cases were raised in 2022, but most were not brought to a close, often because of the inability or unwillingness of local villagers to pay large amounts of money to Kuchis as compensation. In many instances, groups of Hazara villagers have been detained for long periods in order to force the rest of their community to collect the required sum, in what amounted to the taking of hostages and collective punishment. This continued into 2023.
One of the most serious cases left from the previous year regarded the death ten years ago of two Kuchi shepherds, a man and his son, in the area of Jagashew of Nawur. Already in the summer of 2022, as many as 70 Hazara villagers from the area had been detained in a bid to force locals to pay the blood price to the relatives of the victims. This year, according to a Ghazni resident who owns land in Nawur, another 22 villagers were detained in connection with the case. Negotiations on the compensation involved both the amount of money and who should pay it. As the killing occurred in a deserted area – Jagashew, a rangeland area, which is considered a mel, a gathering point, by the nomads – it was hard to determine who the perpetrators were and until these were found, the residents of the nearby hamlets have all been held responsible. Then the Kuchis introduced the name of five culprits and local Hazaras added six more. These, according to locals interviewed, were local robbers and armed goons and many have fled the country for Iran. At the time of AAN’s field research in November 2023, the agreement stipulated within the parties was that if the culprits did not pay the sum within six weeks, all the local villagers would provide it in the form of a loan, until it could be recovered from the perpetrators. However, local Hazaras wondered why the government did not pressurise the specific individuals indicted or at least their families into paying, by confiscating their assets, and feared the mechanism could be a ruse to extract the money twice, from both the culprits and the other villagers.
As for the sum agreed by the dispute commission, the Kuchis did not accept the 40 lakh afghanis (around USD 53,000) that had been proposed by the Hazara commissioners with the support of local authorities. Eventually, the total amount reached was AFS 55 lakhs (around USD 75,000), 44 lakhs as the blood price for the dead men and another 11 lakhs as compensation for the theft of around 200 sheep the shepherds had with them. Even then, according to a Kuchi member of the commission, the Kuchis accepted this only after much pleading by the Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs, which argued that the number of past disputes was so great that if nobody accepted a compromise, they would never be solved.
The list of cases is indeed long and only a few seem to have found a durable settlement. While some cases clearly involve serious crimes or acts of violence, though their having happened in the context of a civil war would make one think that they could be included in the amnesty declared by the IEA in the wake of its takeover, other claims for compensation revolve around smaller incidents – some almost trifling – and are nearly impossible to pin down. Nonetheless, the compensation money obtained by (or promised to) the Kuchis bears proof of the effectiveness of such a ‘claim campaign’ in the context of the economic crisis afflicting Afghans. The situation is adding a burden to the economic plight of the affected villagers and is described as an organised racketeering scheme by some observers.[6]
The unregulated use of pasture by Kuchis is also proving a major problem for residents of Nawur. Already in 2022, the district administration promised locals they would have determined the boundaries of pastures to be used by the respective groups, but have yet to do so. Hazaras interviewed said they would like this to be done quickly, as in the meantime, it is Kuchis who are using most of the pasture available in the district.
Locals interviewed by AAN went on to complain that Kuchis damage their crops when moving through the districts, despite an agreement reached last year between them and the nomads through the mediation of the Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs and the court about which route the Kuchis should follow in order to reach their mel without causing damage to crops. Locals claimed that, apart from the central areas close to the district centre, the rule is not enforced by the security forces and added that whenever farmers have tried to prevent damage to their fields, the Kuchis have attacked and beaten them.
The cases of damage to the crops were solved through the Commission for Dispute Resolution and compensation payments ranging from 40,000 and 100,000 Pakistani rupees (USD 143 to 3,575) have been offered to the farmers. However, complained one Hazara from the district, Kuchis have been made to pay compensation only for the damage to the crops, but have never been condemned or fined for the aggression or the injuries caused to farmers. He described the commission as dominated by its Kuchi members. Indeed, Hazara chances to get redress for wrongdoings[7] were probably not enhanced by the fact that, until recently, the head judge of the Nawur court was himself a Kuchi from the Niazi tribe. According to locals, he was very mindful of maintaining good relations with other Kuchis and easily swayed in their favour. He has now been replaced by a new judge from Kandahar, whom locals hope will be more independent.
Timid signs of improvement in relations between residents and local government in Nawur were reported by one of the local Hazaras interviewed. In particular, he singled out two developments. The composition of the Commission for Dispute Resolution has changed and the new Hazara members, albeit still in a weaker position, are not as utterly helpless as the previous ones. Moreover, the newly appointed security commander, a Pashtun from Ghazni, with his focus on targeting the real culprits, and not arresting random villagers, and seeking the involvement of tribal leaders and elders in resolving disputes, had made a good impression on him.
Broadly speaking, however, the morale of local villagers is at a low ebb. According to those interviewed by AAN, the oppression and uncertainty brought by the yearly Kuchi inroads are pushing many residents of Nawur to leave the area. Even the landlord from Ghazni complained that, in 2023, it had become difficult to find sharecroppers or labourers to work his lands in the district.
Tangled up in green: complexities of a seemingly schematic confrontation
The temptation to see the situation in Hazarajat as merely the outcome of ethno-religious fault lines is high. Many elements of these have been present since the inception of the dispute and undoubtedly keep contributing to the development of the Kuchi-Hazara conflict. Some of the factors at play, while true, risk being overemphasised. For example, an aspect of organised collective politics is always present in the narratives of the conflicting parties. Hazaras from both Hazarajat and the diaspora speak of ‘genocide’ and of the continuation of age-old policies aimed at ‘Pashtunisation’ of Afghanistan, while Kuchis clearly count on aspects of their identity shared with the Taleban authorities (Pashtun even if not the same tribal background, and Sunni) and play on political revanchism and hostility against a group, the Hazaras, considered by many Taleban to have been hostile to their insurgency and supportive of the previous government.
At a closer look, this monolithic vision of the confrontation shows some cracks: behind ethnonationalist postures hide more nuanced and opportunistic attitudes, which may, in turn, ease or further complicate the solution of disputes.
Not all sedentary Shia inhabitants of Hazarajat identify as Hazaras. Despite being often counted together and sharing most cultural and socio-political aspects of life, Sadat (singular Sayyed) constitute a recognisable minority group in the Hazarajat (as in other regions inhabited by Shias). Traditionally held in great respect because of their claims of descent from the Prophet’s family, they are interspersed among Hazaras across the whole region and highly integrated into the same communities, of which they traditionally constituted the cultural and economic elite. Decades of war in Afghanistan saw momentous changes in the society of Hazarajat: not only were the Kuchis denied access, but the Sadat lost some of their previous prominence in the face of a new class of mujahedin religious leaders who were Hazara by ethnicity, had been trained or educated in revolutionary Iran and often opposed to Sadat traditionalism and privileges. Despite a great degree of Shia solidarity between the two groups, some of these fault lines may be reappearing nowadays, resulting in different responses to the new situation. As reported by one interviewee:
In Dara Mandi area, which is located between Ghor province and the Panjab district, some aghayun (term of respect for the Sadat) were the tenants of the Pashtuns and the aghayun themselves are now saying to the Kuchis that the land had been grabbed by their fathers by force.
What may sound like a self-damaging statement could be aimed at showing a higher degree of cooperativeness with the newly powerful to guarantee the survival of the Sadat community. This has by no means been an unknown attitude among vulnerable minorities throughout history and it is often encouraged by the majorities in power. Indeed, one source from Yakawlang, himself a Sayyed, told AAN that he was approached by a Kuchi leader about a land dispute who sought to gain his support, claiming that the Kuchis wanted to “reclaim what the Hazaras had usurped and give back to the Sadat what had legitimately been theirs.” The Kuchi head of the Bamyan commission also said that the four Hazara members who remained in the commission after the resignation of the other six are in fact Sadat and they accepted all of the commission’s decisions.
Even without invoking these identitarian nuances, in the harsh economic situation of Hazarajat, one of Afghanistan’s poorest regions, competition by people for their very survival can emerge among the Hazaras. Interviewees from Panjab reported how some villagers would offer themselves as tenants to the Kuchis who had just reclaimed some lands in exchange for higher rents than what the Hazara families who had, until recently, been tilling the land had been due to pay:
There are other problems as well as disunity. For example, some people tell the Kuchis that the previous tenant was giving them 20 sers of wheat (one ser equates to around seven kg), while they promised they would give the Kuchis 40 sers as ejara for the land. Disunity exists, and from the time that Kuchis started the dispute, they have been using such disunity among the Hazara people.
Local rivalries inside a community also play a role: some local Hazaras proved ready to testify that other Hazaras had not bought the land from the Kuchis. But are only Hazaras permeable to disunity and cooperation with the ‘enemy’, and are the Kuchis as united as they get portrayed by their opponents? That would definitely go against popular wisdom about Pashtun tribes and indeed a Kuchi elder interviewed by AAN criticised both the IEA and his fellow Kuchis:
The Taleban somehow defend the Hazaras. There is a Hazara who in the past usurped the majority of Kuchi lands in Panjab. He is the closest adviser to the current governor of Bamyan.This person was also in power in the previous government and currently has the support of the governor.… On the other hand, the Taleban always ask us to compromise with the Hazaras.Among the Kuchis, there are some who only consider their own interests. For example, the son of Naeem Kuchi only takes care of his land and the government supports him. The rest of the Kuchis are homeless. We have no representative. There are some people whom no one listens to.Only to solve the problem of Naeem Kuchi’s son, this year the governor travelled to Panjab – Hazaras had burned his wheat harvest. The government only addressed the problem of Naeem Kuchi’s son, and that was it.
Internal competition for resources among the Kuchis has also started to appear. According to an interviewee from Nawur, the Dafdani Kuchis have now been occupying the pastures of the Kharroti Kuchis in the district for two years. The latter, the Hazara said, are more interested in agriculture and own less livestock; hence, they do not damage Hazara crops as much as the Dafdani do. Quite understandably, the Hazaras would support the Kharroti claim to the pastures were the issue to be addressed by the government.
Even the duality between commissions and courts shows inconsistencies in the IEA’s overall political management of the conflict and, sometimes, offers room for manoeuvre to the Hazaras, who typically find themselves on the weaker side. Hazaras interviewed preferred that their cases be sent to a high court (mahkama marafiya) such as that in Bamyan and not be adjudicated by hastily set up primary courts (mahkama ebtedaiya), such as that in Panjab or by commissions reportedly dominated by Kuchis, as one interviewee said:
We’re not happy with the work of the commission. We want the court to solve the disputes. Even the local people who don’t have any disputes believe that the disputes must be settled in court. The marafiya court in Bamyan makes decisions according to the law and based on justice.
The preoccupation of the Emirate with the juridical soundness of its court system – which has in the past earned them some recognition even among non-supportive parts of the Afghan population – emerges in the more impartial attitude ascribed to the high court in Bamyan, as well as in the uneasiness created among the Kuchis by the impossibility to perfect their recent reappropriation of lands by getting the signatures of the absconding Hazara commissioners and disputants.
A recurrent concern of the Hazaras interviewed was the ‘landslide effect’: for each Kuchi claim that gets accepted and satisfied, there will be more or bolder claims in the next year. While possibly not so monolithically united in exploiting their renewed superiority over the Hazaras, it is true that Kuchis are spread far and wide and as news travels, it is probable that more of them will show up year by year. This is adding another layer of complexity to the disputes, even to cases that had apparently been satisfactorily settled, as related by two Hazaras from Bamyan:
(Hazara villagers) had paid the ejara last year, but some other Kuchis came this year and said that the person who was receiving the ejara was only one of the heirs and that they were also heirs, so they should be paid too. Now, one heir has become 30 to 40 heirs.
Last year, some Kuchis had sold the land [they had just successfully reclaimed] to Hazaras, but this year, more [Kuchi] heirs to that land showed up and said the sale was null [because they had not agreed to sell it].
That leads to another issue of fundamental importance: What do the Kuchis mean to do with the land they have reclaimed? Many Hazaras would indeed be interested in buying back some of the lands from which they are being evicted and in 2022, some tried to do so, although this has not proved easy. According to a Kuchi elder who spends his time between Logar and Panjab district, the answer is categorically negative:
Kuchis have made a promise among themselves that they will not sell the land at any price. We just want our lands to be determined and submitted to us. Then, we will rent it to local people again because we Kuchis won’t live in those areas all the time. We’re on the move. We spend two or three months there and then we move to warmer areas.
His words are identical to those of the other Kuchis interviewed by AAN, showing a common position has been agreed upon, at least for the purpose of communication with the outside world. But Kuchis have travelled along a wide range of paths in life over the last 40 years of displacement and not all prospective heirs will be interested in resuming a transhumant life or be in a position to visit Hazarajat twice a year to exact rent from tenants.
However, even if Kuchis, looking for quick money, wanted to sell the land they have just reclaimed in the future, that may be more complicated. As the land has recently been confiscated from other Hazara families, it would be considered disputed land locally and few potential buyers from the area could be expected to step forward.
Conclusion: irreconcilable positions and no real solution in sight
The debate goes on over whether IEA’s management of the Kuchi-Hazara dispute is part of a broader political strategy or simply the result of the attitude of local IEA officials, often sympathising with and in some cases related to the Kuchis. Still, the main trends arising over the past two years are clear:
The IEA has permitted the adjudication of claims related to private property, payment of rent arrears and debts and the redress of other losses sustained by the Kuchis over the decades when they were absent from Hazarajat and the years in which they tried in vain to regain access to it. In general, the authorities have accepted the legal ownership documents from Zahir Shah’s time. Despite the political and economic imbalance inherent in them from that era, that they are weighted against the Hazaras and have been denounced by a number of Afghan Islamist tanzims in the past, they have apparently not been questioned by the IEA.
The IEA has refrained from addressing the highly contentious and symbolically relevant issue of the right to the exclusive use of the higher mountain rangelands, especially those located in Bamyan province. Rights to graze this land were granted to the Kuchis in various decrees from the time of Abdul Rahman onwards. The IEA, stressing that it is state land and does not belong to any group, seems to be postponing a decision over its use.
Proceeding from the previous point and hinting at the need for a ‘shared use’ of those pastures and citing security, the government has prevented the migration of Kuchis en masse to the most prized but also more distant grazing area of inner Hazarajat in Panjab and Waras districts.
Conversely, there has been a strengthening of the seasonal presence and opportunities available for Kuchis in some districts, which form a sort of ‘outer belt’ of Hazara-inhabited areas. Districts such as Nawur or Behsud, despite not being the main focus of Kuchi property claims, have witnessed a major and more prolonged influx of Kuchis over the past two years. The nomads have consumed massive amounts of local resources, such as pastures, non-irrigated cultivated land and water, to the detriment of locals. If this trend continues, it could turn into a seasonal relief valve for dispossessed Pashtun communities across the country, whether or not they belong to the original Kuchi clans and families who moved to Hazarajat in the distant past, while making life for local Hazara villagers intolerable.
The IEA has certainly played a major role in the current direction that the Kuchi-Hazara dispute is taking. The Taleban have a previous history of ethnically and religiously polarised conflict with Hazara militias in the late 1990s and of meddling in Kuchi attempts at gaining access during the Republic. Moreover, the IEA has a strongly connotated identity as a Pashtun-dominated government where Kuchis easily have the upper hand on Hazaras in terms of political and military power and wasita – connections with the powerful. Thanks to this, the Kuchis’ position has been strengthened not only by the active collaboration of local IEA officials related or sympathetic to them but also because they have been able to exploit the feelings of powerlessness and fear among Hazaras that the Taleban takeover has engendered. However, the IEA did not invent the Kuchi-Hazara dispute. Rather, they inherited it from previous Afghan governments all the way back to Abdul Rahman’s campaigns of subjugation in the Hazarajat, achieved with the help of the Kuchis in the 1890s. This is not something that needs to be stressed in order to remove responsibility from the IEA leadership for what it does now, but rather to serve as a reminder about where the roots of the conflict lie.
If a national collective take on the Kuchi-Hazara conflict is of any value, it would have to be tackled in terms of historic experience, not of contingent legal suits. A fundamental problem is the diverging perception of whole periods of recent Afghan history and of the value and significance attributed to them. For most Kuchis, such as the head of the Bamyan resolution commission, the last forty years are, legally speaking, a black hole:
All the deeds and documents reviewed were from before 1357 [1978].… We do not make decisions about the deeds distributed after 1978.And we told the Hazaras that they must bring any kind of [ownership] documents they have from before 1978: those we would check. They don’t have any such documents. They made fake documents after 1978 when it was a time of wars and Kuchis didn’t come to their lands at all.[8]
For Kuchis, the last four decades of war and turmoil saw them traumatically lose not only their hegemony over the Hazarajat, but their nomadic lifestyle. Yet their rejection of what happened in the past forty-five years mirrors the rejection by Hazaras of the decrees and deeds issued by governments that dispossessed their forefathers and, with few exceptions, largely left the Hazara community discriminated against and marginalised over a timespan of eighty years, from 1893 to 1978. For the time being, as one Hazara interviewee described it, the upper hand is with the Kuchis:
We asked them why they hadn’t come in the past years to make their claim. They said that they were afraid of getting killed by us and that: “At that time, power was yours, now it’s the turn for our power.
In the long run, however, without some sort of shared understanding of what has happened in the past, no possible application or interpretation of legal provisions can satisfy both parties. If such a rapprochement does not happen, history will simply keep taking turns of abuse and retaliation in the Hazarajat highlands until they become inhospitable to humans, no matter how rich their beautiful pastures are for the grazing of animals.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
References
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It is difficult to get precise figures about the number of animals, mostly sheep and goats, that Kuchis brought with them. Hazaras from Nawur would estimate between 500 and 1,000 for each family, but one Kuchi source from the district gave much wider variations, saying that, depending on the household wealth, a family could own from 70 to as many as 30,000 animals. Sources in Behsud estimated flocks there to be composed of 4-5,000 animals each.
↑2
Naeem Kuchi, arguably the foremost tribal leader of the nomads during the Republic, had previously been a Taleban commander and Guantanamo inmate. During the brief and bloody Taleban conquest of Hazarajat in 1999-2001, he led Kuchi militias there, before the abuses they committed against Hazara villagers induced the Taleban leadership to recall them.
↑3
In the past, Pushta Ghorghori, near the Shato Pass leading from Panjab to Yakawlang, was a major stopping place for Kuchis, as it was located just above the irrigated areas, which was the limit marking the beginning of state-owned rangeland upon which grazing rights had been granted to the Kuchis by the kings’ decrees. Of the other areas mentioned by the interviewee, Dara Mandi is in western Panjab, Derazqul on the border with Behsud of Maidan Wardak and Kerman is an area split between Ghor’s Lal wa Sarjangal district and Panjab. The dispute over land in Pushta Ghorghori has been frequently reported on by some Afghan media outlets, for example here.
↑4
Karim Khalili, a former vice-President of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai, is also the leader of one of the factions of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami (Party of the Islamic Union), the main Hazara/Shia political organisation in Afghanistan; Muhammad Mohaqeq is the leader of another such faction, labelled Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Mardom-e Afghanistan (Party of the Afghan People’s Islamic Union). Both are currently living outside Afghanistan.
↑5
Only occasionally does the tension underlying the new imbalance of power trigger other forms of resistance. Last year, the wheat harvest of Salim Naeem’s lands in Panjab district was burned by a local farmer. According to the Kuchi head of the Bamyan dispute commission, Governor Sarhadi hurried there to resolve the issue and a compensation of AFS 200,000 (around USD 2,700) was eventually paid to the perpetrator.
↑6
A recent report by an Afghan news website, Kabul Now, currently based abroad, gives a comprehensive list of cases across Afghanistan and has attempted to estimate the compensation paid by or required from Hazara villagers. It calculates that, up to August 2023, Hazaras would have paid, only as compensation for harm done to persons or animals, almost 17 million afghanis and 24 million Pakistani rupees, roughly the equivalent of USD 310,000, while an additional 42.7 million afghanis (USD 570,000) had been fixed by the courts and commissions but remained to be paid.
↑7
In 2023, Nawur saw at least one major case where a crime perpetrated by Kuchis against a Hazara was addressed. In the summer of 2022, a Hazara man was murdered by some Kuchis. His body had not been recovered and, not knowing his fate, nobody had filed a complaint for murder, until the issue was disclosed one year later by other Kuchis and the matter was investigated. The commission eventually settled for a blood price of 60 lakh Pakistani rupees (around USD 21,500) to be paid to his family.
↑8
This rejection of all proceedings made by courts during the years of mujaheddin government in Hazarajat can influence land disputes in many ways: one of the Hazara disputants in the case of Poshta Ghorghori claims that some land owned by the Kuchis there was allotted to his family in the 1980s as blood price in compensation for the murder of his grandfather by a group of Kuchis in 1974, which the previous government had failed to prosecute. The IEA, however, has not considered the decision of the mujahedin court valid.
The Pastures of Heaven: An update of Kuchi-Hazara disputes as spring approaches
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
A flock of Hazara sheep in Yakawlang district, 2012 – photo by Fabrizio Foschini
