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How to Support Female Entrepreneurs in Afghanistan

June 26, 2024
BY: Belquis Ahmadi;  Afsana Rahimi
United States Institute of Peace

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Potential areas of cooperation between the Taliban and the international community, such as private sector development and alternative livelihoods to now-banned opium poppy cultivation, will be on the agenda at a meeting of international envoys for Afghanistan hosted by the United Nations in Doha from June 30 to July 1. Discussions on women’s rights are not included, as the Taliban consider it an internal matter. This is ironic, given that the private sector is one area where the Taliban allow limited women’s participation.
As envoys discuss normalizing relations with the Taliban while respecting human rights, it’s important to consider if women benefit from private sector development and how it can empower them. Despite claimed support for women in the private sector, the Taliban’s approach lacks essential elements for genuine economic empowerment.

Exclusion of Women a Drain on Afghanistan’s Economy

Excluding women from education, public spaces and employment severely hampers the Afghan economy. Sustainable prosperity is unattainable without the contributions of half the population. Banning women from education beyond sixth grade cuts the qualified labor force by half, and further restrictions on educated women limit the country’s productive capacity even more.

Studies have shown that gender inequality in the workforce can have a substantial negative impact on a nation’s gross domestic product. The World Bank estimates that gender inequality in earnings alone costs the global economy $160 trillion. A 2024 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report concluded that restrictions on women’s rights and employment are significantly hampering economic recovery in Afghanistan. The report notes women’s participation in the workforce dropped dramatically — from 11% in 2022 to just 6% in 2023 — as a consequence of restrictions placed on them by the Taliban.

While the Taliban ostensibly support women working in the private sector, the gender segregation enforced by the Taliban poses a significant obstacle to women’s businesses and their employment in the private sector. Female entrepreneurs are encountering significant obstacles in acquiring or renewing their business licenses under the Taliban’s rule. Moreover, a significant number of established, professional and trained female entrepreneurs have left the country due to the Taliban’s restrictive policies and the ban on education.

In Afghanistan, women have historically played an important role in running businesses and creating jobs for both women and men.

In Afghanistan, women have historically played an important role in running businesses and creating jobs for both women and men. As more and more men took up arms after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, women were compelled to become the primary breadwinners for their families. More women started entering the workforce and pursuing educational opportunities. Many women in both urban and rural communities turned to income-generating activities, establishing micro and small businesses. Women in rural areas have long been involved in dairy production, the clothing industry, embroidery, food processing and handicrafts. In these communities, education and professional expertise in entrepreneurship were not necessarily prerequisites for success, as marketing and the financial aspects of the businesses were handled by male family members.In a survey conducted in 2020, the Afghanistan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industries (AWCCI) identified 2,471 formal businesses owned by women across 32 provinces, excluding Nuristan and Paktika. Formal businesses are defined as those that have acquired a license from the Ministry of Commerce and Industries. Additionally, there were 56,000 informal women-owned businesses. The survey found that all together these businesses had created over 130,000 jobs.

The AWCCI’s initiatives have played a crucial role in empowering female entrepreneurs and supporting inclusive job creation, demonstrating the substantial impact of targeted investment in women’s economic activities. In 2017, the year the AWCCI was established, the total amount of investment by businesswomen was estimated at $87 million. The chamber connected Afghan women to regional and global platforms. By 2020, the investment by businesswomen had increased to $90 million.

Prior to the Taliban taking power in 2021, women-owned businesses included a diverse range of products and services, from carpet weaving to construction, as well as nontraditional businesses such as media outlets, technology, agribusinesses and import and export. With technical and financial support from donor agencies and land provided by the government, women-only markets were constructed in 13 provinces. Women-owned kiosks and fast-food restaurants in parks were also dedicated to women and families.

Afghan women participated in domestic trade fairs across multiple provinces. They successfully entered the global market, showcasing their products at regional and international trade fairs in countries such as India, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates, expanding their market reach and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Life for Women under the Taliban

Since 2021, the Taliban have issued decrees severely restricting women’s employment opportunities, undermining genuine economic empowerment. The UNDP’s April 2024 report highlights significant barriers for female entrepreneurs and employees, including limited market access, reduced mobility, regulatory restrictions and discrimination. Many women-owned businesses face challenges such as reduced customers and logistical issues.

The Taliban’s restrictions disrupt social networks, increase isolation and stress and erode women’s sense of identity and purpose.

These restrictions disrupt social networks, increase isolation and stress and erode women’s sense of identity and purpose. They cause profound emotional and psychological impacts, including feelings of hopelessness, diminished self-esteem, anxiety and depression among women. The ban on girls’ education above sixth grade limits educational opportunities and stifles aspirations, leading to long-term detrimental effects on women’s mental health, confidence and overall well-being.A female entrepreneur in western Afghanistan who owns a small business told us her monthly income dropped from $2,000 to zero. Another business owner noted the country’s rapid decline into poverty and famine. “The situation on the ground is deteriorating rapidly,” said this person, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Intellectuals [are] fleeing and the economy collapsing. The authorities are exacerbating the crisis by imposing excessive taxes and coercing people to contribute more, even going as far as shutting down some businesses and enterprises.”

Despite the Taliban’s apparent support for trade fairs, female entrepreneurs face significant challenges. Restrictions on attendance to women who lack the financial means to purchase goods reduce the fairs’ profitability for female entrepreneurs. Some women have turned to online businesses or WhatsApp groups to promote their products, but these efforts are limited compared to men’s access to investors and buyers. This glaring disparity highlights women’s ongoing challenges in accessing markets and financial support.

Additionally, female laborers in the private sector face severe restrictions. In December 2023, for example, the Taliban ordered pine nut processing factories in Paktia province to terminate the jobs of female laborers, affecting several hundred women. In January, a similar order in Nangarhar province led to the dismissal of around 300 women from a pine nut processing factory. These policies target and undermine women’s workforce participation, exacerbating economic hardships and impeding their ability to sustain livelihoods.

Exodus of Female Entrepreneurs Impacts Economic Stability and Growth

A significant number of established, professional and trained female entrepreneurs have left Afghanistan due to the Taliban’s restrictive policies, especially the ban on education for women. They have been forced to seek refuge or migrate to other countries to secure educational opportunities for their daughters. This exodus has caused a brain drain, depriving the nation of skilled female entrepreneurs and leaving those who remain without the necessary resources and support to run successful businesses. The restrictive environment further stifles innovation and growth, leading to a decline in the quality and sustainability of women-owned businesses.

“For 15 years, I proudly owned and operated a successful business, offering employment opportunities to over 100 women and men,” said a former business owner who was forced to leave Afghanistan in search of better opportunities. “I now find myself displaced in a foreign land, grappling with the challenges of starting anew. I chose to leave everything behind so that my daughters could pursue their education,” she added. Her story highlights the broader issue of economic resilience and potential being diminished by the loss of entrepreneurial leaders.

The lack of role models and mentors discourages new female entrepreneurs, undermining economic diversity and stability and reversing progress in women’s economic empowerment.

Conclusion and Recommendations

A stronger economy is a shared interest among the Taliban, the Afghan people and the international community, but it is also a battleground for gender discrimination against women, a critical aspect that needs full consideration in the Doha discussions. Women have historically participated in the economy, providing practical benefits. Despite the Taliban’s claims of supporting women in economic roles, their actions contradict this by restricting opportunities in both public and private sectors. These include bans on public sector employment, wage reductions and restrictions on hair salons, gyms and public baths, as well as licensing and capital requirements. Indirect social constraints like mahram rules and potential future education bans further limit women’s economic prospects. The international community must ensure that development aid does not discriminate against women or become inefficient due to their exclusion.

The international community must ensure that development aid does not discriminate against women or become inefficient due to their exclusion.

In Doha, meeting participants will discuss ways to implement the recommendations of the U.N. special coordinator of the independent assessment mandated by United Nations Security Resolution 2679 (2023) in January. The report noted: “adherence to principles of non-discrimination and inclusion, respect for women’s rights and efforts towards their meaningful participation and respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Afghans should be ensured and advanced.” In Doha, participants should also consider the following recommendations:

  • Ensure Afghan women have unrestricted access to domestic and global markets: The Taliban must allow Afghan women full access to both domestic and international markets by lifting all existing restrictions. This will enable women to participate freely in economic activities, helping Afghanistan to utilize its full workforce potential, stimulate economic growth and improve societal well-being.
  • Provide safe spaces and opportunities for capacity building for female entrepreneurs: Capacity building for female entrepreneurs is impossible without safe environments. The Taliban must stop intruding on and disrupting training efforts, ensuring that women can develop their skills and businesses without fear. Creating secure spaces for learning and growth is essential for empowering women and fostering economic development. Empowerment activities should focus on enhancing skills related to entrepreneurship, leadership, financial literacy and technology.
  • Establish comprehensive benchmarks to measure contributions of female entrepreneurs: Donor communities should establish comprehensive benchmarks to evaluate the economic growth and contributions of female entrepreneurs. This involves setting clear metrics and conducting regular evaluations to monitor progress. By systematically tracking the performance of women-led businesses, donor communities can identify areas for improvement and provide targeted support.
  • Ensure women’s participation and empowerment in humanitarian aid and private sector development: Donor communities should benchmark humanitarian assistance to ensure it promotes both the rights of women to participate in the assisted sectors and tangible increases in women’s actual participation in the private sector. This involves setting clear criteria for evaluating how well aid initiatives support women’s inclusion and empowerment. By systematically measuring and tracking women’s engagement in these sectors, donors can ensure their assistance is reaching women.
  • Empower women by giving them comprehensive access to macro-finance and global markets: Institutions like the World Bank, alongside Islamic microfinance initiatives, must ensure Afghan women have access to macro-finance and global markets. This goal demands robust, long-term strategies and unwavering political commitment. Without such measures, current support systems will only address women’s immediate needs, falling short of fostering sustainable economic independence and growth.

Afsana Rahimi is the chairperson of the Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the vice chairperson of the Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce. She is also the co-founder of Global Afghan Women Trade Caravan and senior vice president of the Afghanistan Business Council–USA.

How to Support Female Entrepreneurs in Afghanistan
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As Taliban Poppy Ban Continues, Afghan Poverty Deepens

June 24, 2024
BY: William Byrd, Ph.D.
United States Institute of Peace

Thursday, June 20, 2024

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • The ban on opium cultivation is working but failing to curb exports as landowners liquidate inventories.
  • The ban is unsustainable and could trigger political tensions, even armed conflict.
  • U.S. and other donors must be clear-eyed, tailoring responses and programs to on-ground realities.

Afghanistan, historically the leading source of the world’s illegal opium, is on-track for an unprecedented second year of dramatically reduced poppy cultivation, reflecting the Taliban regime’s continuing prohibition against growing the raw material for opiates. The crackdown has won plaudits in international circles, but its full implications call for clear-eyed analysis and well considered responses by the U.S. and others. The ban has deepened the poverty of millions of rural Afghans who depended on the crop for their livelihoods, yet done nothing to diminish opiate exports, as wealthier landowners sell off inventories. The unfortunate reality is that any aid mobilized to offset harm from the ban will be grossly insufficient and ultimately wasted unless it fosters broad-based rural and agricultural development that benefits the most affected poorer households.

The U.S. and other governments and agencies, who will be discussing counter-narcotics and livelihoods at the U.N.-hosted international meeting in Doha at the end of this month, must face the facts about the ban:

  • It is not sustainable. There is no sign of a shift to cash crops, horticulture, livestock and non-farm activities that could replace opium, and the Afghan economy is too weak to generate significant numbers of other jobs.
  • Enforcement will prove increasingly difficult as landed interests start to suffer from the ban and pressures intensify to resume cultivation.
  • Political tensions with local interests and possibly within the Taliban are likely to grow, perhaps leading to violent conflict beyond what the protests already seen.
  •  So-called alternative livelihoods projects have not worked in the past and will be of little help in mitigating the adverse effects of the poppy ban, let alone creating a sustainable path away from dependence on opium production.

International actors need to ensure that their policy recommendations, and in particular proposed financial support, if any, do not feed into harmful, unsustainable Taliban approaches. They must be sure to avoid inadvertently supporting better-off rural core constituencies of the Taliban, or fueling unrealistic narratives about the success and longer-term prospects of a ban as pressures to resume more poppy cultivation intensify. On the positive side, there may be scope for cooperation with the Taliban on expanding and improving treatment programs for Afghanistan’s numerous drug addicts, and it may be worth exploring the potential for a confluence of interests in strengthening interdiction efforts to curb opiate processing and exports.

An Unprecedented Second Year of Success Against Poppy Cultivation

The Taliban’s comprehensive ban against opium cultivation, production, processing and trade, announced by their emir in April 2022, achieved a more than 85 percent reduction in the total national area of poppy cultivation in the 2022-2023 growing season, predominantly by deterring farmers from planting the crop. All in all, households with an estimate of almost 7 million people were prevented from cultivating opium poppy in that season.

International actors need to ensure that their policy recommendations, and in particular proposed financial support, do not feed into harmful, unsustainable Taliban approaches.

Vigorous enforcement of the ban has continued in the 2023-2024 growing season. The national picture will not be complete until satellite imagery for Badakhshan province and other higher-altitude, late-harvesting areas becomes available, but all indications point to an unprecedented second year of very low opium poppy cultivation. Indeed, the national figure quite possibly could be below last year’s level of 31,000 hectares — the most accurate estimate of the 2023 poppy harvest based on an analysis of satellite imagery for all agricultural land in the country by the geospatial firm Alcis. This compares with national cultivation typically exceeding 200,000 hectares during the previous decade.As in past successful Afghan poppy bans at regional and national levels, these massive reductions were achieved predominantly by discouraging farmers from planting opium poppy through pressure and threats reinforced by small amounts of eradication, as well as occasional action by law enforcement against poppy farmers. The general pattern in 2023-2024 is no different, characterized by special efforts to deter planting in areas where some cultivation had remained in 2022-2023, for example remote areas of Nangarhar that had resisted the ban in the previous year.

The glaring exception again appears to be Badakhshan province, which had largely escaped the ban and saw a significant increase in poppy cultivation in 2022-2023. Large-scale planting has occurred in Badakhshan in 2023-2024 despite some efforts to deter it. Eradication activities appear to have been limited and sparked open resistance, including violent protests by farmers and perhaps an IED attack on a Taliban convoy traveling to an eradication site. But even if there is a second year of expanding poppy cultivation in Badakhshan, this would not detract from the low overall national cultivation.

Unlike the first Taliban opium ban in the year 2000 which applied only to poppy cultivation, the current ban encompasses all stages of illicit narcotics production including trade, processing and exports. Earlier there were some signs that the Taliban might be serious about seeking to curtail the trade beyond the cultivation stage. However, available evidence suggests that trade, processing and exports are continuing at high levels, fueled by landowners and others selling off their accumulated inventories of opium cultivated in the past.

Analysis by David Mansfield indicates that such inventories, left over from bumper harvests in 2022, 2021 and earlier, can support the overall trade in opiates for several years when combined with ongoing opium production in Badakhshan. Indeed, high prices triggered by the ban mean that landowners and others holding opium inventories have accrued large capital gains and can comfortably support pre-ban income levels with gradual sales. Concentrated in the south and southwest, these landowners are happy with the ban (as long as their inventories last) and comprise a core constituency of the Taliban.

But the Ban is Harmful for Large Numbers of Poor Afghans, and Unsustainable

The story for poorer rural households is very different. With no or limited land, they depended on opium to make ends meet — through sharecropping, tenancy and wage labor — and benefited from the buoyant rural economy engendered by high levels of poppy cultivation and its demand for workers.

This large segment of the rural population has been suffering greatly from the ban and is bitterly opposed to it, a sentiment which often spills over into negative views toward the Taliban more generally. Given Afghanistan’s economic weakness and limited prospects for recovery let alone robust growth, the poppy cultivation ban is akin to an additional humanitarian shock from an approximately $1 billion loss of income annually for this part of the population.

These households are trying to cope with the shock the opium ban has dealt their incomes and livelihoods, but unfortunately have to do so in counterproductive short- and long-term ways. Like poor households generally, common coping mechanisms include selling off remaining assets such as livestock, eating less and lower-quality food, foregoing healthcare and pulling children out of secondary school. Moreover, outmigration by family members to seek work abroad (ultimately in Europe) and send back remittances becomes an increasingly attractive option for those who can afford the cost, despite the associated risks.

While outmigration and remittances are good for the involved households and the Afghan economy, they give rise to tensions with neighboring countries and potentially European ones. Overall, the medium-term economic prospects for previously opium-dependent poor rural households are dim in the face of the general weakness of the Afghan economy and its limited growth potential. As long as the ban continues, their few remaining assets and coping mechanisms will be increasingly exhausted, making a recovery later all the more difficult.

Big-picture, replacing poppy cultivation with wheat — the common pattern in the past — is not a sustainable way forward. In the 2022-2023 growing season, for example, satellite imagery for Helmand — by far Afghanistan’s largest poppy cultivating province pre-ban — shows that virtually all of the massive 99 percent decline in poppy cultivation was replaced by sharply higher wheat growing as well as more land apparently left fallow. Primary reliance on wheat, a relatively low-value, low-labor and water-intensive crop, cannot support the country’s large rural population.

The well-known sustainable path away from dependence on opium involves high-value cash crops, labor-intensive horticulture, livestock and buoyant non-farm activities.

The well-known sustainable path away from dependence on opium involves high-value cash crops, labor-intensive horticulture, livestock and buoyant non-farm activities in rural areas, with wheat part of the picture but by no means dominant as it is now. If the predominance of wheat continues in 2024, it will further underscore the lack of sustainability of the poppy ban, though one advantage of wheat for cultivators is that it is easy to shift back to poppy at some point in the future.

What Donors Can and Should (and Should Not) Do

The U.S. and other foreign governments and agencies must be clear-eyed about the ban:

  • First, it is not sustainable over the longer term, there being no sign of a shift to the activities that could replace opium in rural livelihoods, and with the Afghan economy too weak to generate large numbers of jobs in other sectors. The prognosis, therefore, is for continuing, indeed deepening rural poverty and deprivation as the ban continues to unfold.
  • Second, it will prove increasingly difficult to fully enforce the ban as landed interests deplete their inventories and start to suffer, increasing pressures to resume cultivation, particularly if the anomaly of substantial poppy cultivation in Badakhshan continues. Thus, a return to significant levels of poppy growing seems likely in the next couple of years.
  • Third, it is likely to give rise to intensifying political tensions between the Taliban leadership and local interests, as well as possibly within the Taliban, potentially even leading to violent conflict. Small examples of this have already been seen in Badakhshan and Nangarhar provinces.
  • Fourth, “alternative livelihoods projects” — the default donor response in the past — have not worked and will be of little help in mitigating the adverse effects of the poppy ban let alone forging a sustainable path away from dependence on opium production. What is needed instead is broad-based rural development and robust economic growth, the prospects for which are dim in the near future.

Facing this reality, expectations must be kept modest for how much U.S. and other foreign donors can mitigate the effects of the poppy ban through their interventions and financial support. Offsetting the humanitarian shock caused by the ban would require well over a billion dollars a year given administrative overhead and other extra costs, a figure no one could possibly expect would be met, and in any case that would provide only a temporary band-aid. Even hundreds of millions of dollars of well-targeted development aid would not offset the headwinds facing Afghanistan’s rural economy, let alone reverse the economic damage from the opium ban. So, any financial support that donors may consider will at best have only a marginal impact.

Moreover, it would be only too easy to squander limited aid funds on alternative livelihoods projects that will not make a difference or even worse, would be counterproductive.

For example, distributing agricultural inputs, especially for staples like wheat, to farmers according to their landholdings would not help the poorer households that have suffered the most from the ban, and would foster unsustainable cropping patterns that easily could be reversed if poppy cultivation is resumed. And if aid is targeted at the provinces that have reduced poppy cultivation the most (notably Helmand and other nearby provinces in the southwest), and furthermore is distributed to landowners, it would end up supporting a core constituency of the Taliban that has already benefitted greatly from the ban as a result of capital gains on their opium inventories.

Any aid mobilized should foster broad-based rural and agricultural development and should be targeted at activities that will benefit the poorer rural households.

Any aid mobilized in response to the Taliban’s opium ban should foster broad-based rural and agricultural development and should be targeted at activities that will benefit the poorer rural households most affected by the ban. Examples include small livestock, horticulture and labor-intensive non-agricultural activities. But it must be recognized that realistic levels of rural development aid will only have a marginal effect and will not come anywhere near to offsetting the impact of the poppy ban.On a more positive note, there may be a confluence of interests with the Taliban on expanding and improving treatment programs for the numerous problem drug users in Afghanistan, representing a serious public health problem the authorities are well aware of and are trying to do something about. It may also be worth exploring possible common interests in stronger interdiction efforts against processing and exports of opiates, in cooperation with neighboring countries. But going after the opium inventories held by landowners and other elites — probably the most effective way of cracking down on post-cultivation stages of the trade — most likely would be a nonstarter from the Taliban perspective since it would directly harm the interests of a core constituency of theirs in rural areas of south and southwest Afghanistan.

As Taliban Poppy Ban Continues, Afghan Poverty Deepens
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The Daily Hustle: Eid-e Qurban, a time to reflect and be grateful

June 17, 2024

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon • Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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Today is Eid-e Qurban, also known as Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, which marks the most important religious holiday in Islam. On this day, Afghans, across the country will sacrifice cows or sheep in remembrance of the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael in submission to God’s command and of the lamb which God provided as a substitute sacrifice. However in the current economy, the cost of honouring this important religious tradition is more than some cash-strapped Afghan families can bear. In this Daily Hustle, AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon spoke to one Afghan man who is unable to afford the ritual sacrifice for the third year running, but is, nevertheless, mindful of the Eid’s true meaning – reflecting on the life you have and thanking God for the bounties he has given you.

The Afghanistan Analysts Network wishes a joyful Eid-e Qurban to all its friends and readers and to all the people of Afghanistan.

A tradition dating back to Abraham

In the old days, I used to buy a sheep to sacrifice for Eid-e Qurban every year. Those days now seem like a lifetime ago, even though it’s only been three years since my fortunes changed.

I used to have a good government job with a good salary. Back then, my family and I shared the house we inherited from our father with my brothers and their families. I didn’t have rent to pay and my salary was enough to provide for my family. There was money for new clothes for all the Eids, new school bags and uniforms at the start of the school year, new clothes and chaplaqs (sandals) for the summer and winter coats.

Every year, a few days before Eid, my eldest son and I would go to the livestock market on the outskirts of the city to buy a sheep to sacrifice for Eid. It was our special outing. On the drive there, I would tell him the story of Ibrahim and how, in his dreams, he received a command from God to sacrifice his son Ismael to demonstrate his obedience. And how Iblis (the devil) tried to tempt him to disobey and how Ibrahim kept true to his faith and to God. And how, finally, God stopped Ibrahim in the end and sent him a lamb to sacrifice instead of his son. It’s important to me that my children know about our religion, where our traditions come from and what they mean. I knew that when we got home, my son, in turn, would tell the story of Ibrahim and the lamb to my other children as they gathered around the sheep we’d brought home.

On the day of Eid, we’d sacrifice the sheep and distribute the meat – some to the needy, some to our neighbours and some for the family to eat with guests who usually call to bring Eid tidings.

Life changes suddenly

after the fall of the Republic, everything changed. Many of us who had government jobs were afraid of what might happen to us now the Taleban had taken over the country. I stopped going to work and moved with my family to a neighbourhood where no one knew us. I rented a small house for my family, which cost 3,000 afghanis (USD 40) a month, and we started living off our savings. When the money ran out, I sold my share of the family home to my brothers for 170,000 afghanis (USD 2,300). It gave us enough funds to survive for a few more months. But money was tight and we had to be careful. No more new clothes or sandals for the summer. In fact, the only way we were able to manage is because my wife is so good with money. She knows how to economise and make the little money we have stretch to meet our basic needs. I was also looking for a job, but so was everybody else and finding work was more difficult than finding bird’s milk. [The full phrase is shir-e morgh wa jan-e adamizad, which translates as ‘bird’s milk and human life’, and signifies how precious or scarce something is).

A lifeline in the nick of time

I wasn’t having much luck finding work and we’d used up nearly all the money we had. Finally, one day, I answered a call from a number that wasn’t saved on my phone. I’d been receiving quite a few calls from that number but I never answered them because I was worried about who might be calling me. Finally, I decided to answer the phone and see what the caller wanted. It was my old boss. He said I should go back to the ministry, that my bast [grade] had been approved and that I was free to take up my old job again. It was like a miracle. God had heard my prayers and sent me a lifeline just in the nick of time.

So, a few days ago, I went back to the ministry. I was anxious and unsure about what I might find there. But when I arrived and saw so many of my colleagues were also back and working, all the anxiety I felt slipped away and was replaced by a feeling of homecoming. I called my boss and told him I’d arrived, and he instructed me to go to his office. He welcomed me with open arms and told me how happy he was that I was coming back to work. He introduced me to the new colleagues who had joined the department since the start of the Islamic Emirate and took me to Human Resources to sort out my paperwork.

The people at Human Resources said I could start working immediately, but they said that new government had reduced everyone’s salaries and mine would also be reduced by 30 per cent— from 10,000 afghanis (USD 133) to 7,000 (USD 93). Still, I was happy to have a job and a regular income.

Eid, a time to reflect and be grateful

There won’t be enough money for extras. After we pay the rent, there’s only 5,000 afghanis (USD 66) left over for our living expenses. It’s not enough for a family of five. But I know my wife can make it work so we can have a roof over our heads and food on the table. And at least I have a job. I’m better off than most.

So, there’s not going to be a sheep to sacrifice this year. We don’t have enough money for it. A couple of months ago, I had the idea of buying a young lamb to raise for Eid, but it seems everyone had the same idea. The price of lambs had soared to 13,000 afghanis (USD 173) each, almost as much as you’d pay for a full-grown sheep.

This will be the third year we haven’t been able to sacrifice a sheep and the fact that we haven’t been able to fulfil this important religious rite is heavy on my mind. I also worry about the example it sets for our children and also troubled that our traditions might be fading from our lives. My youngest is too young to remember the last time we sacrificed a sheep and celebrated Eid.

This year, there’s no money for the things we need to have on hand to receive guests, if anyone comes calling. No money for dry fruit or sweets and no money for new clothes or presents for the children.

Still, Eid is about more than sacrificing sheep, or buying new clothes or receiving guests. It’s about reflecting on the life you have and thanking God for the bounties he’s given you – the love of your family, good health and a job.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

The Daily Hustle: Eid-e Qurban, a time to reflect and be grateful
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Khalida Popal: ‘I was accused of wanting to brainwash women to play football’

June 10, 2024

Founder of Afghanistan women’s national team on fearing assassination and fleeing country then aiding 500 players and their families evacuate when the Taliban returned

Guardian
Sat 8 Jun 2024 03.00 EDT

“They tried to silence me,” Khalida Popal says with unflinching clarity as she remembers the moment when, in 2011, she knew she had to leave Afghanistan for ever. As the co-founder of the national women’s football team, and their first captain who had since become the unlikely head of finance at the otherwise all-male Afghanistan federation, Popal’s outspoken defiance made her a target for assassination.

“I faced many challenges, like death threats,” she continues on a mild afternoon in London. “I was always followed and threatened. There was a moment where I saw a gunman coming towards the car I was in so I am thankful for the traffic in Kabul. Usually I was frustrated by the traffic, but that time it saved my life as I managed to jump out of the car and run as fast as I could and hide myself.

“I was lucky I survived. The situation got worse and the police wanted to arrest me. There was so much danger towards me and my family. I put them in a really horrible situation because it’s so dangerous provoking people in an Islamic country. It won’t take long to be stoned or shot. I was accused of being against Islam and wanting to brainwash women to play football.”

Popal was forced into exile and, after a desolate time in refugee centres, she is now a stateless citizen who lives in Denmark. Her gripping and moving new book, written with Suzanne Wrack of the Guardian, also shows how Popal exposed systemic sexual abuse of women in the national team and eventually helped more than 500 people to escape the Taliban and find refuge in different countries. She continues to support many young female Afghan footballers while lambasting Fifa’s failure to offer them recognition or support.

Popal is often described as being fearless in standing up to repression, but she shakes her head. “I was scared,” she says. “I was in shock most of the time. I would receive a phone call from a man saying: ‘I will rape you.’ I was looking around, feeling someone is just behind me, and most of the time I could not tell my parents because I was too scared that their love and protection will stop my work. I was lonely, frustrated, sad and broken. Most nights I was crying into the pillow until I fell asleep.”

Unlike her teammates, Popal was bolstered by parents who encouraged her to speak out and be her true self. “There are many stories of the cost our players paid for playing football,” she says. “One of our teammates was a goalkeeper who had great talent. She was beautiful, amazing, very athletic, and grew up as a refugee in Italy where she learnt football. She came home to Afghanistan and her family was strict. She was playing with us secretly. When the family found out they stopped her.

“Then they took the right away from our friend to go to school and play football. She was imprisoned at home and lost her freedom because her only happiness was school and football. She was forced to get married and so she set herself on fire and burned [to death].”

Despite the trauma, Popal intensified her efforts and a few years later she led the first national women’s team from Afghanistan at a tournament in Pakistan. “That’s one of the most beautiful, amazing moments in our lives,” Popal says, her eyes shining. “When everybody says you’re not worth anything, and you will fail, there is so much pressure. After all our struggles as women, when the national anthem played that’s the most beautiful thing that happened to us. Representing our country when we were told we belonged to the kitchen, that we are whores, was a great achievement. I never played in a World Cup but, to me, that moment felt like winning the World Cup.”

Popal eventually found herself in a position of limited power, developing women’s football, in the national federation. But Keramuudin Karim, the president of the federation, tried to control Popal. Years later she worked with Wrack and the Guardian to reveal how much sexual abuse of players on the national team occurred under Karim’s watch.

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021 and Popal was thrust into even darker terrain. She looks stricken again. “The return of the Taliban came as a shock. I don’t know if we were naive but we trusted the western world which said it will not let the women of Afghanistan face the dark time again. That was the wrong trust.”

Popal was besieged by messages from desperate women begging her to help them escape Afghanistan. “It was never our job, as individuals, to evacuate people. But when the Taliban took over the first thing that came in my mind was: ‘What will happen to our girls? The enemy is out there and they have no protection.’ I was so stressed about the men in the neighbourhood who were against our players’ activism. There was a great risk they will expose to the Taliban what’s happened in the past.

“I remember sitting on the floor of the apartment in Denmark thinking: ‘I have no power.’ And I felt again the guilt because I was the reason they all came to football. And this is how it will finish. They will all get killed. But I’m happy that every time I was about to give up a voice inside said: ‘I do have power as an individual. I can still raise my voice.’ I reached out to people, wrote to them and then groups came together to lobby governments and in a week we managed to get the team out.

“It is now more than 500 [people that Popal has helped to escape Afghanistan]. The first group was 80-something and included the senior women’s national team that is now supported by the government of Australia – where they got evacuated. The youth teams have come to the UK and other European countries, and some went to the US and Canada. Then the families continued coming.”

Popal and her supporters were accused of making “false” claims in the initial evacuation. The BBC alleged that 13 of the female evacuees were not involved with the national or regional teams listed in the documentation. She grimaces now in response: “What was so painful for me was the way a news agency would put my role as someone who played God and said I was the one to pick and choose – ‘You deserve to be alive and you deserve to die.’ I never had that role. I could have just written a post saying: ‘I feel sorry for the women of my country.’ But I went beyond that, even if it’s so risky to do something you have never trained to do. I’ve never trained to evacuate. I’ve never trained how to talk on the phone with a young woman about to kill herself.”

Popal looks at me intently. “I did that during the evacuation because one of our players was too scared. She got a panic attack. When she phoned me on a video call, she had the gun in her hand and I could see it. It was so scary. I couldn’t breathe, seeing what she is trying to do. She said: ‘I’m just sitting by the window and looking outside. The minute the Taliban is on our street, searching houses, I will take my life before they take mine.’

“How do you support someone [in this situation]? I am not a psychologist. I’ve never been trained to tell someone: ‘Don’t do it, don’t give up.’ I don’t care if they played for the national team or what titles they had. All I wanted to do was to get as many women out of the country as possible.”

Did that particular woman escape Afghanistan? “Yes,” Popal exclaims in delight. “Nilab [Mohammadi] is in Australia. She is scoring goals as a top footballer and she is also studying. We have had many conversation because I travel back and forward to Australia. I’m mentoring, supporting through my resources to get them in football, education and work – not only the national team but also our players in Europe and the UK.”

What is Fifa doing to help female footballers from Afghanistan? Popal shrugs. “We are very disappointed. I keep calling on Fifa but they kept ignoring us. They kept silencing us in so many ways. Fifa could do one thing best and that would be recognising this team in diaspora. But they are playing the ball towards the Afghanistan Football Federation, a federation controlled by the Taliban that do not allow women to go to school or get out of their house unaccompanied by a male family member. Where is this hope Fifa has that the Taliban will allow a [women’s] team to represent Afghanistan?”

A Fifa spokesperson said: “The selection of players and teams representing a member association is considered as an internal affair of the member association. Therefore, Fifa does not have the right to officially recognise any team unless it is first recognised by the concerned member association.

“However, ensuring access to football for both female and male players without discrimination and in safety is a key priority for Fifa. Fifa is therefore continuing to monitor the situation very closely and remains in close contact with the Afghan Football Federation and other stakeholders with the aim to promote access to football in Afghanistan. Fifa has also been supporting the evacuation of over 150 Afghan sports persons and human rights defenders at risk in November 2021 and continues its support for this group.”

Has Gianni Infantino, Fifa’s president, given any indication he might meet Popal or her colleagues? “Unfortunately not,” Popal says. “We have sent emails, complaints. I actually filled the form and complained that the Afghan women’s whole football department is vanished, which is against the statutes of Fifa. But our report was not answered. All the players in our men’s national team are not coming from Afghanistan. But they travel and represent Afghanistan. But with our women footballers Fifa is saying to the Taliban: ‘You can do whatever. We’ll support you.’ By staying silent, you support, right?”

Fifa disputes that its leadership ignored the allegations. In 2019 a Fifa spokeswoman told the Guardian: “In early 2018 Fifa was made aware of sexual abuse allegations and immediately began to investigate these serious matters in a way that would ensure, first and foremost, the safety and security of the victims and their families.”

The 37-year-old Popal feels “relief” that her story has finally been told in full in her book. “I always had a fear, like: ‘What if I get shot and my story will be untold?’”

Does she still feel in danger? “There is always risk because I am from Afghanistan and I speak out loud and criticise, and support many young women and girls. Of course there are people who are not happy and want to silence me.”

Popal’s smile is tangled as she admits: “One thing I am very bad at is taking care of myself. But I have found that what makes me happy is being around my girls. Now they are all flourishing in new societies. I’ve never been a mum but, honestly, I feel so good when I meet them in Australia, the UK and Germany. I see them fluently speaking new languages, passing exams, getting their driving licences. This is beautiful.”

 My Beautiful Sisters by Khalida Popal is published on 20 June (John Murray Press, £20). 

Khalida Popal: ‘I was accused of wanting to brainwash women to play football’
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International assistance to Afghanistan needs to adapt to the ‘new normal’

June 7, 2024

Alexander Matheou

Al Jazeera

Published On 7 Jun 2024

Trucks painted bright blue, yellow, and purple dot the arid emptiness of Spin Boldak in southern Afghanistan. Their roofs are laden with the entire possessions of families who have returned from Pakistan after decades of displacement. Hundreds of thousands have preceded them in recent months following a ruling that undocumented migrants must leave or face deportation. Most have never been to Afghanistan before. They must build new lives from scratch.

Many are so poor that they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. They certainly don’t have the capital needed to start a livelihood. When they arrive in Spin Boldak, they receive medical care, some food, and a little cash from humanitarian agencies. They are grateful, but when I ask them what they want, they all underline the same thing – jobs, start-up capital – a chance to survive economically.

Very few will get such help. Not because humanitarian agencies don’t want to support them but because international aid in Afghanistan is still largely geared towards survival, not resilience. This is true for returnees from Pakistan and for responses to floods and earthquakes. As a result, there is a growing divergence between donor strategies and the expressed needs of Afghans facing climate and poverty-related exclusion and displacement risks.

That there is divergence is not surprising. Many of the major donors of international aid are from Europe and the United States. Memories of conflict are still fresh. On top of that, clashes in values with Taliban authorities, particularly regarding access to work and education for women and girls, make tension inevitable and necessary.

What is disappointing though is that the framing of much international assistance remains essentially negative, the emphasis being on not helping the Taliban. Whereas, what is needed is a people-first, positive framing that asks what institutions, structures, skills, and attitudes are most likely to contribute to sustained wellbeing and peace in Afghanistan, given the specificity of the context.

Some will protest that such a framing is impossible while half the population is excluded from education and the workforce. There are two main flaws to this argument.

The first is that it is not entirely true. While restrictions on women are unacceptable and severe, there are exceptions and workarounds that can support women, and these are opportunities to help.

The second is that restricting aid hurts everybody, including women and girls, who, as well as aspiring for themselves, also want their fathers, brothers, and husbands to have an income and an education. In other words, everybody loses from non-engagement, including those the nonengagement is intended to support.

What would a more positive framing consist of in practice?

For a start, it would consider the institutional capacity in Afghanistan to provide social protection and opportunities for its citizens rather than focusing on parallel, international structures. For the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, this means supporting the country’s leading national, humanitarian institution – the Afghan Red Crescent. But there are plenty of other institutions critical to the well-functioning of the country that would benefit from support too.

Second, it would think long-term. Instead of endlessly emphasising an urgent need for food, it would design support aimed at livelihood recovery and job creation, for men and women. This is not an assertion that relief aid is never needed, only that it should be supplementary to a strategy of promoting household economic independence. This is far from where we are now.

Third, it would invest in the country’s capacity to cope with the endless climate risks. Heavy rains and flooding have killed dozens of people in both southern and northern provinces of Afghanistan over recent weeks. Cattle, agricultural land, trees, and bridges have been destroyed, pushing thousands of some of the world’s poorest people into destitution.

Relief aid is needed, but so are check dams and early warning systems. Yet such development support that may provide sustainable protection remains unacceptable to many donors who see it as somehow aiding the de facto authorities. Such policies are helping no one.

Fourth, it would focus on all possible learning opportunities. There is rightly indignation at the lack of secondary education for girls, but we should not give up on learning altogether. Every feasible opportunity for alternative education, vocational education, skills development, and learning should be supported for both men and women. Of all the crises Afghanistan is experiencing, the least visible and most severe may well be a mental health crisis rooted in trauma from the past and a lack of hope in the future. Relief aid is a weak strategy to address that. Supporting self-development is a strong one.

Finally, even a new framing must distinguish between engagement and endorsement. There are many good reasons why endorsement is problematic, but engagement to enable the right sort of investment that works in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan is critical.

After August 2021, many donor countries didn’t know how to respond to the shock of the change in leadership in Afghanistan. To their credit, some continued to respond to humanitarian imperatives even if they did hold back any development financing and engagement.

As we approach the third anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, and begin to witness a relatively stable “new normal” under the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan leadership, it is time for more donors to move from a reactive strategy to a proactive one. One that aims, as much as possible and despite daunting challenges, to lay foundations not just for bare survival, but for wellbeing and hope.

Alexander Matheou is the Asia Pacific Reginal Director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

International assistance to Afghanistan needs to adapt to the ‘new normal’
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Kabul: Final Call by Laurie Bristow; The Afghans by Åsne Seierstad reviews – how the west abandoned Afghanistan… and what happened next

June 3, 2024

In August 2021, Britain’s last ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, climbed on to a table holding a kitchen knife. He and a member of his security team had a small but important task. They unscrewed a portrait of the queen from the wall. Around them was “incessant gunfire”. Some of it came from heavy calibre weapons. A large TV screen nearby relayed the news on a loop. It was grim. The Taliban were at the gates of Kabul.

From time to time, Bristow recalls, there were great crashes from the roof as soldiers destroyed sensitive equipment. The UK was shutting its embassy and relocating to a military facility inside Kabul airport. Soon, soldiers and diplomats would depart. The US-led campaign in Afghanistan – a 20-year saga of wishful thinking and blunders – was ending in ignominy and farce. And, as Bristow describes in his compelling memoir Kabul: Final Call, with betrayal and human disaster.

The previous week, the Taliban had overrun a series of provincial capitals. Afghanistan’s foreign-backed republic was falling apart. That might have been predicted. In February 2020, Donald Trump announced the US was pulling its forces out. The Biden administration stuck to this decision and gave a deadline of September 2021 for the exit of Nato troops. Afghanistan’s government, many thought, might stagger on until Christmas.

Bristow arrived in Kabul in June 2021, as Afghanistan’s future looked precarious. He understood it might fall to him to shutter the embassy and evacuate staff, as well as Afghans who worked with British forces. What nobody had anticipated was the speed with which the situation unravelled. The Taliban – chased out in 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11 – controlled rural areas and key roads. In nine giddy days they reconquered the entire country.

What went wrong? As Bristow tells it, the west failed because of bad strategy and a loss of will. After the attacks on the twin towers, a military response from the US and its allies was inevitable. Its goal: to exterminate al-Qaeda. As a young reporter, I watched the Taliban’s northern army surrender outside Mazar-i-Sharif. The five-year-old emirate ended in “a wilderness of shimmering desert and telegraph poles”, I wrote in 2001. It was “vanishing into history”.

This prediction turned out to be wrong. After a period in Pakistan’s tribal regions, the Taliban returned. They waged a brutal and increasingly effective insurgency against international and Afghanistan government troops. The conflict cost billions. Meanwhile, George Bush’s administration invaded Iraq. A surge by the next US president, Barack Obama, didn’t bring results. By 2021, the public had lost interest in Afghanistan, seeing it as a for ever war with few benefits.

Washington and London’s mistake, in Bristow’s view, was to seek a military solution to what was a political problem. The international coalition also failed to address the “egregious” behaviour of its Afghan allies. Bristow portrays Afghanistan’s then president, Ashraf Ghani, as an aloof academic, surrounded by toadies. As the Taliban closed in, he gave speeches from his fortified Arg palace about digital governance. Afghanistan’s then defence minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, was more clear-eyed; the Taliban tried to murder him. Overall, Afghanistan’s ministers were a corrupt and predatory bunch, beset by factional squabbles.

As the situation got worse, Bristow received media requests for interviews. He relayed these to special advisers working for then foreign secretary Dominic Raab. There was no reply. When Kabul fell, Raab was on holiday to Crete. Other senior mandarins were missing. Bristow doesn’t say much about the infamous campaign allegedly involving former prime minister Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, to rescue Afghan cats and dogs. But he notes that “the priority of some in London” was to spare senior figures from “embarrassment”.

Kabul: Final Call is full of glorious details. Bristow was previously ambassador to Moscow. He swapped a 19th-century mansion overlooking the Kremlin for a Barratt Homes-like residence in Kabul. It had a shiny grand piano and a garden with a small lawn and mynah birds. Before flying out, Bristow picked up a flak jacket and helmet. During security alerts, he took cover in a sweaty armoured “wardrobe” and leafed through a back number of the Economist.

In the run-up to Kabul’s fall, there were numerous ominous signs. Rockets thudded into the green zone. The French ambassador sent home his chef. After relocating to the airport, Bristow found himself in a “real-life” version of Apocalypse Now, as desperate Afghans tried to board a plane. Thousands besieged the perimeter. The Baron hotel – used by the UK as an evacuation handling centre – became a chaotic refugee camp. He spoke to Downing Street from a laptop propped up on the bar.

In contrast to his masters in Westminster, Bristow comes across as decent, serious, analytical and quietly heroic: a brave public servant doing a tough job. He pays tribute to the young British soldiers sent to guard the airport’s gates. And to his staff, who had to inform Afghan families they did not qualify for evacuation. “You are told in return that you are condemning them to death,” he recalls. It was a harrowing experience, he writes, that haunted those involved.

Some hoped the Taliban who seized Kabul in 2021 might be more moderate than their hardline predecessors. This, it turned out, was a delusion. The Afghans, by the Norwegian writer and journalist Åsne Seierstad, tells the story of what happened next, after the last flights carrying Bristow and his US counterparts took off. She traces the lives of three Afghans: a Taliban commander, a young female law student and a prominent women’s rights activist.

Despite earlier assurances, the Taliban closed down girls’ secondary schools, banned women from the workplace and ordered them to cover up. They were forbidden from travelling farther than 45 miles (72kms) without a male guardian.

Seierstad, the bestselling author of The Bookseller of Kabul, gives a heartbreaking account of the first day of school. Senior girls wearing regulation black dresses and white headscarves arrived, keen to learn. They had “expectant faces”. The same morning, the Taliban’s education ministry ordered female secondary schools to remain closed. In some provinces, Taliban fighters stormed classrooms, beating girls with rods and berating them. In 2022, women were banned from university.

It is Afghan women and girls who are paying a terrible price for our missteps. Since the Taliban took power poverty, hunger and infant mortality have soared. Bristow argues we need a “proper reckoning” of why the campaign in Afghanistan ended the way it did. A lack of resolve contributed to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, he thinks. The only “glimmer of light” he sees comes from courageous Afghans who defended their right to live freely and in peace.

Luke Harding’s Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, is published by Guardian Faber (£10.99)

 Kabul: Final Call: The Inside Story of the Withdrawal from Afghanistan August 2021 by Laurie Bristow is published by Whittles Publishing (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. 

 The Afghans: Three Lives Through War, Love and Revolt by Åsne Seierstad is published by Little, Brown (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com

Kabul: Final Call by Laurie Bristow; The Afghans by Åsne Seierstad reviews – how the west abandoned Afghanistan… and what happened next
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The Daily Hustle: Why one Afghan girl decided to open her own madrasa

June 3, 2024

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon • Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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After the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan closed girls’ high schools, thousands of older Afghan girls were left behind from education. With not much to do except help with the household chores, many families decided to enrol their girls in a madrasa so that they could pursue their religious education. Many older girls, who had already had extensive religious education in their high schools, found the quality of madrasa instruction fell short of the mark. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon has spoken to one girl who decided to take matters into her own hands and, with her father’s support, establish a madrasa.  
 

My last day in school

I was a student in grade 11 when the Taleban took over Afghanistan. My school was one of the few co-educational government schools in Kabul, where both boys and girls attended but not in the same classrooms. Sadly, there were far fewer girls than boys studying at my school, but we were all hardworking and serious about our studies.

As district after district fell under Taleban control, my classmates and I were busy with our midterm exams, oblivious to the fact that in a few days, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan would collapse and the Taleban would enter Kabul, and our lives would change forever.

On that last day in school, we took two exams, mathematics and physics. Our teacher told us there were rumours that the Taleban might enter Kabul, and that, if that happened, there was a high chance there’d be fighting in the city streets. This would mean we wouldn’t be able to get to school to take our last exam. It was best, she said, for us to take both exams while we were at school that day.

Little did I know that this would be the last day I’d put on my black school uniform with its white headscarf. I didn’t imagine that never again would I see the inside of a classroom.

When I got home from school that day, my mother told my brothers to stay inside. She said it was not a good idea for them to play with their friends on the street outside our house as they usually did after school. She put my sisters and me to work preparing dinner for the family while she kept one eye on the TV and the other on the front door, waiting for my father to get home from work. She was anxious and distracted.

The Taleban entered Kabul that night. We watched on TV as they took over the Arg (the Presidential Palace), their fighters sitting behind desks where, hours earlier, officials of the Republic had been working.

A month later, the new government shut all the girls’ high schools. After that, girls could only go to school until they’d finished grade six.

Going to madrasa is better than not going to school at all

It was supposed to be temporary. The Emirate announced on the news that girls would be able to go back to high school as soon as the new government made the necessary arrangements. But the days turned into weeks and then into months and the high schools stayed closed.

We are three sisters and three brothers. I am the eldest. My brothers are all in school – in grades 11, 7 and 3 – and my youngest sister is eight years old and also in school. But my 12-year-old sister, who should have been in grade 7 by now, is no longer in school. She’s very upset. In the mornings, we help our siblings get ready. We make breakfast and make sure they have everything they need in their school bags and then we watch with envy as they leave the house to go to school. In the afternoons, I help our younger siblings with their homework. The rest of the time, we help my mother with chores around the house and read books.

Finally, after months of waiting to go back to school, my sister and I decided we should start going to a madrasa. We talked it over with our father. We told him we needed something more than chores to occupy our time. We wanted to learn more about our religion, Islam. He thought it was an excellent idea and enrolled us in a madrasa in our neighbourhood that same week. But after only a few days we realised that our knowledge was too advanced for what they were teaching us. So, we talked to our father and asked him to find another madrasa for us.

Over the months, we tried several madrasas, but the curriculum and the quality of teaching were the same in all of them – rudimentary and desperately poor. They taught us the Arabic alphabet and then how to connect the letters to make words, but we already knew how to read and write. They also taught the Holy Quran, a few hadiths and some doa’a [prayers], but only in Arabic, without translating them into Pashto. My sister kept complaining that she didn’t want to merely memorise these verses. She wanted to know what they meant. So, in the evenings, my father and I sat with her and read the Quran with her in Arabic as well as the translation in Pashto.

I’d already studied these texts in school in Arabic and Pashto. In our religious studies classes, we’d learned tafsir (exegesis), the hadith, the history of Islam and other subjects related to our religion. I went to each madrasa for a few days, but I soon got bored and lost interest. I thought these classes were a waste of time. Yes, they were useful for younger learners, but older girls who’d already had extensive instruction in their high school classes needed a more rigorous curriculum.

Attempts to improve the instruction

Every day, over dinner, l’d complain to my family about the latest madrasa I was enrolled in. At first, my father would find me another madrasa to attend. But it soon became obvious they were all the same. Finally, my father decided to speak to the people in charge of the madrasa about improving the curriculum, perhaps including fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), tafsir and other more in-depth Islamic studies.

But all his efforts were in vain. Although they were very polite and sympathetic, they always gave a reason for not being able to improve the quality of instructions for the girls. In one madrasa, they told him they operated on a shoestring budget and didn’t have the money to hire more professional female teachers. In another, they said they couldn’t find qualified female teachers, and in yet another, they said there were qualified female teachers, but they lived too far from the madrasa and their families weren’t willing to send them to teach so far from their homes. He tried and tried, but the answer was always the same: This is the best we can do for the girls studying at our madrasa. Whatever reasons they gave, in my mind, they were just excuses. I could not accept there was no way to improve the curriculum for girls.

Finally, I decided to ask my father to help me establish our own madrasa on our street.

Let’s open a madrasa

Several reasons prompted this decision. First, my sister, who finished grade 6 last year and is now at home, is growing more despondent by the day. She’s sinking into a deep depression and everyone in the family is very concerned about her. We could all see how happy she was to be going to her classes at the madrasa, even if the quality of teaching was poor. My mother said that some of the other women in the neighbourhood told her they also had daughters in the same predicament and felt they would benefit from going back to a learning environment. But this wasn’t the only reason. We have a beautiful religion and it’s important for every girl to understand Islam and what it means to be a Muslim.

But many people don’t take the trouble to make sure they have a deep understanding of Islam and its tenets. They stray from the path of faith by believing in superstitions and inventions that have, over time, gained currency and are touted as truths. It’s important for all Muslims to understand the faith, its rules and obligations to God and our fellow human beings. I feel strongly that people in my community, especially women, have the opportunity to learn about Islam from credible teachers and, hopefully, stop believing in myths and superstitions.

I presented my idea of opening our own madrasa to my parents over dinner one night. I was nervous and had been preparing my arguments for days. I told him that we could open a madrasa in our neighbourhood if he’d commit some funds to rent a place near our home and pay a couple of well-qualified female teachers. I thought this might give my sister some hope and a sense of purpose and help her overcome her sadness. It would be good for the community because the madrasa would be free for all girls in the neighbourhood and a place for them to learn not only about our religion but also another language – Arabic.

Starting a madrasa, easier said than done

Both my parents thought it was a good idea. My father has a good position in an international NGO and is also a partner in a small business that he runs with one of his friends. He said he’d contribute some of his earnings to opening a madrasa in our neighbourhood. This kind of thing, he said, is an obligation for all Muslims who have the means to support the community.

He looked into how he’d ask permission to register a madrasa and found it was pretty straightforward and could be easily done when the time came. We’ve also identified two very good female teachers of the Quran and the hadith that we could hire when we open the madrasa. We haven’t discussed this with them, or anyone else in detail yet because we don’t want to raise hopes until we’ve rented a place for the school and secured all the necessary permits from the government.

Finding a place to rent has proven to be easier said than done. My father’s been looking for weeks and there are no vacant houses to be had in our neighbourhood. He put the word out that he’d be interested in renting a house as soon as one becomes available. For now, my sister and I spend our days making plans for the time when we can open the madrasa. We’ve enlisted everyone in the extended family to help us find all the things we need – furniture, whiteboards, exercise books and most importantly, textbooks.

While we wait, we still keep hoping that one day soon, the Emirate will find a way to get girls back into education, so that all Afghan girls can finish high school and even go to university, if they want to.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

 

The Daily Hustle: Why one Afghan girl decided to open her own madrasa
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What It’s Like Backpacking in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan as an American

May 29, 2024
Life & Trends Reporter
Newsweek
May 25, 2024

Dreaming of quitting your job to go traveling around the globe? Well, one American did just that on a quest to visit every country in the world and ended up at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“There was an eerie silence and stillness in that moment, and those simple three words will forever be engraved in my mind,” Eli Snyder, a 25-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, told Newsweek, recalling the moment a Taliban official at the border looked him the eye and said “Welcome to Afghanistan” during his visit back in January.

Americans are advised against traveling to Afghanistan. The U.S. Department of State warns that “travel to all areas of Afghanistan is unsafe.” Its current travel advisory for Afghanistan is “Level 4: Do Not Travel, due to armed conflict, civil unrest, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping.”

Eli Snyder in Afghanistan.
Eli Snyder is pictured in Afghanistan in January. “I live for visiting places as dissimilar as possible from how I’ve grown up in suburban America,” he told Newsweek. ELI SNYDER

On May 17, three Spanish tourists were killed and four other foreigners were wounded in Bamiyan, a city just outside the Afghan capital of Kabul, after gunmen opened fire as the group walked through a market. The attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, is believed to be the first assault against foreign tourists since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.

“In general I felt safe in Afghanistan…safer than big cities in the U.S. and Western Europe after dark, that’s for sure,” he said. “I live for visiting places as dissimilar as possible from how I’ve grown up in suburban America outside of Kansas City. Sometimes this means visiting a dangerous place. But it remains true, as I’d much rather visit Pyongyang [the North Korean capital] than Winnipeg.”

He has been sharing his travel adventures on his social media accounts (@snydtheexplorer on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube) and recently shared snapshots from his trip to Afghanistan in a viral TikTok video posted on May 15, which has garnered 1.8 million views.

His latest viral post comes as travel is set to reach “record highs” in 2024, with global tourism spending expected to reach $2 trillion, according to a December 2023 survey by market research firm Euromonitor International.

Jet-setters say they’ll cut down on other areas of personal spending to prioritize leisure travel this year, according to a global survey of over 10,000 travelers across nine countries, conducted by Ipsos and the Hilton hotel group.

‘Absolutely Out of Body Experience’

Snyder, who is currently spending a month in Buenos Aires, was inspired to visit Afghanistan after seeing the country named among the favorite places of travelers who have visited every country and hearing “the best things about the hospitality, nature and food.”

He spent 10 days in Afghanistan, visiting Kabul, Bamiyan and the Band-e-Amir national park in the Bamiyan province in central Afghanistan, as well as the city of Mazar-e-Sharif and the town of Balkh in the Balkh province in northern Afghanistan.

Snyder was accompanied by Valentin Oeckl, a 22-year-old who’s traveling from Germany to Australia without flying. The pair met in Islamabad, Pakistan where Oeckl was staying in order to get a visa for entry into Afghanistan.

Snyder warned: “Only the most experienced traveler should consider traveling to Afghanistan without a guide, and even then, it will be a daunting experience.”

However, he and Oeckl could not afford to pay for a guide, so they navigated the country without one, which was “the most challenging thing.”

Eli Snyder in Afghanistan.
Left, Eli Snyder, on the left, with Valentin Oeckl. Right, Snyder walking in a street in Afghanistan. ELI SNYDER

He noted: “Afghanistan isn’t a country you visit for tourist attractions per se, but a country where you can walk out of your doorstep and be immediately stimulated by the ongoing ebb and flow of daily life.”

There are too many memorable moments from the trip to recount, Snyder said, but the most poignant one was when he crossed the border into Afghanistan from the town of Torkham in Pakistan.

Snyder recalled: “We had walked through the long corridor of barbed wire fences, and found ourselves alone in the Afghanistan immigration office. We handed over our passports to the Taliban official, who stamped us into the country, looked at us in the eyes and said ‘Welcome to Afghanistan.’

“From then forward, everything was an absolutely out of body experience. But perhaps the craziest part was the end of the trip, when we would wake up and go walk around the markets, chatting with locals and the Taliban as if it were just another day,” he added.

The “only hairy moment” during his trip was on the morning of his first day in Kabul. He and Oeckl didn’t have their permits yet and were walking to the office of the country’s Ministry of Information and Culture.

“We were apprehended and they were stern with us for not having our permits, but mostly they were just curious to see two tourists walking around Kabul without a guide,” the traveler said.

Eli Snyder in Afghanistan.
Eli Snyder picture with locals in Afghanistan. “I’d much rather visit Pyongyang [the North Korean capital] than Winnipeg,” he told Newsweek. ELI SNYDER

Staying Safe While Exploring Afghanistan

Snyder’s “top tip” for keeping safe on a trip to Afghanistan is to explore the country with a guide. He noted: “Of the micro niche tourist scene that exists for visiting Afghanistan, a gross majority have a private guide to assist with daily activities and Taliban interactions. The issue is that guides cost thousands of dollars due to the demand and the fact that people will pay anything for safety.”

Snyder also said he was able to navigate the country without a guide with the help of tips from a blog by Diána (@theglobetrottingdetective on Instagram), a Hungarian solo female traveler who traveled around Afghanistan for four weeks.

“Without her trip reports, I wouldn’t have had the confidence, information, resources, contacts etc…to successfully and safely execute my trip,” he noted.

“When you smile at someone and look them in the eye, displaying a warm and sincere and non-threatening demeanor, it is the most effective method to diffuse any instigation that I’ve ever known. Just smile, be kind, and you’ll be alright wherever you are,” he noted.

What It’s Like Backpacking in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan as an American
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Departing Afghanistan

May 29, 2024

By William H. McRaven

The Atlantic magazine
A poem for Memorial Day

The Atlantic has often channeled the resources of poetry—its charged and immediate patterns of language—to mourn and memorialize the war dead. The earliest years of the magazine spanned the Civil War, during which the editors published dirges, elegies, and ballads that told stories to console, to heal, to hearten. An elegy for Rupert Brooke took the sonnet into a new, modern vernacular at the time of the First World War. In October 1944, the magazine put together a portfolio of Soldier Verse; in 1960, The Atlantic published Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead,” a poem that reflects on the uses of monuments and memorials.

“Departing Afghanistan” continues and deepens this legacy. William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral and the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote “Departing Afghanistan” in June 2021, prior to the evacuation in August.

The poem emerges from a period of deep reflection and personal soul-searching: Had all the losses, over 20 years, been worth the fight? In its emphasis on the experience of service members, and in its haunting refrain, “Departing Afghanistan” provides neither a defense nor an explanation. After all, the decision to go to Afghanistan and to leave Afghanistan was never the decision of the service members.

Instead, for this Memorial Day, Admiral McRaven offers a probing inquiry and a sustaining melody—and a message to the service members that, as McRaven put it to me: “for twenty years they fought with courage and convictions, they kept Americans safe and they should have no regrets as we depart Afghanistan.”

— Walt Hunter
The Hindu Kush will be quiet now,
silence will come to the ancient lands.
The roar of the planes
will fade in the night
as we depart Afghanistan.
The scholars will chide us
and the pundits will pan,
why did we stay so long
when we should have been gone—
gone from Afghanistan.
But the fight was a good one,
noble and right,
no matter how long it took.
Not a soul has been lost on American soil,
not a single building shook.
For 20 years our people were safe,
living their lives in peace,
raising their families across the land,
because our soldiers fought—
fought in Afghanistan.
It was a tragic waste, some will say,
the loss of so many men.
The rows and rows of headstones
on the graves at Arlington.
But a noble life is never a loss,
no matter where they may fall.
To the soldier who did their duty,
they’re a hero forever, for all.
Make no mistake about it,
we came for a righteous cause.
We fought with courage and conviction.
We fought for the betterment of all.
And for those who cheer our final days,
be careful about what you wish.
For the fate of the Afghan people
is unlikely to be filled with bliss.
The children will weep as their future fades
and old women will cry to their men.
“They weren’t so bad,”
the elders will say,
as we depart Afghanistan.
We pray for the people of Afghanistan,
they are warm and kindly souls.
We pray that their future
will be filled with success
as the days and years unfold.
I hope those we saved will remember us,
and the innocents we harmed will forgive.
But to those who bore arms against us,
may you regret each day that you live.
The winds will howl through the vacant FOBs,
through the plywood and houses of tin.
The tarmacs will rot
in the noonday sun
as we depart Afghanistan.
Some will say it was right.
Some will say it was wrong.
Let the history books decide.
But every soldier did their best,
of that, no one can deny.
We ache for those warriors we lost
and the loved ones who bear the pain.
If only we could have saved them all,
and brought them home again.
The Hindu Kush will be quiet now
and silence will come to the ancient lands.
For those who served
let there be no regrets
as we depart Afghanistan.
William H. McRaven is a retired naval officer.
Departing Afghanistan
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A Hidden History

May 29, 2024

The New York Times

May 22, 2024

A Times investigation uncovered a brutal campaign enacted by U.S.-backed forces during the war in Afghanistan.

I covered the war in Afghanistan and went back after the Taliban took over.

General Abdul Raziq was one of America’s fiercest allies in the fight against the Taliban. He was young and charismatic — a courageous warrior who commanded the loyalty and respect of his men. He helped beat back the Taliban in the crucial battlefield of Kandahar, even as the insurgents advanced across Afghanistan.

But his success, until his 2018 assassination, was built on torture, extrajudicial killing and abduction. In the name of security, he transformed the Kandahar police into a combat force without constraints. His officers, who were trained, armed and paid by the United States, took no note of human rights or due process, according to a New York Times investigation into thousands of cases that published this morning. Most of his victims were never seen again.

Washington’s strategy in Afghanistan aimed to beat the Taliban by winning the hearts and minds of the people it was supposedly fighting for. But Raziq embodied a flaw in that plan. The Americans empowered warlords, corrupt politicians and outright criminals in the name of military expediency. It picked proxies for whom the ends often justified the means.

I’ll explain in today’s newsletter how using men like Raziq drove many Afghans toward the Taliban. And it persuaded others, including those who might have been sympathetic to U.S. goals, that the U.S.-backed central government could not be trusted to fix Afghanistan. If there was ever any chance that the United States could uproot the Taliban, the war strategy made it much harder.

My colleague Matthieu Aikins and I have covered Afghanistan for years. After America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, we were suddenly able to visit people and places that were off-limits during the fighting. We traveled there, hoping to learn what really happened during America’s longest war.

Alongside a team of Afghan researchers, we combed through more than 50,000 handwritten complaints kept in ledgers by the former U.S.-backed government of Kandahar. In them, we found the details of almost 2,200 cases of suspected disappearances. From there, we went to hundreds of homes across Kandahar.

We tracked down nearly 1,000 people who said their loved ones had been taken or killed by government security forces. We corroborated nearly 400 cases, often with eyewitnesses to the abductions. We also substantiated their claims with Afghan police reports, affidavits and other government records they had filed. In each of the forced disappearances, the person is still missing.

Even at the time, U.S. officials grasped Raziq’s malevolence. “Sometimes we asked Raziq about incidents of alleged human rights abuses, and when we got answers we would be like, ‘Whoa, I hope we didn’t implicate ourselves in a war crime just by hearing about it,’” recalled Henry Ensher, a State Department official who held multiple posts on Afghanistan. “We knew what we were doing, but we didn’t think we had a choice,” Ensher said.

It would be too simple to say that Raziq’s tactics were entirely in vain. They worked in some respects, reasserting government control in Kandahar and pushing insurgents into the hinterlands. Raziq earned the admiration of many who opposed the Taliban. More than a dozen U.S. officials said that without him the Taliban would have advanced much faster.

But Raziq’s methods took a toll. They stirred such enmity among his victims that the Taliban turned his cruelty into a recruiting tool. Taliban officials posted videos about him on WhatsApp to attract new fighters.

Many Afghans came to revile the U.S.-backed government and everything it represented. “None of us supported the Taliban, at least not at first,” said Fazul Rahman, whose brother was abducted in front of witnesses during Raziq’s reign. “But when the government collapsed, I ran through the streets, rejoicing.”

Even some who cheered Raziq’s ruthlessness lamented the corruption and criminality he engendered — a key part of why the Afghan government collapsed in 2021. After Raziq’s death, his commanders went further. They extorted ordinary people and stole from their own men’s wages and supplies.

“What they brought under the name of democracy was a system in the hands of a few mafia groups,” said one resident of Kandahar who initially supported the government. “The people came to hate democracy.”

Historians and scholars will spend years arguing whether the United States could have ever succeeded. The world’s wealthiest nation had invaded one of its poorest and attempted to remake it by installing a new government. Such efforts elsewhere have failed.

But U.S. mistakes — empowering ruthless killers, turning allies into enemies, enabling rampant corruption — made the loss of its longest war at least partly self-inflicted. This is a story Matthieu and I will spend the coming months telling, from across Afghanistan.

A Hidden History
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