The Daily Hustle: The ancient art of making surma

May 6, 2024

Sayed Asadullah Sadat • Roxanna Shapour

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In Afghanistan, surma (kohl) has been used since ancient times by both men and women to enhance the eyes, for its healing properties and to protect the wearer against the evil eye. Traditionally made by grinding stibnite rock into a fine power, the use of the black concoction to line the eyes also has a religious aspect. According to accounts in the Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad used and recommended a form of surma, both for its medicinal qualities and as an adornment. It is therefore halal and its use permitted, or even encouraged. In recent times, however, this millennia-old practice has fallen out of favour with urban dwellers who are increasingly opting for imported eyeliners. There are also concerns about potential health hazards, if the surma has been made in unhygienic facilities, or, as is the case with some preparations, contains high levels of lead. AAN’s Sayed Asadullah Sadat has spoken to a man whose family has been supplying surma to Kabul’s residents for five generations about how the coveted black paste is made and what the future holds for this centuries-old tradition.

Surma, the family business

I’ve been selling surma in Kabul all my life. It’s a trade my brother and I inherited from my father 30 years ago, as he had from his father. My family has been selling surma for five generations and we have a reputation as among the most trusted vendors in Kabul.

There are four kinds of surma in Afghanistan. The best come from stibnite (ithmid) rocks from the mountains in Badakhshan and Ghorband.[1] These are the rocks I use to make my surma. I buy them from trusted traders who bring them to Kabul. The antimony from Badakhshan is a lightweight, ‘moist’ rock that makes for a true black surma. They say Badakhshi surma is ‘hot’[2] in nature and so good to use in winter to warm the eyes against the cold. The rock from Ghorband is heavier and it’s a ‘dry’ rock. It’s more difficult to grind into a fine powder and the colour is not a deep black like the surma the rock from Badakhshan produces. Ghorbandi surma is ‘cold’ and is best used in the warmer months. Both have healing powers and protect the eyes against all manner of ailments, especially air pollution.

There are other surmas, less expensive and of inferior quality on the market. One comes from Peshawar and is similar to the one from Ghorband. Another is imported from Russia. There are also commercial surmas, imported mostly from Pakistan and India, that are made by burning things such as apricot kernels into charcoal, but these don’t have the same benefits as rock surma and are also not considered halal.

Making surma then and now

As a boy, I learned how to make surma at my mother’s knee. Once a month, she would make surma from the rocks that traders brought from the mountains. First, she’d put the rocks in the fire to burn off the impurities. Then, she would grind them into a fine powder in her brass Russian-made mortar and pestle, sifting the powder several times through a mesh until she was satisfied with its fineness. Next, she’d melt beef fat, skimming off the foam until there was a clear liquid, the colour of gold, which she’d drip slowly into the powder until she had a paste. Finally, she’d wrap the paste into several paper parcels, which she weighed on a tarazu (traditional scale) to make sure they weighed three grams each. These little paper packets were my father’s stock for the month. He’d carry them in a small pouch on his route as he walked the streets of Kabul, hawking or calling at the homes of his regular customers.

In those days, my brother and I would sit next to my mother as her hands deftly turned rock first into fine powder and then into paste. She’d tell us the story of surma – where it came from, what it was used for and about the ancient people in distant lands who used it.[3] Slowly, as she recited verses from the Hadith about how the Prophet Muhammad used antimony, she’d line our eyes with surma to keep us healthy, ward off the evil eye and thank the Prophet for the bounties his gift was affording our family.

I still prepare surma much the same way my mother did, except modern appliances have made the job easier and faster. I now use a gas stove instead of a brazier, an electric grinder instead of my mother’s mortar and pestle, a battery-operated scale to weigh the packets and little plastic pouches instead of paper.

Health concerns and changing fashion

Business these days is not as good as it used to be in my father’s time. Many urban women, who used to wear surma as part of their makeup, have stopped using it in favour of eyeliner pencils imported from the West. They frown on surma, saying it’s old-fashioned and unhygienic. There are doctors and reports in the news that say it’s bad for the eyes and could lead to infections or even blindness, that surma contains lead and could poison the blood and cause all kinds of diseases. But I don’t think they’re aware that our surma, which comes from the antimony rocks of Badakhshan and Ghorband, does not have lead.[4] Anyway, my family has been selling surma for five generations, and in all this time, there’s never been a case of anyone having any trouble with our product.

We still have about 70 regular customers. Some shopkeepers buy from us and sell at a profit in their stores. We also do a fair amount of trade selling on the streets of west Kabul and sometimes customers call me on my mobile and ask for a delivery. Many families still use surma regularly. People still use surma at weddings and when babies are born. People also use it when they make a sacrifice, lining the eyes of the sheep [to be killed] with surma. This is not based on sharia, but it’s according to our own customs in Afghanistan.

The surma market is indeed dwindling, but there’s still enough custom for us to make a living. We buy the stibnite for 400 afghanis (USD 5.70) per kilo and can make about 1,000 afghanis (USD 14.90) per kilo after we process it. These days, we make about 7,000 afghanis (USD 99) a week, which my brother and I divide equally.

Surma, a dying tradition

My sons and nephews don’t want to take over the business. They say it’s a dying market and they don’t want to live hand to mouth. Two of my sons are in Iran chasing their dreams for a better future on construction sites along with their cousins. I have two other sons who are still here in Kabul. One works as a guard and the other as a driver. We always thought that at least one of the boys would carry the family tradition into the future. We wanted to modernise our operation, expand the wholesale side of the business, start selling to more and more shops and maybe even export to Pakistan and Iran. We had plans to buy some machines to do the grinding and mixing and invest in nicer, professional-looking packaging.

Now, my brother and I sit together to grind the rock and make surma in a melancholy mood and lament the end of our family as a long line of trusted vendors of surma. We will keep the tradition going as long as we can, hoping that at least one of our boys will come to see this tradition as a legacy worth saving.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

References

References
↑1 Stibnite, an antimony-sulphide metalloid compound (Sb2S3), is the main natural source for the chemical element, antimony (atomic number 51).
↑2 In Afghanistan, as in the wider region, there is a belief that foods and other things ingested by humans have a hot (garm) or cold (sard) property, with a unique impact on the human body.
↑3 Just how ancient is testified to by the modern words used for surma. The Arabic name, koḥl, which was borrowed into English in the eighteenth century, was earlier used in Akkadian, another semitic language spoken 3,500 years ago. Greek and Latin borrowed a word from ancient Egyptian to get stibium. The Persian word, surma, comes from Azerbaijani – ‘to draw along’ (see Wikipedia).
↑4 Surma made from an alternative source, the rock, galena (lead sulfide), would contain lead.

The Daily Hustle: The ancient art of making surma
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Despite Daunting Economic Headwinds, Afghan Private Sector Shows Signs of Life

May 2, 2024

BY: William Byrd, Ph.D.

United States Institute of Peace

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Business cannot be the economy’s savior, but it can help stabilize the situation with support from donors and the Taliban.
Three years after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the country’s economy remains in a dismal state marked by depression-level price deflation, high unemployment and a collapse of GDP. Still, while the bad news for Afghans is well known, less visible are some green shoots in the country’s private sector that, if properly encouraged, could mitigate the situation. These range from small business activity to Taliban plans for major projects to the potential for an uptick in investment. Clearly nothing in those developments can stimulate a strong economic revival.
Yet should the Taliban, foreign donors and agencies, and the Afghan private sector manage to do more in their respective spheres, there is reason to hope for greater economic stability. That should benefit the Afghan people and the country’s neighbors, not least by easing pressures on Afghans to out-migrate in search of incomes.Signs of increased activity for Afghan businesses can be detected in projects underway and nearing completion; in missions abroad by trade and business delegations; in some new private investments; and in the fact that a few Western companies are operating again in Afghanistan. The percentage of small companies reporting a return to full operations after years of war and disruption has doubled in the past year amid a number of startups.  Announcements by the Taliban regime of mining, infrastructure, and other projects are significant. On the international side, recent initiatives like the World Bank’s “Approach 3.0” are intended among other things to support the Afghan private sector.

But the broader headwinds facing the macro-economy remain formidable. The continuing impacts of the shocks stemming from the August 2021 Taliban takeover — most notably the abrupt cut-off of development aid and security assistance — have been compounded by the Taliban’s rigorously enforced ban on poppy cultivation, declining humanitarian aid, and compulsory return of many Afghans from Pakistan.

Business Activities in Afghanistan

The stirring of the Afghan private sector was evident at a private sector conference in Istanbul on March 4, organized by the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce and joined by USIP, and at individual meetings with Afghan business leaders there and subsequently in Dubai.

  • The Taliban are reporting new business creation in Helmand, where some 67 manufacturing firms — mostly in agro-processing — are said to have started operations in the past three years, along with similar reports from some other provinces. At a broader level, the number of private enterprises surveyed by the World Bank that reported being fully operational rose from 28 percent in May-June 2022 to 57 percent in March 2023, with 31 percent of firms in the subsample that responded to both surveys reporting their operating status had improved versus 16 percent reporting a decline.
  • The sole remaining Afghan private airline, Kam Air, has an expanding fleet of 12 aircraft with commercial flights operating among four Afghan cities and between Afghanistan and Dubai, Istanbul, Delhi and other regional cities. Several foreign airlines have resumed scheduled international flights to Kabul.
  • The Taliban retendered and awarded to a Chinese company the major Amu Darya oilfields project, with production reported to have started up. There are also reports that small-scale oil refineries are back in operation, using locally extracted crude oil purchased by the Taliban and then auctioned to refiners.
  • The Taliban have contracted three sizable cement projects, two with Afghan companies and one with a Qatari investor, with a reported total investment of $450 million. This presages significant progress toward self-sufficiency in a sector where it eminently makes sense given Afghanistan’s resource base and the high cost of transporting cement long distances from neighboring countries. The contrast with the previous government, which could not get major cement investments going due to a variety of reasons, one being corruption, is striking.
  • Numerous mining contracts have been issued, though many of them may be simply validating and taxing ongoing activities while the prognosis for large new projects is uncertain. There is clearly considerable ongoing activity in smaller-scale extraction of resources such as coal, talc, chromite, dimension stones, gemstones and lithium, the latter including at least for a time involvement of Chinese entrepreneurs.

On the international side, some larger Chinese companies appear to be expressing interest in the mining sector and infrastructure, and there are even a few U.S. and European businesses operating in Afghanistan. For example, a California-based telecom services company is actively supporting a major Afghan mobile phone company.

The World Bank’s Approach 3.0, announced in February, modestly expands the Bank’s engagement with Afghanistan, while maintaining its “principled approach” embodied in Approach 2.0, which is intended to ensure participation of women and girls in bank-financed projects. Approach 3.0 authorizes: (1) resumption of World Bank International Development Association (IDA) grants to Afghanistan, which had been stopped since August 2021, to complement continuing funding by the Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund (ARTF); (2) completion of the $1.2 billion CASA-1000 project to transmit electricity from the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan; (3) bank staff to engage in technical meetings with senior Taliban officials; and (4) financing of small and medium-sized private Afghan businesses by the World Bank, including a recently approved microfinance project, and its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Afghan Economic Doldrums

Despite these positive signals, private sector activity along with Taliban business promotion is running up against the formidable challenges faced by the Afghan economy as a whole, enumerated above: plummeting humanitarian aid, the Taliban’s opium ban and the last year’s forced repatriation of Afghans from Pakistan (which appears to be resuming after a pause). These new shocks are reverberating atop those stemming from the August 2021 Taliban takeover — loss of more than $8 billion a year of civilian and security aid, the run on Afghan banks, freezing of some $9 billion of Afghan central bank assets in the U.S. and elsewhere and the stoppage of financial transactions with foreign banks, among other things.

The impact of all these shocks on aggregate demand in the economy, and on Afghans’ incomes, has been dramatic. GDP declined by more than a quarter in 2021 and 2022 and there is no sign of significant recovery in 2023, nor on the horizon in 2024 and beyond. According to the World Bank’s Afghanistan Welfare Monitoring Survey, the unemployment rate among surveyed households was close to 20 percent as of April-June 2023, and there is no reason to believe that more recent trends will be any better.

A striking symptom of low demand and lack of purchasing power in the country is the ongoing economy-wide price deflation. Headline inflation (year-on-year) started to decline in mid-2022, went below zero about a third of the way through 2023, and since then has been negative — reaching nearly minus 10 percent as of February 2024. These kinds of price declines are only seen in countries facing a deep economic recession, such as the U.S. Great Depression in the early 1930s when prices declined by 25 percent between 1929 and 1933. Mirroring these price declines is the appreciation of the exchange rate of the afghani by 20 percent vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, which discourages exports and encourages imports — the opposite of what is needed given Afghanistan’s large trade deficit which calls for higher exports and lower imports.

What To Do?

Afghanistan’s economy will remain weak for the foreseeable future despite private sector activity and business interest in some projects. It would require major, unlikely actions to change this bleak picture.

On the Taliban side, reversing or at least mitigating their restrictions against female education and women working would, in addition to its direct benefits for Afghanistan’s economy and development, help loosen restrictions affecting international financial transactions and economic relations. And at least a de facto relaxation of the Taliban’s problematic, unsustainable opium poppy cultivation ban would restore part of the more than $1 billion a year in rural small farmers’ and wage laborers’ incomes that have been lost. Unfortunately, major changes like these do not appear to be on the cards.

Short of such game-changers, the Taliban administration should reverse recent price deflation and ensure that the Afghani exchange rate is not too strong. Reducing the amounts of U.S. dollars sold by the Central Bank at foreign currency auctions, and moderately increasing the printing and circulation of afghani banknotes, is the correct macro policy stance and would at least stop worsening the recession.

Second, avoid overtaxing the private sector. The regime has been successful in mobilizing tax revenue, especially customs receipts. However, actually collecting all the taxes on the books, which the previous government did not exploit due to lax effort and widespread corruption, would impose too heavy a burden on the private sector and further dampen economic activity. The Taliban should review of the existing panoply of taxes, simplify by abolishing duplicate and excessive taxes, and not impose new levies.

What can foreign donors and international agencies do? Absent unlikely changes in policies such as formal recognition of the Taliban government or the outright removal of sanctions, international actors can mitigate the economic headwinds by:

  • Slowing and making more predictable the inevitable decline in humanitarian aid while increasing basic development assistance to the maximum extent possible (including newly authorized World Bank assistance under Approach 3.0);
  • Maximizing the effectiveness of aid and its benefits for the economy and private sector by prioritizing local procurement from Afghan companies while moving away from importing goods that can be produced in Afghanistan and aid agencies importing goods on their own account;
  • Reducing over time the U.N. humanitarian cash shipments, which are high-cost, risky, and optics-wise problematic, and gradually replacing them with a combination of normal banking transactions, swap arrangements, and use of digital currency and e-money;
  • Exploiting the authorization for the World Bank and IFC to provide financing directly to Afghan private businesses, and encouraging other aid agencies to do the same (funding well-vetted Afghan private companies is no more risky and probably less risky than other forms of aid);
  • Engaging with Taliban officials on technical macroeconomic policy issues by the World Bank (permitted under Approach 3.0) — in particular to encourage the authorities to shift to more expansionary monetary and exchange rate policies; and
  • Getting international authorization and facilitation — if necessary — to arrange manufacture and circulation of more afghani banknotes to increase the money supply moderately.

Regional countries should facilitate — not block — trade between Afghanistan and its neighbors. Border closures should be avoided and not used for political leverage. Business travel and contacts should be encouraged, building on earlier initiatives. Large-scale deportations of Afghans by neighboring countries need to stop. Beyond their humanitarian consequences, they are economically harmful — especially for Afghanistan but also for neighboring economies, which make use of Afghan labor, and potentially damaging as well for regional security.

From a longer-term perspective, Afghanistan will need to make more and better use of its water resources, for both irrigation and hydroelectric power, which in turn will support the private sector in agriculture, agri-business and other activities. This will require cooperation by regional countries and receptivity to fair water sharing agreements and mutually beneficial water conservancy projects, which can regulate water flows as well as provide electricity to multiple countries.

What can Afghan businesses do? Though the Afghan private sector can sometimes be effective in pursuing narrow commercial issues such as tax relief, it seems unable to engage in effective collective action in furtherance of broader economic goals, let alone to pursue changes in social policies.

Sizable businesses with ongoing activities in Afghanistan should strive to stay in operation, even if there are no prospects for expansion in the short run. They should proactively seek, as appropriate, contracts with the aid community to provide imported and, increasingly, domestically produced goods and services, which will foster private sector development and improve aid effectiveness.

Sizable and successful Afghan businesses based in neighboring countries should not lose interest in Afghanistan, and they may be able to support exports of Afghan agricultural and processed goods and enhancing their value chains, as well as investing in import substitution.

The large amounts of Afghan expatriate financial capital in nearby countries may become available to augment the leverage of IFC and other international financing, which is now authorized and hopefully will materialize in the future.

There are no “silver bullets” that will revive Afghanistan’s economy, let alone stimulate the robust economic growth that is essential for national development. But taken together, the above actions by the key stakeholders will make a difference. They can mitigate the weakness of the country’s economy and help promote critically needed economic stability.

Despite Daunting Economic Headwinds, Afghan Private Sector Shows Signs of Life
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The State of Research on Afghanistan: Too many poor quality publications and some real gems

April 29, 2024

Christian Bleuer

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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With the publication of the newest edition of the Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography, Christian Bleuer, who has been compiling and adding to it since 2004/5, looks at what it says about the state of scholarship on Afghanistan and comments on the past and future of research in this area. The problems with integrating scholarship and research into policymaking is discussed and he also notes some interesting new research while offering suggestions for reading.

The Afghanistan Analysts Bibliography 2024 is available for download in the Resources section on our website.

Many publications, but not many good publications

That there is a massive volume of English-language publications on Afghanistan is undeniable. The Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography now stretches to almost 8,000 publications, including books, academic journal articles, research institute reports, university dissertations and other entries: the first edition, compiled in 2006 included just under 1,000 publications. What is also undeniable is that the average quality of these publications is low – an assessment particularly noticeable in relation to the author’s research interests, governance, conflict and identity. As for quantity, the annual volume of publications in English did rise sharply after 2001 as the West focussed on Afghanistan, and will likely decline precipitously as that attention and funding diverts to other crises.

That low-quality assessment is, however, an average. Certain rare publications stand out as higher quality – some of the author’s favourites are showcased below. Usually the better publications stem from field research or in-depth archival research, backed by fluency in local languages. On the other hand, low-quality publications are all very similar, with most based on a brief survey of secondary sources of poor to average quality. There is a relevant computer science concept here: GIGO – garbage in, garbage out, meaning, if you put dud data in, you get dud results out. It could be applied to many publications on Afghanistan. It is just not possible to make a satisfactory study if it is based on previous poor quality studies, unless your research is on the phenomenon of bad scholarship. The author has published several articles in this category, for example, his 2014 report for AAN, ‘From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in Western writing’.

The importance of languages

Some research projects related to Afghanistan do not require fluency or even proficiency in Pashto, Dari or the other languages of Afghanistan, nor do they need to be based on lengthy field research or archival research. Examples here include military studies that focus on NATO/ISAF forces, analysis of American foreign policy decision-making (when Washington is the subject of analysis, not Afghanistan), technical agricultural reports and critical feminist studies of representations of Afghans and Afghanistan in the Western media. At the opposite end of the scale would be studies that can only be sufficiently analysed with local language fluency and deep knowledge of local history and society, with examples including studies on the ethnic and/or religious factors in local identities and political action, push/pull factors in decisions to emigrate from Afghanistan, ethnographic case studies and the examination of rural livelihoods and economic survival.

The comparison to area studies in other regions puts Afghanistan studies in a poor light. There are academic journals and publishers that would absolutely outright reject any submission by an author without language fluency demonstrated in the references and citations. This is especially true in Russian, Chinese and Latin American studies, among many others. Some fields are even more rigorous, if much smaller. The following anecdote is illustrative of this. Years ago, this author spoke to one recent university graduate who was hoping to do a PhD in Mongolian studies (with a focus on the 13th century), only to be dissuaded by a professor who said that for his proposed research he would need to become fluent in reading not just multiple forms of Chinese and Mongolian from different eras, plus Old Uyghur, but also French, German and Russian to access secondary sources from the 19th and 20th century. Compare this to most articles in the bibliography whose list of references include only English-language publications.

Other fields of research have a much higher share of publications that have another strength seldom seen in publications on Afghanistan – time, and plenty of it. So much about publications on Afghanistan is ‘instant analysis’, that is hurried and shallow as a result. This is not to deny that many authors have works that are a decade in the making, even if they are not getting daily attention.

The problem of good and bad scholarship underpins another question: Can even good literature on Afghanistan have any beneficial effect or make some positive contribution to policymaking and governance?

Should policy-makers read the literature on Afghanistan?

One publication can, in certain circumstances, have a major effect. It does not mean, however, that the effect is necessarily positive. An example of this is when President Bill Clinton likely based his decision to not intervene early on in the Balkan conflicts after reading the book, ‘Balkan Ghosts’, by journalist Robert Kaplan, a person with no local language skills or in-depth research background in the Balkans. The book presented a deeply flawed ‘ancient hatreds’ argument, long ago disproven in academia. The argument in the book went that the people of the Balkans have hated and fought each other based on ethnicity forever and will continue to do so, making any intervention or engagement futile (see this reporting in The New York Times). The counterargument, that Clinton did not read, expressed in a book review by the journalist-turned-historian Noel Malcolm, was that “The Bosnian war was not caused by ancient hatreds; it was caused by modern politicians.” Whatever one’s view on the NATO interventions in the Balkans, it is clear that policy should not have been made based on ahistorical and deeply flawed publications.

Knowledge can also be used in a way that is not for the broader public good, for many British colonial administrators spoke local languages and understood regional history very well, all in the service of the empire. Moreover, knowledge is not always power (good short background on that issue here). Knowledge about a problem does not, in itself, allow for it to be fixed. It is dubious to suggest that, for example, the creation of more knowledge on the local history, language and social trends in Palestine and Israel is going to facilitate solving the Israel-Palestine conflict in the face of contemporary local political intransigence on one hand and the lack of will on the part of outside powers on the other (not because of ‘ancient hatreds’).

Could Afghanistan have benefitted from any studies, or do all paths lead to failure such as Israel-Palestine? Or is this just another faulty line of argument similar to that of ‘Balkan Ghosts’, even if not exactly an ‘ancient hatreds’ argument? It is not possible to prove that more knowledge could have worked out better for Afghanistan, but it is undeniable that there was an early lack of large-scale violence post-2001 that was squandered by the disinterest of Western power brokers (now transfixed by Iraq) and by many local leaders working in their own narrow personal interests.

Nobody in any position of power or influence over Afghanistan in 2001 was following the guidelines of ‘evidence-based policy’, a concept that “advocates for policy decisions to be grounded on, or influenced by, rigorously established objective evidence” versus “policymaking predicated on ideology, ‘common sense,’ anecdotes, or personal intuitions” (more information on this concept here). This concept is practiced in medicine, advocated for in regards to energy and climate change and thoroughly ignored in foreign policymaking and state-building. While there may have been experts on Afghanistan who were ignored in 2001, it cannot be argued that there was some vital, comprehensive publication that policymakers could have read at that time that would have pushed them towards more sustainable and effective policies. However, even a cursory reading of human rights reports from the 1990s could have woken the US and others up to exactly who they were putting into power and there were different Afghan voices arguing cogently for different types of governance structures they deemed appropriate for their country.[1] Neither research institutes nor universities have the foresight or funding to regularly produce such work before an issue becomes policy relevant. Publications that were intended to inform policymakers only became common after 2001.

There is even a case of a powerful leader ignoring their own academic work. Two presidents of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani and Hafizullah Amin, both have/had advanced degrees from Columbia University. While nothing is known of Amin’s academic work while studying for his master’s degree in education, Ghani wrote an excellent anthropology dissertation and then much later co-authored a book with Clare Lockhart titled Fixing Failed States. This book, which was received favourably by reviewers, was ignored by Ghani once he became president, in favour of politics as usual. If policymakers will not or cannot take their own advice – advice they built a career upon – how do we expect them to take advice from others?

The problem of expert advice and scholarly literature being ignored is clear enough. Academics and their work have consistently been ignored or just not useful for policymaking (not counting outliers such as the ignored book mentioned above). Added to this is the communication problem where academics and policymakers speak different languages. Academic work is often too dense and filled with jargon and obscure theory. It is indigestible for those outside the field (and sometimes even for fellow researchers).

Unfortunately, the environment of university-based research is declining precipitously. This will mean that opportunities for research that existed for Ghani (Columbia University PhD) and Lockhart (Harvard and Oxford degrees, plus a lengthy Yale fellowship) will exist but in lesser numbers and in poorer quality.

The death of the university

Universities in the West are failing in their traditional goals, with opposite ends of the ideological spectrum offering competing explanations for why, with the mundane reasons being budgets cuts combined with an out-of-control university bureaucracy funnelling money towards itself at the expense of students and faculty. Of the many failures, of which students are the primary victims, are the relatively minor concerns of those early career researchers wishing to make a living from their work. The problem here as related to research on Afghanistan is that there was and still is a need for in-depth and long-term analysis of Afghanistan, but is there a market for it? Should young students and researchers invest time and money in earning an advanced degree scrutinising some aspect of Afghanistan, or train in data management or dentistry?

There are now many disincentives to invest so much in studies and language training. What is at the end of such a rigorous course of study over a decade? The statistics say that you should prepare for the likely scenario of retraining and employment outside the field of study you chose – and indeed outside of university employment in general. Even if a researcher is particularly dedicated and sticks with their PhD studies despite the negative forecasts, they may find only employment at the fringes of academia in a role known in the US as ‘adjunct faculty’, a type of low-paid part-time and/or short-term contract employment that puts at least one-third of teachers in this scheme under the poverty line (according to a 2020 study by the American Federation of Teachers. The equivalent positions in Canada, Australia and western Europe are not much better when you factor in the extreme cost in living in some of the cities and towns where competitive research universities are based. At the opposite end of the scale are the full-time permanent faculty position that comprise only 25 per cent of instructors at American universities, a phenomenon with equivalents in most other countries to varying degrees (see this blog from Inside Scholar on the rise of part-time and short-term contracts in universities).

How about scholars on a fast track, who do not need so much time to become proficient in the languages of Afghanistan and who already have a strong base of knowledge to build on? Obviously, Afghan researchers whether in Afghanistan or in the diaspora have a strong head start and could be the source of much needed quality analysis. However, this does nothing to fix the long-term problem of the decline of university research as a viable career choice.

Some interesting research

Failures and faults of Afghanistan research aside, there are some bright spots. Below are some publications from the last five years that have caught the eye of the author due to his personal research interests. They touch on governance, religion and ethnicity. If you are looking for recommendations on agriculture, military operations, gender or macro-economics, you will need to ask somebody else. The works selected are interesting for their high quality, or as an example of a new trend in research – and in some cases both.

If in 2001 there were only a few professors and prominent exiled Afghan political figures whom you could ask for their opinions on what sort of structure the Afghan government should have, over 20 years later, we now have Afghans asking Afghans that question in a rigorous manner:

Mohammad Bashir Mobasher and Mohammad Qadam Shah, 2022, ‘Deproblematizing the Federal–Unitary Dichotomy: Insights from a Public Opinion Survey about Approaches to Designing a Political System in Afghanistan’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Vol 52, No 2.

In this article, Mohammad Qadam Shah (Seattle Pacific University) and Mohammad Bashir Mobasher (American University, Washington DC) argue that “concepts such as unitarism, federalism, centralization and decentralization are highly politicized and often misunderstood when they enter the public discourse.” So, if you were hoping for an answer to the question ‘What system of governance do Afghans prefer?’, you will get an accurate but complicated answer, and certainly not an easy one. You may consider this debate moot with the return of the Islamic Emirate (Afghanistan’s current rulers prefer a unitary and highly centralised state), but the article may be useful in the future when and if the Taleban no longer rule Afghanistan.

If you are not a student or faculty at a university with subscription access, you can have ‘short-term access’ from Oxford University Press to this article for the very unreasonable price of 55 USD, or you can email the authors directly and ask for a PDF – a good example of the difficulty in accessing research on Afghanistan. There is, however, an article on the same topic (a general introductory work) that is available for free:

Jennifer Murtazashvili, 2019, ‘Pathologies of Centralized State-Building’, Prism, Vol. 8, No. 2.

There are also an increasing number of collaborative works between local and foreign researchers; I choose to note this one as it is, unexpectedly, by two researchers based in China:

Ihsanullah Omarkhail and Liu Guozhu, 2023, ‘The Trajectory of Islamic State Khorasan Province and Afghan Taliban Rivalry’, Small Wars and Insurgencies.

Related to my interest in ethnicity and religion – specifically the interplay between the two – there is an entire issue of an academic journal with 11 articles by Afghan, Pakistani and Western scholars on the theme ‘Ethnic Nationalism and Politicized Religion in the Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderland’.

There are also several books I want to eventually read, but cannot assess at the moment (due to constraints of time, money and library access). One is an English translation of a book originally published in German in 1975, for those interested in the deep history of the region:

Karl Jettmar, 2023, Religions of the Hindukush: The Pre-Islamic Heritage of Eastern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan, Orchid Press.

On the subject of religion, there are more publications worth mentioning. The question of what exactly is the status of Sufism in Afghanistan at the moment is addressed in this book:

Annika Schmeding, 2023, Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan, Stanford University Press.

I also noticed a recent English translation of a 1970s ethnography by an Afghan. It will certainly read like a classic ethnography – both in a good and bad way, as it is a product of its time. But regardless, it should provide an informative view of the understudied ethnic Baluchis before the beginning of decades of war.

Ghulam Rahman Amiri, 2020, The Helmand Baluch: A Native Ethnography of the People of SouthWest Afghanistan, Berghahn Books.

Published by Berghahn Books and available for purchase at a price (USD 135) set for university library buyers, this book serves as a model for moving knowledge from local languages into English – in terms of content although not price. There are many other works by local scholars that would merit translation if funding was available.

Another book from the same publisher is a study of Afghans as a global phenomenon:

Alessandro Monsutti, 2021, Homo Itinerans: Towards a Global Ethnography of Afghanistan, Berghahn Books.

Anthropological studies of Afghans can no longer confined to the village, or even just to the territory of Afghanistan. That has been true for decades and even more so now. Alongside this book, one should consider reading this study of Afghan traders who turn up in surprising places across the Eurasian continent:

Magnus Marsden, 2021, Beyond the Silk Roads: Trade, Mobility and Geopolitics across Eurasia, Cambridge University Press.

For some reason, this book went unnoticed by the author when compiling the bibliography – an unfortunate incident that illustrates the need for a researcher to do their own search for sources that is not just confined to this bibliography. On a more fortunate note, the publisher has made this book free to download.

Notable over the last five years, at least in areas of research that this author favours, is that European researchers have made more contributions worth mentioning than Americans (for unclear reasons). In addition to Schmeding, Monsutti and Marsden above, I noted with interest these two new books, one already published and one forthcoming, in June of this year:

Florian Weigand, 2022, Waiting for dignity: Legitimacy and authority in Afghanistan, Columbia University Press.

Jan-Peter Hartung, 2024, The Pashtun Borderland: A Religious and Cultural History of the Taliban, Cambridge University Press.

The (bleak) future of research

Despite the positive contributions listed above, universities cannot be relied upon in the future to produce a sufficient base of knowledge. Is there an alternative? Options exist, but in a deficient form that would need to be reformed. Government-controlled research services such as Australia’s Parliamentary Library, the United States’ Congressional Research Service and the UK’s House of Commons Library are focused on rearranging existing research into digestible shorter products for government. They do not produce new knowledge and much of their work is tailored to individual MPs, ie it is never destined to be public. Nor does it appear that any of the most important foreign policy decisions has ever been affected by research from these types of institutions.

On the independent side, research institutes and thinks tanks have short time frames and in many cases unreliable or short-term funding, some of which reduces their independence. It is clear that there is no model waiting to take over the research role that universities have performed, even if it is and has always been overwhelmingly an ineffective role. If governments want access to timely research before and at the beginning of a crisis, they will need to start funding projects that can provide the evidence that is needed to craft effective policy. This funding will need a long-term component focussed on researchers who need some guarantee of long-term job security if they are to invest so much time, effort and money into research on what many will consider irrelevant topics (until the topic becomes highly relevant). This could take place in a university or in an independent research institute, but in a manner that negates the short-comings listed above.

Unspoken in this article and a topic that would merit a much longer discussion, is the collapse in opportunities for field research (as in the 1980s and 1990s). Will communication technology and inter-connectedness overcome this problem and reach into Afghanistan in a methodologically sound manner, or will rigorous and scholarly studies on Afghanistan be limited to refugee and asylum studies based outside of Afghanistan? Furthermore, the ability of local researchers to freely do their work and publish is doubtful. A report from January that the Islamic Emirate had conducted a mass confiscation of locals’ books in Dari and Pashto was not encouraging. Maybe this state of affairs will not be permanent, but, sadly, I see no bright future for research on Afghanistan. I hope to be proven wrong.

You can download the bibliography here.

Edited by Kate Clark

Note about the author, written by the author: Christian Bleuer left the field of Afghanistan studies in 2009-10 when it became clear that his planned fieldwork among ethnic Uzbeks in Kunduz Province was, due to security concerns, no longer possible according to his university’s guidelines for doctoral research fieldwork. Preparation for that fieldwork can be seen in this article on the local history of the Kunduz river valley. The eventual plan would have been to work from these (overwhelmingly English-language) sources to expand into field interviews and translation of local language sources and documents. The resulting article – basically a salvaging of a literature survey for a failed research project – fits in very well amongst the many other articles on Afghanistan that are based almost entirely on English-language sources.

His other work on Afghanistan has often been alongside Afghan researchers, with this AAN report being an example of one of the types of collaborative research he feels can be useful. The bulk of his research (mostly unpublished or uncredited as an anonymous author) is on former Soviet Central Asia. He eventually co-authored a history of Tajikistan.

References

References
↑1 For example, in October 2001, Afghan-American anthropologist M Nazif Shahrani argued in the Canadian online governance policy forum, Federations, against a highly centralised form of government, while the Afghan-Canadian economist Omar Zakhilwal (and years later, Afghan minister of finance and ambassador to Pakistan) argued exactly for it:

M Nazif Shahrani, 2001, ‘Not “Who?” but “How?”: Governing Afghanistan after the conflict’, Federations, October issue, PDF.

Omar Zakhilwal, 2001, ‘Federalism in Afghanistan: A recipe for disintegration’, Federations, October issue PDF.

 

The State of Research on Afghanistan: Too many poor quality publications and some real gems
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Married at 10, abused and forced to flee without her children: an Afghan woman on life under the Taliban

April 26, 2024

Mahtab Eftekhar, as told to Zuhal Ahad

The Guardian

At the age of 10, while still in the third grade, I received news from my mother and stepfather that we would travel to Helmand province for my brother’s wedding. Little did I know, it was to be my own wedding, as my family had arranged my marriage to my cousin and sold me for 40,000 Afghanis [£500], without my knowledge or consent.

That night, after the wedding, I went to sleep beside my mother and little brother, only to wake up next to my cousin. Trembling from confusion and fear, I fled the room in tears and screams. But my mother and her sister coerced me back into that room. It was then that I was told I had been married to my cousin.

It was the beginning of an agonising nightmare that shattered my childhood and adult life.

Two years later in 2007, aged 12, I became a mother for the first time, but my child was born premature and disabled. She soon passed away. The next year, I gave birth to and lost another daughter. My husband’s family had refused to take her to the doctor when she was unwell because she was a girl, and not the boy that they had wanted so much.

In 2010, when I was still only 14, my third daughter was born. She was also sick and below average weight. She got weaker day by day and her skin was getting increasingly yellow.

Relentless abuse from my husband for the misfortune I kept bringing to the family left me exhausted, but the fear of losing my child gave me the strength to flee to my mother’s home in Kabul. After months of treatment at a public hospital, my daughter recovered from jaundice.

I thought moving away from his family, who had encouraged him to mistreat me, might put an end to the physical and mental abuse but it continued nonstop. The fear of losing my children kept me from leaving or seeking a divorce.

Kabul presented a fresh start and better opportunities, especially for my daughter, Zahra, who began attending school. From then on, my primary focus shifted to her education. I would study alongside her, reading her lessons before teaching them to her every evening.

Today, at 14, she excels in English and has a great talent for drawing. When she was younger – and before the Taliban takeover in 2021 – she was invited to participate on television programmes and often talked about the hardships I and many women like me endure in Afghanistan. I relived my childhood and dreams by bringing up such a strong and smart child as Zahra.

At this time, I also took tailoring and beauty courses that led to me gaining work at a nearby salon. Starting with basic tasks such as eyebrow trimming, I eventually established my own beauty parlour in Kabul. Unfortunately, my only source of income and hope was closed by the Taliban after they regained power in 2021.

“If you breathe, you belong to me; otherwise, you belong to the earth,” he told me.

Mahtab Eftekhar, pictured with her daughter Zahra, who is now 14 years old and still living in Afghanistan. Photograph: Handout

After the Taliban regained power, my daughter was also barred from attending school. As the physical and verbal abuse from my husband intensified, I submitted a formal complaint at the Taliban’s police station, detailing the abuse and how I was forced into a child marriage.

When my husband learned of this, he took my children to Helmand and asked me to drop the case if I wanted to live with them again.

After many days apart from my children, I couldn’t bear it any more and reached out to my daughter. I coordinated with her on the phone to set a meeting time. I travelled to Helmand and, with the help of a family that I met on the bus, I passed all the Taliban checkpoints and was able to reunite with my children.

But on the journey back, near Kandahar city, the Taliban forced me and my children out of the vehicle and took us to a police station. Instead of helping me they beat and verbally abused me for travelling alone.

At first, I did not tell them anything, but then I saw my husband and his family at the police station and understood that they had reported me to the Taliban. My husband’s mother hit me with a rock and accused me of adultery, and abandoning the house and my responsibilities.

I froze as I knew what the consequences of such an accusation could mean for me. If it was proven that I had committed adultery, I would be flogged or stoned to death by the Taliban. I felt as though the entire world was against me.

I tried to defend myself and told the Taliban about my complaint and request for divorce. I pleaded my innocence with the authorities at the station, but they did not listen to me. They had already judged me guilty without any proof. As punishment, they beat me with rifle butts, plastic pipes and whips.

Fearing the consequences of defying the Taliban, I reluctantly agreed to go back with my husband’s family. They told me that my husband would divorce me and that I could keep my daughter but they would take my son. Hoping to secure at least my daughter’s future, I agreed.

But my trials were far from over. During my divorce hearing, the mullahs [Taliban clerics] decided that as a woman who had demanded a divorce, I lost all rights, including obtaining the mahr [dowry] and custody of my five-year-old son. The mahr refers to the money or assets given by the husband to his wife. It is considered the exclusive property of the wife, which she can use to support herself during the marriage or after divorce.

Although I tried to appeal against the verdict in other courts, I got nowhere.

After my divorce was finalised in 2023, I joined women protesting against the Taliban and their oppression of women. Despite my activism, my thoughts never strayed far from my son. Unfortunately, my husband took my son back to Helmand, leaving me devastated.

I sought help from the Taliban’s police, but each time, they refused. Instead, they accused me of adultery and flogged me as a punishment.

Soon after our divorce, my husband brought our son to visit me in Kabul, only to use the opportunity to kidnap our daughter, taking them both back to Helmand.

Mahtab with her daughter, Zahra, who was kidnapped by her father and taken to back to his family in Helmand province. Photograph: handout

I was left with no reason to live. No one would rent me an apartment due to my being alone and single and I could not work as women were barred from jobs. So, I put away all my belongings – and the sorrow of losing my children – and left for Iran.

I am now 26 and I have lost everything: my childhood, youth, health and my children. Yet I am grateful to have found my voice. In Iran, I am earning a living working in a tailors’ shop and, at the same time, advocating and amplifying the voices of women in my country.

I am not afraid of dying on this journey to justice. Rather I embrace it, knowing that at least I will be an example for thousands of women enduring similar hardships and inspire them to stand against tyranny.

Married at 10, abused and forced to flee without her children: an Afghan woman on life under the Taliban
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The Durand Line and the Fence: How are communities managing with cross-border lives?

April 22, 2024

Sabawoon Samim

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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The Durand Line, which serves as the de facto border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, has never been officially recognised by any Kabul government. It cuts through the heart of Pashtun tribes, who share family ties, religion and traditions. For most of its existence, it made little practical difference to the lives of the people living on either side. However, Pakistan’s decision in 2017 to fence the entire Line, a project which is now almost complete, has physically split communities. In this report, guest author Sabawoon Samim looks at what that has meant to the lives of those living on the Durand Line, exploring the damage done and some of the partial solutions found by locals, albeit at some cost and some risk.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking the download button below.

Many of the interviews for this report described the fence built by Pakistan as “passing not through the land, but through [our] hearts.” It follows the 2,640-kilometre-long Durand Line, signed in 1893 between the Afghan king, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, and the British foreign secretary for India, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand. Much has been written about how the agreement was reached, its legal status and how it affects the politics of the two countries. However, there is a dearth of information about the damage done to local communities, socially, economically and culturally, by Pakistan’s fencing of the Line. This report, based on 16 in-depth interviews with Afghan nationals from the border provinces, tries to remedy that.

After providing a brief historical background, it delves into who the local communities are and the bonds between them. It examines the recent restrictions put in place along the Durand Line, particularly Pakistan’s fence, and how it has split communities and prevented what used to be normal travel. It explores how locals are coping with losing the freedom of movement they used to enjoy and the means they employ to try to cut through, go under or otherwise, circumvent the fence – and the risks and costs that entails.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking the download button below.

The-Durand-Line-ReportDownload

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 19 Apr 2024

The Durand Line and the Fence: How are communities managing with cross-border lives?
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‘Why the silence? Why the inaction? It breaks my heart’: Malala and Jennifer Lawrence take on the Taliban

April 19, 2024

The Guardian

Fri 19 Apr 2024

The Oscar-winner and the Nobel laureate have teamed up to make Bread & Roses, a new film about the abuse of women in Afghanistan. In an emotional interview, they warn that the west ignores its message at their peril.

“Strong women are not easy women,” says Jennifer Lawrence, “and a woman’s life is lonely. So much of our experience cannot be shared or understood by men, and our rights are in their hands. That’s why we need each other.”

The two other people on our video call nod in agreement. One is Malala Yousafzai, who, with Lawrence, has produced a new documentary about the oppression of Afghan women by the Taliban after US troops withdrew in 2021. The other is Sahra Mani, who directed it.

Bread & Roses is also a story of three women. Sharifa incarcerates herself at home in accordance with new laws that ban women from school, work or going out other than in certain chaperoned circumstances, wearing full-body coverings. Zahra is a dentist whose activism lands her in jail. Taranom seeks refuge in Pakistan and mourns her homeland. “Strong women are always lonely women,” she says near the end of the film, bereft.

No arguing with that today. “That’s why we’re here,” says Malala. “Because it is a lonely journey, and we are joining each other to share empathy, and solidarity with all Afghan women.” Mani hasn’t returned to Kabul since the Taliban took control again. Seeing school friends married off as minors further spurred her to gain an education. Her own brother objected. “You have to fight in your community, in your family,” she says. Then, once you enter “male-dominated society, they’re not ready to accept you as someone who has a brain. So yes, it’s really lonely.”

Today, of course, the situation is yet worse. “If you are born as a girl in Afghanistan,” says Malala, “the systematic gender oppression by the Taliban has decided your future for you. This is the worst form of discrimination: women denied every basic right and opportunity.”

In fact, adds Mani, her film sanitises current events. We see protesters attacked with water cannons; in reality many were “killed, kidnapped and illegally detained. The situation is much worse than I say in the film.”

The genesis of Bread & Roses began three years ago, after Lawrence was appalled by news reports about the plight of these women, and by the prospect of their being forgotten. “I think it’s really easy to be ruled by our constantly moving news cycle,” she says – less peppy, more sober and, later in the call, more emotional than the familiar chatshow charmer. “By the time the information gets to us, it has been so distilled through our western lens.”

Agreeing with Malala that “storytelling is the soul of any activism”, Lawrence commissioned Mani to coordinate the shooting of first-person testimonies. “Hopefully this movie,” says Lawrence, “made by Afghan women, through their perspective of this moment, will mean it’s not just a flash of a story in a pan. It is a resistance happening right now. These women need the world to witness this so that they are not suffering in vain, and we need to pressure our governments to hold the Taliban accountable.”

Progress has been slow. The US administration has not taken responsibility for the repercussions of its military retreat. Western feminists tend to focus on matters of immediate domestic import, and on identity politics, rather than the massive and dramatic human rights abuse in the Middle East.

“It is a reality that breaks your heart,” says Malala. “Why is there silence? Why is there inaction? Activists and storytellers cannot spend too much time thinking about it.” The ultimate obligation lies with the general public, she believes. “I think it’s the job of the people to hold their leaders to account and put more pressure on them. So I hope that people will begin to question their representatives and ask them what they have been doing. What do they mean when they say they’re committed to gender equality – those nice fancy words – when they don’t take any action to protect women’s rights and girls’ education in Afghanistan?”

Why haven’t they yet? Racism and ignorance certainly contribute, agrees Malala, ever measured and collected. “Sometimes when people talk about Afghanistan or Pakistan they assume that this is normal, expected. But when women are systematically oppressed we should not excuse that based on religion and culture.” Zahra, Sharifa and Taranom are trying to define themselves within their society and faith: now a radical act, but less so 100 years ago, when female education and modern dress were encouraged, and forced or child marriage abolished. (All such reforms have been repealed, reinstated and repealed again many times.) “I think culture is defined by people,” Malala continues, “and oftentimes women are not included in that.”

In the film, men are curiously absent. Even Zahra’s fiance, Omid, although tearful at the prospect of her departure, does not visibly back her protests. Such inertia is standard, says Mani. “In the minds of Afghan men, women’s education is a women’s problem. Not theirs.” Some are even enabled by the lockdown: one woman sobs reporting beatings by her husband, who has been liberated by the isolation (a WHO report nine years ago found 90% of Afghan women had experienced domestic violence). Mani’s previous film, 2018’s A Thousand Girls Like Me, told of a young Afghan woman seeking to expose the abuse within her family – and the failings of the country’s judicial system.

Sexism also helps account for the muted international response, says Mani. Had men been the victims, we could have expected a different tenor of outcry. “What Afghan women face today has not come from God. They are victims of male politicians who made a wrong decision – and children and women pay the price.”

At one point, women on a march are threatened by unseen male hecklers: go home and shut up or we will kill you, they say. One woman succinctly slaps him down: “You are desperate for power over us.”

How much is that a universalism? “All of this is universal,” says Lawrence. “This misogyny is dangerous. And the paralysis that comes over us when we don’t know what to do or how to help is dangerous.”

Yes, I say: the Taliban behaving like this is not unexpected; the tacit complicity of loved ones feels the greater betrayal. Or perhaps that’s too strong a word?

A still from Bread & Roses.
‘You are desperate for power over us’ – a still from Bread & Roses. Photograph: Courtesy of Apple

“Not strong enough of a word,” says Lawrence. “Of course it’s a betrayal. We of course felt that betrayal when our supreme court turned over Roe v Wade. How can you not see me as an equal? It doesn’t decrease the amount of abortions, it just increases the amount of death. Women die. It’s a massive betrayal.”

The strength of Lawrence’s response to that rollback was reported at the time. Her home state of Kentucky was one of the first to ban abortions after the 2022 ruling, reopening a rift with her Republican family that had begun during Trump’s presidency, and which Lawrence had been trying to repair since giving birth to her son, Cy, now three.

“I just worked so hard in the last five years to forgive my dad and my family and try to understand,” she told Vogue in 2022. “I’ve tried to get over it and I really can’t … I can’t fuck with people who aren’t political any more … It’s too dire. Politics are killing people … How could you raise a daughter from birth and believe that she doesn’t deserve equality?”

One of the outcomes of that ire today is that she refers to her day job as “purely just a way to be able to get a film like this made”. Using her platform “makes me feel a little hopeless. But it’s something. Obviously it was scary to reach out to Sahra and offer to get her funds and equipment. There were many people in my life that didn’t want me to get involved in something that would make the Taliban not like me. It’s scary and it is overwhelming, but the scariest possible outcome is ignoring it and pretending like it’s not happening.”

Lawrence’s investment in the project is also evident when she begins weeping. This comes when speaking about people “whose rights are taken away and their homes are stolen. These people have to be separated from their families. Nobody wants to go to a refugee camp in Germany where they have to share a tent with thousands of people. The living situation is so dire that a part of me just can’t even believe that we … it’s just unbelievable.”

That we allow this to happen? “Yes. And that this is the terrorist response: little boys are easier to manipulate into becoming young soldiers if their mothers aren’t educated. So they stop education for young girls from sixth grade. It’s an unbelievable way to treat humans, your fellow citizens, the women who are your wives, who are your mothers, your sisters. It’s so overwhelming.”

Lawrence’s voice shakes. “I do understand and sympathise with the freeze response. I have to fight it myself. But the alternative is so much more horrifying, because the Taliban is a terrorist organisation to the world. And the longer we ignore the rights of women in our own country and countries around the world it makes the world a more dangerous place.”

This, agrees Mani, is where the international strategy of silence seems perverse as well as cruel. Compassion shouldn’t be a luxury – but other countries should seek to curb the Taliban through self-interest, too.

A still from Bread & Roses.
Men are conspicuously absent here … a still from Bread & Roses. Photograph: Courtesy of Apple

“We shouldn’t trust them. If Afghan women are paying the price today, the rest of the world may pay tomorrow. We don’t want something horrible like 9/11 to happen again.”

Instead, she says, the west appears to be funding its own destruction. “We handed part of our world to terrorists and told them: ‘You can have it! Plus: we will pay you millions of dollars every week!’ The Taliban receives a lot of financial support from international communities without any accountability.”

She leans forward, urgent and angry. “So what is the game? There is a horror happening. What is the story behind all of this?”

 Bread & Roses is on Apple TV+ and in select cinemas from 21 June.

‘Why the silence? Why the inaction? It breaks my heart’: Malala and Jennifer Lawrence take on the Taliban
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The Daily Hustle: The trials and tribulations of being a street vendor in Kabul

April 15, 2024

Sayed Asadullah Sadat • Roxanna Shapour

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For anyone who has spent any time in Kabul, handcart sellers and street vendors are a familiar sight, as they walk around the city hawking their wares from dusk to dawn trying to eke out a meagre living for their families. Street vendors say that more and more young Afghans have been joining their ranks, trying to earn a living during a time of high unemployment. The municipality, worried about the impact on traffic congestion, revived a half-hearted policy of the Islamic Republic and banned mobile selling, insisting the vendors must buy a fixed booth and then pay monthly rent. At a time of economic hardship, those added costs have just added to the difficulties of trying to earn a living selling goods on the streets of the Afghan capital, as AAN’s Sayed Asadullah Sadat found out when he spoke to two vendors.
40-year-old Amanullah [not his real name] is a street vendor who supports a family of ten selling vegetables.

For the past ten years, I’ve been selling vegetables from a handcart in the Pul-e Bagh Umumi area of Kabul. These days, this way of earning a living has become ever more difficult. The number of street vendors in Kabul has been on the rise since the economy went bad and the jobs dried up. More and more people arrive in Kabul every day in search of a living; many end up on the streets selling everything from vegetables to clothing to used electronics. Unfortunately, this has worsened the already bad traffic situation in Kabul. You’ll see handcart vendors weaving through the vehicles trying to sell their goods, competing for space with the cars – and the streets were already crowded!

Last year, Kabul municipality came up with a plan to reduce traffic in the city and part of that was building white stationary stalls for street vendors to rent.[1] They told us we were banned from hawking our wares from handcarts or on foot. So, I borrowed 15,000 afghanis [USD 209] from my brother-in-law for the initial cost of a stall. There’s also the ongoing rent, which varies from 3,000 to 30,000 afghanis [USD 42 to 417] a month, depending on the size of the stall and its location. I could only afford the least expensive one, so my rent is 3,000 afghanis [USD 42] a month.

At first, business was good and I was able to provide for my family. But a few months ago, the municipality moved our stalls to a remote commercial vegetable market. They hadn’t even told us beforehand. One morning when I went to work, my stall was gone. I went to the police station, but they said they didn’t know anything about it and that I had to go to the municipality. At first, the municipality said they didn’t know anything about it either. Finally, after searching for most of the day, another street vendor told me the stalls had been moved to this commercial produce market near the Kabul River. That is where I finally found my stall. My vegetables were damaged from sitting in the heat all day.

I went back to the municipality to ask why the stall had been moved and they said the original location had been designated as a ‘green area’, so the stalls had to be moved to another place. I told them the new place was a private market and the owner wanted to charge an additional amount for rent. The officials told me they couldn’t do anything about that. Now, in addition to the monthly rent I pay the city, I have to pay another 1,600 afghanis [USD 22] for ground rent to the owner of the market.

Many of the other street sellers have taken their stalls home and started selling on the street [ie in front of or near their homes] again. I’m thinking of doing the same. I’m not making much money because the market’s out of the way and few people come there to shop. I’ve asked if I can move my stall to another location, with a higher footfall, but they said this was the location allocated to me and that If I wanted to move, I had to apply for another location and pay another fee.

Things didn’t used to be like this before. Street vendors didn’t have to pay money to anyone during the Republic. We weren’t hunted down like thieves and we were never taken to the police station. It’s true that in some areas, criminal gangs forced us to pay protection money and some shopkeepers charged a small fee for allowing us to set up in front of their shops, but these were not high amounts. Vendors were making enough money to provide for their families and even put some aside for a rainy day.

Hamidullah [not his real name] is a 28-year-old street vendor with a university degree, originally from Paktia province. He’s been selling children’s clothes in Kabul for the past year to support his family of nine back home.

Last year, I lost my office job and had to find work to provide for my family. I came to Kabul from Paktia province, hoping to find a job. Initially, I’d planned to go to Iran, but my friends who were already there warned me against it. They said the economy was bad, the Iranian rial had devalued, and the money you could earn wasn’t worth as much as it used to be. Plus, it was expensive to live there. They were struggling to make ends meet and couldn’t send money back home to their families. Additionally, the Iranian government had stepped up deportations, and the risk of being sent back with nothing was high. Therefore, I decided to sell children’s clothes on the streets of Kabul instead. I live in a rented room with some friends from my village who also sell things on the street. We work during the day and spend the evenings together, talking about the day that passed and our plans for the future. Sometimes, we don’t sell anything and we share what we have with each other.

It’s not easy being a street seller. The economy’s bad and people don’t have enough money to buy clothes. Still, I’m in a much better position than many other clothes vendors because I sell children’s clothes and people are more likely to spend money on their kids, especially at the start of the school year or before an Eid.

The municipality wants us to rent stalls from them, which they say is to help reduce traffic in Kabul. They put up about 200 stalls next to the Kabul River and sold them to people. Then one day, they removed all of them and leased the land to a businessman who built a modern market in their place. They call it a ‘public-private partnership’. The market has about 500 small shops, but most are empty because it’s expensive to rent one. It costs 7,000 dollars upfront and 3,000 afghanis [USD 42] rent per month. As for me, I don’t even have the money to buy a handcart, so renting a stall’s out of the question.

I have a deal with a shopkeeper who gives me the clothes on credit. Every morning, I pick up the clothes. From early morning until the end of the day, I carry the clothes in my hands, looking for customers and trying to dodge the police. In the evenings, I take what’s left back to the shop, along with the day’s earnings, and he gives me my cut. On good days, I can make as much as 300 afghanis [USD 4.20], but there are days when I don’t make a single sale.

You have to be on the lookout for the police. Since the municipality started its policy of forcing street sellers to rent stalls, they don’t allow us to sell on the street. They hunt us down and harass us. I, myself, have been taken to the police station several times. Each time, they confiscate my goods and make me promise to stop selling on the street. When they give back my stock, many of the items are damaged or soiled and sometimes things go missing. Once, I lost around 20,000 afghanis worth [USD 278] of children’s clothes. I’m still paying off the debt to the shopkeeper.

My roommates and I have started putting a little money aside each month so that we can rent a stall together. It means living more frugally than we already are and asking our families back home to do the same. It’s not easy, but we have to tolerate it. We have no other choice. We have to tighten our belts and pool our funds to secure a stable location so that we can earn money on the right side of the law and without fear of being harassed.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 Kabul Municipality’s plan to designate locations and establish fixed booths to regulate the activities of street vendors and reduce traffic congestion in Kabul dates back to the days of the Islamic Republic, but it was only enacted half-heartedly. After the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, the municipality revived the plan (see this April 2022 ToloNews report) and has enforced it strictly, with higher costs (both initial outlay and rent) for the vendors. See also AAN special report published in September 2022, ‘Taxing the Afghan Nation: What the Taleban’s pursuit of domestic revenues means for citizens, the economy and the state’.

 

The Daily Hustle: The trials and tribulations of being a street vendor in Kabul
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America’s 20-Year War in Afghanistan Is Over, but Some of the U.S. Military’s Waste May Last Forever

April 3, 2024

Interview by Jenni Doering

“Living on Earth”
A farmer from Khoshob village walks near his water reservoir near Kandahar airfield, in southern Afghanistan. Credit: Kern Hendricks
A farmer from Khoshob village walks near his water reservoir near Kandahar airfield, in southern Afghanistan. Credit: Kern Hendricks

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Managing Producer Jenni Doering with freelance journalist Lynzy Billing. 

JENNI DOERING: The war in Afghanistan was the longest the U.S. military has engaged in with the last of American troops withdrawing in 2021. Over twenty years, the U.S. military dropped tens of thousands of bombs in Afghanistan and more than 70,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians died as a direct result of the war.

The prolonged conflict also left many Afghan people without adequate food, clean water, and shelter, making them vulnerable to natural disasters, including the devastating earthquakes that have taken thousands of lives in recent days. But there is another cost to the war that is often overlooked.

Afghan civilians are now living among dangerous pollutants left behind in the wake of the fighting, according to reporting from Lynzy Billing. She’s a freelance journalist who was born in Afghanistan and dug into this for our media partner Inside Climate News and New Lines Magazine.

Lynzy, welcome to Living on Earth!

Lynzy Billing reported on environmental and public health issues around three former U.S. military bases in Afghanistan in 2022. Credit: photo courtesy Lynzy Billing.
Lynzy Billing reported on environmental and public health issues around three former U.S. military bases in Afghanistan in 2022. Credit: photo courtesy Lynzy Billing.

LYNZY BILLING: Thank you for having me.

DOERING: So we often think of the direct injuries that bombs and other weapons can inflict during a war, but they can also leave behind dangerous chemicals. So what kinds of toxic substances can munitions have?

BILLING: I think that beyond the obvious impacts of the bombs and weapons during the American war in Afghanistan, there was a longer lasting effect that came with the war. And that really is the chemicals and residue attached to these weapons and munitions. If we’re speaking about bombs alone, tens of thousands of bombs were dropped on Afghanistan over the last 20 years. And most of these included explosives like RDX. And RDX has been described as being potentially carcinogenic. There’s a whole array of munitions that are left behind.

But it’s also the bases themselves, the military bases, and their waste disposal practices, and their activities during the war that also left behind the environmental effects that really we haven’t had a chance to look at properly until now. I think I really wanted to get away from just talking about the weapons that are still left half buried or uncovered and really look at the longer lasting health impacts from the war in general, which are in soil and are in water and in the air and in people’s food and what they eat and drink from on a daily basis.

DOERING: Yes, from what I understand, the U.S. military consistently dumped sewage into agricultural fields where Afghan people were growing their food. What pollutants were in that sewage, and what kinds of impacts did that have?

BILLING: One of the things that kept coming up around the three bases that I visited, which were in Nangarhar, Kandahar, and Parwan provinces, these were three of the largest US bases in the country, it was a lot of agricultural land, and farmers working in that land were telling me the same story, which was that U.S. military contractors were bringing tankers out to their fields and dumping sewage or wastewater in them. And they all relayed that either the sewage was blue, or it was gray.

And the gray wastewater and black wastewater comes from toilet facilities at the base. So it could be like sinks and showers. And it’s like grey water, and it has a residue in it, which contains phosphates and other chemicals. The blue that they were seeing was a dye that comes from portable toilets, which also had an array of chemicals that can have different levels of toxicities that are harmful to human health. So I started looking at studies that were done on wastewater and sewage sludge in other countries where, for example, sewage would go through a treatment process. And even that sewage had chemicals in it that couldn’t be removed, such as PFAS, which are also known as forever chemicals, just because they have a really long shelf life.

A water outflow from Bagram Airfield, formerly America's largest military base in Afghanistan. Credit: Kern Hendricks
A water outflow from Bagram Airfield, formerly America’s largest military base in Afghanistan. Credit: Kern Hendricks

And those chemicals have been linked to a whole array of health problems: kidney problems, cancer. So I started to realize that this sewage and wastewater that was being dumped in the fields was, you know, incredibly harmful to the farmers who were working there. And children that were working there as well.

DOERING: Those PFAS “forever chemicals,” municipalities here in the U.S. are spending many millions of dollars per facility to install systems that remove those chemicals. And we know that military bases often use these chemicals in their operations. So I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be in Afghanistan.

BILLING: As well as the residents living around the bases, I spoke with contractors who were tasked with the job of hauling this waste off the bases and finding somewhere to dump it. And they just relayed a really big problem just because of the amount of waste the bases were producing. Some of them had 40,000 troops on them at one point. And there was just so much waste, it couldn’t all be burned in a burn pit. It had to go somewhere. And one of the other areas aside from fields for sewage was waterways. And for the contractors, one of the reasons one relayed was that they could save on fuel if they found somewhere close by to dump. And in terms of those in charge at the bases, the waste really wasn’t their priority at the time, they were fighting a war, and the responsibility really went with the contractors to come up with their own solution of where to put the waste. No one was really checking it or thinking about any long term impacts at the time. And there were no laws or any prohibitions, really, from a U.S. military perspective, or international perspective, that was stopping them from dumping in waterways and fields and land or burning in areas around, also.

DOERING: A couple of years ago, when the U.S. finally did pull out of Afghanistan, there was a lot of talk about how important it was, this moral obligation that we had to help out some of the Afghans who had helped us during the war, and who had worked with the U.S. military, interpreted for the U.S. military, done a whole range of different things. So some of those people were able to come to the U.S. and flee the Taliban. But it seems like there’s kind of a lack of understanding of the obligation that we have to protect Afghans from the environmental degradation that we’ve caused there.

BILLING: Absolutely. I don’t think there’s any responsibility from the American military to protect Afghans. And I think that one of the reasons that we don’t know much about the U.S. military waste is that they’re not required to share what they do with their waste. There’s this whole black box on responsibility just because they don’t actually have to share that information. And I think on top of that, there’s actually a DOD prohibition that means the U.S. military doesn’t actually have to clean up its bases when it leaves a country overseas. And that it’s then the host nation’s responsibility to clean up.

And you know, you look at the amount of bases in Afghanistan and the size of them. They are still sitting exactly the same today as August 2021 when America left. You can see it on satellite today, you can still see the amount of scrap and broken tanks and engines. And then on top of that, you can still see the burn pits, some as big as three football fields, still scorched and charred from how they were left. So there was a lack of care when they were there at the bases for both their own service members and for the entire Afghan population, but then a definite lack after they left because they don’t need to, there’s no requirement for them to care about the environmental damage that they had on the country.

DOERING: What kinds of health impacts did you see on the ground while in Afghanistan? Can you tell us a story or two from Afghan civilians that really stood out to you?

BILLING: There were a lot, a lot of stories. I spoke to a lot of people. One thing, though, that does come up is that there’s definitely a pattern with the same health problems, which very much mirror the health problems of U.S. service members who were returning from deployment. One around Jalalabad airfield, there was a farmer and his name’s Khan Mohammad.

He had been working there for 20 years in a field just by the base, and his whole family helped him work in this field. And he had two sons, who were five and seven, who both have kidney problems. He had another son who had other health problems, their cousins had kidney problems, his mother had a skin rash, a persistent skin rash, and she was working the land as well in that field.

And so you have this whole family working in this field where tankers are dumping sewage waste, and they’re coming down with really serious kidney problems, even at the ages of five and seven.  And they really believe that they’re sick from the waste being dumped in their fields. But the reality is that they can’t afford the medical treatment they need, or they can’t afford to constantly go and see doctors. And there’s really not much they can do. And then you’d go to speak with a farmer next to Khan Muhammad. There was another  one next to him called Wali Rahman. He had the exact same problem. He had the same kidney problems. Doctors in that area know what’s happening. They know the waste is being dumped there. And they say, “There’s a pattern here. People are getting sick from the same things. They’re drinking and washing in the same rivers. They’re working on the same land, they’re eating the food they grow in the fields. It’s all connected.”

DOERING: And like you say, they don’t really have the resources to get the medical help they need. In your story, there was somebody who maybe would need a kidney transplant at some point. But that’s several thousands of dollars.

BILLING: And also, there are people in areas that didn’t have the possibility to travel to get the medical treatment they needed before, because there was ongoing fighting going on. A lot of people traveled to Pakistan to get treatment just because Afghanistan doesn’t have the resources or medicines available for it, as well.

DOERING: I think in your story, you came upon a couple of kids who were collecting scrap metal from one of the piles of  waste that was left behind. Can you tell us about that?

BILLING: They had a little shop across the road from Kandahar airfields. And they’d moved there after their father had died. And they were making a living off scrap metal collecting. And outside of bases in Jalalabad, Kandahar and Bagram are just rows and rows of little shops, with a whole array of scrap in them, all of which comes from the bases. And these two boys, you know, they had everything from broken motors and seats from Humvees to grenades, like whole grenades still, and—

DOERING: Live grenades?

BILLING: Live grenades, still with the key hole. And, you know, unexploded artillery shells. So there’s all these dangers of them collecting these things. The scrap metal collectors, not just in Kandahar, had persistent skin rashes and problems as well. And the doctors were telling me about this also. And this is just because of the materials that they’re dealing with on a daily basis.

DOERING: This is really heavy reporting, Lynzy. What keeps you going back to Afghanistan to report stories like this, about the environmental pollution left behind by the U.S. military?

BILLING: I think I’ll keep going back to Afghanistan until I can’t get in anymore. And it is getting harder to get in. I think that Afghanistan is a country in which the effects of this kind of environmental damage, and the effects of the war in general, they didn’t go away when the U.S. left in 2021. And they’re still there, and people are still there waiting for answers and some level of accountability.

An Afghan scientist collects soil samples from a family farm near the site of a former American base in Jalalabad. Credit: Kern Hendricks
An Afghan scientist collects soil samples from a family farm near the site of a former American base in Jalalabad. Credit: Kern Hendricks

And this is an American war in Afghanistan. And I think, especially Americans should really know about what happened there and what happened with these waste disposal practices. And also just because the U.S. military is in so many countries around the world using the exact same waste disposal practices, and right now there is no law saying they have to clean up, there is nothing that’s stopping it.

DOERING: Lynzy Billing is a freelance journalist who wrote about this for Inside Climate News and New Lines Magazine. Thank you so much, Lynzy.

BILLING: Thank you so much for having me.

America’s 20-Year War in Afghanistan Is Over, but Some of the U.S. Military’s Waste May Last Forever
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We Still Haven’t Figured Out How to Beat ISIS

April 3, 2024

The New York Times

March 31, 2024

Mr. Costa was the special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 2017 to 2018. Mr. Clarke is the director of research at the Soufan Group.

For all of the counterterrorism wins that the United States has had in its fight against the Islamic State — and there have been many — we still have not figured out how to defeat it.

A terrorist attack targeting a concert hall in the Russian capital of Moscow on March 22 killed more than 130 people and left many others severely wounded. It served as the latest deadly reminder that the Islamic State — and particularly its Khorasan branch, ISIS-K, which is active in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan — remains a potent threat. It’s a painful lesson Afghans and Americans alike learned in August 2021, when ISIS-K conducted a complex suicide operation that killed at least 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American service members in Kabul, in the midst of a chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Since the start of the new year, ISIS-K has launched lethal assaults in Iran and Turkey. Several ISIS-K plots in Europe have been disrupted, with arrests in Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands. On Tuesday, four days after the Moscow attack, the ISIS-affiliated al-Battar Media published a message threatening Italy, France, Spain and Britain: “Who’s next?” Both France and Italy have since raised their terror threat levels.

All of these events point to what we now know: Stripping the Islamic State of its self-proclaimed caliphate is not the same as beating it. At its peak, the caliphate was as large as the territory of Britain, stretching from the Levant to Southeast Asia, and boasted over 40,000 foreign fighters from more than 80 countries. Forced from this redoubt, ISIS has reconstituted itself in other countries, going underground in less detectable — but more dangerous — forms.

To stop that threat from reaching America and its allies, the United States must prevent two decades of counterterrorism expertise from atrophying. There are other serious threats that deserve Washington’s attention, including Chinese adventurism and the challenge of artificial intelligence. But to keep Americans safe, counterterrorism must remain a strategic priority — and that includes finding a way to keep eyes on the Islamic State in parts of the world where we no longer have a footprint.

After the terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda of Sept. 11, 2001, the American public was told to brace itself, that the war on terror would be a generational one. The United States made some profound blunders in the decades-long fight that followed, and eventually, Washington turned its national security focus to different geopolitical threats. But neither of those facts obviated the need to remain committed to countering transnational terrorism. By pulling back troops and intelligence assets from active conflict zones, the United States has allowed groups like ISIS-K to rebound. It’s not the time to let up, or predictably, we will find ourselves facing a resurgent adversary.

The Islamic State is nothing if not resilient. Aggressive Western military campaigns helped dismantle the caliphate and have in recent years severely curtailed the operations of ISIS militants in other countries, including the Philippines and Syria. Rather than disappear, they have gone on to rebrand, enlist new fighters under the same banner and plot new attacks. Some have reappeared in other countries, better trained and harder to find and protect against. Some are intent on committing acts of terrorism like those we’re witnessing now, traveling across borders to infiltrate target countries.

How did a jihadist group operating from a remote region of Afghanistan manage to expand its networks and begin planning external operations with such global reach?

Part of the answer is that we left. Before the United States withdrew, ISIS-K was far more constrained, particularly its ability to launch external attacks. In a 2020 agreement between the United States and the Taliban signed in Doha, Qatar, the Taliban agreed to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to threaten the United States and its allies. In return, Washington agreed to fully withdraw its forces from the country. The stipulation to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghanistan asian operating base was primarily relevant to the Taliban’s longstanding, cozy relationship with Al Qaeda. The Taliban and ISIS-K, on the other hand, are mortal enemies and have been fighting each other since ISIS-K started operating in the country in 2015, at the apex of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate.

Either way, it’s unrealistic to expect the Taliban to be a reliable counterterrorism partner in an international effort to defeat ISIS-K. But some level of cooperation, however unappealing, is necessary. The human intelligence so critical in counterterrorism can only be gathered on the ground. With no American footprint left in the country, our counterterrorism interests would be better served with intelligence derived from Taliban security and intelligence operations directed against ISIS-K — a mutual enemy. The cooperation should remain limited to information sharing and should not extend to training or the provision of equipment.

Intelligence history is replete with examples of marriages of convenience between intelligence services for sharing threat information, even between adversarial countries. Although a “shadow war” has played out between Iran and the United States for decades, the United States still reportedly shared threat warnings on an impending terrorist attack with the Iranians in January. Washington did the same with Moscow two weeks before the ISIS-K attack on the concert hall.

Of course, coming to any kind of agreement with the Taliban is a deeply complicated and controversial endeavor. Even a highly restricted relationship with the Taliban would be distasteful and fraught with ethical dilemmas, given the regime’s human rights record.

But it’s been considered before. And the alternative is worse: a devastating attack directed at Americans overseas or at home.

Christopher P. Costa was a career intelligence officer and was the special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 2017 to 2018. Colin P. Clarke is the director of research at the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consulting firm based in New York City.
We Still Haven’t Figured Out How to Beat ISIS
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Asfandyar Mir on Why ISIS-K Attacked Moscow

April 3, 2024

BY: Asfandyar Mir, Ph.D.

United States Institute of Peace

Monday, April 1, 2024

ISIS-K’s recent attack on the Russian capital was, in part, intended to assert the organization’s growing capacity to inflict terror beyond its home base of Afghanistan. “By reaching Moscow, ISIS-K is trying to signal it has the geographic reach to hit anywhere in the world,” says USIP’s Asfandyar Mir.
U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: Asfandyar Mir is the USIP senior expert for South Asia. There’s really been a thought process and a lot of pieces surrounding what happened at that Moscow concert hall attack. Our guest says it will have far reaching impact and he is here today to give us a little more information about that very point. Asfandyar, welcome. How are you?

Asfandyar Mir: Good. Thanks for having me on, Laura.

Laura Coates: Thank you for being here today. Now, there are a lot of questions that people have. One is, what exactly ISIS-K is and what was its intent in Moscow. They, of course, have claimed responsibility for the attack. And I wanted to understand more about this organization, if we can even call it that this group, what is ISIS-K?

Asfandyar Mir: Sure. So, ISIS-K is the Afghanistan based branch of ISIS in the Middle East, which has now been around for roughly 10 years. It first emerged in early 2015. And ever since, it has been active in the region, it has been fighting there. The Taliban, of course, you know, back when the United States had a presence in the region, you know, ISIS-K was attacking the United States. And around the time that the U.S. evacuated from Afghanistan, if you remember, in August 2021, there was a big attack. A terrorist attack during the evacuation, which killed around 13 service members, as well as 200 or so Afghans who were trying to evacuate. And ISIS-K was responsible for that attack as well. So, this is a nasty group. It is doggedly persistent. And now it is attacking countries both in the region. It has struck Iran, it has struck Pakistan, it has attacked in Central Asia. And it has finally managed to reach parts of Europe as well. We heard about some foiled plots, terrorist plots in Europe and more recently, we saw this attack in Moscow.

Laura Coates: Why now? It’s not an emergence, but why do you think it is becoming so much more active now?

Asfandyar Mir: Look, it has been active, it’s just not been in our news cycle, as much. But the group seems to have this goal of punishing disbelievers and infidels, you know, as per its doctrine. And in line with that it has been actively consistently plotting in the region, outside of Afghanistan, but also aiming for parts of Europe. The U.S. military has been warning that we could see an attack against Western states, U.S. interests, which is code for targets in Europe, in six months, with little to no warning. And this attack is very much in line with that warning.

Laura Coates: When What do you think the intent was in Moscow, specifically, obviously, Putin a very strong force in the region, why there?

Asfandyar Mir: I think multiple motivations were at play for one, ISIS and Russia have, you know, have sort of sparred with each other. Remember Russia backed the regime of Bashar Al Assad in the Syrian Civil War, in which the Assad regime was also fighting ISIS. And the Russians came on the side of Assad in a big way. And ISIS has not forgotten that ISIS-K is angry and upset about that. Another motivation is competition with the Taliban, which now runs the government of Afghanistan. And ISIS-K, wants to show that it is the most audacious terrorist group around, that it sort of holds the mantle of the global jihadi vanguard. And it really seeks to outperform, you know, militants like the Taliban who tend to reserve themselves or limit themselves to the boundaries of Afghanistan or its immediate neighborhood. By reaching Moscow ISIS-K is trying to signal that, that it has the geographic reach to hit anywhere in the world in the way that the Taliban won’t.

Laura Coates: Really, really important. Thank you so much for joining us today, Asfandyar Mir, for all of your expertise. Thank you.

Asfandyar Mir: Thanks for having me, Laura.

Asfandyar Mir on Why ISIS-K Attacked Moscow
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