Afghans who got onto evacuation lists may have the chance to go to Europe or North America, if they can get passports and visas for Pakistan. Their first dilemma is whether to go; it is not easy leaving one’s homeland. But there is a second dilemma – whether to spend savings or go into debt to get the necessary travel documents. Many families have faced repeated disappointments and staggering costs trying to get those documents. In this instalment of the Daily Hustle, AAN hears from one Afghan about his painful decision to emigrate and then his, so far unsuccessful, efforts to get passports and visas for all the family.
I’m 46 years old. My wife and I have four children – three sons, aged 16, 14 and 11, and a five-year-old daughter, who’s the apple of my eye. I’ve been working for an international NGO for about 13 years, working my way up the ranks until I was a programme manager. My family and I had a good life. I had a good job and a steady income, which allowed me to provide for my family, put the kids in private school and lend a helping hand to our extended family and people back in our village when they needed it. The future looked bright.But in spring 2021, as the Taleban were capturing district after district across Afghanistan, everything changed. In the weeks and days before the Taleban took over, the atmosphere in Kabul was tense. All over the city, people who were worried about the coming changes were making preparations to leave Afghanistan. Families were selling up everything they owned to pay for their move abroad. The shops that traded in used goods were bursting with household goods – furniture, appliances, kitchen utensils, clothes – their wares spilling onto sidewalks. Driving through the city, you could see people rummaging through what was on offer, looking to pick up bargains. Traffickers were doing a booming business smuggling people to Pakistan, Iran and further afield to Turkey and on to Europe.
Finally, on 15 August 2021, the Republic fell and the Taleban took over the country. They would soon re-establish the second Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. I was concerned about the future. I’m old enough to remember what it was like during the first Islamic Emirate and I didn’t want that life for my children. I considered leaving the country, but I didn’t think my family and I were at any particular risk. I’d never worked for the government or the Afghan security forces. I still had a job and was earning a good income. I thought my NGO job would also offer me a measure of protection from any ill effects that the change in government might bring. The Taleban fighters who were now everywhere in the city were nice enough, even helpful and, at times, good-humoured. So, I thought we should wait and see what happens. After all, Afghanistan was home.
The decision to leave
Things, however, were not looking great. The economy went into freefall almost immediately after the takeover. For a time, my NGO had trouble paying salaries because of the banking crisis and the cost of basic goods was rising at a dizzying rate. Luckily, we had some savings that helped us through the difficult days and enough money to help our siblings and parents, who were in dire financial circumstances.
The announcement of a general amnesty by Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada that offered protection to members of the former government and security forces gave me hope. And, to be honest, the security situation was much better. The conflict had ended and people were travelling around the country. They were going back to their villages, some of them for the first time in years, or to places they had always wanted to visit. I thought maybe this time it would be different. Maybe the new Emirate would have space for all Afghans to live in peace and prosperity.
Meanwhile, the NGO I worked for had submitted the names of all staff members to a European country for evacuation. My managers weren’t sure if they could continue operating in the new environment and were very concerned about the safety of the people working here. They asked if I wanted my family to be put forward for evacuation. I said that I did, thinking that I could make a final decision later when the time came. Things were still uncertain both on the ground and in my head and heart. I kept having conversations in my head weighing up the pros and cons of staying versus leaving.
The pull of home was strong, and the idea of leaving my parents and siblings behind was unbearable. There were days when I felt the need to leave and secure a future for my family with a sense of urgency. On other days, I thought I should stay home in Afghanistan. It’s true things were getting more difficult and so many things were uncertain, but the boys could go to school and, as for my daughter, she’s only five years old. She could still go to primary school in Afghanistan and maybe by the time she was ready to go to high school, the Emirate would have re-opened them for girls. And I still had a job.
Finally, the NGO I worked for told me that we had been accepted for evacuation by a European country. A few days later, I received an email from that country asking me to resubmit all our identity documents and start preparing to be evacuated. We had to settle our affairs, obtain passports and gather all the documents we would need in our new home in Europe.
It was time to make a decision. I talked things over with a friend and told him that I was thinking of staying in Afghanistan. He said I was being short-sighted. This, he said, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure a good future for my family. If I passed it up, I might never have the chance to immigrate again and I owed it to my children, especially my daughter, to take it.
That evening, as I watched my daughter play with her doll in the living room, I thought about her future in the new Afghanistan. One of the first things the Emirate had done was to close girls’ high schools, and while they had been promising that this was only temporary, there had been no movement on this front. Eventually, they would bar women from attending university.
Would the Emirate make good on its promise to reopen girls’ high schools and allow women back into universities? Or would she be sentenced to a life of illiteracy and dependence? There was too much at stake. My friend was right. I owed it to my little girl to give her every chance at a better future.
The trials and tribulations of getting a passport in Afghanistan
Getting passports for myself and my family proved to be a difficult task. I tried unsuccessfully for more than six months to get them using the official process. The lines at the passport office were long and the process arduous. When we didn’t hear back, I went to the passport office several times and queued up on the street overnight, but the answer was always the same: We are very busy, there are a large number of passport requests to process and you must wait your turn. Finally, after several months of waiting, I gave up on the idea of getting a passport through the normal channels and started looking for a wasetaI (contact) at the passport office. My friend told me he knew someone who worked there and arranged for a meeting at a teahouse in central Kabul. The wasetal asked for 500 USD for each passport. It was a lot of money, 3,000 USD for six passports, but it seemed to be the only way for us to get them. I agreed to pay and he delivered the passports, as promised, two weeks later.
Time to get visas
Once we had our passports, I contacted the EU country which had agreed to take us for further instructions. They told me to apply for visas to Pakistan, which I did at the Pakistani embassy in Kabul. The visa applications were affordable (180 USD for the six of us or 30 USD per person), but our applications were denied. I then went to a travel agency which acts as a broker for visas to Pakistan and charges 300 USD per visa after it has successfully obtained them. But the visa broker was only able to get one visa. I had to find a way to get the other five visas. I contacted another person who said he could get the visas, again for 300 USD per person. We agreed that I would pay him 300 USD in advance and the remaining 1,200 USD when the visas were secured. This man never came through with the visas. I waited for a month for him to contact me, but he never did, nor would he answer my many phone calls. In the end, I lost the 300 USD I had given him.
Finally, I emailed the European country and explained my difficulties in getting a Pakistani visa. They wrote back quickly and told me that I should get an Iranian visa. It took three weeks to get our visas from the Iranian embassy, which cost 300 USD per person (1,800 USD for my family of six). After that, I was instructed to proceed to Iran’s capital, Tehran, but as we were making the final preparations to leave, they emailed me to say that they were having some issues with processing evacuation applications at their embassy in Tehran. They told me to wait for further instructions. About two weeks later, they wrote again to tell me that the only option was for us to travel to Pakistan.
We were back where we started. I applied again for Pakistani visas for the five of us. I decided to try my luck with the embassy again rather than pay the hefty fees of a visa broker. I paid 30 USD per visa and waited. It took three months for the embassy to issue only two visas, which are valid for 90 days, but the other four applications were rejected. The race is on now. I have no choice but to pay a visa broker 1,050 USD per visa (4,020 USD in total) and hope against hope that these visas arrive before the other ones expire.
Today, the future seems as uncertain as it did that fateful night when I made the decision to leave Afghanistan. Over the months, I’ve spent nearly 10,000 USD from our savings to get passports and visas for us to leave. I try to manage my expectations; we’ve had so many setbacks, and things could still go wrong. But still, I’m hopeful that this time everything will work out. If the Pakistani visas come through, and if the European country is still willing to take us, then hopefully we will soon be on our way to Islamabad and then onwards to our new home in Europe – hopefully.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
The Daily Hustle: Mission impossible – the quest for passports and visas in Afghanistan
The Taliban’s Neighbourhood: Regional Diplomacy with Afghanistan
Even as many diplomats shun the Taliban regime, protesting its treatment of women and girls, emissaries of countries near Afghanistan have sought dealings with Kabul in areas like security and commerce. It is a worthwhile endeavour, and the West should not stand in the way
What’s new? The Taliban, mostly isolated by Western powers, are looking to build ties with foreign capitals closer by. These countries cannot simply say no: they must deal with the Taliban on security and economic issues. Regional engagement remains limited, however, due to both mistrust and hurdles raised by Western sanctions.
Why does it matter? Dysfunction in the relationships between Afghanistan and its neighbours affects lives and livelihoods across South and Central Asia. Kabul and its regional partners should explore ways of expanding trade, managing disputes over water and other shared resources, and combating transnational militancy. Failure could spell instability in a vast area.
What should be done? Instead of retreating from the many challenges of dealing with the stubborn Taliban, regional capitals should continue to develop a clearly defined format for broad-based security cooperation and economic integration. Western countries should support such efforts – or, at a minimum, refrain from blocking them.
Executive Summary
As most of the world shuns the Taliban due to their violations of women’s and girls’ rights, countries in the region around Afghanistan are dealing with the regime to address their needs for security and economic stability. This region, as the Taliban broadly define it, spans the “Eurasian continents”, from China in the east to Türkiye in the west and from Russia in the north to India and the Gulf monarchies in the south. It encompasses countries closer in, such as the Central Asian states, Iran and Pakistan. The Taliban, like previous Afghan rulers, view Afghanistan as a bridge connecting all these places. Regional countries’ policies toward the Taliban vary enormously, though all believe contacts with the regime to be necessary, but so far, their engagement is limited. Kabul and its regional partners are struggling to develop a modus vivendi as regards issues of mutual concern, which range from boosting trade to managing disputes over water and halting transnational militancy. It is a fraught endeavour, but a worthwhile one, and Western capitals should not stand in the way.
The Taliban’s denial of basic rights to Afghan women and girls and their imposition of draconian social rules since returning to power in August 2021 has sabotaged, at least for now, the chances that the UN and other international bodies might recognise their regime. Yet even as Western diplomats cancelled meetings with the Taliban, regional actors sought more dealings with Kabul. Some have condemned the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls, particularly bans on girls’ secondary and higher education, but overall regional officials tend not to put emphasis on women’s and girls’ rights. At the same time, they are convinced that the best way to secure their countries’ interests and moderate the Taliban’s behaviour in the long term is patient deliberation with Kabul, rather than ostracism. Channels between Kabul and regional capitals appear to offer the Taliban their best hopes for diplomatic engagement in the coming years.
Still, regional collaboration has fallen short of what some of Afghanistan’s neighbours wanted. Some were aspiring to a “grand bargain” that would have traded diplomatic recognition for Taliban action to form a more inclusive government, particularly by empowering Afghan politicians whom they had sponsored in opposition to the Taliban in the past and with whom they remain friendly. The Taliban, however, rebuffed all attempts to coax them into including former enemies in the cabinet. Most regional players have therefore settled for piecemeal engagement with Kabul that addresses specific issues on a case-by-case basis. More by necessity than design, this approach aligns with the Taliban’s own preference for transactional relationships that avoid the prospect of what they perceive as foreign meddling in Afghan affairs. Taliban talking points about respect for diverse cultural values and alternatives to the “Western-imposed” global order also chime with the interests of those regional powers.
After the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s neighbours feared that violence would spill across their borders.
At the top of the regional agenda are matters related to security. Regional officials have observed Kabul’s novel methods of controlling Islamist militant groups with varying degrees of scepticism and anxiety. After the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s neighbours feared that violence would spill across their borders to hotspots like Indian-administered Kashmir or the Fergana Valley in Central Asia. Those concerns proved to be exaggerated; as the Taliban firmed up their hold on the country, militancy did not spread. The major exception is Pakistan, where attacks by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) climbed during the Taliban’s first two years in power, significantly raising tensions with Islamabad. The Taliban have used a standard playbook for answering regional concerns about nearly all militant groups: Kabul refuses to kill or capture suspected militants. Instead, it relocates them, helping them establish new lives in an effort to curb their ambitions and break down their command structures.
The first step toward better regional security cooperation could be cooling down the rhetoric on all sides and getting actors to agree on a set of facts, even if they have different priorities. Taliban forces have got better at corralling the most dangerous jihadists, those loyal to Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-KP), but even in that case the Taliban have not built enough confidence with regional partners to share information freely. Part of the problem is the gap between how Kabul prefers to deal with most of the Islamist militant groups in Afghanistan and how the region would like Kabul to deal with them. Overcoming this divide requires building a common platform for discussing regional security concerns and a common approach to addressing challenges. All sides would benefit from improved border management, customs integration and demarcation of Afghanistan’s rugged frontiers.
The other main area of regional cooperation is economics. Decades of war in Afghanistan shelved ideas of multiplying trade corridors to rival the Silk Routes of old, but these began to regain currency as the Taliban’s military victory brought greater stability and the de facto authorities started tackling corruption. Regional capitals are now seeing glimmers of commercial opportunity. They are dusting off plans to get trucks, railcars, gas and electricity moving across borders. The Taliban are impatient to start work on such projects, though some of the barriers will be insurmountable in the short term.
The logic for better regional economic connectivity is overwhelming, especially in the energy sector where Central Asian countries are in search of new markets while South Asia needs new supplies of oil, gas and electricity. Equally importantly, the region has strategic reasons to encourage ventures in Afghanistan as part of long-term planning for economic integration, which in turn would help with regional stability. Some regional actors think building Afghanistan into the regional economic architecture could increase regional influence, placate detractors of diplomacy among the Taliban and make the de facto authority a more predictable entity. Many among the Taliban, for their part, see such integration as a path to greater prosperity for Afghanistan and greater longevity for their regime.
Still, a multitude of factors inhibit economic cooperation between Kabul and the region. Economic restrictions and sanctions continue to stifle private investment. The desire of some donor states to limit aid to humanitarian assistance, and attempts by some to block development aid altogether, also contribute. The limited resources of some regional countries, coupled with inability to attract external financing, also impede serious economic collaboration between Afghanistan and the region. Equally importantly, the lack of a legal framework in Afghanistan continues to undermine private-sector confidence in the country, particularly as the Taliban embark on a cryptic ad hoc overhaul of laws they inherited from the government they overthrew.
Some of the Taliban’s actions, including building water infrastructure without coordination with downstream countries, have also engendered tensions with Afghanistan’s neighbours, particularly Iran and Uzbekistan. Disputes have occasionally contributed to skirmishes between the Taliban and neighbouring countries’ forces. In such a febrile atmosphere, regional states might be tempted to scale back their ambitions for engagement with the Taliban. Doing so, however, would likely make it still harder to resolve such problems and put solutions to other challenges neighbours face in Afghanistan further out of reach.
Many steps toward regional cooperation do not involve Western donors, but those countries have a stake in the results. Europeans, especially, would benefit from a stable, self-sufficient region that is not a major source of illegal drugs, migrants or terrorism. Yet sanctions and other measures originating in the West that aim to signal disapproval of the Taliban are obstacles on the road to more functional relations between Kabul and regional capitals. Whether it is a vote at the World Bank on a water project, or permission to send equipment to Taliban border guards despite sanctions, much progress depends on Western support – or at least, acquiescence. While such practical steps should not imply recognising the Taliban regime, they would contribute to regional peace and security.
Kabul/Brussels, 30 January 2024
I.Introduction
The Taliban takeover in 2021 transformed Afghanistan but not the circumstances arising from its geographical location.1 Like many past governments in Kabul, the Taliban regime has advanced a foreign policy of neutrality and promoted Afghanistan as a profit-making link between nearby states. The Taliban authorities have pursued ambitious plans for cross-border railways, pipelines and electricity corridors.2 But the country’s neighbours remain wary, in keeping with a long tradition of treating it as, at best, a buffer protecting them from other regional powers and, at worst, a haven for militants and smugglers. Since the Taliban have a bad reputation of their own, they face major challenges in securing a role for Afghanistan in the region’s security architecture and economic future.
This report examines the Taliban’s regional diplomacy to date. “The region” is defined as the Taliban themselves understand the term, looking out from Kabul at adjacent states and others farther away, with Afghanistan as the middle ground between what the Taliban call the “Eurasian continents”.3 Neighbouring countries, such as Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, regard engagement with the Taliban authorities as a necessary evil if they are to address core concerns. Regional powers like China, India and Russia have also explored engagement as a means of addressing concerns and of supporting their allies in containing any spillover from Afghanistan. More distant countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates have also entered the diplomatic fray, partly to challenge the Taliban’s Islamic exceptionalism but also spurred by the need to balance their own regional rivalries. Appendix B provides an outline of each of these countries’ approach to Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover.
To illuminate its discussion of specific issues, the report explores the Taliban’s way of interacting with the world – with limited transactions rather than strategic pacts – and assesses what regional actors want from their dealings with Kabul. Beyond top-level diplomacy, it also delves into practical aspects of cooperation in security and economic affairs, including how countries in Afghanistan’s neighbourhood work together – or compete – in managing transboundary waterways. Its conclusions might apply to other foreign actors searching for strategies of political engagement with the Taliban.
Research included dozens of conversations conducted over the course of 2022 and 2023 with government officials and various experts from Afghanistan and regional countries, in Kabul, Dushanbe, Istanbul, Ankara, Doha, Dubai, Brussels, London, New York and Washington, as well as others contacted remotely. Fieldwork was also carried out at border crossings in Afghanistan at Takhar, Kunduz, Herat, Kandahar, Khost and Nangarhar.
II.Regional Diplomacy after the Taliban Takeover
The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul sent tremors through regional capitals, where officials have spent the last two years grappling with how to deal with the new Taliban regime. Different governments have engaged with Kabul in different ways, but common themes have emerged in regional policy toward the Taliban, and, conversely, in the Taliban’s approaches to the region. This section sums up Kabul’s relations with the neighbourhood, while the individual approaches of regional actors are profiled in Appendix B.
A.The Quest for Recognition
In their first months after seizing power, Taliban officials were hopeful that their government would obtain international recognition.4 But not a single foreign government or multilateral organisation would formally acknowledge the Taliban-controlled government without concessions on women’s rights and other matters.5 The uniform refusal angered the Taliban’s more conservative elements, splitting the movement into two camps: one, centred in the Kabul-based interim government, sought a thaw with the West; the other, gathered around the Kandahar headquarters of the hardline emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, rejected this notion.6 The emir’s camp, convinced that the U.S. would block any attempt at rapprochement, argued that the Taliban should bolster their movement’s cohesion and their government’s prospects for survival by reintroducing strict policies their earlier regime had decreed in the 1990s.7 Rolling out a series of draconian edicts on women’s rights in 2022 and 2023, the emir showed his defiance of the West and reassured his followers that the Taliban regime would not compromise.8
The Taliban’s intransigence, particularly on gender policies, has fuelled a cycle of worsening relations with the West.
The Taliban’s intransigence, particularly on gender policies, has fuelled a cycle of worsening relations with the West. Additional restrictions by the Taliban on the rights of Afghan women and girls prompted repeated condemnations by Western countries – to which the Taliban responded with further measures, in part because of constituents who praised them for rebuffing the demands of countries that had invaded Afghanistan. The space for diplomacy shrank ever further. While the Taliban maintained that they would not change domestic policy for the sake of outside acquiescence to their rule, public opinion in the West urged Western governments not to “normalise” a regime that may be guilty of “gender apartheid”.9 Pressure mounted on Western states to keep up the sanctions, asset freezes and other forms of isolation they had imposed on the Taliban.
B.The Taliban Turn to the Region
The standoff between the Taliban and Western countries placed the region in a bind. Several of Afghanistan’s neighbours had opposed the group when it ruled in the 1990s, with only three of them – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – recognising its government at the time. Others, including India, Iran, Russia and Tajikistan, had backed armed opposition to the first Taliban regime.10 At the start of the Taliban’s second administration in 2021, many of the same anti-Taliban groups in northern Afghanistan reached out to regional actors in hopes of renewed support. As a result, the first question for neighbouring countries after the Taliban’s return to power was deciding whether to fight the regime or talk to it.11
Although regional actors also condemned the Taliban’s discrimination against women, they decided to engage with Kabul over the following months. The extent of cooperation varied, and each actor was motivated by different considerations, but a common denominator was a tilt toward working with the Taliban rather than isolating them. Although the U.S.-led coalition had failed to bring peace to Afghanistan, it was widely perceived as having policed the country and its departure imparted a feeling of urgency in the region, especially regarding security threats.12 As one diplomat put it, “the West is leaving the problem to regional countries”.13 Since March 2022, when Taliban restrictions on women and girls got more severe, a pattern has emerged of increasing interaction between Kabul and regional capitals, even as engagement with the West has dwindled.14
The region’s overtures toward the Taliban appear in part to reflect that some countries … have their own reasons to seek alternatives to a U.S.-led unipolar order.
As the Taliban gave up hope of winning over the West and shifted toward the region, they also adapted their rhetoric. The emir insisted that he would seek positive relations with the region and beyond.15 Yet such statements were often paired with assertions that, as the Taliban do not interfere in foreign countries’ internal affairs, others should not meddle in Afghanistan’s.16 Taliban officials also became more vocal about their dissatisfaction with Washington, a sentiment sometimes echoed by regional actors.17 The region’s overtures toward the Taliban appear in part to reflect that some countries (for instance, China, Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia) have their own reasons to seek alternatives to a U.S.-led unipolar order that dictates which regimes are acceptable and which are not.
Still, the neighbourhood’s cautious embrace of Kabul appears to be based not primarily on anti-U.S. sentiment but on an assessment of what will yield the tangible results they seek. Regional governments concluded that talking with the de facto authorities was the best way to nudge them toward responsiveness to their agendas. Security and economic concerns came before those related to women’s and girls’ rights. “The world will not stop and wait for Western sentiment to shift in favour of the Taliban”, a regional diplomat said. “We are here on the front lines”.18
Having themselves maintained or re-established a diplomatic presence in Kabul, many regional countries have welcomed the appointment of Taliban envoys in their capitals, claiming that such representation does not amount to implicit or explicit recognition but is a “technical” prerequisite for managing co-existence with Afghanistan.19 These working-level relationships are likely to proliferate.20 It is even possible that, in the future, some countries could break with the Western-led consensus and officially recognise the regime.21
C.A Limited Partnership
The Taliban’s military dominance has convinced regional capitals that a more stable Afghanistan, albeit one ruled by a somewhat unpredictable regime, is a lesser evil than a return to civil war. The regional consensus is fragile, however, underpinned by the premise that Taliban rule will not devolve into the kind of factional chaos that plagued the country in the past. Should regional countries feel that the government cannot impose order inside Afghanistan’s borders and contain transnational threats, this consensus may well unravel. If that happens, countries in the region could be tempted to pick sides in another intra-Afghan conflict, repeating the destructive pattern of past decades.22
The region’s diplomatic posture should also not be mistaken for full recognition; even calling it “normalisation” may be going too far. The level of engagement is, for now, far from the ambitious goal sometimes discussed among Afghanistan’s neighbours: a strategic pact, or “grand bargain”, between themselves and the Taliban. Most versions of the idea, which thus far is informal, raise the prospect of recognition in exchange for the Taliban forming an “inclusive” government. Others see the Taliban as exclusionary, and not just in gender terms, pointing to the fact that their administration is made up almost entirely of their own members and not many non-Pashtuns. Nearby countries are pressing for a cabinet in Kabul encompassing other political and ethnic factions with which they enjoy historical ties.23 The Taliban bluntly reject such proposals, their vision for maintaining control of the country being based on keeping a monopoly on the state machinery, with loyalists in all key positions. They have shot down the region’s ideas about including politicians from the previous republican order. They promise to “broaden” their government in the future without providing details.24
Some regional actors are growing disillusioned with the Taliban and appear to have halted attempts at reaching an overarching agreement with them.
Some regional actors are growing disillusioned with the Taliban and appear to have halted attempts at reaching an overarching agreement with them, instead limiting themselves to piecemeal negotiations over narrow areas of mutual concern. There has been little or no coordination among regional actors on these micro-engagements, but they are learning from one another about how best to deal with the de facto authorities. For example, diplomats have noticed that the Taliban’s officials based in Kabul use conciliatory language but seem hamstrung in terms of what they can offer, as they are often undermined by their superiors in Kandahar. At the same time, attempts at bypassing Kabul to negotiate directly with Kandahar have borne no fruit, partly because the emir spurns most diplomatic overtures.25 Some neighbouring countries are still investing time and energy in opening channels with the emir, but their experience so far has been that Kandahar prefers to stay aloof.26
What remains, then, is a small cadre of regional diplomats posted to embassies in Kabul – often with modest staffing and tiny budgets – trying to deal with Taliban officials who are often constrained by their own organisational and political wrangling. These interactions are also limited by security considerations: Russian and Chinese diplomats, for example, have scaled back their movements in the Afghan capital due to jihadist attacks on their compatriots.27 These difficulties aside, most regional diplomats have continued dogged efforts at engagement. On topic after topic – security concerns, including Islamist militancy, border clashes, weapons proliferation and counter-narcotics; and economic issues, such as trade, foreign investment, water management and climate change – they continue to reach out to the Taliban.
III.Regional Security
Given Afghanistan’s turbulent history, it isnot surprising that regional governments see the country mostly as a security problem to be contained. Before the Taliban takeover, the task of containment fell to U.S. forces, whose counter-terrorism operations, for all their flaws, gave the country’s neighbours a degree of comfort.28 Although the UN reported numbers of transnational jihadist fighters in Afghanistan during those years dwindling to a few dozen, the Taliban’s return to power left regional actors feeling exposed.29 They worried about the potential for a return to civil war and expressed fears about militant groups, questioning the Taliban’s willingness or ability to rein them in. They also harboured concerns that the rise of an Islamist government in their neighbourhood could galvanise Islamists within their own borders.
A.Islamic State-Khorasan Province
The security threat that Afghanistan’s neighbours most frequently raise is that emanating from the local branch of the Islamic State, known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP).30 In some ways, the growing concerns about IS-KP are paradoxical, as in reality, overall levels of violence related to the group have fallen over the past two years. As the Taliban improved their counter-insurgency efforts, IS-KP has launched fewer attacks and killed fewer people.
Click to compare IS-KP incidents and fatalities data from 2018 to 2024. CRISIS GROUP
Still, regional actors are worried about IS-KP’s continued capacity, and particularly its new emphasis on attacking citizens of neighbouring countries, both inside Afghanistan and outside.31 The attacks on foreigners undermine the Taliban’s claims to be security guarantors, disrupt their fragile international relations and help IS-KP recruit. Such incidents, though rare, have attracted significant attention. In April 2022, IS-KP fired a barrage of Katyusha rockets at Termez, a city on Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan.32 The next month, it launched a similar attack in Tajikistan. Neither appeared to cause casualties or major damage.33 A more serious incident occurred that October, when IS-KP struck a Shia shrine in Iran, killing scores of worshippers.34 In addition, the group has targeted foreigners in Afghanistan several times, including bombing the Russian and Pakistani embassies in September and December 2022, as well as a hotel that same December many of whose guests were Chinese nationals.35
As part of its efforts to boost recruitment, IS-KP has published propaganda in all major regional languages. It has tapped the grievances of non-Pashtun ethnic groups, not just those concentrated in Afghanistan’s north, but also those in neighbouring Central Asian states.36 IS-KP also maintains strong connections to Pakistan, where many of its founding members were born.37 The group’s leadership regularly calls on its supporters abroad to carry out attacks inside their home countries.38 This incitement is tied to a surge of violence in Pakistan, where incidents related to IS-KP became more frequent after 2021.39
Rather than fostering international security cooperation, concerns about [Islamic-State-Khosaran Province] have had the opposite effect in recent years.
Rather than fostering international security cooperation, concerns about IS-KP have had the opposite effect in recent years, as foreign governments blame each other. In particular, Russian and Iranian officials claimed, absurdly, that the U.S. supports IS-KP.40 Such allegations fuelled Kabul’s paranoia, with Taliban officials at times echoing these claims, while in other instances accusing regional intelligence agencies of backing the group.41 For example, some Taliban officials charge, perhaps equally risibly, that Pakistan provides a haven to IS-KP militants.42 These statements have added to rising tensions between Kabul and Islamabad, as the latter accuses its neighbour of harbouring the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an insurgency that has mounted numerous attacks on the Pakistani army and police (see Section III.C). Taliban officials also frequently mention their suspicions that Tajikistan is a source of IS-KP recruits.43
The public discord may mask a degree of behind-the-scenes intelligence cooperation. While information is scant, Iran has hinted that it is working with the Taliban in counter-terrorism, while other countries, such as the U.S., hold regular bilateral talks with Kabul on security issues.44 Whatever the source of the Taliban’s intelligence, their strikes on IS-KP have become much more effective and precise. Since mid-2022, the Taliban have carried out a series of raids that killed prominent figures in IS-KP, such as its alleged deputy leader, former interim leader, intelligence chief and head of judiciary. Possibly due to this crackdown, the number of IS-KP attacks has declined.45 There are also indications that Taliban efforts to curb IS-KP recruitment, particularly on university campuses, might be enjoying success.46
Whether IS-KP could, in the future, become a more potent transnational threat remains an open question. So far, its operations beyond its original territory near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have been limited. The Taliban reportedly eliminated the group’s cells that targeted Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in late 2022, and the group has not launched further cross-border attacks since then.47 On the other hand, IS-KP still attracts recruits from disparate parts of Central and South Asia and encourages attacks outside Afghanistan, arguably making it the most dangerous armed group in the region.48
B.Militants in Northern Afghanistan
Regional countries are also concerned about a plethora of other transnational jihadist groups operating from Afghanistan. Central Asian states understandably focus on militants in the country’s north, near their borders, who have longstanding ambitions to foment rebellion in their home countries.49 Many of these smaller groups consist of no more than a few dozen fighters, but however tiny, they remain a key priority for China, Russia and the Central Asian states because the militants in question often belong to Uyghur, Uzbek, Tajik and other ethnic groups with links to constituencies in their countries.50 It is partly for this reason that Afghanistan’s neighbours have pushed the Taliban to form a government that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity: they fear the lack of inclusion could stir unrest with these ethnic-based armed groups that might, in theory, spill across borders.51
Of course, most regional engagement with the Taliban on security issues does not involve pushing for an overhaul of government; day to day, diplomats are making requests for Taliban action against particular bands of gunmen. These entreaties sometimes get results: the acting defence minister personally answered a call from a neighbouring country to disband a militant group in a border province.52 The Taliban are unwilling to eliminate these groups, however, eliciting frustration and bewilderment from the region.53 For example, in this instance, the Taliban, instead of imprisoning the jihadists, reportedly split the 75 fighters into three contingents, relocating each to a separate location on the other side of the country. Allegedly, the Taliban integrated some of these militants into the security forces to keep a close eye on them and provide them with a source of income.54
The Taliban actively seek diplomatic relations with regional countries.
Such gambits are risky. The Taliban actively seek diplomatic relations with regional countries, while harbouring groups that want to overthrow the same governments. As a regional diplomat put it: “Afghanistan continues to remain a safe haven for terror groups; now, it is just not as blatant as in the 1990s”.55 The risks are even greater when all sides are not forthright about security concerns. The most notorious case of Taliban secrecy involved al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose death in a Kabul house controlled by the acting interior minister raised questions among neighbours about whether the Taliban could be trusted. After U.S. forces killed Zawahiri, the region grew more vigilant about the Taliban providing other militants with safe havens – even accusing them of giving foreign fighters Afghan residency and citizenship documents.56 Prompted by this newfound distrust, a number of regional actors issued warnings that likely exaggerated the number of foreign fighters in Afghanistan.57
Despite their neighbours’ misgivings, the Taliban seem determined to experiment with their own way of controlling militant groups: weakening them, relocating their fighters and curbing their independence. As a rule, Kabul seeks to integrate jihadists into civilian life rather than cracking down on them or extraditing them.58 At the same time, the mistrustful region is exploring ways to fortify its rugged borders with Afghanistan to avoid infiltration. Tajikistan, in particular, has been lobbying nearby states to create a “security belt” around the country, strengthening patrols along the frontier.59 China, which feels confident about having secured its own short border with Afghanistan, is also assisting Dushanbe to guard against militants crossing into China via Tajikistan.60
C.Militants in Eastern Afghanistan
While militants in northern Afghanistan are mostly a dormant threat to neighbouring countries, more serious transnational risks have emerged in the country’s east. New Delhi is concerned about the alleged continued presence in Afghanistan of Laskhar-e Tayyiba and Jaish-e Muhammad, two pan-Islamist groups that have conducted attacks on Indian soil for decades.61
Islamabad, for its part, has reason to worry about the TTP, an umbrella group of tribal factions also known as the Pakistani Taliban, which has gained strength under the tenure of its current chief, Noor Wali Mehsud, intensifying its attacks within Pakistan.62 The TTP was already becoming more aggressive before 2021, but the Taliban’s takeover appears to have emboldened the group. Jailbreaks during the Taliban’s sweep to power set free many TTP prisoners, allowing fighters to leave Afghanistan and resume their war to topple the Pakistani state.63 Since then, the group has conducted a series of spectacular attacks in Pakistan, whose security forces struggle to seal the porous border.64 In response, Islamabad, which claims that the TTP operates from Afghan soil, has pushed hard for Kabul to crack down on the group – but with little success as the Taliban, at least publicly, deny the TTP’s very presence in Afghanistan.
Islamabad has tried several tactics: pausing diplomatic efforts to advocate for international engagement with the Taliban; accusing Kabul of violating the 2020 agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban, which included counter-terrorism provisions; temporarily closing border crossings; and seeking to complete fences and other barriers along a border that the Taliban, like earlier Afghan governments, do not recognise.65 Faced with the Taliban’s refusal of repeated requests for action against the TTP, Pakistan even conducted air and artillery strikes inside Afghanistan, which along with Pakistani Taliban commanders also allegedly killed dozens of civilians.66 More recently, Islamabad has resorted to drastic measures that fall short of military action. In October 2023, Islamabad started mass repatriation of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, also introducing restrictions on transit goods bound for Afghanistan.67 None of these methods have delivered results, however, and the Taliban’s unwillingness to crack down on the TTP could further strain relations between the neighbours.
Indeed, as with the northern groups, the Taliban have returned to their standard playbook for reining in foreign militants. Even as they deny the TTP’s presence in Afghanistan, they have quietly forbidden the group from carrying out external operations, removed its fighters from border regions, housed TTP groups in “refugee” camps, separated fighters from their units and embedded them in Taliban units to break the chain of command.68 The TTP is, however, much larger than the northern militant groups, and the Taliban said their plan for curbing the group would involve relocating “thousands” of people.69
The Taliban’s reluctance to clamp down on the TTP is partly motivated by reluctance to act against a longstanding ideological ally.70 They may also feel their clout with the TTP is limited, given that many of the group’s former members played a key role in founding IS-KP, and if pushed, might defect to their enemies. So far, it remains unclear to what extent the Taliban’s approach has moderated the TTP’s behaviour, if at all. While some experts believe that Taliban pressure has induced the TTP to agree to negotiations and stick to small-scale attacks on Pakistani troops, such claims are difficult to verify.71 Whatever the case, one thing is certain: the Taliban are far from satisfying Islamabad’s demands vis-à-vis the group.
The [Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan] has also sought to counter the Taliban’s pressures by rallying supporters among the Pashtun tribes and clans in Afghan regions next to Pakistan.
The TTP has also sought to counter the Taliban’s pressures by rallying supporters among the Pashtun tribes and clans in Afghan regions next to Pakistan. While the group’s standing on the Pakistani side of the border has diminished in recent months, as evidenced by mass demonstrations against its revived insurgency, the group remains popular on the Afghan side, allowing it to continue to operate, while exploiting differences between Islamabad and Kabul.72 The TTP also appears to enjoy some local Taliban support.73 Grievances that lead Afghans to back the TTP include Afghan refugees’ allegations of mistreatment by Pakistani security forces; Kabul’s claims that Pakistan has annexed Afghan territory; and years of sporadic cross-border shelling by the Pakistani army. Though Islamabad denies many of these charges, anti-Pakistan sentiment, sometimes fuelled by Pashtun nationalism, is widespread in the borderlands.74
For now, the TTP’s presence in Afghanistan poses the single deadliest threat emanating from the country. Islamabad has reacted by stepping up mass deportation of Afghans and tightening trade restrictions, while also threatening to escalate cross-border strikes unless Kabul takes immediate action.75 Friction between the neighbours has broader ramifications, including for China, which has extensive economic interests in Pakistan.76 Any further spread of violence into Pakistan might also erode the fragile consensus among other regional states that, unlike in previous decades of civil war, they will not pick sides among Afghan factions. After all, much of the region’s political calculus in favour of working with the Taliban rests on the assumption that the former insurgents can maintain stability. As a top diplomat put it: “Should transnational [militancy] thrive, it would make the Taliban unacceptable to the region”.77
D.Fears of “Contagion”
Besides fearing that militancy may spill across Afghan borders, the region also worries that the Islamists’ success in overthrowing the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan might inspire their own restive Islamists, heating up simmering insurgencies in places such as the Indian-administered part of Jammu and Kashmir and Central Asia’s Fergana Valley.
These “contagion” scenarios arise in part from recent history in other parts of the world, such as Libya, where the 2011 uprising threw open stockpiles of weapons that made their way into nearby countries.78 In 2021, Afghanistan looked like a similar proliferation risk because the U.S. and its allies left behind military equipment worth billions of dollars when they departed.79 In the confusion of the Taliban’s takeover, fleeing Afghan government forces took numerous armaments into neighbouring countries and smugglers brought other materiel into Pakistan.80 At the same time, weapons fell into private hands inside Afghanistan as government stores were looted.81 The Taliban tried to address this problem by going door to door, collecting guns for safekeeping in government depots, and they continue to raid hidden arms caches across the country.82 These actions have slightly eased regional countries’ concerns, even if not all Taliban local commanders followed rules for securing the weapons.83
Another export from Afghanistan would seem to be harder to control: revolutionary ideas.
Another export from Afghanistan would seem to be harder to control: revolutionary ideas. Diplomats from countries across the region express anxiety that the Taliban’s triumph over a superpower will galvanise Islamists opposing their own governments. To some degree, the Taliban has allayed these concerns as well by expressing little sympathy for Muslim rebellions in nearby countries. With rare exceptions, the new authorities in Kabul have refrained from public comment on militant groups in China, India and Central Asian states. Still, they are putting out propaganda in several of the languages spoken in the region, and some of the policies they advertise – for example, on battling corruption and respecting religious values – are troubling to nearby governments that view such messages as implicit criticism of their own rule.84
So far, at least, the fears of contagion seem exaggerated. Except for Pakistan, places in the region previously beset with Islamist militancy have witnessed lower levels of violence since the Taliban takeover. From the start of 2018 to August 2021, Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir saw 44 fatalities in violent incidents on average per month; since the Taliban returned to power, that number has fallen to 21 per month.85 Central Asia’s Fergana Valley, where Uzbekistan has regularly put down Islamist uprisings in previous decades, has remained almost entirely peaceful since 2021.86 These developments obviously have local explanations, and probably little, if any, connection to Afghanistan, but the trend does indicate that the initial worries about guns, fighters and jihadist ideology spilling across borders in the aftermath of Taliban victory were overblown.
IV.Economic Dynamics
A.New Impetus for Regional Trade and Connectivity
From the days of the Silk Routes, prosperity in Afghanistan’s neighbourhood has depended on trade – with much of it passing through the country. In the last few decades, warfare turned Afghanistan into a roadblock to regional development. Since 2021, however, stability under the Taliban has revived regional actors’ dreams of trade corridors spanning South and Central Asia, giving new life to old plans for easing the flow of freight, gas and electricity.87 The Taliban and officials of neighbouring governments express interest in such economic cooperation, all for their own reasons. The region is trying to insulate itself from Western sanctions on Russia, Iran and Afghanistan, as well as the prospect of further economic restrictions on China. Central Asian countries, in particular, worry they will end up surrounded by pariah states and cut off from global markets.88 For their part, Moscow and Beijing are keen to foster the regional economy as a buffer against pressure from the West.89 The region wants business with Kabul mostly for the sake of diversifying trade routes – while also, perhaps, tempering the Taliban’s erratic tendencies with incentives for good behaviour.
Kabul’s motivations are stronger. After the Taliban took over, the West froze central bank assets and cut aid that previously had covered 75 per cent of state spending, while offering only partial sanctions relief.90 Afghan GDP contracted by 21 per cent in 2021.91The Taliban scrambled to halt the economic freefall, focusing on self-sufficiency and regional connectivity, not just as a way of paying the bills, but also as a defensive measure: by holding out the prospect that stable rule in Afghanistan would pay dividends in the form of economic opportunities, they made the former a matter of self-interest for regional actors.92 Customs duties emerged as the biggest source of revenue for the new regime, as it tackled widespread corruption and removed predatory checkpoints that had proliferated during the war, hampering trade.93 The Taliban also invited foreign companies back to the country, but the few investors willing to take the risk were mostly from the region: for instance, the largest mining concessions to date have been awarded to local firms backed by Chinese, Iranian or Turkish partners.94
Millions of Afghans suffer extreme poverty at a time when Western donors, put off by the Taliban’s discrimination against women, are turning away.
A degree of economic stability returned, as Kabul’s revenues picked up, exports grew, inflation fell, the currency recovered and the proportion of food-insecure households declined from 70 per cent in late 2021 to 59 per cent in early 2023.95 Still, millions of Afghans suffer extreme poverty at a time when Western donors, put off by the Taliban’s discrimination against women, are turning away, resulting in billions of dollars cut from humanitarian budgets for 2023.96 The Taliban had found ways to pay hundreds of thousands of civil servants, but their burden grew in 2023 as humanitarian agencies stopped covering salaries for some medical staff.97 Pressures on the central bank, still deprived of its assets, are expected to mount in 2024 as aid dwindles, clouding the macro-economic picture.98
The Taliban, who know they need economic growth to stay afloat, have pushed for Afghanistan’s inclusion in regional development plans.99 Their main priority appears to be constructing a trans-Afghan railway that would link Uzbekistan with Pakistan, which could shorten delivery times by up to five days, thereby reducing transport costs.100 It would also connect to the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan rail system, which started running trains into the Afghan border town of Hairatan in 2022.101 But no country involved appears to want to spend the billions of dollars required to build the railway, and international development agencies backed away after the Taliban takeover.102 Doubts persist about Kabul’s technical capacity to undertake such an ambitious project.103 The deterioration of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations over the TTP has dulled appetites as well. Similar concerns have delayed longstanding efforts to link the region’s electricity and gas supply networks.104
B.Modest Investments, So Far
With mega-projects on hold, Kabul appears to be exploring more modest efforts. The Ministry of Water and Energy has, for example, proposed small-scale projects for energy generation, such as wind farms.105 Before investing in railways, the Taliban are also spending their meagre development budget on improving the roads connecting Afghanistan with its neighbours, upgrading infrastructure at border crossings and regularising trade practices.106
Kabul has also been promoting regional investments in extractive industries, but most of these projects remain at exploratory stages. For example, in September 2022, an Iranian company signed an agreement for the extraction of lead and zinc in Ghor province.107 In January 2023, Kabul inked a deal for development of the Amu Darya oilfields with a Chinese company, Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas, which later unveiled further investments in Afghanistan.108 Despite the grand announcements, work has been slow getting started. The exceptions have been low-key projects such as Perozi Park, an industrial complex near Kabul, with construction co-sponsored by Beijing. At the time of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the area was still a wasteland.109
Much of the investment by regional actors is extremely cautious at best, and performative at worst.
For now, much of the investment by regional actors is extremely cautious at best, and performative at worst, geared toward boosting relations with Kabul without risking much capital.110 Investors may simply lack confidence in the Taliban’s ability to manage the economy, but some have also had bad experiences in Afghanistan. Missteps by Chinese entrepreneurs best illustrate the volatility of economic adventurism in the country since 2021. The departure of U.S. forces sparked a “gold rush” among Chinese speculators, many of whom arrived from prospecting in Africa to seek precious metals, gems, rare earths and other mineral wealth.111 Some of these entrepreneurs told Crisis Group that the early efforts faltered, with the would-be investors going home “after having discovered that this frontier market might be more ‘frontier’ than expected”.112 Some businessmen tried to bribe their way past Taliban regulations and, allegedly, set up alcohol distilleries and prostitution rings, getting themselves arrested.113
There appears to have been a misunderstanding between the Taliban and this wave of entrepreneurs, with the former hoping for investments by Chinese state-backed firms and instead getting small-time chancers. So far, bigger Chinese companies seem content to purchase exploration rights to Afghan mines, even if they are not developing them yet, perhaps as a means of seeking control of what is found underground and influencing commodity prices.114
C.Tensions over Water
Water management has emerged as a point of contention between the new government in Kabul and neighbouring states. Tensions over water had simmered for decades, but grew in recent years, to the point of reportedly triggering border clashes with Iran. The most important reason is the impact of climate change: with 80 per cent of its water coming from snowmelt and glaciers, Afghanistan is among the countries most vulnerable to global warming.115 About 60 per cent of the country’s households now suffer water shortages, while hotter winters and precipitous spring seasons are respectively causing droughts and floods.116 Making things worse is the fact that Afghanistan lags behind its neighbours in developing water infrastructure. Meanwhile, other countries have built agricultural sectors that depend on an unhindered supply of water from Afghanistan.
These factors drive the Taliban to seek ways of catching up, pursuing ambitious water projects that are raising hackles in the region. Afghanistan is mostly upstream from countries next door, which means they often view Afghan dams and irrigation systems as threats.117A complication is that among Afghanistan’s many transboundary rivers, only one is subject to a water-sharing agreement. The rest are governed only by international customary law, which calls for “equitable and reasonable” use of water, without clarifying what that phrase entails.118The fact that previous Afghan governments drummed up nationalist fervour for water projects, giving the issue populist appeal, has not helped the Taliban in managing relations with their neighbours. The Taliban have also seized upon water infrastructure not only for its practical value but also as a propaganda piece meant to portray their efficient governance, filling their media outlets with footage shot from drones showing construction in several provinces.119 Among these, works in two places – a canal in the north and a dam in the south – are most contentious.
1.Concerns from Central Asia
In the north, the Taliban inaugurated the Qush Tepa Canal in March 2022, making swift progress on what ranks as their largest infrastructure project.120 When finished, the canal will divert water from the Amu Darya, a river that separates Afghanistan from its Central Asian neighbours. The canal will traverse 285km of northern Afghanistan before reconnecting with the river, irrigating up to 550,000 acres of farmland.121 Kabul funded the project from the national budget, at times awarding mining rights to contractors in lieu of payment to spare the cash-strapped treasury.122 More than 100 companies are reportedly involved, with over 7,000 workers.123 By October 2023, phase one of the project was complete and the second under way.124
The imminent prospect of the canal diverting part of the Amu Darya revived old fears in the region: Crisis Group has been reporting about the potential for water conflicts between Afghanistan and Central Asian states for over twenty years.125 Afghanistan appears to be joining Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as upstream countries that, struggling economically, are trying to keep more water even as neighbours downstream – namely, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan – need more for their growing agricultural sectors.126 The five Central Asian countries already squabble over water, despite a 1992 agreement among them on allocating it, to which Afghanistan is not a party.127 Still, Kabul is bound by international law, including the obligations to notify affected states of waterworks and to abide by a no-harm principle.128 Central Asian states say they were never informed, let alone consulted, about the Taliban’s plans for the canal.129
Downstream countries want further discussion of the canal to find ways of mitigating its impact on transboundary water flows. In an attempt to reduce wastage caused by the Taliban’s rudimentary construction methods, Uzbekistan has even offered technical support for the project.130 But the Taliban are wary, arguing that the project is in line with provisions in international customary law about “reasonable and equitable” use of water and that previous Afghan governments, having been planning the canal since the 1970s, already satisfied the notification requirement. The Taliban sometimes view foreigners’ efforts to talk about the canal or offer assistance as delaying tactics.131 Given how important the project has become to the Taliban’s self-portrayal domestically, and the money involved, Kabul will not want to adjust the schedule – even as delegations keep visiting from nearby countries to persuade them otherwise.132
2.Conflict with Iran
On the country’s southern borders, a similar conflict over water has often sparked public accusations by both sides. Iran and Afghanistan are feuding over the Helmand river, Afghanistan’s longest waterway, which provides more than 40 per cent of the country’s surface water and is critical for irrigation in its arid southern provinces. The main point of contention is Kamal Khan dam, inaugurated in 2021 by the previous Afghan government. Downstream, the river is vital to the wellbeing of the volatile Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan, where wetlands are drying up and scientists predict that planned Afghan dams could threaten 70 per cent of wheat production.133 Disagreements over rights to the river may have contributed to deadly clashes between Taliban and Iranian forces in May 2023, though both sides deny it played a role.134
The longstanding tensions with Iran could ideally be mitigated by an existing deal on water sharing.
Unlike the dispute with Afghanistan’s northern neighbours, the longstanding tensions with Iran could ideally be mitigated by an existing deal on water sharing. A 1973 bilateral agreement stipulated that Tehran would be entitled to fixed amounts of water, which were to be determined after construction of a hydrometric station and three testing stations in Afghanistan.135 With the political upheavals both countries lived through in the following years, the deal was never ratified or put into practice.136 But it remains a point of reference, with both sides invoking its provisions during their recent spats over water sharing.137
Mirroring their behaviour in other water disputes, the Taliban have signalled that regional concerns will not slow down their infrastructure plans near the Iranian frontier. Soon after the border clash, and even as bilateral talks continued about the Helmand river in May 2023, senior Taliban officials announced fresh construction on the Bakhshabad dam, located on the Farah Rud, another river flowing into Iran. The fact that this dam was inaugurated in the middle of the diplomatic tussle over the Helmand suggested that Kabul will keep building water infrastructure, even when neighbours vehemently disagree.138
The Taliban’s high tolerance for conflict over water arises in part from their hopes that hydroelectric projects could make Afghanistan, which currently imports 80 per cent of its electricity, self-sufficient in energy. More urgently, Kabul also faces rising demand for water from farmers, especially in the Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan. The need for irrigation in those regions rose sharply in 2023, after the Taliban banned opium cultivation and farmers switched to growing cotton and other more water-intensive crops.139
V.Better Regional Dialogue
The lack of trust between the Taliban and their neighbours is evident, and tensions on some of Afghanistan’s borders appear to be growing. This wariness prompts countries in the region to cherry-pick issues they want to engage on, focusing on matters of highest priority in their respective capitals. While such a pragmatic approach is logical from a diplomatic standpoint, it misses opportunities for solving interrelated sets of problems. For their part, the Taliban need to set aside concerns about falling under foreign influence if they wish to achieve better collaboration with their neighbours. Broad-based security cooperation could address regional states’ concerns about militant groups inside Afghanistan, while also easing Taliban worries about insurgents getting help from outside the country. Similarly, better integration of regional economic development plans could lead to forging shared economic interests, building incentives for cooperation instead of destructive rivalries.
A.Security Cooperation
The first step toward better regional security cooperation will be cooling down the rhetoric on all sides and getting regional actors on the same page about security issues, agreeing on a set of facts even if they have different priorities. Taliban forces have got better at targeting IS-KP leaders, but information sharing remains limited, since the Taliban have not built confidence with regional partners.140 Part of the problem is that the Taliban lack credibility due to their blanket denials regarding certain threats – particularly the TTP – while regional countries offer inflated estimates of the number of militants allegedly based in Afghanistan. There is also a schism between how the Taliban prefer to deal with many of the Islamist militant groups inside Afghanistan and how the region would like Kabul to deal with them.
It does not help that UN monitoring teams, which used to visit Afghanistan to provide independent assessments of terrorist threats, have not returned since 2021. The UN accepts information only from member states, meaning that the Taliban cannot assist the monitoring because they lack a UN seat. Member states should continue to encourage the UN to send the monitors back to the country or at least to seek feedback from Afghan forces on militant groups, which would represent a step toward refocusing global counter-terrorism institutions on transnational threats rather than groups with local agendas like the Taliban.141
Regional forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could also play a greater role in addressing the plethora of emerging challenges at the regional level.142 In fact, there are conversations within the organisation about reactivating the Afghanistan contact group, first established in 2005, with a view to fostering a regional platform for engagement with Kabul.143 Regardless of the format, regional players need to discuss the legitimate security needs of all actors around the table. Simply comparing notes might lead to tangible cooperation: some regional countries have expressed a desire for greater information sharing – and, possibly, even training and equipping Taliban forces – even if that remains controversial with their own populations.144
If regional security cooperation is to become a viable option, it must be based on reciprocal transparency.
If regional security cooperation is to become a viable option, it must be based on reciprocal transparency. While Afghanistan’s neighbours complain about the Taliban’s lack of decisive action against groups that threaten their security, they themselves have only provided limited information in response to Kabul’s requests for lists of the weapons and ammunition they received from fleeing members of the previous government’s armed forces.145 The Taliban also express frustration at getting no answers from neighbours (especially Pakistan) to their queries about alleged sightings of drones in Afghanistan’s airspace.146 Finally, the de facto authorities in Kabul want to know how anti-Taliban fighters are slipping into the country, but they receive little response from their neighbours.147
Such cooperation might be easiest, at first, along Afghanistan’s rugged borders, where neighbouring countries seek to staunch the flows of migrants, drugs, guns and jihadists coming from the country. Skirmishes on the frontiers fell off in the second year of Taliban rule, but the persistence of such incidents point to the lack of cooperation between Taliban patrols and their counterparts.148Central Asian countries have placed restrictions on some border crossings, allowing only representatives of local businesses to pass, which improves security but hurts trade. Another major problem is that the Taliban do not recognise the Durand Line as an official border, and have, at times, sent troops to impede Pakistan’s fencing of the boundary.149 Given that all past Afghan governments have refused to recognise this border, inherited from colonial times, it is hard to imagine the Taliban doing so, but that should not prevent them from cooperating on practical steps that improve security for both Afghanistan and the neighbourhood.
At best, the Taliban would accept help with the professionalisation of Afghan border guards, andall neighbours would agree on installing new technology at border crossings. Given the need to build trust, a starting point might be for Kabul to satisfy the neighbours’ requests to keep Taliban fighters away from their borders unless they belong to the uniformed Afghan border units. If the region wants the Taliban to improve the professionalism and efficiency of their security forces, however, they could support it in doing so. While they may understandably feel uncomfortable handing over military equipment abandoned on their territory by the armed forces of the previous Afghan government, countries across the region could also benefit from supplying equipment for border screening and customs integration. Neighbouring states welcomed Tajikistan’s proposal for establishing a “security belt” around Afghanistan in early 2023.150 This “belt”, which aims to provide a buffer against militants operating from inside Afghanistan, could also be extended to address the Taliban’s concerns about infiltration across the border in the other direction.151
Of all the risks that threaten to spill over into the region, the TTP is the deadliest. Kabul should constrain the TTP by curtailing the group’s capacity to recruit, train and raise funds on Afghan soil. Stronger action by the Taliban, including jailing individuals assisting the TTP in attacks on Pakistani targets or putting TTP leaders in Afghanistan under house arrest, would allow Pakistani forces to counter cross-border threats more effectively. But Islamabad will also have to address the root causes of the militancy in Pakistan itself if counter-insurgency operations are to stand a chance of success.152
B.Economic Integration
The Taliban takeover has resulted in widespread poverty, from which the only escape is economic development that surpasses the high rate of population growth and overcomes hurdles such as insecurity and climate change.153 Many neighbouring countries also need strong growth to keep up with swelling labour forces.154 Against this backdrop, the case for better regional economic connectivity is overwhelming, especially in the energy sector, where Central Asian countries are in search of new markets while South Asia needs new supplies of oil, gas and electricity.155 Government planners across the region have been drafting schemes for such integration for decades, but now that Afghanistan is finally peaceful, allowing for their rollout, the Taliban have made themselves into global pariahs.
Investments in the frontier market are no doubt risky, as the bruising experience of Chinese investors has shown, but the region has strategic reasons to encourage ventures in Afghanistan as part of long-term planning for economic integration, which in turn would help with regional stability. The Taliban are frustrated that regional partners are slow to move ahead with projects such as railways, mines, electricity lines and trade corridors, and while some of the blame falls on the Taliban (see below), the region as a whole would clearly benefit from more alacrity with bringing Afghanistan into its development plans. China and Pakistan have already expressed support for including Afghanistan in the Belt and Road Initiative.156More such efforts are needed, however, to fully integrate Afghanistan into the regional economic infrastructure and insulate it from potential breakdowns in bilateral relations.157
That said, development plans require a reliable partner in Kabul, and the Taliban have not yet shown they are fully open for business. They have succeeded in tamping down violence across the country and have, for now, quelled the minor insurgencies against them. Corruption levels plunged after they took over and have remained much lower than under the previous government.158 While it may not be evident to much of the world, their government has shown a degree of administrative authority that is on par with that of most regional countries, with Taliban decisions enforced – for good and ill – in every Afghan province.
The Taliban’s internal dynamics … continue to give external actors cause for concern.
Yet the Taliban’s internal dynamics, with centres of power in Kabul and Kandahar vying for influence, as well as their opaque and, often, erratic policies, continue to give external actors cause for concern. Their government’s discrimination against women has tarred the Taliban’s name around the world, and some firms will steer away from the ethical and reputational risks of business with the regime. State revenues seem healthy, but no outsider can feel certain that the fiscal situation is solid because the government does not publish detailed budgets. The nature of opportunities also remains a matter of speculation: Afghanistan’s natural resources, for example, have never been properly mapped.159 Nor do the Taliban have the regulatory frameworks needed for large investments. They need to give investors greater predictability, including by ensuring clarity over applicable laws and establishing mechanisms for arbitration of commercial disputes.160
For the sake of regional stability, economic integration must make progress most urgently on water issues. Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan cannot afford to let their rivers dry up, but landlocked Afghanistan also cannot grow if water disputes interrupt trade, including its access to ports such as Iran’s Chabahar. The basis of an agreement between Iran and Afghanistan over the Helmand river may exist in the 1973 treaty: as discussed earlier, the two sides never established the hydrometric station and testing stations imagined as part of the agreement to determine river levels. Provided the two countries can pull together the required budget, building this infrastructure could reduce tensions between them and would offer agricultural returns on the investment for both. Similar collaboration may be feasible on the northern border where, as mentioned, Uzbekistan is offering technical support for the Qush Tepa canal. The Taliban have resisted what they see as foreign meddling in their flagship project but would have a lot to gain by allowing international expertise into the process. Including such support as part of a broader package of economic ties could bring them to compromise.161
Beyond the cases of Iran and Uzbekistan, some kind of wider agreement, or at least a tacit understanding, will be necessary to move ahead on regional cooperation. Afghanistan is not party to water-sharing treaties with Central Asian states, and a concern for many of them might be whether they can conclude binding international agreements with the de facto authorities without bestowing recognition on their government. Yet many seem to believe that important issues could be addressed without first having decided the issue of recognition. The Taliban and their neighbours thus have an opportunity to reach broad agreements, perhaps in multilateral discussions, on watershed management and climate adaptation. In that regard, the Taliban should be allowed to join the Conference of the Parties climate summits, or similar international events, to discuss not only what to build but also how to finance it. Afghanistan is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, but its access to climate financing – the Global Environment Facility, Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund – has been suspended since the Taliban takeover.162
Whatever gets achieved in international forums, be it on climate funding or other issues, it will almost certainly be less than the Taliban expect. Hundreds of billions of dollars flooded Afghanistan when Western donors considered it the main front in the war on terrorism, leading to outlandish ideas among Afghans about how much foreigners are willing to spend in their country. Recent efforts at economic projects have reportedly broken down because Kabul’s new bosses had unreasonable expectations. A regional diplomat sardonically accused the Taliban of employing a strategy that he called “pul bakhshish”, or “money gifts”, meaning that Kabul seeks more and more concessions as it negotiates an agreement, eventually making the deal a burden on the other party. Too often, Kabul expects support that matches the grants given the U.S.-backed government when it was battling the Taliban. In other words, besides the technical hurdles in attracting foreign investments – mapping resources and establishing legal frameworks – the Taliban also require more exposure to the workings of global markets.163
C.Western Support or Acquiescence
Diplomats from the region are trying to address security and economic issues through cautious engagement with the Taliban, but an official at a tiny embassy in Kabul admitted that the “to do” list feels daunting, as regional aspirations are often stymied by wider constraints. Only a handful of Western diplomats remain in the Afghan capital, and much of the day-to-day work with the Taliban falls to regional actors with budgets that do not match the size of the problems. Western sanctions have been eased by U.S. exemptions, but many sanctions remain in force, and, in any case, it is hard to get loans for infrastructure in an impoverished, pariah state.164 Many issues facing Afghanistan are development challenges, but Western donors have cut off development assistance and offer only fast-shrinking humanitarian aid. “If your engagement is mostly based on humanitarian assistance, and that assistance is declining, then your engagement strategy is really a disengagement strategy”, as a Western official in Kabul summed it up.165
Policymakers in the countries that battled the Taliban in previous years might see this state of affairs as painful but necessary to achieve a range of desired outcomes. There are more than a few Western leaders who would prefer to forget Afghanistan; for some of them, shunning the country allows them to avoid the topic of a lost war. Prominent voices are calling for pressure on the Taliban, and even active support for anti-Taliban forces, hoping for regime change, but the Taliban show no sign of collapse and subjecting Afghans to more years of war seems particularly cruel.166 Others may hope that undermining the regime will leave a mess on the doorsteps of China, Russia and Iran, which some might see as a geopolitical win.167 Still others, including Western diplomats who want to negotiate a better future for ordinary Afghans – women and girls, especially – may believe that their leverage with the Taliban is higher if they hold back security and economic support, using the promise thereof to get concessions in future negotiations over recognition.
How best to make progress on human rights requires careful consideration and will almost certainly entail trade-offs, but Afghanistan’s security and economic challenges cannot be ignored in the meantime – not least because the people who suffer the most from instability and deprivation are usually women and girls.168 Two years after the Taliban returned to power, it is worth giving weight to the concerns of regional countries that spend the most time talking to the new leadership in Kabul and have the most at stake. The countries surrounding Afghanistan are warning that the world cannot afford to have a failed state in the region and that isolation would only make the Taliban more intransigent. They need international backing for the modest steps required to live next door to such a challenging neighbour.
Western donors discussing development policy options for Afghanistan should … involve governments from the region in their deliberations.
Those needs will vary according to countries and projects, but in many ways Western countries remain gatekeepers, whether for attaining voting rights at the World Bank board or granting exemptions from sanctions and export controls to send equipment for Taliban border guards. Progress will be impossible in many cases without Western support or, at least, acquiescence. For example, regional airlines want to resume flights to Kabul but have not done so because the radar system at the airport is deemed unsafe. Regional diplomats complain that new equipment has been purchased but remains stuck in Europe due to sanctions.169 Another chokepoint is Western banking regulations: regional banks want to facilitate transactions with Afghanistan, but U.S. banks often forbid them from doing so.170 Western donors discussing development policy options for Afghanistan should also involve governments from the region in their deliberations – even if regional actors are not donors themselves, decisions made in such meetings can bear directly on their economic wellbeing as well.171
Some solutions will need to move ahead without any, or much, Western funding. It is, for example, hard to imagine international donors paying for large-scale water infrastructure on the Helmand river to assist the outcast regimes in Kabul and Tehran. But it would not cost international agencies much to offer technical assistance for better management of shared waters. For the moment, Afghanistan and Iran prefer to talk about their dispute bilaterally, but their 1973 agreement allows them to “use the good offices of a third party” and contains additional protocols for arbitration of disputes.172 It might be desirable to involve the World Bank or a similar institution that could offer expertise and, possibly, help with small-scale funding to map and monitor water flows.173 Similar technical assistance could aid Afghanistan in better regulating migrant labour, offering skills certification for Afghans seeking work in the Gulf and elsewhere. Solutions proposed for the Afghan banking sector might also require only a few experts and a green light from the U.S. government, rather than a major investment.174
The UN Security Council received a blueprint for moving ahead with such ideas in mid-November 2023, when Special Coordinator Feridun Sinirlioğlu concluded his much-anticipated review of international efforts in Afghanistan. Among other proposals, Sinirlioğlu called for greater international support for security cooperation with the Taliban-controlled government, including provision of assistance related to addressing “key security and regional stability issues” such as terrorism and border controls. On economic matters, Sinirlioğlu’s report called for expanding international cooperation in the fields of climate adaptation and transboundary natural resource management; completion of near-finished infrastructure projects abandoned in 2021; and measures to promote transit, trade, and connectivity between Afghans with the world. The Council should adopt these and other recommendations from the Sinirlioğlu report as part of its mandate to maintain international peace and security.175
More fundamentally, Western countries must decide whether the Taliban are a threat to be contained or unavoidable (if frustrating and, in their gender policies, odious) interlocutors on regional stability and development. Some Western intelligence officials want more cooperation with the Taliban on counter-terrorism, but others among their colleagues still talk privately about backing anti-Taliban rebels.176 This policy schizophrenia has persisted for too long. Regional states do not need the West’s blessing to engage with the Taliban on matters of national security or economic integration, but getting it would, in many instances, simplify their efforts in that regard.
VI.Conclusion
A Taliban regime that respects human rights might be welcomed into the club of nations, someday. But that will not happen in the foreseeable future, if ever, which means that Afghanistan is likely to be ruled by an unrecognised pariah regime for years to come. Its people should not be held hostage to this reality. For the sake of destitute millions both in Afghanistan and across the region, efforts must continue to make the world’s relationship with Kabul more functional, even if on a piecemeal basis. Afghanistan and its neighbours have urgent needs – among them, security and economic recovery – that cannot be placed on hold.
With Western influence in Afghanistan fading, most of the responsibility for improving regional cooperation falls on the shoulders of the country’s neighbours and the Taliban themselves. They must clear a path for greater flows of goods across borders and work together to keep one another safe. All sides know from history the nightmarish consequences of failure. While Western countries are unlikely to be enthusiastic about such cooperation on account of the Taliban’s attacks on women’s rights, they should at the very least refrain from blocking practical steps to do such things as improve trade and counter militants, which will lessen poverty among the Afghan people – including women – in the long term.
Kabul/Brussels, 30 January 2024
ICG report: The Taliban’s Neighbourhood: Regional Diplomacy with Afghanistan
For a country where jobs are scarce and, for many, livelihoods unreliable, sending men from the family abroad to work is an option tried by many families. Remittances, the money those workers send home, are hugely important for the national economy, individual families and communities. In this report, guest author Sabawoon Samim delves into the experiences of Afghan men working in the Gulf and how the money they send home is a lifeline for their families and communities. He also scrutinises the social and cultural impact of this migration – how greater earning power and exposure to life in the Gulf has affected their thinking and the power dynamics within families and inside local communities.
The most common destinations for Afghan migrants over recent decades have been Iran and Pakistan. This study focuses on those going to the Gulf countries: the differences between the destinations and the reasons for going are telling. Afghans first arrived in Iran and Pakistan en masse as refugees fleeing war rather than as workers seeking jobs, and they travelled together with their families and clans. Later, some did start travelling to Iran and Pakistan for work, but mostly illegally. These two neighbours are also themselves economically fragile and Afghan migrants have a tough time finding decent work.
Afghans travelling to the Gulf, on the other hand, have been almost solely motivated by the need to work and the vast majority are lone men who leave their families behind. The numbers are also far smaller – in the hundreds of thousands, rather than millions. The orientation of the migrants towards their home country persists; they not only visit as often as they can but also send far more money home than if they had wives and children living with them. Their migration is also mostly legal; Afghan workers need to have papers, including a work permit, to go to the Gulf, but then, once there, enjoy a legal status in the host countries. Compared to Iran and Pakistan, the difference in the money to be made in the oil-rich Gulf very much marks it out.
Those differences mean that the attractiveness of the Gulf as a destination is very particular, as is the effect of that migration on the local and household economies back home. This report offers a local-level view of both aspects of this migration. It also looks at its effect on family dynamics as young men gain earning power and a greater say in economic and cultural matters. It focuses on migration from rural communities in Afghanistan’s south and southeast, regions which have supplied many migrant workers to the Gulf. The report touches on some of the wider, national-level implications of this particular migration, for example, the importance of remittances to the national economy, but its primary focus is the local level and the individual experience.
The report draws on 11 in-depth interviews with migrants and was also enriched by the author’s multiple conversations with different people during previous travels and fieldwork. The interviewees came from the provinces of Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni and Kandahar. Residents from these provinces have supplied a large number of migrants to the Gulf. Interviewees included both the migrants themselves and their male relatives. (Unfortunately, the author was not able to speak to any women in the families).
The report begins by looking at the history of migration to the Gulf and then explores what Afghan migrants do there. It delves into the effects of remittance money on households as well as the social implications it has had on Afghan society. The report concludes by arguing that migration patterns, which serve as a key source of livelihood for many families, do carry risks, as the ability to travel and work abroad is prone to changes in the policies of host countries.
The history of migration to the Gulf
Like many others, Afghans have long sought to migrate to areas where employment and labour opportunities were better than at home. As an initial step, migration for work typically comes inside the country, chiefly from rural to urban areas, where prospects for paid labour are relatively better, but then also, potentially, on to foreign countries.
The history of migration to the Gulf in modern times dates back to the earlier part of King Zaher Shah’s reign (1933-73). At the time, Afghans used to migrate to British India and some would then go onto Gulf countries,[1] which one interviewee, quoting his grandfather who had migrated there in search of labour in the 1940s, referred to as “mere deserts.” However, he found labour opportunities scarce and like many others returned to India.
The trend to migrate to the Gulf for work only really gained traction during the presidency of Daud Khan in the 1970s when the Gulf states started to discover large-scale oil deposits and underwent rapid development. As these states needed cheap labour to work in their fast-developing economies, travel there for work became an option for Afghans, among many others. According to the accounts of at least three men who migrated to the Gulf in the 1970s, Daud Khan’s government was asked to supply Afghan labourers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (the UAE) and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait. According to these three men, coupled with the account of a later migrant who knew about the event, Daud Khan rejected the UAE’s offer. The reason given by all of the interviewees was Daud Khan’s personal pride, as he considered supplying Afghans as labourers a national disgrace. He did issue passports, though, allowing Afghans to travel to the Gulf as tourists. When they arrived, however, according to the interviewees, most then found labouring jobs.
Later on, the Soviet invasion of 1979 and subsequent war spurred mass emigration from Afghanistan for the first time. The violence forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to flee to Pakistan and Iran as refugees, where they faced troubles in camps and had a hard time earning a livelihood. Some among them tried to move beyond Pakistan and Iran to other countries, including to the Gulf, and were helped by Afghans who had travelled there earlier, during the reigns of Zaher and Daud, and had already established a footprint.
Even after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, and the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government fell and the mujahedin gained power in 1992, Afghanistan was not at peace. Out-migration persisted and even increased as poverty and bitter civil war pushed new waves of people out of the country to seek work and safety abroad. The same was true during the Taleban’s first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) from 1996 to 2001.
However, it was the post-2001 events in Afghanistan that most drastically transformed the nature of migration vis-à-vis the Gulf. With the fall of the first IEA and the formation of a new US-backed government in 2001, Afghanistan’s status as a pariah state ended and it was exposed to the outside world for the first time in many years; diplomatic relations with countries, including the Gulf states, evolved and Afghan migrants were welcomed to the labour market there.[2]
Why go to the Gulf?
The factors that had pushed Afghans to migrate before 2001 remained in and even increased. Several factors were at play, including spreading insecurity all over the rural areas of southern and southeastern Afghanistan as the insurgency gradually but inexorably took root. In some places, the insecurity hampered trade and economic growth. The Taleban, particularly during the initial years of their insurgency, blocked development projects, banned locals from working for the government or NGOs and threatened and even killed individuals associated with the government. That, and the reluctance of some NGOs to work in insecure areas, worsened economic prospects. Many in the rural areas, including our interviewees, felt they could not find a place in the new setup as they lacked the right skills and/or could not read and write well or at all. Agriculture could not support the growing population, and the labour market was struggling to afford jobs for everyone.
Families might also want their sons out of the country so they would remain safe and not fall victim to recruitment campaigns by the government, or the Taleban or local militias. The author came across several cases of this push factor. In Paktika’s Mushkhil area, a family requested their fellow villager, who had migrated to the UAE, to provide a visa for their young son; he had joined the insurgency and they wanted to coax him out of the movement. In another instance in Ghazni province, when the older brother of a migrant to the UEA called Mirza found out about his younger brother’s increasing interactions with the Taleban, he immediately provided him with a visa to cut him off from the insurgents.
In these circumstances, migration looked like a good option. The post-2001 government facilitated issuing passports, foreign work permits, travel and other related matters. However, the question of who could get to an attractive destination like the UAE or Saudi Arabia depended on an individual having connections with Afghans already there. Businessmen with a footprint in the Gulf who needed cheap labour would seek out young men from their own communities, providing them with visas and work opportunities, covering all their expenses and then recouping the outlay from their salary once they started working, as one interviewee described.
When I went to Dubai [around 2015], I was 18 years old. One of my fellow villagers had a shop there and needed a worker and my father asked him to get visa for me. He agreed and I started working for him, initially for 1,000 dirhams [367 USD], a month.[3]My salary was 1,300 but he took a cut of 300 dirhams [roughly 95 USD] to make good the cost of my visa.
I worked for him for three years and then got a share in a [new] shop, established by a friend who also worked for the same fellow villager. Our shop steadily grew. Now, I have two shops and have hired more than ten workers, all from my village, and relatives. Initially, I came here with empty hands, having no more than 500 afghanis [roughly seven USD] in my pocket, but now, after seven years of musafari [migration], I have built a new house, bought a car and have a good life.
Within the Gulf, the destinations for most Afghans have been the UAE and Saudi Arabia – the latter has turned into a major hub for Afghan migrants despite not providing visas. According to the World Bank, 360,000 Afghans were living there in 2015 (see footnote 1). Many Afghans, after arriving in Pakistan as refugees in the 1980s, had procured Pakistani ID cards and passports and some at least have used these to get to Saudi Arabia This was the case with one of our interviewees, while three others got there by bribing Pakistani officials and/or using personal connections to get a passport, which they used to get visas to Saudi Arabia, something easily available to Pakistani nationals. Once they arrived in Saudi Arabia, our four interviewees, like many others, changed the passports they were using to their Afghan ones. Interviewees described Saudi moves to allow Afghans to change their Pakistani passport to Afghan ones as a special “treatment” and exceptional “favours”.
When it comes to the UAE, it provided visas to Afghans until 2020 and Afghans travelled there in large numbers. Other Gulf states, such as Kuwait and Qatar, also host a small number of Afghans who live there and do business. Migration to these two, and other, Gulf countries has been sporadic throughout the last two decades as they have also denied visas to Afghans. More recently, Afghans began to migrate to Oman, which started issuing visas in the last couple of years. In Oman, many have established businesses, whilst others use it as a gateway to other countries (mainly the UAE).
Nearly all the migrants whom the author interviewed or otherwise came across have been less-educated men,[4] and according to our interviewees, Afghans working in the Gulf predominantly come from rural southeastern and southern Afghanistan.[5] The reasons they gave for this was that residents of these areas had had a footprint there since Daud’s tenure; one interviewee said that when Daud Khan was asked to supply labourers to the Gulf, he mostly sent men (as ‘tourists’) from southeastern provinces. Ever since, men from those areas, already working in the Gulf, have brought over their relatives or fellow villages, keeping and expanding their presence.
In general, employment opportunities are scarcer in rural areas than in urban centres, so there is a greater incentive for men in rural areas to leave home in search of a job, whether to Pakistan, Iran or, if they have a chance, the Gulf. Many first migrate to urban centres inside Afghanistan. However, with the urban market for unskilled labour often saturated, those who lack enough education and working skills often find it difficult to get a job. This was the case with at least one of our interviewees, who hails from Paktia and now works in the UAE. He first tried to establish a business or find a well-paid job in Kabul, but his business never flourished, and he failed to find a job with good wages – hence, he migrated to the Gulf.
Once they arrive in the Gulf, Afghans initially start as labourers, but many establish their own businesses after mastering a certain profession. In the Gulf, where the prospects of successful businesses are much more realistic, Afghans have proven resilient by building different businesses and providing labour opportunities not only for Afghans but also for Pakistanis and Bengalis.
What jobs do Afghans do in the Gulf?
Unlike migrants from countries such as India, Afghan migrants do not hold administrative roles in either governments or the private sector. A number have small businesses and others are employed by their fellow Afghans, or Arabs, or others.
As for Afghan businesses in the Gulf, they vary. Afghans from certain regions, or provinces, dominate particular sectors. One interviewee from Khost, who has spent 15 years in the UAE, described these patterns:
When you go there [to the UAE], you’ll see that every Afghan working in construction is from Khost. When you go to [an Afghan] bakery, you will surely find out the owner is from Ghazni or Paktia. It’s the pattern that was established years ago and is followed till today.
Migrants from other parts of the country such as the north, for example, are famous for dominating auto part retail. Interviewees from Paktika said their people focus on furniture and carpet shops, a sector in which Ghazni natives have also flourished. An interviewee from Paktika, in his 40s, also remarked on this pattern:
For years, when Afghans from certain provinces came and worked in certain sectors, they’d also then bring their fellow villagers and relatives to the same business. And as the chances of businesses flourishing are high, and people of all sectors make good profits, they’ve continued and grown the speciality that was handed down to them. For example, I’m from Paktika and have a mafrushat [furniture shop]. When I need a worker, I bring one from among my relatives. He works for me, gets familiar with my business and after a few years, he builds one for himself also. This pattern repeats and repeats and that’s why every province has a certain occupation.
The majority of Afghans do not own businesses, but work for others. Interviewees said that those employed by Afghan businesses are paid set wages and their employer gets them a visa. Those working for Arabs, typically as drivers, gardeners or guards, get visas through other channels.
Estimates suggest that, by the end of 2021, nearly six million Afghans were living abroad. Among these, only 2.7 million were registered as refugees (see this UNHCR report). The number of Afghans living as economic migrants was estimated by the World Bank in 2015 to be 2.25 million. However, the real figures are undoubtedly much higher, particularly when it comes to migrants in the Gulf, given that Afghans working there often arrive on Pakistani passports. As to how many Afghans are working in the Gulf, the numbers are not robust, but most put the population there in the hundreds of thousands.[6]
Sending money home
Migrating for work is clearly important for individuals, families and the nation, given the money migrants send home, but how much they send is impossible to say. Robert Holzmann warned in 2018 that “No reliable data exist on remittances in Afghanistan” and that is still the case. Long years of conflict, he said, have weakened and limited the development of the formal financial sector and so:
[A] significant share of remittances in Afghanistan are transferred through a well-developed network of informal brokers, called “hawala” dealers, that are not monitored and included in official statistics. Furthermore, responses in household surveys with regard to money are typically biased downward as mistrust leads people to underreport their money transactions. As a result, official data … understate the real magnitude of remittances to and from the country.
Obscuring the statistics further is the fact that Afghans returning, at least, from the Gulf usually carry large sums of cash. Those who have major businesses frequently travel back to Afghanistan, transferring their profits as cash in their luggage. While it is legally outlawed in many countries to take large sums of money out, Afghan migrants have still managed to bypass monitoring systems at airports. One interviewee claimed that he once brought over 100,000 US dollars into Afghanistan after he “placed it inside [the baby’s] nappies,” making it undetectable to the electronic checking system at airports.
Nevertheless, attempts to estimate or extrapolate give a sense of the scale of the money involved. The World Bank estimated total remittances in 2022 to be 1 to 1.2 billion USD and that this was a doubling of the money sent home in 2019. As a means of comparison, in 2022, UN shipments of dollars used to pay for humanitarian aid were 1.8 billion USD (according to the same World Bank report). ACAPS reported that in 2020, 10 per cent of Afghan households received remittances and that this comprised, on average, almost 59 per cent of the household budget for those who received them. Quoting 2016-17 research by the Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey, it said that poverty rates among ‘receiving’ families were substantially lower than the norm, something the next section of this report will illustrate. First, though, the author wanted to give a sense of how much Afghans can earn in the Gulf. Their descriptions give an idea of the remittances they send home and the money they invest back in their villages.
Several Afghan business owners in the UAE said the general wage they pay for newcomers starts at around 1,000 dirhams (367 USD). One interviewee who owns a furniture business in Saudi Arabia said the initial wages for new labourers start at 1,800 riyals [480 USD] a month. Take-home pay increases after the individual has paid back his visa costs and acquired skills in his profession. One interviewee claimed he had received or at least knew of workers who get wages of up to 4,000 dirhams (1,090 USD) per month in the UAE and 5,000 riyals (1,330 USD) in Saudi Arabia.
The smallest amount Afghan workers make is twice what they can earn from the same job inside Afghanistan. One interviewee gave this example: “If you work as a waiter in a restaurant, you make 7-10,000 afghanis (roughly 100 to 120 USD) per month, but if you work as a waiter in Dubai, the least you make is more than 25,000 and the most 35,000 afghanis.” He said that a taxi driver in the UAE “can make over 40,000 afghanis [roughly 600 USD] in a month” whereas taxi drivers in Afghan cities “struggle to make even 15,000 (roughly 200 USD),” a month.
After spending some years and becoming experts in their field of employment, the salary migrants receive increases, sometimes by as much as two-fold. One interviewee said he initially started on a salary of 1,200 dirhams (380 USD) as an assistant cook, and after three years, his salary had increased to 2,500 dirhams (700 USD). One cost they do face is accommodation and food.
The second category of Afghan migrants is the businessmen. From owning construction and transport firms to restaurants, bakeries, auto part dealerships, car showrooms, and hawalas, Afghans have invested in different fields. Some, as our interviewees said, have even established joint businesses with locals. One stated that he worked with an Arab to obtain visas from the Gulf states, which they then sold on to both Afghans and non-Afghans at a much higher price. Another interviewee described his situation:
Our people have great businesses in Dubai and Saudi. We own two shops of mafrushat (furniture) and carpets. We can make 20,000 riyals [5,300 USD] to 40000 riyals [10,600 USD] in a month. Our [business] has now declined due to huge taxes and other problems. I remember, in the past, in the three months of saifia [the summer holidays], we made 50,000 [US] dollars.
An interviewee from Kandahar, who has businesses in the UAE with his brother and cousins, also described the profits his family and friends make:
My cousin is in the UAE and has two shops selling auto parts. In three years, he bought a house worth 200,000 [USD] in Kabul. Another of our villagers has an abaya business. When he first went to Dubai, he didn’t even have a rickshaw. But now, he has two [Toyota] Fielders, has built a new qala [villa] and got his three brothers married.
The impact of remittances money for households
For those households that have someone working abroad, remittances may be the main source of income. In rural areas, while agriculture and livestock cover basic needs, remittances can then be used to cover other substantial needs, as one interviewee explained:
Many things we eat, including flour, come from our lands and livestock. But there are too many other necessary things that can only be bought by money. When you take even one step, you should pay money. Agriculture and livestock can only cover the substantial needs, and nothing remains for the other needs. People in cities have jobs and salaries. But for people of the countryside, it’s foreign [remittances] money that covers the additional costs of life. If there were no remittances, people would be as poor as they were 20 years ago.
Another interviewee, aged 34, from Paktia, also explained how remittances are used:
If you don’t have money, you have nothing these days. And money can’t be earned in farming because the market [for selling the harvest] isn’t good, the drought is heavy, and land is scarce. So basically, you can’t do anything – because everything requires money. For example, unlike in the past, you need to eat different things – it’s become a tradition – not just beans and potatoes. And for that, you need to buy stuff, which needs money. You have to follow dozens of new traditions established in the villages, so you’re not out of the race, and that all needs money. I told you this to give you the picture that everything requires money and there is no money inside Afghanistan. Except flour, beans and potato and milk and yogurt, everything else comes from the bazaar and requires money. And people still afford all these needs and live an improved life, not because they’ve earned money here [in Afghanistan] but because all this [money] comes from Arab countries.
One of two brothers who work in Sharjah in the UAE said they send home 1,300 dirhams (390 USD) each month, able to save so much because their employer pays for most of their food and accommodation costs. All the unskilled workers do the same, he said: “We spend very little money there and send most of it here [to Afghanistan].” A third interviewee living in Ghazni province has two sons in Dubai, each earning 1,800 dirhams a month.
They send their wages every month. I use a portion of that to purchase necessary goods from the bazaar. The remaining money is spent in several ways such as getting the two [boys] married, digging a well, buying solar panels and a motorcycle. I save some of the money for medical treatment and other emergency costs.
Most Afghan migrants in the Gulf live as individuals with their families staying in Afghanistan, coming back and forth between their host country and home. This means that the vast majority of what they earn is sent to Afghanistan. Even the small number that have their families with them, also send money back to Afghanistan, as one interviewee explained:
My family lives with me in Saudi Arabia. But my brothers and uncles live here [in Afghanistan]. I send them money on a monthly basis. In addition, except for family expenses, I invest all my money in Afghanistan because we have a saying in Pashto that ‘Someone else’s bed is only yours till midnight’ [ie if something does not belong to you, don’t expect to be able to use it forever].[7]Foreign countries never become home, so it’s always safe to invest in your own country and when you are forced to go back, you’ll also have something there.
To a great extent, our interviewees said, remittances had helped their communities remain independent of government and fluctuating political developments within the country. Money sent home has meant not having to look to the state for a job or rely on it for services, thereby maintaining these communities’ autonomy. Especially in the southeast, where many of our interviewees are from, such autonomy was much prized historically and is still valued today. Also, when Afghanistan’s economy encounters occasional contractions, such as following the Taleban takeover of 2021, which resulted in an overnight cut in foreign aid, and sanctions suddenly applied to the whole country rather than an armed opposition group, those with access to remittances were better able to ride the disaster. One interviewee, owner of two markets in Kabul, who also has an active business in the UAE explained the dynamics:
I remember there were a lot of rumours in 2014 that the Americans [military forces] were withdrawing and ending their aid to Afghanistan. They didn’t [fully] withdraw, but the money did shrink and many people working for them lost their jobs. I had a friend who was responsible for logistics in a few of the bases and when the Americans withdrew, he and his entire workforce lost their jobs. My friend then asked me to get him a visa for Dubai. For us, it didn’t matter whether aid was shrinking or the Americans were withdrawing. Our businesses don’t have a connection with such things and continue in the same way to this day.
Another interviewee from Paktia said something similar:
When the Taleban came [to power], a lot of people lost their jobs. Just in our village alone, more than ten youths who’d worked in the Republic became jobless. Even those who didn’t lose their jobs had their salaries decreased significantly. I know a lot of people who saw their businesses collapse. But praise be to Allah, those who are abroad haven’t faced such challenges and continue their businesses as normal.
When the afghani lost its value against foreign currencies in late 2021 and prices shot up as a result, interviewees said those households with access to remittances were the least affected. One interviewee, a migrant in the UAE, said when the price of five litres of oil jumped from 500 to 800 afghanis (roughly 80 to 110 USD), he still had no problem with that, given that he exchanged dirhams for afghanis at a higher rate: one dirham for 20 afghanis (roughly three USD) before and for 28 (roughly five USD) after the increase in prices. Furthermore, informal channels for transferring money have kept working. In 2021, when sanctions struck banks and money transfer companies, hawalas still functioned normally. Afghans abroad could still send their money home with little or no trouble.
Apart from allowing households to stay standing in the face of political and economic disaster, remittance money also protects households from natural disasters, such as drought or floods or sudden costs, such as for medical treatment. It would be fair to say that it is remittances that keep agriculture alive in many parts of southern and southeastern Afghanistan. As the level of groundwater declines, farmers find it difficult to irrigate their fields as wells dry up. In most of southeastern Afghanistan, farmers rely on irrigation water and as drought persists, it becomes difficult to continue farming. However, families who have someone abroad use remittance money to dig deeper wells, buy fuel for water pumps or install solar panels. This happened to one of our interviewees:
Last year, the level of water declined to 35 metres. It’s gone down by seven metres. The well we’d dug dried up. To irrigate the fields, I had to dig a new one. I called my brothers who were in Dubai to send money. They sent 15,000 afghanis [roughly 200 USD] and I spent it all on [digging a new] well, and buying pipes and other tools.
Of course, eventually, given the climate crisis, the aquifers will drop further if they are not replenished by rain. It could be argued that those with resources are enabled to take an unfair share of what water there is, with their poorer neighbours falling even further behind.
Similarly, in times of natural disasters such as floods, it is again remittance money that assists households. When Andar district in Ghazni province was hit hard by floods in 2022, for example, many farmers lost their harvest. One interviewee from the district, who was cultivating wheat and beans on a little over 20 jeribs [one hectare] of land, lost almost everything to the flood: “I didn’t have flour to eat for the year ahead,” he said. However, two of his brothers were in the UAE and sent money to buy flour.
Remittances also have significantly larger geographic effects: a community elder from Khost described its role in keeping the province’s economy afloat as “oxygen.” He said that several of Khost’s districts rely solely on remittances as their main source of income and that without “Arab money,” they would be in the same dire economic situation that Afghanistan was in decades ago, or would have collapsed because of successive economic shocks.
The cultural impact of remittances
Migration has not only had an economic impact on Afghans but has also had a sociopolitical effect. Interviewees felt that Afghan society, particularly in rural areas, had been isolated – protected or cut off – from urban trends and global developments. Their communities, they said, had persisted with the same norms and traditions they had had for decades, possibly centuries. They felt that migration to the Gulf, especially during the last two decades, had spurred change in their areas.[8] Returning or visiting migrants have become familiar with a life far different from what is conventional in their own communities. They have seen a richer economy and living standards, and different ways of living which are still very much Muslim. They may challenge the established norms and old traditions at the family and community level, want education for their children, including their daughters and sisters, want to ‘improve life’ in their villages and have the money to spend, whether on schooling for younger siblings or installing internet connections in their villages.
Historically, it was the head of the family, the father or grandfather, who was in charge of decision-making both within the family and together with other elders in the village. But with migration, this dominance can be dented, as one interviewee, who has two brothers as migrants, explained:
In the past, it was the head of the family that had control over everything because they had the money in their control. But nowadays, it’s the young men that make money and thus control the family. When an elder tells them: Don’t do a particular work, they do it! If he [the elder of the family] resists, the [son] then doesn’t send money. And the elders become toothless.
Another interviewee described what happened when his Dubai-based friend came home and wanted to buy a car.
His father didn’t allow him, telling him there were other important things to buy first. But as he had no control over the money his son earned, his son bought a car. For a few days, his father didn’t talk to my friend. Then, one day, he needed some money and asked for it from his son. My friend gave him enough money and then their problem was solved.
In another instance, an interviewee described how the young men in his village decided to repair the old village mosque. However, the older people resisted the idea, saying the old mosque was fine. As the young men had their money collected both in the village and from their fellow villagers in the Gulf, they started repairing the mosque regardless of what the elders were saying.
In another example, a group of younger men in Khost’s Tanai district decided to have dinner in every house in the village during Eid. They had excluded the village elders from their plan. In response, the elders threatened to cancel the programme. However, the young men argued that, in the words of one interviewee, “It’s us who earn and it’s us who decide how we spend the money.” Another man in his 40s described the effects of migration on social norms:
In the past, when someone was getting married, he wouldn’t know his spouse unless they were wed. No one consulted them about their choice, nor did they themselves dare to talk about their future wife. But nowadays, they call their parents from Dubai and tell them to go and ask for a [particular] girl’s hand for them. Many parents are obliged to ask their sons whether he wants to marry a particular person or not.
This does not necessarily mean that elders in the home or village have entirely lost control over these young men, but it is true that their power has significantly waned when it comes to many decisions.
Exposure to other societies has also led migrants, in the words of one interviewee, “to comprehend the value of education.” Many Afghan migrants in the Gulf, interviewees said, are poorly educated or illiterate and struggle to cope with everything that needs reading and writing. One, for example, said he had difficulty activating a bank account, reading bills or finding his way when doing business. He claimed he lost a lot of money because he could not read or understand the rules. He regretted his lack of an education, saying he could have earned much more money as a literate man. One head of a family who had migrated to Saudi Arabia described education as akin to eyes and ears in this modern age.
If you don’t have it, you’re deaf and blind. I myself work outside my country just because I don’t have an education and can’t find a good job in Afghanistan. Even in Saudi, I can’t do anything other than labouring and business because I have no education. There are Pakistanis with us there that have good education and they’re hired by companies, have much higher salaries and easy work. But our labourers need to work mightily, day and night. Personally, I didn’t know how important it was before coming here and now I sometimes feel huge grief for why we’re unable to have an education and a comfortable life in our own country.
Another man, also the head of a family, who has his younger brothers in the UAE, similarly described how migration had influenced their thinking towards education:
My younger brothers didn’t go to school here. They didn’t like it. So, I sent them to Dubai to work. After spending some years there, they repeatedly regret that they didn’t go to school. One of them said that: “Our time has passed, but let’s not allow the children to remain illiterate.” At their insistence, we rented a house in Gardez for the children and sent the boys there to study. Now, one of them has finished university and got a job with an NGO.
Migration has not merely influenced attitudes towards boys’ education. Several migrants also expressed a desire to get the girls in their families educated. Though the dominant thinking in these parts of rural Afghanistan has not changed much and still impedes greater progress in girls’ education, there are growing incidents that indicate attitudes towards education, including for girls, are now quickly changing. The contribution of migration to this, and the exposure to other ways of living in other Muslim countries, cannot be underestimated.
More recently, one interviewee, who has eight brothers and one nephew in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, described how they gathered their whole village together and spoke to them about establishing a ‘community-based class’, run by an NGO, in their village. “In the beginning,” he said, “they didn’t like it. But after some time, they became content with the idea. We all went to the educational department in the province and requested them to ask an NGO to establish a class in our village.” The interviewee succeeded after several attempts to secure the establishment of the class. Now, he said, girls from all over his village study up to the sixth grade. Another interviewee, who has migrated to the UAE, said he encouraged girls in his family to take part in a radio-run education programme.
A friend of mine told me that a [local] radio station had several [educational] programmes for girls. They have [specific] books and one should go to places they have [authorised] to register. The [girls] even take exams. So I told all my [female] family [members] to take part. I bought them books and notebooks. And it’s now almost a year they are following the programme. They can now read and write.
Conclusion
For Afghans, getting to the Gulf is proving increasingly difficult. Currently, no state, except Oman, gives out visas. Those Afghans who already have visas and work permits also report problems. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has placed multiple strict regulations on non-Arab businessmen. Our interviewees also said they have increased taxes and the price of residence permits. Acquiring a Pakistani passport and migrating to Saudi Arabia has also become difficult, if not impossible. In October 2023, the Saudi Arabian authorities reportedly retrieved more than 12,000 Pakistani passports from Afghan nationals and informed Pakistani authorities about the scam (see this Express Tribune report). Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior constituted a committee to investigate this issue. This could potentially affect the status of Afghan migrants in Saudi Arabia.
The UAE, for its part, stopped giving visas to Afghans and the nationals of 13 other Muslim majority countries four years ago, reportedly for ‘security concerns’ (see media reporting here and here). Our interviewees also concurred that a key reason for Afghan nationals being included in the list is, in fact, security concerns because some Afghan nationals were said to have contacts with the Taleban, including fundraising for them, and were sharing jihadi and ‘extremist’ content on social media. They described hundreds of Afghan migrants being deported or blocked from entering the UAE. The ban has also negatively affected traders who could not renew their expired visas and are stuck in Afghanistan. (See media reporting on a protest Afghan traders staged against the ban and its effect on businesses here). That denial of visas to Afghans has endured even after the re-establishment of the IEA in 2021; the UAE has an ambassador in Kabul and the Islamic Emirate has a consular presence in Dubai (see media reporting here and here). Currently, with the exception of Oman, the migration of new Afghans to the Gulf has stopped entirely. Only those who already have visas can travel back and forth between their host countries and Afghanistan.[9]
The fear also remains that, as one of our interviewees warned, Afghans cannot rely on foreign hosts being friendly forever. The most glaring example of foreign countries only providing ‘beds till midnight’ is the mass forced ‘return’ of Afghans living in Pakistan, up to half a million, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR (as of early January 2024).
The need to migrate for work is stronger than ever, given the dire state of Afghanistan’s economy and the need for ‘oxygen’ – the remittances that are a lifeline for households, communities and, indeed, the national economy. As legal means of travel shrivel up, Afghans have turned to illegal migration. It is next to impossible, or at least very expensive, to go to the Gulf.However, many are still trying to take the difficult option of getting to Iran and Pakistan, despite the threat of forced return, and the West. The long and perilous journey to Europe is not undertaken lightly, given the threat of arrest and even torture and other violence (one example of media reporting, out of many, by the BBC here) and of push-backs along the way (see recent reporting from AAN here). Even so, many feel they still have to try to go elsewhere: “When you stay here [in Afghanistan],” one interviewee said, “you can’t find a job, so if you want to stay alive, the only option is to go abroad.”
Saudi Arabia and the UAE had been, along with Pakistan, the only countries to recognise the first Islamic Emirate, before cutting relations following al-Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001.
↑3
The exchange rate of currencies to USD used throughout this report is from early January 2024.
↑4
The national literacy rate in Afghanistan was 31 per cent in 2011 and 37 per cent in 2021 (see this World Bank data chart), but much lower in rural areas as they are affected by conflict, poverty and lack of resources and access. Per a study in 1997 (see here), the literacy rate in rural areas was only 8.8 per cent compared to 25.9 per cent in urban settings.
↑5
The author has not been able to find written sources for this, although regional bases for migration are referred to in some of the literature, for example, the ACAPS report: “In some rural districts of Afghanistan, labour migration to Gulf Arab countries has traditionally been very high even before 2021.”
↑6
ACAPS, in a 2023 report, ‘Afghanistan – Remittances: the scale and role of private financial transfers’ quoted UN figures from 2020: “An estimated 617,110 Afghans lived and worked in countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, including labour migrants and permanent but foreign-born residents.” Robert Holzmann’s 2018 report for the World Bank, ‘Managed Labor Migration in Afghanistan: Exploring Employment and Growth Opportunities for Afghanistan’, quoted numbers from 2015:
The number of Afghan migrants abroad was estimated at around 4.8 million in 2015. By country of destination, indicative data from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA 2015) suggest that neighboring Iran (2.35 million) and Pakistan (1.6 million) host more than 80 percent of the total Afghan population abroad, while the rest currently reside in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (460,000) and Saudi Arabia (360,000). Finally, some 50,000 Afghans live in other countries, mainly in India and Central Asian countries.
It can be concluded that even though ACAPS and Holzmann were quoting migrant numbers overall, certainly those for the Gulf would be predominantly migrant labour and male. In a 2013 study, ‘Labour migration for decent work in Afghanistan: Issues and challenges’, written for the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Piyasiri Wickramasekara and Nilim Baruah focussing on migrant labour specifically found that two-thirds of Afghan labour migration was to or returning from Iran, while 12 per cent was to or from the Arabian Peninsula.
↑7
The interviewee suggested with this Pashto proverb that foreign countries do not belong to Afghans and therefore can afford only a temporary home.
↑8
Returning refugees from Iran and Pakistan have also brought back different attitudes, for example, often a greater desire for school education for their children. Such an influence has included members of the Taleban who have lived in Pakistan’s cities or the Gulf, as the author explored in an earlier report.
↑9
There is almost no way to travel to the Gulf illegally for work, except, as was the case in the past, by pretending to be Pakistani. In the last couple of years, some Afghans have gone to Saudi Arabia for umra, performing the pilgrimage, and then tried to stay on illegally. They were, anyhow, few in number and those who travel to Saudi for umra are required to leave a monetary guarantee to ensure they will return to Afghanistan.
Sending Money Home: The impact of remittances on workers, families and villages
Stephanie Sinclair, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, is the founder and president of Too Young To Wed.
Their names are Khoshbakht, Saliha, Fawzia, Benazir, Farzana and Nazia — Afghan girls ages 8 to 10 who have been sold into marriage. Desperation forced their parents to thrust them into brutal adulthood. In Shahrak-e-Sabz, a settlement of makeshift mud-brick homes and tents for the displaced in Herat province that we visited last month, our researchers counted 118 girls who had been sold as child brides, and 116 families with girls waiting for buyers. This amounts to 40 percent of families surveyed, even though the Taliban decreed in late 2021 that women should not be considered “property” and must consent to marriage.
Conditions in the settlement are hellish. Shahrak-e-Sabz is set in a vast desert with no shade trees in sight; scant protection from sandstorms and harsh weather; no running water, electricity, heat or work; and only a trickle of aid from the outside world. Most families living here left behind decent lives to escape climate change and conflict. They subsist on stale bread and black tea; many are close to starving.
Across Afghanistan, child marriages have skyrocketed, and not only because of economic collapse. Families once hoped that their daughters, when educated, might find good work and contribute to the family income. Today, under the Taliban’s ever-increasing restrictions, school is prohibited for girls after the sixth grade, and work options for women are few. Sequestered at home, a girl becomes just another mouth to feed. But as a bride, she’s a valuable commodity. A $2,000 bride price is enough to feed a family for a year. For the girls, of course, this is a nightmare. In their new in-laws’ homes, they are saddled with housework and often subject to verbal, physical and sexual abuse — slavery under the guise of matrimony. It’s no wonder suicide and depression are rising among Afghan teenage girls.
To address the root causes of the child-bride phenomenon, my organization, Too Young to Wed, works to alleviate the hunger that stalks almost 90 percent of Afghans today. We provide parents with livelihood training so they can support their families rather than choose between starving or selling their children. In some cases, sensitive social workers can work with local authorities to annul marriages. Meanwhile, it is essential to educate community elders about the detrimental effects of child marriage, its harm to girls’ physical and emotional well-being and to the broader societal fabric. Girls under age 15 are five times more likely than women to die in childbirth, and their babies are often born premature.
In the midst of our fieldwork in Afghanistan, we worked with photographers to document the lives of several families who have faced the prospect of child marriage. Here are six of their stories.
Khoshbakht, 10
(Too Young to Wed)
Khoshbakht is one of five children living with their mother, Nazdana. Their father died a year ago, and Nazdana now works as a tailor by day and does embroidery at night. Her two daughters gather meager money by begging. Since the family’s house was destroyed in an October earthquake, they have been living in a tent. In two months, Khoshbakht is to join the family to which she was sold two years ago for 150,000 Afghanis (about $2,100). “I want to be with my mother,” she said. She also wants to stay in school with her friends. Nazdana has been offered money for her 8-year-old daughter, Razia, too. “In the future,” she fears, ‘I won’t have a choice.”
Saliha, 10
(Too Young to Wed)
Saliha was sold into marriage at age 7. “I sold my daughter due to poverty and hunger to save the life of the others,” said her father, Mohammad Khan. “I feel guilty but I had no other choice.” Too Young to Wed worked with the families and faith leaders to annul the marriage. Saliha, now 10 and enrolled in school, looks at her homework with her father, who is delighted by her education. “When we go in the city,” he said, “my daughter tells me: here, it is written ‘clinic.’ Here it is written this name or that name. Me? I can’t read these things. I will not marry my daughter before she finishes her studies. It’s too important.”
Fawzia, 6
(Too Young to Wed)
Fawzia, standing here with Ghulam Hazrat, 8; Amina, 5; and her mother, Shirin Gul, loves playing with her rabbit and wants to go to school like other girls. But Shirin Gul says she will have to sell Fawzia into marriage. The family has too little money, and she sees no other option. Three of her eight children are disabled, and she earns just 25 Afghanis (about 36 cents) a day spinning wool.
Benazir, 10
(Too Young to Wed)
Benazir, seen here making bread, was sold into marriage at age 7, when her father, Murad Khan, found he could no longer feed his eight children. Too Young to Wed negotiated with the families and faith leaders to annul the marriage, and helped Khan with the start-up capital needed to open a shop and become self-sufficient. Benazir is now enrolled in robotics school, and one of her sisters, Khomari,has completed Too Young to Wed’s sewing program. Khan says, “Even if someone put a knife on my neck, I won’t marry off my daughter.”
Farzana, 9
(Too Young to Wed)
Farzana’s mother, Mariam, has seven children, ranging in age from 1 to 15. Farzana is at the top of this photo, with her mother and four of her siblings: Halima, 13; Fatima, 2; Gul Ahmad, 5; and Yunus, 7. After Mariam’s husband died in a car accident last year, she had to borrow money to survive. As her debts increased, she was forced to sell Farzana for 300,000 Afghanis (about $4,300). The buyer insists he’s entitled to take Farzana now because there’s no man in Mariam’s house, but Mariam is fighting through the legal system to keep Farzana until she turns 18.
Nazia, 9
(Too Young to Wed)
Nazia was sold one year ago instead of her 12-year-old sister Pashtana, who insisted on staying in school. Their mother, Nazgul, and her husband have struggled to feed their six children and decided they had no other choice but to sell one of their daughters to a relative’s family for 200,000 Afghanis (about $2,800). At the time, Nazia had no idea what marriage would mean, so she didn’t protest. Now she knows, and the boy’s family wants to take her already. Nazia said she wants to play and be with her family. “I like school. I like learning the alphabet. The whole class is friends with me.” Nazgul regrets her decision but said, “We didn’t have anything, not even a mattress. I was forced to sell my daughter.” She is trying to persuade the boy’s family to let Nazia stay home for three more years.
In the new Afghanistan, it’s sell your daughter or starve
2023 was a busy year for AAN, with just over 50 publications. They ranged from in-depth investigations into the economy, public finance and the aid industry to a poetic journey into the world of falconry. We introduced a new form of report – short, first-person accounts by Afghans of what they are doing to survive – and try to prosper – which we have called The Daily Hustle. We also posted two major publications on Islamic Emirate thinking and law-making, a translation of Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada’s orders and edicts, with accompanying analysis, and a review of a book by the Chief Justice outlining what he believes a properly constituted Islamic state should be like. Our most widely-read report of 2023 also gave readers a window into the thinking of Afghanistan’s new rulers: five former Taleban fighters spoke about life in the capital, with some unexpected comments. Here, Kate Clark looks back at 2023 – what we wrote and what you read – and introduces some of AAN’s plans for 2024.
What we were writing in 2023
2023 was a year in which the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) really bedded down and our reporting reflected that: we looked at the Amir’s decrees – what he felt had needed banning, promoting or making obligatory – and the way the IEA has extended control over higher education. We also looked at its spending priorities. Indeed, the economy proved to be a strong constant throughout the year.
Little had changed in how the outside world and the IEA dealt with each other since it re-established its rule over Afghanistan in August 2021. Given the financial dependence of the Islamic Republic, and indeed the Afghan economy, on outside funding, and the subsequent and lasting rift with donor countries, the economic consequences of the 2021 change of government persist. Our work tried to unpick this, with reports on IEA perceptions of the aid industry, the parallels and differences between its ban on women working for NGOs and the United Nations in the 1990s and now, and a candid look at aid diversion. We also scrutinised international attitudes towards the IEA, with in-depth reports on the various meetings and initiatives for regional and international actors to thrash out a way forward to deal with a government that has not wanted to heed their demands.
These ‘top-down’ or ‘big picture’ views of the economy and politics were balanced by reports that zeroed in on the local, sometimes hyper-local level: how shopkeepers, civil servants and farmers in the formerly heavily contested Andar district have found prosperity since the end of the fighting, the struggle by three women now selling goods on the streets of the capital to try to feed their families, or how one girl, banned from secondary education, has found a job teaching younger girls, trying to “help [their] dreams come true.” Reports on rights and freedoms, especially those of women and girls, featured strongly, as they have done in earlier years.
Some subjects continue regardless of who is in power in Kabul, for example, the long dispute between Afghanistan and Iran over water from the Helmand River, Chinese investments in Afghanistan – motivated by economic interest or security fears? – and the fate of Afghans held in the United States prison camp in Guantanamo, something that we have reported on every year for the last decade. Actually, in 2023, there was just one Afghan left, Muhammad Rahim, held without charge or trial since 2007. We reported on his efforts to persuade the authorities to release him. Unfathomably, even though it is now two years after the last American troops left his country, the US continues to argue that the war is, in fact, not over and Rahim remains a threat to its national security.
In 2023, we also rolled out two new types of report. The first, The Daily Hustle, trialled in late 2022 became a firm feature on our website. It tells the stories of individual Afghans: surviving a Kabul winter, opening a girls’ home school, or the journey to Pakistan to visit family. The second is what we are calling ‘themed reports’. Grounded in in-depth research and/or dealing with complex subjects, we hope they will have a long shelf-life and so present them as graphically designed PDFs. Our aim is to facilitate the ease and enjoyment of reading them. We used this format for reports on, for example, how Afghan musicians are faring, on various aspects of the aid industry, and for a review by former BBC journalist and Deoband graduate, John Butt, of the IEA’s Chief Justice’s theory of jurisprudence, ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance).
At AAN, individual researchers generally focus on what interests them, a strategy which we hope keeps our publications lively and fresh. At the same time, we try to cover a broad range of topics, so set ourselves to cover eight key thematic categories:
War and Peace
Economy, Development and the Environment
Culture and Context
Political Landscape
Rights and Freedoms
Regional Relations
International Engagement
Migration
In the table below, it can be seen that three of these categories dominated our research in 2023: Economy, Development and the Environment, followed by Rights and Freedoms, and then Culture and Context. That last category is where we try to provide a wider and deeper context for thinking about Afghanistan that goes beyond economics and politics: music, history, literature and wildlife. They are often our favourite reports to write. Indeed, we ended 2023 with two such reports, about falconry in Afghanistan: the first surveyed the poetry and literature going back into history of falcon and falconer; the second explored how every year, raptor birds migrating across Afghanistan, are “caught and sold, often abroad, to be trained to hunt other prey in turn,” while wealthy hunters from the Gulf come to Afghanistan to hunt bustards with falcons. Finally, it was noticeable that War and Peace dominated our reporting in earlier years – in 2021, two out of every five reports fell into this category, as did 14 of the 20 most-read reports. In 2023, just one report fell into that category.
AAN Category
Published
Top 20 read
Number
Percent
Number
Percent
Economy, Development, Enviroment
19
38
6
30
Rights and Freedoms
11
22
6
30
Context and Culture
9
18
5
25
International Engagment
5
10
1
5
Poltical Landscape
3
6
2
10
Migration
1
2
0
0
War and Peace
1
2
0
0
Regional Relations
1
2
0
0
Table by AAN.
What you were reading in 2023
As to what you, our readers, were interested in, the same three categories dominated our list of the twenty most-read reports. Way out ahead, with almost ten times as many page views as the second most-read report was ‘New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul’, by guest author Sabawoon Samim. He interviewed five former fighters, asking what they thought about living in a city previously viewed as at the heart of the ‘foreign occupation’ and with a population degraded by Western ways. Much of their experience, however, was positive. They liked the modern facilities and relative cleanness of the capital and the ethnic diversity: “You can see an Uzbek, Pashtun and a Tajik living in one building and going to the same mosque,” commented one man, who also said: “Unlike villages where a lot of people go to the mosque to impress others, people in Kabul go there just for the sake of Allah.” Our report was picked up by foreign media, used to vilify the Taleban, who discovered with astonishment that they shared some experiences with the former fighters – chafing at the dull and restricted nature of office life, for example. Our second most-read publication was a dossier of reports on women’s rights, published in 2021, a reminder that concerns about the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan remain evergreen.
Other publications from earlier years also featured in the top twenty most-read reports. An investigation into the damage and threat of the climate crisis by guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar was widely read, as were two reports on the cultural history of hashish in Afghanistan, on production and consumption, both published in 2019. The crossover of those interested in Afghanistan and in drugs has pushed up reader numbers for these two reports to our most-read reports every year since they were published.
As for readers of our reports in Dari and Pashto, the five most-read were very varied. Way out in front, with almost twice as many page views as any other report was ‘From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in Western writing’, from 2014. It was a rare survey of how Uzbeks have been portrayed by Western media and authors from colonial times to modern-day, much of it with racist overtones. Other reports, which were also popular in earlier years and featured in the top-five list, were Mayar’s look at climate change and a charting of a then new Afghan migration route through the Balkans, published in 2016. At number five, though, was a report published late in 2023 – the review of the IEA’s Chief Justice’s theory of jurisprudence. The book was written in Arabic, so perhaps it is not surprising that readers wanted to read a scholarly analysis of it in Pashto.
The year ahead
In 2024, it looks inevitable that Economy, Development and the Environment, International Engagement (or non-engagement) and Rights and Freedoms will form a large part of our research portfolio, as they did in 2023. Regional Relations also look likely to loom large; the IEA, at least, puts great store in them, and difficulties with the neighbours can have major repercussions, as the forced migration of Afghans from Pakistan has shown (almost half a million since September, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR).
In the first week of January, we heard from one of those Afghans who had spent the last 35 years of his 55 years in Pakistan. “It’s not easy to start a life, especially at my age,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d have to start all over again, but I’m an Afghan. I know from experience that life is full of unexpected twists and turns.” At AAN, we expect to be covering such unexpected twists and turns, as they affect Afghanistan and look forward to sharing the year’s journey with you.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
AAN’s 20 most-widely read reports in 2023 (English)
Nearly a million Afghans, many born and brought up in Pakistan, have ‘returned’ to their country since the start of Pakistan’s latest deportation campaign. On 3 October 2023, the government in Islamabad told undocumented Afghans living in the country to leave voluntarily by the end of that month or risk being forcibly returned. The police in Pakistan, however, began detaining and forcibly returning Afghans well in advance of the deadline, despite calls from Kabul and international organisations such as the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, to stay the deportations during winter or at least slow their pace to avert what many feared was a looming humanitarian catastrophe. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon heard from one Afghan who has recently returned to Kabul with his family about the abrupt ending of his life in Pakistan and his experience of return. By the time I left my home in Islamabad to return to Afghanistan, I had spent 35 of my 55 years in Pakistan. In 1988, the Soviets had started their withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fight for power between the mujahedin factions had entered a ferocious and more bloody phase. As a young man of 20, I couldn’t see a future for myself there in the rubble and poverty. There were no jobs and my father was struggling to feed our family. As the oldest son, I had to leave home in search of work to send money home and, at the very least, my father would have one less mouth to feed. Over the years, I made a life for myself in Pakistan. I married a girl from my family, we had two sons and then later, we were blessed with three daughters.
At first, I worked as a day labourer and we didn’t have much money, barely making ends meet. But our situation improved when my sons got older and could join me at work. Within two years of my sons contributing to the household, we were able to buy some cows and start breeding them and selling their milk. We invested all the money back into the business. We bought young calves and sold them at a profit when they were grown. We were now financially secure businessmen. We moved to better housing, sent my three daughters to school and, eventually, my two sons got married. Now, we have a happy, prosperous nine-member household. Or at least we did until the Pakistani government started the latest deportation of Afghans.
The right time to leave
At first, when the Pakistani government first announced the deadline for Afghans to leave, I ignored it. They had made such announcements before, and we had always been able to weather the storm and stay on in Islamabad. We used to have official refugee papers, but I had allowed them to lapse. I don’t know why. I guess I had become too complacent. I tried unsuccessfully to bring our paperwork up-to-date and legalise our status again. We thought we could lie low and let the storm pass. But the police started rounding up Afghans even before the deadline. Even people who were in Pakistan legally were being detained and sent back to Afghanistan. We had a family meeting to talk about what we should do. My wife and I were the only ones in the family who had ever lived in Afghanistan. My children were born in Pakistan and my girls had never been to Afghanistan. My teenage daughters opposed the move because they knew they would not be able to continue their schooling. They’d heard about the Emirate’s restrictions on women and were afraid they would lose all the freedoms they’d had in Pakistan. But the situation seemed impossible, so we decided to start making preparations to return to Afghanistan. It was best to leave on our own terms. We would sell what we could so that we could return with some capital.
Preparing to leave
Packing up a life is not an easy thing to do. We had to decide what we could take, what to sell and what to leave behind or give away. We had to tie up loose ends and say goodbye to friends and family. Mostly, we had to come to terms with leaving our lives and everything we had known. The few weeks before we left took not only a physical toll but also an emotional one.
We took a beating on the sale of our belongings. There are always people to benefit from the misfortune of others. The Pakistani government had a list of things we couldn’t take to Afghanistan. These included livestock and motorcycles. Our two cows were worth 500,000 rupees (USD 1,750) each, but I sold them for 190,000 (USD 650) each. I also had five calves, each worth 90,000 rupees (USD 300); I got only 30,000 (USD 100) for each of them. I sold my motorbike for only 100,000 rupees (USD 345). I had bought it new for 200,000 rupees (USD 690).
Meanwhile, my wife and daughters were busy packing our belongings. When the packing was finally done, I sent my oldest son to the market nearby to arrange for a truck and a driver to take us and our stuff to Afghanistan. The police were out looking to arrest undocumented Afghans and I told him to be careful.
The police arrest my son
We hadn’t heard from my son since he’d left the house early in the morning to find a truck. I kept calling him, but he wasn’t picking up the phone. That evening, we sat in silence, waiting for the phone to ring, my wife’s eyes locked on the front door. The next day, around 9 in the morning, we got a call from a strange number. The person on the other end told me in Urdu that he was a police officer and then gave the phone to my son. He told me he’d been detained and unless we gave the police 25,000 rupees (USD 81), they would issue a First Information Report (FIR) and send him to prison. I quickly agreed to send them money to get him released. But I couldn’t go to the police station myself because, without valid refugee documents, I could be detained as well. So I asked a Pakistani friend to take the money to the police station. After an hour, which felt like an eternity, my son called to say he was on his way home.
We couldn’t risk leaving the house again, so I asked a relative who had a refugee card to help us rent a truck. Luckily, he found an Afghan driver who agreed to take us all the way to Kabul for 182,000 rupees (USD 630).
A final goodbye
It was already dark when we reached the Torkham crossing. We had to wait until morning for them to open the crossing point. My daughters were anxious and kept asking questions. They wanted to know about life in Afghanistan, what the houses were like, could they find the same products they were used to buying in Pakistan, did they have the same TV programmes and, most importantly, what were they going to do about their education since they could not attend high school in Afghanistan?
Finally, they opened the border and the Pakistani police started searching the vehicles that had queued overnight. They made us take everything off the truck. They threw everything on the ground and when they were finished riffling through our belongings, they left it all on the ground for us to repack. My wife watched quietly, shaking her head as the guards carelessly dumped our bedding and clothes on the dirty ground and signalled my daughters to start shaking the dust and repack things as best they could.
I could hear a boy crying because he’d been told he had to leave his pet chicken behind. The boy clutched the bird to his chest and pleaded with the guards. The father quietly spoke to the guards and asked them to make an exception. Finally, they said they’d let the boy take his chicken if the father gave them 3,000 rupees (USD 10). I could see the father’s ashen face as he explained to his son that they couldn’t afford to pay and had to give the chicken to the guards. The boy hugged the bird one last time and then handed it over. He kept looking back as long as he could, a river of tears streaming down his cheeks, until they were past the checkpoint and he could no longer see his beloved pet.
When we reached the checkpoint, we stopped and looked back at the country that had been our home all these years. In our hearts, we thanked Pakistan for affording us a good life. Then, we turned around and started taking our first steps toward our new life.
Back home to Afghanistan
Luckily, the border was not too busy when we crossed, but we had to spend another two nights on the Afghan side to get our returnee documents and the money the Emirate gives returnees to help them get started, 15,000 Afs (USD 215) per family. I heard that families that arrived two weeks later had to wait up to 11 days to get their documents and money.
When we reached Kabul, there was a clamour of excitement in the truck. The girls were marvelling at the modern buildings in the city, the broad clean avenues. They pointed to shop windows and giggled to each other. It was the first time I’d seen a glint of excitement in my girls’ eyes since we’d decided to leave Islamabad. The mood had lightened and I didn’t want to darken their delight with my own anxieties about the future, so I joined in the merriment too.
One of my relatives had an empty house in Kabul’s Tarakhel township. Weeks earlier, he’d called me. He’d heard we were leaving Pakistan and told me we could live in the house rent-free for as long as we needed to get on our feet. It was a very lucky break that many people don’t have, but over the years, I’d hosted this man and his family in Islamabad several times and he told me it was his turn to host us.
We’ve been in Kabul for a month now. The days are taken up by setting up the house and settling into life. I take the girls out to explore the city. It gives me joy to see them excited about the possibilities Kabul has to offer. For now, we have enough money to survive the winter, but I have to get work and a way to find a living for my family. I’ve been asking around for work since we arrived, but jobs are ‘as rare as bird’s milk’ (an Afghan saying, az sher-e morq ta jon-e adamizad, ‘from bird’s milk to human life’ refers to a precious rarity). I don’t think I’ll find a job before spring, but I hope to rent some land and start a cattle business when the weather gets better. We have to start small, but I’m sure we can make a go of things.
It’s not easy to start a life, especially at my age. I didn’t think I’d have to start all over again, but I’m an Afghan. I know from experience that life is full of unexpected twists and turns. I have faith in God and, inshallah, things will go well.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
The Daily Hustle: ‘Packing up a life’ in Pakistan and being forcibly returned to Afghanistan
Ms. Gannon is a Canadian journalist who covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for 34 years for The Associated Press.
The New York Times
4 January 2024
It’s striking how much Afghanistan, which has the unfortunate legacy of being the site of America’s longest war, has all but disappeared from public discussion in the United States. But perhaps it’s understandable. After all, there always seems to be another conflict, another war — which, as it happens, is also Afghanistan’s history.
Since 1979, Afghans have lived in almost perpetual conflict. Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes or their country. Foreign interventions have come and gone, ending in failure, leaving Afghans and their neighbors to live with the consequences.
Today, America’s longest war is over. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul sits empty, a daily reminder of how America has sought to isolate Afghanistan since the U.S. military’s withdrawal in 2021. Washington has done so in an effort to pressure the ruling Taliban to moderate its views, including committing to women’s rights, expanding the government to non-Taliban members and addressing human rights abuses.
That tactic backfired the first time the group was in power. And vacant Western embassies aren’t going to get girls back to school or increase women’s participation in the work force. Instead, isolating the Taliban has served only to isolate Afghans, leaving many of them feeling alone and, worse, helpless.
It’s time to accept that past policies have failed and that the United States and its allies must change course and commit to greater engagement, which would in turn bring a better understanding of the realities in Afghanistan. Along with the large amount of humanitarian aid Washington provides, it’s time for America to return to Afghanistan and the 40 million people who live there. Washington should reopen its embassy in Kabul and commit to engaging with Afghans across society. Afghans need to know that the United States and others are there and that they can be depended upon.
As a journalist who worked in Afghanistan for decades, I have seen the country through its many wars and witnessed the results of successive failed policies. I watched as so many nations and international organizations scrambled to evacuate some of the country’s brightest and best-educated people. I watched the last U.S. aircraft fly out of the Kabul airport in 2021, bringing a frantic end to the war and ushering in the Taliban’s return to power.
I wondered then whether the world would ever be able to see Afghanistan for the striking country it is and to see Afghans — not just the Kabul elite and expatriates but also those in villages and cities, on farms that stretch for miles or in the rugged mountains — not as a problem to solve but as the very answer to lasting peace in their country.
When the Taliban previously controlled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, Washington, the United Nations and others came down hard on Taliban leaders with conditions they were instructed to meet if they could hope to gain recognition by the United States and other nations. The Taliban were told to educate girls, end drug production and expel Osama bin Laden, who had lived there since the spring of 1996, before the Taliban took power.
But U.S. and U.N. sanctions closed off Afghanistan and undercut those among the Taliban who wanted to engage with the world and had a vision for their country that — while it might not have matched the conception in Western capitals — included having girls and boys attend school.
Most significantly, some of those Taliban members open to engagement did not support foreign fighters taking up residence in their country. As I reported at the time, the Taliban’s then deputy interior minister, Mohammad Khaksar, told me that in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strike on the United States, he had reached out to a U.S. diplomat and a C.I.A. official in neighboring Pakistan for help in expelling foreign fighters but was rebuffed. Gregory Marchese, at the time the vice consul at the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, later corroborated to me that he’d had that meeting with Mr. Khaksar and a C.I.A. official, Peter McIllwain. Mr. McIllwain later confirmed what Mr. Khaksar had said about it.
America did not focus on Afghanistan in the years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, when it closed its embassy. This left Washington blind to what was taking shape there in the lead-up to Sept. 11. Over the past two years, Washington has pursued a similar policy, shunning a diplomatic return to Kabul and believing it can pressure Taliban leaders into educating girls and easing restrictions on women with the promise of international recognition. And once again, that notion is failing.
In my reporting on the Taliban movement since 2021, I have found that the most restrictive Taliban leaders have grown more assertive, capitalizing on the nation’s isolation to tighten their grip, at the expense of those who advocate international engagement and whose vision for their country does not exclude girls from education or seek to make women invisible.
Financially, America has continued to be generous to Afghanistan, providing significant humanitarian aid since the Taliban’s return to power. In fact, America remains one of the nation’s largest humanitarian donors — having spent about $2 billion on aid since leaving the country. (At the same time, the United States and European nations are holding more than $9 billion in Afghan assets, frozen since the Taliban’s return.) But humanitarian aid alone won’t help Afghanistan move forward.
The public face of the anti-Taliban movement in Afghanistan is composed of some of the same discredited warlords accused of war crimes and former generals who took charge after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, some of whom have also been accused of — and denied — crimes against Afghan civilians. The United States has been engaged with those leaders, but they are part of the problem, not a solution.
Of course, America talks to the Taliban as well. U.S. officials have met with Taliban leaders in Qatar, where the group maintains a political office and where the U.S. diplomatic mission to Afghanistan is based. Washington’s special envoy, Thomas West, is the public face of America’s Afghanistan policy. He has met with the Taliban in Qatar to discuss topics like education for girls and humanitarian aid, and he holds meetings with the leaders of Afghanistan’s neighbors and those in the Middle East and Europe.
But it is engagement at a distance. That strategy offers a voice to only a few Afghans — the Kabul elite, expatriates and former government officials. That means U.S. officials don’t hear, see or understand what is happening on the ground. The United Nations has maintained a steady presence in the country since the Taliban took power, and nearly 20 nations, including Japan, China, Russia and some Middle Eastern nations, have maintained or established some sort of diplomatic presence there in the past two years. Until the United States and other Western nations do the same, there will be people in Afghanistan who will continue to feel alone and unable to make the changes that only they can make.
It would also be helpful if Western officials’ public statements aided in finding a path forward rather than inflaming sentiments. Speaking to Congress in April about how U.S. funds were being used in Afghanistan, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko, said: “I would just say I haven’t seen a starving Taliban fighter on TV. They all seem to be fat, dumb and happy. I see a lot of starving Afghan children on TV. So I am wondering where all this funding is going.”
While Mr. Sopko’s concerns about how U.S. money was being spent may have been legitimate, that kind of caricature is not in anyone’s interest. The Taliban is a movement defined by its religious zeal, whose tribal roots are deeply wedged in Afghanistan’s conservative countryside. Respect goes far in Afghanistan — and a lack of respect goes equally far in unproductive directions.
The Taliban come from within Afghan society. That does not mean all Afghans support the relentless restrictions on girls and women, but it does mean that navigating a way forward requires deeper understanding, less arrogance and more of a homegrown Afghan solution.
And like it or not, that means returning to Afghanistan.
Kathy Gannon is a Canadian journalist and former correspondent and news director of 34 years for The Associated Press, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia and the Middle East. She was seriously injured in 2014 when an Afghan police commander fired on her car, killing an A.P. photographer from Germany, Anja Niedringhaus.
We thought we would start the new year by asking AAN writers and friends to recommend books about Afghanistan. The books they reviewed were diverse – fact and fiction, classics and newly-published and written in English, Pashto and German. Two were books that the reviewers felt helped make sense of why the Islamic Republic and its foreign backers failed, both written well before 2021. Three are accounts of journeys, from the 1930s, 2010s and after the 2021 fall of Kabul, all far more than travelogues. The memoirs of a United States airman who listened in to conversations from insurgents far below, gathering intelligence in order to target them, reveals the danger of realising your enemy is human, while a novel brings out the humanity of those living through an earlier phase of the war – the devastating fight over Kabul in the 1990s. We hope you enjoy these reviews as much as we did.
Rosita Forbes, ‘Forbidden Road. Kabul to Samarkand’, 1937
It was one of those finds. I had never heard about the book before, never saw it in a footnote or referred to elsewhere, but then discovered a story from a world long gone.
“The frontier you wish to cross is generally regarded as closed,” is what Rosita Forbes was told at the Soviet embassy in London when she earnestly started planning her trip to Samarkand, “through Afghanistan.” It is the 1930s and her wish to travel had been generated by seeing refugees from Soviet Turkmenistan, fleeing collectivisation, in Mashhad, Iran.
Finally, the journey happens. Forbes, an English travel writer, who had driven an ambulance in the first world war, travels through Afghanistan, a country then in the middle of – underreported – reform. The take of historians is usually that ‘reformer-king’ Amanullah’s abdication in 1929 was followed by half a century of stagnation. But Forbes speaks about then prime minister, His Royal Highness Sardar Hashem Khan, as “Asia’s wisest politician” and describes passing through “amazed villages lectured” by radio broadcasts in “Pushtu” on “agricultural reform, trade, sanitation, and the suppression of unnecessary murder.” She sees an Afghanistan with the potential for change – although the few glimpses into women’s life are sobering.
The road to Samarkand, described in the second half of the book, leads her through Kabul, a city with (you hear echoes of Babur) “a beauty like nothing else on earth.” She travels to the Khyber Pass and Jalalabad, and Herat and Bamyan, with the old bazaar at the feet of the Buddha statues still existing, and Charikar and Duab and finally Mazar-e Sharif, “the mecca of Central Asia.” To get there, she has made ‘a little detour’, mainly by lorry, squeezed in between male passengers and the driver. In a black hat, shawl, overcoat and sunglasses. And lipstick, if one of the ‘76 half-tone illustrations’ in the book does not deceive me.
“We lunched in the middle of [a] Ghazni street under the lovely long walls of her fortress.” road to Mukur, she describes villages with “excellent rest-houses with clean beds, tea, and a pilau for the ordering.” (70 years later, this writer still found pilau there.) “To travel with Afghans is a pleasure,” Forbes writes: “With seventeen Afghans on the post lorry,” mind you, on the way back from Kandahar to Kabul, “we had no food for eight hours, and were half frozen by sleet and wind.” In Kabul, the passengers all said farewell. “It was a good day. I had enjoyed it.” So did I, this very unexpected book.
Rosita Forbes, ‘Forbidden Road. Kabul to Samarkand’, 1937, EP Dutton & Co, New York, 289pp, (second-hand, found online)
Reviewed by Thomas Ruttig, a co-founder of AAN.
Jamaluddin Aram, ‘Nothing good happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday’, 2023
This moving debut by Jamaluddin Aram is an ode to life in the midst of war. His novel tells the story of a neighborhood in Kabul in the early 1990s (Wazirabad, for those who don’t know it, is next to Kabul Airport and was a ‘prize’ greatly fought over) and presents a fascinating cast of characters. There is the Kite-Seller and Bonesetter, the Widow, the Electrician, three militiamen and a young calligrapher called Seema; the men are mostly named by their work or profession, while the women are mostly defined by their familial positions and relations. However, the novel takes us beyond these titles and the stories of the women are detailed and layered – as they provide for their families, questioning and subverting the norms, or skillfully navigating a world where the stakes are set against them, to survive and pursue their hearts’ desires.
This novel is unexpected and refreshing in its language and structure. While written in English, the book incorporates Persian poetry, local proverbs, sayings and elaborate curse words and phrases with ease and grace, immersing us in a particular place and time. The structure is nonlinear, interweaving the stories of all the characters and integrating gossip, rumors, predictions and dreams, giving a surreal quality to the storytelling. The book tells stories of love, hate, faith, doubt and survival with tenderness for a community suffering poverty and living in the shadow of the war but not defined by either.
Jamaluddin Aram, ‘Nothing good happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday’, 2023, Simon & Schuster, 299 pp, ISDN 978-1668009857
Reviewed byShaharzad Akbar, a human rights activist in exile who misses home and loves books.
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, ‘Connecting Histories in Afghanistan’, 2008
While in Herat recently, I re-read Hanifi’s ‘Connecting Histories’that explores the economy and society of the country in the 19th-century and its relations with colonial British India, through a lens of trade, literacy and state building at a critical and turbulent period of history.
Drawing on official and oral historical sources, Hanifi describes how British hopes of a subservient ‘frontier zone’ that might enhance their economic interests were thwarted by successive Afghan rulers who, while relying on handsome subsidies, gradually expanded their bureaucratic infrastructure in order to retain a monopoly on transnational trade in key commodities that depended in large part on nomadic communities for secure transport. The author documents how control of commerce enabled Abdul Rahman Khan (r 1880–1901) to invest in measures that he deemed essential for a ‘modern’ and independent state, while still making the case for increased subsidies.
The book has particular resonance in the aftermath of the most recent foreign engagement, when a culture of entitlement seemed to prevail among many Afghan politicians and officials whose legitimacy derived largely from financial and material support provided – often unconditionally – by outsiders. Just as in the 19th-century, such assistance was portrayed as a bulwark against an ever-shifting set of perceived threats to both donor nations and their allies in Kabul. By contrast, external aid has, since 2021, been employed as a means to pressure the current administration, whose response is to maximise locally-generated revenue and question the manner in which much ‘humanitarian’ assistance is provided. Hanifi’s book serves as a reminder that tension between Afghan leaders and their foreign backers is nothing new. Since 2021, this tends to be portrayed as primarily a tug-of-war over control of external aid with the administration in Kabul, but may also be about the current leadership’s assertion of a right to determine the longer-term vision for Afghanistan.
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, ‘Connecting Histories in Afghanistan’, 2008, Columbia University Press, 282 pp, ISDN 0804774110
Reviewed byJolyon Leslie, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan since 1989 and is currently engaged in building conservation in the old city of Herat.
Ian Fritz, ‘What the Taliban told me’, 2023
This is the memoir of a US airman who deployed to Afghanistan after having learned Farsi and Pashto. In 2011, at the age of 22, he began flying hundreds of hours on ‘Whiskey and U-boat gunships’.[1] This was the time of the US military’s ‘capture or kill’ operations and of ‘the surge’ when President Barack Obama pushed US troop numbers up to more than one hundred thousand to break the Taleban insurgency.[2] Fritz’ job was to listen in to Afghans speaking on their walkie-talkies far below – and use that information to kill them.
He offers an entertaining, very personal, worm’s-eye view of the war. He is smart, well-informed and writes with insight about contending with strange languages, cultures and comms systems.
His perch gave him a rare window on the war. Most of us could only really see it from the single angle our particular perspective permitted, but occasionally you get a clear look from a different angle, and it makes your eyes go wide. Fritz shares his double vision with the reader, of the enlisted member of the US armed forces, and the man listening in to the conversations of fellow human beings. That was very hard on him.
The core of the narrative is how Fritz’ comms monitoring got him seeing his ‘targets’ as humans and the war itself differently. It made him suicidal. He did quit in time to save himself, but had a hard time getting the people around him to even understand what the problem was. He describes how the same thing happened to most other specialists in his role. Fritz went on to become a medical doctor.
I had expected more about the Taleban in this book, given its title, but it really only offers glimpses of them: he condemns them, but likes them. Fritz only deals with the politics of the war on a very abstract level, focusing on the stupidity and wrongness of it.
Ian Fritz, ‘What the Taliban told me’, 2023, Simon & Schuster, 304 pp, ISDN 978-1668010693
Reviewed byRoger Helms, who has been involved in Afghanistan since the 1980s when he worked on cross-border aid projects from Pakistan. He features in AAN largely as our map-maker.
Lillias Hamilton, ‘A Vizier’s Daughter: A Tale of Hazara War’, 1900
Hamilton, a prolific journalist as well as family doctor to the Afghan king, Abdul Rahman Khan (r 1880–1901) wrote what reads now like historical novel, in 1900. That was only a few years after the events which give it its setting, the brutal suppression by the ‘Iron Amir’ of the Hazara uprisings of 1888-1893. The author gives a fictionalised account of real events, saying she wrote about what had been seen and heard by people that she spoke to. They included Gul Begum, the heroine of her story.
Gul Begum is the daughter of an arbab, a Hazara landowner, who was a minister – vizier – in the self-governing Hazarajat before the war. Beautiful and wise, her father was really proud of her. When Hazaras lost their lands and property after defeat in the fight against Abdul Rahman Khan, Gul Begum was among the women and children taken captive and sold as slaves, while her father disappeared. In a complicated but compelling story, she tries to escape a forced marriage to a colonel in the amir’s army. Whether or not she escapes her fate, the reader will need to find out.
I found the book realistic and exciting, and with everything narrated simply and fluently, in a way that any reader could easily understand. Hamilton was an outsider, a British woman at a foreign court, but also an insider, family doctor to the royal family. Her account feels authentic.
Lillias Hamilton, ‘A Vizier’s Daughter: A Tale of Hazara War’, 1900, Gale and The British Library, 430 pp ISBN 978-1535800402
Reviewed byRohullah Suroush, a researcher with AAN.
Barnett R Rubin, ‘The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System’, second edition 2002
Of the books about Afghanistan that I have read over the years, and they are quite a few, there is above all one which gave me a major piece in the puzzle of why everything turned out the way it did in that agonised country – Rubin’s ‘The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System’.The main focus of the book is how the Afghan political elites, including the state, as well as civil society and later the armed opposition groups during the Soviet occupation, became increasingly dependent on foreign assistance from competing international powers. It was a development which began in earnest during the reign of Abdul Rahman Khan (r 1880-1901) and which ultimately led to the collapse of the state and the fragmentation of Afghan political and social society in the beginning of the 1990s. Although it is not covered in the book, the same conditions came to characterise Afghan political life in the coming decades and was an important cause to the downfall of the Islamic Republic in August 2021.
Barnett R Rubin, ‘The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System’, 1995 (second edition 2002), Yale University Press, 420 pp, ISDN 0300095198
Reviewed byAnders Fänge, a Board Member of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), SCA Country Director for 17 years during different periods between 1983 and 2011 and UNAMA Field Director 2001-03.
Whitney Azoy, ‘Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan’, 1982
Books published on Afghanistan that adhere to at least a minimum academic standard are not known as enjoyable reads. That is not their purpose; they should instead have rigorous analytical standards and be of value in helping you to understand Afghanistan, either as a whole system or one of its smaller components. Reading these books does often feel like a chore. But on occasion — a rare occasion — there is a book that offers both high quality analysis and is an enjoyable read. Whitney Azoy’s 1982 classic about buzkashi is one of those few.
Whitney Azoy first came to Afghanistan at the beginning of the 1970s as a US State Department Foreign Service Officer. He later resigned from the State Department and enrolled in an anthropology PhD programme. He returned to Afghanistan for fieldwork and departed in 1978, as did most foreigners. The result of his fieldwork was a PhD dissertation on the horse-riding sport of buzkashi, a project that was later published in 1982 as a book. In 2012, a 3rd edition by Waveland Press was published that included two new chapters and 30 more years of buzkashi in Afghanistan.
Buzkashi, a sport with deep Turkic cultural roots and historically popular in northern Afghanistan, and often described as horseback polo with a dead goat (or calf), is usually considered at most to be an entertaining game to play or watch once the temperatures drop. However, the game as a metaphor for politics and power competition in Afghanistan is a rich one. There is so much in this sport that can, once analysed, offer insight into how Afghanistan works. It is a metaphor, not strict engineering schematics, so it does take some literary license to make the metaphor work. Azoy goes beyond that simple comparison and observes everything around buzkashi as part of the broader game – from powerful local elites to the lowliest of social outcasts who are present on the sidelines. The importance of buzkashi was not lost on the national government, and they eventually introduced it in Kabul in a sanitised and controlled version for public consumption.
The book has, throughout the text, engaging characters and vivid scenes of people angling for position – both on and off the field. It is as valuable a read now as it was when it was first published. I consider it mandatory reading when considering a short list of introductory texts to Afghanistan.
Whitney Azoy, ‘Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan’, 1982, University of Pennsylvania Press, 152pp, ISDN 978-0812278217
Reviewed byChristian Bleuer, a researcher with two decades of experience in Central Asia. He is currently updating his Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography (2019); to be published by AAN in 2024.
Muhammad Ismail Yun, ‘What was Not Said in the Palace’ (in Pashto), 2017
This book was written by Kabul University professor and owner of Zhwandun TV station. Muhammad Ismail Yun. He also worked as the Head of Cultural Affairs in the Security Council for about two and a half years during the second Hamed Karzai presidency, sitting in the Arg, Afghanistan’s Presidential Palace.
Before that, Yun worked as an elected first clerk (munshi) in the Emergency Loya Jirga and member of the secretariat (dar al-insha) in the Constitutional Loya Jirga and as a campaigner for Karzai in the 2009 presidential election. He had established good relations with Karzai during his jobs in the Jirgas and been able to have many meetings with the president. He said he accepted Karzai’s offer of a job at the Security Council on the understanding that he would not only be a government employee, but the voice of the nation.
Yun provides short biographies and character sketches of all those who were in the palace during his time there, what he observed and heard, including in special meetings with the president, whom he said he met more than ten times.
He mostly speaks about the demands of the various powerbrokers. As a staunch Pashtun nationalist, it is not surprising that Yun mainly highlights those coming from the Northern Alliance – Shura-ye Nizar – whom he says were able to get Karzai to accept their demands and work for their interests. He also describes how it was individuals working in the palace, rather than the rule of law which prevailed, and how the neighbouring countries were also able to put pressure on Karzai, obliging him, he said, to accept their proposals concerning the internal affairs of Afghanistan. An example he gives of something which actually took place in Karzai’s first term, before Yun got his palace job, was what Yun calls the ‘unnecessary pampering of minorities’, when the districts of Panjshir and Daikundi were promoted to the rank of provinces in 2004.[3] He says that after making scores of arguments to Karzai against this promotion, the president told him: “I was very much forced to – Iran forced me a lot.” Yun believes that, as there was no parliament at the time, these decisions were unlawful.
“I understood from my first meeting with him,” Yun says of Karzai, “that anyone could spend time with him. His social behaviour was very good, but his political behaviour was full of ‘dealings’, and he obeyed force.”
People outside the palace, writes Yun, kept asking: What’s going in the palace? While people inside the palace were asking each other: What’s the gossip (sar-e chowk)? The real situation, he contends, was unknown not only to the people outside, but also even to those working in the palace. Yun claims to have been the voice of the nation when speaking to those in power, a sane voice in a place of chaos and an observer of that chaos and of what ‘really went on’ behind the scenes. The detail he gives, the accusations he makes and the stories he tells are all interesting. He was also, of course, an individual with interests as well.
Muhammad Ismail Yun, ‘De Arg Nawayalai, 2017, De Afghanistan Mili Tahrik [the National Movement of Afghanistan]
Reviewed byAli Mohammad Sabawoon, a researcher with AAN.
Matthieu Aikins, The Naked don’t Fear the Water’, 2022
I find it difficult to read books about Afghanistan, partly because so few compare with my experience of the country and its people. Most are still written by non-Afghans with an outsider’s view, some of them downright orientalist. Of course, I belong to this group of outsiders, although I have lived and worked in the country for many years, so feel entitled to criticise. So, it’s rare that books come along that pique my interest, but Matthieu Aikins’ book, “The Naked don’t Fear the Water”, did pique my twin interests – Afghanistan and refugee studies. It is also written by someone I met during my time in Afghanistan and respect deeply.
This non-fiction book tells the story of a journey made in 2016 by Matt with his Afghan translator, driver, ‘fixer’ and friend, Omar, to reach Europe in search of a better future: the aim was to experience first-hand and chronicle the dangerous journey many refugees and migrants take to escape poverty, economic uncertainty and conflict.
It is written in the sort of beautiful and compelling prose that I have never been able to master. It is an important book that has come at an important time – when the discussion of forced migration is once again dominating politics, and when the humanity of the refugee is too easily lost or forgotten. If you read it carefully, it also tells us how differently some countries welcome ‘outsiders’ – like Matt – who was welcomed by Afghans and Pakistanis with open arms and friendship, in stark contrast to the way most Western countries approach refugees, which is increasingly hostile and suspicious.
For the journey – described by one reviewer as “a modern version of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’”[4] – Matt had to “leave behind the passports that allowed me to move so easily through this world of borders.” There are many such reflections along the way, reminders of the enormous privilege that comes with a ‘respectable’ passport that enables easy border-crossing. Hopefully, readers will keep these differences in mind – and not simply be swept up by the incredible journey. The majority of refugees, lack such a privilege; Omar fittingly observes that his only possession is luck.
Matt tells us early on that he is making the treacherous and risky journey in part to give something back for all that Omar made possible for him in Afghanistan since they first met when both were about 24 years old: “I was confident that we would leave Afghanistan together, no matter what. Our trip would close a circle, for there had been a reciprocity in our motion, it seemed to me, since the day we met.” Matt does sometimes wonders if it was this reciprocity – or brotherhood – that drove him to make the journey, or whether, perhaps, it was the great story. The truth perhaps is a bit of both, friendship and story become blurred. After all, the book is written by Matt, not co–written with Omar, and while it tells Omar’s story, it is from Matt’s perspective, and in many ways, it is really Matt’s story.
When I recently reread the first 50 pages of this book, I was struck by two things. Firstly, this story is underpinned by male privilege – it is unlikely that a woman could have had quite such an experience or written such a story. At the least, the story would have been drastically different. Mostly though, Matt is aware of his various privileges, reflecting, for example, on how he can pass as an Afghan while also holding Canadian and US passports: “My ancestors came from Japan and Europe, but I look uncannily Afghan: almond eyes, black hair, wiry beard, describing the reaction of an early tea house acquaintance: “He’s a foreigner! But why does he look so Afghan?” Elsewhere, he experiences racism because of that appearance, so the privileges it brings is highly contextual: “With my dark hair and Asian eyes, I had crossed a color line somewhere over the Atlantic. In Europe, I was no longer included with the whites. I got called a Paki in England; in France, I was arabe. But as I travelled into central Asia, it was like walking toward a mirror; in norther Afghanistan, with its mix of Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks, I’d found my phenotype. People saw their face in mine.”
Matt was able to slip in and out of these two apparent identities, passing as Afghan when it suited, and calling on his Canadian-American identity when it suited, such as entering Afghanistan with the two litres of alcohol allotted to foreigners, in an exchange with the border police: “‘Brother, are you telling me you’re not Afghan?’ ‘No sir,’ I’d say, scrambling around the let with my passport before the cop could snatch the bottles. ‘Look at my name, I’m not even Muslim – sorry’.” Most refugees, including Omar, don’t have this privilege, to take on different identities, although Omar did try – and fail – to pass as a non-Afghan on his refugee journey.
The second surprise for me when re-reading the book for this review also came early on, when Matt tells his story of throwing a big party in Kabul, with alcohol and drugs flowing freely. I wondered why this had to be included in a story about displacement. Was it there to show the decadent lives of many Westerners in Kabul (not all, possibly not even a majority of us) and to remind the reader why the Taleban might feel that the West had corrupted Afghans? Did he mention this, along with other earlier stories of first going to Afghanistan, travelling on local transport and staying in small hotels and guesthouses, hanging out with some questionable characters, smoking hashish and occasional opium, as honest truth-telling of his own coming of age as journalist, or unnecessary bravado? These are the parts I stumbled over – perhaps, because I wondered how much of an Indiana Jones or Lawrence of Arabia mentality there was in the many Western men who worked in Afghanistan, especially as I had not pegged Matt as one of them. There is always a danger in such great stories, even when written with great sensitivity and finesse, that they appeal to readers on a different level than intended – to those in search of a good adventure story.
In the end, Afghanistan and Omar gave Matt what he had wanted since graduating from college in 2006 – great stories: “I wanted to be a writer and thought I’d find in the world the material I lacked within myself.” And while Matt has delivered an insightful and empathetic story about Afghanistan, Afghans and displacement, and the global dilemma of how to humanely address forced displacement, I could not help but wonder how the story would have been told differently if Omar had not been the protagonist in Matt’s story, but the author of his own story. What would Omar have told us about the experience of the failed Western state–building project in Afghanistan that squashed his hopes of a better future, how he felt about working for the Western military and Western journalists, ‘fixing’ their stories and fame? How did Omar experience the trip – and what was he thinking when Matt got annoyed at him being homesick and lovesick and wondered to himself: “What kind of protagonist was he?”
I enjoyed the book, despite the occasional discomfort at some passages, but also wondered if I would have liked it more had it been co–authored or written from Omar’s perspective. Does it take a Western author to draw attention to the plight of refugees? There are, after, all excellent first-person narratives written by refugees, such as Behrouz Boochani’s acclaimed autobiographical book ‘No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison’,[5] and I think we need more of these books, especially from Afghans, where the authors are the protagonists of their own story, not someone else’s. I can’t wait to review such a book next time.
Matthieu Aikins, ‘The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees’, 2022, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 384 pp, ISDN 978-1913097851
Reviewed bySusanne Schmeidl, a critical peace scholar-practitioner. She has worked for nearly three decades in academia and the non-profit sector, much of it in Afghanistan.
Christoph Reuter, ‘We Were Happy Here: Afghanistan after the Victory of the Taleban – A Road Trip’, 2023
“We met Taleban who offered, with a flirtatious smile, to carry our luggage,” but also “local commanders who held us for hours, time and again, just because they could.”
This book by veteran German journalist and occasional AAN author Christoph Reuter provides a deep look into a period in Taleban-ruled Afghanistan that might well be already over – the immediate aftermath of the re-establishment of their Emirate. Chaos reigned in many places, allowing access to areas that had been off-limits for reporters – and most Afghans – for at least a decade. Given the subsequent consolidation of the Kandahar-centred Taleban leadership’s power and increasing control of Afghan and international journalists, Reuter’s freedom to move, his ability to make a ‘road trip’, as the book’s subtitle calls it, might already be a historical anomaly.
“Suddenly, we were able to travel everywhere,” the author says and takes us to 18 of the (now) 33 provinces of Afghanistan: to Nuristan where former government employees try to survive as hunters, to Zaranj in Nimruz province where desperate Afghans try to break through the border to Iran and to Daykundi where an accusation of ‘Taleban land-grabbing’ turns out to be the work of a Hazara landlord. Reuter also takes the reader to Ghormach in Badghis province where a farmer ploughs a field that has seen no rain and is not even his own, and for a walk through Kabul’s terror victim cemeteries. The road trip is completed by glimpses of Kabul in the dramatic time just before and then after the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Reuter had been in Kabul just before the collapse, not anticipating – like everyone – that it would come so soon.
Reuter also takes us back to the pre-August 2021 Kabul bubble, with parties where German diplomats and aid officials shared thoughts on ‘how it really looks in the country,’ a reality which they did not share in their official reporting. The Afghan government’s narrative of difficult but incremental ‘progress’ had to prevail – until it was too late. Reuter laments that, in German, there is “no plural for ‘self-delusion’.” It is a great line.
The book, however, is much more than pure reportage, let alone travelogue. A chorus of Afghan voices permeates the book, from Baridad, the farmer, to Afghan parliamentarian Raihana Azad, from the Taleb who apologised for his boss’s rudeness, to Muhammad Yassin, an aircraft mechanic who was sitting on an evacuation plane in August 2021 about to leave Kabul airport. Reuter had sneaked onto what was a private evacuation flight, only to be forced off it at gunpoint by the US military. It was Yassin, the Afghan about to go into exile, who provided the quote for the book’s title: “We were happy here.”
Reuter slips in a good amount of – sometimes dead-pan – analysis. He draws from two decades of Afghanistan exposure, from not just flying in from time to time, but from spending years in the country. For some of them, he was the only German journalist permanently based in Afghanistan. He carried out pioneering investigations, including an early report into one of the many US ‘wedding bombings’, in 2002 in Uruzgan province, the result of a local US ally covering up his men’s looting of a village.
In Kunduz, Reuter and photographer Marcel Mettelsiefen visited each family of the 90 people who had been killed in the German bombing of two fuel tankers highjacked by Taleban in 2009. The tankers had got stuck in a sandy riverbed during a dark Ramadan night and the insurgents had called the inhabitants of a nearby village to syphon off the fuel and get the tanker afloat again (they failed). Meanwhile, a German commander – fed disinformation by a sole source (an NDS employee who augmented his earnings with a German salary) that all the people assembled there were ‘Taleban’ – ordered an airstrike. Reuter called it “the gravest order to kill the Bundeswehr [German armed forces] issued in its history.” His investigations – recalled in this book – brought the incidents back to light, the horror fresh again, after all these years.
Some parts of the book were published as reportages in English on Spiegel magazine’s website (see here; here and here). The book deserves to be translated in its entirety.
Christoph Reuter: ‘Wir waren glücklich hier: Afghanistan nach dem Sieg der Taliban – Ein Roadtrip’, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2023, 336 pp. ISBN 978-3-421-07005-0
Reviewed byThomas Ruttig, a co-founder of AAN.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
The Airforce-speak for variants of the C-130 military transport plane.
↑2
The surge in troops began in December 2009, peaked in summer 2011 and numbers returned to 70,000 in by summer 2012: see a timeline from the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. For more on the ‘capture or kill’ operations see this AAN report by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, ‘A Knock on the Door: 22 Months of ISAF Press Releases’, published on 12 October 2021.
↑3
These decisions were, however, immensely popular with local people who felt they had been neglected by successive central governments. People in Daikundi, for example, one of the poorest and most isolated areas of Afghanistan, believed that splitting from Uruzgan and gaining a status as a province would bring them more attention, services and funding.
A pseudonym for an Afghan peace and women’s activist
Al Jazeera
Published On 1 Jan 2024
The biggest challenge of teaching girls and women in Afghanistan is not the security risk or the bad internet connection, but the creeping hopelessness.
I have sent the link and I am waiting for my students to join the Zoom session. I am teaching them English. I receive a notification that my students are in the waiting room. I put a big smile, I let them in, and greet them in English.
I know that they can’t see my smile because I don’t turn on my camera for security reasons, but I know they hear it in my voice. I know that I have to do everything and anything to keep up the spirits of my students. And I have to do it for myself as well.
Since 2021, we have had to struggle against two enemies: the Taliban ban on secondary and higher education for girls and women and the desperation and hopelessness that are slowly overcoming us.
According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), some 2.5 million girls and young women are out of school due to the ban. Before the universities were closed for us, one in three young women were enrolled; some 100,000 were denied their dreams of pursuing the degrees they wanted. Not only that, even when students have found opportunities to study abroad, the Taliban has denied them the right to do so.
Islamic scholars have repeatedly said and emphasised that there is no basis in our religion for this ban. Even economically, it does not make sense. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that preventing girls from attaining secondary education costs the Afghan economy some $500m per year.
The Taliban government has refused to change its decision despite the repeated appeals of international organisations and agencies. Afghan women and girls, for their part, have refused to give up.
The need and desire for education has been so great that soon after the bans were imposed, a few teachers got together and organised classes online. At first, it was a small group with just a few students. I joined them about a year and a half ago.
We teach English as well as all high school subjects and a few additional courses, like computer skills. News of our courses spread by word of mouth and more and more students joined. By 2023, we had grown to 400 students from across Afghanistan.
I consider myself lucky to have this opportunity – to be able to help a little my family financially and help other young women and girls who want to study and learn.
I had received training at a teacher training centre before 2021. I did the course without having the intention to be a teacher one day; my dear father had suggested that I do it and I followed his advice.
At the centre, they taught us how to approach education through different methods and how to interact with students to help them learn better. But a lot of what we learned could only be applied in a normal situation where the teacher and students are in a classroom together, not online struggling with a frustratingly bad internet connection.
So when I began teaching online, it was a challenge. I struggled and often thought about quitting, but the desire of my students to learn kept me going and I found a way to make it work.
“Whenever I thought I couldn’t do it, you showed me somehow that I could. You are the best role model in my life,” one student wrote to me recently. Such messages really warm up my heart and motivate me to keep going.
But there are other times when I also get difficult questions that I struggle to answer.
“Teacher, if I had been allowed to go to school, now after two years, I would have graduated from school. But it would have been useless because I am not allowed to go to university. Or if I were to graduate from university, again it would be useless because I would not be allowed to work. So why should I study now?” another student asked me recently.
It was a heartbreaking question. I wonder how many girls and young women across the country are asking themselves this question.
Due to the prison-like conditions that Afghan women and girls live in, many suffer from mental health problems. According to statistics from medical facilities, there has been a sharp increase in Afghan women taking or trying to take their own lives.
Many don’t have hope for the future and I can see it in my students. I am often compelled to assume the role of a counselor and sit and listen to stories of suffering and depression. Some of my students have shared that they are mocked or blamed for what has happened to them – working hard and dreaming big, only for everything to come crashing down.
Hearing and knowing what my students are going through makes it all the more challenging to teach. But I know I cannot give up and must keep going for their sake. I constantly try to keep them motivated, keep their spirits high, and encourage them to love learning and exploring.
I share inspirational stories and biographies of great people from across the world. I ask them to write lists of their dreams and goals, to share their plans for their future and everything that keeps them hopeful and motivated. I try to help younger students discover their talents; I ask them to write stories and poems or to paint. We try to break out of prison through learning and creativity.
The other teachers and I are doing our best to keep the hope of Afghan girls and young women alive. But we need support. It would make a huge difference for our students if the United Nations and international organisations could help us set up a mechanism to formalise the education we provide and grant valid documents certifying degrees attained. This would help motivate young women and girls and lessen the troubling feeling that they are wasting their lives.
Things in life often don’t go according to plan. I never planned to be a teacher, especially not one in hiding. But here I am teaching online, defying an unjust ban, trying to help my fellow Afghan girls and women, and fighting despair. It is a job I never wanted, but I love doing it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
I teach in secret, defying the Taliban ban and fighting despair
The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution on the Independent Assessment on Afghanistan, which former Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Feridun Sinirlioğlu had put together. UNSC Resolution 2721 only passed after a month and a half of Security Council meetings, mainly held behind closed doors, and two weeks of intensive negotiations on its language. The result is a resolution which failed to fully endorse the Sinirlioğlu report. AAN’s team here summarises the developments around the Independent Assessment, from how it came to be proposed, to its contents, to the Resolution passed on 29 December, the last working day of the Council in 2023.
The Security Council adopts resolution 2721 (2023) on the independent assessment on Afghanistan. The resolution was adopted with 13 votes in favour and two abstentions (People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation). Photo by UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe, 29 December 2023.
The Independent Assessment on Afghanistan, mandated by the UN Security Council on 16 March 2023 (see UNSC Resolution 2679), was given to UNSC members on 9 November. Since then, it has been the subject of much discussion among Security Council members, Afghans and other interested parties and Afghanistan has loomed large on the Council’s agenda, both formally and informally.[1] On 11 December, the co-penholders, Japan and the UAE, circulated a first draft of a resolution concerning the Assessment to Council members. The members then met to discuss the draft on 12 December and later provided written comments. A second draft was shared on 18 December, and after an additional round of comments and edits, a third draft was shared with council members’ under silence ‘on 26 December.[2]
The following day, China, France and Russia broke the silence, with Malta, Switzerland and the United States providing additional comments. The penholders then put a fourth and final draft ‘in blue’ on 28 December (here). This was the resolution that was put to a vote on 29 December.
This report is structured around four questions. The first deals with the events that preceded the Assessment and how the Security Council embarked upon this course of action. The second and third summarises the Assessment, while the fourth sums up what the Resolution says.
Why did the UN Security Council ask for an assessment?
In the two years following the dramatic collapse of the Islamic Republic, the question of ‘what to do’ about Afghanistan has been of great concern to the UN Security Council (UNSC). Three of its permanent members – the United States, United Kingdom and France had given military and financial backing to the Republic and, for greater or lesser periods of time, had fought the Taleban, who took power on 15 August 2021.
Afghanistan has been high on the Security Council’s agenda as it concerns the Council’s specific powers, especially Chapter VI (articles 33-38) on the specific settlement of disputes and Chapter VII (articles 39-51) on actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.[3]
On the day after the takeover, 16 August 2021, Afghanistan was the priority item on the agenda for the 8834th meeting of the Security Council (see here); UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the Security Council and the ‘international community’ to “stand together, work together, act together and use all tools at their disposal to suppress the global terrorist threat in Afghanistan and to guarantee that basic human rights will be respected.” Since then, the Security Council has continued to single out these two primary concerns, what it casts as the ‘global terrorist threat’ and ‘respect for basic human rights’.
The 2021 annual report on Chapter VI related practices of the UNSC also touched on the situation in Afghanistan, encouraging all parties to:
[S]eek an inclusive, negotiated political settlement, with the full, equal and meaningful participation of women, that responded to the desire of Afghans to sustain and build upon the country’s gains over the past 20 years in adherence to the rule of law, and underlined that all parties must respect their obligations (see page 434 here).
The 2022 UNSC annual report on Chapter VII concerns named Afghanistan as one of the countries which it saw threats to international peace and security as continuing to emanate from and expressed particular concern over:
[T]he cultivation, production, and trafficking of illicit drugs and acknowledged that illicit proceeds of the drug trafficking in Afghanistan were a source of financing for terrorist groups and non-state actors that threatened regional and international security. (page 4)
[T]he Council reiterated the need to ensure that the sanctions regime pursuant to resolution 1988 (2011) contributed effectively to ongoing efforts to bring about sustainable and inclusive peace, stability and security in Afghanistan, and noted the importance of the sanctions review when and if appropriate, while taking into account the situation on the ground, in a manner that was consistent with the overall objective of promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan (pages 24 and 25).
Afghanistan continued to figure prominently on the UNSC agenda in 2022. Of the 127 UNSC consultations in 2022, seven were about Afghanistan and the country was referenced 11 times in the list of highlights of UNSC activities that year (see here). It was discussed, among other places, at a country-specific high-level meeting on 26 January and also at an informal, confidential gathering under the Arria-formula on 24 October. (see here).
However, differences in how the member states of the UNSC wanted to deal with Afghanistan emerged in 2023 in discussions surrounding the extension of the United Nation’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) mandate in March. The lack of a consensus became evident. Initially, the co-authors of two March resolutions on Afghanistan — Japan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – envisioned an extension of the UNAMA mandate without any changes for nine months and an independent assessment regarding Afghanistan by October 2023. The United States, in particular, strongly opposed extending UNAMA’s mandate for only nine months, saying that shortening the mandate for four months would “negatively affect both UNAMA and the Secretary-General’s plan to convene Afghanistan special envoys” (see AAN reporting here).
The result was two resolutions, both passed on 16 March 2023. One extended UNAMA’s mandate until 17 March 2024. The second, Resolution 2679 (2023), requested the UN Secretary-General, in his role as the UN’s chief administrative officer, to provide the Security Council with “an integrated, independent assessment” no later than 17 November 2023 (see AAN reporting here), following consultations with “all relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders, including relevant authorities, Afghan women and civil society, as well as the region and the wider international community.” The Assessment should:
[P]rovide forward-looking recommendations for an integrated and coherent approach among relevant political, humanitarian, and development actors, within and outside of the United Nations system, in order to address the current challenges faced by Afghanistan, including, but not limited to, humanitarian, human rights and especially the rights of women and girls, religious and ethnic minorities, security and terrorism, narcotics, development, economic and social challenges, dialogue, governance and the rule of law; and advance the objective of a secure, stable, prosperous and inclusive Afghanistan in line with the elements set out by the Security Council in previous resolutions”
The mandate was broad and somewhat vague, covering the actions not only of the UN but also other ‘relevant political, humanitarian, and development actors’, in other words, everyone concerned with Afghanistan.
About a month later, Guterres appointed senior Turkish diplomat Feridun Sinirlioğlu as the Special Coordinator for the independent assessment (announcement on 25 April here). The appointment preceded a long-awaited meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan, held in Qatar’s capital Doha, on 1-2 May 2023. The meeting, said Guterres, was “about developing a common international approach, not about recognition of the de facto Taliban authorities,” and that it was important to “understand each other’s concerns and limitations” (see readout of the press conference here). Participants in this meeting, Guterres said, agreed on “the need for a strategy of engagement that allows for the stabilisation of Afghanistan but also allows for addressing important concerns” (see also AAN analysis here).
What key issues does the independent assessment identify?
The Independent Assessment on Afghanistan was not published on the UN website until 6 December 2023 (here), but was leaked and widely distributed soon after it was circulated to UNSC members (see for example, the independent, women-led non-profit news website Pass Blue here).
The Assessment says it has one “overarching goal” – to “advance the objective of a secure, stable, prosperous and inclusive Afghanistan in line with elements set out by the Security Council in previous resolutions.” It does not, however, identify what those elements are.[4] Widespread consultations with Afghans and others, it says, have underlined that “international engagement is not working.” It does not “serve the humanitarian, economic, political or social needs of the Afghan people,” nor does it address the concerns and priorities of “international stakeholders, including the neighbouring countries.”
Following what the Assessment coyly refers to as “the political transition in August 2021” (ie the military defeat of the Islamic Republic, which donor countries and the UN itself had done so much to support, and the re-establishment of the IEA, which many of those countries had previously been fighting), it says that many Afghans, nations and UN bodies had been concerned about IEA governance and the protection of rights, especially of women and girls. They are also concerned about “potential threats” to regional stability. From the IEA’s point of view, the Assessment says, it controls Afghanistan’s territory and governs the country, but has “appealed unsuccessfully for political and economic normalisation.” This situation “has led to an impasse, leaving much of the international community’s relations with Afghanistan in a state of uncertainty, with serious repercussions for the Afghan people.”
It concludes that it is necessary to find a ‘political pathway, basing this premise on current problems with aid (more on which below) and the fact that Afghanistan has the potential to both “enrich the region” as a hub for “trade, connectivity and people-to-people contacts” and destabilise it as a potential source of “transnational terrorism,” illegal narcotics and migrants” and because Afghans and others do not want to see renewed conflict. It says the pathway should allow all sides to discuss and deliberate their interests fairly.
The end state of those discussions, the Assessment says, is the “definition of a future where the State of Afghanistan is fully reintegrated into the international system without passing through a further cycle of violence while respecting all legal obligations.” It offers proposals “for a way forward and an engagement architecture to guide and bring more coherence to political, humanitarian and development activities” and that it presents “a substantive roadmap” that will “enable more effective negotiation and implementation of the priorities of Afghan and international stakeholders.”
This is a grand vision, but even at the earliest stage of the document where these quotes are from – page 2 of 19 – questions are raised and not answered, for example, given that the various Afghan and international stakeholders have contradictory priorities, how can Sinirlioğlu confidently assert that they will be implemented?
The Assessment then identifies five “key issues and priorities”. The first is human rights, especially what it calls the “basic rights of women and girls,” including to education, work and representation in public and political life. It also mentions “other patterns of unequal treatment and discrimination” towards citizens of “a number of ethnic or religious minority groups” (without specifying which – here or anywhere else), reports of extrajudicial killings by the IEA, especially of former officials and members of the security forces, the shrinking of civil space, including the harassment of civil society and the media, and restricted access to justice.
A second, shorter section outlines concerns about “counterterrorism, counternarcotics and regional security”. Security has improved since August 2021, it says – not surprisingly, given the (unmentioned in this document) the complete victory of the Taleban over the Republic. It acknowledges Emirate moves against the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), again not surprising as it is the IEA’s most dangerous armed opponent. It then points to the Emirate’s “limited responsiveness” to international calls to contain or control “terrorist groups and individuals inside Afghanistan, including members of Al Qaeda,” who, it says, have shown a “persistent presence.” These groups include significant numbers of Tehrik-e Taleban Pakistan (TTP) fighters who “appear to have free movement and shelter in Afghanistan and are carrying out an intensifying campaign of violence inside Pakistan.” This section also acknowledges the IEA’s “significant progress” on counter-narcotics (although as AAN has reported, so far, that has focused on cultivation, while trade has largely continued) and says “many stakeholders” want to help with “alternative crops and livelihoods”.
The Assessment then moves on to a third key issue/priority – economic, humanitarian and development issues. Those consulted by Sinirlioğlu and his team “across the spectrum” urged, the Assessment says, for “any international engagement strategy” to give attention to the combined humanitarian, development, and economic challenges facing Afghanistan.” Neighbouring countries, it says, see their interests served by Afghanistan having a robust and healthy economy. Afghans want urgent relief, it said, but also “but also an ability to fully invest in and pursue their own economic futures and livelihood opportunities freely.”
The Assessment describes the collapse of the economy in August 2021 as a consequence of the abrupt halt to aid and the freezing of Afghan access to the international banking system and (for the new IEA government) offshore foreign exchange reserves. Although the economy has, it says, for now stabilised, albeit at a low level, it warns that aid, already insufficient, is expected to fall, and that the banking system is still not functioning properly. It devotes one bullet point to shortcomings in IEA policy, which have contributed to “chilling” the economy: “Failure to institute measures of fiscal transparency, abrogation of the judicial system and basic legal guarantees, and lack of equal economic participation among all sectors of society have all contributed to continued low confidence among international donors and investors.” It also cites the IEA’s “exclusionary policies” towards women and some former technocrats.
The Assessment recognises that the nature of the aid – off-budget, with little development funding and no technical assistance – “limits the degree to which [it] can respond to basic needs in a sustainable and cost-effective way” and that delivery via an “overlapping network” of UN agencies and NGOs is costly and lacks necessary scale and coordination. It hones in on the particular damage of restricting technical assistance in agriculture, water management, demining and public health and denying Afghanistan access to funds aimed at helping the poorest countries adapt in the face of the climate crisis.
The last bullet point in this section feels significant. Stakeholders, the Assessment says, suggested ways to improve the effectiveness of aid or ensure economic recovery, but it warns: “[T]he triggers that have led to the current situation are as much political as economic, and economic recovery will depend significantly on a political decision, by donors in particular, to promote the development of the economy for the benefit of the Afghan people.” It lays Afghanistan’s problems with development and the economy squarely at the door of donors, alone.
A fourthkey area, Inclusive Governance and Rule of Law, deals with what the Assessment describes as the call by many Afghan stakeholders, member states, multilateral institutions, the Security Council, neighbouring countries and near-neighbours that the IEA establish “an inclusive system of governance.” A “balanced, broad-based, inclusive, accountable and responsible government” is both a “reflection of fundamental rights” and “a key ingredient for peace, stability and harmony within the country and in the region.” It says that in this “diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural society,” the inclusion of all communities in governance structures is “central to the social and political stability.” Many Afghans, it says, “expressed perceptions of exclusion and discriminatory practices on the basis of ethnicity, language and gender” under the IEA. Many spoke of their disenfranchisement from the “full ability to participate in political life” and the “marked decline in the space for political engagement”, to raise concerns and affect policy-making.
This, it says, was especially the case for Afghan women.
It says the IEA interprets such calls as a demand for power-sharing and “specifically for a return to government of some former political leaders”. The IEA also denies the charge that it is exclusive, insisting its government is ethnically diverse and that it has retained much of the Republic’s civil service.
The Assessment acknowledges that the IEA has established some limited means for consultation and complaint and that “many Afghan civil society actors” have continued to “build bridges and create spaces for dialogue among themselves and with the [de facto authorities] on an informal basis.” It believes these could be “built upon and be complemented by national dialogue.” Re-establishing “a justice and rule of law system that protects equal participation and fulfilment of rights,” it says, “would advance inclusive governance, while also contributing to economic growth and stability”. Notably, no mention is made of elections.
The fifth key indicator deals with Political Representation and Implications for Regional and International Priorities. In this short section, the Assessment acknowledges the IEA’s call for recognition, bilaterally and at the UN, and its assertion that it meets the requirements for occupying Afghanistan’s seat at the UN General Assembly (a decision on this was postponed for the third year in December 2023, see AAN report here). The Assessment acknowledges that this lack of recognition disadvantages Afghans and has limited the means to deal with regional concerns, including on trade, connectivity and transboundary resource management. However, “International stakeholders,” the Assessment says, remain “aligned behind the position expressed at the Secretary-General convened meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan in May 2023, which supported engagement with Afghanistan and the development of a common international approach, but that acknowledged the DFA [de factor authorities] should not be recognized at this stage”.
Already, in this laying out of the key issues, assumptions have come into play: that donors are overwhelmingly responsible for the economic woes of Afghanistan, or that the IEA will change what it fundamentally believes to be correct, for example, why would the Emirate want to ‘re-establish’ something it believes it has already instituted, the establishment of a justice system based on holy law that fulfils the rights of both God and people?
What are the Assessment’s recommendations?
The Assessment makes four broad recommendations and offers an analysis of the justification for those recommendations as well as suggestions regarding their implementation.
The first set of recommendations proposes a series of measures aimed at addressing the basic needs of Afghan people and strengthening trust through structured engagement.These include:
Expanding international assistance, including technical assistance, to improve the capacities of relevant Afghan institutions to deliver services to Afghan people more effectively.
Supporting food security and agricultural livelihoods, including the IEA’s ongoing counternarcotics campaign, environmental security and water management, the health sector, and demining, prioritising the most vulnerable groups and women and girls.
Finalising some near-finished infrastructure projects that were started before August 2021.
Establishing economic dialogue and financial reforms to reduce the effects of existing sanctions on the banking sector and supporting efforts to rehabilitate Afghanistan’s central bank, but only after the Emirate demonstrates transparent and accountable fiscal governance.
The Assessment point out that while “economic dialogue may positively impact blockages to private investment and banking transactions,” the “chilling” economic effects will likely ease only after significant policy changes, including removing restrictions on women and girls. The Assessment envisages that progress on economic issues would promote the Switzerland-based Fund for the Afghan People to disperse funds, which would stabilise the currency and offer a “gradual transition from current cash shipment-based assistance.”
Enabling partial restoration of regular transit, trade, and other means of connectivity between Afghans and the world, including airport safety and capacity, which would pave the way for more flights at Kabul International Airport.
Restoring regular administrative processes inside the country and abroad to issue passports and visas.
Encouraging and assisting activities that help Afghans realise their political, economic, cultural and social rights, including support for media, civil society, and victim-centred approaches to justice and reconciliation.
Recommendations to provide women and girls “educational opportunities, including for online learning, employment, micro-finance, preventing gender-based violence and providing psycho-social support” seem to fall well short of pursuing avenues that would see Afghan women benefit from the full spectrum of their rights as guaranteed by international law. This section also includes assistance to “women and girls and vulnerable Afghan groups and individuals who have sought protection and refuge outside Afghanistan” and dialogue with the IEA on its human rights obligations.
The second set of recommendations addresses what the Assessment calls security-related concerns of “International stakeholders and UN bodies” about “the use of Afghan soil to threaten or attack any other country, the planning and financing of terrorist acts, and the production, sale and trafficking of illegal narcotics.” The Assessment stresses the need for coordination and cooperation between the IEA and international stakeholders to address these concerns and enumerate priority areas as:
Supporting bilateral and multilateral security cooperation, which it says will require significant capacity and resources.
Cooperating with international counter-narcotics efforts to maintain the current pace of the IEA’s plan to eradicate illegal narcotics.
Strengthening international borders, including border controls and issuance of identity papers and travel documents.
Expanding international cooperation and assistance in areas that advance regional and global priorities, including in response to climate change, transboundary water issues (presumably on the Helmand Water Treaty, see AAN report here), counter-narcotics and global health security.
Reviewing and updating relevant provisions of the UN 1988 Sanctions list to “facilitate better compliance … and make the sanctions regime more relevant to current realities.”
Gradually resuming diplomatic engagement inside Afghanistan, which would pave the way for more sustained dialogue with all Afghan stakeholders, without specifying who these might be, as well as the delivery of international aid, including development assistance.
The third set of recommendation lays out a roadmap for political engagement intended to fully reintegrate Afghanistan into the international community in line with its international commitments and obligations. This section sets out to explain how the Assessment’s stated objective: “An end state of Afghanistan’s full reintegration into the international system” can be achieved using a “more coherent political engagement process…. pursued through a performance-based roadmap.” The outline of which is explained broadly as: “(A) international obligations of the State of Afghanistan with suggested benchmarks to indicate progress in meeting them, and (B) a call for an intra-Afghan political process that will build toward inclusive constitution-making. Progress in both of these components will build toward (C) an end state of the international community’s normalisation of relations with the State of Afghanistan.”
The final and fourth set of recommendations suggests a set of mechanisms designed to coordinate and oversee the recommendations made in the report. The Assessment stresses that significant resources and coordination platforms are needed to implement its recommendations effectively. To this end, it recommends three interlinked mechanisms:
UN-Convened Large Group Format: This group currently exists and was first convened by the UN Secretary-General in May 2023 in the Special Envoys format. The Assessment recommends another meeting of the large group format to discuss and advance its recommendations.
International Contact Group: This smaller group, selected from members of the large group format, would coordinate action and approaches “take a more frontal role” in political engagement with Afghan stakeholders.
UN Special Envoy: The Special Envoy would have a complementary mandate to UNAMA and focus on “diplomacy between Afghanistan and international stakeholders as well as on advancing intra-Afghan dialogue.” She/he would represent the UN in the above-mentioned groups and lead coordination efforts.
What is in the Resolution about the Assessment and where do we go from here?
Resolution 2721 was adopted on 29 December by 13 votes in favour, with China and Russia abstaining (see here). The Resolution sets forth six points as a common approach of the Council members on Afghanistan, with some reservations from China and Russia (more on which below).
It says that the Security Council:
1. Stresses the critical importance of a continued presence of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and other United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes across Afghanistan, and reiterates its full support to the mandate and the work of UNAMA and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General;
2. Takes positive note of the independent assessment on Afghanistan (S/2023/856);
3. Encourages member states and all other relevant stakeholders to consider the independent assessment and implementation of its recommendations, especially increasing international engagement in a more coherent, coordinated and structured manner, affirms that the objective of this process should be a clear end state of an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors, fully reintegrated into the international community and meeting international obligations, and recognizes the need to ensure the full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of Afghan women in the process throughout;
4. Requests the Secretary-General, in consultation with members of the Security Council, relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders, including relevant authorities, Afghan women and civil society, as well as the region and the wider international community, to appoint a Special Envoy for Afghanistan, in a timely manner, provided with robust expertise on human rights and gender, to promote implementation of the recommendations of the independent assessment, without prejudice to the mandate of UNAMA and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and their vital work in Afghanistan;
5. Welcomes the Secretary-General’s intention to convene the next meeting of the group of Special Envoys and Special Representatives on Afghanistan initiated in May 2023 in a timely manner, and encourages the meeting to discuss the recommendations of the independent assessment;
6. Requests that the Secretary-General brief the Security Council on the outcome of these consultations and discussions within 60 days.
According to the independent think tank, The Security Council Report,[5] it appears that negotiations concerning the Resolution were complex and contentious (see here). This was evident also from the discussion at the Security Council following the vote on 29 December (see here). On one side of the rift were the UK and US, both very supportive of the Assessment and apparently also of the initial draft of the Resolution. China and Russia, on the opposite end, were primarily concerned about the lack of IEA buy-in for the process suggested in the Resolution. In remarks delivered on 20 December, US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said:
[W]e welcome the UN’s Independent Assessment on Afghanistan. We agree with the report’s recommendations on appointing a UN Special Envoy in establishing an international contact group. The UN Special Envoy and the contact group will be important for the development of a roadmap that ensures Afghanistan meets its international obligations. They will also complement UNAMA’s work to accomplish its mission of promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Following the vote, Deputy Political Counsellor of US Mission to the UN Lisa Browne said:
The United States strongly supports this resolution’s call for a UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan. A Special Envoy will be well positioned to coordinate international engagement on Afghanistan, including with relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders, to achieve the objectives laid out in this resolution. The resolution’s request to set up a Special Envoy for Afghanistan, emphasizing that such a post would help coordinate work to achieve progress in the country.
[S]hould seize the momentum of the independent assessment with the hope of changing Afghanistan’s current negative trajectory.… [W]e encourage all parties, including Afghan and international stakeholders, to take forward the independent assessment’s recommendations, working towards an Afghanistan that is at peace with its people, its neighbours, and the international community.
China and Russia built their argument around the Islamic Emirate’s response to the Assessment (seen by AAN), which was provided to Council members. The IEA defended its record on women’s rights, security, the economy and narcotics and rejected any suggestion of intra-Afghan dialogue or the creation of the oversight mechanisms referred to in the report, particularly the Special Envoy. It blasted the “malicious and illegal sanctions” regime, “grudge-motivated pressures” on it and interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. The IEA did welcome “recommendations of the assessment that support the strengthening of national economy of Afghanistan, opens the pathway to the recognition of the current government and encourages regional connectivity and transit via Afghanistan.”
It is obvious that currently Council members remain divided on the follow-up implementation of the assessment report, and the Afghan authorities, on the other hand still have reservations on some recommendations…. China and the Russian Federation expressed these concerns in the consultation and constructively proposed amendments to the draft of relevant issues, which however were not taken on board. It is deeply regrettable, and we have to abstain in the vote just now.… It is our hope that going forward, the Secretary-General will cautiously deal with the appointment of the Special Envoy, continue to strengthen communication and interaction with the Afghan authorities, and strive to find appropriate solutions.
Russia abstained on a draft resolution on the independent assessment report on Afghanistan.… [W]e assume that the Secretary-General will consult the de facto authorities when appointing a Special Envoy and will also take into account the views of all members of the Security Council. That is a principled condition that we have insisted on from the outset. We would like to make it clear that we will not support Secretary-General’s decision unless it has the approval of the de facto authorities.
China and Russia, according to The Security Council Report, also raised questions regarding the composition of the “smaller contact group” and suggested deleting the paragraph about the Special Envoy altogether. However, the penholders have not gone as far, and their suggestion was left out of the final ‘in blue’ draft. The think tank reported that:
[C]hina and Russia apparently suggested deleting the paragraph that requests the Secretary-General to appoint a Special Envoy for Afghanistan and removing text noting that the next meeting of Special Envoys and Special Representatives should discuss the proposed establishment of the “smaller contact group,” In the next draft of the Resolution, the penholders apparently removed the text on the “smaller contact group” and added language requesting that the Secretary-General consult with relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders (including the Taliban, Afghan women, and civil society); Council members; the region; and the international community before appointing a Special Envoy.
It also seems that UNSC members could only agree “to take a positive note of the independent assessment” and “encourage member states and all other relevant stakeholders to consider and implement its recommendations.” China and Russia were reportedly behind the latter formulation. Altogether, any language that stipulated endorsement of the Assessment and its recommendations was a point of debate among Council members. The Security Council Report said:
Although the first draft of the Resolution endorsed the independent assessment and its recommendations, it appears that later drafts instead welcomed them, following a proposal from Malta and the US. It seems that China and Russia argued that the draft should either take note of the independent assessment or welcome the efforts of Sinirlioğlu and his team. In an apparent compromise, the draft in blue takes positive note of the independent assessment.
Text affirming that one objective of this process was to see Afghanistan fully reintegrated into the international community and meeting its international obligations was subsequently added to the Resolution, The Security Council Report said. However, the Resolution was stripped of any conditionality, ie any language that suggested that IEA compliance with the obligations under international law was a precondition to Afghanistan’s full reintegration into the international community.According to The Security Council Report,a group of European members of the Security Council, including France, Malta, and Switzerland had sought to bolster language relating to Afghan women and the ‘women, peace and security agenda’. The think tank said:
Several members, including France, Malta, and Switzerland apparently proposed language emphasising that the Taliban’s compliance with their obligations under international law, particularly those relating to human rights, is central to the roadmap for political engagement outlined in the independent assessment report.
Text reaffirming the indispensable role of women in Afghan society was added to the Resolution following a proposal from Switzerland, as was language noting that the Special Envoy for Afghanistan should have robust expertise on human rights and gender.
The independent assessment has generated a dynamic discussion about Afghanistan, which has been on the global side-line for some time, but so far, responses to its recommendations among Afghanistan’s stakeholders appear to fall short and be far from adequate. The move to have an independent assessment was driven by a desire to establish a consensus on how the Security Council deals with Taleban-ruled Afghanistan. No such shared approach, however, appears to have emerged. The Resolution does authorise the appointment of a Special Envoy, but “in consultation with members of the Security Council, relevant Afghan political actors and stakeholders, including relevant authorities, Afghan women and civil society, as well as the region and the wider international community”. There is no mention in the Resolution of an intra-Afghan dialogue envisioned by Sinirlioğlu’s report as the key mandate of the Special Envoy. Instead, the Special Envoy, as per the text of the Resolution, is seen as a gender and human rights expert who should “promote implementation of the recommendations of the independent assessment, without prejudice to the mandate of UNAMA and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and their vital work in Afghanistan”. This also limits the space where a future Special Envoy would work and have a say. It is also noticeable that the idea of a smaller contact group has been dropped entirely. The Resolution only confirms that the negotiations between various international and local actors will continue without a feasible conclusion any time soon. China and Russia’s firm position that they will not approve any choice that the IEA has not approved, seems to indicate that the appointment of the Special Envoy will not happen any time soon.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour, Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
The following meetings were among those held:
10 November A first discussion of the report by Security Council members during an informal lunch organised by the outgoing co-penholders on Afghanistan, Japan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
28 November Closed-door Security Council meeting (see here).
30 November Meeting of the high-level diplomatic grouping, the Group of Friends of Afghanistan, co-organised by Canada, UK and Qatar (see hereand here).
11 December Closed-door, ‘Arria-formula’ Security Council meeting on “women’s perspectives on Afghanistan” (see here), organised by Switzerland and co-sponsored by Japan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
20 December Briefing of the Security Council by Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Roza Otunbayev (see the video here). Statements were also given by the Representative of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva and Director of the Coordination Division, Ramesh Rajasingham, a “representative of Afghan civil society” (unnamed in UN reporting ahead of the event) and the chair of the 1988 Afghanistan Sanctions Committee, the Ecuadorean Ambassador to the UN José Javier De La Gasca. This meeting was followed by closed consultations.
↑2
According to UNSC procedures, draft resolutions go through a negotiation process before they are put ‘under a silence’ – normally lasting 24 hours – to allow for final comments from Council members. When the Security Council approaches the final stage of negotiating a draft resolution, the text is printed ‘in blue’. See The UN Security Council Handbook.
↑3
The Security Council, as one of the six main organs of the United Nations, is primarily responsible for maintaining international peace and security (here). The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression; it calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. It can also impose sanctions or even authorise the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security. It can set forth principles for a peace agreement; undertake investigation and mediation, in some cases; dispatch a mission;appoint special envoys or; request the Secretary-General to use his good offices to achieve a pacific settlement of the dispute. Its powers are laid out in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII of the UN Charter. The UNSC deliberations on Afghanistan are based on powers listed in Chapter VI (articles 33-38) on the specific settlement of disputes and Chapter VII (articles 39-51) on actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. Based on these powers, the Security Council authorises UNAMA’s mandate and obliges the mission to provide quarterly reports on the situation in Afghanistan.
↑4
The list of Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan is long (read them here). There have been eight since the IEA takeover, dozens during the Republic and after the al-Qaida attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, and 11 before that.
↑5
The Security Council Report (SCR) is an independent think tank that works towards the promotion of transparency in UNSC decision-making. See the organisation’s website here.
UN Security Council Resolution on Afghanistan: Just another ‘much ado about nothing’?
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
The Security Council adopts resolution 2721 (2023) on the independent assessment on Afghanistan. The resolution was adopted with 13 votes in favour and two abstentions (People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation). Photo by UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe, 29 December 2023.