Of Hunters and Hunted (2): Falconry, bird smuggling and wildlife conservation

December 28, 2023

Fabrizio Foschini

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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The cold weather marks the start of the hunting season in many countries across the world. In Afghanistan, despite a hunting ban, this time of year sees the resumption of particular hunting-related activities. One particular group of hunters – raptor birds migrating through the country – become the hunted. Every year, some are caught and sold, often abroad, to be trained to hunt other prey in turn. At this time of year, as well, foreign falconers, notably wealthy sportsmen from the Gulf endowed with special hunting permits, come to western Afghanistan in order to indulge their passion for falconry and hunt their most prized quarry, the houbara bustard – which has also become the objective of a Qatari conservation programme in the country. In this second and concluding instalment of a two-part report on falconry in Afghanistan, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini examines the illegal export of raptors from Afghanistan, and also the hunting of and efforts to conserve the houbara in Farah province. He notes the ambivalent effects of this particular form of foreign intervention.

Part 1 of this report, which traced falconry through poetry and memoirs, can be read here.

From hunting with falcons to hunting falcons

At Kandahar and above Kabul nests the Khorasani falcon
When Aries comes the chicks of the peregrine are born 
And with Taurus you fetch them from the nest
From Khorasan come peregrine falcons who are
Great, healthy and powerful as marine falcons

In the first part of this report, centred on Khushal Khan Khattak’s Baznama, his poetic treatise on falconry from which these lines are taken, we have been referring to falcons in a rather general sense. Some classification will be required here before delving further into contemporary falconry. Raptors employed for falconry must be divided into two main groups, according to both modern Linnaean classification and traditional Arabo-Persian medieval categorisation, besides practical visual recognition when flying.

Falcons proper (Persian shahinan), that is members of the falconidae family such as the peregrine, saker, gyrfalcon, and even the smaller merlin and hobby, are categorised in Persian as siyahchashm (black-eyed) and can roughly be described as long-winged raptors.

Hawks (Persian bazan), on the other hand, such as the goshawk and the sparrowhawk, belong to the Accipitridae, which are traditionally labelled zardchashm or gulabchashm (yellow-eyed or rose-eyed) and can be described as short-winged.

Hunting techniques further set the two groups apart: falcons mainly hunt other birds, climbing above their prey before dropping on them out of the sky in a fast dive. Among these, the peregrine is pre-eminent, the fastest-moving creature on Earth, reaching speeds of 320 km/h. Hawks are more apt at catching prey both in the air and on land in manoeuvred flight through woodland or semi-covered areas. Falcons tear apart their prey, using a beak which has evolveda sharp ‘tooth’, one of the characteristic features of this group. Hawks kill with their talons.

Both types of raptors can be taken from the nest as chicks and reared and trained until they are able to hunt, or they can be captured as adults. Those who take chicks follow the birds’ reproductive calendar and sites of different species, seeking out the many falcons who nest in rugged mountainous terrain across Afghanistan, notably Badakhshan, Nuristan and Bamyan as well as other areas to the south and north of the Hindu Kush. Nowadays, however, adult falcons captured while migrating are considered superior, as they are already skilled hunters and do not require excessive training.[1] Consequently, their market price is much higher than that of birds taken from their nests and reared by humans. October and November are considered the best months for catching wild birds, especially falcons such as the saker or peregrine, when these migrate from Central Asia and western China to warmer areas, flying through northern and central Afghanistan.

The opening lines of this section show how modern-day Afghanistan was already considered a primary ground for catching raptors for falconry in Khushal Khan’s time. And if today, falconry practised by Afghans has by and large disappeared, hunting falcons in order to sell them, often on the international market, has increasingly become a profitable business.

A falcon hunter interviewed in Kabul agreed to share with AAN some details of the profession he had inherited from his father. He originally hails from Kunduz province and mostly traps migrating falcons in that area, in the districts of Dasht-e Archi and Khanabad or in neighbouring Darqad in Takhar province.

When we go hunting, prior to hunting we first catch some small birds – we call them sarkheli, badori, torlaki (black tail) or shinlaki (blue tail). We tie snares to their feet and head and to all places where it is possible to put snares on. We sew the eyes of these small birds shut and tie their wings so that they cannot fly away and get lost. They can fly maybe one or two hundred metres and we can easily catch them back. Some people use pigeons as bait, also putting a snare harness on them. When we see falcons and hawks in the air, we throw the birds towards them. They attack them, but they get stuck in the trap and then we catch them. 

Some people also tie the bait birds into a net and when the hunting falcons see them, they attack and also get stuck in the net. They pin the caps of the net into the earth, so the falcons cannot fly away and carry it with them.[2]

Falconry in Afghanistan, like a number of traditional practices, has suffered the consequences of four decades of war, destruction and displacement. Until recently, a quite common sight on Kabul’s streets was men pulling handcarts filled with cages and birds of various kinds for sale, among them, inevitably sparrowhawks or other small raptors. Now, hunting raptors are mostly purchased by foreign buyers and trafficked outside the country.

Of course, there are exceptions: a number of falconers remain in the country, especially in the eastern region around Jalalabad (read a 2011 report here), where research into the current situation by members of the Pakistan Falconry Association (PFA) between 2014 and 2016 was undertaken. Afghan falconry also still exists in the Shomali plateau north of Kabul, whose residents have a deep-rooted interest in all types of hunting.[3] Here, when NATO troops were present, Afghan falconers were employed by the US Army to keep rabbits from encroaching on lanes at the Bagram airbase.

Falcon hunting and falconry are interconnected activities and often a family affair, passed down from father to son. Some contemporary hunters thus keep up hawking as a hobby, especially with birds they cannot profitably sell on the market. Such was the case with the hunter interviewed by AAN in Kunduz. He had captured two peregrine falcons during the 2022/23 season, the female he sold for a million Pakistani Rupees (around 3,700 USD), while the male he kept for himself for occasional hunting. He said males are not usually sold; as with most raptors, adult females are comparatively larger and more powerful than males (a differential which allows a pair of birds to hunt different prey in the same area) and are therefore more frequently employed in falconry as well as being in higher demand. Hawks are also more likely to be kept or sold in local markets.

Foreign demand for falcons is driving the market and comes overwhelmingly from the Gulf; falconers there do not employ hawks for hunting, but only and exclusively falcons. So, despite the veneration of the peregrine, the saker and other falcons in Khushal’s treatise and the presence of saker falcons in stories by Rattray and other colonial officers, much of the recent photographic evidence, as well as the author’s personal observations over the past two decades, point to a predominance of accipitridae, ie hawks, in the hands of Afghan falconers. Falcons, on the other hand, are probably not something the average Afghan falconer can afford any more and so those captured or raised inside the country are usually sold to foreign markets.

To highlight the difference this makes, a survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Mazar-e Sharif in November 2007 found that the price of a female saker falcon ranged between 1,000 and 3,000 USD, while that of a sparrowhawk was only around 100 USD. Needless to say, the same falcons, once they are exported, are worth many times that price. In the late 1990s, a female saker falcon was worth between 20,000 and 40,000 USD in Riyadh or Dubai. After a temporary price drop in the early 2000s, more recently, prices were reported to have reached similar or higher figures already at the Pakistani market level, which is usually the retail outlet for Afghan falcons. The final price in the Gulf would be higher still.

As a consequence of this trade, the saker falcon’s status is endangered across the whole region, as reported already in 2007 by the WCS:

The case of the saker falcon is especially worrying. Biologists from the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency (ERWDA) in Abu Dhabi (now Environmental Agency, EAD), mandated to address the impact of falconry on saker falcon populations, have documented a very rapid population decline, particularly on Central Asian breeding grounds, mostly caused by inadequately controlled offtakes for the falconry trade.

Successive Afghan governments from Karzai onwards have tried to tackle the trafficking of raptors (see Tolo News report here), although without much success. Despite several confiscations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Gulf countries over the past two decades that have enabled the return and release of dozens of smuggled birds, the trade has continued unabated (see and by Pajhwok).

The hunting ban announced by the previous Afghan government (and which has been replicated by the Islamic Emirate) has not been enforced with regularity. High-profile Pakistani or Arab traders or their local contractors acquire permits for nest-hunting or trading raptors by government officials; thus, the ban has mainly affected local hunters who cannot afford to secure permits or bribe officials. For some involved in the hunting and rearing of hawks for local markets, these restrictions have forced them to give up their profession, while those making better profits have been able to continue their activities undisturbed.

The insurgency both exacerbated the previous government’s unwillingness to prioritise the fight against bird smuggling and also helped curb Afghan falconry and the raptor trade. The Taleban forbade hunting in areas under their influence in order to reduce the risk of villagers, wandering in remote and mountainous areas on a hunt, chancing upon their hideouts and reporting them to government or NATO forces. Long periods of high-intensity conflict typically have ambivalent effects on fauna as they tend to disrupt people’s hunting activities (read a report on falcon trafficking in Syria and the war’s impact). At the same time, it hinders attempts to protect the environment, launch restoration programmes and combat wildlife smuggling. While war in Afghanistan probably reduced people’s hunting for personal consumption or leisure, it did not stop the lucrative poaching of species in high demand in foreign markets.

The Kunduzi hunter said that, whereas in the past he used to go to Peshawar to sell the falcons he caught, in the last two years, he now goes to Kabul to meet contractors acting as buyers for foreign customers. This may be a result of the difficulties Afghans currently face crossing the Torkham border with Pakistan, but is surely also a sign that the raptor trade has not in any way been disrupted by the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, despite the continuing official ban.

A few short-winged hawks are still employed by the Afghan falconers who still hunt, given they are cheaper to buy and keep, and since their hunting techniques are more suited to the hilly and partially wooded terrain of central and eastern Afghanistan. The more specifically aerial prowess of falcons, such as the peregrine, seems to be better suited to the flat and open expanses of southern and western Afghanistan and, in those regions, it is to the glove of foreign falconers, rather than Afghans that the birds return to. Foreign hunting parties have become a fixture of Afghanistan in the past decades. Come winter, wealthy Arab falconers from the Gulf flock to western provinces such as Farah to fly their favourite falcons – often originally from Afghanistan, but smuggled to the Gulf via Karachi – at their favourite prey, the houbara bustard.

A hunting paradise in Farah

But the bustard, that miracle of the sky
But for its leash it would grab!
Higher than bustard can the falcons fly

From Khushal Khan’s geographical perspective in Afghanistan’s southeast and the Vale of Peshawar, bustards would probably not have been typical birds. Although they were present, they were and still are more common in the steppe expanses from Baluchistan to the north of Afghanistan. However, given his use of the phrase, “miracle of the sky,” the bustard’s flying skills and its value as game for falconry because of the sport it offered were very well known to him. This is further made clear by a hunting calendar he provides in the Baznama, where the bustard is featured from the month of October:

When it’s Virgo there come quails

And at the start of Scorpio white geese

For the bustards you must wait for Libra

This is indeed the time when the first houbara bustards – increasingly referred to by Afghans by their Arabic name ‘houbara’– arrive in Afghanistan.[4] Houbaras migrate between the northern steppes of Central Asia, such as in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, where they go to find mates and reproduce, and their winter quarters in western Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they stay between October and March. The season between the end of autumn and the early part of winter is also when falconers from the Gulf, who have a real obsession with the houbara bustard, fly to these parts.

There are several reasons why the houbara is such prized game among Gulf Arabs: partly, it is nostalgia for the old times, when houbara hunting during transhumance guaranteed food for Bedouin households, but also due to the unmatched sport offered to falconers by this bird with its size, mimetic plumage, flying skills and peculiar defensive techniques. Despite living partly on the ground, the bustard rises high into the air and spirals to avoid being struck, while reportedly also being able to defend itself by defecating on a pursuing falcon. Even more importantly, houbaras are considered a delicacy in the Gulf. There, the bird’s meat is believed to grant longevity and also, reportedly, to be an aphrodisiac (see this report by wildlife author, Richard Conniff). On a hunting trip, houbaras are often eaten right away, boiled first in order to tenderise the meat and then grilled, with the broth served as a starter.

A houbara bustard in western Farah province, 2023. Photo by AAN.

Due to intensive hunting, houbaras have become very rare in the Arabian Peninsula read a report here) and, after attempts at importing live birds captured elsewhere, Gulf hunters started to explore new hunting grounds, notably western Afghanistan.[5]

The presence of hunting parties from the Arab Gulf in Afghanistan dates back to the mid-1990s and has been no secret since Steve Coll, in his book Ghost Wars, wrote about an episode when the US were about to bomb a group, believing Bin Laden to be among them.[6] Under the Islamic Republic, Gulf hunters were sometimes even invited by government officials, in spite of the hunting ban (reported by Pajhwok here) and were able to secure permits to hunt in Afghanistan.

The current Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) also put forward a national hunting ban in November 2022. In some provinces, such as Farah, where hunting has evidently become of national strategic significance, the ban was imposed through other means. The local minister of Haj and Religious Affairs asked residents through sermons in mosques to stop hunting rare birds (see this Tolo report). The ban occurred just in time to stop the impending hunting season and the effects of its enforcement soon followed: Afghan media reported that a number of local hunters were arrested in Anardara and Khak-e Safed districts between the end of December 2022 and end of January 2023.

However, shortly after this, and in an even more timely fashion for the houbara season, the possibility for foreigners to hunt in Afghanistan became regulated through a series of contracts tendered by the Ministry of Culture and Information at a total of 42 million USD (ToloNew report here). Though the announcement alluded to different contracts, the main beneficiary is certainly Al-Gharrafa, a Qatari organisation headed by prominent businessman Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah al-Thani.

The Al-Gharrafa Foundation began its activities in Afghanistan (or at least was registered as an NGO in Kabul) on 23 April 2014, although it had already explored possible areas of interest (see an earlier Pajhwok report here)). Despite having a central office in Kabul (where its main project has been the building of a residential project for needy people, Shahrak-e Qatar in PD5 on land given to it by the Republic in exchange for investment by Qatar), its main focus has been on Farah province.

The first priority of the foundation was indeed a houbara conservation project, which started in 2014 with the building of a breeding farm about 15 km south of Farah city. Around one hundred houbaras were imported from Qatar and it was planned that 1,300 would be raised in the period up to 2019. By 2016, they had reached 855 birds and began releasing them in Dasht-e Chakerta, to the west of Farah city. According to Al-Gharrafa’s website, 470 were released in 2017 and around 400 in each of the following years (see also Afghan media reporting). According to an employee of Al-Gharrafa interviewed by AAN, to this day, around 2,800 houbaras, both male and female, have been released. Al-Gharrafa has also developed a date palm farm, some of the produce of which is given to locals as alms, and is also engaged in other charitable construction projects, such as building the airport of Farah, the local Friday Mosque and some educational facilities.

Qatari interest in Farah clearly lies in falconry, although a rationale for working there could could be found in need – although one of the largest Afghan provinces, it has seen some of the lowest aid and investment from donors. Moreover, given the vast expanses of desert ravaged by an ‘unstoppable’ wind, there is also a lack of alternatives to invest in.

Al-Gharrafa is not new to agreements on hunting permits. During the Republic in 2016, it obtained the right to hunt 30 per cent of the birds it would release each year (read a Pajhwok report from that time).

Hafez Burhanuddin, Director of the Environment Protection Department of Farah, told AAN that:

Every year, the Arabs come here in Jadi (December-January), Dalw (January-February) and Hut (February-March). Some years, they stay here for one month, some years for 15 days, but it’s always according to the policy and laws of the government. The Emirate has organised that this can be five months each year and that every time they come here, the Emirate is responsible for their security. This year and the past one, the Arabs have travelled here for three months.… They go about their business and spend their time here. All their activities are arranged with the central government. Then Kabul tells us and we execute what it is told to us. 

The Arabs hunt with the falcons, they hunt the houbara and when they’re on a safari, they kill two or four houbara each day and eat them. They don’t hunt, except with the falcons and it must be said that they do not hunt the indigenous birds of Farah, except the houbara. When they come to Farah, they are given some 50 guards and moreover, they’re accompanied by drivers and some other local helpers, and these people are assigned to them by the Ministry of Interior.

Sheikh Ali himself comes every year for hunting trips, followed by guests and customers. According to local hunters and drivers who have served as guides to these parties, besides Dasht-e Chakerta, where Al-Gharrafa has a hosting facility and an additional preserve with other animals such as ostriches and wild goats, the Arabs mainly head to the westernmost districts of Farah and stay in mobile camps in Anardara and Lash wa Juwayn on Iran’s border, where houbaras are said to concentrate.

Despite some initial suspicion by locals as to the Qataris’ ‘real objective’ (read reports written during the Republic by ToloNews here and Killid here), as well as unease by some members of Farah’s civil society over the lack of accountability of hunting and aid alike – some locals interviewed complained about the big fluctuation in the level of charitable support and environmental impact from year to year – Al-Gharrafa’s activities certainly constitute a much-needed boost for Farah’s economy. The Arabs employ around 40 locals on the houbara farm (guards, veterinarians and the keepers). When hunting, they hire drivers, guides and other attendants and buy provisions and fuel, spending as much as 20 lakh AFS (27,000 USD) per day.

Al-Gharrafa’s interest in Farah also seems to have brought the attention of central government to the province: as reported by local officials to AAN, for the past two years since the re-establishment of the IEA and in contrast to other provincial administrations, where very little money has been distributed by the central government, the governor of Farah province has received a yearly sum of 500,000 USD to be spent on relevant projects.

Everybody interviewed by AAN seemed to agree that Qataris are not interested in buying local falcons in Farah. Visiting Arabs bring their own falcons and the only falcons on the farm in Farah are elderly specimens that cannot be released into the wild, something the foundation has often done with retrieved smuggled raptors. Similarly, although the mountainous areas of Farah, such as Kuh-e Sharafat in central Farah and Kuha-ye Saji in Khak-e Safed district, are still inhabited by falcons, nobody in the province hunts them. According to two local hunters interviewed by AAN, professional dealers from Helmand or Herat still operate, selling the birds on to Pakistani contractors.

Altogether, the IEA’s ban on hunting reinforces efforts made by the previous government, although it is probably better able to enforce the ban, even though at this time many impoverished Afghans might have turned to hunting to boost their meagre incomes. Such a short-term solution to economic woes would irrevocably deplete Afghanistan’s remaining wildlife reserves. One of the hunters from Farah interviewed by AAN, who in past years hunted quails, partridges and rabbits to sell in the city for their meat, said that for the past two years the hunt had not been good and that animals had become few and far between because of intensive hunting. He said the Taleban ban had only spurred him on further to give up his profession, at least temporarily.

Nonetheless, the hunting ban exposes the unfair relationship between Afghan citizens and wealthy foreigners, as the latter are permitted to hunt, even if only for leisure, in exchange for economic and political support.

Falconry and environmental conservation: concerns from which the Afghans are excluded?

Hunting with falcons? You need to have money
Or neither money nor needs

Any impression that the presence of an organisation such as Al-Gharrafa in a remote place such as Farah is a bizarre eccentricity, the whim of a sheikh indulging in his private pastime, needs to be dispelled. Not only, as mentioned, is Al-Gharrafa’s engagement with Farah’s wildlife a part of the organisation’s portfolio in Afghanistan, the Qatari organization is far from being an exception in the Gulf landscape.

It can be reductive to describe houbara hunting by Gulf Arab falconers as simply an aristocratic pastime practised by a powerful minority of foreigners in a poor country which finds itself in a position of dependency. The cultural value of falconry as a tradition has been widely explored and is charged with social and even environmental significance in Gulf countries. In the words of the director general of the International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC): “Falconry remains, for many people, intrinsically linked to… tying people together with wildlife and enforcing conservation programmes.” In recent times, however, the effects of this ancient tradition – coupled with modern technologies such as off-road vehicles and GPS – have been detrimental to the animal and bird species involved.

Arab Gulf countries began efforts to protect and repopulate bustards at home in the 1980s, following which, programmes were launched to support bustard populations abroad as well. The International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC), a United Arab Emirates-led effort, was founded in 2006 and established houbara farms and other conservation projects in Morocco and Kazakhstan. Saudi Arabia soon sponsored a centre in Morocco as well. Qatar seems to have decided that Afghanistan could be the place to test its mettle in the competition for the conservation and hunt of bustards and, indeed, it seems to have found in it the perfect terrain for regaining any ground it might have lost with respect to its neighbours. A similar project sponsored by the UAE centred on curbing smuggling and establishing a research farm, appeared in northern Balkh province in 2013 (see this report by Radio Azadi).

The long-term Qatari engagement as a potential mediator during the Afghan conflict and its solid relationship with the Taleban has offered an unrivalled entry point for cooperation with the IEA, even on these types of projects (see ToloNews report). If nothing else, Afghanistan probably offers Qataris less of the bureaucratic hassle involved in organising falconry safaris abroad (read here about a diplomatic incident caused by the death of the Qatari Emir’s falcons at customs in Kazakhstan).

This sort of ‘sporting’ competition between Gulf countries to launch conservation programmes and to secure and expand hunting preserves and opportunities across the region include elements of ruling family or national prestige, and has become an established part of the diplomatic game played by Gulf countries. When the Pakistani Supreme Court sought to ban houbara hunting in 2015, then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asked it to reconsider because of the potential fallout with Gulf states, key investors in the country. The ban was revokedthe following year, as reported by Arab News. When it comes to Afghanistan, that Afghans become mere gamekeepers for wealthy sheikhs may not be the main problem – such a role would hardly rank even low down among the different ways in which foreigners have sought to use Afghans as pawns for their own geopolitical struggles in recent centuries. Still, the scenario is controversial.

Part of the International Fund for Houbara Conservation’s mission states that: “Through restoring sustainable wild populations of houbara, IFHC will secure the continuation of traditional Arabian falconry for future generations.” The proportion of birds bred and released into the wild that are then hunted in Farah seem to satisfy the need for the numbers of houbara in that province to slowly but steadily increase and the risk of their extinction be avoided. However, given the VIP status of the hunters, it is unclear how the number of kills is monitored and, should quotas be introduced, who would exercise control over them. With no consistent reporting on the issue from within Afghanistan, recurrent scandals in neighbouring Pakistan regarding the excessive killing of houbara by the occasional irresponsible Arab hunter do not help dispel these concerns (as reported here).

Whatever becomes of the fine balance between hunting and conservation, it is clear that programmes such as those enacted by Al-Gharrafa in Farah represent interests external to Afghanistan and will always tend to focus and orient their activities to satisfy those interests in the absence of any strong partnership or supervision by the Afghans themselves. It is in Afghanistan’s interests for civil society and the authorities at all levels to be more engaged when it comes to planning and implementing initiatives for the conservation of the country’s natural environment. It may seem marginal to suggest this at a time when so many Afghans are more concerned with survival, but as shown by increasing environmental problems affecting human life, efforts at conservation and restoration and critical rethinking about the use of natural resources are going to be key for a sustainable future, both in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Wildlife repopulation programmes driven by hunting, as seen only too often in Europe in the recent past, can tend to overlook the need for extreme care, both by boosting the target species to the detriment of competitors or the natural environment, or when releasing into the wild animals as the programme’s targets which are not indigenous. Western Afghanistan, for example, has traditionally seen the presence of two species of gazelle, the goitered gazelle and the chinkara or Indian gazelle. The introduction by Al-Gharrafa in 2015 of 33 specimens of gazelle from Qatar, as it reported here, which in a matter of years multiplied to well over one hundred, might become problematic in the future. They are most likely Arabian sand gazelles, once considered a sub-species of the goitered gazelle but since 2011 recognised as a separate species.[7])

Khushal Khan Khattak may be a model for modern-day Afghanistan here. Notwithstanding the hard times he was facing, he managed to leave his descendants with a lasting record of his love of falconry and in the process elevate himself from the position of courtier to that of independent leader. So too could any Afghan government strive to pay attention to the management of its natural resources and environment – not simply for the leisure and health of the Afghan people, but for future generations, and to uphold the country’s dignity.

If the decline of an ancient tradition such as falconry is considered a ‘minor loss’ against the backdrop of over four decades of war, the disappearance of a rich and often unique natural life cannot be. Afghanistan’s wildlife cannot wait for Afghans to have lots of money and no other priorities. Help and funding from the outside, such as that provided by Qatar in Farah province, can play a pioneering role in preserving and even restoring parts of the country’s environment. Yet, for the best results, it should be done within the framework of a comprehensive national strategy for the preservation of wildlife and Afghanistan’s natural resources.

Edited by Emilie Cavendish and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 As Khushal Khan writes: 

Only that who is a Jack-of-all-trades 

Ought to try and catch a wild peregrine

Better if you take it from the nest

‘Tis a treat then, worth that of a court

Strangely enough, Khushal Khan seemed to prefer birds taken from the nest to those captured as adults. However, this may also point to a decline in expertise in falcon training and the search for faster and better results over the care and passion for rearing one’s own birds.
↑2 In desert areas such as in Farah province, hunters told AAN that falcons would be ambushed with nets close to water springs, which are scarce.
↑3 See this earlier AAN report about a “king of the air” found “bloodied and hanging from a hook in landlocked Afghanistan.”: ‘The ‘Bagram Duck’: Migrant bird killed north of Kabul and offered as game’.
↑4 ‘See this earlier AAN report about a “king of the air” found “bloodied and hanging from a hook in landlocked Afghanistan.”: ‘The ‘Bagram Duck’: Migrant bird killed north of Kabul and offered as game’.
↑5 The houbara does not normally constitute the falcon’s typical prey, so they must be specifically trained to hunt them with live animals.
↑6 AAN has in the past written about the bird and its ‘Arab connection’: ‘Bird Bomber: Police kill ‘dangerous’ houbara bustard’.
↑7 Questions are raised also by the presence of ‘alien’ ostriches in Al-Gharrafa farms. However, it has not been possible for the author to ascertain what, exactly, they are meant for, whether for husbandry or hunting (and thus likely to be released into the wild.

Of Hunters and Hunted (2): Falconry, bird smuggling and wildlife conservation
read more

Of Hunters and Hunted (1): Falconry in Afghanistan from classical literature to colonial sources 

December 27, 2023

Fabrizio Foschini

Part 2 will look at how Afghan falcons are trapped and sold abroad and how wealthy Gulf Arabs, keen to hunt in Afghanistan, are also involved in conservation programmes for the birds that their falcons capture.
A personal memory as an introduction to the topic

I was made aware of Afghans’ fascination with falconry some fifteen years ago in a rather accidental way. Back then, I was carrying out field research in Badakhshan for a project on oral history, travelling in winter to take advantage of the locals’ comparative immobility in that frozen season and so able to conduct my interviews at ease. I often got stuck in one village or other due to heavy snow that made roads impassable, even for people like me, travelling either on foot or horse. It thus happened me to have to put up for a few weeks at a mehmankhana (guesthouse) in the comparatively cosmopolitan little town of Ishkashim, where I joined the company of other seasonal travellers from various parts of Afghanistan, mostly Mashreqi (eastern) Pashtun traders.

When you are stranded far away from home and family, snowed in by a six-month winter, you come to appreciate a good story being told around the evening stew and before the board game of carambole. After a few nights and unable to compete with the veteran storytelling skills of my companions, I resorted to that ample reservoir of good stories by the Italian 14th century author Giovanni Boccaccio, brought together in his The Decameron. Out of all the stories, I picked for an impromptu translation that of the noble but poor Federico degli Alberighi and of his beloved falcon, whom he willingly sacrifices to feed an unexpected guest, a widow he devoutly loves but who – alas! – had in fact come to see him to beg for the falcon alive, for her ailing child.

Considering the often spicy corpus of The Decameron, mine was a rather prudish choice made in order to navigate safer waters and avoid giving unpleasant impressions about old Italian society to my Pashtunwali-abiding audience. What I could not have foretold was the great success that my tale would reap (I was afterwards compelled to write down an abridged version in Dari.) The interest from my public was elicited not only by the flawlessly ghairatmand (honourable) behaviour of the novel’s protagonist, but by the very subject of falconry, which spurred an immediate reaction in the form of a salvo of quotes from Khushal Khan Khattak and possibly other (and unknown to me) Pashto poets. Though my friends in Ishkashim were more partridge-fighting enthusiasts, I suddenly realised that they, like many Afghans, nurtured a deep fascination for both falcons and falconry alike.

A book and a symbol: Khushal Khan Khattak’s Baznama

The nature of the falcon is in my pride 
You see, it fits every type of game!

Previously, as a student of Afghanistan, I had only been marginally exposed to the subject of Afghan falconry. The existence of an excellent and unique translation and study of the Baznama, the Book of the Falcon by eminent 17th century Pashto poet Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-1689) in my native language was probably the main reason for this.[1]

The book’s fame is largely due to it being a major and early literary work in Pashto. The choice of Pashto was a conscious one, explicitly pointed out by the author (he is reported as having composed another work on falconry in Persian that was subsequently lost):

Persian art, that of the falcon

But I versified it in the Afghan language

This came at a time when Khushal Khan’s commitment to the struggle for Pashtun independence from the Mughals was at its highest. The book, consisting of 47 ‘chapters’ – actually poems of different lengths – was written in less than a week in 1674. Khushal Khan was busy entreating for tribal coalition-making in order to overcome the forces of the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb (1658-1707) – against whose rule he had rebelled – and for this purpose was travelling to Swat to convince the Yusufzai to join ranks. The text opens with a powerful contextualisation of this literary enterprise during political events that were to shape the author’s life:

Today, that by two years I passed sixty

With this oppression and this pushing against us

Of Aurangzeb’s Mughals who advance from India

Greedy to grab our people

And it is four years, and maybe five

That on Pashtun steel his rush is crushed

And a vane desire of revenge urges upon him

Day and night your Khushal is on the alert.

To help the Mughals: gold, and lands and riches

To me the force that the Almighty gives!

Wanderer without a home, without quarter 

Roaming the mountains alone like an ibex

Two lanterns has the night, the third am I

Hence, what time is left to me for hunting? 

Yet, no other ghost lingers before my eyes

The love of falcons brought me to the Swat valley.

His work is also remarkable for its particular style and for treating the subject of falconry, an all-time favourite for treatises throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, in poetic form. The main text is in the form of a mathnavi, where couplets feature end-rhymes, while several ghazals interrupt the text in order to deal with specific topics.

When compared to that most famous of all falconry treatises, the prose-written De arte venandi cum avibus by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, or even to geographically closer precedents who had likely been read by the author, such as the 11th century Persian language treatise, Baznama-ye Nasavi, Khushal Khan’s text appears much less schematic: there is no classificatory introduction, and the chapters, although each concern a specific subject, are not organised in regular order. Chapters describing the value and characteristics of several species of falcons and hawks are intermingled with others devoted to the cure of maladies, proper nutrition and training.

In particular, the text delves into all sorts of remedies and attention to be given to the falcons: how to get rid of sickness or parasites, how to entice and teach them to hunt, how to feed them the proper way (also according to Ayurvedic concepts) and make sure they defecate regularly. Peculiarly, not only is all this done in verse, but also with great verve:

Lots of guano, steady speed!

(the falcon) Enjoys water, twists and twirls! 

The falcon owner or carer is urged to take up a personal and devoted role in providing for his bird’s well-being, such as, for example, extracting glands from the necks of wolves and cows, which:

You grind them well with your teeth

‘Til a yellowish water comes out

Let it dry and then for four days

Twice a day mixed with minced food

You give them, and a tasty omelette 

Of mice and dried rabbit flesh

And a potpourri of young gadflies

Well-boiled in cow butter

Khushal Khan Khattak was evidently fond of falcons, and this fondness led him to use the bird as a poetic metaphor in all contexts. Besides the Baznama, falcons reoccur in many lines of his poetry, describing a red that is like the falcon’s talons are the hands of the brave Afghans after battle with the Mughals or separation from the beloved that tears the poet’s heart to pieces as the falcon tears apart a quail. Khushal even imagines himself as an old expert falcon, happily swooping down on those “pretty plump partridges,” the Afridi maids (which suggests that I may have been more liberal with my choice from The Decameron), but also that the eyes of his lover, like two falcons, pounce upon his heart, that poor pigeon![2]

If Khushal Khan Khattak is exceptional in his love of falcons and his use of them in symbolism and metaphor, still, these birds are no strangers to the literature originating in or around Afghanistan. Indeed, falconry may well represent one of the oldest motifs to have appeared in literature in the territory in and around present-day Afghanistan. There is a story of a falconer from Balkh, for example, guilty of having offended his master’s wife by teaching parrots to slander her and punished by a falcon who subsequently blinds him, which appeared as early as 400-200 BCE in the Panchatantra-related corpus of tales. It was later popularised throughout the world in the Arabic derivation, Kalila wa Dimna.[3]

The region to the east of the Iranian Plateau, known in medieval times as Khorasan, was likely to have been one of the world’s earliest cradles of falconry as a favourite pastime among elites and ruling classes. We know this to be true due to the many Persian words in the falconry lexicon of the eastern Arab world, whose inhabitants would eventually become even more passionate about hunting with falcons than their eastern neighbours.

Indeed, falcons and hawks were not as central to classical Persian literature as they would later become to Arab poetry. However, some of the earliest and most important falconry treatises to appear were composed in Persian (such as Nasavi’s aforementioned Baznama from the 11th century) and there are references to falcons interspersed through the works of major Persian poets, such as Fariduddin Attar and Omar Khayyam, and more relevant for Afghanistan, Jalaluddin Rumi Balkhi. For him, the falcon came to symbolise the human soul, able to rise up when unfettered and which returns to God, the falconer; the prophets are God’s own falcons launched to communicate with humanity.

There is also a much more transcendent and timeless symbol at play when dealing with falcons, which has justified the enduring fortune they found in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Among the animals that can be kept and trained, falcons offer a unique living demonstration of dexterity and regality, of hunting skills – which, through the ages, have easily been equated with battle prowess – and ‘noble’ demeanours. This explains why these birds have evolved from the totemic value they held in ancient societies to heraldic and aristocratic symbolism.[4]

The practice of falconry has thus been associated with status and power among the region’s courts for centuries. Falconry was similarly held in the highest esteem and practised by the ruling classes in Mughal India, a major source of influence on Afghans during Khushal’s time, as well as on Khushal’s own life.

Zain Khan Koka, the scion of an Afghan family who distinguished itself under the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries, riding with a falcon. Source: Pinterest.

Khushal Khan Khattak’s passion for falcons may have partially derived from his persona as an indomitable, independent leader, no matter that he may have been in dire straits or under pressure from powerful enemies – an early model for the ‘king-unto-his-own’ Afghan khan that, in the 19th century, would be popularised by British diplomat Mountstuart Elphinstone’s remarks on what he perceived to be the extreme independence, characteristic of this nation. But falconry may also have been one of the last few courtly pleasures Khushal did not have to relinquish when he became the wandering rebel banished from his home and family (the Mughals replaced him as chief of the Khattak tribe with one of his own sons, who subsequently became his sworn enemy). His attachment to falconry may simply have been the very human reaction of an old man trying to cope with the loss of privilege and trying to face increasing struggles with undiminished dignity.

Khushal Khan’s combination of treatise-style learning and poetical form as well as his larger-than-life personality are quite unique and certainly self-aware. Throughout his Baznama, packed as it is with practical medical remedies and dietary advice, a number of meditations are also found, usually in the form of short ghazals, which offer a break from the text. They alternately compare a passion for falconry with the pursuit of a more meaningful way of life, the experience of the hunt and its teachings with war and life itself, and even the proud temper of the falcon with the poet’s own. These may be in line with pre-existing traditions of mystical symbolism rooted in the imagery of Sufi-influenced poetry or the conventional association of falcons with ruling power. However, Khushal’s typically concrete and passionate approach to his poetic creation also suggests a very personal, if not autobiographic, meaning for the writing of such a book at such a time in his life.

Falconry in modern Afghanistan

Difficult art, that of rearing falcons
In Kabul maybe you will learn it

Khushal’s verse, reproduced above, shows how, in his time, the still-to-be Afghan capital held first place in falconry across the region. Besides being the seat of a Mughal governorship and thus a cultivated and refined city, Kabul found itself open to influences and knowledge related to falconry proceeding from different geographic and cultural areas.

A dominant model portrays Afghanistan as located at the convergence of three main cultural-political areas: the Iranian Plateau, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. Without judging its overall validity, we can concur that the country sits at the confluence of three major areas of interest, at least for falconry and the traditions connected to it. Hawking has indeed been common, in the flat, barren expanses of western and southern Afghanistan with their Khorasanian traditions, and the steep valleys south of the Hindu Kush, where Khushal divided his time between war and hunting. It has also been practised in the hills to the north of the Hindu Kush, where the steppe tradition of falconry had spread from Mongolia to the historical region of Turkestan which encompassed today’s northern Afghanistan.

Looking for historical records of falconry practices in modern Afghanistan, it must be remembered that most travellers, especially during the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, were chiefly interested in information that might have political or military relevance, or customs particular to Afghanistan that differed starkly from those of neighbouring countries. Hence, falconry was not a subject that elicited more than an occasional passing note.

It is difficult, for example, not to argue with the laconic comment by that pioneer of Afghan travelogues, Mountstuart Elphinstone, that “Afghans do not have falconry except in the east.” At the time, in 1809, he had never travelled west of Peshawar or Multan, so how would he know what went on in the western half of the Durrani Empire, for example around Kandahar or Herat?

The Kashmiri Mohan Lal travelling across Afghanistan in the service of the British in the mid-1830s reported, for example, two instances of hawking in western Afghanistan. In the hills outside Herat he had a meeting with the chief of the local Hazara tribes, who was out hunting with falcons. Moreover, heading south of the city through Adraskan district, he mentions an area called Basha – though a scholar of Persian, Mohan Lal apparently failed to notice that this name means ‘sparrowhawk’. He reported that it was a green plain where hawks abounded and that it used to be a favoured hunting spot for Timur Shah (r 1773-1793), the son of Ahmad Shah Durrani. This seems likely, that Timur liked to hunt there when he was governing Herat for his father or at any rate before he moved the Afghan capital from Kandahar to Kabul.[5]

Lal’s travel companion and patron Alexander Burnes, while on his way to Kabul in 1836, did write down a few observations on falconry, but only when passing through Sindh (Cabool, A Personal Narrative, 1843, p.35, 50-51), where the local Talpur rulers were exceedingly fond of hawking. A few years later, British diplomat and explorer Richard Burton, deployed to a garrison in Sindh, also had ample opportunity to enjoy falcon-hunting with the last of the Talpur rulers, experiences he wrote about in Falconry in the Valley of the Hindus (1852). Until only recently, the Talpurs had been vassals of the Afghan rulers and no doubt shared many of the cultural traits of the courts in Kandahar and Kabul. Burton’s work is organised as a collection of anecdotes following his conversations with a native prince and his entourage on what could have conceivably been a single day trip of horse-riding and hunting with falcons. The numerous technical details about falcons and hawk species – their characteristics, origins, training, etc. – are at first interspersed within the text, but gradually come to constitute separate topical chapters around which the text is construed, as in the classical forms of falconry treatises.

This text offers a unique insight into falconry practices most likely similar to those of contemporary Afghanistan, at least to those in Kandahar, which enjoyed a closer connection to Sindh. A typical feature, for example, something which Burton found so peculiar that he suggested it be adopted by European falconers, was the practice of the falconer literally throwing the falcon into the air to enhance its acceleration. More generally, the broad use of short-winged raptors, such as goshawks and sparrowhawks, able to catch their quarry on the ground, connects to other data on falconry and hawking in Afghanistan. Indeed, as shown in a rather dramatic engraving in the book, goshawks were also trained to attack mammals as big as chinkara gazelles, by plunging their talons into their eyes.

Painting by James Rattray portraying two hawkers from Kohistan at the times of the British occupation of Kabul (1839-41).

As for Kabul and its surroundings, the British occupation of 1839-1841 also produced some sources. Among a series of paintings left by James Rattray, one has for its subject two Kohistani hawkers engaged in conversation with a number of raptors resembling sparrowhawks on their wrists (and head). To the British officer and painter, we are also indebted for a lengthy description, probably the most complete besides Burton’s treatise on Sindh, of Afghan practices when capturing and training falcons:

The wild falcon is caught in nets, and regularly harnessed in leg and breast strings, hood, bells, and wing-straps. Its eyes are then sewed up, and it is placed on a perch in a dark room. For two or three days it is starved, and then crammed. About the seventh day one stitch in the eyelid is unfastened, and if it proves tractable, and on a dead quail being shown to it, it alights on the fist of its instructor, and afterwards comes to be fed at the call, ‘beea’ (come), its education is nearly accomplished. Its eyes are then quite unsewed, and should it strike a quail thrown up in the air, and bring it to its master, it is considered fully trained, and makes its début in the field forthwith.

Rattray also noted that it was customary to set free the raptors at the end of the hunting season; it could happen that the same bird be recaptured and employed for hunting by the falconer in successive years.

British officer Harry Lumsden, stranded in Kandahar for a year in 1857-58 due to the Indian Rebellion, reported that during the winter, Afghan ruler Dost Muhammad Khan sent him saker falcons which had been trained to hunt hares in collaboration with the tazi, the Afghan hound (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, March 1907, Vol III, n°3).[6]

Amir Abdul Rahman Khan (r 1880-1901) remarks in his memoirs that in his youth he was usually accompanied when travelling by several falcons, and we know from other sources that he kept up this hobby at his court in later years. In the early twentieth century as well, there are a number of references to falconry. At the Afghan court, a character repeatedly associated with this pastime is Prince Nasrullah. The Briton, Doctor Gray, in his memoirs, At the Court of the Amir, portrays the prince hawking for partridges.

Nasrullah’s brother, Amir Habibullah (1901-1919), was also an avid hunter, going as far as elephant-riding in order to shoot ducks around Afghan reservoirs and lakes. M.E. Bell, an American who served as an engineer in Kabul for ten years, recalls him carefully tending a falcon on his wrist while out hunting. In all likelihood, given that Habibullah was also an enthusiast of European technology and introducing new habits at court, he will likely have neglected falconry for more ‘modern’ types of hunting.

It is thus possible that falconry at the Afghan court experienced a period of decline during this era, which saw the introduction of modern hunting guns, much like what reportedly happened in neighbouring Qajar Iran. As in Iran, where falconry lingered as an attribute of noble status among tribal chieftains in remoter areas, such as among Kurds and Lors, in Afghanistan it is likely that the comparatively larger class of rural khans, maliks and arbabs perpetuated the tradition during this age of transition. It is they who are featured prominently in a comparative wealth of photographic evidence from all corners of the country from the 1940s to the 1970s, certainly too vast to be treated here. Surely, rural falconers suited the lens through which foreign visitors to Afghanistan were keen to see the country: a land of ancient customs unspoilt by globalisation and modernity.

Afghan falconer with sparrowhawk, early 1950s. Photo from the exhibition by Yvonne von Schweinitz in Munich, 2014-15. Source: versicherungskammer-kulturstiftung.de

By contrast, few written academic studies have appeared concerning falconry in Afghanistan in that era. A German zoologist who lived in Afghanistan between 1963 and 1974, Gerd Kühnert, left a study of the hawking practices he witnessed and participated in, in his Falknerei in Afghanistan (1980).

A peculiar account of falconry in 20th century Afghanistan is also that told by Sirdar Muhammad Osman. A descendant of Amir Sher Ali’s family exiled to India after the second Anglo-Afghan War (1879-1881), he was born in Dehra Dun and became a famed naturalist and conservationist of the Indian Himalayan foothills. However, he also resided for long periods in his ancestral homeland in the 1940s and 1950s, working for the Helmand Valley Authority. His book of recollections about his experiences there is titled Falconry in the Land of the Sun (2001). It details practices that seem to have been particular to Afghanistan, such as using eagles asquarry to be hunted with saker falcons, after these had been trained on buzzards.

The decades of conflict and upheaval that racked Afghanistan from 1978 onwards brought a radical decline to the local practice of falconry. However, war in Afghanistan did not create hurdles for the lucrative international (and illegal) trade in raptors, which became increasingly fed by birds smuggled out of the country. Then, in the 1990s, a new type of falconer appeared in Afghanistan: wealthy Arabs from the Gulf countries, who discovered in it a favoured hunting destination. All this will be the subject of the second part of this report on falconry in Afghanistan: hunting, smuggling and conservation.

Edited by Emilie Cavendish and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 Il Libro del Falcone, edited by Daniele Guizzo and Gianroberto Scarcia, volume 55 of the series Eurasiatica, Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, 2001. The Baznama has since also been published in English by Sami ur-Rahman (The Book of Falconry, Islamabad, 2014). A previous English translation by a local scholar, dating back to the 1930s, had limited circulation. Excerpts from the text given here are based on the Italian translation and the Pashto text (the Italian edition includes the original text).
↑2 This, at least, is the rendition of his poem known as ‘The Maidens of the Adam Khel Afridi’ by HG Raverty (Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans, 1862, p203 – available online here). Dupree’s Afghanistan offers three alternative English translations of the same verses (p83-86).
↑3 The collection of fables with animals as heroes, likely originating from the Sanskrit Panchatantra, had already reached European countries by the late Middle Ages through its Persian and Arabic renditions, while at the same time, travelling to the Far East via Indonesia.
↑4, ↑5 Traces of a ‘totemic’ value attributed to these birds seem to linger even in an orthodox Muslim society such as Afghanistan: the prefix ‘baz’, (hawk), especially in combination with ‘Muhammad’, is still a favourite among both Pashto and Dari speakers (as well as other groups). ‘Shahin’ (falcon), on the other hand, is a relatively common unisex name in Afghanistan and other countries of the region.
↑6 For more on this, see our earlier report, ‘From Tazi to Afghan Hound… from hunter’s friend to silken-haired pet’.

 

Of Hunters and Hunted (1): Falconry in Afghanistan from classical literature to colonial sources 
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Afghan women are hanging on amid Taliban repression

December 20, 2023
BY MALALAI HABIBI
OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
The Hill
12/19/23 8:30 AM ET

In the shadows of the oppressive and misogynistic Taliban regime, Afghan women find themselves navigating a perilous journey where their rights are systematically erased. Yet amid this darkness, a formidable spirit of resistance, agency, and activism by Afghan women has emerged, becoming an example of courage and a source of inspiration worldwide.

The civic and social spaces for Afghan women — particularly activists, journalists, and all those who have loud voices — are being restricted with each passing day. Over 90 decrees issued by the Taliban have taken away fundamental rights to education, freedom of movement, work, and employment, protection against gender-based violence, political and social participation, access to healthcare, freedom of expression, and equal access to resources and protection during an emergency. In the tragic Herat earthquake, for example, over 90 percent of casualties were women and children.

The women of Afghanistan have been relegated to sexual objects and reproductive machines as they are also denied rights over their bodies and reproductivity with the banning of contraception pills.

In the face of such dire circumstances, Afghan women have refused to be silenced. Despite the looming threats of arbitrary detention, torture, imprisonment, and forced disappearances, they have taken to the streets, raising their voices to reclaim the rights unjustly and illegally taken from them. This defiance and resistance stand in stark contrast to the portrayal of Afghan women as passive victims during the NATO invasion in 2001.

Two decades later, in 2021, Afghan women stood undeterred in the face of the Taliban’s resurgence. From the earliest moments of the Taliban’s return to power, these women declared that they would not succumb to silence nor permit themselves to be lost in the cycle of victimization, violence, and power struggles. Their continued activism, widespread street protests across the country, and online campaigns have shed light on the situation inside, and are a testament to their unwavering commitment, courage, and resistance.

At every gathering, event, and seminar, whether behind closed doors or in public, the activism and resilience of Afghan women take center stage, garnering both attention and admiration. These women have not only set a new standard but have also encouraged men to mobilize for peace and freedom as well. This is a significant shift from the historical perception of Afghan women as passive.

The acknowledgment of their courage has generated discussions about their critical role in bringing fundamental change. With their remarkable resistance, Afghan women also underscore that their call for international community support is about solidarity and support, not about fighting their battles for them. The message is simple: to stand beside them and ensure they receive the rights, respect, and recognition they rightfully deserve, echoing universal principles and laws.

Although there has been extensive engagement with the Taliban, mostly without the presence of Afghan men and women, the international community has refrained from recognizing the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan. This cautious approach has been largely driven by the persistent resistance of Afghan women to reject endorsing a regime marked by brutality, suppression, and unlawful and illegitimate power.

Afghan women have joined forces with their Iranian counterparts to codify and eventually end gender apartheid in Iran and Afghanistan. Their advocacy focuses on the legal and strategic implications of acknowledging the Taliban within the international system and institutions. Afghan women’s resolute stance has played a pivotal role in dissuading global recognition of a regime mired in brutality, shedding light on the moral imperatives and fundamental principles of the world obligation to fight atrocities committed in other jurisdictions.

The remarkable resilience displayed by Afghan women under Taliban rule has been nothing short of exemplary. They have shattered the biased and passive image that the world had painted of them.

Throughout their resistance, Afghan women advocated and fought not only for their own rights, demands, and needs but also those of the entire Afghan citizenry across genders, ethnicities, religious affiliations, and ideologies. They demonstrate that their fight is for collective humanity. They even fearlessly took to the streets, despite Taliban brutality, to show solidarity with Iranian women and the Women, Life, Freedom movement, underscoring the universal nature of their cause while weaving a tapestry of resistance.

While the past two decades of democracy enabled substantial political engagement from Afghan women, their focus had predominantly been around social activism — addressing societal concerns and promoting positive change through community organizing, national-level advocacy, and building institutions.

But the landscape drastically shifted with the Taliban’s resurgence. Today, their resistance has taken the shape of a formidable political activism where women inside and outside the country, both young and old, work together to bring about fundamental political and structural change.  They are organizing political campaigns against the current regime, protest marches, and public demonstrations to challenge political systems, often enduring beatings in the process. They are engaging in civil disobedience and resisting unjust laws and policies, writing letters and petitions, and using online platforms to raise awareness and share information.

They are also mobilizing support for their cause, creating diverse coalitions advocating for political issues, and engaging in global political issues through international organizations and movements. This has taken Afghan women’s agency a few steps forward and positioned them as a structured and powerful resistance front, enabling them to further consolidate their impact on the political landscape.

The women of Afghanistan endure one of the harshest periods in their history, yet their exceptional rebellion marks a turning point. This chapter in the history of their resistance is a showcase of their unwavering courage, resilience, and refusal to be forgotten. The world must stand in solidarity with Afghan women, acknowledge their courageous leadership, and join the call for justice and human rights.

Malalai Habibi is a women, peace, and security expert and an advisor at the Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame.

Afghan women are hanging on amid Taliban repression
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Land in Afghanistan: This time, retaking instead of grabbing land?

December 15, 2023

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon

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When the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) retook power, it started reclaiming state land that had been seized during previous administrations. In October 2022, the IEA established the Land-Grabbing Prevention and Restitution Commission, within the Ministry of Justice, whose purpose is to investigate land-grabbing under the Islamic Republic, restore any state land and prevent it happening in the future. The IEA has also established a special court to which any party with an objection to a decision by the commission can appeal. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon gives an account of the commission’s work and assesses how much usurped land has so far been reclaimed.

Disputes over land ownership have been a major issue in Afghanistan for decades, helping to fuel the broader conflict since 1978 (for more on this, see this USIP paper). With each turn of the political wheel, a new set of actors took power and could seize or redistribute land, making disputes ever more complex. Many disputes over land are between citizens, and the IEA has said these have to be dealt with by the courts. The commission it has set up deals solely with what the Emirate believes could be usurped state land – and this is also the subject of this report.

This report looks at how the Emirate has dealt with historical state land-grabbing since the takeover. It provides a short historical background to land-grabbing and previous attempts to counter it and then details the legal framework adopted by the newly-created land-grabbing commission and special court and provides an overview of the commission’s work through five case studies in Kabul, Kandahar, Nangrahar, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces.[1] To gain granular detail of the commission’s work in these provinces, AAN interviewed 16 people with direct knowledge of the commission’s work (seven face-to-face interviews and nine by phone). The interviewees included journalists, tribal elders and IEA officials.

A short background of land-grabbing

State land comprises forests, ‘protected land’ (ie protected from development by the state or protected by law) and non-irrigated land. Only non-irrigated land can legally be sold or leased by the state, and then only under certain conditions.[2] However, such rules broke down under the Republic and in earlier periods when there was widespread grabbing of state land by senior officials, their close relatives and other influential and powerful figures (see Middle East Institute (MEI) report here). They either took the land for themselves and sold it on to others, or distributed it to clients and supporters, especially to relatives, sympathisers, factional comrades and fellow tribe members, further strengthening their power among their own community and thus their relevance at the national level. The phenomenon was especially common in or around Afghanistan’s cities. In some cases, the land-grabbers made sure to obtain legal documents from the government to show that they had been granted the land legally. This was possible for those holding high office, their relatives or other powerful individuals, who could threaten or bribe officials or give them a share of the land as a reward for the title deeds.

Attempts to reclaim such land were made – or seen to be made – under the Republic. In 2014, the Karzai government established a law which was passed by the Wolesi Jirga (lower house of parliament), determining punishment for the usurpers of land. At that time, members of the Wolesi Jirga and deputy of the commission established for evaluating state and public land in the parliament, Sher Wali Wardak,saidthat 1.3 million jeribs (226,000 hectares) of state and public land had been usurped by 5,300 people. That number, he said, included members of parliament, ministers and commanders (see media report here). However, the issue appeared to drift – certainly, no reports were published to indicate whether or not any land, or how much, had been reclaimed based on the efforts made by the Wolesi Jirga commission

Two years later, in 2016, the new president, Ashraf Ghani, asserted that “the culture of land usurpation is not accepted by the nation anymore.” He said he had appointed provincial governors, heads of police, municipalities, corps commanders and others whose first and fundamental duty was to prevent land usurpation (see Ghani’s Facebook page here). However, a former government official in Kandahar told AAN that a delegation tasked by Ghani to investigate just one case, the Aino Mena township in that city, just took money from “the owner” (Mahmud Karzai, brother of then former president Hamed Karzai), as a fine for having built on state land – USD 27,00 per jerib. Nothing changed. It was an example of how those who had usurped land could challenge even the power of the president of the Republic.

Land was also an issue for the Taleban leadership even before they captured power, as evidenced by it being regulated by two decrees issued by Sheikh Hibatullah Akhundzada during the insurgency: state land can be leased to the public, he ordered in 2017, while private land must not be seized by the ‘mujahedin’ (Taleban fighters and commanders) or anyone else (ordered in 2019). Following the takeover, Hibatullah’s first two published orders also concerned land. In the first five weeks of Emirate rule, he had ordered an end to the usurpation of state land, which he said had been “the norm” under the “puppet administration.” He also ordered provincial governors “to rigorously prevent the grabbing of Emarati [state] land and hand over usurpers to face sharia law.”

A month later, in October 2021, he again banned land-grabbing, this time for land whose ownership was unclear. Only the supreme amir, ie himself, the order decreed, “Based on necessity and expediency, can give [such land] to a member (of the Muslim community) as property.” The decree drew a parallel with what it said was the amir’s right to “withdraw from the public coffer [bait ul-maal]” and presumably give money to someone, again because of expediency. Elsewhere in the amir’s body of orders, this is also banned for others. In March 2023, the ban on officials selling land, or transferring land to individuals or corporations, was repeated, unless there was a specific decree from the amir (for the texts of the decrees up to March 2023 and an accompanying report, (see here and here).

The land commission, the special court and their objectives

The supreme leader of the IEA, Sheikh Hibatullah, established the Land Grabbing Prevention and Restitution Commission (in Pashto, de zmako de ghasab de makhniwi aw de ghasab shoyo zmako de istirdad kamesuin) by decree in mid-October 2022. See this report on the Supreme Court website and the text at the end of this report. The commission is headed by the Minister of Justice, with the Ministers of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, Urban Development and Housing and Work and Social Affairs as members. The commission has 11-member delegations in each province (12 members in Kabul), as well as 146 administrative and technical employees. The supreme leader also appointed a court consisting of a judge, mufti (cleric able to give fatwas or religious decisions), head of the court and a clerk (moharir) (see a tweet from the spokesman of the IEA here). He also ratified the draft law that the members of the commission had prepared. The draft law consists of four chapters and 22 articles, in Pashto and Dari languages (see the draft law here and read AAN’s translation of part of it in the Resources section of this website).

When the commission intends to assess any land, according to a journalist who has followed commission proceedings, it first invites community elders to a meeting and speaks to them. It provides them with information about the process and tells them to come along with any kind of ownership documents they have. The commission then sees and assesses the documents. If they are legal, they simply tell the people that the land or property does belong to them and no one else has any business with their land. If someone fails to present legal ownership documents to the commission, it will conclude that the property lacks legal documentation and the person who claims to own it is banned from building on the land or selling it. Anyone breaking this ban is forcefully stopped by the IEA. However, the commission gives people a chance to appeal its decision and submit their case to the special court. The author has seen neither any published number of cases presented to the court nor a breakdown of how many are successfully appealed and how many fail.

According to the Minister of Urban Development and Housing, Hamdullah Nomani, speaking at a gathering on 28 June 2023 to celebrate the achievements of the ministry during the previous year, 80 per cent of land in Afghanistan is owned by people who only have informal documents, which are not acceptable to the courts, based on current rules and regulations. He said eleven kinds of documents were accepted by the IEA and mentioned three – a legal ownership documents issued by the state (sharie qabala), letters of guarantee (de wasiqai khatona) and in some cases, tax receipts (see Pajhwok report here).

As the minister said, ownership of the vast majority of private land is evidenced by a customary document (orfi qabala). This is not an official document, nor is it issued by the state, but by the owner of a plot of land at the time when he or she wants to sell it or transfer its ownership. It is a customary guarantee that the land is theirs. If any third party claims ownership of it through witnesses, documents or other means and goes directly to the buyer to claim ownership and if the land is proven to belong to that third party, the seller of the land would have to give the buyer a refund. Importantly for this report, if a landowner only has an orfi qabala, and the government claims the land, the document is worthless. The commission will insist that the land belongs to the state.

The commission has been working apace. IEA-run newspaper Hewad Daily, quoting Ministry of Justice spokesman Hamid Jahadyar, wrote on 30 May that by that point, the commission “had assessed four million jeribs (800,000 hectares) of land, of which 500,000 jeribs (100,000 hectares) had been identified countrywide and taken and delivered to IEA departments.”

Two months later, on 27 July 2023, the secretary of the commission, Ehsanullah Wasiq, said in the commission’s accountability session (milat ta the zawab wayalo programme) that it had by then evaluated 7,949,721 jeribs (about 1.6 million hectares) of land.[3] Of that, the vast majority – 7,551,343 jeribs (1.5 million hectares) had been identified as state land and 589,499 jeribs (118,000 hectares) had been retaken and registered in the government’s land bank.

These statistics represent the bare bones of the commission’s work so far. To better understand the impact of its judgements, AAN has conducted five provincial case studies.

Houses on the slopes above Kabul built on state land. In old city below, much of which was destroyed in the 1990s civil war, land grabbing and informal development has taken place, largely on private land. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2012
Houses on the slopes above Kabul built on state land. In the Old City below, much of which was destroyed in the 1990s civil war, land grabbing and informal development has taken place, largely on private land. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2012

Provincial Case Studies

Kabul

In terms of cost and quality, Kabul holds the first position in the usurpation of land in Afghanistan. Ten square metres of land in Sherpur, the upmarket neighbourhood in the heart of the capital, is worth more than hundreds of jeribs of land grabbed in Marja or Nad Ali districts of Helmand or any other province.

Land-grabbing began early in the capital. In 2003, armed police, led by Kabul Chief of Police Abdul Bashir Salangi, and acting on the orders of then Minister of Defence, Marshall Muhammad Qasim Fahim, violently and suddenly levelled the homes of people living in Sherpur. The land belonged to the ministry, but as Joanna Nathan, writing for the Middle East Institute (MEI), described, the residents had been there for decades and were given no opportunity to argue their case or indeed pack up their belongings. All of those directly involved in the destruction (ie minister, police chief and most of the police) belonged to the group which had captured Kabul in 2001, the Shura-ye Nizar network within Jamiat-e Islami. The minister then handed out plots of land to commanders, cabinet ministers and other well-connected individuals, most of them Shura-ye Nizar comrades or other powerful figures in the government. Two Shura-ye Nizar commanders received multiple plots, according to MEI. For a list of those receiving plots compiled by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), published by MEI and with added biographical information from AAN, see the end of this report.

There were only three high-profile state officials who publicly criticised the move, then Minister of Finance, Ashraf Ghani, who also refused a plot, head of the AIHRC, Sima Samar, and AIHRC employee Nader Naderi. Beneficiaries defended taking the land. For example, as reported by MEI, Education Minister Yunus Qanuni claimed the land-grabbing was legal because the Ministry of Defence owned the land and could distribute it as it wished. Central Bank governor (later Finance Minister) and head of the Afghan Millat party, Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi told journalists he was entitled to the land and denounced anyone who dared criticise the process as participating in “political terrorism.” Nathan ended her report:

The Sherpur evictions were a seminal event in puncturing the enormous hope that had surrounded the 2001 intervention. The resulting mansions serve as monuments to the powerlessness of ordinary Afghans and a daily reminder to Kabulis of the impunity of the new administration and international inaction.

The table below lists the people who received plots of land in Sherpur, originally published by MEI and sourced to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Details in the status column have been amended by AAN: information from the AIHRC, via MEI, is in plain text; information added by AAN is in italics.

Recipients of Land in Sherpur, 2003

No. Name Status Number of plots
1 Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi Governor of the Afghanistan Bank, Afghan Millat party leader 1
2 Habiba Sarabi Minister of Women’s Affairs 1
3 Khaleq Fazel Chair of Evaluation and Review Commission on State Industries 1
4 Marshal Qasim Fahim Minister of Defence, Shura-ye Nizar 1
5 Muhammad Yunus Qanuni Minister of Education, Shura-ye Nizar 1
6 Kabul Mayor’s Deputies [sic] Khaled, finance office for the late Shura-ye Nizar leader Ahmad Shah Massud during the ‘Resistance’ (Tajik from Mazar-e Sharif) 1
7 Hamid Seddiqi Head of Protocol, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Employee of former King’s Office 1
8 Hedayatullah Dayani Employee of former King’s Office 1
9 Malik Possibly General Malik, who led the rebellion against General Dostum, allowing the Taleban into Mazar-e Sharif in 1997 and subsequently oversaw the murder of thousands of Taleban fighters. 1
10 Haji Muhammad Mohaqeq Minister of Planning, Hezb-e Wahdat 1
11 Baba Jan Commander, former PDPA, then Shura-ye Nizar 1
12 Haji Almas Commander, Hezb-e Islami 1
13 Amanullah Guzar Commander, latterly Shura-ye Nizar 8
14 Abdul Rahim Minister of Justice, Shura-ye Nizar 6
15 Halim Khan 1
16 Shakir Kargar Minister of Water & Power, Jombesh-e Meli 1
17 Baba Jalandar Commander, Shura-ye Nizar 1
18 Gul Haidar Commander, Shura-ye Nizar, head of security southeast zone (Loya Paktia) 1
19 Commander Gada Shura-ye Nizar 1
20 General Momen’s family Jombesh-e Meli, although close to Shura-ye Nizar, died in 1994. 1
21 Gul Agha Sherzai Minister of Urban Development, commander in Kandahar 1
22 Haji Ferozi 055 Corps Commander 1
23 Haji Katib Ministry of Defence Employee 1
24 Muradi Director of Planning, Kabul Municipality 1
25 Bismillah Khan Deputy Defence Minister, Shura-ye Nizar 1
26 General Aziz 1
27 Jegdalik Mayor of Kabul, Shura-ye Nizar 1
28 Haji Qadir’s family Minister of Public Works, Hezb-e Islami Khales, assassinated in July 2002 1
29 Dr Taj Muhammad Minister of the Interior, married to the niece of his predecessor, Yunis Qanuni (from Shura-ye Nizar) 1
Details of the recipients in the status column have been amended by AAN: information from the AIHRC, via MEI, is in plain text; information added by AAN is in italics.

The usurpation of state land in and around Kabul has been a constant of the past two decades, said AAN analyst, Fabrizio Foschini, who has followed the issue closely. He says, however, that its forms changed over time.

From the more brazen grabs of state lands such as in Sherpur in the early years of the Republic, land appropriation schemes evolved, coming to involve ‘land development firms’ usually linked to powerful government officials or the hijacking of government housing projects meant for specific categories (civil servants, returnees, etc).

In other cases, it was the plight of specific dispossessed groups, such as the Kuchi nomads, that provided the excuse for occupying state land: political patrons emerged who helped the landless settlers secure their squats around the capital in exchange for support at elections or in other mobilisations meant to increase their own relevance as powerbrokers, while also extracting economic dividends from the allocation of the plots thus conceded by the government.

Calls for the government to do something about land-grabbing were futile because, most of the time, it was members of the government, senior figures in the armed forces and politicians – or their relatives – who were doing the land-grabbing. Another such example was the brother of the Second Vice President, Abdul Karim Khalili, Haji Nabi. According to a 2013 report from Radio Liberty, he acquired 50 jeribs (10 hectares) of state land belonging to the Ministry of Defence in the north of Kabul and built a township, called Omid-e Sabz on that land. The report also said that he usurped more than one thousand jeribs (200 hectares) on the slopes of Koh-e Korukh, (Korukh Mountain) in the neighbourhood of Omid-e Sabz.

Reclamation of land in Kabul by the IEA began by the municipality soon after the takeover, before the land-grabbing commission was set up. For example, a road in the Spin Kali area of Khushal Khan, located in district five, was taken back by the municipality. The road leads from Khushal Khan towards Dast-e Barchi and joins the ring road in the Dar-ul-Aman area. AAN saw that a 40-metre-wide road was being asphalted and some houses that had been built on the road or on its brink had been completely or partially destroyed by the government. One resident, Sayed Khan, said the road had been built during Daud Khan’s era (1973-78) and, over the years, people had encroached on it with their house-building. He said officials from the Republic had also tried to reclaim the road, but “the people refused to return this part of the road to the government.” He said IEA officials had also come and asked people to present their legal ownership documents. When they could not, he said the officials gave them only a three-day deadline and, on the fourth day, came with different kinds of vehicles and bulldozers and started razing the houses or parts of them, to the ground. Sayed said the government had not reassured the people with promises of alternative places to live.

However, after hearing different accounts of what had happened, it became clear to the author that the situation of landowners varied: some had legal documents and others did not, but all had seen parts of their houses destroyed. Two people living on what had been agricultural land said the officials had promised to compensate them. Another man, who was busy repairing the parts of his home that had been destroyed, said the amount of compensation had yet to be specified by the IEA.

The same road also connects to Chaharahi-ye Qambar and then on to Kotal-eKhair Khana in district 17, where hundreds of houses have been destroyed by Kabul municipality since the IEA takeover to fit in with the government’s master plan for the capital. In the area from Chaharahi-ye Shaheed to Qasaba in district 15, 450 houses were also razed (see YouTube video reports by Afghanistan Map here and Kabul Show here).

On 10 June, Pajhwork reported, quoting the municipality, that 100 jeribs (20 hectares) of land had been retaken from usurpers and that according to the city plan, the land would return to a green area and a road was planned to be constructed through the area as well (see Pajhwok report here).

AAN also visited Tarakhel township, located around 30 kilometres northeast of Kabul, in Bagrami district of Kabul province. According to residents, the township had been built in the era of Hamid Karzai, most probably in 2007, on around 35,800 jeribs (7,160 hectares) of land. They said Karzai had granted this land to Mullah Tarakhel Muhammadi, an MP in the Republic. The land was then divided between Mullah Tarakhel and Haji Monjai, a tribal elder not from Tarakhel’s tribe, but another important political actor and like Mullah Tarakhel with a jihadi background with Hezb-e Islami. These two men then distributed the land to the people of their clans and they, in turn, sold it on to different people from different provinces who built houses there. The township has a large bazaar with many shops and markets. The previous government also built some schools in the township, but not enough to meet the requirements of the residents in terms of basic education.

One of those who bought land and built a house in the township, Nur Khan, who is originally from Sayed Karam district of Paktia province, told AAN that an IEA official from Kabul municipality (whether with the commission, or not, he did not say) had come to the township and spoken to the people and to Mullah Tarakhel himself. He said they surveyed the land and found the plot was not bigger than the limit stated in the document that Karzai had given to Tarakhel.

Nur said the officials then said the width of the streets in the document was 12 metresand there were places specified for parks, schools, mosques and clinics, but none of these appeared on the ground. “The officials then told the people that [from now on] all construction work was banned and no one could buy or sell the land.”

Another resident, who is from the Tarakhel clan, Sharbat Khan, however, said that if a person had the approval of an NGO to carry out construction, the IEA would allow the building to go ahead. He said a Norwegian NGO had given some people around 300-500 USD to make a shelter. Pajhwok news agency reported on 26 October that a ‘credible source’ had revealed to it that Mullah Tarakhel had been summoned by the commission and arrested (see Pajhwok report here).

An IEA official, who wished to remain unnamed, told AAN that Tarakhel had been ordered by the Minister of Justice to vacate his house, but he had not. He said the minister had him arrested and sentenced him to one week of detention. Even though his time was completed, the official said, Tarakhel’s detention was lengthened for 10 more days. Mullah Tarakhel’s brother, Musa Khan, said in a video posted on Facebook on 8 November that he had emptied Mullah Tarakhel’s home, his guest house and madrasa on the order of the Minister of Justice. In the video, he requested the minister to release his brother. The official said that Tarakhel was then released

The process of identifying and reclaiming state land is also underway in the Omid–e Sabz township. According to a report from the Afghan Voice Agency (AVA) from February 2023, the commission, in its initial deliberations, had declared that the township was built on state land. As to the even more valuable Sherpur land, it has not yet been reported whether or not the IEA has begun to look into it. High-profile Taleban are now living in some houses, like those of two former vice presidents, brother of Ahmad Shah Massud, Ahmad Zia Massudand Jombish-e Melli leader, Abdul Rashid Dostum. However, the IEA official told AAN that the commission would discuss Sherpur soon. He said the IEA had established a commission to investigate all the homes of people who had left Afghanistan (evacuated in August 2021), including in Sherpur and asked those who had moved into the houses – mostly Taleban – to leave or pay rent into a special bank account which, if the house is proved to have been legitimately owned, will be transferred into the owner’s personal account.

The official also said they would be discussing other neighbourhoods, “in PD [police district] 17, the townships of Tilayi, Safa, Zakirin, and in Sar-e Kotal-e Khair Khana, where Amanullah Guzar usurped land [and also] Dasht-e Champtala, taken by commanders related to [leader of mujahedin faction, Ettihad-e Islami and later MP, Abdul Rabb Rasul Sayyaf] and to the Hazara ethnic group [sic] and in Mullah Ezat’s township in PD 5, and in Khushal Khan Mena, Kampani, Kart-e Mamurin, Afshar, Mirwais Maid and other [neighbourhoods].”

In the summer, at its accountability session, the commission’s secretary, Ehsanullah Wasiq, said the fate of about 41,972 jeribs (8,394hectares) of usurped land in Kabul had been sent to a special court for its final decision. It has apparently decided in the state’s favour, given the recent announcement of a new law ratified by the supreme leader of the IEA. It said that “41,970 jeribs of land in PDs 8, 16, 17, 20 and 21 of Kabul city have been declared as state land and the Ministries of Agriculture, Hajj and Awqaf, and Information and Culture ordered to rent the land out on lease to their current owners, according to sharia principles.” The new decree says reclaimed state land in Kabul will be leased out to its ‘current owners’, but does not mention what would happen to the land that had changed hands several times.

Informal settlements in Kabul were estimated in 2017 to account for around 70 per cent of the built-up areas in the capital (see p20 of this 2017 study of Kabul), with the assumption that that proportion would have grown since. AAN analyst Fabrizio Foschini writes:

Most of the land on which these houses were built did not feature in the master plan and was originally state land. That includes everything from shantytowns erected by IDPs to well-off residential projects, built by land developers connected to Republic-era political powerbrokers. Nowadays, the total area of Kabul city is estimated at over 1,020 km2 (510,000 jeribs). Taking into consideration only the built-up areas of the city, assessed in 2019 to be around 35 per cent of the total, the amount of grabbed state land in the capital looks bound to exceed by far the 42,000 jeribs (84 km2) that the IEA has so far declared as usurped.[4]

AAN raised the issue of the new law, which turns former owners into tenants, with residents who are living on land declared as state-owned in PD 8 (Kart-e Naw, Rahman Mena, Shah-e Shahid, Qalacha and Beni Hesar), PD16 (Microrayon One, Qala-ye Zaman Khan, Deh Khodaidad, Alukhel, Bagrami, Sharak-e Khorasan and Shahrak-e Cement Khana), PD17 (Bustan-e Kabul, Chamtala, Bagh-e Aref Khan)and PD21(Hudkhel and Deh Khodaidad), and Tarakhel township. It appears that the court’s decision and decree has yet to be shared with the local people. If this became the pattern nationwide, it could represent a new income stream for the government and the effective and ongoing transfer of resources from private households to the state.

Butkhak on the eastern periphery of Kabul has witnessed massive unplanned urban growth since this photo was taken in 2010. The land was partly state, partly privately-owned land, as well as pastureland, rights to which were claimed by local Pashtun tribes. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini.
Butkhak on the eastern periphery of Kabul has witnessed massive unplanned urban growth since this photo was taken in 2010. The land was partly state, partly privately-owned land, as well as pastureland, rights to which were claimed by local Pashtun tribes. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini

Helmand

In Helmand province, land-grabbing took place in the era of Hamid Karzai. Self-appointed police chief of Helmand province in 2001 Abdul Rahman Jan, grabbed a reported 20,000 jeribs (4,000 hectares) of government land in the districts of Nad Ali, Marja and Nawzad in the same year. He then settled members of his clan on this land (see AAN report here). A resident of Marja district told AAN that the Taleban had themselves also distributed non-irrigated land in Marja district well before the takeover. Residents use the term dashti simi (desert areas) for this land, as it was not part of the green, canal-irrigated areas of Nad Ali district, which was distributed to people during Zahir Shah’s reign. The resident believed the people to whom the land had more recently been distributed belonged to the Taleban or were pro-IEA, with each family considered eligible for 15 jeribs because a member had been martyred while fighting in Taleban ranks – they included children of fathers who had been killed – or were Taleban fighters. He said the distribution had taken place by issuing a small piece of paper as an order (amr) but that, after the takeover, no more land had been distributed or given to the people (see also AAN’s report about the sale and distribution of state land by the Taleban during the Republic here). The interviewee said that sometime after the takeover, the IEA had takenback any land whose new owners had failed to fertilise and was still fallow, but had not reclaimed land from those who had improved and were actively using it.

A source in the IEA, who had received a document giving him ownership of 15 jeribs of land in Marja district before the takeover, but had yet to receive the land, told AAN that he and many others he knew had been denied land after the takeover. He said the document he had received had been signed by Mawlawi Yaqub, the current defence minister, who was then a deputy leader. He was not willing to discuss or speculate about the reason behind the refusal, as he saw it, to honour the order. However, another source in Helmand said that some commanders of the IEA had been involved in the distribution and the refusal might be because there had been corruption in the distribution. Another interviewee said that, before the takeover, the Taleban had distributed land in Nad Ali and Nawzad districts as well as Marja.

So far, the IEA has not reclaimed the land distributed by Abdul Rahman Jan in Nad Ali, Marja and Nawzad districts or that distributed by the Taleban in Nad Ali and Nawzad districts. However, the interviewee in Marja said there were rumours that the IEA would seek to reclaim it.

Uruzgan

The pattern of land-grabbing in Uruzgan province is different from other provinces because, interviewees told AAN, in a district like Dehrawud, state land was taken directly by local people, rather than being grabbed by a powerful individual and then sold, leased, or districted by him (or rarely her).

Pajhwok, an Afghan news agency, reported that the commission had taken around one thousand jeribs (200 hectares) of land back from the residents in the Jono area of Dehrawud district. It said that some houses and agricultural fields had been destroyed by the government and the residents forcefully displaced from their houses. The report quoted the spokesman of the security headquarters, Mullah Bashir, saying that the local people had been found to have grabbed state land and following the special court’s decision, the authorities had warned the people to leave the area, but they had not moved (see Pajhwok report here).

A local journalist said that many people had grabbed the land in the Jono area and made gardens and houses on it, under the pretence that because it bordered their land, it was theirs. He said the residents had failed to present ownership documents.

This local journalist also said that after the destruction and taking back state land, the people of that area had come together and protested in reaction to the step taken by the government. The protest ended without a result.

So far, AAN’s interviewee said, 20,000 jeribs (4,000 hectares) of state land had been taken back by the IEA in Dehrawud district.

Kandahar

The most high-profile dispute over land ownership in this province is over the land on which the exclusive Aino Mena township in district 11 of Kandahar city was built. This is some of the most valuable land in Kandahar and the construction of houses, parks and buildings providing services on it, laid out to a regular and well-made plan, has further lent value to the location. However, questions remain as to its legal ownership: Was the state land legally purchased by Mahmud Karzai, brother of then president Hamid Karzai, before construction began in 2003? Did the then governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, sell it, and if so, did he do so legally? Do the people who live there and purchased homes have a right to their property? Both of the Karzai brothers stayed in Afghanistan after the fall of the Republic, meaning the IEA cannot just confiscate the land as they might if the brothers, like other senior politicians, had fled in 2021.

When the township was in its initial phases of construction, the Taleban sought to dissuade individuals interested in buying the land by contacting a local media outlet, but the matter was kept quiet and their warning was not reported back then.[5]

Around ten months ago, Mahmud Karzai was reported to have been banned from travelling outside the country (see Azadi Radio report here). He told the media that the Minister of Justice had asked him to stay in the country because of differences between him, as head of the township, and his deputy, Abul Hamid Helmandi. Mahmud Karzai said the minister had said that his (Mahmud’s) signature might be needed during any division of the property. The two men are also head and deputy head of AFCO, the company responsible for building and other related activities of Aino Mena, which was set up in 2002 (see Tolo News report here).

An engineer from Kandahar city, Khan Muhammad, told AAN that two different issues were at play. First, there were indeed differences between Karzai and his deputy, but these had been resolved. Second, Khan said, Mahmud Karzai had been found to have grabbed 1,300 jeribs of state land neighbouring Aino Mena and the IEA has already taken this back. AAN was unable to find a written report on this. However, a source in the IEA confirmed that this land had been retaken.

On 27 July 2023, the secretary of the Land Grabbing Prevention and Restitution Commission, Ehsanullah Wasiq, spoke about Aino Mena in the government’s accountability programme, although without mentioning Mahmud Karzai by name. He said the land had been sold by then governor Gul Agha Sherzai, to “the ones” who had built a township on the land, adding, “Whether the land was sold in a legal way (sharei tariqa), or not, or the land is considered the property of those who bought it, or not, the issue has been submitted to the special court and the special court will make [a] decision about it in the next days.” So far, however, no reports have been released as any Special Court decision.

In late May 2023, the IEA said it had clarified ownership of 1,500 jeribs of land in Shakur Karez area near the Amir Lalai hotel in Daman district, next to the Kabul-Kandahar highway, as belonging to the state. Theycirculated a video showing their officials razing down the walls of illegal buildings. Dozens of IEA officials are seen in the video destroying the walls, shouting while pushing the walls to collapse (see a video report here).

A source in Kandahar told AAN that the person had bought an amount of land and usurped an equal amount of state land neighbouring his newly acquired land. The source said the government had destroyed a house built on the land and drills (deep wells, locally called, barma). He said that the usurper then reclaimed the land in the court and alleged that his land was forcefully taken from him.

The densely farmed and densely populated province of Nangrahar where state-land promised to returnees from Pakistan and teachers never reached its intended recipients, but was grabbed instead, while leased state land of the Nangrahar Canal was illegally sold on. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2011.
The densely farmed and densely populated province of Nangrahar where state-land promised to returnees from Pakistan and teachers never reached its intended recipients, but was grabbed instead, while leased state land of the Nangrahar Canal was illegally sold on. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2011.

Nangrahar

Nangrahar might be one of the most complicated provinces in terms of land-grabbing, not only because of the variety of ways in which state land was grabbed, but also the sheer amount – 485,000 jeribs (97,000 hectares), according to the Agriculture Department of this province, (as reported by the state-owned Hewad newspaper).

For example, land in two townships, intended for returnees coming back from Pakistan and teachers, was usurped. 3,000 plots out of the 8,000 allocated for returnees in Chamtala township in Surkhrod district were stolen in 2008, as reported by AAN in this 2012 report. As we also reported, in Sheikh Misri township, on the border between Surkhrod and Chaparhar districts, teachers and returnees who had been given ownership documents in 2005 were unable to obtain their plots. The returnees had protested in Jalalabad city, but failed to receive the promised land. Powerbrokers sold the land, and the returnees and teachers never received their land. A local journalist in Nangrahar, who wished to remain unnamed, told AAN that some land was allocated to the teachers in the Kama district and in the Gamberi desert, but the plots were never given because, he said, the area’s residents said they owned the land.

The returnees settled in two camps, Form Ada Camp and Kabul Camp. However, according to the journalist, the commission has warned them to leave the camps because it says they were built on state land and the returnees have usurped it.

There is also land in Nangrahar that was usurped and then sold on. The IEA has asked these new owners to come along with documents to prove the ownership. For example, a tribal elder who, along with other people of his clan, had bought land in the Sayyaf Family township in Surkhrod district was summoned by IEA officials. He told AAN the officials had asked them to present any kind of document they had to prove their ownership. When they presented only the documents of the land which they had bought from the brother of a leading senator (both brothers still live in the country), he said, the officials did not accept them. “We finally told the IEA that we’d bought the land from that mentioned person and that he had taken money from us several times by sending police or his bodyguards when we had built houses there.” The tribal elders said the person told the commission, “I was a paid representative of a well-known jihadi leader and was just obeying his orders.” The tribal elder said, “The IEA then jailed him for a few days.” The elder said it was still unknown to them what the IEA would do with their issue.

Amid the process of retaking state land, a delegation of the commission visited a township in the area near to Sayyaf Family township in Surkhrod district and discovered that the township, which was built on 3,648 jeribs (730 hectares) of state land, had been sold by one tribal elder Haji Gul Meran to another, Sabawoon, without any legal documentation.

The IEA officials warned the residents not to do any kind of construction work in the township and to avoid selling and buying houses and land. The report, published on the Ministry of Justice website, did not provide any other information (see the report on the Ministry of Justice website here).

There were also other kinds of land-grabbing in Nangrahar. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) leased out around 14,000 jeribs (2,800 hectares) of the Nangrahar Canal land to private investors. The leases ran for 90 years. However, the investors then divided the land into residential plots and sold them to people – an illegal act. AAN quoted a provincial council member, in its 2012 report, saying the investors “told the buyers: for 90 years the state cannot say anything to you, and after that, who knows.” However, a new government has demanded answers. The journalist we interviewed told AAN that so far, 2,000 jeribs (400 hectares) of canal land had been repossessed by the IEA and that efforts to recover more were ongoing.

Conclusion

Reactions to the reclaiming of state land, in Kabul at least, seem largely to depend on who is speaking. Generally, it appears to be welcomed. People think the government should take back land from anyone who has usurped it. However, those who bought land, sometimes after it had changed hands several times, argue differently: the IEA should hold the big land-grabbers accountable, but not the poor people who subsequently bought it.

Those who have bought land and possess only orfi qabalas (customary ownership documents) have said they were always ready to pay some amount towards the cost of the land to the government. In this scenario, they would receive legal documents of landownership and the government would get thousands of millions of afghanis. The new law does, in some conditional cases, give the option to take money from the current owners and issue them legal documents. However, so far, those people who bought state land have not been informed whether this will be possible or whether, instead, as the law appears to imply, they will have to pay rent for the homes they thought were their own. Being transformed from homeowner to tenant would be hard.

During the Republic, any decision made by the government against the ‘the people’ could be challenged, especially if a person or group had a connection with high-ranking officials or powerful politicians. However, now, everyone thinks that the IEA has banned protests and who would dare violate the Emirate’s law?

Grabbing of state land under the Republic was rampant and widespread. Most of the major land-grabbers are long gone, but they have left a mess of disputes behind, which the IEA will find difficult to resolve without alienating those who thought they had become landowners and will now be dispossessed. Those now former landowners will also be looking particularly closely at what happens in a neighbourhood like Sherpur, in Kabul, where some high-profile members of the IEA are now living, having taken over villas there. There is one other issue that may prove troublesome. The amir has reserved to himself the right to distribute state land. If redistribution does happen, it would be particularly upsetting to anyone who has lost property in the process of the state reclaiming its land.

Edited by Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 These provinces were chosen for this research for the following reasons: first, they featured many cases of land-grabbing and these, compared to other provinces, had been exposed previously, though none of them thoroughly. Second, AAN knew that in these provinces the activity of the commission was intense. Third, the author had well-informed sources in these provinces to provide him with good and accurate information.
↑2 There are three types of land in Afghanistan – private, public and state. Public land comprises pastures and graveyards. Graveyards cannot be transferred or leased, but ‘common pastureland’ can be transferred or leased out by the government to anyone it chooses. ‘Special pastureland’ (maximum area 2,700m2) cannot be leased or sold by anyone, including by the government, but can use it for social purposes, such as a playground or for grazing cattle or other livestock.
↑3 This is a programme in which government ministries provide detailed reports of their activities during the previous year. It started during the Ghani administration and the IEA has continued it.
↑4 Foschini adds:

Built-up areas, at 35 per cent of the total, are at an all-time high due to in-fill (they were 20 per cent in 2000). As of 2019, the rest consisted of barren land (53%), vegetation (11%) and water bodies (0.1%) according to land use surveys made with GIS/GPS technology.
↑5 When the project of this township was in its initial stage, most probably in 2008, this author was sitting in the office of a local reporter. The local reporter received a call from the Taleban, saying that all people should be aware that the land of the Aino Mena township was a government asset and people should not buy property there. The Taleban warned that when the government of the Islamic Emirate came into power, all the property would be retaken from anyone who had land or built houses in the township.

A few days later, the author, who was a working journalist at the time, asked the reporter what had happened to the issue, as he wanted to write a report about the case. The journalist said when he contacted the authorized body of the township, he was told to be aware that the authority has spent millions of dollars on this township and that the journalist should be careful not to write a report in this regard. He said he then decided not to make a problem for himself and simply forgot about reporting it.

 

Land in Afghanistan: This time, retaking instead of grabbing land?
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A Dreams Deferred (Again): The last remaining Afghan in Guantanamo loses his latest bid for freedom

December 8, 2023

Kate Clark

The last Afghan still held in Guantanamo, Muhammad Rahim from Nangrahar province, has failed in his latest attempt to persuade the United States authorities to release him. The US continues to assert that he was a translator, courier and facilitator for al-Qaeda leaders and even though it is more than two years since US forces left his country, still claims his release would be a threat to its national security. As AAN’s Kate Clark reports, the US has detained Rahim without charge or trial for almost 17 years, never giving him the chance to have its claims against him independently scrutinised.
For all previous AAN reports on the Afghan experience in Guantanamo, see our dossier, published in October 2023. It includes two special reports which give more detail about Rahim.

There had been hopes of a positive decision for Rahim as, for the first time, he had a lawyer representing him at his hearing in front of the Periodic Review Board, the body made up of senior officials from the US military, intelligence and government, which decides the fate of those at Guantanamo – to free them, put them on military trial or keep them locked up. However, it has again determined that his detention “remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States” (the unclassified summary of its decision, dated 21 November and published on 6 December, can be read here and all published documents related to the hearing here).

Rahim is one of only three men, out of the 30 still in Guantanamo, who remain in indefinite detention. 16 others have been cleared for transfer, but remain there, three for more than a decade, while 10 are on trial in what are called ‘military commissions’; one has been convicted. Rahim is also the only Afghan left in Guantanamo out of the 225 men and boys who were rendered to the camp, among them shepherds, taxi drivers, tribal elders, Taleban military and civilian officials, abused boys and old men with dementia.

Rahim was picked up in Pakistan by the ISI in 2007 and handed over to the CIA, which tortured him at a black site in Afghanistan and then rendered him to Guantanamo. The details of the torture were published in the US Senate’s 2014 report on the CIA.[1] Rahim was the last detainee to go through this programme and the last man of any nationality to be rendered to Guantanamo.

What was said at the hearing, what was decided and the ‘peculiar injustices’ of the Periodic Review Board 

Rahim’s counsel, James Connell, described Rahim to the Board as “an anomaly,” a “poor candidate to be one of the last” detainees neither cleared for transfer nor put on trial. He pointed out to the Board that in the four current military commission trials involving Guantanamo detainees, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor has named nearly 100 co-conspirators, but not a single case names Rahim. That, he said, casts “significant doubt on the allegation that Rahim played any significant role in al Qaeda.” He said Rahim was not alleged to have been involved in any attack on the US or its allies, nor to have personally committed any act of violence.

Connell’s arguments were in vain: the Board again asserted, without giving any details, that Rahim had advanced knowledge of many al-Qaeda attacks, including 9/11, and had financed, planned and participated in attacks against US and Coalition targets in Afghanistan.

The Board also cited what it called Rahim’s “consistent and long-standing expressions of support for violence against the United States and Coalition Forces.” It said he showed a “lack of candor when answering questions regarding pre-detention activities and beliefs prevent the Board from assessing whether he has had any change in mindset or his current level of threat.”

One of the peculiar injustices of the Guantanamo system is that detainees have to show remorse for what they are accused of, even if they have actually done nothing wrong. Indeed, after enduring what the former Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, called “the horrors and harms” of Guantanamo, men like Rahim, who have been tortured and detained without trial for decades, much of it in solitary confinement, have to say that they really like America in order to try to persuade the Board that they are no longer a threat to US national security.[2]

In his statement to the Board, Rahim clearly tried to do just that while still being true to what he has suffered. He spoke of the “lessons I learned at Guantanamo.” The “violations I experienced” had taught him, he said, the importance of respecting the human rights of every man, woman, boy and girl. From his long imprisonment, he said he had learned the virtue of patience and the pointlessness of violence. He admitted that he had struggled with remaining patient during his imprisonment and had “sometimes let my frustration get the better of me.” Connell also pointed out that Rahim had had no serious disciplinary issues for well over five years, despite living with high heat and humidity, in decrepit buildings with problems including sewage block-ups in the cells, conditions that were especially difficult for an “aging detainee” like Rahim (he is now 57) to bear, given he has mounting health problems and suffers from insomnia.

Rahim told the Board that he was not an enemy of the US. In the 1980s, he said, America had helped him and other mujahedin in their fight against the Soviet invasion and in the 1990s, he had worked alongside the US Drug Enforcement Agency, including assisting a US ambassador’s visit to Jalalabad. He condemned the 9/11 attacks, ascribing them to al-Qaeda and saying Afghans “did not and would never agree to attacks on civilians.” He also said he had learned that the “positive view of America I had as a young person was mostly justified… During the darkest days of my captivity, the biggest shock was that Americans could do these things to me.” It was not only American attorneys that had been kind to him, he said, but also medical staff, guards and officers.

It was all to no avail. The only hopeful part of the Board’s short statement was that it said it was “encouraged by the detainee’s participation and discussion of his future plans and hopes for further candor when discussing his pre-detention activities and beliefs so that any change in mindset can be evaluated.” This is a step forward from previous determinations which had turned down his transfer point-blank.

The claims against Rahim

As to Rahim’s “pre-detention activities and beliefs,” in statements supporting his habeas corpus petition,[3] Rahim admitted to working with Arab fighters before and just after 2001. This was not in itself unusual and did not necessarily point to any shared ideological stance; being in paid employment was much sought after in what was then a very poor country (even more so than now). The US military had previously claimed the job of another Afghan detainee, Abdul Zahir, for example, who had worked as a chokidar (doorman) and occasional translator for an Arab commander, was sufficient to detain him from 2002 to 2015, a position later overruled by a Periodic Review Board. When it finally decided to release him, it said he “was probably misidentified as the individual who had ties to al-Qaeda weapons facilitation.” (For details on Zahir’s case, see pages 30-33 of the author’s 2016 special report, Kafka in Cuba: The Afghan Experience in Guantanamo.)

What Rahim has denied is the US claim that he also cooperated with al-Qaeda beyond the immediate post-2001 era. He said that when he was detained he was living in Lahore making a living selling honey, something his family also said in recent interviews (more on this below). CIA statements to the media when it announced his detention that he was one of Osama bin Laden’s “most trusted facilitators,” “a tough, seasoned jihadist” who was “best known in counter-terror circles as a personal facilitator and translator” for bin Laden were undermined by the US Senate’s 2014 report on the CIA’s use of torture. It revealed that the agency’s interrogation of Rahim had “resulted in no disseminated intelligence report.” It suggested that the only information it had about him were the ISI’s allegations and that nothing useful had been ascertained from questioning him. Documents released in Rahim’s habeas petition also point to the basis of US accusations being hearsay, including ‘double hearsay’, ie what someone claimed someone else had said about Rahim, testimony from other detainees obtained under torture or duress and unverified and unprocessed intelligence reports.

However, whether or not Rahim was a seasoned al-Qaeda facilitator almost two decades ago, it is hard to fathom why the US would still consider him a risk to its national security now, especially given it no longer has forces in Afghanistan and there are plenty of men now in power in Kabul/Kandahar who have had working relationships with al-Qaeda over the years. Moreover, the US chose to withdraw its forces despite members of al-Qaeda and other similar groups being based in Afghanistan.[4] Any risk a freed Rahim could conceivably pose would be marginal compared to existing threats. He, himself, was unconvinced that this was the real reason for his continued incarceration, telling the Board:

As a 57-year old man in poor health, I am confident that the United States does not fear that I would return to a battlefield that no longer exists. But I can understand that you might fear what I would say if released, so I will tell you the lessons I learned in Guantanamo. 

Rahim has previously said explicitly that he believes it is the torture he endured that is behind his continuing detention: he is kept locked up not for anything he did, but because of what was done to him and the US authorities’ reluctance to free a man who could speak about CIA practice.[5] Connell also told the Board that he believed Rahim had probably not been cleared for transfer before “as a result of the circumstances which brought him” to Guantanamo (see Connell’s statement here), again, an allusion to his being a victim of torture.

The author is not convinced that this is the only reason, however, because of the peculiar way the US authorities understand risk when it applies to those incarcerated at Guantanamo. The casting of anyone who arrived at Guantanamo as, in the words of US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld in early 2002, the ‘worst of the worst’ created monsters in the public imagination. In the absence of any proper scrutiny of allegations and evidence, there has been nothing to reduce these imagined monsters down to size or create a space to deal with them rationally. Nothing in US files on the last eight Afghans held at Guantanamo (many classified but published by Wikileaks) scrutinised by the author suggested the eight were especially dangerous individuals. Most of the claims failed to stack up at all. Yet the inertia fundamental to the Guantanamo system means that assertions made against detainees can stand in the eye of the US authorities for years, even, as was the case with some of the Afghans, that they were ludicrous.[6]

Exacerbating this is the way that, after Barack Obama took office in 2008, Republican members of Congress who had been unconcerned about transfers suddenly strived to block them, complicating all subsequent transfers or attempts to close the camp. Moreover, at the end of the day, both detention and any release are arbitrary, given that the US authorities exercise unrestrained power over the individuals in Guantanamo.

Unfulfilled dreams 

At his hearing, Rahim and his counsel tried to paint a future for Rahim that was less frightening for the Board. If released, Rahim said he would like to cook and open a restaurant or a mobile ‘food truck’. His counsel described him as the best in “a field of good cooks” among Guantanamo detainees and said that he, himself, would be first in line to eat at any outlet Rahim established. His spinach curry was the best Connell had ever eaten. For now, however, a future outside Guantanamo remains a dream. Rahim is still incarcerated and about to enter (in February) his seventeenth year away from his family.

Meanwhile, in Kabul, where Rahim’s family now lives, members have been speaking to the media about their son/father’s long detention and absence.[7] In a video published by BBC Pashto (see clips on X, formerly Twitter) on 29 November 2023, which was actually eight days after the Periodic Review Board had decided to keep him incarcerated, but had yet to publish their determination, one of Rahim’s four sons, Ismael, said they needed their father home; they missed him so much. He described his father’s arrest in Lahore in 2007:

We were very small when our father was arrested together with us. My little brother, Daud, was two years old and was sitting in my mother’s lap when my father was arrested.… We don’t remember our father sitting with us at all. 

Ismael is now, of course, a grown man. Alongside him, Rahim’s mother, Safora Bibi (see also ToloNews), old and crying, said that after he was dragged forcibly from his car and taken away, they heard nothing about him for four years. Then came a message from the International Committee of the Red Cross that he was alive and in Guantanamo. “Everyone has now been released,” she said, “but not my son.”

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

References

References
↑1 See pages 163-169 of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ‘Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program’, 9 December 2014.
↑2 The report by Ní Aoláin, Technical Visit to the United States and Guantánamo Detention Facility by the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, was published on 14 June 2023. She was the first independent UN investigator to visit Guantanamo. The report is replete with details of the “profound human rights abuses” perpetrated against the hundreds of Muslim men and boys who were rendered to Guantanamo in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the US, and has implications for both Rahim and the other Afghans taken there.
↑3 Such petitions ask a court to rule whether a government is lawfully detaining an individual. Special Rapporteur, Ní Aoláin described how they work for Guantanamo detainees in her June 2023 report:

Regarding habeas remedies she finds it has been overwhelmingly ineffective both in efficiency of process and delivery of the remedy of actual release for detainees. Detainees have had access to habeas corpus since 2004, but most proceedings have languished in judicial pipelines undermining the requisite regularity of independent, impartial, review, and calling into question their effectiveness as a matter of international human rights law.
↑4 In talks with the Taleban before their takeover of Kabul, both the Trump and Biden administrations dealt with men who had long and enduring relationships with al-Qaeda – more than a dozen of the movement’s senior officials and commanders, now government ministers, were under United Nations sanctions because of their alleged links to terrorist groups. They include acting minister of interior Sirajuddin Haqqani, who also has a ten million dollar FBI reward on his head which says he “maintains close ties to the Taliban [sic] and al Qaeda … and is a specially designated global terrorist.”
↑5 “How come they make me admit to things in order to get out?” Rahim wrote to his habeas lawyer on 27 April 2016. “I am an innocent man. Parole comes after a trial, not before. They are holding me because I was tortured. Please give me a fair hearing, with my lawyer.” See the author’s 2021 report, ‘Kafka in Cuba, a Follow-Up Report: Afghans Still in Detention Limbo as Biden Decides What to do with Guantanamo’, p51.
↑6  The author meticulously unpicked many of the claims against the last eight Afghans to be detained, concluding that in trying to understand why they were detained, it usually made more sense to look at who had informed the Americans about them or handed them over; incentives for this could be a bounty or settling a score in a factional or personal dispute. For more on this and on US government politics ensuring the survival of Gauntanamo, see two special reports by the author, Kafka in Cuba: The Afghan Experience in Guantanamo (2016) and Kafka in Cuba, a Follow-Up Report: Afghans Still in Detention Limbo as Biden Decides What to do with Guantanamo (2021).
↑7 The family members called on the US to release Rahim, as have IEA officials. For example, IEA spokesman Zabehullah Mujahed told ToloNews:

We have discussed the Guantanamo prison with the Americans several times. There is an Afghan prisoner who has to be released. He was arrested without any crime and the other thing is that he has been there for a long time and has suffered cruelty. He should be released as soon as possible. Now, once again, we ask the Americans to release him as soon as possible. The Islamic Emirate will also try in this regard through legal means.

 

A Dreams Deferred (Again): The last remaining Afghan in Guantanamo loses his latest bid for freedom
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How the Taliban Enables Violence Against Women

December 8, 2023

Belquis Ahmadi

United States Institute of Peace

Thursday, December 7, 2023

As the world commemorates 16 Days of Activism to end gender-based violence, Afghans discuss their experiences under the Taliban.

Right now, women and feminist organizations around the world are commemorating the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women with the 16 Days of Activism campaign. Starting on November 25 and running through December 10, this year’s campaign calls on governments worldwide to share how they are investing in the prevention of gender-based violence.
While the campaign itself is worldwide, 16 Days of Activism should pay special heed to Afghanistan. In just 28 months, the Taliban have dismantled Afghan women’s and girls’ rights — imposing draconian restrictions regarding their education, employment and freedom of movement. Any perceived violation of these oppressive policies is often met with harassment, intimidation, and verbal and physical abuse orchestrated by the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue. And when women are detained by authorities, they have been subjected to cruel treatment, including torture.
The Taliban’s anti-women policies, combined with an emboldened patriarchal system, have made Afghanistan the lowest-ranked country in the 2023 Women, Peace and Security Index. With humanitarian aid to Afghanistan drying up, the 16 Days of Activism offers a chance to renew international attention so that Afghan women and girls are not left behind.

To ensure that Afghan voices are included in this year’s conversations, USIP launched an online survey asking Afghans both inside and outside the country about their personal experiences and views about the impact of the Taliban’s policies toward women to better understand where their needs lie.

Taliban’s Policies Have Rolled Back Two Decades Worth of Gains

Almost immediately after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban began rolling back the over two decades of gains women had achieved in politics, governance, education, health and the private sector.

Within months, the Taliban suspended the Afghan Constitution, which had obligated the government to protect and promote human rights; replaced the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice; ordered professional and working women to stay home until further notice; prevented women from travelling on long-distance (72 km/45 miles) road trips without a mahram; and imposed a strict dress code on women.

Those we interviewed, both men and women, underscored the immense impact that stringent measures on women and girls have had on Afghan society. Particularly, they pointed to the prohibitions on employment and education, the mandated dress code, and the requirement for a mahram as encroachments on fundamental women’s rights.

Additionally, a number of respondents highlighted instances of public humiliation — where the Taliban’s religious police employed loudspeakers from moving vehicles or within crowds to critique women and their mahram, focusing on elements such as clothing choices, hijab styles and shoe colors.

One woman from Kabul said, “The Taliban view us as criminals. As soon as we step outside our homes, the religious police run to us to intimidate us, to scare us and to remind us that we belong at home.”

These restrictions only intensified when women interacted with government agencies, where they were subjected to degrading behaviors, harassment and insults.

In this context, women are treated as second class citizens, with no agency over decisions about their own body and life. The mental toll has been enormous — women we talked to expressed feeling suffocated, depressed, isolated and worthless. Consequently, there has been a surge in suicide attempts among Afghan women and girls, and they now account for three out of every four suicides and suicide attempts in the country.

“The Taliban have robbed us of our identity and are taking our agency away,” said a woman from Paktia. “They want us to hide behind the walls of our homes. They don’t see us as human beings.”

They want us to hide behind the walls of our homes. They don’t see us as human beings.

In the numerous responses, the Taliban were not the only underlying cause of violence against women. The widespread lack of awareness regarding women’s rights among members of the Taliban has also allowed deeply ingrained and traditional perceptions regarding gender roles to resurface in Afghan society — with the Taliban sparking a resurgence in other forms of gender-based violence.As a woman from Nangarhar noted, “The Taliban’s policies have unfortunately normalized various forms of abuse, including physical, mental and financial abuse of women.” Meanwhile, a teacher from Jawzjan expressed a sense of loss under Taliban rule: “Over the past two years, our society has regrettably regressed by several decades.”

Forced Marriages and Domestic Violence

Financial hardship further compounds the challenges faced by women, with the prevalence of underage and forced marriages on a significant uptick. The dismal state of the Afghan economy, along with the lack of education for girls, has compelled families to wed their daughters out of perceived economic necessity. Furthermore, there is a disturbing trend of marrying young girls to much older men.

The abrupt decline in women’s employment and economic standing — many women were employed teaching in girls’ schools that are now closed, or in beauty parlors that are banned — coupled with restrictions on education and freedom of movement, has taken a toll on their mental well-being. Meanwhile, soaring unemployment and poverty in Afghanistan mean families are spending more and more time within the confines of their home, fostering an environment that is often rife with distress, tension and domestic violence.

Beyond acts of physical abuse, domestic violence can also take the form of isolating women from social engagements, publicly or privately disrespecting women, ignoring their opinions, taking control of their financial affairs, and restricting financial independence.
Tragically, honor killings further compound the issue of domestic violence, and husbands who display negative behavior toward wives who give birth to girls represents another distressing manifestation of gender-based violence within familial settings.

A Justice System Steeped in Anti-Women Sentiments

For victims of domestic abuse, the Taliban’s justice system is a nightmarish ordeal. Perpetrators routinely go unprosecuted in Taliban courts (with cases involving murder an exception), allowing abusive Afghan men to no longer fear repercussions for the harm they cause women and girls.

As one woman from Jawzjan told USIP: “In the republic era, individuals facing charges related to violence against women and those avoiding legal consequences sought shelter in regions controlled by the Taliban, deeming them safe havens. Currently, the entire country has transformed into a sanctuary.”

Women who attempt to leave their marriages encounter further obstacles in exercising their legal rights. In March 2023, the Taliban invalidated numerous cases of divorce that were settled under the previous government. These women, who had once managed to secure independence, now find themselves coerced to reunite with their ex-husbands. Even those who manage to maintain their divorce face issues over child custody and the collection of alimony.

Meanwhile, the Taliban Supreme Court’s recent disclosures do not include any initiatives to reel in child and forced marriage, or the practice of Taliban officials taking multiple wives. Despite their previous claims to the contrary, it’s clear where the Taliban’s legal priorities lie regarding violence against women and girls.

The cumulative effect of these impositions is a stifling environment where women’s voices are devalued, their rights are curtailed, and their overall wellbeing is compromised. In assessing life under Taliban rule, it is crucial to address not just the external threats posed by Taliban decrees, but also how those restrictions perpetuate and worsen harmful behaviors in a domestic setting.

The Taliban have only emboldened already-existing patriarchal norms in Afghanistan. Any attempts to foster a more equitable and just society must also address these root causes so that every individual, regardless of gender, is treated with dignity and respect.

Protecting Afghan Women and Girls

Comprehensive and immediate measures to address the challenges faced by Afghan women and safeguard their rights and well-being is urgently needed.

During this year’s 16 Days of Activism, Afghan women are calling on the international community, particularly the United States and Europe, to utilize the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and the global human rights sanctions regime adopted by the European Council in 2020 “to target individuals, entities and bodies – including state and non-state actors – responsible for, involved in or associated with serious human rights violations and abuses worldwide, no matter where they occurred.” The Magnitsky sanctions could send a message that Taliban rule cannot be normalized without addressing fundamental violations of women’s rights.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council bears the responsibility of preserving international peace and security. In Afghanistan, over 50 percent of the population faces severe marginalization by the Taliban —treated as criminals for exercising what should be protected freedoms and systematically excluded from all facets of society. A commissioned report from the U.N. Security Council’s special coordinator for Afghanistan, Feridun Sinirlioglu, calls for a new U.N. envoy to lead efforts to normalize the international community’s relationship with the Taliban if the Taliban observe international rights and security norms. The U.N. Security Council should not do this, however, without clear conditions on women’s rights and women’s security that must be met for the Taliban to increase their international standing.

In the meantime, it is essential to provide robust support and resources to U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan Richard Bennett. He has a mandate to document and report on human rights violations, with a particular focus on the rights of women and girls. It is crucial that he is able to provide comprehensive oversight on the Taliban’s discriminatory practices to provide authoritative benchmarks for rights-based conditionality.

Outside the U.N., the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) can take more concrete steps to address human rights violations against Afghan women and girls as a way to uphold Islamic values. The Taliban’s national restrictions on education, movement and employment are unprecedented among OIC states and inconsistent with classical interpretations of Sharia. The OIC can deliver this message most forcefully in support of women’s rights.

Inside Afghanistan, religious scholars and the media have a vital role in raising awareness and educating male family members about the significance of respecting the rights of women and girls, both within households and in the broader societal context. Promoting an understanding of Islamic rights through diverse channels, including social media, conferences and community initiatives, is essential in fostering positive change. Together, these measures can contribute to creating a more equitable and supportive environment for Afghan women.

How the Taliban Enables Violence Against Women
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Whose Seat Is It Anyway: The UN’s (non)decision on who represents Afghanistan 

December 7, 2023

Thomas Ruttig

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While the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) maintains that it deserves full-scale recognition, it has not been given the country’s seat at the United Nations. In early December 2023, the UN General Assembly will again consider whether or not to allow the Islamic Emirate to take Afghanistan’s seat at the world body. The argument plays out in the context of a worldwide discussion about whether and how governments should deal with a regime that critics say denies women and girls almost every individual right, has a dire general human rights record and is narrowly based. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig has been analysing the impasse, noting the intra-Republic rivalry to also represent Afghanistan at the UN, and scrutinising UN procedures and considerations to try to make sense of it all.

A view of delegates inside the General Assembly Hall during the first day of the 78th session of the General Assembly held on 19 September 2023. Photo by UN Photo/Paulo FilgueirasThe Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s quest for diplomatic recognition 

Since the Taleban returned to power in August 2021, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has rebuffed the IEA’s attempts to take the country’s seat. However, diplomatic recognition, including by the UN, is perhaps the IEA’s foremost foreign policy goal. It figures prominently in many speeches and statements of its leaders. Most recently, the IEA’s designated UN representative, Muhammad Suhail Shaheen, accused the world organisation of acting “without neutrality in determining the seat of Afghanistan” and using the matter to put “pressure” on the Emirate (see ToloNews here). The IEA argues that it is the legitimate government of Afghanistan based on the claim that it has full territorial control, has ended the war and brought security to all Afghans.

Yet, so far, only China appears to have come closest to recognising the Emirate, if recognition is measured by an acceptance of the other’s ambassadors. [1] This is in contrast to the Taleban’s first time in power, from 1996 to 2001. Back then, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates maintained diplomatic relations at the ambassador level until they eventually severed ties under US pressure after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks.

The IEA seems more fully isolated diplomatically this time. A closer look, however, shows a more ambiguous picture. An overview of the IEA’s current diplomatic relations and interactions compiled by Aaron Y Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in August 2022, concluded that it is actually “far less isolated today” than during the 1996-2001 period (see here).

When his piece was published, Zelin counted eight countries where Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions were under IEA control. By November 2023, IEA deputy foreign minister Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai said this number had risen to “up to 20” (ToloNews here), including the Afghan embassy in Tehran (see ToloNews here) and the strategically important consulate-general in Istanbul (Pajhwok here).[2] Turkey reportedly also accepted a new IEA-appointed diplomat in October 2023 at the Afghan embassy in Ankara (see Iran International here).

Zelin found 378 publicly announced meetings between representatives of the Taleban and diplomats from 35 other countries, mostly Middle Eastern states (35 per cent), but with China engaging “more often than any other [individual] country.”[3] (See this AAN report by the author on China-Taleban relations.) The volley of diplomatic interactions has continued since Zelin’s August report, without interruption.

Even more importantly, a number of countries still have ambassadors officially posted to Afghanistan. They include China and other neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Iran and most of the Central Asian republics, along with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Japan. Indonesia, which was involved in mediation between the former government and the Taleban before 2021, reopened its embassy in Kabul in February 2022 and although its diplomats continue to work from Islamabad, it does have a charge d’affaires in Kabul (see Indonesia’s The National Kompas here). In July 2023, a Taleban delegation paid an “unofficial visit” to Jakarta (see VoA here). While some ambassadors seem to be based more or less permanently in Kabul, such as those of China, Iran and Russia,[4] most others appear to be coming and going.[5]

Western countries have not officially closed their embassies in Kabul nor have they officially broken off diplomatic relations. [6] Rather, they do not maintain diplomatic personnel in the country, as was the case for many countries during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989) when they either withdrew their staff from the country or downgraded relations to the chargé d’affaires level.[7] Some countries still have non-Kabul-based acting ambassadors or more junior diplomats and there is also a (shrinking) number of special representatives for Afghanistan (ranked as ambassadors). Most Western engagement with IEA officials takes place in Qatar’s capital Doha with diplomats below ambassador level representing their countries in meetings. [8]

The United Nations’ political mission (the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA) has been operating in Afghanistan without interruption since March 2002 (mandated by UNSC resolution 1401). [9] Most recently, the UN Security Council (UNSC) has started deliberating the findings and recommendations of a recently completed independent assessment on Afghanistan carried out by senior Turkish diplomat Feridun Sinirlioğlu. His mandate from resolution 2679was to “provide forward-looking recommendations for an integrated and coherent approach among relevant political, humanitarian, and development actors.” The assessment, delivered on 28 November, proposed among other things, a conditions-based “roadmap” with the “end state” of “the reintegration of the State of Afghanistan into the international system.” (In April 2023, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed senior Turkish diplomat, Feridun Sinirlioğlu, to conduct an independent assessment to “provide 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,” as mandated by UNSC resolution 2679 (see Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News here).[10] Many are reading this goal to mean diplomatic recognition.

While all this activity is of a distinctively higher level than it was during the first emirate, at the UN itself, the firewall that has so far prevented the Emirate from taking Afghanistan’s UN seat is holding. The IEA believes the decision to deny it the seat – or more accurately, the lack of a decision to change the status quo – is keeping it from achieving international recognition, more generally, and is denying it access to, among other things, more extensive development aid and sanctions relief.

This report analyses the UN rules and procedures and aspects of international law that come to bear in the debate about Afghanistan’s UN seat. In this area, UN rules often seem arcane and opaque, so are worth unpicking. They allow ‘non-decisions’ and the absence of debate on the matter of the IEA’s claim to the seat, useful for maintaining the status quo without really having to talk about it publicly. The report will also show that the competition to occupy the seat is not only a two-horse race between the Taleban and the former government, but also a power struggle between the current acting representative, who inherited the seat after the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan-appointed envoy resigned, and other former officials of Republic, now in exile.

Rules and procedures at the UN

For the second time since the establishment of the IEA, on 16 December 2022 in the 55th plenary meeting of its 77thsession, the United Nations General Assembly deferred a decision on granting Afghanistan’s new rulers the country’s seat at the UN (see the Credentials Committee’s 12 December report A/77/600), UNGA resolution A/RES/77/239 and the transcript of the 16 December 2022 55th plenary meeting A/77/PV.55). [11]

#UNGA banner. Source: 78th General Assembly Live Blog, United Nations website, September 2023.

Importantly, while the UNGA deferred the decision on the Emirate’s request to take over Afghanistan’s seat, it also did not explicitly reject the request (more on the committee’s reasons for this deferral below). At the same time, as well, it did not explicitly stipulate that the previously-credentialled representative should remain in place. However, as Rebecca Barber wrote, in a paper published in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, “based on the Assembly’s practice and procedural rules there was little doubt that this was to be the case.” [12] This standstill over who should rightfully represent the country has resulted in the continuation of the status quo, leaving a relatively junior diplomat, who has not been formally appointed by any government, occupying the country’s seat.

If earlier decisions are an indication, UNGA should consider the matter for a third time in early December 2023 and take a decision by adopting a resolution (see last year’s here) proposed in the UN Credentials Committee report. [13] Every year, this body of nine annually changing members checks the credentials of member-states’ representatives and, based on the documents it has received, takes note of who has been put forward to be credentialled for that year’s upcoming UN General Assembly. [14]

The credentials are usually straightforward procedural matters, except in unusual cases such as Afghanistan under the IEA. [15] (Other current controversial cases are Myanmar, Libya and, somewhat differently, Venezuela.) [16] Whether the Committee does anything more than just pass on information to the UNGA is debated. Barber argues that: “This delineation of the credentials process as being only about the procedural requirements of representation at the UN, and not about the recognition of the status of governments more broadly, was articulated in a 1970 memorandum by the UN Legal Counsel. That memorandum described the examination of credentials as a ‘procedural matter’, limited to assessing compliance with the Assembly’s procedural rules, and not involving questions of ‘recognition’ or ‘substantive issues concerning the status of governments’.”

However, in 1996, the Committee’s report, which includes the Legal Counsel’s opinion on Afghanistan, provides a fuller record of proceedings and shows just how active the ‘non-decision’ on Afghan representation at that time was: it followed a debate about what to do between the Committee members. Moreover, judging by its membership, this committee is powerful – in a committee where the General Assembly appoints the members yearly, China, Russia and the United States have been members every year since 1947. [17] That fact and the opacity with which it works do not give the appearance of a mere rubber-stamping body (see also Euronews reporting here).

Neither the committee nor the UNGA have a debate or hold a formal vote on credentials, even for controversial cases. The General Assembly always adopts, by acclamation, the Credential Committee’s report with a short resolution. The decision is valid for one annual session of the UNGA (September to September). What can be said is that the procedures allow for controversial questions of recognition to be deferred without public discussion or even a decision to do something having to be made.

Interestingly, another important multilateral institution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, sought clarification from the UN about who represented Afghanistan in the context of its Afghanistan investigation. In October 2021, it sent letters to the UN Secretary-General and the ICC Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ie, the ICC member-states) for “information on the identification of the authorities currently representing the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan by Monday 8 November 2021” (author’s emphasis). The letter showed that, as Ehsan Qaane wrote in a 2021 report for AAN Delaying Justice? The ICC’s war crimes investigation in limbo over who represents Afghanistan, the ICC judges “are not convinced that the diplomats appointed by the former regime can truly represent Afghanistan before the court. However, they themselves cannot contact the Taleban authorities directly, as that would imply recognition.” In this letter, the judges reasoned that “they believe the decision of who represents a state is of a “political nature” and a matter of “constitutional and international law,” beyond their mandate. The responses to the ICC’s query, wrote Qaane, offered no further clarification on the issue:

The two institutions did respond, but were of little help. The Bureau of the ICC Assembly of States Parties said, on 26 October 2021, that “due to its nature and functions, it [the Bureau] does not hold the type of information that is requested.” The UN Secretary General, meanwhile, told the judges on 18 October 2021, that the decision of government recognition was not his to make, but was “a matter for individual Member States.”

How was the last decision on Afghanistan’s UN seat taken?

The committee’s relative obscurity allows it to be opaque. Indeed, International Crisis Group’s UN Director Richard Gowan described it to the Associated Press as one of the “least transparent U.N. bodies” (see here), adding that “the fact that it isn’t transparent allows it to fudge certain decisions and kick hard decisions down the road.”

Its most recent recommendation on Afghanistan, which was adopted by the UNGA on 16 December 2022 and was valid for UNGA’s 77th session from 13 September 2022 to 5 September 2023, reads:

The Chair proposed that the Committee postpone its consideration of the credentials pertaining to … the representatives of Afghanistan … to the seventy-seventh session of the General Assembly, and to revert to consideration of these credentials at a future time in the seventy-seventh session. The proposal was adopted without a vote. [18] 

Given that the Credentials Committee usually meets three times a year, in March, June and September, its recommendation on Afghanistan’s seat for the current 78th UNGA should have already been taken, but will not be made public before the UNGA makes it official by adopting the Credentials Committee report.

The case of Afghanistan: competing requests

According to the UN’s rules of procedure for credentials, a head of state or foreign minister must submit credentials for their representatives at least one week before the opening of the UN General Assembly. [19] In Afghanistan’s case, the Credentials Committee has a problem, as it received in both 2021 and 2022 (the committee’s 2023 recommendation is not yet publicly available) what it described in similar wording in both its reports as “two communications concerning the representation of Afghanistan … indicating different individuals as representatives.”

In 2021, it had one letter dated 14 September 2021 from the Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations in New York and “another dated 20 September 2021 from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs” (see here). In 2022, the first letter, dated 6 September 2022, came from Afghanistan’s Chargé d’affaires ad interim to the United Nations in New York, followed by a second one, on 17 September 2022 from “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan” (see here).

At first glance, the Credentials Committee left the matter of who exactly sent both communications unclear (see here). In both years, the first letter obviously came – as is usual – through Afghanistan’s permanent mission in New York and should represent the credentials submitted by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRoA) continues to be registered on the UN’s list of “Official Names of the United Nations Membership” (here) and its protocol list (here). The country is simply recorded as Afghanistan on the list of member states, but with the pre-1978 and Republic-era green, black and red flag still shown (here).

Although not spelled out, it seems the second communications were from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s foreign ministry. [20] Indeed, IEA foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi did send a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in September 2021, nominating the Emirate’s Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as their permanent representative and asking for credentials for him. A UN spokesman confirmed that Muttaqi’s letter was received and forwarded to the Credentials Committee (see Reuters here). [21] The Credential Committee references the letter in its 1 December 2021 report (see here):

The Committee had before it two communications concerning the representation of Afghanistan at the seventy-sixth session of the General Assembly, indicating different individuals as representatives to the seventy-sixth session of the Assembly. The first was dated 14 September 2021 from the Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations in New York. The second communication was dated 20 September 2021 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan.

The Chair proposed that the Committee defer its decision on the credentials pertaining to … the representatives of Afghanistan to the seventy-sixth session of the General Assembly. The proposal was adopted without a vote.

The result is a diplomatic oddity, a junior diplomat appointed by a government that no longer exists currently occupying Afghanistan’s seat at the UN. Naseer Ahmad Faiq has declared that he no longer represents the old government, which has never officially abdicated, and that he does not represent the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan either, but only the “oppressed groups in Afghanistan” (comment made to media – full quote below). [22]

Afghanistan’s Chargé d’affaires ad interim to the United Nations, Naseer Ahmad Faiq, speaking at the UN Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan. Source: UN Web TV, 20 December 2022.

Faiq assumed the helm at Afghanistan’s Permanent Mission in New York after the country’s permanent representative, veteran diplomat Ghulam Mohammad Isaczai (also spelled Ishaqzai) resigned in December 2021. [23] Faiq’s new role was made public “in an official tweet” by Afghanistan’s Permanent Mission to the UN on 16 December 2021, without mentioning who had appointed him (see Ariana news here). The letter to the UN – if there was indeed a letter – naming him heading Afghanistan’s mission to the UN has not been publicly released. [24]

Isaczai had notified the UN of his resignation on 16 December 2021, according to a UN spokesman (see AP report here). He had been scheduled to address the final day of the UNGA high-level meeting on 27 September 2021 (six weeks after the fall of the Islamic Republic), but he later withdrew the request to speak (see the German news website RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) here). [25]

There was speculation in the media about the reason behind the resignation. The Associated Press said he had resigned “after the country’s current Taliban rulers sought to replace him with their own envoy” (see here). Foreign Policy quoted one Afghan diplomat saying he had resigned because he thought there was no government in Afghanistan for him to represent at the UN and two other diplomats saying he expected to be appointed to a senior UN post in Ethiopia.[26]

After the credentials committee’s decision to defer any action in 2021, the chair, Sweden’s UN Ambassador Anna Karin Enestrom, declined to respond to questions from journalists about whether the current ambassador for Afghanistan still represented his country (see Reuters here).

Intra-Republic conflict

Further controversy about the country’s permanent representation in New York played out in early 2022, before the UN credentials committee’s most recent (non-)decision. On 9 February, reports emerged in the Afghan media that the mission had announced the appointment of Muhammad Wali Naeemi as Afghanistan’s Permanent Representative and Chargé d’affaires to the UN, replacing Faiq (ToloNews here and Khaama Press here).

The statement said that Naeemi, who had been deputy permanent representative under Isaczai, had not been able to assume his post earlier for health reasons, but “considering that Naeemi as the deputy representative has recovered, and based on the UN’s standards that after the ambassador and the permanent representative his deputy will take over responsibilities, Naeemi has taken the responsibilities as Chargé d’affaires from 4th February 2022” (quotes from the ToloNews report).

The last of the Republic’s foreign ministers – who has maintained that he still holds this position – Muhammad Hanif Atmar, also sent a letter to the UN communicating Naeemi’s appointment. Faiq, however, continues to hold himself to be Afghanistan’s representative and posted a copy of the letter on X (formerly Twitter) here. The media also reported on 8 February 2022 that Faiq had accused “corrupt individuals and traitors from the former corrupt government” of having staged “evil plots and conspiracies” against him, following a statement he made at a UNSC meeting discussing the situation in Afghanistan on 26 January 2022. In that statement, he had also announced that he was “not representing the former corrupt government” and demanded “the confiscation and freezing of Afghanistan’s assets illegally transferred to [bank] accounts of the former corrupt government officials” (see the text of his statement here). Later, he claimed that after that speech, he had “received a call from one of the top Taliban leaders asking him to represent them at the UN” but had declined (see the UAE’s English-language daily The National here). Indeed, in a series of interviews in 2023, Faiq underscored that he was not the Emirate’s representative either. For example, he told the Turkish Anadolu news agency: “We are not in contact with the Taliban. We are not representing the Taliban. We are the only voice of the oppressed groups in Afghanistan” (see here).

The UN did not act on Atmar’s letter. Instead, it deleted the names of Ashraf Ghani as Afghanistan’s head of state and Atmar as foreign minister from its official protocol list, leaving their places blank but retaining the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as the country’s official designation. ToloNews first reported this on 22 February 2022, saying that the updated list had been published on 15 February (see ToloNews here and the current UN Protocol and Liaison Service list, as of 6 November 2023, here).

Although these approaches have further obfuscated Afghanistan’s place at the UN, it seems that the decision has simply been left open and not taken in favour of any of the two Afghan contenders for the seat, leaving Faiq as Afghanistan’s default representative to the world body, only because no decision has been made to choose someone else. The most recent list of UN member states heads of mission (as of 1 November 2023) continues to list Faiq as Afghanistan’s representative (see here). For the third year running, however, Faiq did not make a statement in Afghanistan’s name at the 2023 General Assembly, due, reported AP, to “the credentialing dispute.”

Faiq can, nevertheless, still attend UN meetings as Afghanistan’s representative in the current General Assembly (see here). He also attended and spoke at the 26 September 2023 UNSC meeting, where the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, former Kyrghyz president Roza Otunbayeva, briefed the council on the situation in Afghanistan (see here). Most recently, on 1 November 2023, he spoke at the UNGA’s Third Committee, discussing the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (see his post on X here) and on 5 October during the discussion on the advancement of rights of women and girls (here). Faiq unsuccessfully put Afghanistan forward as a candidate for the UN Human Rights Council in October 2022 (see his post on X here) and voted in favour of a UN resolution that condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine, which Afghanistan had reportedly co-sponsored in March 2022 (see his post on X here).

Faiq’s 2022 request to be re-accredited has a further weakness. After the controversy over Atmar’s letter and Faiq’s distancing himself from the former government, it is very likely that his letter did not carry Atmar’s signature and, therefore, did not fulfil the UN requirement that such a request must come from a foreign minister. However, this appears to have had no influence on the Credential Committee’s stance.

The Emirate’s position

International diplomatic recognition is a major foreign policy goal for the Islamic Emirate. It has repeatedly called on governments to establish full diplomatic relations, although so far, to little avail. It hailed the acceptance by the People’s Republic of China of the credentials of its ambassador on 1 December 2023 as an “important chapter” (see VoA here): it was the first time a country had formally done so and followed another first for China, in September 2023, the appointment of a new ambassador to Kabul. This was a sign, the BBC reported the Emirate as saying, for other nations to establish ties with its government. However, in reality, the number of countries with embassies and some even with ambassadors in Kabul as well as the number of countries which have allowed the IEA to either take over their embassies/consular offices or post an Emirate official at Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions is relatively few. And none have, so far, fully recognised the regime.

The stated obstacles have remained consistent. Immediately after the Taleban took power, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for example, made full recognition dependent on, among other things, the Taleban’s willingness to form an “inclusive government” (see Russian foreign ministry’s press release here). This position was repeated during the September 2023 meeting of the Russia-hosted Moscow Format consultations on Afghanistan, which was also attended by the five Central Asian Republics, China, India, Iran and Pakistan. Participants at the meeting repeated their demand for the establishment of “a balanced, broad-based, inclusive, accountable and responsible government in Afghanistan.” While they made no explicit reference to recognition, they did, however, express “their interest for expanding engagement with the current Afghan authorities in the areas of culture, sport and education” (author’s emphasis; see the meeting’s final declaration here).

Yet the IEA has repeatedly insisted that it has the right to Afghanistan’s seat at the UN as it controls all of Afghanistan.Mutaqqi’s 2021 letter requesting the UN to accept the Emirate, according to UN spokesperson, Farhan Haq, argued that former president Ashraf Ghani had been removed and was no longer recognised as the country’s head of state and that the mission of the Republic-appointed representative “is considered over and that he no longer represents Afghanistan”(see German news site Web.de here).

The IEA also criticised the UN General Assembly’s 6 December 2021 decision to continue acknowledging Ghulam Mohammad Isaczai as Afghanistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations (see Ariana news here), calling it “unfair.” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the IEA foreign ministry’s spokesman, tweeted: “The new Afghan government, as an accountable authority with sovereignty over entire Afghanistan (sic), which has ensured security for all Afghans, has a legitimate right to represent the Afghan people in the UN” (see ToloNews here). “Giving Afghanistan’s seat to Ishaqzai, who has no working relation with Kabul and no authority over any part of Afghan territory is deemed a blatant denial of the Afghan people’s legitimate right,” ToloNews reported Balkhi as saying.

During the Faiq/Naeemi controversy, Inamullah Samangani, the Emirate’s deputy spokesperson, said “the only solution is that Afghanistan’s chair at the UN is given to the current government of Afghanistan” (see Pakistan-based The Frontier Post here). In March 2023, the Emirate again raised its claim (see Pajhwok news here) for its ambassador-designate, Suhail Shaheen, to take over Afghanistan’s permanent mission in New York. “It is our right to be represented at the United Nations,” the Emirate’s spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid told ToloNews (see here).

From the Emirate’s point of view, the opaqueness with which the Credentials Committee operates, the lack of debate in the General Assembly and the non-decisions make it impossible to find purchase to argue its case.

What does international law say?

International law distinguishes between the recognition of states and the recognition of governments. In general, states recognise other states, rather than governments. There is no “formalised procedure and, in particular, no international body” (and certainly not the UN) that determines “whether a state exists or whether a government is authorized to act on behalf of a state,” as a 2020 memo by the Academic Services of the German Bundestag (parliament) looking at the legal framework for a decision on Taleban recognition made clear (see here). This means that individual “state practice and customary international law resulting from it” are used by each state to decide questions of recognition. The memo stresses that there are “discrepancies” in the practice of various states.

Under normal circumstances, ie in times of peace and constitutional order, “state identity is not affected by the change of its government,” write Federica Paddeu and Niko Pavlopoulos in a piece published on the Just Security website (see here). In other words, states tend to continue diplomatic relations with an incoming government without issuing a formal expression of recognition

Since World War II, most states have narrowly focussed on a new government’s effective control of territory and have thus avoided complex political pronouncements about legitimacy. Switzerland, for example, enshrines neutrality as a core virtue of its foreign policy and adheres to “the principles of universality (the principle that wherever possible, Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with all states) and of effectiveness (the requirement that the state to be recognized must have undoubted sovereignty),” as laid out in a legal memo published by its Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (last updated in April 2023 see here). The memo adds:

For the sake of the certainty of international law, Switzerland as a general principle refrains from setting additional conditions for recognition.…

The only precondition for the recognition of a government under international law is its effective exercise of sovereign power (first and foremost, control of a substantial part of the territory and of the apparatus of administration).…

If a state maintains normal diplomatic relations with a new government, this is merely a declaration that the new government is effective, not that it is legitimate [author’s emphasis].

Such an approach by any state may be rooted in the consideration that debates about legitimacy are complex and may not be politically expedient – whether disputatious, contrary to trade or other state interests or simply time-consuming.

However, sometimes concerns about legitimacy outweigh the principle of effective control and then states can be forced to consider questions of the legitimacy of the new government and whether to recognise it. For example, as the Bundestag paper highlights, this can happen when there has been “a change in the form of government by a change of the form of the state or due to an unconstitutional or otherwise irregular transfer of sovereign power within the state” such as “civil war, military coups [or] disputed election results.”

In Afghanistan’s case, statehood is uncontroversial, as is the IEA’s effective control of territory. What is controversial is whether the Emirate is a legitimate government. In August 2021, Afghanistan’s form of state changed from an Islamic Republic to an Islamic Emirate, and not by peaceful means. [27] It would appear, therefore, that UN member-states have considered the new regime’s legitimacy and, as a result, have refrained from recognising the IEA and re-establishing full diplomatic relations. Most have either not sent any diplomats, or only lower-ranking ones, and only a few an ambassador to Kabul. Also, in most cases, they have not received IEA diplomats. Many still seem to recognise the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or at least allow diplomats appointed by it to continue their work.

The legitimacy question also plays out between the various Afghan political forces, all of whom interpret the issue of Afghanistan’s seat in New York as ‘recognition by the UN’. The Taleban, for their part, have always insisted on the continuity of the Emirate, and the 20 years of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as an interregnum; they have never recognised the Republic as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, describing it as a puppet of foreign forces. They are unswerving in their demands for recognition “by the UN,” as the UN’s envoy to Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, pointed out in her comments to the Security Council in July 2023.

It is worth noting, however, that the United Nations is neither a state nor a government and does not have the right to ‘recognise’ a government (see UN website here).

The UN’s practice in the Credentials Committee should turn on this same question of legitimacy, particularly regarding upholding the UN Charter, although by not discussing the matter publicly or making an active decision on who gets the Afghan seat, neither the Committee nor UNGA are actually grappling with the issue of legitimacy. Otunbayeva used the language of recognition – in her UNSC comments in July: “The Taliban ask to be recognized by the United Nations and its members, but at the same time they act against the key values expressed in the United Nations Charter” (see the full transcript of her statement here). The Emirate took issue with her claims that its governance structures were “highly exclusionary, Pashtun-centred and repressive,” calling her assessment “baseless and biased” (see ToloNews here).

On balance, and based on the body of UN resolutions and repeated calls by member states for an inclusive government and respect for human rights, especially those of women and girls, it could be surmised that it is because states do not consider the Emirate legitimate that they have rebuffed its attempts to be recognised and admitted to the United Nations. However, this has never been publicly discussed or debated by either the Credentials Committee or the UNGA, so it is just surmise.

Importantly, while sending or keeping ambassadors in Kabul, as China, Russia, Iran and some other countries have done, could be seen as de-facto recognition of the IEA, this or indeed even establishing full diplomatic ties with the Emirate would still not constitute de-jure recognition and would not imply that the country in question considers the Emirate to be legitimate. [28]

Still, even partial diplomatic relations, such as existing lower-level diplomatic contacts, without the full gamut of diplomatic relations, are highly controversial and have drawn sharp criticism among the general public outside of Afghanistan and among some in the Afghan diaspora. Such pressure is another factor that governments need to take into account when deciding to recognise another government. In the eyes of many who are not well-versed in the intricacies of international law, recognition might imply legitimacy.

Recognising governments-in-exile

The Swiss legal memo also mentioned ‘special cases’, particularly after a coup or civil war, where “a legitimate government loses all or part of its power over the state and even flees abroad, becoming a government in exile.” In these instances, the memo says, “the former government sometimes continues to be recognized as the legitimate government (the de jure government) even if it has lost effective control of the state – at least temporarily – and this control is being exercised on the ground by a new, different government (the de facto government).”

One recent example is Yemen. There, the Houthis took effective control over large swathes of the country, yet the former government, in exile in Saudi Arabia, continues to be recognised by many states (see Reuters here). The Houthi government is even subject to a range of sanctions by the UN Security Council, including asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo (see UNSC here and here), not unlike the current IEA.

In Afghanistan, a similar situation emerged in 1996 after the Taleban had toppled the government in Kabul, which called itself the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA). After extensive deliberations, the committee decided to “defer any decision on the credentials of the representatives of Afghanistan until a later meeting.” In other words, the ISA (headed by the late Burhanuddin Rabbani, himself president by dubious means) was allowed to continue to occupy Afghanistan’s seat at the UN, even as its territorial control shrank to the full control of only one province. In 1996, the Taleban also nominated their representative, who was not credentialed (see the Credential Committee’s 23 October 1996 report A/51/548). [29]

During the Soviet occupation (1979-89), Afghanistan’s governments were not considered legitimate by most UN member-states. At the time, significant majorities in the UNGA supported resolutions condemning the Soviet occupation. While many countries withdrew their ambassadors or closed their embassies in Kabul, most did not completely break off relations,[30] and the governments of the time were able to retain the country’s seat at the UN. This is another example of how many states do not consider legitimacy to be the prime argument when it comes to diplomatic recognition of other governments.

In the current situation, Afghanistan’s former government (or president) never formally abdicated. Ashraf Ghani and other politicians have repeatedly made statements from abroad, using the Republic’s black, red and green flag as a backdrop, sometimes still claiming to represent the Islamic Republic (see for example, Ghani in this late August 2021 Khaama Press report or former foreign minister Atmar’s bio on X, where he still calls himself “Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”). At the same time, the former government is bitterly disunited and has not declared itself a government-in-exile, with one small exception: the former first vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, who, in the immediate aftermath of the Taleban takeover, claimed on 17 August 2021 that he was still the legitimate head of state because he, unlike Ghani, was still on Afghan soil (see his post on X, here). In September 2021, the Afghan embassy in Switzerland announced that Saleh would be leading a government-in-exile (see Khaama Press here). Saleh is no longer in Afghanistan and, at any rate, does not seem to have broad support among his former government colleagues. The existence of a government-in-exile, led by Saleh or any other person, has never been publicly mentioned again.

The absence of continuity, consensus and, at the very least, some degree of cohesion among the Republic-era political elite, as well as the gap left after the collapse of the old regime, could prove a hurdle to widespread recognition of any Afghan ‘Republican’ government-in-exile that ever did come into existence.

Conclusion

The matter of who represents Afghanistan at the UN remains unresolved and the country’s seat continues to be held by a diplomat from the government toppled by the Taleban, but not appointed by it. While the UN has been using a procedural ruse to withhold the seat from the Islamic Emirate, its de facto authorities continue to assert their right to occupy it.

If state practice is that states usually recognise other states, but not governments, that effective control of a country by the government is considered the main (if not only) criteria for recognition and that even diplomatic recognition does not imply legitimacy, then why do UN member-states not just go ahead and give the green light to the UN General Assembly to hand over Afghanistan’s UN seat to the Emirate?

In reality, the situation is more complicated. Legitimacy has emerged as a criterion in state practice for the recognition of governments, at least in a few cases where power is taken by force and human rights violations of entire social groups are at play, as the open decisions on Myanmar’s and Afghanistan’s seats show (with the collective denial of citizenship to the Rohingya ethnic group and the forced displacement into neighbouring countries of two-thirds of them in the former and the systematic denial of almost all rights to the entire female population in the latter). The acceptance and implementation of obligations under the UN Charter and other international conventions should be, according to UNGA resolution 396 of 1950, of central importance for UN member states. In Afghanistan’s case, one of the founding principles of the UN, “faith … in the equal rights of men and women” – is of particular significance. [31]

In a situation where no UN member-state, including those who have more active diplomatic interactions with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, such as China and Russia, seems to have plans to upgrade their prevailing partial to full diplomatic relations, the UN Credentials Committee will likely maintain its previous course over the question of who should occupy Afghanistan’s UN seat and, as it has done since 2021, defer the decision for another year. Up to now, all other member-states, including Russia, China and other countries in the region continue to point to the need for substantial changes in Taleban policies on women’s rights and the formation of an ‘inclusive government’ as a precondition for full diplomatic recognition and have supported UN resolutions to this avail.

There is, however, no sign from the Emirate’s leadership that they are willing to oblige these demands. Restoring full relations in the absence of any movement from the Emirate on these demands would imply that previous concerns over legitimacy no longer exist. It would mean that the current, curious situation will continue, and Afghanistan will have a representative occupying its seat at the UN who claims not to represent either the current or previous government, but to speak for the country’s people.[32]

What might change matters is the Special Coordinator Sinirlioğlu’s independent assessment and the Security Council’s response to it. It might be possible for UN member-states to offer some goodwill gesture, in an attempt to break the deadlock, but giving Afghanistan’s seat to it now would be premature and meet strong international opposition. Public opinion in donor countries, many in the Afghan diaspora and those critical of IEA policies inside the country would be aghast at such a step under the current circumstances.

Slow and cumbersome procedures at the UNGA and its Credential Committee give member-states another year to deliberate and discuss the independent assessment report and establish mechanisms to implement whatever they decide is the right path forward. Such an approach also gives the Emirate’s leadership time to consider whether it wants to shift on what appear to be the preconditions (even if the UN does not call them that) for recognition and for gaining the UN seat. These seem pretty clear: a major one is that the IEA starts, as its critics would see it, interacting more positively with the Afghan population, civil society and non-Taleban political actors and to amend its policies on women and girls in particular.

It is also possible to foresee the Credentials Committee and the General Assembly continuing to delay, defer and take non-decisions, leaving the situation to drift and an exasperated Emirate’s quest for recognition frustrated.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour, Jelena Bjelica and Rachel Reid

References

References
↑1 China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin refuted speculations that Beijing had formally recognised the Emirate: “China has always believed that Afghanistan should not be excluded from the international community.… We hope that Afghanistan will further respond to the expectations of the International community, build an open and inclusive political structure (and) implement moderate and stable domestic and foreign policies…. As the concerns of all parties receive stronger responses, diplomatic recognition of the Afghan government will naturally follow,” he told the media on 5 December. See this AFP report published by India’s English-language daily the Hindu.
↑2 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website provides a list of IEA’s diplomatic missions.
↑3 In September 2023, the Taleban accredited a new Chinese ambassador. See Al-Jazeera here.
↑4 Russia was the first to meet IEA representatives in Kabul “within 48 hours of the takeover,” as reported by the BBC.
↑5 At the same time, many ambassadors appointed by the former government have clung to their posts as the last bastions of the fallen Islamic Republic (see Foreign Policy here), such as the one in Tajikistan who continues as Afghan ambassador to the country’s Central Asian neighbour, while the Afghan consulate in Khorog, in eastern Tajikistan, has fallen into the Emirate’s hands (see Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) here). Some are tacitly in contact with Kabul, as former AAN colleague Ehsan Qaane wrote in 2021 (see this AAN report), or with roving Taleban envoys, as became apparent when one of them showed up in Germany on 16 November, crossing the border with a Schengen visa from the Netherlands where he had attended an international WHO conference (here).
↑6 There are some exceptions, such as Australia, which has closed its embassy.
↑7 The United States and the United Kingdom, for example, maintained a small team at their embassies in Kabul from the start of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979 until the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, after which they closed their missions along with France, Italy and Japan.
↑8 The exceptions are Norway’s ambassador, who met the Emirate’s foreign minister in Kabul in October 2022 (see the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs website here) and the UK’s chargé d’affaires, who did the same in summer 2023 (see Middle East Monitor here).
↑9 In 1996, the Taleban asked UNAMA’s predecessor mission, UNSMA (United Nations Support Mission to Afghanistan), to leave the country. However, UNSMA staff continued to visit Kabul; they included the author of this report in 2001-02.
↑10 The assessment report, which was due to be presented to the UNSC by 16 November 2023, has not been publicly released, but has been leaked and is widely distributed. The report can be found on the PassBlue website here.
↑11 The first decision was taken in December 2021, four months after the Taleban took power as noted in the Credentials Committee’s report UNGA A/76/550.
↑12 See Rebecca Barber, ‘The Role of the General Assembly in Determining the Legitimacy of Governments,’ International and Comparative Law Quarterly 71, no. 3 (2022): 627–56 (here).
↑13 UNGA appointed the current members of the UN Credentials Committee during the first session of the 77th plenary on 5 September 2023. They are Andorra, China, Grenada, Nigeria, Russia, Solomon Islands, Suriname, Togo and US. See UN Web TV here, from 27:20min.
↑14 This year’s official UNGA schedule, does not list this as an agenda item, but it will likely be amended to include it once the final schedule is published, as was the case last year when the report of the Credentials Committee was listed as an agenda item. See last year’s the official schedule here.
↑15 In 1950, UNGA Resolution 396 set out the procedure for deciding on who is entitled to represent a member state: “whenever more than one authority claims to be the government entitled to represent a Member-State in the United Nations (…), it should be considered by the General Assembly, or by the Interim Committee if the General Assembly is not in session.” See this UNGA Resolution A/RES/196 on Interim Committee from 1948.
↑16 In Venezuela’s case, the US registered its objection to credentials given to the Maduro government but did not block the decision or insist on a debate or vote.
↑17 See A/77/PV.1 for members appointed to the committee by the 77th general assembly in September 2022 and those of the previous year here.
↑18 The UNGA resolution 2022 simply reads: 

The General Assembly,

Having considered the report of the Credentials Committee and the recommendation contained therein,

Approves the report of the Credentials Committee. 

55th plenary meeting 

16 December 2022
↑19 Rule 27 of the UNGA Rules of Procedure: The credentials of representatives and the names of members of a delegation shall be submitted to the Secretary-General if possible not less than one week before the opening of the session. The credentials shall be issued either by the Head of the State or Government or by the Minister for Foreign.
↑20 The UN does not use the Taleban’s chosen name for their state and usually only refers to it as the country’s ‘de facto authorities’ (see, for example, the UN statement after the IEA banned Afghan women from working for UN agencies in Afghanistan) and, recently, as the ‘State of Afghanistan’ (see, for example, the recent assessment of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Coordinator for Afghanistan which has not been released but was leaked and can be found on the PassBlue website here.
↑21 Muttaqi reportedly also requested to be allowed to address the General Assembly during its annual high-level meeting which ended a day later, on 21 September 2021.
↑22 Faiq is a 46-year-old career diplomat who has served in various positions in the foreign ministry in Kabul and twice before at the Afghan UN mission in more junior positions (see Afghans Bios here). In Geneva, the UN’s second main hub, another Republic-appointed diplomat, Nasir Ahmad Andisha, is still in charge as Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations Office in Geneva, see here.
↑23 Isaczai is a seasoned Afghan diplomat with over two decades of experience working for the UN and had been appointed to this position in June 2021, four months before the fall of the Republic, by then President Ashraf Ghani, after Adela Raz moved into the role of Afghan ambassador to the US. Before taking up his post as Afghanistan’s permanent representative to the UN, Isaczai had served in various UN positions, most recently as Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan (2016-2021) and in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (2013-2015). He is currently the Deputy Special Representative and Resident Coordinator at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) (see his UN bio here).
↑24 In a bizarre detail, the residence of the head of mission of Afghanistan – among the poorest countries in the world – is in New York’s Trump Tower, one of the city’s most expensive pieces of real estate. One of Faiq’s predecessors, Zaher Tanin (Observer Daily here), oversaw its purchase and Faiq is still using it. The number of staff at the mission has reportedly dropped from 16 before the Taleban takeover to four, including Faiq (here).
↑25 The high-level UNGA meeting is reserved for heads of state or government and foreign ministers. Representatives of countries who nominate lower-ranking diplomats are scheduled to speak according to their rank, with the lowest at the end.
↑26 In January 2022, Isaczai became the UN’s ad interim Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Jordan and was then appointed Deputy Special Representative for Iraq in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and UN Resident Coordinator there by Guterres in July 2022. here.
↑27 The most recent cases include Mali (2020), Myanmar (most recently in 2021) and Niger (2023). In these countries, military governments control most of their countries’ territories after military coups, but came to power by unconstitutional means and many countries considered whether to express or withhold explicit recognition. Similar developments occurred after Venezuela’s controversial elections in 2018.
↑28 For a good explainer on legitimacy and the differences between de facto and de jure recognition, see Stefan Talmon, ’Recognition of governments in international law with particular reference to governments in exile’, Chapter 2: ‘Recognition and its Variants’, Oxford University Press, 2004.
↑29 Senior Taleban politician Abdul Hakim Mujahed used to reside in New York and had some unofficial diplomatic contacts there. He later returned to Afghanistan under a reconciliation programme. For details on efforts in this regard during the first emirate, see Bette Dam. ‘Looking for the enemy: Mullah Omar and the unknown Taliban’, HarperCollins, 2021.
↑30 No state officially broke off diplomatic relations with Afghanistan either during the first Emirate or the second Emirate – with the exception of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE after 9/11.
↑31 All UN Security Council members, including China and Russia, voted in favour of a UNSC resolution 2681 on 27 April 2023. The resolution, which was co-sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and Japan, urged the Taleban “to swiftly reverse the policies and practices that restrict the enjoyment by women and girls of their human rights and fundamental freedoms “and ensure their “full, equal, meaningful and safe participation” (see AP here).
↑32 One aspect adding a degree of uncertainty is what calculations are made in Beijing and Moscow. Russia and China have used Afghanistan-related matters to score points in their global tug-of-war with ‘the collective West.’ But judging from the latest meeting of the Moscow Format, where they upheld their demand of an ‘inclusive government’ in Afghanistan, this is not very likely.

Whose Seat Is It Anyway: The UN’s (non)decision on who represents Afghanistan 
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The Daily Hustle: “Helping the dreams of girls come true”

November 24, 2023

Rohullah Sorush • Roxanna Shapour

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After the Islamic Emirate banned older girls from education, many girls found alternative avenues to continue their studies, find intellectual stimulation – and even, as this Daily Hustle found out, make a living in the private education sector. AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from one young Afghan woman about how, even in the face of overwhelming setbacks and personal tragedy, she has managed not only to succeed in her learning endeavors but to thrive with the love and support of her family.

Every morning, after I drop my younger sister at school, I teach an online English class to a group of lively girls my own age. My students are intelligent and all are fast learners, except for two who are in grade six and younger than the others – it is a little difficult for them. But they work hard and, with some extra attention from me, mostly keep up with their classmates. After the class ends, I take a moment to think about the road I’ve travelled to get to this place. I thank God for the support I get from my family and for his blessings.

A life-changing tragedy

I was born in Kabul, near the famous Darulaman Palace, in 2007 to a middle-class family. My father is a shopkeeper. He couldn’t finish his education because he had to start working to support his mother and two sisters when he was in eighth grade after his father died. But my mother was a high school graduate. Her schooling was disrupted when she was in grade 10 and girls were banned from school during the first Emirate. But later, during the Republic, my father encouraged her to go back to school.

An NGO near our house ran a school for older girls and young women who had been left behind in education. In that school, my mother finished grades 11 and 12 and got her high school diploma.

A lifetime ago, we used to be a very happy family. Back then, my two younger sisters, my parents and my grandmother and I lived together. But like all families, we’d had our share of tragedies. My parents had lost two sons before I was born and then a daughter after I came along. Then, four years ago, I lost my mother and my little sister. They’d gone to Ghazni to spend the summer with family, but as they were driving into our village in Jaghatu, their car hit a landmine. My mother and little sister were killed in the blast. along with two other family members. And, then four months later, my grandmother died. It felt like my world had ended.

There were just the three of us left – my father, my sister and me. Our house, which was once filled with joy and laughter, became silent and gloomy and my father, who used to be lively and come home with chocolate and candy in his pockets for me and my siblings, sank into a dark mood. About a year after my mother died, my father remarried and, after that, things went from bad to worse. It didn’t take long for my stepmother to start quarrelling with my dad. She wasn’t too keen on having my sister and me living with them and demanded that my father send us off to live with my maternal grandparents, which my father refused to do. She even tried to get my father to marry me off, but my mother’s family interceded and told him I was too young to get married.

Family support makes all the difference

Education is a big thing in my family, for my father who couldn’t finish his own education and for my mother and her family who rank education above all riches. My maternal uncle, in particular, has always taken an interest in my education. He has encouraged me to keep my head down and be dedicated to my studies. When I turned 10, he arranged for me to start learning English in one of the private language institutes near our house. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when all the schools were closed, he made sure I kept up with my English language studies and that I had an online meeting with my teacher twice a week so that he could check my homework. After my mother died, it was my uncle who coaxed us out of our misery. He came around every afternoon to make sure my sister and I were keeping up with our schoolwork and brought us presents when we got good marks in our classes. He told us that learning was the greatest of all distractions and that a good education would be our ticket to a better life.

In August 2021, girls were banned from going to school, and like my mother before me, I had to stop going to school. Otherwise, I would be in grade 11 now. I kept up with my English classes and also took up a job at the language centre as a teaching assistant, helping the teacher with the younger kids in the lower grades. A year later, when I finished the course and graduated first in my class, the institute hired me as a teacher. My uncle, who used to be a teacher himself, helps me with my lesson plans and gives me books to read to improve my English and help me become a more proficient teacher.

With more knowledge comes more responsibility

This year, I was promoted to be a manager at the centre. I still teach two classes a day, but now I’m also responsible for overseeing the work of other teachers. I monitor their classes and have quarterly meetings with them on the progress of their classes. I make plans for new courses and prepare weekly reports for my superiors. There are separate classes, at different times, for boys and girls, but girls can only attend in-person classes up to grade 6. After that, we have online classes for them. We have male teachers for the boys and female teachers for the girls.

Once, the Taleban came to our institute to see if we were observing the rules. Back then, the older girls also came to classes at the centre. Although the classes were separate, they told the institute’s owner that the older girls weren’t allowed to come. After that, we started our online courses for the older girls because we didn’t want the Emirate to shut us down.

These days, I keep myself busy and try to stay out of my stepmother’s way. My father isn’t around much. He stays late at his shop and when he’s home there are endless arguments with my stepmother. There is no space or time for us to be together as a family anymore. The money I bring into the house helps keep my stepmother’s complaints about me and my sister down. It’s a lifeline that allows me to make sure my sister and I pay our own way and also contribute to household expenses.

Making dreams come true

Every morning, I get my younger sister ready and take her to school before I get behind my computer to teach the online class for the older students who cannot attend classes in person. After that, I go to the centre from 9 to 12 o’ clock to carry out my managerial responsibilities, before picking up my sister and taking her home. Then I have a quick lunch and go back to the centre for a class I teach to the younger girls. My afternoons, until 5pm are spent making sure everything is on track at the centre. On Fridays, when I’m not working, I take my sister to my grandparents’ house and spend the day with my mother’s family. This is my routine.

The hours are long and it’s a lot of responsibility for someone as young as I am, so I work hard every day to make sure I do my job well and show everyone that I’m up to the challenge.

I’m very unhappy that I can’t continue my education. But when I lose all hope, I remember my mother and how she was finally able to go back and finish high school. I hope one day, when this ban is removed, all girls can go to school and to university. I count my blessings every day. I am lucky to have this opportunity to work as a manager at the institute and also teach other girls. I am happy I can help girls and boys learn something. The girls who study in the centre all have dreams. I’d like to think that I’m playing a part in helping their dreams come true.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

The Daily Hustle: “Helping the dreams of girls come true”
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The Long Winding River: Unravelling the water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran

November 20, 2023

Mhd Assem Mayar • Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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Afghanistan and Iran have been at loggerheads for much of this year over the Helmand River and its water. As the region grappled with a punishing drought for the third year running, the two neighbouring countries have been locked in a tense melee over shared transboundary rivers. While Iran seeks to assert its rights over water from the Helmand River based on the 1973 Afghan-Iranian Helmand River Water Treaty, Afghanistan maintains that there is simply not enough water to provide Iran with a greater amount. AAN guest author, Mohammad Assem Mayar, looks into what has driven the recent upsurge in the long-running dispute over water between these two countries and provides insights into how their ‘water relations’ might develop.
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking the link below.

As drought continued to exact a heavy toll on the human and natural environment for the third year running, the dispute between Kabul and Tehran, now well into its second century, over water once again took centre stage in 2023. Iran complains that it has not been receiving its fair share of the Helmand water and has highlighted the damage done to its agricultural sector and the devastation wrought on the Hamun Wetlands. Conversely, Kabul argues that decades of inadequate water management under successive ineffective Afghan governments, with water flowing downstream unchecked, has meant that Iran has been getting more than its share. Now, after three years of punishing drought, according to Afghanistan, there is simply no more water for Iran to have.

This report:

  • Examines the geographic and environmental nature of the Helmand River Basin and its vital importance to communities on both sides of the border, before delving into the factors driving the most recent dispute between Afghanistan and Iran;
  • Traces the history of the water dispute between the neighbours back to the late 19th century when the border was first established and looks into the various attempts to settle the issue since that time;
  • Hones in on the existing legal frameworks, especially the Afghan-Iranian Helmand River Water Treaty (hereafter referred to as the Helmand Treaty), which is the only operative agreement defining how water should be shared and what Iran’s rights amount to;
  • Examines Afghanistan and Iran’s attempts to secure additional water from the Helmand River;
  • Looks at the divergent interpretations of the Helmand Treaty and why it has never been fully implemented in the half-century since it was signed.
  • Concludes that the current dispute may ease in the short term if winter rains fall heavily, as predicted. However, the climate crisis will bring more frequent droughts of increasing intensity to this region, putting more pressure on people and governments already struggling to balance water needs against diminishing water resources. This report presents some ideas as to how the impasse could be resolved, including some technological innovations and changes to water usage aimed at reducing demand.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour, Martine van Bijlert and Kate Clark

* Dr Mohammad Assem Mayar is a water resources management expert and former lecturer at Kabul Polytechnic University in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg, Germany. He posts on X as @assemmayar1.

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

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The Long Winding River: Unravelling the water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran
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In a Major Rift, Pakistan Ramps Up Pressure on the Taliban

November 18, 2023

BY: Asfandyar Mir, Ph.D.

United States Institute of Peace

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Tensions over anti-Pakistan TTP terrorist group, expulsion of Afghan refugees will have implications for U.S. interests.
On November 8, in an unprecedented press conference, Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar offered a blistering critique of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He announced that the Taliban leadership was supporting the anti-Pakistan insurgency of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and that had contributed to a major increase in violence in Pakistan — leading to 2,867 Pakistani fatalities since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Over the last two years, the Pakistani government had been careful in its characterization of Taliban-TTP ties despite evidence of the Taliban’s support to the TTP, popularly known as the Pakistani Taliban, through provision of a safe haven and other forms of material assistance. This time, Kakar broke from that diplomatic hedging, saying “in a few instances” there was “clear evidence of [the Taliban] enabling terrorism” by the TTP. A few days after Kakar spoke, Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, followed up on Kakar’s critique of the Taliban, noting that “peace in Afghanistan, in fact, has become a nightmare for Pakistan.”
While Kakar is Pakistan’s “caretaker” prime minister until the country goes through an election (now rescheduled for early next year), he is believed to be close to Pakistan’s military. His statement also comes on the heels of Pakistan’s controversial decision to expel 1.7 million undocumented Afghan refugees from Pakistan — with over 327,000 refugees having already been forced to return to Afghanistan since the expulsion decision was announced. It was also preceded by significant attacks by the TTP, including an audacious attempt at the land grab of a border district in northern Pakistan. Thus, Kakar’s statement and its timing are significant. It indicates not just his views as the interim leader of the country but also the latest policy turn led by the military that Pakistan has had enough of the Taliban’s support for the TTP and wants to pressure the Taliban, at least until they revisit support for the TTP.

Under the new policy, Pakistan has set in place a broader pressure campaign to coerce the Taliban into reviewing and revoking its support for the TTP. Pakistan shares a long border with landlocked Afghanistan; it also supported and provided safe haven to the Taliban for nearly 20 years, all of which gives it unique leverage over the politics of Afghanistan. The main step to that end is Pakistan’s expulsion of refugees, which Kakar admitted is meant to pressure the Taliban. The other significant step Pakistan has taken is the scaling backing of economic and trade ties to impose economic pain on the Taliban. Pakistan has also announced that it will “not advocate the Afghan Taliban’s case at the international level,” which likely means Pakistan will not advocate for the formal recognition of the Taliban-led government and downgrade engagement with the Taliban as it has consistently done since August 2021.

The Taliban’s support for the TTP and Pakistan’s emerging pressure campaign sets the Taliban-Pakistan relationship on a path of long-term deterioration.

Taliban’s Calculus on the TTP and Pakistan

The Taliban leadership has deflected on Pakistani concerns on the TTP, calling it Pakistan’s internal problem. They have instead focused on the Pakistani decision to expel Afghan refugees — in recent weeks, they have broken from relative restraint in their public posture on Pakistan. This has ranged from a statement by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, expressing concern over the treatment of Afghan refugees to Taliban Prime Minister Hassan Akhund calling on Pakistan’s government and “military generals” to adhere to “Islamic principles.” Taliban Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqub has warned Pakistan that it should be mindful of the “consequences” of its decisions and that it will reap what it is sowing. Most significantly, Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani — a longstanding ally of Pakistan — has also condemned Pakistan, describing its decision to expel refugees as “unIslamic.”

These statements by Taliban leaders partly reflect the depth of anger among Afghans and within the Taliban over Pakistan’s expulsion of Afghan refugees. Taliban leaders also seem frustrated at Pakistan’s mounting pressure on them and unwillingness to negotiate with and make concessions to the TTP, in particular since the breakdown in Taliban-brokered talks between the TTP and Pakistan in late 2022. Yet the convergence of leaders representing different factions and groups within the Taliban on this issue is also instructive on Taliban internal politics, suggesting that they may be increasingly on the same page when it comes to Pakistan.

Since their return to power in 2021, as argued by USIP senior expert Andrew Watkins, the Taliban have indicated two distinct impulses: jihadism versus state-building. The jihadist camp champions the cause of foreign fighters. To that end, it seeks to not only protect them inside Afghanistan but also to support their jihadist campaigns. The state-builders have appeared more inward-focused, seeking to limit the activities of foreign fighters to improve relations with regional and Western countries for the end goal of stabilizing the country and economy. The push and pull between these two factions contributed to the Taliban’s dual policy over the last two years of supporting the TTP inside Afghanistan on the one hand and assurance to Pakistan on the other.

Over the last year, Taliban leaders with state-building instincts appear to have soured on Pakistan and see Pakistan’s refugee expulsion as a conspiracy to undermine the Taliban government. There are other grievances among state-builders toward Pakistan, including unmet expectations on economic and trade issues as well as questions about the level of autonomy of a Taliban-led government that Pakistan is willing to accept. Some are suggesting that Pakistan is bent on weakening the Taliban to keep them pliant. There is a possibility that the Taliban state-builders may be advocating use of hard-power leverage, perhaps through violence of the TTP, to counter Pakistan’s purported attempts to weaken them and realize their state-building agenda. If so, the divide between state-building and jihadism-inclined factions on the level of support for the TTP may be shrinking.

Still, some Taliban leaders with a state-building bent will be nervous about a hostile relationship with Pakistan. Irrespective of their public posturing, they are aware that Pakistan has made the more significant contribution to the downfall of multiple Afghan governments over the last four decades. Even if pragmatic leaders are overcome with anger for now, they will worry about the future of their regime if Pakistan remains opposed to them — and may adjust their positions, even realign themselves politically if hostilities persist.

What Next? Pakistan’s Options and Likelihood of Success

Pakistan appears to be ready to sustain and increase economic pressure to compel the Taliban to review its support for the TTP. Pakistan’s economic leverage is rooted partly in being landlocked Afghanistan’s main artery of transit trade and Taliban-led Afghanistan’s main export market — accounting for over 50 percent of exports. Border crossings with Pakistan contribute more than 40 percent of Afghanistan’s customs revenues, which makes up nearly 60 percent of the Taliban’s total revenues. Pakistan has already tightened rules for transit trade, imposed stringent bank guarantee requirements on Afghan traders for imports, expanded a list of goods Afghanistan can’t import via Pakistan and slapped a 10 percent duty (referred to as processing fees) on select commodities imported by Afghanistan. Pakistan has also slowed down the movement of Afghanistan-bound containers arriving at Pakistani ports, as per the Taliban. These measures will have some impact on Pakistan’s economy, but it is far less reliant on the Afghan economy — at one point Pakistan was importing a large volume of Afghan coal, but as international coal prices have dropped, Pakistan’s coal imports from Afghanistan have decreased. Thus, overall, Pakistan’s measures will put more significant pressure on an isolated Taliban regime by cutting into its revenues and trade volumes. Pakistan retains other tools, like closure or disruption of border crossings to dry out Taliban revenues, to exert more economic pain.

If economic pressure fails, an escalatory step, which Pakistan’s military hinted at recently, can be a cross-border military action striking leaders and camps of the TTP in Afghanistan. The outcome of such an action is not clear. There is deep anger in Afghanistan toward Pakistan. Pakistani military action may increase support for the TTP in Afghanistan and also trigger retaliatory violence. Yet it is possible that cross-border action forces the Taliban to revisit its position, at least tactically. There is a precedent for this. In April 2022, Pakistan carried out cross-border airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan, soon after which the TTP, presumably at the insistence of the Taliban, agreed to a cease-fire against Pakistan.

Another more escalatory option for Pakistan is to support opposition to the Taliban, but it is not clear if Pakistan can work with the Taliban’s fragmented opposition. The opposition, dominated by political and military leaders of the former Afghan republic, has a history of poor ties with Pakistan, partly due to Pakistan’s support for the Taliban during the years of the insurgency. Pakistan has also struggled to forge ties with non-Pashtun political leaders — who are a key part of the Taliban’s opposition. Nevertheless, the region has seen strange bedfellow alliances emerge before — and the opposition is paying attention to the deterioration in Taliban-Pakistan ties and may be positioning to improve relations with Pakistan. For its part, Pakistan has helped forge opposition coalitions to balance against the government in Kabul in the past — and given its geographic position, arguably, can be effective at it.

Taliban’s Options and Likelihood of Success

The Taliban have some options of their own in a bid to blunt Pakistan’s pressure campaign and compel Pakistan to make political space for the TTP.  For one, the Taliban can seek to improve ties with neighbors in Central Asia and Iran to weather economic pain and Pakistani coercion. The Taliban have already reached out to Iran recently — with Taliban Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar making a trip seeking more port access and trade concessions from Iran. Iranian access may help cushion the blow of losses from restricted transit trade with Pakistan, but it is unclear if it can be a full replacement.

The Taliban may also seek to backchannel with Pakistan. In the past, amid moments of tension with Pakistan, the Taliban have leaned on sympathetic Pakistani officials to de-escalate tensions. It is possible that some Taliban leaders (such as those from the state-building camp) may seek such help again. There are a handful of international actors as well who the Taliban can ask for help to de-escalate. The country best positioned and most accessible to the Taliban to play the role of a third-party mediator is Qatar, but it is unclear if the Qatari government, currently consumed by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, has the bandwidth or even interest to mediate Pakistan-Taliban tensions. China can also try to mediate, but it has security concerns of its own regarding Afghanistan-based terrorist groups and may share Pakistan’s perspective on the rising insecurity in Pakistan.

Another option for the Taliban is to seek a thaw in ties with the Western world in general and the United States in particular in a bid to open up bilateral trade and economic ties as well as gain multilateral assistance. Taliban actions that are most likely to create greater Western openness to normal ties are reversing the restrictions on girls’ education and on women’s employment, though lesser actions like allowing women to work for nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations may also open some doors. The Taliban can also look to play on Pakistani paranoia by increasing engagement with Pakistan’s archrival India and offering India more diplomatic access in the country in exchange for economic assistance.

Perhaps the most obvious option on the table which the Taliban may believe gives them sufficient leverage is violence against Pakistan through proxies — a variant of a military strategy referred to as “escalate to de-escalate.” The Taliban may be drawn to it due to their successful violence-driven bargaining with the United States as an insurgency as well as Pakistan’s ongoing economic downturn and domestic political turmoil. For this purpose, the Taliban can relax limits on actions and activities of various militant allies against Pakistan. If so, the TTP will be the key ally for the Taliban — directly and through its cover organization which undertakes complex militant attacks, the Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan. The Taliban can also turn to other militant factions in Afghanistan with ongoing activity or a history of violence in Pakistan, such as al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent, Hafiz Gul Bahadur group and Lashkar-e-Islam. The Taliban are also providing haven to separatist Baloch insurgents, which plausibly gives the Taliban leverage over parts of Pakistan with significant Chinese interests.

Still, violence may not lead to the change the Taliban want to see in Pakistan’s behavior. As there is no Pakistani domestic political constituency calling for negotiations with the TTP, it is unlikely more attacks, even if they bring additional economic cost, will create pressure on Pakistani military leadership to revive negotiations with TTP. If anything, it may spur Pakistan into exerting more pressure on the Taliban.

Implications for U.S. Policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan

In an unusual turn of events, Pakistan has come to oppose the Taliban in a way that U.S. policymakers worked for two decades of the U.S. war in Afghanistan to bring about but ultimately failed. Taliban-Pakistan tensions will create feelings of schadenfreude within the U.S. policy community, but also challenge long-standing policy models and assumptions on how the United States should deal with both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the near term, there are three main implications for U.S. interests regarding Pakistan’s pressure campaign against the Taliban and the Taliban’s hardening on support for the TTP.

On the one hand, the shift in Pakistan’s policy improves the United States’ position to press the Taliban on issues of concern, such as human rights, political inclusion and perhaps even counterterrorism. A pressured Taliban regime’s pragmatic elements will see greater value in economic and assistance opportunities through the Western world — and that may create incentives for some Taliban leaders to offset Pakistan’s pressure by reconsidering U.S. demands and taking them up with hardliners in the movement, like Akhundzada. U.S. policymakers can leverage the Pakistani pressure to explore what the new trade space on human rights, political inclusion and counterterrorism looks like with the Taliban. If policymakers believe more pressure can lead to holistic change in the Taliban’s behavior, including that of hardline Taliban leaders, they can coordinate with Pakistan to amplify the pressure, though policymakers will be skeptical of a long-term convergence of interests with Pakistan over Afghanistan.

On the other hand, the Taliban’s strong support for the TTP despite Pakistan’s pressure suggests that the TTP’s threat to Pakistan will continue to grow, even metastasize. Not only does that raise concerns about risks to U.S. interests due to the TTP’s growing violence in Pakistan, for example by adding to Pakistan’s fragility and nuclear security concerns, but it is also instructive on how enduring the Taliban’s support for jihadist groups ultimately is. This points to the need for beefing up the U.S. counterterrorism posture in the region.

At the same time, a competing priority for the Biden administration is mitigating the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Some policymakers may worry that Pakistan’s decision to put economic pressure on the Taliban, especially at a time when international humanitarian assistance is going down, will disturb the already precarious equilibrium of the Afghan economy and aggravate the humanitarian situation — and they may seek to defuse Pakistan-Taliban tensions to save the Afghan economy. However, chances of the United States changing Pakistan’s mind on the pressure campaign are slim.

Beyond the immediate implications, the growing tensions also pose longer-term questions about U.S. policy in the region should Pakistan sustain pressure against the Taliban. U.S. policymakers will need to reckon with the implications of a weakened Taliban regime, including increased risks of renewed conflict inside Afghanistan, and whether mitigating such risks is worth trying to limit Pakistani pressure at some stage. While these questions are somewhat distant for now, the trajectory of Taliban-Pakistan ties over the last two years and the history of Afghanistan suggests they may come up sooner rather than later.

In a Major Rift, Pakistan Ramps Up Pressure on the Taliban
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