Analytical articles | Page 18

01.10.2023

Anatol Lieven

Responsible Statecraft

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Both have intractable governing problems, but that doesn’t mean the West should keep intervening to save them.

Recent months have seen escalating clashes along Pakistan’s disputed border with Afghanistan. In the latest, on December 11 and 15, civilians on both sides were killed when Taliban forces fired into Pakistan and Pakistani troops retaliated.

These clashes have their origins in three factors: the presence in Afghanistan of Pakistani Islamist rebels who launch attacks across the border into Pakistan, Pakistani attempts to fence off the border to limit militant attacks, smuggling, and illegal mass migration (more than 250,000 Afghans have fled near-famine conditions in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control last year), and the radical reduction in Western aid.

The Taliban, like every previous Afghan government, has also refused to accept the legality of the frontier that was established by the British Empire. The border fence has caused violent resentment among Afghans living along the border, as well as some of their neighboring Pakistani Pashtun fellow-tribesmen.

Clashes between the Taliban and Pakistan are on the face of it surprising. Pakistani support was instrumental in helping the Taliban take over Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, and during the U.S. and Western intervention in Afghanistan, Pakistani shelter of the Taliban played an important part in allowing them to continue their struggle. Some Western and Afghan government propagandists even accused the Taliban (quite falsely) of being mere Pakistani puppets. The problems that Pakistan has faced since the Taliban victory last year have therefore led to a measure of Schadenfreude in the West.

This is misplaced. For what Afghanistan exemplifies is a wider problem that may reach terrifying dimensions in the years to come: that of societies that while ferociously determined to resist intervention and even influence from outside, are themselves incapable of generating or accepting effective modern state institutions. At the time of writing, another extreme case of this is developing on America’s own doorstep, in Haiti.

The modern history of Afghanistan is not only the history of the defeat of successive attempts at outside intervention — whether British, Soviet, or American. More importantly, it has been the history of the failure of successive Afghan regimes to create an effective modern state.

Thus in the 1920s, the attempt of King Amanullah to bring accelerated modernization led to a revolt of the tribes under the banner of conservative religious reaction. Following his overthrow, a more limited and cautious royal regime was established. In the decades after the Second World War, with the help of U.S. and Soviet aid and modern weaponry, this state expanded its power; but it proved incapable of meeting the increased expectations that it had generated in sections of society.

The collapse of dynastic rule in the 1970s led to the catastrophic Communist attempt at accelerated modernization, resulting in another conservative revolt and the eventual victory of the Taliban. Their overthrow by the United States after 9/11 led to yet another attempt at modernization (this time coupled with an attempt at “democracy”), with the results that we now see before us.

The Taliban have certain advantages denied to previous state-builders: their deep rootedness in the conservative Pashtun rural society of eastern and southern Afghanistan; and the tremendous prestige that accrues from their defeat of an infidel superpower. Their ambitions when it comes to state-building are also limited, which given Afghan realities may also be an advantage. Essentially they want to create a state with basic internal peace, which in cultural terms adheres strictly to their version of conservative Islam.

They are however completely incapable of developing Afghanistan economically. As the population surges and public misery grows, this is bound to undermine their rule. Moreover, their limited form of rule allows other armed militant groups to exist, like the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which are tolerated by the Taliban because they do not threaten their rule, they do threaten all Afghanistan’s neighbors. For very obvious reasons, however, none of these neighbors is likely to think of intervening directly in Afghanistan to deal with these threats.

The American establishment clearly wishes to forget that Afghanistan ever existed, and since Kabul is 7,000 miles from the United States this could be possible. Americans will however find it more difficult to ignore state collapse in their own backyard. Haiti is in many ways very different from Afghanistan, but the underlying problem is the same: the perennial failure of attempts at modern state-building, both domestic and through outside intervention. And while Haiti, unlike Afghanistan, has not incubated a terrorist threat to its neighbors, like Afghanistan it has generated huge numbers of migrants and great problems of criminality. Haiti over the past 40 years has seen repeated coups and rebellions.

A brief U.S. military intervention in 1994-95 (until 2000 continued as part of a UN mission) failed to solve or even seriously mitigate any of Haiti’s underlying problems . Given its extremely limited numbers, funding, mandate, and timeframe, there was never any serious prospect that it would. Haiti today lacks an effective government and is dominated by criminal gangs whose warfare and crimes are a nightmare for most of the population.

Haiti might on the surface seem a much more suitable area for U.S. military intervention than Afghanistan. There is no terrorist threat from Haiti, so American forces would not face anything like the fanatically determined resistance of the Taliban. Nor would Haitian gangs receive support and protection from outside powers.

But to do any good, a U.S. intervention would have to be in effect permanent, and involve a government that would for the foreseeable future be staffed by Americans. Every short-term effort followed by a “restoration of democracy” has failed and will go on failing.

In principle, the fact that Haiti is a neighbor of the United States should make this possible. The United States cannot simply walk away from Haiti, any more than Pakistan can walk away from Afghanistan. In practice, however, such a long-term U.S. intervention however looks highly improbable, barring a radical transformation in American attitudes and priorities. Especially after the miserable experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq, the American public and Congress are extremely unlikely to accept such an open-ended commitment.

Moreover, the creation of what would in effect be a permanent colonial government would not only challenge contemporary ideas of national sovereignty, it would radically contradict the present largely bipartisan U.S. doctrine of a world divided between democracies and hostile autocracies.

And that is indeed a key point about the examples of Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and elsewhere: the complete irrelevance of U.S. (as previously Soviet) ideological nostrums to these societies. Both democratic and authoritarian regimes have failed to create effective states in these countries, and on the record so far will continue to fail.

As climate change, coupled with population growth poverty and water shortages, undermines more and more vulnerable states around the world, this problem of failed states in recalcitrant societies is likely to grow, until it becomes a dire threat to all organized and developed societies — once again, irrespective of whether these states are democracies or autocracies.

Above all, such failed or failing states are likely to generate immense waves of migration — as we see already in western Africa and Central America. As the example of Afghan migration to Pakistan indicates, this is not simply a problem for the West, but for every state around the world. The most ferocious anti-immigrant (as opposed to security) border in the world is probably that created by India to stop migrants from Bangladesh, more than 1,200 of whom have been killed by Indian security forces over the past 20 years. Once again, this is a problem that transcends ideological systems, to which neither democracies nor autocracies have found answers that manage to be both effective and reasonably humane, and which demands the combined attention of the international community.

Judging by U.S. behavior during the Cold War, American administrations will be tempted to meddle in these failed states for geopolitical reasons, picking one tribe or gang as anti-Chinese or anti-Russian and then blessing them as “democratic,” as President Reagan notoriously blessed the Afghan Mujahedin. This will make local conflicts even worse. Instead, we should recognize that effective statehood is a fragile thing, and that all countries that have achieved it have a common interest in defending it. In the future, this will also mean finding ways to cooperate in managing the problems emanating from places like Haiti and Afghanistan.

01.09.2023

Jamil Jan Kochai

The New York Times

8 Jan 2023

Last September, 13 months after the Taliban takeover, my family and I flew into Kabul one morning as many of our relatives were on the cusp of fleeing the city. We hoped to see them before they parted.

My uncle Fawad and cousin Hashmat picked me up from the airport parking lot. The dire state of the economy became evident almost as soon as we entered the city. Groups of children rushed our car, begging for money or food. Poverty in Kabul has been severe for decades. The billions of dollars that flooded into the country during the American occupation rarely reached impoverished Afghans, as income inequality grew throughout the years. And yet, at least in Kabul, I had never witnessed such wanton desperation on the streets.

Children waited at bakeries for a single loaf of bread. There were makeshift markets filled with desperate, newly impoverished families, selling mattresses and furniture and their own clothing. Fawad and Hashmat — both young and unmarried — bemoaned the collapse of the economy, wondering why America had cut a deal with the Taliban only to punish everyday Afghans with their brutal economic sanctions. “We used to say, ‘Deny us bread but give us peace,’ but now that we have peace, we realize that we need the bread, too,” Hashmat remarked and laughed.

Four years had passed since my last visit to Afghanistan, and so much had changed. I had 100 questions about the American sanctions, the fighting in Panjshir, the restrictions on women and the future of the country. My family members in Kabul felt hopeless. Suicide bombings continued to maim and kill in the cities. Children were dying of malnutrition in underfunded hospitals. The Taliban had shut down high schools for girls — even though Islamic scholars across Afghanistan have criticized the decision — and many of my young female relatives felt despondent about their futures. The occupation had ended, but the aftereffects of the long, American war were still ravaging the country.

For many Afghans, life has become untenable. There is little work. The costs of food, gas and everyday goods have skyrocketed. The countryside suffers from flood or drought — side effects of global warming caused by large industrial nations. And groups affiliated with the so-called Islamic State continue to carry out attacks on vulnerable communities. Although many Afghans choose to struggle through these incredible adversities, others have been forced to flee.

In 1982, during the Soviet-Afghan war, my parents escaped Soviet bombings in Logar Province, south of Kabul, and fled across the border into Pakistan. A decade later, I was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, as civil war raged in Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter, my family and I immigrated to the United States, integrating ourselves into one of the largest refugee communities in the world.

More than 40 years have passed since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, leading to the deaths of as many as two million Afghans. And yet, to this day, the Afghan people have been seemingly condemned to perpetual displacement. War after war, invasion after invasion, Afghans are still seeking asylum.

Fawad dreams of escaping Afghanistan. He has been unemployed for years, living off odd jobs and funds sent to him by relatives in America. He was planning a trip to Brazil, where he would begin an arduous journey through South and Central America to eventually reach the United States.

According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than six million Afghans have been driven out of their homes or their country by conflict, violence and poverty. Legal routes into safer countries like the United States have dried up as the international community continues to isolate and disengage with the Taliban government. Many Afghans, including my own family members, feel compelled to take dangerous pathways through South American jungles, Eastern European woods or deadly waterways.

Journeying through the Darién Gap between North and South America has become an increasingly popular pathway for Afghan migrants unable to attain a visa for America. My mother warned Fawad about the dangers of the Darién Gap, but he wasn’t dissuaded. “There’s nothing for me here,” he said. “I have to leave.”

In our rented apartment in Kart-e-Char, a neighborhood in western Kabul, we were met by my mother’s sisters: Nafeesa, who lived nearby, and Marijan, who had traveled from our home village in Logar. My aunt Nafeesa is tall and stout and quick-witted. From a young age, I learned not to tease her because her jokes packed a wallop. Nafeesa and her husband, Qayoum, a slim bureaucrat from Logar, lived in the Kart-e-Naw neighborhood of Kabul with four brilliant daughters, all of whom were in danger of losing out on an education.

Her eldest daughter, a 14-year-old, could no longer attend her classes because the Taliban had barred girls from high school. As of Dec. 20, the Taliban banned Afghan women from all higher educational institutions as well.

Nafeesa and Qayoum refused to give up on their daughter’s education. They paid for online English courses and signed her up at the local madrasa. Qayoum supported his daughter’s dreams of one day enrolling at a university. Now he contemplated fleeing the country.

“Let me tell you,” he said. “You never know what God has planned.”

The night before the fall of the Afghan government in August 2021, Qayoum spent hours at his office, filling out biometric forms for last-minute passports — though he hadn’t been paid in months. By 2 in the morning, he had completed about 150 passports.

With the Taliban conquering provinces throughout Afghanistan, Qayoum was dubious about the late-night assignment, but he couldn’t imagine that the entire Afghan government was about to abandon Kabul. In the morning, unemployed for the first time in a decade, he saw the streets filled with Afghans. “The Taliban are coming,” some of them screamed. President Ashraf Ghani had fled, and the Taliban were entering Kabul.

Afghans were so panicked, Qayoum recalled, that their vehicles veered left and right and drove directly into oncoming traffic. Several accidents jammed the roads and families were abandoning their cars to run on foot. Everyone was headed to the airport. Qayoum, too, was struck by panic. He thought he might be shot in the streets.

Fortunately, the Taliban didn’t come for Qayoum. There were no public executions in Kabul — as had occurred in Kabul during the Afghan civil wars in the 1990s — and Qayoum’s fear of total urban warfare didn’t come to fruition. The Taliban carried out raids to search for weapons all throughout the city. When they arrived at Qayoum’s home, they scoured his rooms, found nothing suspicious, and left his family alone. “In the beginning, the Taliban seemed different,” Qayoum said. “They didn’t bother people. They promised to forgive their enemies. They promised not to close schools. I thought things might work out.”

The promises, however, didn’t last.

During my last days in Kabul, my 30-year-old uncle Fawad, the former bodyguard, was on the cusp of fleeing Afghanistan. He sat before me one evening, quieter than ever, rising up every few minutes to go outside and smoke a cigarette. He seemed anxious. Fawad wasn’t in the best shape. He had knee problems and hip pain and weak lungs and a terrible temper that often got him into trouble. But the worst part might have been that he was traveling alone. You could see it in his face. He didn’t want to leave home.

My 24-year-old cousin Hashmat felt compelled to stay and help his parents on their farm in Logar, a largely rural province in eastern Afghanistan. He currently worked as a taxi driver, a farmer, a carpenter, a mechanic and a merchant selling homegrown produce. His two older brothers, Jawed and Nadeem, studied at universities in Kabul but never found employment in their respective fields. Jawed sold produce in Logar and Nadeem worked illegally in Istanbul. When Hashmat finished high school, he decided not to attend college and started working to support his family. For him, a college education just wasn’t practical. He needed income, and he needed it fast.

Throughout my time in Logar, Hashmat drove me around and told stories about the war. He pointed out crumbling bases and locations of recent battles. It felt surreal to return to my family’s village after so many years. The last time I had visited Logar in 2017, firefights and bombings were so constant, I only had a few minutes to visit the graves of my relatives. The local village market and all of the roads had been eerily empty. But Hashmat assured me that Logar had become peaceful again. The roads and the market were packed, and everywhere I walked, I met old relatives and friends.

Hashmat was happy about the tenuous peace in Logar. Over the last several years, he had lived through the brunt of the American occupation, dodging bullets in fields, avoiding corpses on roads, all while attempting to appease the Afghan government forces that haunted his village. His house had been scarred with bullets and severely damaged by Afghan commandos. He faced harassment at checkpoints and was once severely beaten by militiamen. He used to watch the sky, wondering if an American bomb might fall on his head. But now he could walk in his own fields again. The constant firefights had all but ceased. He was no longer afraid of driving produce from Logar to Kabul, a trip that had once been a death wish.

While Hashmat seemed cautiously optimistic about the condition of his country, his older brother, Nadeem, was determined not to return. He had fled Afghanistan in 2020, at what my family recalls as the height of the violence in Logar, and had been living illegally in Istanbul since. It was an arduous and suffocating existence. He worked all day in a factory and then spent his evenings cooped up in a small apartment with several other Afghan refugees. The Turkish police were targeting Afghans for deportation. Nadeem was planning to smuggle himself into Europe again.

The last time Nadeem had made the attempt, he was captured at the Bulgarian border by Turkish police officers. They brutally beat him, tortured him and stole his possessions. In a few days he intended to take a new route with a new smuggler, and he assured his family he was going to make it. His mother, Marijan, wasn’t so certain. She had lived almost her entire life in Logar and had survived two occupations, three wars and the collapse of six different governments. And yet, she could never imagine leaving Logar. “I just want him home,” she said. “It’s where he belongs.”

My aunt Nafeesa and her husband Qayoum had their hearts set on England. They had recently received good news from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy program in Britain. There seemed to be a real possibility of relocation.

By the time I touched back down in Sacramento, Fawad was on his way to Iran, Nadeem was crossing the Turkish border, Qayoum was waiting for a call in Pakistan and Marijan had returned to Logar.

Scattered across the world, my mother’s family waits for visas and court dates and smugglers. They trek through woods and rush past borders in a desperate attempt to escape the violence and poverty generated by the same countries they hope will accept them. For now, my mother sits by her phone and prays for word of their arrival.

Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of the novel, “99 Nights in Logar,” and the short story collection, “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak,” a finalist for the National Book Award.

01.02.2023

Murtaza Hussain

The Intercept
January 1 2023

IN THE EARLY days of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, alleviating the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban was a major part of the campaign to sell the conflict to the American public — and eventually to justify an open-ended military occupation. Whether the United States did much to help Afghan women is a debatable point, largely dependent on which women you ask.

Yet there is no question that today, under the Taliban, a young, educated, and urbanized generation of Afghan women who enjoyed a period of opportunity over the past 20 years is experiencing a catastrophic attack on their basic rights.

The Taliban’s recent decision to ban girls’ education past the sixth grade is only the latest outrage to be inflicted on Afghan women, and another step in a campaign to drag Afghan society back to the climate of medieval repression that reigned during the last Taliban government of the 1990s.

There is one thing that could easily be done to ease the suffering of Afghans under Taliban rule: giving a home to Afghan refugees.

This unhappy situation was not inevitable. There are ideological divisions inside the Taliban, particularly between its leaders who spent the war years abroad mingling in foreign capitals, and those who spent it fighting a grueling insurgency inside the country.

While the Taliban government showed initial hints of pragmatism upon coming to power, today it has become clear that the extremist faction of its leadership is in control and willing to sacrifice the well-being of Afghans and the goodwill of the international community to fulfill its ideological mission.

The United States has scant leverage left to change the calculus of an organization so dead set on its goals. If the words about human rights and women’s empowerment that justified the war for 20 years had any meaning at all, there is one thing that could easily be done to ease the suffering of Afghans under Taliban rule, without risking more harm in the process: giving a home to Afghan refugees.

Last week, Congress failed to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, a measure that would have given the tens of thousands of Afghans who escaped to the U.S. after the fall of Kabul a path to permanent legal residency. The measure had been supported by everyone from former senior U.S. military officials, who issued a letter calling protection of the refugees a “moral imperative,” to human rights organizations. The Afghan Adjustment Act, however, was left out of the omnibus spending bill passed at the end of the year, reportedly due to opposition from 89-year-old Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

These Afghans arrived in the U.S. on flights hastily arranged by the U.S. military as the Taliban marched on Kabul last summer. They remain in the U.S. on a precarious legal status known as temporary humanitarian parole that places them at risk of deportation.

Many of these refugee families include those who fought with the U.S. during the war or supported the U.S.-backed government — making them and their families prime targets of the new Taliban regime.

The failure to pass the law also leaves Afghans who worked with the U.S. military but remain trapped in Afghanistan today out in the cold, denying them eligibility for Special Immigrant Visas that could provide a legal hope of immigrating to the U.S. if they escape the country.

If they are not provided a path to permanent status and are thus left to their fate, the ex-U.S. military officials warned in their letter, in future conflicts, “potential allies will remember what happens now with our Afghan allies.”

THE TALIBAN’S RECENT decision to kick women out of school has been met with outrage by the international community and international Muslim religious figures, but most of all from ordinary Afghans. Many Afghans, including many men, have staged inspiring walkout protests from their classes to denounce the measure.

Having done more than anyone to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the U.S. presence in their country, these are the people who deserve whatever support can be provided to them and their families. In the absence of that support, their future is likely to be grim.

Donald Trump’s recent anti-immigrant presidency and the general tenor of Republican politics means that any effort to resettle refugees — those here today and those who may arrive in the future — is inevitably going to be a political fight. That said, a Democratic president will be in office for at least the next two years and will have an opportunity to use their political capital to right an obvious wrong that was done to Afghans by the U.S. — particularly if, as seems likely, the Taliban continue down a course of provocative repression against Afghan women and minorities.

Amid the terrible events now unfolding, it is worth remembering that, for a few months last year, when they appeared to send the world’s most powerful military into a scrambling retreat, the Afghan Taliban enjoyed a strange kind of recognition — maybe even popularity — around the world. Everyone loves a winner, and the triumphant march of the Taliban into Kabul was greeted warmly by everyone from former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who said that the group was “breaking the shackles of slavery,” to the American alt-right who projected their own idealized vision of hypermasculinity onto the new social-media-savvy militants.

Even mainstream conservative politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., claimed at the time that the Taliban was “more legitimate than the last government in Afghanistan or the current government here” — a statement made with apparent relish at the humiliation of a sitting Democratic president who presided over the final defeat.

The U.S. has done a great deal of harm to the Afghan people, using their country as a proxy battlefield, subjecting them to sanctions, and killing them in huge numbers during the war. The least it can do today is give safe haven to those, particularly women, fleeing the collapse of the shoddy government in Kabul that the U.S. government had propped up, and who are now suffering a harrowing attack on their basic freedoms by a Taliban regime that grows more draconian with each passing day.

Murtaza Hussain is a reporter at The Intercept who focuses on national security and foreign policy. He has appeared on CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and other news outlets.

01.02.2023

The Guardian

Editorial

2 Jan 2023

Families are in desperate straits, the security situation is worsening – but the Taliban’s priority is punishing half the population

The Taliban’s relentless campaign against women is not only a matter of rights, but of survival. It is not only cruel and oppressive, but deadly. In a country already on its knees, where 97% of the population live in poverty, two-thirds need humanitarian assistance, 20 million face acute hunger and parents sell kidneys to feed their families, it has made life still more desperate. By banning women from working for NGOs, they are denying essential, life-saving services to women and children. Almost all the large aid agencies have suspended operations and the United Nations has paused some “time-critical” programmes. Major world powers have urged the Taliban to immediately reverse their “reckless and dangerous” decision, while UN agency chiefs described female staff as key to every aspect of the humanitarian response.

In many cases, these staff – who number in the tens of thousands – are also the only breadwinners in their households. Denying them their salaries ensures that women, children (and, incidentally, men too) will starve. The Taliban’s earlier decision to bar women from universities – and reportedly even primary education – means that no more female doctors or teachers will be trained. Teenage girls have already been kept out of school for almost a year and a half.

The Taliban strove to create the impression of a more moderate “Taliban 2.0” before their return to power, promising not to repeat the cruelties of the 1990s regime. But the new Taliban look more and more like the old one. If there are more moderate figures in the ranks, they are unable to prevail. Last month, there was the first public execution since their return to power. Women have been among those punished in public floggings. If the Taliban’s priorities were not so horrific, they would be bizarre: this viciousness appears to be all they care about, despite the country’s parlous state in every possible regard.

Relations with Islamabad are breaking down as cross-border attacks by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) increase. In December, members of the TTP – separate to but allied with the Afghan Taliban – overpowered guards at a counter-terrorism facility in Pakistan and seized control. As the security situation deteriorates, Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on the Pakistani and Russian embassies in Kabul. The Chinese ambassador ordered all nationals to leave the country after gunmen attacked a hotel used by Chinese businessmen. These developments are not merely a diplomatic problem for the Taliban; hopes of income to help replace the vanished foreign aid that shored up the country for so long have disappeared. Now the last props are being removed as aid operations halt, at terrible cost.

In these grim times, women have demonstrated extraordinary courage and resilience in challenging the Taliban’s harsh rule. Men have taken a stand beside them. They deserve not only admiration, but support. The UK did extremely poorly at evacuating Afghans before Kabul fell last year. As of early December, not one person had been accepted and evacuated under the Home Office’s Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which was launched in January for those at risk because they had worked for or were affiliated with the British government. Afghans, and especially those brave enough to challenge this regime, need more than words from the British government.

Roxanna Shapour · 28 Dec 2022

Roxanna Shapour • Rama Mirzada

Afghanistan Analysts Network

28 Dec 2022

Sixteen months since its takeover of Afghanistan, the Emirate has imposed sweeping new restrictions on women’s lives, kicking female students out of universities and education centres, and banning women from working for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). The bans have come on top of the continuing closure of girls’ high schools, the banning of female civil servants from offices, curbs on women’s independent travel and what they can wear, and denying them access to parks, gyms and public bath houses. In this second report in a three-part series exploring how Afghan women’s lives have changed since the Taleban takeover, Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada consider the responses of Afghan women and their male relatives to the Taleban’s cataclysmic encroachment on their rights: How do you keep going when you have no hope?

The first report in this series, How Can a Bird Fly On Only One Wing? Afghan women speak about life under the Islamic Emirate, published in November, surveyed the consequences of Taleban policies which marginalise women and erase them from public life – on household economies, women’s dreams of education and personal and professional growth, and on the power dynamics within families. Many women described how their independence had been undermined, along with their sense of self-worth and self-confidence, and how they were now struggling to maintain a sense of personhood. For a timeline of the main restrictions on the lives of women and girls since the Taleban came back to power, see footnote 1.

This second report focuses on how women are responding to the onslaughts on their rights and freedoms. We spoke to 19 women living in 15 provinces, all of whom were working or had been working before the takeover. The interviews were conducted in June and July 2022. Their voices have only become more pertinent as Taleban restrictions have tightened through the autumn and into winter, affecting more and more areas of their lives. The interviewees provide significant insights into how women are trying to navigate this ever more difficult landscape, where they often feel no hope, and for some, receive little support from their families. The interviews have been edited for clarity and flow. The names used aren’t their real names.

Where there is no hope

In the summer of 2021, we asked our interviewees how they were coping with the constraints placed on their lives since the Taleban came to power and how they felt about their future prospects as women in Afghanistan. What resonated most was an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and dejection, a feeling of being strangers in their own country, and a lack of options reaching into the lives of generations of Afghan women to come.

The Taleban say they have fought for 20 years to free Afghanistan. When they say this, I feel like we aren’t from Afghanistan, that we are strangers who have come from another place. I am deeply saddened when I think about these things, I try to give hope to other people, but it is impossible for me to remain strong; I always cry because I have no other options.

Nilab, 24-year-old single Baluch school principal, Nimruz province

People are disappointed because the Taleban don’t compromise, and their government is not recognised yet. The girls are hopeless and weary. They’re very talented, hardworking and don’t want to waste even a day of their lives, but now they’re staying at home and thinking that the school gates might never reopen to them.

Ghuncha, 39-year-old married Tajik former civil servant, Ghor province

I have no hope that men and women in Afghanistan will be able to go to work freely. I don’t think this group [Taleban] will ever stop condemning us and I can’t imagine a time when we’ll be able to walk in Kabul freely.

Khwaga, 32-year-old single Pashtun protestor and former civil servant, Kabul City

I am disillusioned about living in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, giving birth to a girl is a big mistake because there are so many problems for them here.

Kamala, 29-year-old married Pashtun, Kunar province

Increasingly rigorous enforcement

We asked the interviewees if there had been any changes in how the Taleban enforced restrictions on women. While most reported that enforcement had increased, their experiences varied according to where they live, but also what had been ‘normal’ social practice before the Taleban takeover. The NGO worker in Nuristan said not much had changed because women in her area covered their faces and going out with a mahram even before the fall of the Islamic Republic and therefore there was no need for vigorous enforcement.

One point to note here is that, unlike other parts of the Muslim world, when Afghans refer to ‘hijab’, it is a reference to clothing that is bulky and covers both head and body and possibly face, either the chadori (burqa), which covers the face, or the abaya, with or without a niqab, or in some areas, an Iranian-style chador. When our interviewees speak of having to wear ‘hijab’, therefore, they are referring to garments which cover the head, the shape of the body and possibly the face. In Afghanistan, all women and even very young girls always wear headscarves.

In many areas of the country, the picture that emerged is a gradual hardening of enforcement, such as in Kunarwhere Kamala lives:

In the beginning, there weren’t many restrictions for women going shopping. Now they warn women when they don’t have a mahram or because of their hijab.^[3] They also warn women who work with NGOs to have a mahram when they travel to other areas. Amr bil Maruf (the virtue and vice police) is active here and claim they’re defending women’s rights, but actually, they cannot because in the past, women could visit [government] offices to solve their problems.

According to 28-year-old married Uzbek former teacher, Sima, who lives in Samangan, it was still possible in summer 2022 to move around without a mahram in Mazar-e Sharif where her mother lives:

During the first six months, there was little enforcement [of rules], but now it’s very strict. I was going [from Samangan] to Mazar without a chadori [burqa] or mahram and no one told me anything, but in the past two months, we haven’t been able to go anywhere without a chadori, or abaya, and a mahram. Today [in Mazar], I went to the hospital with my mother in a taxi. No one told us anything, but it is impossible to do this where I live.

38-year-old former civil servant Khalida recounted her experiences in Kabul:

The enforcement of the restrictions has increased. The Taleban tell me to cover my face and hair whenever I go out. A few days ago, in front of Gulbahar Centre, a Taleb told me that God would not forgive me. I asked why? He said that, because my face was not covered, all non-mahram men could see it. Another time. I was waiting for my friend at Haji Yaqoob Square so we could go to a book fair together. The Taleban came several times to ask me why I was standing there, who I was, and who else was with me. Life is strict for women here. The Taleban try to show the world that nothing [bad] is happening in Afghanistan. The Taleban said that women [government] employees must introduce their husbands or brothers to work in their place. They know this is impossible because everyone’s field of study and work experience is different. They just want to marginalise women and trick people.

For most women we interviewed, fear was a powerful motivator for compliance, and rumours fuelled anxieties. 28-year-old Tamana, a married Tajik primary school principal told us that while they had not witnessed strict enforcement in her area in Takhar province, news reports and rumours were causing women to restrict themselves:

I don’t wear short clothing at school, even though only my [female] colleagues are there because we are afraid of spies. Three months ago, my baby got sick and my husband, mother-in-law and I went to Taloqan. We passed through three checkpoints. The Taleban asked about our mahram and our relationships with each other. One of my friends told me that on the way to Taloqan, the driver lied to the Taleban at a checkpoint and told them that [the woman in his taxi] was his wife and that the Talebs asked him to kiss her [to prove it].

The Taleban have not restricted us in my area from going to the bazaar, but the fear lies in our hearts. We hear that the Taleban have beaten women in other places, but it hasn’t happened here yet. That’s why we are afraid. Yesterday one of my friends went to Khwaja Bahawuddin. She says the Taleban have banned black abayas and ordered all women there to wear the chadori. There is a change in my clothing too. I now wear a very long chapan [coat] and a chadori. I used to wear a shorter chapan because I don’t feel comfortable wearing long clothes. My previous clothes were also modest, but this year we were ordered to wear long chapans.

28-year-old Najia, a married Pashtun NGO director living in Nangrahar province, told us that while not much had changed for women in her area since the Taleban takeover, she had started to place restrictions on her own movements:

I used to go places in a rickshaw, but now I don’t because I’m afraid, even though no one has said anything about it. I now have a mahram with me because of my own fear, not because it is enforced. The women here can go shopping as before. Women were already wearing the chadori, so there hasn’t been much change in what we wear. I still wear an abaya and niqab now as [I did] in the past.

24-year-old Nilab recounted how the Taleban in Nimruz stop wedding ceremonies where music is being played:

Women must wear hijab and men must grow beards. People obey these restrictions because they’re afraid of being arrested and punished. The restrictions have increased. They can’t bear even the sounds of people’s happiness. When there is a [wedding] ceremony, the Taleban arrive suddenly and order people to turn the music off or they arrest the men of the family.

The interviews also provide insights into enforcement tactics. In many areas, the Taleban use mosques as a platform to deliver messages about restrictions on women to their menfolk, urging them to ensure the women in their families comply or prepare to face reprisals. Nilab also told us that enforcement had become less visible in her area in Nimruzand that the Taleban were delivering messages in mosques and verbal cautions to men:

They’ve been enforcing the restrictions from the beginning, but now there is Amr bil Maruf – they monitor the clothing of the students and teachers near schools. A month ago, they stopped us going shopping without a niqab and mahram. They told the shopkeepers not to let women without a mahram into their shops. Now [visible] enforcement has decreased, but they still monitor us from afar. Women can go shopping without a mahram, but if they’re not wearing a niqab and a big chador or if they’re wearing makeup, the Taleban find out where they live and threaten their guardians.^[4] The Taleban have advised men at the mosques that they should not permit their women to go out of the house, go shopping or go to any public place without them. They said at the mosque that if they see a woman alone and without [proper] hijab, it will be a problem for her guardian. The Taleban also warned taxi drivers not to allow women without a mahram into their cars.

At least in some areas, there do not seem to be serious consequences for violators. For example, 20-year-old unmarried Pashtun midwife Usha who lives in Uruzgan province said no one in her area was following the rules, and she herself was carrying on very much as before:

The Taleban don’t stop women to advise them because they make their announcements in the mosques when men go for prayers, or in the offices where they tell the managers about the orders. For instance, in the hospital there were some rooms used by both males and females, and the Taleban told the director to separate them. It was announced in two or three mosques that women must not go out alone or even with two or three other women, but no one obeys, and the Taleban have not enforced it. I’ve gone to the bazaar, my friend’s home, and taught classes; the Taleban have not said anything to me yet.

Parvana, 26-year-old unmarried Tajik schoolteacher from Panjshir province said that restrictions had increased, but went on the talk about how restrictions were being driven by the ongoing conflict in the province:

I think the enforcement of the restrictions on women has increased and girls cannot go to school or university and women cannot go to work. The Taleban say the situation is normal and there’s peace here, but actually there isn’t. There is fighting in Panjshir, so families are afraid to send their daughters to university for fear of the fighting, car explosions and rape on the way. The university is almost two hours away, so families don’t send their girls – or their boys – because the situation is unstable.

Some interviewees, such as the 35-year-old Hazara NGO worker, Manija, who lives in Mazar-e Sharif city,reported a scaling back of enforcement since the early days of the takeover:

In the beginning, the enforcement of the restrictions was very serious; now they’re not too strict on women. I don’t know the reason. In the early days, they were rude; for instance, they stopped cars by pounding on them and shouting impolitely. They asked why the women were sitting in the car’s front seats. I don’t know why they’re more polite now. They used a wooden baton to show women to cover their hair and faces. They didn’t look women in the eye when they told them this, but now they look us in the eye and I feel that slowly they too like to see women [outside]. I wear a chadori or an abaya and a mask or no mask and I go out without a mahram. No one has said anything to me yet.

However, 25-year-old protestor, Kowkab, reported a different story from her sister who was at university in Mazar:

In Mazar, girls who live in the [university] hostel cannot go home because the Taleban don’t allow them to travel without a mahram. In the past, female students did everything by themselves, including travel. I know the majority of the female students have no mahram.

There does appear to be some room for negotiation, at least in some areas or workplaces, such as for Usha the midwife we interviewed in Uruzgan province:

I can move freely and have no problem, though there are a few restrictions on women’s clothing; for instance, the Taleban ordered us to observe hijab inside the hospital and offices; no one is following these orders yet, and no one has been forced to obey them. When the Taleban ordered female staff to observe hijab in the hospital, we told them we can’t wear an abaya inside the hospital because cleaners wash the floors with chlorine and an abaya would get dirty on the wet floor. Now, we’re wearing the clothes we wore in the past, such as shalwar kamiz and our white lab coats.

The Taleban also ordered the female staff to come to work with a mahram. The hospital told the Taleban that female staff work separately from the men, so there is no need for a mahram, and they’re not necessary because the hospital does not allow them to enter the women’s ward. Female staff aren’t allowed to come to the hospital in a taxi, rickshaw or on foot, even if another woman accompanies them. They must either come with a mahram or use the hospital transport. Female patients aren’t allowed in the hospital without a mahram. The hospital announced this order, but no one follows it and there has been no serious enforcement. For me, there’s no change. I use the hospital transport. I wear the clothes I wore during the Republic in the hospital, and a chadori outside.

Are men in the family supportive?

When we turned to how the men in their families viewed Taleban restrictions on women, nearly all respondents said their close male relatives were generally opposed to the restrictions. This was particularly the case when it came to the closure of girls’ schools, to which most male family members appeared to be unanimously opposed. Many interviewees, however, said their extended families viewed the Taleban’s restrictions positively. The interviewees, themselves, often broadened the conversation to include the socio-cultural dynamics at play when it comes to women’s rights.

Former civil servant Ghuncha, who lives with her disabled husband and two of her seven children in Ghor province, said that men, particularly in rural areas, were happy about the new restrictions on women:

They say it’s good for women to observe the hijab and good that women are forbidden to move around. In the first years [of the Republic], no one liked women being present at meetings, but [gradually] there was a big positive change in women’s roles. So, now, men are very happy again with these restrictions because they like a government that doesn’t give any authority to women, that makes women observe the hijab, and keeps them at home to do housework and not talk loudly. This is what men want, especially the ones in the villages. My husband thinks otherwise. He thinks educated women should serve society and help other women. He says that having a mahram is not bad, but what about those women who don’t have one? My husband is against school closures because he thinks society needs women to work in different sectors such as education, the military, and health.

The 28-year-old former teacher, Sima, from Samangan province, told us that while her husband was opposed to the restrictions, her own parents’ family were in favour of them:

All men like their wives to observe hijab and stay at home [but] my husband didn’t oppose me, he had no problem when I was going out without a mahram. He’s not happy with the new restrictions, but [the men in] my parents’ family are happy. My husband and I always worry about our children’s education. He says they should be able to study and become independent in the future. My husband wishes for me to have a job so I can help him manage our expenses.

Tamana lives in Takhar province with her husband’s family, who are in favour of the rules on the hijab and mahram, but would like to see older girls in education:

My husband’s family agrees with the hijab and mahram rules for women, but they’re not in favour of closing schools and keeping girls out of education. Families have different mindsets. For example, my father’s family was not too restricted when it came to the hijab and mahram. I had permission to participate in all programmes, but my husband’s family is not like that and now I am 25 per cent more restricted than I was before [I got married].

24-year-old single Nilab lives with her family in Nimruz province she believes that even those, like her father, who disapprove of the restrictions stay quiet about it for fear of Taleban reprisals and peer pressure from the neighbours and family members:

In general, Afghan society is traditional, the education rate is low, especially in my area where the majority of men support these restrictions. Those who are educated and know these restrictions are no good have no right to speak. If they speak, Taleban intelligence will arrest them for speaking against the Emirate. My father doesn’t support these restrictions, but he keeps silent to save himself from public embarrassment. He says the hijab we had before was perfect and if the Taleban’s government is Islamic then they should ensure women’s security, instead of restricting them.

The insurmountable challenge of finding a mahram

Making mahrams obligatory was particularly controversial among our interviewees; for them and their male relatives, it has proved an intractable logistics challenge, as 20-year-old Usha, who lives in Uruzgan province with her parents, eight sisters and a younger brother, explained:

My father agrees with the hijab rules and is happy about them. He says girls must study as much as they want, but use the hijab everywhere they go, even if they go abroad, because it is in Islam and in the Quran. My father is against the obligatory mahram. He says he cannot be in two places at the same time.

I was in Kabul when I learned about the obligatory mahram from my colleagues at the hospital. There were female patients who didn’t have a mahram, so they were asking other women with a mahram to tell the hospital they were from the same family. I don’t think the Taleban can enforce this restriction because there are so many patients and I don’t think all of them can bring a mahram. Most bring their small sons with them. Sometimes, when I have something to do and want to go two or three hours late to the hospital, it’s a big hassle. I have to first find out if my father is free to come with me. It would be difficult for me to obey the Taleban’s order that women must be accompanied by a mahram, even if I wanted to. In my family, my mother and I both have jobs. If my father comes with me, then who should go with my mother?

Taking a mahram along to work was also an added a financial burden for Manija in Mazar-e Sharif, given her already strained household economy:

It’s difficult for me to work because of the mahram [rule]. I must take my husband or my son with me to work, but this is so difficult to manage financially. The office doesn’t pay the travel cost of my mahram so I have to pay for it myself and if I don’t have a mahram, they stop me on the way.

Even Tamana who was able to go to work without a mahram because the school she taught at was so close to her home, reported that the requirement was limiting her professional options and the employment prospects and education of other women:

There’s a big change in women’s education and employment. In the past, the offices were recruiting women, but they don’t hire us anymore and women who work for most NGOs must have a mahram in the office. I don’t go to work with a mahram because the school is near home. My colleagues don’t come to work with a mahram either, but we can’t travel to [the provincial capital] Taloqan [for work] without a mahram. There are many checkpoints on the way and they check each woman’s mahram. I’ve worked in many offices in the past. I was going to the districts and provinces to participate in seminars and conferences without any problems. Now, that is impossible.

Finding ways to cope

In the end, after the initial shock of the takeover abated, uncertainty over the new rules gave way to resignation that they were there to stay and would, if anything increase. Still, most of our interviewees have devised at least some coping mechanisms to at least be seen to stay within the rules and minimise risk.

24-year-old unmarried Tajik, Pakiza, from Paktika province recounted how she and her colleagues complied with the rules at the NGO where she works:

In the beginning, no one was going out for fear of being beaten by the Taleban. After a month, the women started going out. The Taleban here aren’t very serious about hijab but are serious about mahrams. In the beginning, the Taleban warned women to observe hijab and take a mahram. They warned me three times to always observe hijab and have a mahram. Now, when I have a [work] meeting with them, I wear an abaya and niqab and go with a mahram, but otherwise, when I travel to another province or to the districts, I wear my own clothes and a chadori. In the first meeting, the Taleban said that men and women in our office could work together in the same room, but there had to be a distance of one metre [between them]. When we have a meeting with them, there is a one metre distance between men and woman and our mahrams wait outside.

Similarly, Nilab told us how the Taleban in Nimruz had first demanded she send a male colleague to the Department of Education to file her paperwork, but finally relented:

The Taleban’s restrictions on women have affected my mental health. I can’t bear them. We have been ordered to wear a niqab or chadori, but the weather in Nimruz is so hot, when my face is covered, it feels like fire is falling on me like rain. In the past, I could go to [government] offices freely, but when I first went to the education department, they didn’t let me in. They told me I must send a man to process my work, so I sent a male school employee, but he couldn’t process the work properly or accurately. Now, we have permission to enter the office, but we have to call the Head of Education in advance. The Taleban guards let us enter after checking our hijab.

The latest edicts

As Khadija, a 42-year-old married midwife from Kandahar, explained, women have experienced the new restrictions to their lives not in a vacuum, but when they were struggling as well, with the calamitous crash to the economy, fear of worsening poverty and in a climate of uncertainty.

The situation is unacceptable, prices are very high, the fighting might start again and there are no jobs. People are anxious and everyone is waiting for what might happen next.

42-year-old married Pashtun midwife Khadija, Kandahar province

Khadija’s fears of what might happen next were not unfounded. This month two more blows have come in quick succession – to women’s potential to earn money and to any hope that education could be a way forward for some. On 20 December 2022, the Taleban barred female students from universities and on 24 December, they banned women from working for NGOs.

The decree denying Afghan women a university education was signed by Taleban amir Hibatullah Akhundzada, “with immediate effect.” As so many times since the Taleban takeover in August 2021, women in several cities across the country took to the streets to demand their rights (see here and here). The protests were forcefully quashed by the Taleban (see for example this video in Herat where the Taleban used water canon to disperse the protestors and this report from Kabul). This time, however, the girls were joined by some male students, who walked out of classrooms and exams in solidarity with their female counterparts (see for example here and here). At Nangrahar University, male students joined women protesters and at Kandahar’s Mirwais Nika University, they were beaten and fired upon by the Taleban for protesting. More than 60 university professors and lecturers have resigned in protest. The ban was strongly condemned by the United Nations, Western capitals (see here), Muslim-majority countries (see here) and even the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s leading centre of learning and jurisprudence, Ahmed El-Tayeb who slammed the move as contravening sharia. He urged the Taleban to reverse their decision (see here).

Afghan women were still trying to come to terms with this devastating blow when, four days later, the Emirate announced it was barring women from working for national and international NGOs (see here and here). For many Afghan families, the salaries of mothers and daughters working for NGOs has been a lifeline, keeping the household economy afloat and putting food on the table. For Afghan women, this ban was also a mortal blow to their hopes that the situation might improve over time. It looks to be a decisive move by the Taleban to demonstrate their resolve in removing women from the public sphere altogether. Many of the major international NGOs have called the ban a red line and suspended operations (see, for example, press releases by the International Rescue Commission, and Save the Children, Care International and the Norwegian Refugee Council). They have said that banning their female employees from working is not only a breach of humanitarian principles, but also makes their work, in practice, impossible.

The response to these last two edicts restricting women’s lives has already been greater than to all previous ones. Some Afghan men, students and university professors, have acted publicly in solidarity with female students, while the suspension of assistance in response to actions by the Afghan state that humanitarians find intolerable is a rare move, possibly unprecedented. That suspension of aid, at the start of winter when much of the population is already at breaking point, has the potential to touch off wider discontent across geographies and demographics. The Emirate may find itself under greater pressure than ever before.

Edited by Kate Clark and Martine van Bijlert

References

References
↑1	Almost immediately after they took power, the Taleban started the campaign of repression against women. Below is a timeline of restrictions on women’s lives since the fall of the Republic on 15 August 2021: 1. First incident of violence against women protestors 5 September 2021 2. Abolished Ministry of Women’s Affairs 17 September 2021 3. Girls’ high schools not re-opened when all others were 17 September 2021 4. Female civil servants told to stay at home until further notice 19 September 2021 5. Women barred from parks and amusement parks without a mahram, a close male relative acting as a chaperone, 11 November 6. Women barred from travelling more than 72 kilometres without a mahram 26 December 2021 7. Amr bil maruf imposes strict hijab rules, including either the Chadori or black Iranian-style chador as the preferred attire 10 January 2022 8.. Universities become gender segregated 26 February 2022 9. Reversal of promise to reopen girls’ high schools 23 March 2022 10. Parks must be gender-segregated 28 March 2022 11. Women barred from driving 3 May 2022 12. Women must cover their faces in public 7 May 2022 13. Abolished Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) 17 May 2022 14. Female TV presenters told to cover their faces on air 21 May 2022 15. Female students barred from selecting civil engineering, journalism, veterinary, agriculture and geology in the annual university entry exams 14 October 2022 16. Women barred from parks, gyms and public baths 13 November 2022 17. First official flogging of three women for moral crimes 18 November 2022 (after Amir issued decree for full implementation of sharia law on 14 November). 18. Women barred from universities and education centres 20 December 2022 19. Women banned from working for NGOs 24 December 2022
↑2	Research for this report was conducted in June and July 2022 – semi-structured phone interviews with 19 women between the ages of 20 to 42. They were from 15 provinces, Daikundi, Ghazni, Ghor, Helmand, Kandahar, Kunar, Mazar-e Sharif, Nangrahar, Nimruz, Nuristan, Paktika, Panjshir, Samangan, Takhar and Uruzgan, eight living in provincial capitals and seven in rural districts, with four other interviewees from Kabul city. Our interviewees came from diverse communities and ethnicities across Afghanistan – one Baluch, four Hazaras, one Nuristani, five Pashtuns, seven Tajiks and one Uzbek. All interviewees were either currently employed or had been working until the Taleban takeover. This was by design as we sought to find out how the changes and restrictions had affected the lives of women who had previously been active in public life. Two of the interviewees were university students and several had had plans to continue their education, but these plans were derailed by the economic problems they encountered after the fall of the Republic. Four of the interviewees were protestors. The interviews were conducted through open-ended questions in a free-flowing conversation that roughly followed the outline of the following questionnaire. Our intention was to allow interviewees to speak about the one or many significant changes in their lives without being prompted. This approach allowed us to first get a sense how they ranked the significance of these changes before exploring the nuances of their experience in greater detail. The semi-structured questionnaire consisted of nine open-ended questions: 1. What has changed in your day-to-day life since the Taleban came to power? 2. Which of the changes has had the most impact, or do you think is the most important effect? 3. How are these changes affecting you personally and your family in general? 4. How are they affecting other women in your extended family and community? 5. What changes are there in the enforcement of the orders/restrictions regarding women since the Taleban came to power? 6. What do your male relatives think of the recent restrictions? 7. How do you feel about the changes? 8. In what ways would you like the current situation to be different? 9. How do you think this can happen?
↑3	According to officials rules, women should wear a burqa/chadori or an abaya with face veil when outside the home, which they should leave as little as possible and only with good reason. See this earlier AAN report, “We need to breathe too”: Women across Afghanistan navigate the Taleban’s hijab ruling.
↑4	Taleban view a woman’s husband, father or brother, or even son as her guardian, ie legally responsible for her.

12.29.2022

Sultan Barakat

Al Jazeera

28 December 2022

The Taliban’s anti-education edicts stand against the very foundations of Islam and will harm Afghan society as a whole.

The recent edict to ban women from higher education in Afghanistan is not only a blow to those directly affected but to all of Afghan society because it further erodes the little hope for progress remaining in the country. The order was issued at a time when people were hoping for a reversal of another Ministry of Education edict issued in March that stopped girls from attending state-run secondary schools.

Such an indispensable, fundamental right as the right to education being put on hold for half the population exemplifies how much the internal tug of war between competing Taliban factions can harm Afghanistan. Indeed, these most recent limitations on women’s participation in Afghan society are just the latest consequences of the regrettable competition between those in the Taliban who know “where the shoe pinches” and have reflected on the complexities of 20 years of conflict and those who are removed from the realities of the people and cannot see past perceived ideological gains.

For now, members of the latter group appear to be winning. But keeping the country on their chosen path will lead not to a prosperous and strong Afghanistan but to increasing internal strife, continued isolation and eventual collapse of the state.

Afghanistan’s minister of higher education, Nida Mohammad Nadim, tried to defend the edict banning women from universities by pointing to supposed logistical issues, such as limitations to gender segregation on campuses and claims that women do not adhere to the Taliban’s desired dress code while attending classes. The excuses he presented were similar to those offered for the March edict closing down girls secondary schools, but this time he also managed to insult Afghan women and their families across the country by suggesting they are acting “improperly” when seeking education and employment outside their homes.

In March, the authorities had said the secondary schools will remain closed only until “a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture”. Almost a year later, there is still no sign that there are any policies being put in place to address the issue. This apparent lack of interest in finding a way to reopen secondary schools, coupled with the most recent edict putting further limits on opportunities for female education, has caused people around the country to start questioning the sincerity of the Taliban’s stated concerns and considerations over women’s education.

It is not only Afghans affected by these policies who are starting to question the government’s stance on women’s education. There is also discontent among some high-ranking Taliban officials as those working in relevant ministries found themselves unable to offer anything to people demanding answers and solutions. As these excuses, delays and disappointments continue, an entire generation of children have already been deprived of a whole year of education. This is a loss very difficult, if not impossible, to make up. Excuses could have been made if the Taliban leadership had closed schools but was actively working towards a solution. But putting these bans in place without even attempting to circumvent any – real or imagined – obstacles to women’s education is indefensible.

Taliban leaders in Kandahar and Kabul should reflect on the following three points as they judge the value of girls education and determine the role women can play in making Afghanistan a safe, stable and prosperous nation.

First, contrary to claims that it is part of a “Western agenda” imposed on Afghanistan, women’s right to an education is enshrined in Islam.

The first verse of the Quran that angel Gabriel revealed to Prophet Muhammad PBUH began with the word “read”:

“Read! In the name of your Lord who created: He created man from a clinging form. Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One who taught by [means of] the pen, who taught man what he did not know.”

It is paradoxical for the Taliban government to say it is working towards fulfilling the divine call and building a truly Islamic country while simultaneously institutionalising the shackles of illiteracy and ignorance across the nation.

Second, education of women and their participation in the economy is a prerequisite to successful societal development. Those behind the edicts against women’s education should reflect on the impact their decisions will have on the achievement of the broader objective of nation building following 40 years of war. The Taliban’s leaders appear to view complete gender segregation as the recipe for a well-functioning and truly Islamic system. But can they build such a society without educating women? How are they planning to ensure women are cared for by female doctors, for example, if they do not allow girls to go to school and receive a proper education? If women are best served by women, how will they receive quality service from undereducated women, if they are served at all?

Without educated women in the workforce, all 40 million Afghans will have to rely on the male labour force for their development and prosperity, and it does not exceed 8 to 9 percent of the population. Can this minority successfully sustain and develop an entire country devastated by years of war on its own? The Taliban’s myopic attempt to build a gender-segregated society without building the needed labour force to sustain it is equivalent to throwing Afghanistan into the hands of “external” forces because eventually the government will be left with no option other than to import all kinds of workers from abroad merely to keep the country’s head above water.

Third, making a political football out of women’s education will have political, diplomatic and economic consequences well beyond what the government appears to be anticipating. It will further hinder the Taliban government’s already limited prospects for gaining recognition from the international community and working with other nations to better the living conditions of the Afghan people. These anti-education edicts, which are not fully supported by either the people or by the Taliban leadership, undermine and overshadow everything the government achieved in its first year in power and present to the world an image of confused governance and split authority.

These edicts also undermine the efforts of those working towards more constructive and open dialogue between the Taliban and the international community and ensure that Afghanistan will remain isolated and in crisis for the foreseeable future. This is an outcome that should be anathema to the Taliban government because it means Afghanistan will remain dependent on the goodwill and aid of its neighbours and other global powers.

It is imperative for Taliban leaders to rethink their decisions that will undoubtedly harm Afghan women and thus the Afghan nation. Women not only constitute an indispensable part of the Afghan workforce, but they are also the hands that rock the cradle in which the future of Afghanistan rests.

Sultan Barakat is a professor in Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University and an Honorary Professor of the University of York

12.22.2022

Global Opinions contributing columnist

The Washington Post

December 22, 2022

In the autumn of 2020, during the pandemic’s bleakest days, one of my students at the School of Leadership, Afghanistan drew a picture.

It depicts a tent in a field ringed by mountains. The tent is blue fabric, staked to the ground at its corners with a mesh opening in one of its walls. Behind the mesh, obscured, stands a woman. She holds strings of colorful balloons, the strings extending out through the mesh, and she is releasing them, one by one, and letting them rise into the air.

The girl who drew the picture, this young Afghan artist, explained it this way: The blue tent is the blue burqa. The woman inside is every Afghan woman forced to erase herself beneath that blue fabric or behind the walls of her home. She stands for every woman who is alone and quarantined not just by covid-19 but by elements of society that claim ultimate jurisdiction over her life and future, and who fights back by sending her daughters to school. Daughters like the artist herself.

The woman in the blue tent opens her hand and her colorful balloons float away.

*The picture drawn by a student of the author, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, at the School of Leadership, Afghanistan in the fall of 2020. (Courtesy of Shabana Basij-Rasikh)*

Two years later, in the midst of days bleaker than any I could have ever imagined for my country, the men of the Taliban sit comfortably in Kabul and take aim with their weapons and casually blast the balloons of our hopes out of the sky, one by one.

The latest shot came on Tuesday, when the Taliban decreed that women are now barred from attending universities in Afghanistan, effective immediately and indefinitely. It’s a project that began in March, when it banned girls from attending school past sixth grade yet kept universities open.

That’s over now. What remains in my country is this: Girls can attend school through sixth grade — or, said another way, more or less until they enter puberty. And then nothing.

In the Taliban’s Afghanistan, there is no need for adolescent girls to study. There is no need for young women to learn. Women have their purpose. The relentless codification of control over their futures, their ambitions, and their bodies has unfolded across 2022 with slow brutality.

Almost since the day the Taliban seized power last summer, I have asked the world not to look away from Afghanistan. I have asked you not to look away from Afghan women and girls, and from the men who are the judges, juries and executioners of dreams.

I ask this for the same reason that Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights, wrote on Twitter last month: “Those who fear a radicalized Afghanistan should be alarmed by the Taliban’s policies against women & girls, denying them education, work in most sectors, even small joys such as the right to go to a park. This extremism will lead to instability, poverty & more population flight.”

Yes. It absolutely will. It already has. So look, and see, and act.

Act to boldly support and publicly advocate for Afghan women — women who are beaten and shot at, and whose bodies appear cast away at roadsides and in dumpsters and who still call even now for freedom and the right to work and to learn. To Muslim-majority nations I say: Act and speak out in the strongest terms against the Taliban’s utterly un-Islamic decrees.

I personally benefited from the bravery of Afghan women in the 1990s under the Taliban’s first regime. I am who I am because they did what they did for girls like me, risking their lives to teach us in secret. It’s in their honor that I continue our fight for dignity and justice, now and forever.

A new generation of Afghan women is being pushed off the pathway toward education and independence. The bright balloons that once filled our sky are punctured and falling to earth.

These women and their hopes are allies against extremism that the world can’t afford to lose. See them, hear them, honor them. Don’t look away.

12.22.2022

Gordon Brown

The Guardian

22 Dec 2022

In Afghanistan, girls may be banned from primary school. Other Muslim nations hold the key to upholding their rights

Afghan girls at a private institute in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 9 November 2022. Photograph: EPA

This week, the Taliban made a bombshell announcement that they will ban women from attending university or teaching in Afghanistan. It is a decision that has done more in a single day to entrench discrimination against women and girls and set back their empowerment than any other single policy decision I can remember.

Since the Taliban returned to power, girls have been banned from attending secondary school. Now they are being banned from primary school. Thousands of female government workers have been told to stay at home. Other recent rulings prevent women from travelling without a male relative or attending mosques or religious seminaries. Last month, girls and women were banned from entering public places, including parks.

The rest of the world cannot now stay silent in the illusory hope that these bans are temporary. It is time to take the Taliban on – and it is the Muslim nations across the world that follow Islamic law to uphold the education of women and girls, and believe it central to Islamic teaching, that are in the best position to lead the charge. Muslim countries hold the key to restoring women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan.

In the two days since the Taliban’s university ban, we have already heard some welcome voices. Qatar’s ministry of foreign affairs, which has been a mediator between the Taliban and the west, immediately condemned the actions and expressed “concern and disappointment” as it urged Afghanistan to end its ban. The Saudi foreign ministry expressed “surprise” and “regret”, and called on the government to reverse the decision. It was, it said, “contrary to giving Afghan women their full legitimate rights, foremost of which is the right to education, which contributes to supporting security, stability, development and prosperity in Afghanistan”.

After the UAE representative to the UN labelled the move an attempt to secure nothing less than the “the erasure of women from public life”, an official UAE statement said the decision not only “violates fundamental rights”, but “the teachings of Islam, and must be quickly resolved”.

And it is these demands for Islamic law to be upheld that could secure a reversal of the policy. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), alongside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is in a position to use its platform to demand that Afghanistan’s de facto authorities end this assault on women’s rights.

Unity on this issue is possible because religious teaching upholds girls’ right to education. “Iqra”, meaning to read, is the first word of the Qu’ran. And the rest of the Muslim world follows mainstream Islamic teaching that promotes girls’ education. Indeed, “the seeking of knowledge is obligatory for every Muslim”, states Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 74, one of the six canonical teachings in Sunni Islam, which emphasises the deep commitment to learning – by men and women – across the Arab world.

Owing to its own strong commitment to providing education to all girls, women’s university enrolment in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, has increased from 2% in 1970 to 39% in 2018. And in Saudi Arabia, half of university-age women attend university – a higher female enrolment rate than in Mexico, China, Brazil and India. Every country in the Muslim world, except the Taliban-run Afghanistan, is publicly committed to the UN sustainable development goal number four: that every child is ensured access to “inclusive and equitable quality education” by 2030.

The case for reversing the multiple bans becomes even stronger and more urgent when one recalls that Afghanistan itself has enjoyed long periods when girls’ education flourished. Before the Taliban’s 1996 takeover, 60% of Kabul University teachers (and half its students) were women. Afghan women constituted 70% of the country’s schoolteachers, 50% of civilian government workers (and 70% of the 130,000 civil servants in Kabul), and 40% of doctors. In this century alone – up until a year ago – the number of Afghan girls enrolled in school had increased from just 100,000 in 2000 to more than 3.5 million, and female literacy had doubled.

In the long run, repression will fail. You cannot uneducate millions of Afghan girls who learned in the years before 2021 to write, read and think independently. You cannot forever oppress girls and women who have known what it was like to be free. This is why the international community will enjoy widespread public support as it tackles one of the gravest and most indefensible injustices of our generation.

We know the multiple bans were a decision of the Taliban spiritual leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, based in Kandahar, whose followers insisted on these sanctions at a recent a meeting of Taliban officials and policing authorities. He is the real stumbling block to change. Led by our Muslim friends, the world must now plead with him, reminding him of the Islamic texts that justify education for all. It is by mounting all possible pressure through the IOC and the GCC, with the backing of the worldwide women’s movement, that we will ensure girls and women in Afghanistan are finally guaranteed their human rights. This is a fight to the finish. For the sake of girls and women everywhere, it has to be won.

Gordon Brown is the United Nations special envoy for global education and the former UK prime minister

Fabrizio Foschini · Afghanistan Analysts Network

Fabrizio Foschini

Afghanistan Analysts Network

22 Dec 2022 print sharing button

A series of clashes between local villagers and incoming Pashtun groups in the northern province of Takhar brought the issue of conflict over land back into the spotlight. This is an age-long problem, but the collapse of the Republic shifted local power balances and brought different communities onto the winning side. As a result, many old land claims, conflicts, debts and legal accusations have been revived. The recurring conflict between nomadic Pashtun Kuchis trying to gain access to the summer pastures of Hazarajat and local residents has also resurfaced. This year, however, for the first time since 2001, it is the Taleban who have to manage the myriad competing claims with their potential for conflict.

At the same time, they are seen by a number of communities across Afghanistan as supporting the Kuchis and thus a party to the conflict and not impartial mediators. This report by Fabrizio Foschini (with input from Rama Mirzada) looks into two different cases – the land claims of returning refugees in Takhar, and the Kuchi-Hazara land dispute in the Hazarajat – to assess how the Taleban have been handling land disputes so far, in the context of a radically changed political balance and increasing competition for resources.

A Kuchi winter camp in Goshta district, Nangrahar. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2012.Layers of migration and displacement on the northeastern border

In mid-September 2022, clashes erupted in Khwaja Bahauddin district of northeastern Takhar province between local residents and incoming former returning refugees who were trying to settle in the area. The returnees were Pashtun and reportedly many of them of Kuchi, that is nomadic, background. ^[1] Though they came from Pakistan and some southern and southeastern provinces, where they had lived for the past decades, these Pashtuns claimed to be originally from the area and to possess lands in the district, that they demanded be turned back to them. The confrontation that broke out with the largely Uzbek (and some Tajik) residents left at least three people dead when the opposing sides traded hand grenades.

A land dispute that turns sour is hardly unexpected news in Afghanistan, but in this case – as in many others – the ethnic dimension with its looming political undertones meant it could reverberate far beyond the original dispute. What is relevant in this case is that during the first period of Taleban rule in 1996-2001, Takhar was either controlled or bitterly contested by the forces opposing the Taleban (indeed, Khwaja Bahauddin was the Northern Alliance headquarters where Ahmad Shah Massud was assassinated in 2001). Although the Taleban were able to make inroads among sections of Takhar’s population during the past two decades, the province can certainly not be considered a Taleban stronghold. The National Resistance Front (NRF) is known to operate against the Taleban in the southernmost part of the province and to have supporters in other areas as well. Moreover, the Taleban worry that the Uzbek and Tajik population of the area might be receptive to recruitment campaigns, not only by the NRF, but also ISKP, building on the local presence of other radical Islamist groups such as Jundullah, only loosely aligned with the Taleban (see earlier AAN reporting here and here).

The local Taleban authorities reacted, swiftly and harshly, intervening in favour of the Kuchis. On 6 October, the provincial police chief and deputy governor told the 400 already settled families in the area they would have to vacate their houses and land within three days to make room for the returning refugees (see report here). After the local residents appealed the decision, a prime ministerial committee was appointed to resolve the conflict, at least with regard to the residential houses. The committee recognised the Pashtuns as the original owners, but also ruled that “based on the compassionate decree of Amirul Momineen” and because the Tajiks and Uzbeks had rebuilt the dilapidated houses, they would be given 150 acres (60 hectares) of land nearby. The dispute over the agricultural lands was referred to a special court that is supposed to begin its work soon (read here). The government’s media centre described the decision as a satisfactory solution for all parties, but it is not clear how the newly displaced will organise their housing and survival in the face of the oncoming winter (see here and here).

The confrontation in Khwaja Bahauddin is one among several land disputes that have emerged in Takhar since the Taleban’s return to power, particularly in the northern districts of the province close to the Amu river and the Tajik border, including Dasht-e Qala, Rustaq, Darqad and Yangi Qala. Already in December 2021, The New York Times, in their report about land grabs occurring under the new regime, mentioned the problems experienced by Takhar’s local residents.

Like many of the northern provinces, Takhar presents a multi-layered human landscape, where several waves of Pashtun migrants (naqilin) joined the pre-existing inhabitants during the early and mid-twenty century, encouraged by Afghanistan’s monarchic policies. The low-lying northern border districts, jointly called Mawara-ye Kokcha (the land beyond the Kokcha, after a tributary of the Amu River) became the winter quarters for some groups of mostly Pashtun nomads who in summer moved to the high pastures of Badakhshan. There were also other, non-nomadic, Pashtun settlers in the northeast, whose status and wealth could range from that of political and economic elites, endowed with the best tracts of newly-irrigated land close to provincial centres, to that of groups of land-hungry migrants settled on remote and agriculturally marginal land.

During and after the anti-Soviet jihad, when non-Pashtun groups, locally in a majority, acquired military power and political prominence, the prominent position of some Pashtun communities in the north was challenged. Later, after the fall of the Taleban in 2001, some groups of Pashtuns who were perceived to have supported the Taleban military campaigns against the Northern Alliance were targeted in retaliation. As usual, it was those who already had less – money, connections, protection – that paid the highest price. Accounts of looting, punishment beatings, rape and murder were published by Human Rights Watch.

Between 1998 and 2001, Takhar had indeed been a major battleground between the Taleban and the Northern Alliance. Large groups of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), forced to leave by the scorched earth tactics employed especially by Taleban troops who were on the offensive and largely alien to the province, moved from one side of the frontline to the other, where they were sheltered with scanty international support in refugee camps. This was also the case for one of the main bones of contention of the present dispute: Muhajer Qishlaq or Refugee Village. As the name suggests, this was a settlement where displaced people, unable to go back to their homes in other districts or neighbouring areas, ended up settling. Usually, the land allocated for refugees would be lalmi (non-irrigated), if not simply dasht (in Afghanistan usually meaning ‘desert or steppe’) which belonged to nobody. However, it could well be the case that the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani which still held power in the northeast, in opposition to the Taleban, also distributed lands which had been vacated by previous exoduses of refugees. In general, more Kuchis left Afghanistan for Pakistan in comparison to other communities, particularly during the Soviet occupation, as the ‘total war’ tactics then employed disrupted their pastoralist livelihoods.

In an interview aired on Afghanistan International TV channel on 19 September 2022, Kuchi representatives claimed they had in the past already petitioned the Republic for the restitution of the disputed Takhar lands, but said they had been unable to return to the area, back then, due to the opposition of local armed groups.^[2] Takhar was indeed notorious for a chaotic array of militias who vied for power and territorial control from the first years of the Republic. From 2010 onwards, some commanders managed to re-badge their militias as pro-government, irregular armed forces, mostly funded by the state/the United States military and commonly referred to as arbaki.^[3] Now that the arbaki, who were for long considered the Taleban’s utmost foes, have been routed, more and more Kuchis are returning and their claims have gained strength.

Many communities involved in long-lasting disputes or competition for local resources, especially when Pashtun and with some past record of support for the Taleban, now feel they are on the winning side and can enjoy the support of the institutions at the local and national level. In Takhar, as in other parts of the country, these groups are set to make the best gains possible off the current situation. This, however, means that other families, villages and even whole communities, who may have only fared slightly better than just survival, are now faced with the sudden loss of one of the very few assets that remain available to Afghans: land to till and to live on. Old disputes originating from the deeds of long-dead kings or strongmen, and from the displacements and dispossessions caused by war, are again coming back to haunt Afghans at this new and demanding junction, threatening to make yet another generation pay for the errors or misfortunes of the past ones.

The Kuchi-Hazara land dispute in 2022

Almost every Afghan province, if not district, has its own, specific type of land dispute, often dating back some decades; each one would require a separate discussion to identify its origin and interpret the potential political fallout. However, the conflict between Kuchi nomads and Hazara villagers in the central highlands of Afghanistan, potentially surpasses all other land disputes for its magnitude, duration and political significance.

Unlike the situation in Takhar, the land dispute in the highlands of Hazarajat did not suddenly emerge after the Taleban returned to power in 2021. In fact, it has been a constant for the last fifteen years (read AAN reporting here and here), despite having been overshadowed by other dramatic issues and largely forgotten during the final years of the Republic.

The conflict centres on the Kuchis’ claim of rights over the summer pastures of Hazarajat, an historical region of central Afghanistan that includes the current provinces of Bamyan and Daikundi, as well as portions of Maidan Wardak, Ghazni, Uruzgan, Ghor, Sar-e Pul, Samangan and Parwan. The Kuchis started to bring their flocks there every summer from their lower-lying winter quarters in the late nineteenth century, after having helped the Afghan emir Abdul Rahman in the war of subjugation of the nearly-independent Hazaras in 1892-93. The grazing rights the Afghan kings granted the Kuchis and the political and economic superiority they enjoyed over the vanquished local Hazara villagers resulted in eighty years of economic and social relations that were structurally unbalanced and unfair. Much of the local agricultural land was purchased by nomads, while their Hazara tenants, often the old proprietors, continued to work it.

The tables were turned after 1979: the Soviet invasion and the subsequent war stopped the nomads’ seasonal transhumance into the highlands, while the birth of the Hazara mujahedin factions sparked the development of a political consciousness among local Hazaras who now had the tools and weapons to defend or regain their lands. Living standards rose because many landlords were no longer extracting rent. After 2001, Hazaras further improved their once poor status in Afghan society, as they took up the opportunities afforded and came to represent an industrious and highly-educated community central to the political and social life of the country. During this time, Hazarajat, albeit remaining a remote and comparatively poor portion of Afghanistan, did benefit from the development brought by its peacefulness.

The only time during the last few decades that the Kuchis were able to enter Hazarajat and reclaim their old rights from a position of force was during the Taleban military occupation of the area in 1999-2001. During the Taleban campaign against Hazarajat, which registered some of the worst episodes of violence against civilians of the Afghan conflict, the Kuchis, coming on the heels of the Taleban troops, demanded twenty years of ‘back rent’ and were reported to have grazed their livestock on wheat fields.

After 2001, the summer pastures of Hazarajat became once more a forbidden fruit for the Kuchis. But although the Kuchis were not able to enter, they did try. From 2007 onwards, yearly confrontations arose on the borders of Hazarajat. Every spring, large groups of Kuchis, both with and without livestock but usually heavily armed, gathered in Maidan Wardak and Ghazni provinces in the districts giving access to Hazarajat from the southeast. This often escalated, with the Kuchis looting and destroying the property of the usually less-armed and outnumbered villagers who tried to confront them, resulting in burnt houses, devastated fields and scores of displaced people. However, they seldom if ever managed to progress further towards the heart of the Hazarajat. Year after year, in the face of a stiffened Hazara resistance, the central government was forced to intervene by deploying security forces and appointing a mediation commission. This commission, with the hefty budget that was allocated to it in good years, usually managed to defuse the situation. The Kuchis would eventually depart, only to come back the following year. This left the impression that, more than a real attempt to reach and reclaim their lost pastures, the yearly confrontation had come to represent something else for the nomads: for the more dispossessed, a platform to call government attention to their plight, and for their opportunistic leaders, an occasion to play the peacemakers and be bribed off by the government (an opportunity in which some Hazara leaders joined as well).

This year, however, for the first time since 2001, the route to the highland pastures lay open and a greater number of Kuchis than in any previous year moved into Hazarajat. Some even reached the Bamyan districts of Panjab and Waras, in the innermost part of Hazarajat, where some of the most prized pastures that the nomads lay claims to are located.

Overall numbers are difficult to estimate, but some local sources interviewed by AAN pointed to great variation depending on the area. In the more remote areas, in the heart of Hazara territory, numbers were relatively low. For instance, only 380 Kuchis were said to have travelled to Panjab district – all armed men and accompanied by the Taleban governor of Bamyan – despite the fact Kuchis claiming ownership of one-third of all arable land in the district. Even fewer, just over a hundred individuals, reached Waras. Numbers seemed much higher in the more easily accessible districts of Maidan Wardak: 1,600 Kuchi families, according to local Hazaras, for the two districts of Behsud 1 and 2 (a Kuchi leader gave the number of more than 300 families, only for Behsud 1).

In the areas they travelled to, the Kuchis’ set of priorities varied but little. First ranked the exaction of payment for the use of the land by the Hazara tenants (hejara). They often claimed payment was due for at least 20 years, sometimes even for the full 43 years since 1979. In some cases during this period, powerful Kuchi businessmen had managed to travel privately to the land they owned inside Hazarajat and settle their accounts with their tenants. Or, more often, the tenants would yearly go to Kabul, Jalalabad or Logar to pay rent to the landlord. But for the past four decades, a great number of Hazara villagers had de facto re-occupied the lands they had previously lost to the nomads, and successfully escaped attempts to extract payment by the formal landlords. Now that those claiming to own the land have returned, sums that were being extracted from the villagers, calculated on what should have been the landlord’s share of multiple harvests, based on the value of a sir (roughly seven kilos)of wheat, easily reached sizeable amounts. For example, a farmer in Waras was reported to have been comparatively lucky, since he only had to pay three years of arrears. This amounted to 52,000 Afs (around 600 USD). Others in Panjab had to compensate for longer periods, paying arrears for sums as high as 280,000 Afs (around 3200 USD) and 500,000 Afs (around 5700 USD).

In many areas, the Kuchis also objected to the houses villagers had built on the land they were now reclaiming, and asked them to either pay for the land they were using or vacate the houses. As few villagers have the capital necessary to buy the plots where they built their homes, many are now trying to resist eviction. In Bamyan province at least, the Kuchis also obtained the restitution of a number of fortified mansions (qala) they had built during the era of their hegemony over Hazarajat.

Some Kuchis have sought to exact the payment of old debts from local villagers. During the decades of the Kuchis’ pre-1979 presence in Hazarajat, many acted as traders, bringing local Hazaras the commodities this remote and underdeveloped region lacked, such as textiles and utensils. According to one of the members of the council that was established to mediate between the Kuchis and the Hazaras in Bamyan (see below), hundreds of old debts have now been brought up, sometimes dating from as far back as 50 years. Once the debts are re-evaluated at the present value of money and with added interest, the amounts can reach staggering heights: the heirs of a deceased farmer in Waras who had once contracted a 70,000 Afs debt were now told to pay 4,500,000 Afs (around 52,000 USD).

The Kuchis have also brought their flocks with them. Hazara interviewees in Behsud assessed the number of livestock brought by each Kuchi family as between 350 and 1,000 animals, while Kuchis there gave an average of 500 per family. The member of the local mediation council estimated that this summer around 10,000 Kuchi sheep and goats had been grazing between Bamyan provincial centre and Yakaolang, , and a similar number in the areas between Yakaolang and Panjab and Waras. Even in the furthermost areas of Bamyan, although they left their families behind, male Kuchis brought their flocks along. Some locals reported that the Kuchis had bought up sheep and goats from cash-stripped villagers in Yakaolang , Saighan and Panjab districts and had thus increased their flocks during their stay there. Local villagers from areas previously visited by Kuchis told AAN the flocks were much larger than previously. This has led many people to believe that the Kuchis, expecting access to abundant and free pastures, had brought along livestock belonging to other residents of Nangrahar, Logar, Khost and even Pakistan, in exchange for money.

If in some remoter districts they stopped for a comparatively short time – the shortest stay was 20 days in Waras – in other areas, Kuchis remained with their flocks for the whole of late spring and summer, leaving only in late September. This meant that in many places through which Kuchis would usually only transit (ie spend some weeks on their way to the higher pastures and some weeks on their way back), they were now settling down for four or five months.

In places like Behsud, where a commission to mediate between the two sides was established at an early stage (more on that later), losses of harvest and crops to the Kuchi livestock received some compensation and the disruption was somehow managed, despite the high numbers of Kuchis who came. Elsewhere, the situation only worsened as the year wore on. According to complaints of local villagers in Nawur district in Ghazni province, Kuchi flocks ate all the available pasture and even grazed crops growing on lalmi (non-irrigated) land (read here). Such situations sometimes escalated and produced the relatively few casualties reported this year.^[4]

That so few incidents of armed confrontation took place on one hand points to some of the swift attempts to prevent violence and negotiate compensation on the part of the Taleban authorities, but it also indicates the utter helplessness, de facto and self-perceived, felt by many Hazara villagers.

It is clear that this year, the Kuchis arrived at what had become a yearly confrontation from a position of stark superiority. After the first shows of resistance on the part of Hazaras in the spring, the authorities embarked on a campaign of asymmetrical disarmament. Many Hazaras reported that the Kuchis bore arms freely and even pointed to the distribution of weapons for ‘self-defence’ by local Taleban authorities. In some cases, Kuchis displayed Taleban insignia or uniforms and even appeared on board military vehicles, though it is unclear to what extent this was the result of initiatives by local Taleban commanders or organised by the Kuchis to scare local villagers into submission.

Facing the sudden additional burden of back payments and the threat of displacement, on top of yet another year of drought and the economic crash, Hazara villagers have often seen no alternative than to submit quietly. After over a decade of both sides constructing the conflict as a major ethnic (Hazara versus Pashtun), cultural (sedentary and progressive versus nomadic and conservative), religious (Shia versus Sunni) and political (pro-government versus pro-insurgent) confrontation, local Hazara villagers feel powerless to oppose the claims of the Kuchis, who appear to have full government support, for fear of creating more trouble for themselves.

An early example of what was felt to be retaliation against Hazaras, as the ‘losing side’ by the Taleban was the forcible eviction of thousands of Hazara villagers in Gizab district, shortly after the Taleban takeover in autumn 2021, carried out to satisfy the claim of local Taleban supporters (read here).^[5] The eviction, which was later partially repealed, created a generalised feeling of the ‘tables having turned’ in areas which had not been supportive of the Taleban during the insurgency and that considered the Taleban’s conquest of the state as a disaster and political defeat.

It is not always easy to distinguish between actual Taleban policies vis-à-vis land conflicts and the ways in which individuals or groups try to opportunistically use their connection to the winning side to reap easy benefits, disadvantage old rivals and strengthen their own position. Even so, the de facto actions of Taleban officials and supporters, while being a confusing mix of intervention, indifference and impunity have overall, created the widespread perception among Hazaras that the authorities largely identify with the Kuchi side and have backed them.

At the same time, the Taleban, in its role as the central government, has also sought to manage the Hazara-Kuchi conflict.

The Taleban management of the Kuchi-Hazara conflict

After the early, widely-publicised displacement in Gizab, parts of the Taleban movement seemed wary to risk a repeat of the widespread condemnation stemming from brazen abuses perpetrated by their supporters against rival communities. So, early steps were taken by the Emirate to reduce the likelihood of new outbursts of the Kuchi-Hazara conflict and show that they were in control of the situation. This also fits their self-image as a movement able to manage and resolve conflicts and act decisively.

In spring 2022, the Emirate’s leadership established a number of local commissions to mediate between the Kuchis and the Hazara villagers. The existence and effective activity of these commissions, also called councils, is sometimes difficult to assess. However, AAN has been talking to members of commissions in two areas relevant to the Kuchi-Hazara conflict: Bamyan province and the two Behsud districts of Maidan Wardak.

The impetus for the creation of the commissions was the visit of a high-profile Taleban delegation to Behsud in response to the first armed incidents between local Hazaras and incoming Kuchis in spring 2022. The delegation from Kabul, which included Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Mullah Nurullah Nuri, Deputy Minister of Interior Mawlawi Nur Jala and Deputy Minister of Agriculture Mawlawi Fazl Bari Fazl, held a meeting with Hazaras, Kuchis and local officials, after which a joint commission was formed to work on resolving disputes. According to a Kuchi leader selected as a member of the commission for Behsud 2 district, the delegation also urged the governors of Maidan Wardak and Bamyan to establish security units in these districts to secure the area and prevent conflicts.

The first commission for the two Behsud districts of Wardak was made up of twenty members, ten for each of the two districts, five Hazaras from the area and five Kuchis, mostly coming from Khost for Behsud 1 and from Nangrahar for Behsud 2. Sayed Hashim Jawadi Balkhabi, one of Afghanistan’s few Hazara Taleban, was appointed head of the Behsud commission. According to several Hazaras interviewed by AAN, the Wardak commission was effectively controlled by the Taleban provincial and district authorities and Balkhabi’s appointment was largely a symbolic goodwill gesture towards the Hazaras. In Bamyan, the commission comprised twelve members, six Kuchis and six Hazaras, headed by a Pashtun chief commissioner.

Additional local commissions of six members, all Hazaras, were created in Panjab and Waras. Local Hazara residents claimed that, although the members were selected by the provincial and district Taleban governors – either because they were local allies or relatively weak – both commissions were shunned by the Kuchis as they included no fellow Pashtuns. Most of the cases in these two districts were referred to the central commission in Bamyan.

Although the members did not receive any regular salary, at least the commission in Bamyan received 10,000 Afs (around 115 USD) from both sides for each case that it could resolve. When commissions failed to settle cases, these were referred to the courts.

The commissioners said the commissions stepped in whenever two parties who could not reach a consensus referred the matter to them. So far, they have worked mostly on establishing the amounts of arrears villagers have to pay to Kuchis for land use, or the compensation (in money or animals) Kuchis have to pay after their flocks had grazed on villagers’ crops. The commission in Maidan Wardak had also played a more political role in defusing tensions when it asked the large number of Kuchis who had arrived in the province not to move into Bamyan until the situation there was more favourable, though its success in having this request complied with is likely down to the Taleban authorities in Maidan Wardak, rather than the commission itself.

Altogether, both in Maidan Wardak and Bamyan, Hazaras deemed the commissions powerless compared to the local Taleban authorities who were themselves often linked to the Kuchis.^[6] Hazara interviewees also did not consider the ethnic balance in the commissions a guarantee of impartiality; occasional accusations were made against Hazara commissioners for allegedly acting on behalf of the Kuchis and the Taleban authorities for opportunistic reasons.

Kuchi commissioners on the contrary deemed the work of the commissions useful to prevent conflict and help reclaim the rights they had lost. Speaking to AAN, they however complained about the commissions’ inability or unwillingness to deal with the land titles they had brought, and the lack of a decision on their claims to the exclusive use of wide pasture areas, based not on property titles, but on the farman (decrees) of the Afghan kings.

They said they had been told to wait until next year to be given full possession of the lands for which they claim to hold titles, while a decision on whether to uphold the royal decrees regarding pastures would need to be the subject of a centralised decision by the Emirate. They also said they had been told that if the decision went against them, other alternative places would be allocated to them. This suggested that the government delegation and provincial Taleban governors had briefed the commissions on the need for a comprehensive approach to the issue of land occupation and restitution. This was indeed confirmed, when, on 21 October, the Taleban announced a decree from the supreme leader regarding the occupation and restitution of state lands, which would arguably include the Hazarajat pastures. The decree included a nine-provision action plan and the establishment of a commission to “prevent land grabbing and transfer usurped lands,” as well as a special court to deal with the cases. The commission is composed of various relevant ministers, with the notable exception of the Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs, traditionally the one state institution to engage with the Kuchis the most.^[7]

But despite attempts to prevent major confrontations and to win time, at least at the central level, there has also been a clear pattern of abusive and self-interested behaviour in favour of the Kuchis by local Taleban authorities. This is exacerbated by the fact that in many Hazara-inhabited districts, following their military conquest by outsiders and in the absence of dependable local Taleban supporters, the new officials are often from neighbouring Pashtun areas and often have private interests and biases in disputes over local resources. For instance, according to a village elder in Malestan of Ghazni it was not the Kuchis that were now claiming lands or pastures in the district, but rather some Pashtuns from neighbouring Ajrestan district with whom locals had had bitter disputes in the past. He said they were exploiting the new situation, with fellow Ajrestanis holding institutional power in Malestan, to advance ungrounded claims.

A new trend: Old judiciary cases brought up

Another salient trend across the Hazarajat has been the re-opening of sometimes decades-old judicial cases relating to Kuchi claims of human or animal losses in past confrontations with the Hazaras. This was despite the fact that the Taleban’s general amnesty featured prominently in the guidelines given to the Kuchi-Hazara mediation commissions at their inception, with its emphasis on forgiveness of past offences on both sides. Cases that have been reported to AAN by local elders or other villagers^[8] include:

In Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak, three years ago, local Hazaras connected to militia commander Abdul Ghani Alipur burned some tents and vehicles belonging to Kuchis who had come to the district. Under the old government, residents of the Hazara villages involved in the incident had been made to pay 4,500,000 Afs (around 52,000 USD) as compensation and the matter was reportedly closed. However, during the winter of 2021-22, a number of local villagers were arrested after the Kuchis demanded that a further sum be paid for the mistreatment they had suffered. The villagers were held until the whole local community agreed to put together the money to pay the additional fine.

In Nawur district of Ghazni, two Kuchi shepherds were killed by Hazaras eight years ago in an uninhabited mountain tract, and some 250 of their sheep were stolen. From July 2022 onwards, Taleban authorities have been detaining groups of men from the closest villages to force the communities to pay a blood price. Local elders only recently managed to get the last batch of prisoners released after travelling to Kabul and pleading with the cabinet. They claim the local authorities do not want to refer the case to the courts for investigation, preferring illegal or irregular pressure in order to squeeze the largest possible amount of blood money.

Also, in Nawur district, a Kuchi woman was killed during an armed confrontation four years ago. This year, the blood price was set at ten million Afs (around 115,000 USD) by the local commission. It was for the entire village to pay. When the villagers failed to pay up, a number of its inhabitants were imprisoned. The Kuchis later added accusations of rape and are now asking for additional compensation.

A conflict from 1990 between Hazaras from the Malestan district of Ghazni, and Pashtuns from neighbouring Ajrestan district, back then thought to have been settled through negotiation, has been revived and the Hazaras have been asked to pay 62,500,000 Pakistani rupees (around 280,000 USD) for the livestock losses suffered by the Kuchis at the time. By order of the Malestan district governor (who is himself from Ajrestan), every villager who failed to pay would be imprisoned until the full amount was handed over. Kuchis appear only marginally in this case, though one Kuchi, a resident of Kandahar, has separately approached locals asking for compensation for the alleged theft of livestock and cash by Hazaras during the same conflict in 1990. When Hazara villagers referred his case to the conflict resolution commission and the attorney general, the plaintiff resorted to threats and intimidation (threatening to kidnap local Hazaras for ransom, if he lost in court).

In Shebar district of Bamyan, a Kuchi man was killed 30 years ago. According to a commission member from Bamyan, the case has not yet been finalised, but once settled, the amount of blood money will need to be paid by all households of the village concerned.

In Khedir district of Daikundi, five Kuchis were killed 40 years ago. Towards the end of September 2022, Taleban authorities imprisoned nearly 40 Hazara elders from various villages in the district and forced local people to pay blood money of nearly one million Afs (around 15,000 USD) (read also here)

In all these cases, the local Taleban authorities’ modus operandi has been to side with the Kuchi/Pashtun party and enforce compliance with their demands by meting out collective punishments to local communities. This practice offers the authorities arguably more than just the prompt payment of fines or blood money: it represents a way to pre-empt or break Hazara resistance and potential openly expressed opposition to the Kuchi claims – and, by extension, Taleban power – by forcing whole communities into submission.

The threat of additional fines and imprisonment if they do not comply with Taleban orders has significantly contributed to a feeling of helplessness among Hazaras. The lack of recourse and leverage was so acute that some community elders advised individuals or families who have serious issues with the nomads to leave, since they would be unable to receive support from the village and instead threatened to endanger the whole community.

At the same time, it seems that all the parties involved are aware of the unpredictability of political power and that the pattern of dominance may not last forever. Some Kuchis are selling the lands they have just reclaimed before another change in fortune might occur. According to local Hazaras in Panjab district, some Kuchis who visited the district this summer, chiefly those who have moved to Pakistan or the Gulf countries and now have the bulk of their economic activities there, are willing to sell the land to the Hazaras sharecroppers who are working the land. The problem is that most Hazaras cannot easily afford to purchase it.

However, not all Kuchis benefit from the current situation. Many continue to share with the highland Hazaras at least one common trait: to be among Afghanistan’s most dispossessed and economically vulnerable communities. In the context of an ever-contracting economy and the climate crisis, and harsher competition for the scanty resources that are left, it is difficult to imagine a solution for the large tracts of land that are claimed by different communities, that will leave all sides satisfied and that meets all the different demands and needs.^[9]

Where does this come from, and where might it lead?

Many of these decisions, actions and developments point to the convergence of interests between Kuchis and the Taleban – both among local Taleban authorities and within the higher echelons of the central Taleban government – and what may indeed amount to a deliberate pro-Kuchi strategy by parts of the Emirate. The question now is what the Taleban government has to gain in getting so deeply involved in the notoriously sensitive and disruptive issue of land disputes between Kuchis and sedentary communities, and what the rationale may be behind their generally siding with the Kuchis.

There seem to be at least seven possible motivations:

Taleban tribal/ethnic solidarity with Kuchi groups vis-à-vis non-Pashtun communities: Ethnic polarisation is no newcomer to the Afghan conflict, and it is clear, despite the movement’s insistence on its all-Afghan character, that the Taleban at the very least does not fully trust non-Pashtun groups and has largely excluded them from the ranks of the government;

The need, at the local level, to reward supporters and to settle old scores with rivals: Land in Afghanistan has always been a prized resource to be redistributed to allies. Additionally, in past years under the Republic, communities on the losing side of land disputes would often approach the Taleban asking them to intervene on their behalf in exchange for support or recruits. Now, the Taleban might simply be fulfilling promises they made before their victory.

The need to relieve the pressure from large groups of returning refugee or land-hungry Kuchis on other areas that are more central to the Taleban geography of power and their supporting communities (see for example this instance of Kuchi-Taleban clashes in central Ghazni)

The excuse offered by land disputes between communities to disarm local residents, especially those belonging to areas and communities deemed unsupportive or potentially rebellious;

The possible use of disputes to intimidate said communities through the imposition of fines, detention and the massive presence of security forces;

The gathering of much needed revenue through the consolidation of power over rural communities and the widespread imposition of taxation (on the expansion of Taleban’s taxation, including village-level demands in the Hazarajat, see this recent AAN paper);

The creation of a buffer of supportive Pashtun communities in the midst of hostile territories to disrupt the operational capacity and logistic networks of armed opposition groups that may emerge or seek to expand their presence.

The last point requires a few additional words. Afghan news outlets critical of the Taleban, have argued that the Taleban’s aim, in both the northeast and in Hazarajat, is to guarantee military control of the areas they did not manage to conquer during their first rule in the 1990s. The re-settling and empowering of Kuchis in these areas would thus be part of that strategy through a continuation of policies by Afghan kings (from Abdul Rahman to Zaher Shah) to engineer the migration of Pashtuns by allocating land.

Though claims that the Taleban Emirate is implementing a fully-fledged project of Pashtunisation of the country, including by bringing in Pashtun settlers from the other side of the Durand Line (that is, Pakistani nationals), might be a little far-fetched, local Taleban leaders have shown themselves interested in exploiting landless Kuchi and other Pashtun returning refugee groups for purposes of political and military control. Whether planned or just facilitated, the replacement of residents through eviction and land distribution could amount to a Taleban tactic to dilute communities deemed untrustworthy or potentially rebellious by interspersing their supporters among them.

Moreover, competition over areas is not only about controlling stretches of land, but also what and who can travel through them. In places such as northern Takhar, the Taleban might be tempted to replicate Abdul Rahman’s project of establishing a buffer of Pashtuns along the country’s northern borders. At that time, the king feared an invasion from the north. Now, the goal would be a more limited one – sealing the border with Tajikistan, which in the 1990s provided the Taleban’s armed opponents with a major logistical lifeline, prompting Ahmad Shah Massud to establish his headquarters in Khwaja Bahauddin.^[10]

Additionally, in the context of the Afghan wars, ‘logistics lifelines’ include cross-border smuggling, in particular narcotic substances, to finance the conflict. The Mawara-ye Kokcha of Takhar has been a primary hotspot for such smuggling and all local players naturally seek to maintain access to this source of income, now that the Taleban are in control of all the major official border crossings.

However, although the Taleban might see benefits to the decision to support Kuchis’ and other communities’ claims, there is also a clear cost. Any government behaving in a unilateral and seemingly ideologically-motivated or otherwise partisan manner with regard to land disputes threatens to lose credibility among and alienate groups of its citizens. That is even more so for a movement that has participated in an ethnically-polarised civil war in the past and is currently displaying almost no inclusiveness towards other ethnicities and social groups.

The risks of pushing communities who have so far remained neutral into active opposition, and even alienating former supporters, became clear last summer with the rebellion of Mawlawi Mehdi, one of very few Taleban commanders belonging to the Shia Hazara community, after the Taleban encroached on his control of local resources (read here for AAN background on him). In June 2022, Mawlawi Mehdi denounced what he called the Taleban’s Pashtun monopoly of power and discrimination against Hazaras and started an armed rebellion in his home district of Balkhab in Sar-e Pul province. It took the Taleban thousands of men and weeks of fighting to quell the uprising. In this case, it was a dispute about the revenue from coal mines, but wresting control over land could provoke similar responses.

Mehdi’s was not a lone instance. Growing dissatisfaction over the lack of rewards or positions, the harsh treatment meted out against their communities and the consequent growing Taleban doubts as to their loyalty, has led other non-Pashtun commanders to fall from grace with the Taleban, as well. Their fate has further distanced their own communities from the government, leading again to more suspicions on the Taleban.^[11]

To counter this dynamic, some parts of the Taleban are trying to improve their capacity for mediation within local communities, beyond the ad hoc commissions such as those created for the Hazara-Kuchi conflict. However, the Taleban’s scope for patronage in many areas is mostly limited to ideologically-related groups, such as religious networks. The usually marginal province of Takhar, for example, has been among the first provinces to see the formation of a new council of religious leaders. Unlike the mediation commissions, this council will be permanent and have a budget; in the autumn, the movement’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada had a meeting Takhar elders and ulama.^[12] However, this may not suffice to counter the negative effects arising from ethnic or communal polarisation in the northeast.^[13]

The seeds for the re-emergence of armed conflicts are easily sown, particularly if the Taleban do not weigh the long-term consequences of their decisions and actions, and shape their policies about land issues in order to accommodate the local interests of their supporters to the detriment of other communities, or to achieve a purely military dominance over refractory tracts of the country and its population. The same mistake was previously committed by others. Afghanistan’s land disputes always have the potential to blow up into something bigger, with the risk of grievances fuelling ethnic polarisation and wider conflict. In the end, the Taleban should know how central a role land disputes and disgruntlement over their outcomes can play in fuelling communities’ disaffection with the government and fanning possible insurgency. After all, they themselves, for nearly two decades, benefited from such conflicts in their struggle against the Republic and its foreign allies.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1	Prior to 1979, the term Kuchis (‘those who move’) mostly referred to nomads inhabiting the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, but nowadays it is widely understood to include all Pashtun groups who in the past practiced, or still practice, a nomadic way of life. Their summer pastoralist transhumance had been boosted in the late 19^th century, both by the extension of Kabul state control over large tracts of previously semi-autonomous highlands, and the itinerant trade across the Indian subcontinent in winter by male family members (until this was progressively stopped after 1947 because of the tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan). The definition of who is a Kuchi based solely on their – past or present – nomadic livelihoods is sometimes difficult, as many other Afghan communities have also traditionally been involved in seasonal transhumance, whether long- or short-range, partial or involving the whole household. In Takhar province, for instance, many Uzbeks, Tajiks, Arabs and Baluch were also maldaran (livestock herders), yet none would be called a Kuchi; nor would the (northern) Pashtuns, until recently. Under the Islamic Republic, the Kuchis were defined as a separate electoral constituency with ten reserved seats in the Lower House. The impact of these more recent forms of political organisation are unclear, now that the parliament has been abolished. Find further reading on the Kuchis by this author here.
↑2	The role of local commanders such as Qazi Kabir in Khwajah Bahauddin and Malik Tatar in Yangi Qala in preventing the return of refugees to areas where they had usurped tracts of land has indeed been reported in past years (see for example these AAN papers: here and here).
↑3	For more on these irregular forces, Afghan Local Police (ALP), Uprising Groups and later on, Afghan National Army Territorial Force (ANA-TF), see AAN’s 2020 Special report, Ghosts of the Past: Lessons from Local Force Mobilisation in Afghanistan and Prospects for the Future’, as well as this report from 2019 on how Takhar’s strongmen co-opted the ALP.
↑4	Earlier in the year, probably still in winter, a man was reportedly killed by Kuchis in Sar-e Aw village of Jaghatu district of Ghazni when trying to prevent the Kuchis’ animals from destroying his crops. In spring, villagers in Siyasang of Behsud 1 district of Maidan Wardak injured two Kuchis and killed some of their sheep for the same reason. In the first case, the Kuchis eventually agreed to pay blood money to the family of the victim as compensation, although the sum was deemed inadequate by AAN interlocutors. In the second case, the perpetrators fled to a Taleban manhunt to Bamyan, where some of them were later arrested. More incidents were reported throughout the late spring and summer (for example, read here – and here).
↑5	The situation is still tense there as a result of the protracted attempts by the local Taleban networks to evict the Hazaras, who after many months had been granted return to their homes by the Taleban supreme leader. Recently, nine Hazara villagers involved in the legal case were reportedly arrested by the Taleban (read also here).
↑6	In Behsud 1, both the district governor and his deputy are [yes?] of Pashtun and Kuchi origin, in Nawur of Ghazni, a district governor from Helmand was recently replaced by a fellow Pashtun from neighbouring Ajrestan.
↑7	For the moment, the newly-formed commission seems to focus more on the lands allocated to or grabbed by powerful individuals around major cities during the massive urbanization of the previous two decades. Its first act was to start investigating irregularities concerning Mullah Tarakhel Township in eastern Kabul – ironically, Mullah Tarakhel Muhammadi was one of the foremost leaders and parliament representatives of the Kuchis under the previous government.
↑8	These cases have not otherwise been substantiated, but are detailed enough to be credible.
↑9	A discussion of possible ways to enhance economic and social coexistence of Kuchis and Hazaras does not belong in this report. Suffice it to say that, in the opinion of the author, regardless of how low the ebb of the Afghan economy and politics may become, the era of Kuchi hegemony in Hazarajat, or other poor rural areas of the north, has passed and will never return to how it was under the kings. The local populations have reached levels of education, awareness and organisation vis-à-vis the central institutions that, even barring the option of an armed resistance, discourage any such attempt to put back the clock of history. This said, the Kuchis, generally speaking, represent some of the most destitute communities in the Afghan human landscape, nearly always lacking access to education, healthcare, jobs and viable livelihoods. All attempts to favour their integration into Afghanistan’s society and economy, provided they move in the direction of improving the Kuchis’ relations with the country’s other communities and do not pitch one against the other, are not only welcome, but direly needed.
↑10	There are indications that the Taleban have sought to do something similar in Panjshir province. Reports, unconfirmed so far, have emerged of the Taleban facilitating Kuchi grazing in some higher areas of Panjshir, such as Dara-ye Hazara and Paryan, after they had evicted and relocated part of the population during their military operations against the National Resistance Front. These two areas are strategic communication routes (between Panjshir and respectively Nuristan, and Takhar and Badakhshan) over difficult terrain, nearly impossible to reclaim from an insurgency in the making, unless its ties to the local people are severed. This is exactly what the Taleban, now running their own counterinsurgency, relatively unencumbered by concerns for human rights, might have tried to do.
↑11	According to media reporting, two prominent Uzbek commanders from Faryab, a province which provided the Taleban an early northern stronghold, have also parted ways with the Emirate in the past few months. They criticised the monopoly of power by Pashtuns, and one of them was even briefly arrested.
↑12	The recent pledge of allegiance to the Taleban in Panjshir by Hizb ut-Tahrir, a pan-Islamist radical organisation, particularly strong in the province, which has usually kept aloof from the Taleban, looks like a result of similar Taleban attempts at outreach.
↑13	Beside the possibility that some disgruntled commanders may join the NRF, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) is also eager to capitalise on disaffection and resentment against the Taleban among Sunni Muslim non-Pashtuns. Despite not being considered a major stronghold of ISKP, Takhar has recently seen operations involving the group. On 22 October 2022, a magnetic IED killed two Taleban officials in Taloqan, the provincial capital of Takhar, A day later, the Taleban launched an operation in Dasht-e Qala district, resulting in the reported killing of six members of ISKP. A few days later, the Taleban arrested two men whom they accused of being ISKP members in Khwaja Ghar district (see here their alleged confessions). Moreover, Khwaja Ghar, adjacent to Khwaja Bahauddin, has been a major stronghold and training centre for Jundullah, the radical militant outfit which is favoured by some local Uzbeks. Despite cooperating with the Taleban during the insurgency against the old government, it has remained quite distinct from them and could turn into a reservoir of recruits for ISKP.

12.20.2022

by Trudy Rubin | Columnist

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Dec 14, 2022

Failure by Republicans and Democrats to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act this year means that Afghans admitted here after Kabul fell will lose their temporary U.S. parole status next year.

Before the United States made its chaotic exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, Congress had promised special immigrant visas to Afghans who worked with our military or civilians. Once our allies were without the protection of American forces, they would surely face Taliban revenge.

As U.S. troops left, about 80,000 Afghans did make it out of the country, most with the help of their U.S. military colleagues (although tens of thousands who were qualified were left behind). But there was no time for eligible escapees to complete the complex SIV visa process, so they were granted a two-year, temporary “humanitarian parole” status.

Now, unbelievably, Congress seems ready to kick out those who made it here when their status expires in 2023.

The Afghan Adjustment Act, a bipartisan bill that would give those refugees a path to permanent residency, is almost dead because political leaders from both parties have chosen to ignore it. If it doesn’t pass this year, there is virtually zero chance a Republican-led Congress will put it forward next year.

Do congressional leaders, Democrats and Republicans, really plan to stand by while tens of thousands of Afghan allies are loaded on planes and sent back to the Taliban? It seems so.

“People just want to forget about Afghanistan,” said Rye Barcott, a Marine veteran and cofounder of With Honor, a bipartisan organization dedicated to enlisting veterans in public service.

I spoke with Barcott at a small dinner to honor Reps. Seth Moulton (D., Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R., Mich.) for their relentless efforts to help Afghans. Both are members of the House of Representatives’ For Country Caucus, comprised of veterans, a group that pressed the Biden administration to evacuate all of our Afghan allies before we withdrew.

That didn’t happen.

When tens of thousands of terrified Afghans rushed to the Kabul airport in 2021, there was no way to activate the cumbersome SIV process, which can take years. Thousands of Afghans were flown out on U.S. military planes and charters organized by U.S. veterans. Many of the evacuees had worked with Americans, many had not. Giving them temporary status was the easiest answer but left their future in limbo.

Meantime, tens of thousands of interpreters, democracy advocates, and women’s rights activists, who are entitled to those SIVs, are still in hiding in Afghanistan or neighboring countries, desperately waiting for their cases to be decided.

The Afghan Adjustment Act would move the process forward for both groups (although more must be done for those allies left behind).

Republicans such as Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley — a key opponent of the Afghan Adjustment Act — claim they oppose the measure for security reasons. But the Afghans here have already been vetted, and the act would require additional security checks. In other words, the act is a solution to the security problem, not the reverse.

Yet Grassley’s staunch opposition as a senior Republican leader makes it impossible to attach the act to the omnibus appropriations bill working its way through to passage by year’s end. That is the only path open to getting the Afghan bill through.

Senior Republicans appear untroubled by the hypocrisy of their opposition to the bill — at the same time the GOP is demanding an investigation into the Biden administration’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“If you want to investigate Biden’s treatment of Afghans, you shouldn’t be in the position of deporting them,” bluntly states Meijer, an Army vet of the Iraq war, who also worked as a civilian in Afghanistan. (Meijer, one of 10 Republicans to vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump, lost his 2022 primary to a Trump clone.)

His Democratic colleague, Moulton, a Marine Corps vet of the Iraq war, was blunter, saying “Grassley may be carrying racist water for other Republicans” who oppose any Afghan immigration – or any immigration, period. He added “There are a lot of good Republicans who are vets who want to uphold our promises.”

Yet it isn’t just the GOP and Grassley who are at fault.

“The administration is not really lifting a finger for the Afghan Adjustment Act,” Meijer said flatly. “Nobody is really opposed to it, but nobody is viscerally advocating [for it].”

That means it is going nowhere.

It’s no surprise that the Biden team doesn’t want to draw attention to its Afghanistan failure or the immigration issue, but that does not excuse its avoidance of past obligations.

This bipartisan blindness towards pledges made to Afghan allies is a stain on America’s honor — a word that sometimes seems to have traction only with veterans. That blindness also carries security costs.

“We made that promise to protect the Afghan people who risked their lives to help us,” Moulton told me, with the weariness of someone who has stressed this point over and over. “We put our word on the line on behalf of our country. And we know how hard it will be in the future conflicts to find foreign allies if we can’t keep our word.”

Passing this bill should be a no-brainer. Its death would add another chapter to a history of U.S. betrayal of its allies.

“My father was a Vietnam vet, and [I’m sure] he’s rolling in his grave,” Barcott told me. “The Kabul exit was like a repeat of images of Saigon, which is why he spent so much of his life helping Hmong” — an ethnic group endangered by its alliance with Americans in Laos during the Vietnam War.

Yet Barcott was unwilling to relinquish a shred of optimism. “There is hope,” he said. “Legislators need to feel a sense of urgency from their constituents, who need to contact their legislators.”

If you care about American honor, security, and the fate of the Afghans who helped us, that is what you should do — right now.

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