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The Daily Hustle: Crossing the Durand Line to visit family in Pakistan

September 13, 2023 Analytical articles

Afghanistan Analysts Network

11 Sep 2023

The story of Afghan families is often one of loved ones separated by long distances and national borders. Every year, many Afghans who have family living in neighbouring countries make the hours and sometimes days-long journey overland from Afghanistan, braving long bus rides, hours waiting to cross borders and the demands for payment by border guards all to spend some precious time with their families. In the latest instalment of The Daily Hustle, our series of individual accounts about an aspect of daily life in Afghanistan, AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon spoke to a traveller about his family’s overland journey from Kabul to Quetta to visit his mother and siblings.

Every winter, I travel with my wife and eight children to Quetta in Pakistan to spend a month with other family members who’ve been living there for the past three decades. This is a special time of year when we all gather as an extended family and renew the bonds of kinship. I hadn’t managed to make the journey for two years and my mother, who’s getting on in years, insisted we shouldn’t miss the gathering this year.

Getting from Kabul to Quetta is not an easy feat. You have to take an overnight bus from Kabul to Kandahar (nine hours), then a minibus to Spin Boldak (two hours), then it takes up to seven hours to cross the border and, finally, another six hours from the border to my family’s home, again in a minibus. In other words, it takes a little over 24 hours door-to-door. It’s also expensive. All told, it costs about USD 250 for my family of ten and there are also presents to be bought for my mother, siblings and their children.

By the time we arrived at the Spin Boldak-Chaman crossing, called the Friendship Gate or Da Dosti Darwaza in Pahsto, a large crowd was already waiting. But there were also some pleasant surprises. The crossing has improved significantly since the last time I was there two years ago. The Emirate has built two large modern halls: one for men and another for women. There were chairs to sit on and stalls selling snacks, tea and water to people waiting to cross. The children were tired from the overnight journey and getting restless, so I asked my wife to find a place for them to rest while I completed the formalities.

I’m from Kandahar and our ancestral home in the city is noted as my address on my tazkira (national identity card), so I’m allowed to travel to Pakistan without a visa – that’s the rule. But my uncle and his three sons, who were travelling to Quetta with us, don’t have a local address. They had to hire a laghari (guide)to take them across the border unofficially. Luckily a Taleb we had known for years was there at the crossing. He told us there had been incidents when guides robbed people and abandoned them halfway, in the middle of nowhere. Now, the Taleban had registered the guides in their system. He said he’d help us find a registered guide. After a while, he came back to the hall with another man and waved us over. He said he’d agreed to charge 2,500 Pakistani rupees (around eight US dollars) for each person.

I watched as the guide took my uncle and nephews to a row of people sitting in makeshift ‘offices’; some of the people working there took photographs, while others made laminated colour copies of Kandahari tazkiras, signed and stamped and looking very much like the genuine article. We agreed to meet on the other side of the border at Manda, the dry riverbed where the Quetta-bound vehicles stop to take on passengers.

For us, the formalities on the Afghan side were easily completed and we crossed that side of the border pretty quickly. But getting into Pakistan is another matter. It’s a long and arduous process. You have to pass through seven or eight checkpoints in the no-man’s land between the two countries.

The penultimate stop is the biometric cabin, where they take your picture and fingerprints and check them against their database to make sure you don’t have a record. I waited for about two hours before, finally, it was my turn. At least seven men – regular Pakistan soldiers and uniformed militiamen employed by the Pakistani military – each with his own computer, were sitting at desks inside the cabin. I walked up to one of the desks where a soldier took my ID and looked it over. He noted that I spoke English and Urdu and asked if I was a teacher. I told him I’d once been a teacher but was no longer teaching. He then nodded and gestured with his hand, rubbing his thumb against his fingers, the universal gesture indicating an expectation of money. I told him I didn’t have any money, but he looked dubious and said I should search my pockets. He shook his head and said he wanted 1,000 rupees (around USD 3.50). After I paid him, he took my picture and asked me to put my fingers on the biometric device, but the machine wasn’t working and he wrote on the back of my tazkira “fingerprint not captured.”

I walked out of the cabin and looked around for my family. It was then my wife’s turn to do the same with the children in the women’s section. I poured myself some tea from the thermos we’d brought from home and sat down to wait. An hour later, my wife came out of the cabin with the kids and handed me our documents. I saw that someone had written “travelling with a woman and eight children” on the back of my tazkira.

As we were leaving the biometric area, we were stopped by a militiaman who also checked my tazkira. He claimed I wasn’t registered in the system. He looked up at one of the several CCTV cameras, pointed to two teenage boys standing next to him and instructed me to give them 4,000 Pakistani rupees (around USD 13). It was a show for the cameras, a way to take a bribe and not be seen to take a bribe. I’ve heard they do give some money to the children at the end of the day, but most of the loot they keep for themselves. I had no choice but to pay up. If I were to decline or make a fuss, we’d have been delayed for several hours or, God forbid, could have been turned back altogether.

As one hour gave way to the next, the crowd was getting more and more impatient and truth be told, I was a little afraid a dispute might break out between people in the queue or a firefight between the Afghan and Pakistani soldiers on opposing sides of the border, as sometimes happens. These clashes are not unheard of. There have been several in the past decade in the very place where I was standing. On this day, things were relatively orderly, though, and the Pakistani militiamen were not beating people in the crowd as they’ve sometimes done in the past. A man I was chatting to in the queue told me that last year, an Afghan border guard, who was upset about a video of a Pakistani border guard manhandling an Afghan woman at the Torkham border in Nangrahar province that was making the rounds on social media, had shot and killed a Pakistani militiaman.^[1] Now, he said, the Pakistanis were very careful about how they treated people crossing the border.

Finally, the last hurdle. An angry-looking man in civilian clothes asked for my ID. He looked it over and sent me to a nearby cabin where they were vaccinating people for Covid-19. I’d forgotten my vaccination card at home and, even though I’d been immunised several times, I had to get another shot or pay 600 Pakistani rupees (USD 2) to avoid the jab. I’d been planning on getting a booster vaccine when I returned from my trip, so I happily offered my arm to the medic. And with that, I was finally allowed to step out of the crossing point and join my family, also newly vaccinated, in Pakistan.

My uncle and his sons, who’d been smuggled into Pakistan, had arrived at the bus stop several hours before us! They were waiting at Manda and ready to go. They’d already secured a minibus to carry our entire group the rest of the way to my family’s house in Quetta, which took another six hours.

It was already dark by the time we arrived, dusty and road weary, in need of a wash and some sleep. But the fatigue disappeared entirely as soon as we walked up to the gate. The whole family was waiting for our arrival. There were hugs and cheers, as well as some tears. There was tea ready to pour and my mother’s famous sweet bread rolls baked especially for us. In the lively sitting room, the children made shy, tentative gestures to reacquaint themselves with their cousins, but as for me, I was already thinking of the long journey back.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

References

References
↑1	This is likely the incident the man in the queue was referring to (see AVA news agency here).

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon

Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan delusions blind US on Russia-Ukraine

September 10, 2023 Analytical articles

Responsible Statecraft

Quincy Institute

On the second anniversary of the final debacle of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, we should consider the lessons of that disaster for U.S. strategy elsewhere.

While the case of Afghanistan itself is by nature unique, Washington’s mistakes and failures reflected wider and deeper patterns — and pathologies — in U.S. policymaking and political culture. If left unaddressed, these will lead to more disasters in future.

Yet most of the mainstream media and the think tank world are treating the memory of the U.S. war in Afghanistan not as a source of reflection but as an embarrassment to be forgotten as quickly and completely as possible.

This parallels the approach to the memory of Vietnam in the U.S. mainstream — and the result was the disaster of Iraq. One of the most astonishing things about the U.S. debate — to give it that name — prior to the invasion of Iraq, was the general failure to consider, or even mention, what the experience of Vietnam might have taught. Today, this refusal to learn lessons applies above all to U.S. engagement in Ukraine.

The failure to pursue diplomacy with the Taliban prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan can be explained and excused by the fury naturally felt by Americans at the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the Taliban’s refusal immediately to hand over the al-Qaida leadership that was clearly responsible. Nonetheless, given the appalling costs that resulted from the U.S. invasion, it is worth asking whether an approach that allowed the Taliban to save face and remain true to their own beliefs might have produced better results for both Americans and Afghans: for example, exploring the possibility that the Taliban could be persuaded to deliver the AQ leadership to another Muslim country.

In the case of Iraq, there was no sincere diplomatic effort at all, since the Bush administration had already made the decision to invade.

The second lesson of Afghanistan is as old as war itself and was emphasized by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz: that there can never be certainty of long-term victory in any war, if only because war, more than any other human activity, is liable to generate unintended ramifications and consequences.

In the case of Afghanistan, the mission to eliminate al Qaida and remove the Taliban from power morphed into a far greater — and probably innately doomed — effort to create a modern democratic Afghan state through foreign intervention, aid and supervision.

This in turn became related to the attempt to destroy the old and exceptionally powerful nexus between Islamic faith and Pashtun nationalism that had generated the Taliban, much of the resistance to the Communist regime and Soviet intervention in the 1980s, and numerous revolts against the British Empire before that.

Given that most Pashtuns live in Pakistan, the inevitable result was an extension of the conflict to that country, leading to a Pakistani civil war in which tens of thousands died. Pakistan’s refusal or inability to expel the Afghan Taliban led to the threat of direct U.S. intervention in Pakistan — which, if it had occurred, would have produced a catastrophe far worse than Afghanistan and Iraq put together.

The failure to anticipate consequences is worsened by conformism and careerism; not that these tendencies are any worse in the U.S. establishment than elsewhere. But America’s power and capacity to intervene across the world magnify their negative consequences. On the one hand, they mean that even experts and journalists who are in a position to know better, join officials in unthinking obedience to the establishment line of the given moment, which may have only the most tangential relationship to realities in the country concerned.

Returning to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, I encountered journalists whom I had known when covering the Mujahedin war against the Soviets and Communists in the 1980s. I was amused — kind of — to find them parroting a new version of the line that Moscow and Kabul had put out in the 1980s: that the Afghan resistance had no real local support and was not really Afghan, and that it was entirely the creation of outside powers (including Pakistan) and money.

This was despite the fact that the Taliban were recruiting exactly the same people from exactly the same areas as the Mujahedin, who were fighting for exactly the same reasons.

Matters are made worse by the flood of instant shake-and-bake “experts” who are generated every time the United States embarks on a new overseas venture. Selected for their connections in Washington rather than any real knowledge of the areas concerned, they could not correct the mistakes of U.S. policy even if they had the moral courage to do so. Moreover, their ignorance of local history and culture makes them dreadfully receptive to the self-interested fantasies of their local informants.

Thus I was also amused in the early 2000s to hear “advisers” on Afghanistan to the U.S. (and European) governments declare that “Afghanistan in the 1960s was a successful middle class democracy.” This U.S. syndrome could well be called Oedipal, since it is both incestuous and self-blinded.

Once both political parties have committed themselves to a given strategy, the bipartisan Washington establishment finds it extremely difficult to admit mistakes and change course — a tendency to which the U.S. military has also sometimes contributed in a disastrous fashion. This military refusal to admit defeat has its admirable sides — nobody should want U.S. generals to be quitters.

That, however, is why America needs political leaders (including ones with personal military experience, like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Carter) with the knowledge and courage to tell the generals when it is time to call a halt.

Instead, in Afghanistan (as documented by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction and others), generals and administration officials colluded to produce optimistic lies, which were then circulated by a credulous and subservient media. Today, this risks being the case with the Biden administration’s refusal to admit that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed, and that it is therefore time to start developing a political strategy to end the fighting in Ukraine and the economic and political damage this is beginning to cause to vital U.S. allies in Europe.

The last point about the U.S. record in Afghanistan should hardly need to be made, because it has been made over and over again since the 1950s by a whole succession of great American thinkers, including Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward. This is the tendency in the U.S. political establishment to colossally exaggerate both the malignance of the enemy of the moment, and the danger it poses to the United States.

Instead of a Communist-led nationalist movement to reunify Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were portrayed as a force that could start toppling a row of “dominoes” that would end with Communist victory in France and Mexico. Instead of a tinpot regional dictator, Saddam Hussein became a nuclear menace to the U.S. homeland. The Taliban, an entirely Afghan force, supposedly had to be fought in Afghanistan so that we would not need to fight them in the United States.

And today, U.S. officials in their rhetoric somehow manage to combine the supposed beliefs both that Russia is so weak that Ukraine can completely defeat the Russian army and catastrophically undermine the Russian state, and that Russia is so strong that if not defeated in Ukraine it will pose a mortal threat to NATO and freedom around the world.

As Loren Baritz wrote in 1985 concerning the obliteration of the memory of Vietnam in the United States:

“Our power, complacency, rigidity and ignorance have kept us from incorporating our Vietnam experience into the way we think about ourselves and the world… But there is no need to think unless there is doubt. Freed of doubt, we are freed of thought.”

It would be nice to think that on this anniversary, and faced with even greater dangers in Ukraine, the U.S. establishment and media will devote some serious thought to what happened in Afghanistan.

Predictions of an Afghan ‘security vacuum’ were all wrong

September 10, 2023 Analytical articles

Responsible Statecraft

Quincy Institute

It was still shocking for many Americans to witness the swift collapse of a government that so many lives and tax dollars contributed to building.

Today, Afghanistan is a nightmarish place for many Afghans, marked by a lack of rights and opportunities. It’s crucial to recognize this reality. However, it’s also important to acknowledge that numerous predictions from Washington did not materialize as expected. For all the admonishments of the Biden administration, Afghanistan has not become a gift for China or Russia, or a hotbed of transnational terrorism.

President Biden faced relentless criticism for the withdrawal, decried as squandering “20 years of blood and sacrifice” by Republican Senator Jim Risch and branded “fatally flawed” by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who oversaw the end of the U.S. surge in Afghanistan during President Obama’s tenure, likened the evacuation to the infamous Bay of Pigs fiasco, even before the tragic loss of 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans in an ISIS attack.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who less than one year earlier had proudly stood for a photo op with the Taliban’s chief negotiator, after agreeing to withdraw U.S. troops, told Fox News that the “Biden administration has just failed in its execution of its own plan.” In April, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board partly attributed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “U.S. surrender in Afghanistan” and during a Congressional hearing in July, Congressman Michael McCaul labeled the withdrawal “a mistake of epic proportions.” Failure is, indeed, an orphan.

One of the most frequently cited reasons for why the U.S. military had to remain in Afghanistan was rooted in counterterrorism efforts. Indeed, fighting terrorism was the reason for the authorization for the use of military force that allowed U.S. troops to be deployed to Afghanistan in the first place. President Biden drew criticism from certain pundits when he asserted on August 16, 2021, that “Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on [sic] American homeland.” He emphasized that the original mission was, in fact, a response to a terrorist attack and had a primary focus on counterterrorism.

Some pundits might find this fact inconvenient, especially those who have come to believe that our presence in Afghanistan was primarily about nation-building, rather than acknowledging that nation-building itself was an ill-conceived strategy within the context of the War on Terror.

In the lead-up to the withdrawal, the notion of over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities was often ridiculed as ineffective. During the fall of 2021, the Pentagon assessed that the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), an ISIS offshoot in Afghanistan, could potentially launch an attack on the U.S. within as little as 6 months. Yet, nearly two years later, no ISKP attack originating from Afghanistan has targeted U.S. soil.

Furthermore, senior analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) recently evaluated that the group relies on “inexperienced operatives in Europe” to carry out attacks abroad. In other words, the next generation of 9/11 hijackers is not being trained in Afghanistan. The Biden administration showcased its ability to secure significant over-the-horizon victories against terrorists, such as when a U.S. drone killed al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul apartment on July 31, 2022.

As of last March, Nicholas Rasmussen, the Department of Homeland Security’s counterterrorism coordinator, viewed the likelihood of a 9/11-style attack as “almost inconceivable.”

The world of today is different than on the morning of September 11, 2001. Back then, Afghans had extremely limited communication with the outside world. In contrast, today, over 60 percent of adults own a cell phone, with more than 80 percent having access to one. This trend holds true for other once-isolated parts of the world as well. This connectivity will pose challenges to the Taliban’s ability to enforce their draconian restrictions over the long-run. It has also changed the way terrorists operate. In the realm of terrorism, the world is indeed flat. Extremist ideologies can be disseminated, and terrorists can recruit overseas operatives to inflict harm.

But this may not be such a big win for terrorist groups like ISKP. While their capacity for recruitment is more substantial than in the past, their ability to train and direct quality recruits without interference is actually diminished. Meanwhile, the capacity of potential target nations to intercept such plots is stronger than ever before. Instead of participating in a global campaign of terrorist whack-a-mole, it is our domestic defenses that are best positioned to protect the homeland.

This isn’t meant to downplay the potential of ungoverned spaces to serve as breeding grounds for adept and motivated terrorists. However, concerning the case of Afghanistan, NCTC analysts concluded that the Taliban’s activities have “prevented the branch [ISKP] from seizing territory that it could use to draw in and train foreign recruits for more sophisticated attacks.”

While it’s true that terrorism can be managed and nation-building wasn’t the purpose of going to war, it was still shocking for many Americans to witness the swift collapse of a government that so many U.S. lives, tax dollars, and lives of our Afghan partners had contributed to building.

One reason for the astonishment shared by lawmakers, media, and the American public over the evacuation debacle, the vanishing of Afghan security forces, and the hasty departure of the Ghani administration, stems from a steady flow of falsehoods regarding the war. Rather than a deliberate effort of intentional deceit, it was more of a collective exercise in self-deception, omission, and hopeful exaggeration.

As the U.S. war in Afghanistan trudged onward, a carefully curated liturgy of talking points was repeated in Washington. Our leaders were well aware that Afghanistan was an archipelago of cut-off cities and forward operating bases, while the Taliban dominated the countryside, roads, and the night. It was no secret that Ashraf Ghani was surrounded by a circle of sycophantic advisors. The economy was sustained by a continuous flow of aid and war-related industries. Yet, speaking candidly about this was rare until after the Afghan government collapsed.

A cognitive dissonance made it acceptable for U.S. lawmakers, foreign elites, military-aged men who had fled their conflict-ridden countries, and even human rights organizations to not only call for the perpetual deployment of American soldiers but to claim we owed such a commitment. Of course, the U.S. military was more than enthusiastic to oblige. And for soldiers, there is an unrelenting desire and pressure to deploy. I too volunteered to deploy. However, the enthusiasm of young warfighters shouldn’t grant a blank check for putting them in harm’s way.

Since the U.S. withdrawal, unsettling truths emerged. Although tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice, when push came to shove — even before the Americans’ departure — Afghan forces fell to the Taliban. Their supplies ran out and corrupt leaders in Kabul left them to die or surrender. The strongman warlords, elevated by Washington and summoned by Ashraf Ghani to save the republic, fled to neighboring countries.

Over the years, the Taliban were dismissed as a proxy of Pakistan, disconnected from Afghan society, yet, it was the Afghan government, created through an international conference in Bonn, Germany, and supported with billions of U.S. aid, that failed to inspire Afghans to fight for its survival at a crucial moment. Many observers, myself included, were confident that Afghans would fiercely resist the Taliban and the country would rapidly descend into civil war. The country has instead fallen into a haunting silence.

One prediction that has come true is the dire situation for women under the Taliban’s rule that can only be described as gender apartheid. They have progressively restricted girls and women’s right to education, closed gathering places and livelihoods like beauty parlors, and even banned women from a national park. Their actions seem more driven by an obsession with control of every aspect of women’s lives than religious doctrine.

Additionally, the Taliban have stifled dissent and used torture against rivals. We must confront these harsh realities and take meaningful actions, but we must also avoid making promises we cannot fulfill, both for the sake of Afghans and our own credibility.

Today, Afghanistan is not at war for the first time in twenty years, with violent deaths decreasing from well over 20,000 per year in the years leading up to the U.S. withdrawal to under 2,000 last year. The country hasn’t turned into a narco-state. The Taliban also haven’t abandoned their extremist beliefs, disavowed al-Qaeda, or restrained the Pakistani Taliban.

However, their current focus seems to be inward on Afghanistan. The Afghan economy is struggling, partly due to Taliban mismanagement, though it doesn’t appear to be much worse than the previous government at management, and their corruption seems to be less. Their cruelty, however, seems unfailing.

It’s worth reflecting on why so many of our predictions were inaccurate. The U.S. facilitated Afghanistan’s development, but it also prolonged the war. Now, Taliban rule and the isolation it creates has plunged Afghans into deeper poverty and created a nightmare for women, a bargain from hell, created by Washington and its partners in Kabul, but that ultimately can only be resolved by Afghans themselves.

Hollywoodgate review – a fascinating insight into the Taliban’s insular world

September 9, 2023 Analytical articles

Xan Brooks

The Guardian

Fri 1 Sep 2023

Venice film festival: It’s no surprise that Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary lacks in-depth interviews – his subjects barely tolerate his presence as he reveals the fighters’ lack of purpose after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan

The spoils of war are a chore in this fascinating fly-on-the-wall study of the Taliban’s first year in power. Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary is named for its principal location, a former CIA stronghold on the outskirts of Kabul, hastily abandoned and haphazardly vandalised by its previous tenants. The base contains treasures but it has been left in a state. Afghan fighters pick their way through the corridors, weighing up their surroundings, wondering just where to begin. They could be a band of hotel cleaners called in to mop up after a heavy-duty stag weekend.

Leading the band is Mawlawi Mansour, a bushy-bearded Taliban commander whose father was killed in a US airstrike. Nash’at shows him doggedly going about his duties. He stretches his legs on the newfangled treadmill in the gym. He checks the expiration date of cough drops and calamine lotion in the medical stockroom. “Our head doctor is lazy,” one of his lieutenants explains, at which point Mansour flashes a pained look at the camera.

The commander likes to boast that his own wife was a doctor before giving up work as a condition of marriage. If Mrs Mansour was still free to practise, she might have been able to lick this small hospital into shape.

Nash’at – who was born in Egypt and is based in Berlin – spent 12 months trailing Mansour and his crew, loitering in the background and shooting from the sidelines. If his finished film is light on probing interviews and rigorous analysis, there’s an obvious reason: his subjects all hate him.

The Taliban fighters view every journalist as a foreign spy and have accepted the presence of this one only under duress. “That little devil is filming again,” one mutters when Nash’at draws too close. If the director misbehaves, says another, he will promptly be taken outside and killed.

When US forces quit Afghanistan in the spring of 2021 they left behind an estimated $7bn (£5.5bn) worth of military equipment. Mansour’s main task – in addition to checking expiration dates – is to oversee the repair and repainting of the fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters, officially in advance of a victory parade but also conceivably in preparation for a war against neighbouring Tajikistan.

This prospect appears to provide the soldiers with a sense of purpose, something to fill their days and plug the gaps in their hearts. The Taliban are triumphant, but this win feels like a loss. “My burning wish is to see American troops still here,” one soldier admits. “That way I could ambush them, kill them, die and become a martyr.”

While it would have been good to have Nash’at properly cross-examine these men, his film’s careful approach pays handsome dividends. Hollywoodate teases back a corner of the curtain to reveal a Taliban regime stitched awkwardly over the bones of US occupation. It shows us the soldiers pining for the caves where they once hid, and mourning the glorious death that has somehow been snatched from their grasp.

The film hits its head-spinning crescendo during the surreal celebrations at Bagram airbase, which feature a motorbike parade by “the suicide bombing battalion”, a unit that wouldn’t have been out of place in Chris Morris’s Four Lions. The battalion’s members pass through in some haste, trailing their broken dreams and dashed ambitions. For these men in particular, there has been no happy ending. They ride off into an uncertain future; unfulfilled, still alive.

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Hollywoodgate screened at the Venice film festival

An Ambassador Without a Country

September 9, 2023 Analytical articles

By Steve Coll

The New Yorker

August 13, 2023

The Afghan statesman Zalmai Rassoul is recognized by the governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland—but not by the Taliban.

Closeup of the Afghan diplomat Zalmai Rassoul.

Photographs by Silvana Trevale for The New Yorker

King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan, who reigned after his country gained independence from Great Britain, in 1919, collected automobiles and tried to modernize Afghan society through reforms such as compulsory education. In 1925, his government purchased a new Embassy in London, a four-story mid-Victorian edifice at Princes Gate, across Kensington Road from Hyde Park, near the Royal Albert Hall. The King’s change agenda provoked a violent revolt, however, and in 1929 Amanullah fled Kabul, reportedly in a Rolls-Royce. (He died in Switzerland in 1960.) Yet the London Embassy remained—a graceful and rapidly appreciating possession of an isolated, often vulnerable nation.

Zalmai Rassoul, a nephew of Amanullah’s who is now eighty years old, today lives alone in an apartment on the Embassy’s upper floors. In 2020, President Ashraf Ghani appointed Rassoul as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Ireland. In June, 2021, Queen Elizabeth II met him over Zoom, to accept his credentials in the U.K. By that time, the Taliban had stormed dozens of Afghan district capitals, in an escalating offensive against Ghani’s Islamic Republic, the constitutional regime that had been created after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 and was protected for almost two decades by nato troops. On August 15th, Kabul fell, and Ghani fled in a helicopter. As the Taliban took over the government, Rassoul stayed put at Princes Gate.

Since then, neither the United Nations nor any of its member states has recognized the Islamic Emirate, as the Taliban call their regime, largely because it seized power by force and imposed draconian restrictions on female education and on the ability of Afghan women to work freely. In the autumn of 2021, the British Foreign Office informed Rassoul that he could carry on as Ambassador. Almost two years later, the Islamic Republic’s red, green, and black flag still flies above the Embassy’s entrance. “So far, we are guests of the United Kingdom,” Rassoul told me recently, over tea in a cavernous ground-floor office. “It’s very strange,” he conceded. “When I’m asked who you are representing, I say, ‘The Afghan people,’ because we don’t have anymore a government.”

The Taliban, of course, would beg to differ. “We believe that all embassies belong to the state of Afghanistan and should be handed over to the authorities in power” so that the Islamic Emirate can run them in a “transparent and effective manner,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, told me. Rassoul is not the only Ghani-era squatter in an Afghan Embassy. When Kabul fell, the country maintained around forty Embassies around the world. Today, as many as twenty—mainly in Europe, but also in Ottawa and Seoul and a few other places—are still run by Republic-era diplomats. In Beijing, Islamabad, and other capitals, however, governments have accepted Taliban-appointed diplomats, even while withholding formal recognition of the regime. Balkhi said that fourteen Embassies are now managed by “newly appointed diplomats,” while at a number of other outposts diplomats from the Republic era “are fully coördinating with Kabul.”

Of all the Republic-era Ambassadors, Rassoul is by far the most politically prominent. He was educated in France as a nephrologist and worked as a doctor and a medical researcher in Saudi Arabia during the nineteen-eighties, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan stirred an uprising by mujahideen rebels armed by the C.I.A. Later, during the first era of Taliban rule, he moved to Rome to serve as a political adviser to Zahir Shah, the exiled former King whose father had restored the country’s monarchy after Amanullah’s departure, and who reigned over a period of relative stability and prosperity from the early nineteen-thirties until 1973, when he was ousted in a coup d’état. After the Taliban were removed from power, Rassoul became national-security adviser and then foreign minister under President Hamid Karzai. (Karzai has remained in Kabul since the Taliban takeover. Ghani is in the U.A.E.) Later, in 2014, Rassoul ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency. Youthful-looking for his years, he possesses the gentle manners of a royal scion, and is a rare leader from the Republic era who is not a lightning rod for his compatriots’ anger. “He’s a gentleman. People respect him,” Nasir Andisha, a Republic-era diplomat still serving in Geneva, and an informal adviser to the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front, told me. “He was probably the least controversial figure in politics in Afghanistan.”

Rassoul has lately been working with other Republic-era Ambassadors and diaspora figures to develop a plan for their country’s future. “I’m a politician, and, wherever I am, I’m involved in politics,” he told me, speaking publicly for the first time about his work and life at the London Embassy. “You know, politics is like a disease, when you get it.” In March, Andisha hosted a meeting of twenty-one Republic-era envoys in Geneva, where they formed the Council of Ambassadors and named Rassoul as a permanent co-chair, with a rotating partner. The envoys all oppose the Taliban. But “war is not a solution,” Rassoul said, and the best place to start is with intra-Afghan dialogue.

Rassoul’s apartment has a charming view of Hyde Park, and it is comfortably if impersonally furnished, suggesting a four-star hotel with Central Asian accents. For a touch of home, the Ambassador has mounted black-and-white photos of his royal ancestors. Each weekday morning at about nine o’clock, he goes downstairs to his office, where he meets Embassy colleagues as well as Afghan and other visitors. (A handful of salaried diplomats, mainly engaged in consular work, and a driver also remain at the Embassy.) At midday, he returns upstairs for lunch, and then goes down again to check on new developments. Sometimes, there aren’t any. Most evenings, he takes a long walk in the park. About twice a week, he plays golf at a nearby course. (He took up the sport while in exile in Rome.) Other London embassies still invite him to receptions celebrating national holidays or fêting distinguished visitors, and other rituals of diplomatic life. “I will go there and spend half an hour or an hour, just to show that Afghanistan exists,” he said.

Rassoul never married—work always seemed to get in the way, he said—and the only surviving member of his immediate family is a sister living in Brazil. I asked whether he was lonely. “I’m very comfortable here compared to all my compatriots, who, unfortunately, are running around to find a place to stay,” he answered, referring to the tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who had settled in the U.K. in 2021, many of whom have had to navigate overnight transformations from lives of relative privilege to the insecurities and indignities of refugee status. “But, intellectually, I am very frustrated.” Among other things, he still grieves for the Islamic Republic, “this tremendous international effort to bring Afghanistan from ground zero to, despite all the problems, an advanced country in the region.”

In the initial months after the Republic’s fall, the Biden Administration and European allies engaged with the Taliban, hoping to address Afghanistan’s severe humanitarian needs and to coöperate on counterterrorism. But, in March of 2022, on instructions from the arch-conservative Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban decided to prohibit girls from attending secondary school. Since then, such restrictions have tightened, and, according to U.N. human-rights experts, they now constitute the most oppressive regime for women and girls worldwide. In late June, Richard Bennett, the U.N.’s human-rights rapporteur for Afghanistan, denounced the Taliban’s gender policies as “grave, systemic and institutionalized discrimination.” In this atmosphere, although British and U.S. engagement with the Taliban has continued, Rassoul and other Republic-era diplomats find that they are being welcomed at more official meetings than before. With the Taliban’s permission, Hamid Karzai visited London from Kabul this spring for a private visit with King Charles III; Rassoul joined him for a meeting at the Foreign Office. At a recent session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, in Geneva, the Taliban were excluded, and Nasir Andisha, the Ghani-era diplomat, introduced several Afghan women as speakers.

The Taliban’s strategy appears to be to wait out the recalcitrant Ambassadors while its government pursues formal recognition, aided by what has thus far been qualified but significant diplomatic support from China and Russia. Strikingly, the Taliban’s foreign ministry has not tried as yet to disrupt the consular work of non-Taliban Embassies. Indeed, according to Rassoul, the London Embassy funds its reduced operations with fees earned from issuing travel visas, passport extensions, birth certificates, and marriage certificates—and the Taliban still recognize most of these documents. “We attach great importance to serving and resolving problems of Afghans,” Balkhi said, when I asked him why the Taliban do so. Some Taliban officials travel on Islamic Republic-era passports, a Western official told me, because the Taliban have not yet issued their own. Even if they did, Taliban passports might not work very well, since the Kabul government has not been formally recognized.

Rassoul declined to say how much revenue the London Embassy generates through consular work, but it is apparently enough to fund the salaries of the staff. There is some tension between those Republic-era Ambassadors who can raise revenue from consular services provided to sizable Afghan populations (there are some hundred and fifty thousand Afghans living in Britain, according to Rassoul) and those who have no such population to serve. Afghanistan’s U.N. mission, in New York, which has never had a consular function, has fallen into arrears on utility bills. Naseer Faiq, a Republic-era career diplomat, is the mission’s chargé d’affaires—recognized by the U.N. but not the Taliban. “I have been trying to communicate this situation to the management of the building,” he told me. “Of course, this is not easy.” I asked how he pays for groceries. “My wife is working, and she is supporting us,” he said.

The struggle for control of the Embassies is partly rooted in the unsuccessful U.S. diplomacy that aided the Taliban’s military victory two years ago. In 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chose Zalmay Khalilzad, who had served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the U.N. during the George W. Bush Administration, to negotiate with the Taliban. In February, 2020, the two sides announced a deal in which the U.S. promised to withdraw all its troops by May, 2021, in exchange for pledges that the Taliban would prevent Al Qaeda and other groups from launching attacks. Because the Taliban refused to deal with Ghani’s regime, the Republic was largely left out of the negotiations, and later talks between the Taliban and Ghani’s representatives foundered, leaving the Taliban free to pursue a military victory. Joe Biden inherited the diplomatic accord, and, although he described it as “perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself,” in April, 2021, he nonetheless said that the U.S. would pull out all its troops by September 11th. That announcement precipitated the Islamic Republic’s rapid collapse, culminating in the infamous scenes of evacuation and chaos at the Kabul airport in August. “It was a de-facto recognition of the Taliban as the future government of Afghanistan,” Rassoul said, of the U.S. decision to negotiate directly with the Republic’s enemies. He now wants to give diplomacy a chance partly because Afghanistan’s history suggests that no dictatorship of the Taliban’s kind is likely to last long, and so preparations should be made now for what may follow. In any event, “We cannot just sit,” he told me. “If we don’t want the use of force, a war, and we don’t do anything politically, that means we accept the situation with the Taliban there.”

After the Taliban takeover, a number of nations—including the U.K., France, Germany, Poland, Australia, India, and Kuwait—allowed senior Republic-era diplomats to remain at Afghan Embassies. In Washington, D.C., however, a different story unfolded. When Kabul fell, Adela Raz, a thirty-five-year-old woman with a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from Tufts, led the Embassy in Washington, on Wyoming Avenue. On October 27, 2021, Citibank froze the Embassy’s accounts, citing the requirements of U.S. sanctions imposed against the Taliban. Raz and her then counterpart at the U.N., Ghulam Isaczai, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging him to unblock the accounts. They cited the “critical services” that the Embassy provided to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees then pouring into the U.S., and argued that Citibank’s application of sanctions was mistaken, saying, “We continue to function solely as servants of the Afghan people and do not maintain any association with, work at the direction of, or pay any funds to the Taliban.” In January, after some back-and-forth, the State Department sent the Afghan Embassy an unsigned diplomatic note—a kind of official memorandum—that described Citibank’s actions as “independent” of the Biden Administration, and judged that it was “highly unlikely” the bank would unblock the Embassy funds. (Citi declined to comment.)

So the Biden Administration proposed to take “custodial” charge of the Washington Embassy and two Afghan consulates in the U.S.—but not the mission to the U.N.—meaning that the U.S. would pay for the properties’ upkeep and manage access. Raz could remain as Ambassador, the diplomatic note said, but all other Afghan diplomats accredited in the U.S. would be terminated, and their diplomatic visas would be cancelled. Raz declined to stay in place without her colleagues, according to people familiar with the matter, and took a position at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. (Raz declined to comment.) Early in 2022, the State Department took control of the Afghan properties and shut them, which was a “normal procedure for embassies when they cannot support operations financially,” a department spokesperson told me. “U.S. officials engaged with the Afghan Embassy and its bank, but were unable to identify an immediate solution. . . . The Embassy’s underlying financial challenge was that it was no longer receiving funds from Kabul.” When I walked by the chancery on a recent weekday, no flag flew from it.

The D.C. Embassy’s fate reflects a larger truth about Afghanistan in Washington these days: it is an unpopular subject, partly because the Islamic Republic’s fall has become a talking point in polarized partisan politics. On a recent visit to Washington, Andisha was struck by the indifference and resignation he encountered among policymakers and regional specialists. He summed up what he heard as “The Taliban suck, but we have to have some coöperation with them. . . . And there is no alternative.”

It is appealing to imagine that diplomacy—an “intra-Afghan dialogue,” or the like—might address Afghanistan’s fragmentation and perhaps coax the Taliban toward political pluralism. But, in 2021, at a time when Ghani’s regime controlled a large army, the capital, and major cities, the Islamic Republic’s efforts to negotiate failed miserably; it is hard to see why the Taliban would make concessions now. The Council of Ambassadors is one of a number of organizing efforts led by Islamic Republic-era figures in exile. The National Resistance Front, led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of the anti-Taliban guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, has mounted armed resistance in northern Afghanistan, but has been battered by brutal Taliban counterattacks and reprisals against civilians. In general, there is little comity among the diaspora’s political factions. After the shock of Kabul’s fall, “There’s a level of mistrust,” Sima Samar, the former chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told me. “Maybe the U.N. or the U.S. or Europe could bring people together . . . to facilitate an understanding or rebuilding of trust.”

It isn’t clear, though, who should participate in such an effort, or whether Western involvement would help. “My message to Afghan political actors has always been to organize themselves and then summon the international community,” Thomas West, the Biden Administration’s special representative for Afghanistan, told me. Younger Afghan activists are trying to assert themselves, pointing out that they are uncompromised by the Republic’s failures. “I’m not a Talib and I’ll never be a Talib, but I do recognize that we’re all on the same ship and it’s sinking,” Obaidullah Baheer, an adjunct lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan, who is now a doctoral student at the New School, told me. Baheer is part of a loose network of next-generation advocates who have emerged on social media and at international conferences since 2021. “Everyone—especially the international community—wants short-term fixes,” Baheer added. “As always, they look for the silver bullet. That has never really helped Afghanistan.”

I asked Rassoul why he thought the Republic failed. “It’s our fault,” he said. “We could not consolidate democracy.” Afghans “participated in elections, taking the risk. You have seen that. But the institutions in Afghanistan destroyed the democratic process. . . . Corruption played a key role.” So did Afghanistan’s status as a ward of rich nations. “We believed they would be there for a long time and give us money,” he said, but “it was a miracle that the international community believed in Afghanistan for twenty years.”

The Taliban, meanwhile, have shown little interest in talking to exiled politicians or in any process that does not recognize their sovereignty and legitimacy. “The Islamic Emirate has opened its doors for all Afghans, whether living inside or outside Afghanistan, to hold meetings and discussions about issues with the leadership,” Balkhi said. These meetings “take place nearly every single day with tribal elders, scholars, academics, and other strata of society.” If exiles want to participate, he implied, they can come home.

Zalmai Rassoul seems unlikely to do so. In his ninth decade, he is enduring his third exile, and the royalist branches of Afghan politics to which he belongs have had a rough time since the nineteen-seventies, attacked by Communists and Islamists alike. Still, royals in exile can be susceptible to dreams of restoration, no matter how implausible the path may appear. “There is some sort of nostalgia,” he said. “Now that the Republic has been a failure, a lot of people give reference to the monarchy time [as] a really good time in Afghanistan. Maybe some people think that a monarchy—a constitutional monarchy, maybe—is good for Afghanistan.” Rassoul said that he himself does not support that idea, and did not mention his own qualifications, but, when I spoke with Andisha, he volunteered half-jokingly, “If we have a choice later in Afghanistan, we’ll call him a king. That will solve a lot of problems.” ♦

Steve Coll, a staff writer, is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is “Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Women in Afghanistan are fighting an unequal war. We need your support

September 8, 2023 Analytical articles

Zahra Joya

The Guardian

Wed 6 Sept 2023

The Taliban have barred us from the workplace, cut our access to healthcare and closed schools to us. Must we struggle alone?

We suddenly all woke in the middle of the night. A piercing cry came from the corner of our room. It was my teenage sister, sobbing in the little room we rent in London. She always used to sleep in the same bed as my mother – until the fall of Kabul.

She wasn’t used to sleeping alone. That night, early in spring, she sobbed until dawn. Her pain was obvious: separation from my mother and a longing that became chronically painful for us all. Since our exile, I have been playing the role of mother, thousands of miles from our parents.

Afghanistan’s fall was not just the takeover of a country, but the separation of its people, including thousands of teenagers like my sister. The fall is also the story of a mother’s comfort, now missing for my sister and me. We miss her arms and the bed we could share, the food she cooked.

When I see my mother’s face, I can’t hold back tears at the deep lines that have settled on her face,

When the Taliban took over again in Afghanistan, countless lives were transformed in horrible and distressing ways. We were catapulted to another country, with a culture and language so different it felt like another planet.

Although being away from parents is exhausting, I still reassure my sister that, as Hazara girls and women, we are the lucky ones who now live in a safe and free country. There are young girls who were forced into marriages inside Afghanistan, and millions of girls have been deprived of basic rights.

Migration is a path that leads to a new world, one full of challenges and opportunities, but it comes at a cost. The feeling of loneliness and distance from family and friends does not leave you for a second.

On 24 August 2021, when I was forced into exile, I had never thought about the difficulties of living away from home and family. I didn’t have time to think because we were all so confused about what had just occurred.

But now, two years into exile, I am only in touch with my mother through WhatsApp; it’s a strange thing but it has become a familiar practice now. When I see my mother’s face, I can’t hold back tears at the deep lines that have settled on her face. In those wrinkles, I see the pain and suffering of the separation of a mother from her loved ones. I weep afterwards.

How did the Taliban manage to create the first gender apartheid system in front of the world?

Reviewing two years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan is full of despair and darkness. The first question is how the Taliban managed to create the first gender apartheid system in front of the world. How was this possible? Why have the women of Afghanistan been abandoned? What happened to those promises that the international community touted all the time?

Today, millions of school-age girls are deprived of education by the Taliban, made possible by the infamous peace deal that the US agreed with the Taliban in Qatar. Today, the universities are closed to women and girls. The opportunity to work has been taken from tens of thousands of women who were breadwinners and heads of their families. Women’s access to health centres is limited, and the heavy burden of poverty and hunger is backbreaking.

The Taliban have excluded women from public life. Can you picture 50% of the population completely isolated in every sense? Why do we Afghan women pay the price for the Taliban’s return?

Afghanistan’s women now have to fight for something basic: the right to leave the house, to go to school and to parks, to get a job. When I founded Rukhshana Media, I never imagined such a dark day. I feel hopeless – not because I don’t have the will to fight, but when I try to describe and draw attention to this exceptional human condition.

During these two years of Taliban rule, I have received images of mutilated bodies of women and men tortured and killed by the Taliban forces. I could never have imagined such violence.

In these two years, we at Rukhshana have written and reported on the pain of protesting women who were flogged by Taliban fighters. We have written about the murder and disappearance of policewomen who, with the support of the west after 9/11, fought against inequalities in a patriarchal society and made room for themselves in the system.

In these past two years, it seems that the vast majority of Afghan men support women’s education, but this consensus has never been utilised as a means of mobilising people against the unacceptable situation under the Taliban. Women are left alone in their fight against the Taliban.

The Taliban regime does not look at women’s situation as a national issue, and international human rights institutions do not take action beyond publishing statements and reports.

As part of our research at Rukhshana Media, we examined the devastating effects of shutting schools to girls. Our findings showed girls suffering severe psychological problems. Suicide, femicide, forced marriage and domestic violence have increased drastically. It is hard to understand the depths of this darkness, and international human rights organisations seem oblivious to these issues.

We live in a turbulent world. War, violence, natural disasters, fear and anxiety have become integral to our lives. From the earthquake in Turkey and the devastating floods in Pakistan to the war and violence in the Middle East and Ukraine, life has become bitter and unbearable for many. The number of displaced people in the world increases every day; hunger and economic crisis lurk even in the world’s largest economies.

However, women in Afghanistan are fighting a full-scale and unequal war. We need your support, just as the people of Ukraine want your support in their battle against the Russian invasion. Please do not leave Afghan women to suffer and fight alone.

A Taleban Theory of State: A review of the Chief Justice’s book of jurisprudence

September 3, 2023 Analytical articles

John Butt

United States Institute of Peace

3 Sep 2023 print sharing button

In the second of our mini-series on Taleban publications, this report examines what may be the fullest and most authoritative account yet of what the Taleban believe an Islamic state should look like. In his book, ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance), the Islamic Emirate’s Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, lays out his vision and the rationale for it. He delves into the legitimacy of an Islamic state, what he believes should be the political role of Islamic scholars, parliament, the judiciary, education system, what he sees as the proper place of women and why an Islamic state cannot be based on ‘man-made laws’. The book is written in Arabic, which makes it accessible to many scholars in the Islamic world, but limits its readability among Afghans. AAN, therefore, asked John Butt*, a journalist and broadcaster who was based in Afghanistan for several decades and is also a graduate of the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in northern India, to read and review this important text.

The book cover of ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance) was written by the Islamic Emirate’s Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani. Photo: John Butt, X (formerly Twitter), 1 September 2023.You can preview the report online and download it by clicking the link below.

The Islamic Emirate has been described by one scholar as “a highly underspecified and under-theorised political system.” It is notable that since re-taking power, the Taleban have been ruling without a constitution. Even before that, unlike similar armed opposition groups, the Taleban never had an aligned political party to promote their policies or politics (see AAN discussion here). In their previous incarnation in government (1996-2001), they did have a manifesto of sorts, written in Pashto, ‘Taleban: Da jihad atalan da fasad dushmanan’ (Taleban: Champions of Jihad, Enemies of Corruption), but it was scarcely known to the outside world. This is why the Chief Justice’s book, with its endorsement by Emirate Supreme Leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, is so significant.

This report takes a close look at the Chief Justice’s book, which reads like a work of jurisprudence (fiqh) on Taleban policies, jurisprudence being the theory or philosophy of law. One can say that the book amounts to an exposition of what Haqqani sees as Islamic political theory, a vision of what he believes a truly ordered Islamic state should look like.

Edited by Kate Clark

* John Butt came to journalism and broadcasting from a traditional madrasa education. For the last thirty years, he has been responsible for setting up radio serial dramas – storytelling in a contemporary setting – in various countries, particularly Afghanistan: ‘New Home, New Life’ in the 1990s and more recently a cross-border radio drama called Da Pulay Poray.

The first publication in this mini-series looked at the decrees, edicts and instructions issued by the Taleban’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. The orders themselves can also be read in their original Pashto and Dari, as well as AAN’s unofficial English translation.

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

ChiefJusticeBookReviewFINAL Download

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 3 Sep 2023

AUTHORS:

John Butt

‘Freedom’ Is a Word I No Longer Trust

August 31, 2023 Analytical articles

By Sola Mahfouz

Ms. Mahfouz is an Afghan writer.

The New York Times

Aug 31, 2023

When the United States freed Afghanistan from the first Taliban government in 2001, everything in my homeland seemed to change overnight.

My father, a businessman, retrieved his cherished television from its hiding place in our home in Kandahar, where he had stashed it for years after the Taliban banned TV, along with music and cinema, as un-Islamic. Dusting it off, he placed it in a prominent spot in our living room, as if he were reclaiming a part of his own identity. People sang songs of liberation from Afghanistan’s past, and we hoisted high the new tricolor national flag that reflected our nation’s hopeful trajectory: a black band for the dark past, a red band signifying the blood shed for liberation and a green one representing optimism for the future.

It was as if a smothering veil had been suddenly lifted, revealing a world of color and sound that I, then a young girl regularly confined to our home because of Taliban edicts, had not seen or heard before. Even the sky seemed brighter and wider.

None of us could have dreamed that two decades later the Taliban would be back in power. That fate was finally sealed two years ago Wednesday, when the last American military forces were pulled out and, overnight, we lost our freedom again.

Since then I have come to ask myself: What is freedom, exactly? In other countries, particularly in the West, the answer may seem straightforward. But for Afghans, “freedom” is a word with many faces, a fleeting and fragile thing that passes from one hand to another, each claiming its own version of it. It is a word that I have learned not to trust.

Afghanistan has suffered from a succession of supposed liberators. The Soviets invaded in 1979 to prop up the Communist government at the time, which had vowed to free Afghans from feudalism, backwardness and inequality. The Soviets and their Afghan puppets were opposed throughout the 1980s by the mujahedeen, who were themselves hailed as “freedom fighters” by their backers in the United States. The Taliban later came along, promising to free the country from foreign ideas and the chaos of the nearly 10-year Soviet-Afghan war and civil war that followed. They seized full power in 1996.

President George W. Bush, of course, invoked freedom in justifying the military action that overthrew that first Taliban regime after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying of Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors: “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

The U.S. invasion later that year brought us some of these freedoms. The democracy that ensued was a flawed experiment riddled with corruption. But millions of Afghans, rich and poor, men and women, nonetheless rejoiced in the idea of voting in democratic elections.

I can recall other things as a little girl, like suddenly being able to walk with my mother to shop at the bazaar without fear of being lashed by Taliban whips for appearing in public without a male escort. Most exciting, girls were allowed to attend school again. My mother could finally speak openly to me and my siblings of her own college days before the Taliban, when she became a chemistry professor at Kabul University. She was giddy that her three boys and three girls would grow up educated. I stepped into a classroom for the first time at the age of 7, in my new uniform of a black frock, white trousers and a scarf, a bundle of nervous pride tightly clutching the pencils that my father had given me.

In 2016, I left to pursue an education in the United States and watched from afar two years ago as control of Afghanistan swiftly fell to the Taliban again.

As the final American pullout neared in August 2021, my cousin in Afghanistan told me by phone how he had witnessed an elderly woman, her face wet with tears of joy, welcoming triumphant Taliban fighters. She embraced and kissed one young fighter, thanking him for helping to liberate the country from the “heartless, evil” Afghan and American forces that she blamed for killing her three sons in a military raid. Some people showered the Taliban with sweets, a gesture of welcome and reverence in Afghan culture. I was stunned by the contrast between my own family’s fear and despair and that woman’s relief. But how could I blame her? One person’s freedom is another’s oppression. As Albert Camus wrote, “Absolute freedom mocks at justice.”

Now back in power, the Taliban have silenced dissent, enforced their strict brand of Islam and erased Afghan women from public life, education and the workplace. The Taliban have applied a doctrine they call fekri jagra, or “war of thoughts,” to purge Afghanistan of the ideas they say have been imposed on the people by foreign powers.

In America, I thought that I would finally learn what freedom really was, and I did feel free at first. I could speak my mind, question and challenge others, ride a bicycle and wear whatever I chose to wear.

But even here, it’s not so simple.

Former President Donald Trump has attacked and incited violence against some of the foundations of American freedom — the press, Congress, truth itself. In doing so, he is no different from the other authoritarians and fascists around the world who appeal to mythical or selective notions of freedom that threaten to erase all others.

A growing push by American conservatives to remove books from libraries and public schools on grounds of morality or contested history, or to supposedly free children from the “woke agenda,” reminds me of when I was 11 and Taliban sympathizers came to our home to tell my father that if my sisters and I returned to school, we would have acid thrown in our faces. This was a few years after the Taliban had been driven from power, yet parts of the country were still under their sway. For the next nine years, books and a slow dial-up internet connection were my only window to the world beyond the four walls of my home.

We should be wary of those who speak of freedom as if it were self-evident and universal. We must look closely at our freedom, as if it were a beam of light passing through a prism, to discern its true colors. We should ask ourselves: Are we really free, or do we live in someone else’s idea of freedom, one driven by religious or nationalist myths? Does my freedom to stay ignorant deny your place in history, your identity? Do my rights diminish yours? No matter where we stand politically or geographically, we should weigh the freedom that we seek against the moral cost that we pay to achieve it.

I feel more like an observer of American freedom than a true participant. Freedom is not only a physical or intellectual state; it is emotional. The Taliban takeover has devastated and scattered my family and enslaved my homeland. I will only truly feel free when I can do in Afghanistan the same things that I can do in America.

Sola Mahfouz is a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University and the author, with Malaina Kapoor, of “Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education.”

Upcoming Biden book recounts untold timeline of Afghanistan withdrawal

August 30, 2023 Analytical articles

By KIERRA FRAZIER

“Biden didn’t have time to voraciously consume the news, but he was well aware of the coverage, and it infuriated him. It did little to change his mind, though,” Franklin Foer writes in his upcoming book, an excerpt of which was released Tuesday. “In fact, everything he’d witnessed from his seat in the Situation Room confirmed his belief that exiting a war without hope was the best and only course.”

“So much of the commentary felt overheated to him. He said to an aide: ‘Either the press is losing its mind, or I am,’” Foer writes.

The chaotic and violent withdrawal from Afghanistan is well-known, but in his new book “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future,” Foer recounts an unflinching look at the previously untold timeline of events leading up to the withdrawal and the aftermath of it. The book, which is set to be released next week from Penguin Random House, recounts the first two years of the Biden presidency, ending with the 2022 midterm elections. Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor at The New Republic.

When National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan relayed the news to Biden that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, he writes, Biden exploded in frustration and said, “Give me a break.”

In the excerpt, Foer depicts a scene that went viral of the withdrawal: when dozens of Afghans climbed onto the side of a jet to escape the country.

“Only after the plane had lifted into the air did the crew discover its place in history,” Foer writes. “When the pilot couldn’t fully retract the landing gear, a member of the crew went to investigate, staring out of a small porthole. Through the window, it was possible to see scattered human remains.”

Multiple people were killed during the U.S.-led airlift from Kabul International Airport. The withdrawal received heated criticism, especially from Republican lawmakers who have called for investigations surrounding the departure. Within days of the withdrawal, Biden’s poll numbers went down, with a majority of Americans disappointed in his handling of the withdrawal.

When former ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass touched down in Afghanistan after the plane’s departure to lead the evacuation effort, he toured the gates of the airport where he was greeted “by the smell of feces and urine, by the sound of gunshots and bullhorns blaring instructions in Dari and Pashto.”

“Dust assaulted his eyes and nose. He felt the heat that emanated from human bodies crowded into narrow spaces,” Foer writes.

Biden would shower Bass with ideas to evacuate more people.

“The president’s instinct was to throw himself into the intricacies of troubleshooting,” Foer writes. “‘Why don’t we have them meet in parking lots? Can’t we leave the airport and pick them up?’ Bass would kick around Biden’s proposed solutions with colleagues to determine their plausibility, which was usually low. Still, he appreciated Biden applying pressure, making sure that he didn’t overlook the obvious.”

“In total, the United States had evacuated about 124,000 people, which the White House touted as the most successful airlift in history,” Foer writes. “Bass also thought about the unknown number of Afghans he had failed to get out.”

Extensive but not Inclusive: Afghanistan’s growing list of national holidays

August 30, 2023 Analytical articles

Fabrizio Foschini

Afghanistan Analysts Network

30 Aug 2023 print sharing button

August has already seen two days of national public holidays in Afghanistan and will see a third this week, celebrating the anniversary of the departure of the last United States troops on the 31^st. That follows the celebration of Taleban forces’ entry into Kabul on 15 August 2021, which sealed the fate of the Islamic Republic and saw the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). 19 August was also commemorated as the anniversary of the end of the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919; it has for decades been commemorated as Afghan Independence Day. In the century between Afghanistan’s oldest and newest public holidays, there has been a long list of victories, revolutions and other momentous occasions, some of which have been designated as national holidays – for a time at least. AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini has compiled a list of them, pondering on the divided memory they leave.

On 15 August (24 Asad in the Afghan calendar), the IEA celebrated the anniversary of their takeover two years earlier, in 2021. That day, the Taleban captured Kabul and took the world by surprise by sweeping back into power, after two decades spent fighting the Islamic Republic and its international supporters, primary among them the United States, which had ended their first emirate in 2001. What the IEA has called The Conquest of Kabul Anniversary has understandably become its main national holiday (read the official statement on the occasion here). This year, the occasion was marked by extensive celebrations in all Afghanistan’s main cities, except Kandahar, where Taleban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada reportedly “called off the parade himself so as not to disturb the public.” By contrast, many Afghans now in exile named it a day of national mourning and held public demonstrations against the Emirate in the countries where they now live (see for example here).

Given the various economic and diplomatic obstacles the IEA faces, the anniversary of their victory provided an opportunity for a display of euphoria. The symbolic value of military parades and motorcades was apparent, as was their importance in reinforcing the cohesiveness of a militant movement and rejuvenating enthusiasm among the rank-and-file with the day’s re-enactment of the Taleban’s triumphant entry into Kabul. However, such a celebration, in the wake of a bloody conflict whose scars have not yet healed, was very much a day for the victors.

However, throughout their two-decade-long struggle for power, the Taleban have repeatedly shown themselves to be aware of the need for crosscutting references to reach the broader population (see this AAN report on Taleban ideology), including marking events which underpin nation-building sentiments. For example, in their propaganda war against the Republic, they routinely used the symbolic arsenal of Afghan patriotism drawn from the Anglo-Afghan Wars of the 19th century. They compared President Hamid Karzai (and later Ashraf Ghani) to Shah Shuja, the puppet ruler installed by the British in 1839, and their own leader, Mullah Omar to Dost Muhammed, the king who was ousted by invaders, struggled to resist foreign occupation and eventually returned to the throne in a liberated Afghanistan. It was, therefore, logical that once in power, they would adopt some of these holidays as signifiers of national identity, at least those against which have no ideological objections.

19 August, Independence Day, marks the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi at the end of the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919, which granted Afghanistan the right to conduct its foreign relations policies independent of the British Empire (read the author’s previous report on the Third Anglo-Afghan War and its outcomes here). Independence Day has been the mainstay jashn (celebration) in Afghanistan for over a century (read an AAN report detailing a century of Independence Day celebrations here). As the paramount symbol of national pride and freedom as well as resistance to colonial, non-Muslim attempts at conquest or control, the 19 August holiday has proved an evergreen. It has been celebrated by governments of very different political leanings, by the kings, communists, mujahedin, the Republic and the Emirate, both now and during its first period of rule (see for example this AAN report about Independence Day under the First Emirate here and the IEA celebrations last year here).

The Taleban do observe Independence Day, but its coincidental proximity to the Taleban takeover led to incidents in 2021, as the newly victorious Taleban clashed with locals celebrating the occasion in Jalalabad. Arguably overlooking one of the core meanings conveyed by the 19 August celebration, Taleban soldiers had forcibly replaced the traditional national tricolour flags – closely associated with the continuity of an independent Afghan statehood, as well as, more recently, the Islamic Republic – with their own white flags. The resulting clashes left several local youths dead or injured (see Al-Jazeera reporting here).

Thus, two weeks in August have come to include the oldest and the newest of modern Afghanistan’s political events as national holidays. The list of other national holidays is long and twisted, mostly consisting of anniversaries of violent takeovers. The following summary will help to explain why some have been retained but most dropped and why nearly all have failed to account for and include the Afghan population in its entirety.

A calendar crowded with takeovers

Before the staple national celebrations grew to include anniversaries linked to one faction or personality snatching power from another, Independence Day was the main celebration throughout Zaher Shah’s long reign (1933-1973). However, even then, there was already a taste of what was to come. The anniversary of the restoration of his Muhammadzai monarchy, after Habibullah Kalakani’s short stint as monarch in 1929, was celebrated every year at the end of October at least throughout the 1930s.^[1]

A date that did not become a public holiday was 9 March 1963. It could be taken as the start of the so-called Constitutional Period (1963-1973), also termed the New Democracy (Dimukrasi-ye Naw) when Zaher Shah began, effectively, to reign. He had been proclaimed king following the death of his father, Nader Shah, in 1933, but had ceded power to a succession of older and more powerful male relatives, two uncles and then his cousin Sardar Daud. Daud’s decade-long authoritarian premiership ended in 1963, to be replaced by the Constitutional Period. It has been idealised by many Afghans as a time of progress, characterised by a new constitution, Afghanistan’s first elections and greater civil and political rights, including for women.^[2] However, this turning point never acquired the status of an official holiday, possibly because the transfer of power had been peaceful.

Another day that did become a national holiday for a long time was Pashtunistan Day. This holiday had more to do with the discordant relationship between nation-building and state boundaries than it did with the competition for power. The day asserts the unity of Pashtuns (and Baluch) on both sides of the Durand Line^[3] and hints at Afghanistan’s territorial claims on the areas forming Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, its North-Western Frontier Province (renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2010) and Baluchistan. Pashtunistan Day was fervently celebrated all over Afghanistan with the support of the state’s machinery, every 31 August from 1949 onwards, especially during the decade 1953-63, which saw Sardar Daud as prime minister.^[4] Its importance was much reduced in 1976, when Daud, this time as president, found himself relying increasingly for economic and political support on the Shah of Iran. In the regional diplomatic balance of the time, Daud had to accept Tehran’s entreaties for reconciliation with Pakistan and an end to Afghanistan’s claims to territory on Pakistan’s side of the Durand Line.

Over the decades, the commemoration of Pashtunistan Day has been revived periodically, first, under the communist governments in the 1980s and then during the post-2001 Islamic Republic, though with much less emphatic state sponsorship. It seems unlikely that Pashtunistan Day will persist, if for no other reason than because 31 August has joined the Emirate’s crowded August calendar of festivities as the day when the last US troops left Afghanistan (see France24 report here).

The first date to be noted in Afghanistan’s calendar of temporary national holidays involves Sardar Daud again, but this time at the other end of the transfer of power. On 17 July 1973, while Zaher Shah was on holiday in Italy (a ‘holiday’ that was to last 30 years), Daud wrenched power from his cousin in an almost bloodless coup d’état and with the support of factions in the royal establishment and some progressist and leftist groups. Styling himself President, Head of the Cabinet and Foreign Minister, he proceeded to proclaim the first Afghan Republic – and a single-party state. The coup was termed a ‘revolution’ at the 1977 Loya Jirga and the day (26 Saratan in the Afghan calendar) was celebrated as Jashn-e Jomhuriat (Republic Festival). Three days of events at the Chaman-e Huzuri, a sports grounds in downtown Kabul, included competitions of equestrian tent-pegging. However, that holiday was not to last long, indeed only the few years that Daud’s Republic existed.

What had at first looked to many observers as just another power shift within the Musahiban family, that had held onto power since 1929, was actually the presager of unrest and an unparalleled downward spiral into violence. Daud’s seizure of power came at a time of social and economic change and increasing external tensions in the region. New players, such as the communist organisations, had been brought into the business of ‘kingmaking’ by Daud. Up till then, it had been the preserve of royal clans and tribes. However, he violently rejected them afterwards. The growing ambitions of these outsiders, who included the Islamist organisations, to ‘court politics’, coupled with police repression, radicalised politics. The end of Daud’s reign was, however, marked by a national holiday for more than a decade.

The post-1978 holidays

The next shift in power – and its resulting public holiday – came in another coup d’état, known as the Saur Revolution of 27 April 1978 (7 Saur in the Afghan calendar). (See the AAN dossier on the Saur Revolution and its consequences here.) On that day, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and particularly the Khalq faction, which had strong support among the armed forces, attacked the Presidential Palace in response to the arrest of its leadership by the government. Daud and most of his family were killed, along with dozens of others from both sides, and two days later, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was born (see this AAN report for details).

The new government erected a monument to the revolution and its ‘martyrs’ in front of the Presidential Palace and for many years, 7 Saur was celebrated in all government-controlled areas. What followed the coup, however, was a guerrilla war, waged by the mujahedin against government forces and later also, the Soviet army, which invaded Afghanistan on 24 December 1979 to support its ally in Kabul. As the war caused increasing military and political difficulties for the government, the celebration eventually assumed more subdued tones. In 1986, for example, PDPA General Secretary Babrak Karmal, soon-to-be-replaced at the behest of Kabul’s Soviet patrons, failed to attend it altogether. The policies of his successor, Najibullah, aimed at distancing the Kabul regime from communism, further eroded the date’s significance in the following years. Yet, all official references to the Saur Revolution were dropped only in mid-1991 (as mentioned by Barnett Rubin in his The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, 1995, p154). Subsequent Afghan governments have all condemned the Saur Revolution as the root of all evil in Afghanistan.

A date from that period which is still remembered and celebrated to this day, is 15 February 1989 (corresponding to 26 Dalwa in the Afghan calendar), when the last Soviet troops left the country, crossing the Friendship Bridge over the Amu river (see AAN report here). The Soviet withdrawal has been celebrated as Liberation Day by the mujahedin governments, the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Emirate in both its incarnations. It may appear to resemble Independence Day and to vindicate the old colonial view that would have the quarrelsome Afghans able to unite only against an external foe. However, unlike the independence of 1919, the withdrawal of the Soviets did cast a whole segment of Afghan society in the role of losers, to bear the consequences of the political defeat of communism. Also, it did not usher in an era of peace, let alone prosperity.

The most obvious celebrants of 26 Dalwa were the mujahedin organisations which had fought the Soviets. However, a separate date marking their conquest of Kabul on 28 April 1992 has proved a more controversial celebration. This is not only because, as with all violent accessions to power, it also signified the downfall of another party, but also because the victorious mujahedin factions proved incapable of forming a united government and very soon began to fight each other in what led to a vicious civil war in the capital and elsewhere across the country (1992-1996). Victory Day (Ruz-e Piruzi), also called the Islamic Revolution Day (Ruz-e Enqelab-e Islami), was retained as a national holiday by the post-2001 government, largely at the behest of the mujahedin parties which had become constituent parts of the Republic. The celebrations would take place across the country, especially in major cities such as Herat and Mazar-e Sharif where former mujahedin parties still held considerable power. The main celebrations would take place in Kabul and usually consisted of a military parade which ended with speeches by those in the highest echelons of the state at the Chaman-e Huzuri near the Old City of Kabul. Ironically, it was one of the city neighbourhoods that had suffered the worst destruction during the mujahedin infighting.

Celebrating a day that marked the beginning of a new brutal chapter of the Afghan conflict was questioned by other Afghans on many occasions. One of the rare instances when this strife was made evident to external observers was when MP Malalai Joya was attacked and ostracised for condemning the protagonists of Victory Day in parliament in 2006 (see Reporters sans Frontières’ (RSF) report here); fellow MPs from mujahedin parties were so incensed at her repeated denunciation of warlords and war criminals in the chamber that they eventually had her suspended from parliament in 2007.

The Taleban, many of whom were among the mujahedin fighting in the 1980s jihad, have been keen to still commemorate that victory over communism, during both their first and the current emirates. Conveniently, also, it comes on 8 Saur (27 April), thereby helping to erase the ‘stain’ of the Saur Revolution on the 7^th. (see this post on the Pixstory). They referred to it during their decades-long struggle to regain power and likened their fight against the Republic and NATO forces to the one against the Afghan government and Soviet army of the 1980s. In 2013, for example they timed the launch of one of their major spring offensives with the 8 Saur anniversary (see Khaama Press report here).

The same does not apply to another mujahedin-centred remembrance day, Ruz-e Shohada (Martyrs’ Day) that was established as a public holiday by the Afghan parliament in 2012. The date chosen, 18 Sonbola in the Afghan calendar, linked it to the anniversary of the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massud on 9 September 2001, which had already been commemorated by the state before 2012.

The day was supposed to honour all martyrs who had lost their lives fighting for their country. However, the choice of the date of Massud’s death was not universally popular and the character of this commemoration, which came to be known also as Hafta-ye Shahid (Martyr’s Week) or simply Massud Day, was transformed into something entirely different. This was especially the case after 2014, with the worsening military situation and growing political tensions between the various factions in the Republic.

Many of the former commanders from Massud’s Shura-e Nazar network within Jamiat-e Islami, especially those from the Panjshir and Shomali, who had initially obtained high-ranking positions in ministries or the armed forces, started to resent what they perceived as their having been sidelined from power (see this AAN report).^[5] Building on the frustrations and fears of their community constituencies, they started to mobilise their networks to hold demonstrations on Massud Day. The commemoration was thus turned into a means for them to reassert their cohesion and power with friends and foes alike. From a state-organised commemoration of martyrs, the occasion grew increasingly out of government control, with motorcades and gatherings of armed men in and around Kabul coloured by intimidating political and ethnic connotations (see ToloNews here).

Once in power, the Emirate did not allow this celebration to continue. In early September 2021, as the Taleban were still trying to quell an armed resistance in Panjshir, they ruled out Martyrs Day celebrations in the name of security (see Pajhwok here). They removed the celebration from the calendar of public holidays in 2022 (see Pajhwok here). It is unclear whether they will cancel Martyrs’ Day altogether or select another calendar date for this purpose. That would allow the Emirate to honour Afghanistan’s martyrs, while at the same time delinking it from their former foes and denying their political opponents a highly symbolic date around which to rally.

Celebrating which past? Lost occasions under the Republic

What about those other major turnabouts in recent Afghan history, the fall of the first Taleban Emirate and the coming into being of the post-2001 institutions? Could 13 November 2001, when after weeks of US bombings, the Taleban fled Kabul, have been picked to mark such a change? Or would the UN-sponsored Bonn Agreement of 5 December 2001, when the Afghan factions who had opposed the Taleban, either within the country or in the diaspora, came together to establish a future government have been chosen? Or possibly, the Emergency Loya Jirga of 11-19 June 2002, or the establishment of the new constitution, ratified on 26 January 2004, could instead have offered occasions for a national celebration?

The Islamic Republic, however, was content to keep celebrating the 1919 Independence Day, the Soviet withdrawal and the mujahedin’s entry into Kabul, while adding the commemoration of the martyrs only. By refraining from commemorating an inception date of its own, the Republic in a way admitted the very disparate nature of the social and political groups constituting its elites, whose many internal differences were seldom worked out and more often subsumed under a tenuous set of common interests. The possibility of deciding on a new, comprehensive national day was blocked by many factors, not least the ongoing conflict and the new tensions it created, but also by the overly cautious and timid approach by the Republic’s cultural and political institutions towards the country’s recent history.

Born and developed with strong external input from foreign powers, the new institutions appeared, on the one hand, to lack the national legitimacy to proudly inaugurate a completely new chapter of the Afghan political life without being accused of being foreign puppets, so they always tried to refer to a few widely accepted old symbols or to national ‘forefathers’. On the other hand, the post-2001 institutions were still scarred by the violence caused by the internal ethnic or ideological strife that had devastated Afghanistan in the past decades. Leaders appeared unwilling to open a debate that would have put on the table and eventually account for – and maybe even heal the scars left by – the innumerable and conflicting lived experiences of various Afghan communities through the multiple decades of conflict. These experiences were obscured by a veil of silence and the communities cowed into begrudgingly accepting the (latest) winners’ version as the only mainstream narrative. In the end, the fault lines of fear and distrust left beneath the surface of the Republic’s façade were one of the weaknesses that brought about its collapse. Maybe this is a lesson that every government in power could benefit from.

Edited by Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour

References

References
↑1	The Muhammadzai are the branch of the Barakzai Pashtun tribe that had ruled Afghanistan since 1823, when Dost Muhammad Khan wrested the Kabul throne from the Popalzai, Ayoub Khan Durrani, who was the last in a line of kings stretching back to 1747 when Ahmad Shah Durrani founded his eponymous dynasty. Muhammadzai rule was interrupted for around nine months in 1929, when the unrest stirred by modernist reforms led to King Amanullah’s abdication and the throne was occupied by a rebel of lower social standing, a Tajik from the Shomali plain north of Kabul, Habibullah Kalakani. Muhammadzai rule was restored in October 1929 by Nadir Khan, then head of the Musahiban family, a distant paternal cousin of Amanullah and father of Afghanistan’s last king Muhammad Zaher Shah.
↑2	To this day, this brief but intense period is commonly idealised by observers as the brightest example of ‘normalcy’, if not of real prosperity or democracy, that Afghans can look back and aspire to. After decades of war and turmoil, this holds true also for many segments of the Afghan population, except for the most ideological among the mujahedin organisations, who have not abandoned their old anti-monarchy stance, and for the Taleban. Irrespective of their various political ideals, many Hazaras also do not idealise the kings’ time. Once the reformist experiments of Amanullah had derailed, Hazaras remained – except for a handful of urbanised civil servants or intellectuals – de facto second-class citizens in the Sunni-centric, Pashtun-dominated Afghan monarchy and languished at the bottom of the economic and social ladder, even during that eventful decade.
↑3	The Durand Line was established as a demarcation between the respective spheres of influence by British India and the Kingdom of Afghanistan in 1893 during the reign of Abdul Rahman Khan and eventually came to form the border between Afghanistan and present-day Pakistan. The line is a source of controversy, particularly for Afghanistan, because it runs through territory traditionally inhabited by Pashtuns, who have been split in two since it was established.
↑4	Muhammad Daud Khan was often styled ‘Sardar’ (chieftain) because of his royal lineage.
↑5	2014 saw the completion of the so-called ‘security transition’ from NATO to the Afghan security forces, which led to military and territorial gains by the Taleban (read AAN dossier ‘Looking back at transition’). Moreover, a political transition which would have seen the incumbent Hamid Karzai stepping down after more than twelve years and a new president being elected proved particularly difficult and divisive, with elections stalling into a tense stalemate solved only through an unhappy power-sharing deal between the two contenders, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, brokered by the US (see this AAN dossier on the 2014 elections).

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