On 15 August 2021, the Afghan government and large parts of the state, primarily the army and police, came tumbling down like a house of cards, leaving serious questions about the sudden melting away of Afghanistan’s security forces. Many factors contributed to the collapse of the security forces, including widespread corruption, lack of a combat strategy, poor war planning, the withdrawal of US-funded logistics and maintenance contractors and how the United States’ ‘peace’ strategy and then its decision to withdraw rapidly, completely and unconditionally had undermined morale. In this report, guest author Timor Sharan scrutinises the impact of domestic politics on the crumbling of the Afghanistan National Security Forces, particularly in the final months of Afghanistan’s ill-fated Republic. The report shines a light on how the politicisation and ethnicisation of the security forces by President Ashraf Ghani and his inner circle drove military failure and ultimately helped push the collapse of the ANSF and the Afghan state.Afghan National Army soldiers set out during an operation in the village of Dasht-e Baghwani, in Nangrahar Province’s Surkh Rod District, to clear Taliban fighters from the area. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2019.
Drawing on interviews with key informants before and after the fall of Kabul and Sharan’s previous research on the role and power dynamics of Afghanistan’s political networks, this report examines the following:
The impact of the wholesale, 11th-hour restructuring of the top leadership at the Ministry of Interior and other security institutions at a time when the country faced formidable armed opposition, and the US was withdrawing, on the weakening, if not full breakdown, of chains of command and trust;
How Ghani and his inner circle further politicised and ethnicised security institutions to their advantage. The ‘restructuring’ was couched as involving much-needed reforms to deal with very real problems of corruption and nepotism. However, it seems that changes to the senior leadership appeared to be driven by a desire to ‘clean’ the security sector of non-Pashtuns and promote Pashtuns, especially Ghilzai easterners, to shift the balance in favour of Ghani and his inner circle;
Examines the strategic calculations and incentives of President Ghani and his inner circle for this last-minute restructuring and how others attempted to understand them;
And finally, how the Palace’s decisions and actions undermined the ANSF’s capability and morale to counter Taliban offensives, as senior personnel were consumed by internal politics and job security rather than providing logistical and planning support to those fighting.
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking the link below.
Since the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, they have ratcheted up restrictions on women and girls as the group consolidates power. These restrictions include limitations on employment, education, public interactions and other fundamental rights such as access to justice. These restrictions have only tightened over time with increasingly draconian enforcement — the latest being public floggings that harken back to the Taliban’s 1990s rule. Amid the U.N.’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, USIP has compiled a comprehensive archive of Taliban decrees and public statements on the treatment of women and girls. While leaders and activists around the globe strategize and develop plans to address gender-based violence in their respective countries, Afghanistan stands out as a worst-case example, with two decades of hard-won progress rapidly unwinding.
Erasing Women from Public Life
Examples of the Taliban’s repressive treatment of women abound. Days ago, three women were flogged in a football stadium in Logar province in front of thousands for what the Taliban called “moral crimes.” Similar floggings have been reported in Nuristan, Takhar, Kabul, Laghman and Bamyan provinces. In mid-October, a woman in Ghor province accused of a “moral crime” was scheduled to be stoned, but the night before the sentence was to be carried out, the woman was found dead. Activists speculate that she either committed suicide or was murdered by her family.
One of the few Afghan activists to publicly speak of her experience in Taliban detention for protesting for her rights told of the nightmare she went through — an experience that likely mirrors those of other Afghan women detained by the Taliban. “They tortured me … using cables, pipes and whips … As they were torturing me, they would record it. It was a terrifying experience in that prison,” Tamana Paryani said, months after her release and evacuation to Europe.
Women are being erased from public life, effectively imprisoned within their own society by recent decrees that ban women from public parks and gyms, require women’s faces to be covered in public, and limit the number of days they can go shopping (and then only with a male relative). “In no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life, nor are they as disadvantaged in every aspect of their lives,” wrote Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett in his latest report on the situation in Afghanistan.
U.S. Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls and Human Rights Rina Amiri has repeatedly raised alarm about violence against women. “Those who fear a radicalized Afghanistan should be alarmed by the Taliban’s policies against women & girls, denying them education, work in most sectors, even small joys such as the right to go to a park. This extremism will lead to instability, poverty & more population flight,” she tweeted in November.
Afghan activists have consistently called on world leaders to address the dire situation women and girls are facing. “The women of Afghanistan went from existence — from being part of society, from working, from being part of every aspect of life as doctors, judges, nurses, engineers, women running offices — to nothing. Everything they had, even the most basic right to go to high school, was taken away from them,” said Mahbouba Seraj, a 74-year-old women’s rights activist.
After the Talban took over Afghanistan, there was much discussion about whether we would see a reformed Taliban movement that would be more inclusive and more respecting of women’s rights. But only two weeks after Kabul fell, they reinstated their 1990s ban on girls’ secondary education.
Can Pressure Change the Taliban’s Treatment of Women?
Despite the condemnation and isolation from the international community, the Taliban have not changed their posture or policies toward women. Inducing them to do so will require a comprehensive pressure campaign, which could look like this:
The international community should explicitly link recognition of the Taliban government to its policies and practices related to women, among other things. It is important to note that no country has recognized the Taliban as the legitimate governing authority in Afghanistan, which is worse than in the 1990s when they at least had recognition from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But the lack of recognition today is largely tied to concerns over security and terrorism. Moving forward, all states should predicate recognition and normalization on the basic respect for women’s fundamental rights as well.
Political leaders and scholars from around the Muslim world should proactively communicate to the Taliban and the Afghan people what their interpretation of women’s rights under Shariah looks like. For many Afghans and the Taliban, cultural messaging may be even more effective than diplomatic demarches. Demonstrating that women have greater rights in the rest of the Muslim world can help counter the Taliban’s claims that their version of Islam is the only true one. Indeed, Article 6 of OIC’s Cairo Declaration calls on states to “eliminate difficulties that impede … [women’s] full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms and effective participation in all spheres of life, at all levels.”
Continue to support Special Rapporteur Bennet’s mission and enhance his investigative mandate. The mandate for the U.N. Special Rapporteur is renewable by the U.N. Human Rights Council on an annual basis. Not only should his term be renewed as long as the human rights situation in Afghanistan remains poor, but he should also be given greater investigative authorities and resources to comprehensively document Taliban policies and practices that violate international human rights agreements.
Provide financial and moral support to Afghan civil society and women-led organizations who provides services to Afghan women. Afghan women’s rights groups in the country need donor support to survive as their access to employment is effectively cut off. Civil society and leaders of other nations — particularly in Afghanistan’s neighborhood who have friendly relations with the Taliban — should continue to express their support for Afghan women and their fight to reassert their rights. This could include joining campaigns, advocating on their behalf and providing safe spaces and platforms to voice their concerns. Afghan women have long called for their inclusion in decision making at local, national and international levels.
While the international community, particularly the Muslim world, has a vital role to play, the most important and strongest form of pressure will come from inside Afghanistan. Afghan women are their own best advocates but need the support described above. Many traditional male leaders in Afghanistan oppose the Taliban’s policies on women but are afraid to speak up. Giving them a platform on Afghan media and finding subtle ways to empower them in their own communities can help amplify local demands for women’s rights.
Perhaps the most influential sources of change will be from within the Taliban movement itself. Some leading Taliban figures and clerics — including powerful Taliban deputy leader and Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, Minister of Higher Education Abdul Baqi Haqqani and the head of a seminary in Herat, Jalilullah Akhundzada — have called for the ban to be rescinded. The Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, Sher Abas Stanekzai, went so far as to publicly say, “Education is obligatory on both men and women, without any discrimination. None of the religious scholars present here can deny this obligation. No one can offer a justification based on [Islamic] Sharia for opposing [women’s right to education.”
Despite these Taliban leaders speaking up, the ban on education remains in place. These statements may just be lip service, or, perhaps, they offer an entry point for activists in Afghanistan and from the international community to convince the Taliban to reinstate Afghan women’s fundamental right to education. Either way, the steps detailed above to pressure the Taliban will be vital to persuading them to change their education policies.
Documenting Taliban Policies to Measure Success
No pressure campaign can work without ways to measure its effectiveness. This archive helps to demonstrate the deeply disturbing and concerning trend toward more restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives. Getting these restrictions lifted is the primary and widely held goal. The archive enables these policies to be tracked to see whether the Taliban are fulfilling their ostensible commitments toward a just and inclusive society — and can provide points for focused advocacy and debate.
The Taliban Continue to Tighten Their Grip on Afghan Women and Girls
Francesc Vendrell, then UN special envoy to Afghanistan
Francesc Vendrell, who has died aged 82, was one of the longest serving and most successful United Nations peace negotiators of modern times. He helped to promote the disbanding of the CIA-backed “contras” in 1989 who were terrorising parts of Nicaragua in a campaign to overthrow the Sandinista government. He held secret meetings with the Cuban president, Fidel Castro, while brokering a deal between the rightwing US-supported government of El Salvador and the nationalist guerrilla movement, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, which led to a ceasefire and free elections in 1992.
He played a major role in ending Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor and organising a referendum for independence in 1999. For the next two years, as the UN secretary general’s envoy to Afghanistan, Vendrell launched the first contacts between the Taliban government and the Northern Alliance of regional warlords.
At a time when the UN was often pilloried by politicians and much of the media as irrelevant or a costly minor actor, Vendrell’s successes in Central America, East Timor and Afghanistan deserved more recognition.
He did not like the word “mediator” to describe his speciality as a diplomat. It sounded too interventionist. In a series of post-retirement interviews for the journal Asian Affairs, Vendrell told David Loyn, a veteran BBC correspondent, that he preferred to tell warring parties that his job was to provide “good offices” or simply say: “We’re here to help.” He made clear that he did not represent the UN security council or the general assembly, but the secretary general.
This low-key, even soft-seeming approach was enhanced by Vendrell’s ferocious energy in insisting on meeting all parties in a conflict and listening carefully and empathetically to their views. He had a formidable memory for detail. But he could also be outspoken in his suggestions for parties to modify or change their stands.
In the Central America peace negotiations the man who led the process was Alvaro de Soto, a Peruvian diplomat who was the UN secretary general’s personal representative. Vendrell was his deputy. In De Soto’s words, “Francesc was not always at the negotiations themselves. But he was an invaluable adviser who was extremely useful when there was a serious roadblock since he knew all the players. He was a shaper of the talks and very good at detecting differences between leaders. He knew how to conduct an x-ray of the different groups”.
Francesc Vendrell in Faizabad, 2001, preparing to leave rebel-held territory in northern Afghanistan where he had been holding meetings with opposition leaders about NGO programmes. His favourite tactic was talking patiently and at length to all sides.
Vendrell was born into an upper-middle class family in Barcelona. His father, Francesc, was a lawyer who became the city’s deputy mayor in the pre-Franco period. His mother, Matilda (nee Vendrell), was his father’s cousin. Francesc Jr gained a law degree from Barcelona university. After joining a political party, the Unio Democratic de Catalunya, and campaigning with its leader across Europe denouncing Franco’s dictatorship. Vendrell moved to Britain. He studied law at King’s College London and for an MA in modern history from Cambridge.
He took a teaching post at the University of Papua New Guinea and joined the UN in 1968. His first job was on the Melanesian island of Bougainville but he soon transferred to Unitar (the UN Institute for Training and Research) in Geneva. He worked there for several years and was thrilled when he managed to switch to the UN’s political wing, first in the department of decolonisation in Geneva and then at the UN’s headquarters in New York.
His big career chance came in 1986 when he was appointed director for Europe and the Americas in the secretary general’s research and information office.
This led to his role in ending the civil wars in Central America. He and his boss, De Soto, were proud to have got the UN directly involved. As Vendrell put it, De Soto and he brought an end to the Monroe Doctrine, under which the US had for almost two centuries forbidden outside powers from intervening in its backyard in Latin America.
In 1992, Vendrell was appointed director for special political assignments in the new department of political affairs. He led a mission to Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (1992) and another to Haiti (1993). Between 1993 and 1999, he was director for Asia and the Pacific, with a special eye on Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Myanmar. The job catered perfectly to his addiction to travel and the acquisition of polymathic knowledge about dozens of regional political groups and movements.
His job of overseeing Asia led Vendrell to his career’s high point, the assignment which gave him greatest gratification: the liberation of East Timor (Timor-Leste) from Indonesian occupation. After the collapse of fascism in Portugal in 1974 the original colonisers, the Portuguese, had unilaterally left the territory in 1975, only for it to be occupied by Indonesian forces with the connivance of the US. For almost two decades, the Indonesians arrested or shot members of the local liberation movement with impunity. Journalists were barred from entry. Western governments did nothing.
After reports of massacres began to filter out in 1997 the Indonesians slightly loosened their grip. They allowed UN officials to come in and Vendrell was even permitted to visit the independence movement leader Xanana Gusmão in jail. But the Indonesians rejected the movement’s demand for a UN-supervised referendum.
Undeterred, Vendrell turned to his favourite tactic of talking patiently and at length to all sides. He persuaded the Indonesians to let him set up an “all-inclusive intra-East Timorese dialogue”. It consisted of 30 Timorese people, 15 from the diaspora and 15 from inside, chosen by the secretary general, ie by Vendrell. Some supported East Timor remaining under Indonesian control.
The Indonesian regime agreed to consider autonomy and Vendrell drafted a paper suggesting how it should be done.
Coincidentally, demonstrations had begun in Jakarta against the Indonesian regime, run by General Suharto. In 1998 he resigned in the face of massive protests. Surprisingly, his successor agreed to hold a referendum on autonomy or independence, thinking the autonomy option would win. But Timorese voted by a huge majority for independence. The army reacted furiously and went on a killing rampage until the UN security council authorised a UN peace-keeping force, to be led by Australia. In 2002 the territory became independent.
By then Vendrell had moved on to a country that he came to love: Afghanistan. In January 2000 he was appointed the UN secretary general’s special representative to Afghanistan. He succeeded in opening contacts with the Taliban and the warlords, the so-called “mujahideen” who had fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, but this progress was blown away when al-Qaida attacked the US in September 2001. The US invaded and removed the Taliban.
The UN was asked to organise a conference in Bonn for the various Afghan groups to agree on a new government. Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, was appointed as UN envoy over Vendrell’s head. Vendrell helped to prepare the conference but was unhappy with the Bush administration’s imposition of Hamid Karzai as president instead of letting the Afghans decide.
He also disagreed with the American policy, supported by Brahimi, of a “light footprint” for foreign peacekeepers. Vendrell had spoken to numerous civil society representatives who wanted the northern warlords to be disarmed and removed from power, and this required a strong peacekeeping force.
“I wanted the security council to pass a resolution saying that conquest of territory did not give the right to govern. The aim was to prevent the Northern Alliance taking over,” he told me some years later.
Frustrated by US policy, Vendrell resigned in 2002. But he felt committed to Afghanistan and soon took a job as the European Union’s representative in Kabul. He was to live there for the next six years, acting as a polite but firm critic of the Karzai administration.
After retirement he continued to travel to Kabul frequently as chairman of the advisory board of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a group of independent experts. He also regularly taught classes on the art of negotiation and conflict resolution at Princeton and Johns Hopkins University.
In 1971 he met Gordon Wilkins, a New York business executive, who became his lifelong partner. When not travelling, which they both loved, they divided their time between flats in New York City and London. Vendrell was a committed anglophile, who prized Britain’s traditions and rule of law, and was proud to be made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 2012.
A Taliban fighter stands guard as people receive food rations distributed by a Chinese humanitarian aid group, in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 30, 2022 (AP photo by Ebrahim Noroozi).
Just as Americans began to gather for Thanksgiving dinner two weeks ago, the BBC reported that families in Afghanistan are selling their daughters into early marriage to pay for food and feeding their children tranquilizers and anti-depressants because the pills are cheaper than bread. According to ToloNews, Afghanistan’s unemployment rate stood at 40 percent in October. A recent Gallup poll from inside the country shows that, as they face their second winter since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, 86 percent of Afghans say they have trouble getting enough food.
While Western governments often focus on the Taliban’s record on political freedoms and gender apartheid, access to food is also an international human right that national governments are beholden to provide to their citizens. Yet who is to blame for Afghanistan’s inability to obtain sufficient food for its citizens depends on whom you ask. The Taliban—and more than a few commentators—argue Afghanistan’s food shortage is the fault of the West, which has cut off bilateral aid and frozen Afghanistan’s foreign reserves. Western countries point out that they would loosen aid restrictions if the Taliban would allow girls to return to school, cut ties to al-Qaida and cease other highly restrictive policies that violate fundamental human rights. If anything, some observers say, current efforts to isolate the Taliban do not go far enough.
What almost every observer can agree on, though, is that this is a manufactured disaster stemming from multiple, interrelated policy-driven causes, exacerbated by drought, COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Ultimately, the blame game only adds a political layer to the problem, making it even more difficult to determine how to fix it.
When the Taliban took over the country last year, they immediately reverted to a draconian system of rule that imperiled minorities, restricted press freedom and other basic human rights, and removed women and girls from most jobs, schools and public life. In response, Western countries made two moves that themselves directly contributed to food insecurity in Afghanistan.
First, the U.S. froze the Afghan Central Bank’s $9 billion in foreign reserves. A country’s foreign reserves function as a rainy day fund that can be used to finance imports and shore up local currency. Without them, inflation tends to spike, and bank runs are frequent. This is why in one of his last acts before fleeing the country ahead of the Taliban takeover, the Afghan Central Bank’s former governor imposed a withdrawal limit, which his Taliban successor then strengthened and enforced. Afghans can now remove no more than $400 per week from the bank, standing in line for up to three days to get their money out. Nor can the Taliban easily print Afghanis, the country’s currency, because in the past they imported the bank notes and coins from third countries.
Half of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves are still set aside pending the resolution of domestic lawsuits in the U.S., but the other half now sits in a Swiss trust fund, ostensibly “for the use of the Afghan people.” But what this means in practice is still unclear. Though the trust fund was set up in September, the trustees met for the first time only two weeks ago and have much work to do to figure out how to use the money.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s initial executive order on the issue had implied that the money would be used to fund humanitarian aid, but this would have meant using it to solve the wrong set of problems. Humanitarian aid is meant to be a form of charitable giving by international donors, not something Afghans pay for out of their own rainy-day fund.
Instead, according to Reuters, the fund’s statute states that the money will more appropriately be used “for macroeconomic purposes, such as foreign exchange rate and price stabilization.” Yet other nonmonetary purposes are also on the table, and some fear they may have perverse side effects. If the funds were used to pay for electricity imports, for example, this could allow the Taliban to continue charging ordinary Afghans for electricity and use their payments for other purposes. Substituting services to the Afghan people that the Taliban then won’t have to provide also risks inadvertently shoring up the Taliban’s legitimacy.
What makes Afghanistan’s food crisis so intractable is also what makes hunger so difficult to solve globally: The multifaceted nature of the problem, and the lack of consensus on who is to blame and what should be done.
If the use of the reserves is limited purely to monetary policy, however, price stabilization itself could have a huge and beneficial impact for ordinary Afghans. The Taliban has done better than expected at collecting taxes and import tariffs, but without its foreign reserves, the Central Bank can’t easily fight inflation, now at 15 percent, or stabilize its currency. Putting these monies to work as the rainy day fund they are meant to be, rather than holding them in abeyance or spending them to pay national bills, can only help. If a judge releases the other half of the foreign reserves that did not go into the trust fund—rather than awarding them to families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, as Biden’s executive order stipulated—so much the better for Afghans, who have mobilized to argue against the seizure of the reserves for this purpose.
Nonetheless, unfreezing the reserves alone will not solve Afghanistan’s food crisis, because the freezing of the reserves is only one cause of the Afghan economy’s collapse. The wider issue is that after the Taliban takeover, the West halted the influx of development aid dollars that paid Afghans’ salaries and fueled the Afghan economy. This meant that nearly $8 billion dollars of development aid and almost as much military aid evaporated overnight, in a country almost entirely dependent on these funds.
Emergency humanitarian aid still trickled in from donors through multilateral contracts to NGOs and United Nations agencies; the U.S. itself has provided over $1 billion as of September 2022. But this only creates a deeper cycle of dependence, as Afghans formerly paid to work are now dependent on cash or in-kind handouts. And while humanitarian aid may keep people alive, it is development aid that fuels economies and provides for long-term infrastructure and economic growth.
This leads us to the bigger ethical question: Are economic sanctions and aid conditionality the right tools to promote political rights when they generally harm the very people they are trying to help? Or do steps taken to lessen the impact of sanctions on those vulnerable people just then encourage human rights violations? After all, the international community has few other tools for addressing the kind of massive human rights violations inflicted by the Taliban on its people, which the U.N. recently characterized as “crimes against humanity.”
Notably, Afghans themselves disagree as to whether aid conditionality on Afghanistan should continue or be lifted. A survey conducted in Afghanistan this spring by the Human Security Lab, of which I am the director, showed that approximately a third of roughly 3,750 Afghan internet users randomly surveyed on this question wanted to keep the economic pressure on the Taliban, with a third opposing that view and another third undecided. Notably, women in the survey were 5 percentage points less likely than men to argue that international food support should be conditional on human rights.
At the same time, political science research shows that economic sanctions generally worsen human rights violations like killings, torture or arbitrary arrest, rather than improve them. And even if sanctions are effective in the long term at improving human rights conditions or achieving other goals like preventing terrorism, there are ethical questions about whether the ends justify the means.
Ultimately, part of what makes Afghanistan’s food crisis so intractable is the same thing that makes hunger as a global social problem so difficult to solve: The multifaceted nature of the problem, and the lack of consensus on who is to blame and what should be done instead, can drive apathy. As political scientist Michelle Jurkovich shows in her book “Feeding the Hungry,” this problem is not limited to Afghanistan’s current circumstances. Rather, it is endemic to global economic and social rights advocacy more generally—what human security experts refer to as the “freedom from want” agenda.
According to Jurkovich, global social policy on guaranteeing the right to food is stymied by disagreements among anti-hunger organizations about who should do what to fix the problems contributing to food insecurity. And so far, every fix in one area seems certain to cause trouble in another. The case of Afghanistan is currently and tragically an example that illustrates this wider rule. But while the West’s political standoff with the Taliban continues, Afghans are either going hungry or, in many instances, resorting to tragically desperate acts not to.
Charli Carpenter is a professor of political science and legal studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, specializing in human security and international law. She tweets at @charlicarpenter.
Afghanistan’s Hunger Crisis Is a Human-Made Catastrophe
In the wake of the Taleban takeover in August 2021, the Afghan banking system, which up to then had been linked to the global banking network, collapsed. Reportedly very little money had been left in the treasury, and then overnight, the United States stopped flying in dollars, the central bank’s reserves held in the US and Europe were frozen and US and United nations sanctions made getting money into Afghanistan difficult. Along with the sudden shortage of dollars afghani bank notes also began to wear out and could not, until recently, be replaced with newly printed ones. The new Taleban authorities closed the banks to stop people taking out all their savings, thereby saving the banking sector. Eventually, they lifted some, but not all restrictions. For Afghans trying to use the banking system, it remains a hellishly difficult proposition. In this episode of our series on how one aspect of a person’s daily life has changed since the takeover, we hear from a young man about going to the bank.
Afghans queue outside a bank in Kabul. Photo: Hoshang Hashimi/AFP, 31 August 2021.Once a week at 11:30 at night, after dinner and the evening prayer, after the nightly buzz of my siblings playing around has given way to the steady breathing of sleep, my mother watches me with anxious eyes as I leave the house to go the bank.
The journey in the middle of the night from my house in west Kabul to the bank in the city centre is a daunting one. Robberies are common these days, especially late at night when people travelling in cars are easy prey for criminals who use the cover of darkness to rob them of their money, mobile phones, vehicles and other valuables. My mother worries about my safety. So she stays up and calls to check on me several times until I get home.
You may ask why I am going to the bank at this late hour. You would be correct in saying that banks are not open in the middle of the night. In Afghanistan, however, the collapse of the Republic in August 2021 touched off a banking crisis and the banks closed for a short time. After they reopened, they imposed restrictions on customers’ access to their own money in order to stay afloat and avoid a run on the banks. That included limits on when and how much money customers could withdraw.
Each bank has its own arrangements for making appointments. This is the procedure at the bank – one of Afghanistan’s largest – that the organisation I work for uses: commercial customers – businesses and NGOs – must send an authorised representative to queue up at night and wait until 1 am when a bank employee takes down names and gives out numbers to the lucky 55 people who will be able to conduct banking transactions the following morning.
This is why I, the finance officer of a small NGO in Kabul, find myself making this night-time visit to the bank once a week.
How much money can you get out?
There are other banking limitations; each week, commercial customers can withdraw only five per cent of the amount they had in their accounts before the Taleban takeover. There are no restrictions on funds deposited after 15 August 2021. You don’t have to queue up if you only want a statement or a letter from the bank, but you do have to go the day before to book an appointment.
Customers with personal bank accounts can withdraw only up to 200 USD or 20,000 Afs each week. They can book an appointment at any branch and they’re usually two to three days from when they’re booked. On the day of the appointment, the customer must arrive at the branch in the morning when it opens and wait several hours and sometimes an entire day for their turn. There are, of course, ATM machines, but I haven’t personally heard of anyone who’s managed to withdraw money from one since last August.
Transactions, for all account holders, are usually in the local currency, the afghani, but you can ask for dollars if the funds were deposited in dollars and if the bank has dollars available. Otherwise, you can take your cash in afghanis at the bank’s exchange rate, which is usually about 0.5 Afs lower than the market rate. It might not sound like much, but it adds up. For example, if someone earns 500 USD a month, they stand to lose 250 Afs, or about three dollars in the exchange – that’s the same as what it costs to buy 25 pieces of bread.
The waiting game at the bank
The morning after I’ve stayed up to book an appointment, I must arrive back at the bank by 9 am. I nod to the familiar faces from the previous evening and go inside to take a seat. If all goes well, it usually takes about two hours to finish my business, but if the bank has no cash, we must wait until it’s delivered. Sometimes, after we’ve been waiting until well into the afternoon, they tell us that the bank won’t receive cash that day and that we should try another day. There are also lucky days when I’m not withdrawing money and only have to make payments via bank transfers. On those days, I don’t have to wait for the cash to arrive at the bank, and I can put my hand up and ask to make the transfers.
To pass the time while I wait, I play games on my mobile phone, read the news, go on Facebook, or call friends to chat. The long wait is tiring, and it’s not unusual to see people napping in their seats while they wait. Sometimes, especially when the battery on my phone runs out, I talk to the person sitting next to me – light chatter to pass the time. We talk about our jobs, where we went to school or what part of Afghanistan we’re from. Sometimes, we talk about how simple things used to be before, under the Republic, when you didn’t have to go to the bank in the middle of the night to get a number, when you could transfer and withdraw money without any limitations from any bank branch, you could walk in, take a number and finish your transaction within an hour, even if it was super busy.
There are also usually three to four women in the waiting room. Women cannot register in the evenings themselves and must send a male colleague or relative to register on their behalf. I look at them and wonder what they do. Are they, like me, employees of an organisation, or do they own a business? But it’s not possible for me to ask them. I contemplate the possibilities for a moment and then I let the thought go.
When it’s finally my turn, I walk to the teller and hand over the transaction slips and other documents. As he’s processing the payment, I ask again about the restrictions and the possibility that they might be lifted. The teller looks at me impatiently and explains that there’s not enough cash, either in afghanis or dollars, to give free access to the thousands of customers who have funds on deposit with the bank.
Queuing up for a spot
So, as long as the banks keep up their restrictions on how much you can withdraw and what you must do to book an appointment, I must keep queuing up once a week around midnight. There are three checkpoints on the way from my house to the bank. I come to a stop at each one and the Taleban soldier manning it asks where I’ve been, where I’m going and why. I tell him I’m going to the bank. The soldier shrugs and waves me through.
By the time I get to the bank, it’s usually gone midnight and there are already about 25 to 30 people in the queue because people start queuing as early as ten o’clock to make sure they get one of the 55 coveted places that the bank gives out each day. Last week, when I arrived on a cold winter night, the queue was in disarray. The men were huddled together to get some protection from the cold, the fog from their breath floating up to the streetlight above. I joined the queue to wait with the others.
Finally, at one o’clock in the morning, a bank employee came out to take down our names. He noted the information in a small spiral notebook and told us to come back in the morning. As I walked back to my car, I could hear the sound of voices getting louder and more intense. I turned back to look. An older man was upset and complaining that this was his third night running in the queue. He said he’d come a long way from one of Kabul’s eastern suburbs. The bank employee gave him a gentle nudge and told him to try again tonight, maybe come a little earlier.
When I walked in the front door around 2 am, my mother was awake, reading in the living room and waiting for me to come home. I could see the relief in her tired eyes as she greeted me and got up to head for bed. She pointed to the clock on the wall and said I could still get about three hours sleep before the call for prayer and the start of a new day. I knew what the day had in store for me; after prayers and breakfast with the family, I would have to hurry back to the bank and start the long wait. A day of idleness awaited me until it was my turn to walk up to the bank teller.
Without congressional action, the tens of thousands of Afghans we evacuated to the United States may be deported in the coming year.
The night before the midterm elections, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, addressed a packed room in the basement of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. The topic was billed as “Common Sense and Strategy in Foreign Policy.” For an hour, Sullivan held forth on a host of topics, including Ukraine, Taiwan, digital clean energy, and Iran. For the last 15 minutes, he took questions. When this wide-ranging tour of American foreign policy concluded, I felt as though I’d witnessed an episode of mass amnesia: Afghanistan wasn’t mentioned once.
America has a long, disastrous history of forgetting when it comes to Afghanistan. Abandoning the country to Islamic radicals in the 1990s after its war with the Soviets; deprioritizing our own war after 9/11 so we could pivot to Iraq—this willful forgetting has, again and again, bred disaster. This played out most recently last year, when the collapse of the Afghan government surprised many senior officials in the U.S. government. Today, this pattern of forgetting is poised to repeat. Without congressional action, the tens of thousands of Afghans we evacuated to the United States may be deported in the coming year, and very few in Washington seem to be talking about it. The cost of this apathy will be a second Afghan evacuation, equally disastrous, this time played out in reverse, with our allies shipped back to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan they fled.
To understand how we arrived at this looming crisis, we have to go back to August 23, 2021, when, during the withdrawal from Kabul, the Biden administration authorized the use of humanitarian parole to temporarily expedite the entry of Afghans into the United States. The preexisting Special Immigrant Visa program—which can take three years from application to approval—had proved impracticably onerous, so humanitarian parole filled the gap and eventually enabled the administration to evacuate approximately 80,000 Afghans to the United States.
Although humanitarian parole accelerated their processing, the program didn’t provide resettlement services or a clear path to long-term residency for the new arrivals. Afghans have struggled with resettlement and with securing the necessary documentation to work or attend school, as well as access to a host of other necessities. And humanitarian parole extends for only two years. Those tens of thousands of Afghans we evacuated have been living under a cloud of uncertainty, and they will soon be subject to deportation unless Congress acts by adjusting their status. The Afghan Adjustment Act—a bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation introduced this past August—aims to do just that. Astonishingly, it’s struggling to pass.
“It’s important we get this done,” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told me. “Our Afghan allies who fought alongside us and those who fled the Taliban deserve better than having to live with the uncertainty of whether they’ll be able to stay in the United States.” Although the bill doesn’t face opposition from Democrats, it does face competing legislative priorities within a caucus that isn’t eager to revisit the debacle of the Afghan withdrawal.
Republicans, who will soon hold a majority in the House of Representatives, are more eager to revisit the events of August 2021. They have signaled plans to hold hearings on the subject in the next Congress, which would frame the Biden administration’s efforts in Afghanistan in an unfavorable light, with a likely focus on the human cost of the collapse in Kabul and our ad hoc effort to evacuate our allies. It’s difficult to imagine Republicans holding those hearings while they are simultaneously deporting those very same allies. Nevertheless, Republican support for the Afghan Adjustment Act has proved uneven.
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is one of three Republican co-sponsors of the bill in the Senate. Within his party, legislation that expands immigration protections is generally a tough sell. “The Afghan Adjustment Act has received stiff opposition and legitimate criticism,” he told me. “However, I hope the critics understand that American service members who served in Afghanistan feel honor-bound to help their Afghan allies. They are right. The problems with the bill must be addressed, and I believe we can do that.” Graham remains optimistic that the bill will pass. “To turn our backs on this problem and those who provided essential support to the United States would be a stain on our honor and haunt us for generations. Finding a compromise that maintains our honor and assures our national security can and must be done.”
Outside Congress, the greatest proponents of the Afghan Adjustment Act have been, not surprisingly, veterans’ groups. Among them is With Honor Action, a nonprofit that supports the For Country Caucus, a bipartisan coalition of military-veteran legislators in the House. The co-founder of With Honor, Rye Barcott, a Marine Corps veteran, believes the Afghan Adjustment Act is likely to be blocked by both parties’ respective brands of dysfunction. “Political polarization contributes to and drives our amnesia. Congress can’t get out of its own way. There’s no special interest here, and so there’s no one who has this as their top legislative priority,” he told me. “The adults in the room all realize this is the right thing to do, but it’s not getting done. This is going to be the next betrayal, not only for the Afghans, but also for those who served alongside them.”
Although Barcott believes passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act is a moral imperative, he argues that it’s also in our “enlightened self-interest.” Last August, an International Rescue Committee report projected that Afghans evacuated to the U.S. would contribute nearly $200 million in taxes and $1.4 billion in earnings in their first year of work.
Representatives Peter Meijer, Seth Moulton, and Jason Crow—all co-sponsors of the Afghan Adjustment Act and members of the For Country Caucus—were among more than two dozen lawmakers who signed a pair of letters in the spring and early summer of 2021 warning of disaster in Afghanistan if protocols weren’t established to expedite the evacuation of our Afghan allies. Many of those same lawmakers are, right now, sounding a similar alarm, warning of a second crisis, this time entirely of our own making, if the status of our Afghan allies isn’t adjusted. But as the legislative agenda for the end of the year locks into place, their warnings seem to be going largely unheeded in Congress.
“Just like with the first withdrawal, no one believes this could actually happen,” Barcott said. “People can’t imagine that we’re going to take all these Afghans, who we evacuated at great risk and expense, and put them on planes back to Afghanistan. But if Congress doesn’t act, that’s exactly what could happen.”
A lack of foresight plagued our war in Afghanistan from its start. Now it’s plaguing the war’s aftermath. “You’ve got to wonder,” Barcott said. “What will it take for people to care?”
When the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban asserted that the war was over and that they now had control of the entire country. But just a year into Taliban control, an armed opposition front is taking shape, albeit only in a few provinces. Some travel around Afghanistan has become safer, increasing access to many communities. However, a range of factors has made communities more vulnerable to internal conflicts, grievances, and divisions. There is widespread hatred towards the regime, but also towards Pashtuns, as a majority of the Taliban come from this ethnic group. The Taliban have consistently ignored the promises they made in Doha with the U.S. and have brushed off all calls for a broad-based participatory government. Based on experience with peacebuilding in Afghanistan over the last 23 years, including during the previous Taliban regime, this article explores the challenges and opportunities for peacebuilding in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.
The Taliban approach is to use force and torture not only against the armed opposition groups but also against their own local commanders who challenge them and against those raising their voices for basic rights and to those who might criticize the Taliban for their governance, nepotism, discrimination, and corruption at the community level. A growing fear of persecution exists among the population if they speak out on issues of corruption. For example, the Taliban will not tolerate public concerns that some Taliban at the district and provincial level are selling acutely needed humanitarian aid in the market and sometimes allocating humanitarian aid to Taliban soldiers rather than the public.
For the Taliban, the terms “peace” and “peacebuilding” are militarily and politically loaded. Using this terminology enrages Taliban leaders. Most of the Taliban leaders and members know little about social peacebuilding between groups. Therefore, anyone planning peacebuilding efforts in present-day Afghanistan must first go through many rounds of discussion and explanation with the Taliban, both in Kabul and at the district level, if they plan on implementing projects of this nature.
Civic space for individuals and groups to voice their concerns and interests has shrunk under the Taliban to the level of non-existence. Dissatisfaction and criticism of Taliban policies are seen as acts of sedition and could be severely punished. Therefore, one has to be careful about what peace initiatives are feasible at the present time. Anything at the national level is difficult, though small community-based peace initiatives could still possibly be carried out.
NGOs are required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)for each project with related ministries. This has turned into one of the most difficult tasks in project implementations, even if the project is humanitarian or development in nature. In the case of peacebuilding, there is no specific ministry or department to approach for an MoU. NGOs would need to use different terminology for peacebuilding programs in order to get an MoU. Furthermore, NGOs will need to have detailed discussions with authorities in Kabul to educate and convince them of the objectives of the program. However, In the current context, a number of small and dispersed programs, with a coherent strategic vision at the national level, would work better than one large national-level program.A national peacebuilding program will invite Taliban scrutiny, not only from the related ministry but from the intelligence department, which could put the program and NGOs’ staff at risk.
Community-based Peacebuilding and Governance
The current lack of a coherent, locally adapted strategy for the distribution of humanitarian aid is contributing towards significant harm at the community level. Almost all Afghans are eligible for emergency aid during the current intense food shortage and economic crisis, yet aid organizations either have little time or are unwilling to work with community structures in aid delivery.
The ideal approach to address this issue would be a “triple nexus” of coordinating humanitarian aid, development, and peacebuilding. Currently, there are few efforts to foster development. Yet, aid agencies working in Afghanistan today are not linking aid with peace to help develop cohesive communities. At minimum, aid agencies must “do no harm” and avoid undermining existing intergroup relations. If development aid does not appear in the near future, humanitarian aid should be distributed simultaneously with and through peacebuilding processes. The best way to implement peacebuilding would be through a partnership between peacebuilding, humanitarian, and development-focused NGOs to reduce Taliban suspicion of peacebuilding projects. By packaging peacebuilding along with vital aid delivery, it will appear more innocuous to Taliban officials.
International aid agencies desperately need Community Development Councils (CDCs) to partner with NGOs and for transparent aid delivery at the community level. Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Program (NSP) had helped to create CDCs across the country and operated as formal/informal community governance structures. CDCs should not be used as an aid conduit, but rather as community structures and governance bodies that are proactive on issues required to promote cohesive communities. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with aid to Afghanistan up until now. Even the implementing partners of the NSP program who are still active in the areas where they had supported local development prior to the Taliban takeover have abandoned the CDCs and created other structures more suitable to their projects.
Community elders can play an important role in peacebuilding to reduce ethnic divisions in areas where different ethnic groups coexist. They can serve as living examples to show peacebuilding in practice in their communities by trying to reduce the tensions created by previous warlords and further exacerbated by the Taliban. Peacebuilding led by community elders could not only reduce conflicts on aid distribution, land, and water rights, but also promote harmony among different ethnic and tribal groups. This is particularly important now in the face of the exacerbated divisions created by warring factions and now further entrenched by the Taliban.
There are a number of Afghan local civil society organizations (CSOs), with a majority working in provincial centers. Afghan CSOs are active in promoting peace and demonstrating accountable governance. Some are experienced in effective advocacy with the government departments pre-August 2021. Civic space for such local civil society organizations has shrunk and so has the funding for local civil society groups. Some of these groups have developed their capacity over the last 20 years. Funding and support could help to mobilize these CSOs for promoting peace and good governance in their communities.
These groups could have a check and balance role on the CDCs or any other structure the donor community is considering partnering with for the distribution of humanitarian or development aid. Interactions with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) might be challenging for them, but CSOs can at least keep community elders accountable and reduce tensions that are already created by unfair aid distribution. Peacebuilding efforts could help to develop the capacity of CSOs for peaceful conflict resolution, basic advocacy skills, and efforts to promote transparency and peace at the community level.
Campaigning against the forces sending divisive massages
Another type of successful peacebuilding effort for Afghanistan could take place in the digital sphere. Social media is full of hatred and divisive messages among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, particularly among the diaspora. Pashtuns are particularly targeted because most of the Taliban regime are Pashtun. CSOs, particularly youth groups, can at least raise their voices and can launch campaigns to prevent the hatred some people spread on social media. Young leaders from all ethnic groups could be mobilized to stop the warring factions using ethnicity as a battle cry to recruit soldiers. This strategy could be more effective in provinces with diverse ethnic groups to showcase community-level social bonds and promote coexistence.
Four leading Afghan experts with significant experience working to support inclusive political processes, democratic spaces, human rights, and peace processes author each of the articles in this edition of Peace Policy. We chose not to include the names of two of the authors at their request because of our concern for their safety.
Minority ethnic and religious groups and women in Afghanistan have led the movement for democracy and human rights. Discrimination and violence against these groups in Afghanistan are not new. But under the new Taliban regime, they suffer the most.
The human rights situation in Afghanistan and surrounding countries is dire. This article reports on human rights violations identified in research by the Afghanistan Human Rights Coordination Mechanism, a consortium of national human rights-oriented civil society organizations (CSOs) and international organizations. It was established in response to the emerging challenges faced by human rights defenders (HRDs) after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021. The article looks toward a future of multi-ethnic democracy to improve the human rights situation.
Under Taliban rule, minority groups in Afghanistan are experiencing systematic discrimination based on their gender, ethnicity, language, and religion. The Taliban are Sunni Muslims and have a long history of persecuting minority religious groups including Hindus, Sikhs, and Shiites. The Taliban are mainly from the Pashtun ethnic group and speak Pashto. Minority ethnic groups include Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks, many of whom speak Dari. There have been reports of extra-judicial killings of minority groups all around the country. The Taliban are killing members of minority groups, in particular the Hazaras and Tajiks, each day. The Taliban have excluded women from all public roles and restricted girls’ education beyond grade six.
During the early Taliban rule in the 1990s, there were brutal attacks on minority groups and women. Between 1996 and 1997, for example, the Taliban massacred over 2,000 Hazara people in Kabul and Bamiyan. They carried out a similar massacre and forced migration of Tajiks from the north Kabul (Shamali) valleys.Another brutal genocidal attack on Hazaras took place in 1998 in Mazar-e Sharif, where more than 5,000 Hazara and Shiite minority members were killed in 48 hours of continuous Taliban attacks on their homes. Since the August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, these minority groups and women leaders are experiencing increased levels of public discrimination and are disappearing, being arrested, tortured, and assassinated. Afghan HRDs, especially women human rights defenders from minority groups, have been facing kidnapping, gang rapes and imprisonment, physical and psychological harm, defamation and house searches, arbitrary arrest and torture, and physical threats and violence against their family members by the Taliban. Local HRDs from regions such as Daikundy, Sar-e Pul (Balkhab), Uruzgan, Panjshir, Ghazni, and Andarab in southeast Baghlan are reporting ethnic cleansing, massacres, forced displacement, and war crime incidents that occurred in the past 12 months.
Other conservative groups such as Hezb-ut-Tahrir, Jamiyat-e-Eslah, warlords, and religious actors build on the Taliban’s position against these minority groups. They view these minority groups as democratic actors in the country.In this sense, the struggle is between those who desire a multi-ethnic democracy that protects the human rights of all minority groups and genders and those who do want a country run by a small group of conservative men primarily from one ethnic group.
The state of lawlessness in the country has been a major challenge to the safety and security of vulnerable groups.The absence of a legal protection framework and protection structures is having a widespread impact on human rights and HRD protection in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban takeover, the civic space is strictly controlled by the Taliban, who have canceled the Constitution and turned to a radical interpretation of Islamic jurisdictions. The absence of a judicial system leaves no guarantee or space for citizens to exercise their social and political rights through protest, limits access to information, and controls the press.
Protection strategies for minority groups, women, and HRDs are also limited due to the deteriorating economic conditions in Afghanistan. Afghan HRDs are having a difficult time providing food for their families, and many are facing a loss of future work and financing prospects. The economic downfall of Afghanistan also precipitated a huge migration outflow, crowding asylum and resettlement prospects for HRDs due to the overloading of the foreign countries’ asylum system.
A majority of Afghan HRDs in neighboring countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey report suffering psychological harm. These originate from harassment by the police, risk of forced deportation, and a lack of access to visas, visa extension, and other basic living provisions. Despite the lower risk of deportation and police harassment in Western countries, HRDs in exile also report high levels of psychological harm and face serious financial problems, as well as the uncertainty of the success of their applications for asylum and the complicated approval processes.
Within Afghanistan, HRDs report growing hostility against HRDs due to a rise in ethnocentrism, ethnic/religious/gender/age discrimination, increasing religious radicalization, and growing conservatism. This social context exposes HRDs to social ostracization, if not criminal punishment as their human rights backgrounds have been associated with treason, infidelity, spreading immorality, blasphemy, or apostasy.
A variety of policy recommendations emerge from this analysis
HRDs need access to immediate remedy and legal accountability for the atrocities committed by the Taliban and other armed groups against HRDs, minority groups, women, and people in the general population.
Vulnerable groups need access to protection services inside the country and access to internal relocation.
HRDs outside the country need a comprehensive coordination platform and network to have collective action and advocacy to address the rapid decline of international community support. This is particularly true for Women Human Rights Defenders and protestors.
Afghans need to continue articulating the promise and possibility of a multi-ethnic democracy with a non-centralized system emphasizing local governance.
Written by a Senior Human Rights Defender from the Shia Community with over 20 years of experience as a civil society leader, using this pen name to avoid retributive threats to family inside Afghanistan.
Human Rights Defenders and the Future of Multi-ethnic Democracy in Afghanistan
Several armed opposition groups launched attacks against the Taliban in multiple provinces over the last year. While these groups may be in their initial stages of formation, the number of casualties they have inflicted on the Taliban is enough to meet the definition of an active conflict according to Uppsala University’s Conflict Data Center. In other words, the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan did not result in the settlement of a decades-long conflict in the country. Conflicts do not end simply by one party gaining the upper hand, nor by foreign parties opting out with a hasty exit.
Ending hostilities in Afghanistan requires active efforts on the part of Afghans and the international community. Local, regional, and global stakeholders in Afghanistan should launch a new political process to prevent a full-scale recurrence of violence and aim to build lasting peace.
Why should the Taliban take part in a political process?
During their two-decade-long military campaign, the Taliban anticipated their victory in returning to power through NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Their deal, signed with the United States in February 2020, affirmed their belief in the possibility of a forceful overthrow of the Islamic Republic government.
Now, however, the Taliban face a different set of challenges. They have failed to provide effective governance and revive the collapsed Afghan economy. They are also unable to protect the population against the deadly attacks of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-KP).
There is active and growing civil opposition within Afghanistan and fervent advocacy against the Taliban by Afghans living abroad. Under pressure for harboring al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahiri, who was eliminated by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul in July, the Taliban regime is far from being delisted from sanctions, let alone being recognized as a legitimate governing body by the international community.
Hard-pressed by several simultaneous pressures which will remain and perhaps intensify under current circumstances, the Taliban have two options: continue on their pathway of suppressing rivals and the general public, or enter into negotiations with other Afghan factions to settle the conflict and construct a sustainable and inclusive government.
But if there is not yet a particular group that can pose a serious military challenge to the Taliban regime, who could they negotiate with even if they chose a different path?
Mapping stakeholders for inclusion
The former army is disintegrated, and ex-government officials have lost the public’s trust. The mujahideen groups who are positioning themselves politically are considered warlords. The older generation has a history of escalating conflicts and corruption, and the new generation has no history that proves their leadership capability. Aside from no track record or a lack of credibility, these groups also have not united with each other.
Identifying stakeholders to participate in a political process at local and national levels is complicated but not impossible. Lack of credibility is not unique to non-Taliban factions. The Taliban regime faces a challenge that is worse than other known stakeholders. After all, if a regime that partners and provides safe houses for globally designated terrorists should be part of a political process, then it becomes hard to argue against the inclusion of other factions.
Perhaps the general rule should be to include all sides in such a process. An inclusive process, however, does not necessarily mean that each of the dozens of political parties in Afghanistan’s recent history will be physically present at the table. But every possible ideology should have representation. One way this process could work is for emerging and old political parties, civil society organizations, women, youth, and armed opposition groups to organize themselves around categories of shared visions and each category nominates representatives.
The regimes and governments of Afghanistan, and those who contested or backed them, can be grouped into four broad factions representing different
ideological visions for the country: modernists who constitute most of the new generation of Afghan leaders, fundamentalists such as the Taliban and their likes, conservatives like the jihadist groups, and moderates who have separated or never joined the other three groups but have not yet coalesced into their own group.
In summary, an important step to pave the way for a political process is for Afghan factions to organize around particular visions and develop a mechanism to identify their representatives. This will exert political pressure on the Taliban to consider peace talks. Additionally, the existence and persistence of organized groups will make it harder for the global community to shy away from supporting a path toward peaceful settlement of Afghanistan’s conflict.
Vision for peace
It is important that these groups develop a coherent vision for peace in the country and the steps to reach it. Two mutually reinforcing objectives include agreeing to improve the lives of Afghans so that everyone may live with dignity and peace and launching an inclusive process to prevent another cycle of a full-fledged armed conflict.
The Taliban are unrealistic to operate under the assumption that other forces will accommodate their exclusive hold on power and that the people of Afghanistan will tolerate violence carried out by the regime.
If there is one thing the highs and lows of cycles of armed conflict in Afghanistan teach us, it is that there is no such thing as lasting victory without compromise. The Taliban’s present claim to power is precisely the reason now is the best moment for them to reach out to all sides and actively seek to prevent another full-grown armed conflict.
This is the time to either launch and complete a coordinated and inclusive political process or allow the momentum toward recurrence of mass scale violence to determine the fate of Afghanistan—yet again.
Aref Dostyar is the Senior Advisor for the Afghan Peace and Development Research Program at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He was previously the Consul General of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Los Angeles.
Afghanistan needs a new political process to prevent a renewed phase of armed conflict
The withdrawal of US troops and immediate takeover by the Taliban in August 2021 marked a radical transition from Afghanistan’s status as a republic to an Islamic Emirate system. With this transition, the Taliban maintains the perception that peace has replaced their ongoing war. While radical transitions did not bring positive peace, a temporary reduction of violence has occurred despite unresolved political and social conflicts. The presence of authoritative and religious hardliners has ushered in a new era of human rights violations, including marginalization, widespread discrimination, and atrocities against women and ethnic groups.
The types of insecurities faced by people in Afghanistan provide a context for and are crucial in defining national and local peace. Different groups of people, including the privileged and political classes, often have different narratives of peace. These differing perspectives represent disparate constituencies throughout the country.
In reflecting on the past year and the years that led up to the Taliban takeover, one thing is clear: there was an overarching flaw in the nature of the Doha process and its agreement. At the same time, bringing the Taliban to the negotiation table and accepting their demands at the early stages of negotiations exponentially empowered one party of the armed conflict and allowed the Taliban to gain momentum on the battlefield. The Doha process collapsed without political settlement and failed to create consensus among Afghans through Intra-Afghan negotiations. This failure, along with other political factors, resulted in the Taliban’s forceful takeover.
Now that Afghanistan is an Islamic Emirate ruled by the Taliban void of domestic and international legitimacy, a new phase of resistance, armed conflict, and social and economic crisis has arisen. This has caused political instability, exacerbated ethnic tensions and economic crises, and raised the level of concern among Afghanistan’s neighbors due to the spillover across borders of violence and insurgency and the influx of refugees. Under these circumstances, the country needs a new political process to reignite an intra- and interstate dialogue and negotiations leading to political settlement and reconciliation
For the political process to demonstrate inclusivity, create consensus, and produce outcomes that lead to stability, there must be conditions for social and economic development in place. This process needs to give voice and agency to every community and enable all interested groups to engage and participate in the discourse about how their society should be ruled. The platform for such a process can also address contentious issues among various factions of Afghan society and reduce the magnitude of political uncertainty. The people of Afghanistan want peace and stability. Still, there has not been a political process to deliver it. It is deeply concerning that Afghanistan does not have an effective political process to address people’s grievances and create conditions for reconciliation.
International partners of Afghanistan assume that development aid is the solution to the current economic crisis. While Afghanistan undoubtedly needs money and resources, it is important to remember that social, economic, and political development are strongly interlinked. Development aid will not produce desirable outcomes without a consistent plan for addressing all these issues and when implemented under the shadow of an unstable political system and weak institutions.
To attain peace and stability, the new political process should be based on the principle of inclusivity, which in Afghanistan involves two fundamental issues: domestic and regional processes of inclusion. A domestic process contextualized for Afghanistan could enable conditions that address the grievances of people from different parts of society and instigate dialogue about a political system, governance, and institutions favorable to all Afghans. The second fundamental issue, initiating a new regional negotiations process that requires inclusion of countries in the region with economic and security interests.
Internal Process for Intrastate Negotiations
In Afghanistan, ethnicity is often the basis for political polarization and mobilization. Utilizing a policy that isolates specific groups is likely to divide the population along ethnic lines and create a narrative of “the other” as the enemy. Afghanistan’s ethnic identities and groups are fundamental to the country, and each has clear interests and a strong agency. The common interests of these groups cause collective mobilization, which could lead to unarmed or armed resistance. The current de facto government’s lack of representation has marginalized non-Pashtun ethnic groups, fueled ethnic tensions, and widened the gap between Pashtun and non-Pashtun citizens. Ethnic groups seek national-level political representation, and instability inevitably grows if that representation is denied. The inability to address ethnic crises causes political instability, insurgency, and widespread resistance.
Therefore, an intra-state political process should include dialogue about an appropriate political system for the country based on the principle of inclusion. There has been an ongoing debate among Afghans around the nature of governance in Afghanistan and determining a path towards a political settlement. For instance, some believe that a centralized system of governance would best hold the country together and prevent factions and outside interference. Others have argued that a centralized political system was attempted and failed to bring the nation together or address economic disparities and provinces’ economic and political needs. This approach to governance has caused grievances as basic needs have gone unmet and specific populations experience isolation and marginalization. However, there is growing recognition that a decentralized system can create a balance of power across regions and address each group’s needs and grievances.
Moreover, the ongoing ban on women’s political participation and the denial of the agency of half of the population has raised serious concerns, both nationally and internationally, about the Taliban and their de facto authorities. A political process must also include women’s meaningful participation to address the concerns of women in Afghanistan.
Afghans have been debating the country’s political process for years. More than ever, it is urgent that this process is based on consensus and results in an inclusive government and political system that consists of people from across provinces and ethnic groups who can see themselves represented in all levels of participation. Any ongoing dialogue must be time sensitive and result in a comprehensive agreement. It is possible that such a process could enable conditions for reconciliation. A political process should not only be a place for deal making between parties but also provide open space for people to have in-depth discourse about the type of state and system in which they want to live.
A domestic political process should create the level of discourse needed to settle significant differences about the nature and approach needed to establish good governance and address Afghan’s fundamental differences. Ideally, it would lead to a nationally representative administration, with political positions distributed among different parties, and it would address the political imbalances among different groups in Afghanistan.
External Process for Interstate Negotiations
The next crucial step to engage is an effective political process is to establish external, interstate negotiations and utilize a consistent regional diplomatic platform to provide countries in the region a place to engage in dialogue and address their economic and security concerns and interests. Historically, countries in the region have used proxies inside Afghanistan to address their own security concerns and compete with one another for their interests. Regional processes have been attempted, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Heart of Asia, Troika Plus, and one-time forums organized by countries in the region, particularly Dushanbe, Moscow, Delhi, Tehran, and Islamabad. However, none of these processes produced effective outcomes because they failed to address the core political and economic issues of the regional actors. In some instances, countries have been altogether excluded, as was the case for India and Iran during Troika Plus.
Excluding any regional country from the negotiation and dialogue process will likely result in an agreement that the excluded party will sabotage. An inclusive process is necessary to address regional parties’ interests, discuss core
political concerns, and negotiate economic and security issues. If regional actors’ interests are taken care of, they will not need to involve Afghan actors and proxies inside Afghanistan. A consistent regional platform that includes all concerned actors, results in clear agreements, and removes proxies from the equation could lead to real political settlement among Afghans.
Conclusion
Afghanistan’s international allies and partners should commit to a comprehensive political process and identify a country or the United Nations to facilitate the external process by initiating a regional negotiation for peace and security involving the United States, Pakistan, China, Iran, India, Russia, and Central Asian states. Meanwhile, an internal political process must commence with a new generation of Afghans, representatives of political parties, ethnic groups, religious minorities, civil society and community representatives who demand consistency, continuity, investment, and an outcome based on consensus. Acknowledging that the process could be time-consuming and that past attempts at political processes have failed should not undermine the urgency of commencing this essential process.
Dr. Nilofar Sakhi is a Professorial Lecturer of International Affairs, Elliott School of George Washington University. Sakhi is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute for the Fall 2022 semester.
Afghanistan Requires a National and Regional Dialogue Based on the Principle of Inclusivity
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
Afghan National Army soldiers set out during an operation in the village of Dasht-e Baghwani, in Nangrahar Province’s Surkh Rod District, to clear Taliban fighters from the area. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2019.
Afghans queue outside a bank in Kabul. Photo: Hoshang Hashimi/AFP, 31 August 2021.Once a week at 11:30 at night, after dinner and the evening prayer, after the nightly buzz of my siblings playing around has given way to the steady breathing of sleep, my mother watches me with anxious eyes as I leave the house to go the bank.
