Wilson Center Fellow Gaisu Yari reflects on the outcomes of the All Women Summit in Albania, examines the various avenues being utilized to hold the Taliban accountable for their violation of women’s human rights, and recommends pathways forward for the global movement to uphold women’s rights in Afghanistan and for UN member states.
The Taliban’s narrative and war against women dominate televisions, radios, and the internet. But over the past three years, Afghan women have been changing that narrative by stepping into their own stories and making their demands heard.
The room buzzed with conflicting dialogues and disagreements over controversial topics that women in Afghanistan have struggled with for years. One group voiced concerns about the influx of humanitarian aid over the past three years, criticizing the lack of monitoring mechanisms despite the deepening humanitarian crisis. Another challenged the role of women protestors, who have recently mobilized into a movement against the Taliban’s brutal war on women.
Some questioned the legitimacy of women in exile and their efforts to sustain the movement on the global stage, while others critically examined the unity within the movement and challenges it faces. Meanwhile, some participants listened quietly to what was perhaps the most vibrant, diverse, and chaotic—yet productive—gathering at the All Women Summit in Tirana, Albania, held September 11–15. For four days, the space was led, organized, and filled by women leaders, protestors, practitioners, journalists, and entrepreneurs from Afghanistan and around the world.
A historic gathering
After three years of collapse, women leaders in exile, despite facing resettlement challenges, continued their advocacy, while women in Afghanistan resisted the Taliban’s strict policies. For all of them, the summit was a historic moment that pushed the women of Afghanistan to move from grief to solidarity building and strategizing. Throughout the All Women Summit, participants not only witnessed distinct exchanges, vibrant discussions, and disagreements but also came together during meals to grieve what they had lost and to create moments of strength, listening to each other despite the hardships of the past three years. Walking the hallways, the sight of women with different styles, colorful clothes, and bold red lipstick symbolized their determination to stand tall and commitment to advancing the movement.
Women of Afghanistan showed resistance to change narratives in the past three years, and the All Women Summit in Albania legitimized their unity, solidarity, and goal to change life for women in Afghanistan. The summit’s resolution and the experience in Albania conveyed a unified message, addressing the criticisms of disunity and scattered approaches over the past three years. It was a pivotal moment for the movement, clarifying its next steps, confirming women’s priorities, and laying the groundwork for developing a women’s political manifesto.
In the past three years, the Taliban banned women from all their basic rights. Twenty years of achievements, including the establishment of systems and legal mechanism to protect women have been erased. The Taliban drastically put in place hundreds of decrees banning women from public spaces, the right to education and work, and freedom of movement and speech. They essentially criminalized women’s general movement in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s frightening law banning women’s voices in public spaces was among the most recent actions that showed the reality of their fight against women and discrimination of women’s basic human rights once more.
The Taliban’s narrative and war against women dominate televisions, radios, and the internet. But over the past three years, Afghan women have been changing that narrative by stepping into their own stories and making their demands heard. Now, they are taking to the international stage to tirelessly advocate for change and engage with international accountability mechanisms to transform the regional landscape and uphold the rights of women in Afghanistan. For instance, women protestors have shifted the narrative from victimhood to stories of strength and reclaiming agency. They have organically formed and sustained grassroots movements to display resilience and resist the Taliban’s policies. This approach differs significantly from the experiences of women during the first Taliban takeover in 1996. Three years of resistance have been long and exhausting for the protestors and the movement at the international level, marked by constant loss, ongoing struggle, limited resources, and a lack of security or protection.
The “Bread, Work, Freedom” movement has a clear message from within. Chanting on the streets of Kabul for their rights and freedom, the movement builds on 20 years of work and investment from the international community. While the Taliban has not been stopping their policies, the “Bread, Work, Freedom” movement is a symbol of defiance against the Taliban’s control of the country by force, pushing women in their homes, and creating collective trauma for the population of Afghanistan. On one hand, these protests are applauded and receive international recognition; on the other hand, there has not been much change in Afghanistan for women.
International accountability mechanisms
What women face in Afghanistan is unprecedented, and experts are navigating different international tools, laws, and mechanisms to address violations. In March 2023, jurists, women activists, women leaders, and organizations started a campaign “calling all member states to recognize the crime of gender apartheid to counteract and end the systems of apartheid currently in place in Iran and Afghanistan.” In the past year and half, the campaign addressed issues such as education and the right to work and tracked all Taliban’s decrees against women to use in the international legal mechanism of UN’s 6th Committee on Crimes Against Humanity Treaty.
On October 10, the 6th committee started to discuss the convention and see if the treaty, which is set to conclude in 2026, will move forward to formal negotiation. The campaign is pushing for member states codify gender apartheid in the treaty on crimes against humanity. Legal experts argue that recognition of gender apartheid under the international law will tackle phenomena of systematic crimes against women that shows domination and oppression. It is this systematic oppression in Afghanistan that distinguishes gender apartheid from gender persecution under the international law.
In September 2024, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia, supported by many other countries, warned the state of Afghanistan of its violation of women’s rights would trigger an automatic referral to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unless their policies are changed. This is an unprecedented announcement, as no countries in the history of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which Afghanistan signed in 2003) were ever brought to the international’s highest court. The Taliban proudly rejected the warning and claimed that they have not been violating any laws and that human rights in Afghanistan are protected.
While the movement, experts, and member states use various tools to hold the Taliban accountable, the following recommendations are essential to consider when addressing the issues faced by women in Afghanistan. These recommendations are intended for both the women of Afghanistan and the member states engaging with the Taliban through different processes and mechanisms.
Recommendations for the women of Afghanistan
Platforms such as the All Women Summit in Albania should be further developed, and Afghan women should use them as opportunities to expand the resolution’s action points. This work requires cohesive financial support. The next summit should already be in the planning stages, ideally taking place in a regional country, such as Türkiye.
A women’s political manifesto should be initiated, as Afghanistan will soon face critical events like the 4th round of the UN Doha Process (Doha 4) and proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Given the movement’s challenges with unified messaging and cohesion, Afghan women must sustain their engagement through conferences, strategic partnerships, and media platforms. Writing, sharing, and maintaining their narrative is essential to strengthening their position within the international community.
The movement must engage strategically with partners shaping the Doha 4 agenda, ensuring that discussions on Afghanistan include the voices of women. The agenda should serve the needs of all Afghan people, rather than focusing on narrow, specific areas.
Women inside Afghanistan and those in exile should push for constructive dialogue. Building solidarity through open conversations will strengthen the movement and unify strategies for future political decisions affecting Afghanistan.
Activists, organizations, and key actors should closely monitor the ICJ process and actively engage in consultations with countries such as Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia.
Recommendations for member states
The UN Doha Process on Afghanistan has not proven to be a successful platform for measuring impact or holding the Taliban accountable. Therefore, member states should not exclude Afghan women from these discussions, especially given the lessons learned from Doha 3.
Over the past three years, Afghan women have faced ambiguity regarding the engagement process with the Taliban and have not had clarity on the UN Doha Process. Moving forward, the international community should treat this as a lesson learned and provide clear guidelines on what engagement entails, along with outlining both long-term and short-term objectives.
With the upcoming Doha 4, the announcement of the ICJ proceedings, and the 6th Committee’s consideration of the treaty, member states should discuss and establish cohesive guidance in the UN Security Council. This guidance should be integrated into the UN-led process for Afghanistan. Afghan women perceive a paradox in the international community’s approach to addressing women’s issues in the country.
Gaisu Yari is a fellow at the Wilson Center and a former civil service commissioner in Afghanistan. She is currently leading the Afghan Voices of Hope Project.
Poetry forms a rich and popular strand of Afghan culture that can have real influence on society, and the Taleban, as insurgents, and now as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) have drawn on this. During the insurgency, poetry was an important propaganda tool used to promote jihad, mock the ‘invaders’ and venerate the martyrs. That poetry has continued since the 2021 takeover, but its style and content have changed dramatically. Patriotism and love of Afghanistan have replaced the themes of war and destruction, and the IEA is now investing some of its scant state resources into poetic public information campaigns. Given how many other forms of cultural expression are banned by the Emirate, unaccompanied, chant-like taranas have become the closest permissible thing to music. Given Afghans’ love of poetry, argues AAN’s Sabawoon Samim, it can touch at least some listeners’ hearts deeply.
When the Emirate came to power in August 2021, music was, as AAN reported in November 2021, “one of the first casualties,” even though, at first, it was only unofficially banned (see also our 2023 report on what had happened to five musicians, young and old). This prohibition encouraged the rise of the only songs that the Taleban believe Islamic law allows, those that are unaccompanied by instruments and are voice-only. Most famously are the taranas, with their “melodies and texts deeply rooted in Pashtun folk culture, but unaccompanied by instruments,” as described in our November 2021 report.
Taranas are closely associated with the Taleban and the author has observed that choosing to listen to them tends to be a good indicator of support for the Emirate. You hear them, especially in rural areas where the Emirate has a large constituency. In towns and cities, by contrast, many young people refrain from listening to them, given the taranas’ association with the IEA, and instead find ways to enjoy banned music privately online, on platforms such as YouTube.
Guests at wedding halls, restaurants and other public spaces might also prefer other forms of music, but given the ban, they turn to taranas as the only legal source of musical entertainment. One interviewee told the author: “Taranas are different from music both in content and the way they are sung, but they are better than nothing.” In Kabul’s restaurants, for example, taranas – many of which are the old popular songs now performed a cappella – have replaced other forms of piped music. In Kabul’s wedding halls, where once the sound of live music filled the air, wedding guests are now entertained by the melodies of taranas, while at graduation ceremonies, students and guests are serenaded by songs extolling the virtues of education. The same is true of what is on offer on domestic radio stations. Taxi drivers, who usually put the radio on to break the monotony of their days, now play taranas rather than what was ubiquitous pop music; callers now telephone in to stations to request their favourite tarana instead of their favourite pop song.
Interestingly, some of the taranas now duplicate musical compositions of Pashto, Dari and Hindi songs, sung accompanied by beatboxing – percussive sounds produced by the human voice – in lieu of instruments. Although these kinds of taranas are officially banned (see for example this Pajhwok News report), they have a wide fanbase among both Taleban and non-Taleban, given their more musical feel, and more and more are being produced in private studios (see, for example, this and this tarana).
Drawing on seven in-depth conversations with Taleban poets and members of the Cultural Commission of the Taleban’s shadow government during the insurgency, and analysis of more than two dozen poems from both the insurgency era and the present, this paper looks at how poetry and taranas have become key features of the second Emirate rule. It first explores the high status of poetry in Afghan society and how the Taleban, as insurgents, drew on a long tradition of using it to recruit and galvanise fighters. It then considers how, since the takeover, the IEA has systematically invested in taranas, including promoting new themes of patriotism, unity and development. It finds that poetry is also one of the few ways that members of the movement can convey criticism.
State-produced poetry
As taranas grow in popularity, filling the void left by the ban on other music, the Emirate authorities are investing considerable attention and state resources in creating and promoting them. The government’s aim appears to be fostering patriotism, promoting its religious ideology, sharing the Emirate’s narrative of itself as the liberator and protector of Afghanistan and attempting to gain greater legitimacy among Afghans. A Taleban-affiliated poet from Paktia described the usefulness of this policy more bluntly: “Poetry is an essential resource for a state to cleanse the toxins that infidels have injected into the hearts of Afghans.” Similarly, another interviewee, a Taleban official in Khost province, remarked:
In other societies, people may be less emotional, but in Afghanistan, emotions hold sway, shaping everything. The significance of poetry lies in its profound impact on emotions, which makes it highly effective here.
All our interviewees agreed that senior figures within the movement find taranas and poetry in general effective tools for fostering patriotism and unity as well as conveying the movement’s identity. One senior Taleban official in a civilian ministry presented it as a tool for reconciliation:
It’s very important for people with political differences to gather together. Discussing ideas and sharing thoughts is the first step towards understanding and knowing each other. Through these events, the Emirate wants to tell people that we are [all] the same. We don’t only know war, we also know peace and love.
Emirate officials believe this strategy is making headway, as highlighted by a mid-level Taleban official from the Ministry of Information and Culture: “On social media, we’re watching an increased number of Afghans from across the country listening to taranas, particularly those about the motherland.” The author has also observed Taleban taranas with over a million views on YouTube and hundreds of public comments (see, for example, videos here, here and here).
The Emirate has taken steps to regulate and control this growth with the establishment of the Taranum[1] and Culture Directorate under the auspices of the Technical and Vocation Education and Training Authority (TVETA). The Directorate is responsible for “organising poets and singers, overseeing taranas, aligning them with Islamic [values] and [Emirate] policies and removing instruments from them,” as its deputy Mawlawi Ghulam Said Ihsas said at the TEVET ‘Accountability Session to the Afghan Nation’ (televised by state broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) and accessible here).
The authorities have also taken steps to professionalise and enhance the quality of taranas. In contrast to during the insurgency, taranas are not only produced in audio but are now also available as music videos. (While videos are now illegal under the new Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law, issued in August 2024, enforcement appears to be patchy at most.) TVETA has established a new studio for tarana singers, who are also given access to additional studios at the state-owned broadcaster, RTA and ministries, such as the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Ministry of Interior. By the end of 2023, according to Ihsas, TEVTA alone had published more than 200 taranas. State-produced taranas have also been published on official social media accounts such as RTA Music (see for example this and this video).
Another key step the IEA has taken is organising poetry programmes, most of which are also televised. These are large gatherings of poets, government officials and people from across Afghanistan held in different provinces where poets recite their poems to a wide audience. Although the Emirate’s poetry events are typically limited to recitations, RTA and other channels often broadcast poetry gatherings which include a type of poetry contest, musha’ara, that involves replying to one poem with another. RTA has a programme called ‘Cheena’ (spring water), where it invites senior figures, such as Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahed, alongside leading poets and tarana singers.
Regional Ministry of Information directorates also host annual poetry evenings, mostly in Pashto-speaking provinces, that can boast hundreds of participants, including Taleban-affiliated and other poets, young men and government officials. Famous non-Taleban poets, such as Pir Muhammad Karwan, Matiullah Turab and Alim Bismil join younger, emerging bards and are given the stage to declaim their poetry. Last year, poets from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the other side of the Durand Line who hold a Pashtun nationalist political stance and supported the former Republic were invited to Nangrahar’s historical and famous Naranj Gul poetry event and VIP reception. The poetry at these events tends to be diverse, containing patriotic, romantic and satirical poems, as well as those condemning Pakistan, Iran and the West.
The Emirate also often uses taranas in its official media, ceremonies and propaganda. For example, when the Emirate announces a new reconstruction project, the video is often scored with a tarana (see, for example, this state-owned Bakhtar New Agency video on X).
The Emirate’s has embrace of poetry, especially the tarana, has arisen not only because it has banned or suppressed so many other cultural expressions but also because poetry is a bedrock of Afghan identity and culture and a potent force to be exploited. Poetry was especially important for inspiring fighters during the various phases of Afghanistan’s long war, a tradition which the Taleban as insurgents built on. These factors will be addressed in the following sections before the paper returns to how the Emirate is deploying taranas today, including the transformation of their subject matter.
Poetry in Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s culture boasts a rich and diverse poetic history that is deeply embedded in Afghan society in all linguistic traditions. Poems are used to welcome a newborn into the world and bid farewell to the deceased. When a child is born, their mother may sing spiritual poetry to instil a sense of connection to the divine. If a child cries, a parent, grandparent or older sibling might sing a soothing poem to calm or help them fall asleep. Poetry provides consolation and often carries valuable lessons in times of sorrow or hardship. More mundane examples include the rhyming couplets frequently seen stuck onto the rear windows of cars (see this AAN report for examples) or written by pupils in the margins of their school textbooks or on social media. A famous saying in eastern Afghanistan sums up the omnipresence of poetry in the country: “When you move a rock, you may find a poet underneath.”
Every ethnic group in Afghanistan has its revered poets, many of whom are treasured and shared across ethnic and linguistic lines. As the Afghan poet Reza Mohammadi notes in this editorial for the Guardian in 2012, “Whether we are Tajik, Hazara, Pashtun, Uzbek, Turkmen, Nuristani, Baluch, or any other of the hundreds of sub-ethnic groups, Afghans are threaded together by poetry.” Somehow it is the Persian poets, such as the thirteenth century ‘Mawlana’, Jalaluddin Rumi, born in Balkh in what is now Afghanistan, that have attained a global reach (though, as this essay notes, the price of his fame was the “erasure” of his Muslim identity for western audiences).
Poetry is also deeply intertwined in centuries-old Pashto literary traditions. The 8th century Afghan king, Amir Kror Suri, is regarded as the first Pashto poet whose work was recorded for posterity:[2]
I am a lion In the world there is none more powerful Neither In India, Sind, Takhar nor Kabul Nor is there any in the plains of Zabul There is none mightier than me The arrows of my strong decision, like lightning fall On the fleeing and escaping enemy l boldly recall Defeated in battle they have been all. There is no mightier than me.
One distinctive form of Pashto poetry is the landay or tappa, a 22-syllable rhyming couplet with a specific rhythmic and syllabic structure. This is a strong oral tradition, with landays mainly composed and recited by women. The female poets, themselves, are often unnamed and unknown. Landays address a wide range of daily issues and social themes and leave virtually no part of life untouched. (A rare collection of landays was made by the American poet Eliza Griswold, who worked with Afghan poets to translate their poetry for a 2015 book; some of the poems also feature in this essay).
Afghan literature also includes a rich tradition of epic poetry known as hamasi poetry.[3] Used to honour heroes and heroines of war and rally support for battles, hamasi poetry has adapted to changes in circumstances and typically reaches its literary peaks during times of war. For example, during the early 12th century, Pashtun poet and leader Khushal Khan Khattak deployed his poems against the Mughals, encouraging resistance against their invasion and cruelty. Similarly, during the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1919, Malalai’s two-line tappa rallied Afghan morale and spirit, contributing to their victory in the Battle of Maiwand against the British:[4]
Young love, if you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand, By God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!
In more recent history, the Soviet-Afghan war during the 1980s once again witnessed a surge in hamasi poetry. Poets captured the inhumane nature of the war and of Soviet aggression, inspiring resistance fighters such as in the poem below by the famous Dari poet, Khalilullah Khalili, which praises the mujahedin (see here):
Brave one, I admire your passionate eyes. The homeland is waiting for your strength. Fight fiercely – make [the enemy] bleed, thrash it, set it on fire. What could be worse than having the enemy in your own land? The homeland is looking to you, waiting for you to prove your skill in battle.
Even after the Soviets departed, poetry remained alive within the mujahedin factions. The themes, however, shifted to celebrating victory and praising commanders and leaders. The Taleban, who were part of the fight against the Soviets, fully embraced this poetic tradition. When they gained power in 1996, they banned music but encouraged taranas.
That said, poetry and taranas were not very pervasive in the early days of the Taleban movement. One interviewee claimed that only “a handful of poets existed and the taranas were also scarce.” During the first Emirate, taranas focused on specific issues, such as describing the Taleban movement, praising God and the Prophet Muhammad and highlighting heroism in their conflict against other mujahedin factions. Interviewees noted that at the time, the Taleban had not composed taranas of their own as they would in later years. Rather, theirs was a continuation of the poetry practice inherited from the jihad era and the earlier epic (hamasi) poetry.
A twentieth-century depiction of the most famous Afghan war poet, Malalai, whose two-line tappa rallied her comrades to defeat the British at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880 during the second Anglo-Afghan War (unknown artist).
The poetry of the insurgents
It was during the long years of insurgency against the Islamic Republic and its foreign backers that the Taleban movement began to effectively use taranas to inspire jihad. After the first Emirate collapsed in the face of heavy United States bombardment in 2001, the movement eventually regrouped as an armed insurgency. Again calling themselves ‘mujahedin’, their poetry echoed that of the anti-Soviet jihad. It was used to boost morale, call men to arms and legitimise the war effort. It soon became an essential feature of the post-2001 Taleban movement, with more poets and singers offering a growing number of poems reflecting the themes of the movement’s new jihad. The key poetic form was the tarana.
The taranas of the insurgency were so vivid and powerful that several Taleban interviewees believed they could by themselves rouse young men to take up arms. “When the youth would listen to these taranas,” said one interviewee, a local Emirate official in Khost, “their emotions would go up and the only place they could find relief was in action and by joining [our] ranks.” Another Taleban interviewee said they could also cause the enemy to defect: “The taranas were so powerful that if a soldier of the Republic listened to them, he might leave his post and join us instead.” A Taleban soldier from Nangrahar concurred that poetry had been a recruiting tool: “During the jihad, people did not listen much to taranas, but for those who did, it was nearly impossible for them not to join [us].” Another interviewee from Khost province recalled:
A soldier of [the Republic] had beaten one of my friends up badly, while he was still at school. He was very angry with the government. I took the opportunity to send him hundreds of taranas. A month later, he slowly reached out to our group and, in the end, joined us. He was later martyred.
According to a New York Times report) from 2019, Taleban suicide bombers who failed in their missions and were arrested were observed reciting poems to their fellow prisoners, suggesting their deep familiarity with the poetry. One bomber quoted in the piece, whose device detonated prematurely, sang a poem about what the prison was for him:
In our chains, there are lessons to be learned. The sun shines and reveals the secrets of our world. The chains are beautiful, creations of God: The chains on our hands hurt us, But the scars on our hands teach us.
Analysis created in support of the US military’s counter-insurgency operations during this period certainly saw the Taleban’s taranas as a threat to their own information war – see for example, this 2009 paper from the Naval Postgraduate School, ‘Understanding Afghan Culture’, which purports to:
Offer IO [information operation] practitioners and analysts valuable insight into the power of poetry within the Afghan battle space. … The intention of this paper is to help operationalize the many facets poetry offers U.S. and Coalition forces.
Another paper from 2011, casts the overlooked power of the Taleban’s taranas as emblematic of the West’s failure:
The Taliban taranas appear to be deeply rooted in the Afghan psyche. They appeal to emotions the West do not and have not tried to understand. This lack of understanding, in part, has ultimately doomed Western engagement in Afghanistan.
On this last point, the Taleban and Americans might now agree. The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan continues to appreciate the poetry of the insurgency. On a stand at the entrance of the Directorate of Taranum and Farhang (Singing and Culture) of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Authority, it is written:
No one can be blind to the compelling role played by the singers of taranas in propaganda, intellectual and psychological warfare.
Poetry, then and now
Although a significant portion of the taranas during the insurgency revolved around the conflict, the poetry was diverse, lamenting the burdens of war and contrasting the oppression of foreign invaders with the heroism and resistance displayed by the ‘occupied’. Consider the following three poems: [5]
We’re not mad to seek death Our love for freedom drives us Our dignity endures We struggle for noble goals, suffering the mountains and sleepless nights Every step brings bitter memories Yet we walk barefoot through life’s ups and downs all in pursuit of the sacred.
***
If the entire universe conspires against me I shall still stand, unwavering on the battlefield of honour and dignity. My heart beats for sacrifices and freedom A living memory of the brave youth of Uhud.
***
Jihad is my path Through hardships, I embrace [my] love for freedom. A lone Taleb I step into the battle of honour – a thorn in the world’s eyes fuelled by love of liberty.
Such poems resonated with young Afghan men often disgruntled with the US-led coalition and what they saw as the foreigner-installed Republic. Listening to these taranas reminded Taleban fighters, as one interviewee put it, “not to forget what the invaders were doing and [also] that we were responsible for stopping them.” Another interviewee, now a member of the Emirate’s police force, recalled that during their stays in mosques, playing taranas would stir the comrades’ emotions and they would urge the commander in charge to begin the attack, demanding to know what he was waiting for and why they were just sitting around.
In those days, there were also taranas of victimhood, including memorialising the civilian victims of international forces. An English language 2012 anthology, Poetry of the Taleban, edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten, included a poem about a wedding party that had been bombed, killing both bride and groom: “But the news brings press releases from Bagram / Saying that ‘we have killed the terrorists” (p 41). Criticism of the United States and the Republic was a common theme, as was mockery, seen in this ode (p 118) to the end of President George W Bush’s tenure in 2009:
Karzai: Give me your hand as you go; Turn your face as you disappear. Bush: Sorrow takes over and overwhelms me; My darling! Take care of yourself and I will take care of myself.
For the Taleban, these poems served a purpose beyond mere propaganda; they were an attempt to humanise the war and Taleban suffering and express deep inner feelings. One interviewee, a Taleban poet who now works in a civilian ministry, said that for some mujahedin, fighting the enemy was not sufficient: they needed the powerful outlet of writing or reciting poetry to also satisfy their need for action. Poetry, the interviewee said, was also “the weeping that comes from the hearts of those who … were unable to physically resist the occupation and the injustice through [armed] jihad.”
How poetry changed after the capture of power
The wartime themes shifted after August 2021 when the Taleban gained control over all Afghanistan. Poets were quick to celebrate the victory they had secured and emphasise the defeat they had inflicted upon their enemies. After assessing more than a dozen poems from this early period of IEA rule, the author found they were exclusively focused on the victory, for example:
They have defeated the coalition of 40 countries The Taleb has won the 20-year war Their flag is white, flying high Their purpose and movement are white. This is the brave Taleb jan Who has crushed the puppet soldiers all the way to Kabul And won the 20-year war.
Another poem conveys a similar message: Felicitations on the Afghan victory I see the Taleban everywhere Congratulations These Crusaders have been ripped apart Praise be, they have turned to dust Blessings on this bittersweet victory.
After that initial ‘poetry of victory’ period, other themes have subsequently emerged in the three years since 2021. For example, the Taleban also tried to present themselves as the defenders and liberators of Afghanistan:[6]
From the long winter nights and the icy snow To fatigue on the battlefield And bruised and broken feet To the dark nights of the Tor Ghar We have long embraced the gunpowder and sacrificed Mansuri youth To discharge our debt to you O motherland, we offered our blood to you.
These poems have a strong narrative of sovereignty and independence. This reflects the Emirate’s boasts that it does not operate under foreign influence nor, as one interviewee from a civilian ministry put it, do its officials hold “the passports of other countries,” referring to the dual citizenships held by some of the officials of the Republic.
Our interviewees also highlighted a patriotic desire at this time, reflected in official taranas, to promote prosperity and development in Afghanistan after decades of conflict. One Taleban-affiliated poet said: “In the past, the sole goal was jihad, but now that era has ended. Instead of war, our current objective is to rebuild Afghanistan.” Poems such as this one capture the mood well:
What great transformation God’s mercy has brought about Those who made bombs are making pearls They have given everyone their rights They are rebuilding their devastated homeland.
Another poem conveys a similar sentiment:
Now that I have freed you I will rebuild you and make you shine again Homeland is the cure for hearts Life breathes, breathes and heals My desolate country, beloved homeland, needs our care It needs the lost Taleb inside its heart It is black, it is on fire, it wants to be rebuilt.
This poem suggests Afghanistan is now developing after years of violence:
Quickly progressing country You are flourishing again My beloved, beloved homeland None rival your beauty But the war-torn country is wounded. Advance! You will rise again You will flourish.
In this poem, patriotism is fused with a yearning for peace and normality:
I will envelope you with a green shawl I will make this country like a thousand others I will protect it with my life’s blood I will sacrifice for it my flesh I call this a marker of faith My soul is renewed and gleams I see the green panoramas of the country People from heaven shielded you, may God protect you from further adversity May God make no mother childless here Be strong and end the night of guns As we have freed you from occupation We stand with you.
Sacrifice, a common motif in wartime poetry, remained after August 2021, although now it was enjoined in the cause of development:
Afghanistan will grow green and flourish I have planted you in my heart Beloved Afghanistan When someone takes your name I roar that I will be sacrificed for you, Afghanistan. ***
We will rebuild you, homeland This promise we make We will sacrifice our life We will never let anyone [harm] you As in you roam the Taleban’s caravans.
Other poems urge the Taleban to be protectors of the realm:[7]
Be the guardian of the homeland
Rebuild the wasteland
This country, Taleb jan, wants reconstruction
Treat its wounded body sincerely
You are the ibn Qasim of the age
protect it by all means
Take care of this nation through education and instruction
Bring the people closer to you; bring them inside your heart
Rule their hearts
For all shall praise you
Personify Omari principles
History will honour you.
***
Let’s build our country, compete with the world We will make it flourish, like paradise We are bound to progress We are serving its beauty and unity
***
Long live the house of Muslims, beloved Afghanistan This homeland of martyrs The homeland of heroes It is a piece of our hearts Hell for others, heaven for its people Its air is heavenly, Every desert is heavenly It is bursting with rubies and gems
***
I am in love with you I am the guardian of this realm My purpose strong I am a Badri soldier I have no care for riches, no care for myself I am like a star Shining bright for you.
Another key aim of the poetry being disseminated is the promotion of unity among Afghanistan’s diverse ethnicities. The Taleban want to distance themselves from being labelled as a Pashtun movement (although senior appointments evidence otherwise – see AAN reporting from 2021 and, more recently, this 2023 report by a panel of UN experts). One interviewee said that content promoting harmony was effective in countering the divisive “propaganda” that anti-Taleban political groups propagate. The unity theme can be seen here, for example:
Light the light of unity Erase hatred with unity Even if the world tries to sow discord We are bound together in unity.
The poem below stresses that the varied ethnicities in Afghanistan make up a unified Muslim homeland:
This heavenly, heavenly country Shrines and dusty graves adorn the homeland May its tears become pearls and its wounds flowers May the strangers be gone forever May it never be soaked in blood again Tajik and Hazara are brothers here Be they Pashai, Pashtun or Uzbek, they are brothers The country is the home of Muslims, One nation, one united homeland.
The theme of obedience also looms large in the Taleban’s poetry, promoting loyalty to the Amir. See these two poems, for example:[8]
Do not be neglectful There is honour in obedience Obedience is the secret to success and happiness Do not build your life on betrayal O shepherd, gain high honours through obedience
***
Do not stray from obedience to these three
First Allah, second the Prophet, third the Amir.
These are the keys to exultation
First, intention; second, piety; third, planning.
Mujahed, always keep on your breath
First, hamd; second, prayer, third, takbir.
Beyond shaping public perceptions, Taleban poetry also reveals the movement’s conservativism. For instance, this poem by Ikram Maftun, a provincial official, highlights the dim views of his fellow Taleban towards NGOs and what he sees as trappings of modernity, such as television:
If the Quran’s commands are not fully applied Tell me, how would you protect its dignity? In the face of infidel NGOs how would you protect the honour, faith and values of Afghans? In the time of mobiles and television depravity How would you protect girls and the youth from immorality?
Not all taranas are officially sanctioned, however. Indeed, poetry has become one of the only platforms where Taleban fighters can voice criticism and alert the Emirate to potential problems. In public poetry events, one can hear poems that caution leaders and fighters not to deviate from the cause. In private gatherings as well, Taleban poets are blunt about the risk of power corrupting. This poem, for example, reflects the concerns of older Taleban members about their superiors practising favouritism:
Offices have changed the comrades Big positions and high ranks have changed the comrades They have forgotten the weary comrades of battlefields They have forgotten the friend of the bad days Now, they only remember and see their in-laws and brothers Now, they only know their tribesmen, villagers and cousins.
Another poem criticises nepotism within the Emirate:[9]
Thanks to nepotism and connections The arbakai has now become a mujahed There is no need for aptitude and piety The only thing you need is a connection with an official.
Conclusion
Since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, The Taleban have endeavoured to reframe their identity from fighters to rulers. Not surprisingly, given the importance of poetry to the movement as a means of propaganda and recruitment during the insurgency, they have continued to turn to poetry. Taranas, in particular, sung as chants or a capella anthems, have real power in a society where the poetic tradition is part of everyday life. The Emirate’s campaign to systematically promote poetry using state resources is a sign of how successful they believe it was during the insurgency and how powerful it can continue to be.
As the context has changed, the Emirate’s strategy has also evolved. During the insurgency, the audience primarily consisted of rural Afghans, often Taleban sympathisers and their own fighters. Unlike today, resources were scarce and the movement struggled to reach a broader audience. Now, the IEA recognises it has new audiences, some of whom have long viewed them as adversaries. Correcting this perception is an urgent priority. It has therefore shifted its focus towards themes shared by both Taleban and non-Taleban Afghans, such as patriotism, unity and development. These powerful sentiments are now the arenas through which the Emirate seeks to influence hearts and minds.
For their own members, poetry is used to foster obedience to the Amir and the Emirate. The lives of former fighters have been dramatically altered by the change in their fortunes, with all the power and resources that such a position affords the victor. Taranas are being used to motivate their loyalty and – perhaps more optimistically – offer reassurance to any sceptics in the ranks. Some of those sceptics are disgruntled poets who use poetry to convey their concerns and caution their leaders – sometimes even face-to-face. In a video posted on X, a Taleban-affiliated poet, Nemat Lewanay, sitting with acting Defence Minister Mullah Yaqub cautioned him and other Taleban leaders against forgetting their jihad-era comrades and turning towards worldly pleasures:
I appreciate you are busy But not this much You no longer feel the old love Comfort brought extravagance Gone is our reverence for the mountains If vanity and prejudice do not unseat us No power in the world can stand against us Those who neglect old comrades have no honour.
Edited by Rachel Reid, Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
Taranum is the formal plural of tarana.
↑2
For a detailed background, see ‘Amir Korer Suri as the First Poet of Pashto’ by Ghulam Sakhi Himat and Azizurahman Haqyaar in the International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Biotechnology, 2021.
↑3
Hamasi means ‘epic’ in Pashto: hamasi poems are focused on war, heroism and commemorating heroes (read more about Pashto epics here). In modern times, hamasi cover all war-related issues.
The reference in the second poem to the ‘youth of Uhud’ is to the companions of the Prophet Muhammad who participated in the Battle of Uhud, the second major battle between the Muslims and the (non-believing) Quraysh of Mecca, fought in 625 CE. The Muslims, with an army of around 700 men, faced the approximately 3000-strong Quraysh and, despite being outnumbered, were victorious.
↑6
The reference to Tor Ghar (the Black Mountain) in this poem is to a mountain in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the other side of the Durand Line, used here as a stand-in for all of Afghanistan’s high mountain chains. The ‘Mansuri youth’ likely refers to the 10th century Persian Sufi thinker, Mansur Halaj, who gained a large following as a preacher before becoming embroiled in a power struggle with the Abbasid court. He was executed after a long period of imprisonment on religious and political charges.
↑7
Muḥammad ibn al-Qasim al-Saqafī, mentioned in this poem, was the 8th-century military commander who led the Muslim conquest of Sindh in India for the Umayyad Caliphate.
The poet also lauds ‘Omari qualities’, referring to the virtues attributed to Mullah Muhammad Omar, one of the founders of the Taleban movement and its first supreme leader.
The poet also describes himself as a ‘Badri soldier’. This is a reference to the 313 companions of the Prophet Muhammad who participated in the Battle of Badr, an important early battle fought in 624 CE. Muslims honour these 313 men as a symbol of bravery, given they defeated an army of 1,000 non-believers.
↑8
The poem mentions ‘hamd’, a word from the Quran used exclusively to refer to the praise of God. ‘Takbir’ is the Arabic term for the phrase, ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is the greatest). This phrase is used to glorify God and is recited in Islamic rituals and events.
↑9
Arbakai is a term from Loya Paktia for tribally-raised and controlled temporary local militias. It became an insult during the Republic, used to describe pro-government armed groups, including the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and uprising groups.
The Poetry of the Emirate: From insurgent war propaganda to state-sponsored PR
Activists hope a change in international law could help to address the intensifying erosion of women and girls’ rights in Afghanistan
Over the past three years, the world has watched in horror as women and girls in Afghanistan have had their rights and freedoms systematically stripped away.
In the face of inaction by the international community, a campaign for the conditions being imposed on Afghan and Iranian women to be made a crime under international law as gender apartheid was launched last year. What does the term mean and will it make a difference?
What does gender apartheid mean?
Gender apartheid is a term used to describe the systemic oppression, discrimination and segregation of a specific group based on gender.
Apartheid is defined as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”.
Racial apartheid, which comes from the Afrikaans word for “separateness”, became a crime under international law in 1973 in response to the segregation and subjugation of black South Africans by the white ruling class in South Africa since 1948, and which continued until 1994.
Women’s rights activists, UN experts and lawyers argue that if you replace the word “racial” with “gender”, it becomes an accurate reflection of the condition of tens of millions of women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran.
What are activists calling for?
At the end of 2023, a campaign called End Gender Apartheid was launched by Afghan human rights activists, backed by United Nations experts, calling for gender apartheid in Afghanistan to be codified as a crime against humanity by the U
The campaign argues that current laws criminalising gender persecution do not reflect the intent, ideology and institutionalised nature of the systemic subjugation and deprivation of women in Afghanistan , where laws have been specifically crafted to constrain the lives of women and their role in society.
What is the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan?
Women and their status and rights have been pivotal to the Taliban’s governance of Afghanistan since it swept to power in August 2021, after the withdrawal of US and UK troops and the collapse of the democratic Afghan government.
In the past three years, the group has issued more than 80 edicts curtailing the rights of all Afghanistan’s women and girls.
In August, they published a new set of “vice and virtue” laws, which banned women from speaking in public, deeming their voices an “intimate” part of their bodies, and made it mandatory for women to cover every part of their body in thick cloth in public. It also made it illegal for women to look at a man who is not a relation.
The Taliban have also brought back flogging and the stoning and public execution of women for offences such as adultery.
What about calls for this also to apply to Iran?
Some human rights activists are also arguing that the term gender apartheid should also be applied to what is happening to women in Iran.
They argue that Iran’s new “hijab and chastity” bill imposes harsh penalties, including prison sentences of up to 10 years, on women who do not conform to a mandated dress code and head covering in public.
It also increases the surveillance of women and girls by the government to ensure they are conforming to the hijab regulations, using CCTV cameras on public transport and government-mandated “hijab watchers” and imposes more gender segregation in public spaces. An aggressive enforcement crackdown by the Iranian regime has seen women shot in their cars,dragged from the streets, tortured and imprisoned after being deemed to be in breach of strict hijab laws
The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran has called the law a form of gender apartheid, and said “authorities appear to be governing through systemic discrimination with the intention of suppressing women and girls into total submission”
However, others argue that the situation for women in Iran is not comparable to the plight of women in Afghanistan and while the Iranian authorities are undeniably imposing human rights abuses and severe gender discrimination on women and girls, it does not equate to gender apartheid.
Could making gender apartheid a crime against humanity make a difference?
Those calling for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime against humanity argue that the international community responded to racial apartheid in South Africa after it became a crime in 1973,eventually forcing the government to back down.
If gender apartheid was codified as a crime and applied to Afghanistan or Iran, states would theoretically be obliged to take action, to uphold the integrity of international laws. It would also increase pressure on countries to grant asylum to Afghan and Iranian women and girls and hopefully stop states from accepting the legitimacy of Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan and pursuing trade and diplomatic relations with them.
In September, Canada, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands said it was planning to take the Taliban to the international court of justice (ICJ) for gender discrimination, which could strengthen the calls to codify gender apartheid under international law.
However, others argue that making gender apartheid a crime would have limited impact.
When it comes to Afghanistan, while activists push for sanctions and isolation of the Taliban, the international community has largely followed a policy of conditional engagement and there are signs that countries in the region are slowly building diplomatic bridges with the regime.
So far, no condemnation, sanctions or pressure from the international community has had any impact on the Taliban or the relentless oppression of women and girls in Iran and there is no prospect of governments engaging militarily in Afghanistan or Iran to protect their rights.
As one Afghan woman told the Guardian earlier this year: “Nobody is coming to help us.”
What is gender apartheid – and can anything be done to stop it?
Vice and virtue law weaponizes religion to justify Taliban’s oppressive rule.
New law faces opposition from within the Taliban’s ranks, governors, religious leaders and civil society.
The international community should prevent the further erosion of human rights in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s new vice and virtue law, which places sweeping restrictions on women’s dress, mobility and public presence, is facing pushback from Afghan religious scholars, civil society, the wider Muslim community and even the Taliban themselves.
The law weaponizes religion to justify the Taliban’s oppressive rule, leaving millions of Afghan women and girls in a state of fear and uncertainty.
A Gross Misinterpretation of Islamic Teachings
The Taliban’s law, ratified on July 31, 2024, erases the hard-won rights of Afghan women over the past two decades. Women are now required to cover their entire bodies, including their faces, and their voices must be concealed in public spaces. The law goes further, barring women from traveling without a male guardian, and imposing restrictive dress codes and behavior rules. These limitations go beyond women’s rights, affecting public celebrations and banning music, all framed under an extremist interpretation of Islam. The law, if fully enforced, would undermine fundamental human rights while reinforcing the Taliban’s authoritarian rule.
Noting that the law grossly misinterprets Islamic teachings, scholars have publicly challenged the regime, arguing that the Taliban’s claims about women’s voices being awrah (nakedness) and the necessity for strict covering are not supported by the Quran or Sunnah. They point to numerous religious texts that affirm women’s voices were heard and respected during the Prophet Muhammad’s time, directly contradicting the Taliban’s position. For instance, Quranic verses such as 60:12 and 58:1 show women engaging in verbal communication with the Prophet, while the hadiths narrated by Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, further prove that women’s voices were never meant to be silenced in Islamic tradition. These scholars have highlighted that morality enforcement, according to Islam, is the responsibility of the Muslim community as a whole, not the state, debunking the Taliban’s justifications.
Taliban Split on Vice and Virtue Law
There are increasing signs of internal division within the Taliban regarding the implementation of the vice and virtue law. Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada’s unusual visit to northern and western Afghanistan earlier in September, covering eight provinces, including Takhar, Badghis, Balkh and Kunduz, highlights efforts to address growing dissent among local officials and tribal leaders. According to reports, multiple governors have refused to enforce the vice and virtue law, while one of the Taliban’s chief negotiators of the 2020 Doha agreement and deputy minister of foreign affairs, Abbas Stanikzai, has publicly spoken against its restrictions on women.
The Taliban’s efforts to enforce this law will not only exacerbate public resistance but reveal the internal conflicts that may threaten their grip on power.
These divisions have led to internal fractures, with local leaders questioning the law’s implementation. As one leader of the Ahmadzai tribe told one of the authors, “It feels like there has been a death in everyone’s family … because their daughters can’t go to school.” This discontent highlights the law’s psychological and economic toll, affecting families and the country’s well-being by limiting women’s participation in society and weakening the economy. The Taliban’s efforts to enforce this law will not only exacerbate public resistance but reveal the internal conflicts that may threaten their grip on power.The growing resistance to the Taliban’s law is not limited to Afghan scholars. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and its scholars have also expressed their disapproval, with some delegations snubbing Taliban officials at recent meetings. Even traditionally conservative members like Saudi Arabia have criticized the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Shariah. This global Muslim opposition to the law underlines that the Taliban’s position is not only out of step with Islamic jurisprudence but also threatens to isolate Afghanistan diplomatically.
Fearing potential unrest from both scholars and the general populace, the Taliban issued a statement on September 20 prohibiting religious scholars from engaging in controversial topics. This move suggests that the regime is acutely aware of growing dissatisfaction with its policies and is increasingly concerned about the possibility of dissent. By stifling debate on sensitive religious issues, the Taliban seeks to maintain control and prevent any challenges to their authority. This reflects a broader anxiety within the regime about the fragility of their power and the potential for public outcry against their governance. Such measures indicate a recognition that discontent is simmering beneath the surface, and the Taliban is eager to quash any emerging voices that could galvanize the population.
Recommendations to Safeguard Women’s Rights
As Haibatullah attempts to enforce the new vice and virtue law, the growing resistance is impossible to ignore. Besides the opposition from Afghan scholars, women and civil society are pushing back, both inside Afghanistan and in the diaspora, as they continue to fight for the rights and freedoms that were promised but never delivered. This week there were a slew of arrests of Afghan scholars who have been outspoken on women’s rights, including a prominent scholar who used to lead the Council for the Protection of Religious and Jihadi Values in Kabul. Afghan women have sent an official request to the OIC’s Fiqh Academy to issue a fatwa (a legal opinion or decree handed down by an Islamic religious leader) against the Taliban’s misuse of Islamic sources, including the Quran and hadith, in this new vice and virtue law. In a brief response, the OIC said women have the right to education and to speak and be seen; it now has the opportunity to review the law and issue an official legal ruling condemning the Taliban’s misinterpretations.
Internationally recognized mechanisms, such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan appointed by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, must be empowered to not only monitor human rights violations tied to the enforcement of this law but also impose consequences that are connected to economic outcomes, normalization and recognition as part of the U.N. Doha process. The U.N. Doha process on Afghanistan is a diplomatic initiative aimed at facilitating dialogue between the international community and the Taliban, focusing on securing peace, stability and the protection of human rights, including ensuring the Taliban’s compliance with international law. It seeks to address key issues such as governance, women’s rights and security in Afghanistan, with the ultimate goal of fostering an inclusive political solution. It will be essential to incorporate the monitoring mechanism of the special rapporteur into the U.N. Doha process as part of a formal mechanism to set milestones for Taliban compliance.
Internally, the Taliban face growing dissent over the law, offering a potential opportunity for the Taliban movement to be responsive to its constituencies and change leadership. By supporting more responsive moderate elements within the Taliban, such as those already questioning the law’s necessity, a reorganization of leadership (or recognition of local leadership) in the regime could frame a retreat as aligning with Islamic jurisprudence and local oversight. This internal pushback could provide a way for the Taliban to back down without appearing to surrender to external pressure beyond the Taliban movement, opening the door for broader reforms.
By maintaining pressure on the Taliban and supporting the growing internal and external resistance to their regime, the international community can help safeguard the rights of Afghan women and prevent further erosion of human rights in the country.
Mohammad Osman Tariq is an Afghan religious scholar who has written about religious institution building in Afghanistan. He is also a senior advisor to the Religion and Inclusive Societies program at USIP.
Religious Leaders, Civil Society Oppose Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Law
The government of Afghanistan has been warned that its violations of women’s rights will trigger a referral to the United Nation’s highest court – the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – unless it changes its policies. The initiative, taken by Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands and supported by 22 other states, centres on alleged violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to which Afghanistan is a signatory. According to the procedures of the court, the Afghan government is offered a chance to resolve the dispute, failing which, the ICJ will take up the case. A spokesman for the Islamic Emirate immediately dismissed the allegations. While the court lacks enforcement power, it is not without teeth and a judgement against the IEA could lead to additional sanctions against the Emirate, as well as political pressure on those actors inclined towards normalisation. Rachel Reid provides an overview of the process, its potential impact and pitfalls.The move to take Afghanistan to the ICJ could be groundbreaking: CEDAW has been in place for more than 40 years, but never before has the court been asked to look into a state’s alleged breach of it.[1] The initiative was announced by four foreign ministers at a side event at the UN General Assembly on 25 September 2024 in an emotional speech from the German minister, Annalena Baerbock, who described the restrictions on Afghan women and girls.
You are not allowed to go to high school. You are not allowed to do sports. You are not allowed to travel. You are not allowed to work. To take the bus. To speak to a man or boy. To see a doctor on your own. It sounds like prison. But this has been the reality for women and girls in Afghanistan since 2021. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are removing every last shred of freedom from women and girls. And now, they have even banned women from speaking in public. In German, we have an expression for that: ‘mundtot’. It literally means mouth-dead. To kill someone, by killing their voice. That’s what is happening right now.[2]
In announcing their initiative, the four states accused the Afghan government of being responsible for “systematic gender discrimination,” as outlined here on the website of the Australian Foreign Ministry. It listed a broad range of restrictions: “Afghan women and girls are being socially, politically, economically and legally marginalized. The recently enacted so-called ‘vice and virtue’ law seeks to silence half the population and erase women and girls from public life.”
The four countries involved – Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands – have effectively put the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) on notice that they intend to pursue legal proceedings at the ICJ, if it does not change its policies. In a statement published by the Australian government, they called upon “Afghanistan and the Taliban de facto authorities” to cease their violations of the human rights of women and girls and “to answer to the request for dialogue to address the concerns of the International Community on this matter,” including recommendations made through the UN’s Universal Periodic Review process.[3] In addition to their side event in New York and media statements, AAN understands that a formal notification has been given to IEA officials.
There was a characteristic dismissal of accusations of discrimination by IEA officials, here in a tweet from deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat:
The Afghanistan Islamic Emirate is blamed for violation of human rights and gender apartheid by some countries and factions. Human rights are protected in Afghanistan and no one is discriminated against. Unfortunately, efforts are ongoing to spread propaganda against Afghanistan on the say-so of a number of women to make the situation look bad.
IEA leaders are consistently proud of their policies on women. In his Eid al-Adha message in June 2023, for example, Supreme Leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada said (as reported by AP):
The status of women as a free and dignified human being has been restored and all institutions have been obliged to help women in securing marriage, inheritance and other rights.
Given the Emirate’s stance that what others see as restrictions on women’s freedoms and behaviour are in accordance with divine law and, anyway, are a domestic matter that other countries have no right to interfere in, it seems all but inevitable that the ICJ will eventually take up the case. Should that happen, it would be the first time any country has been summoned to the court for discrimination against women.
How does the ICJ work?
The International Court of Justice, often called the ‘World Court’, is the judicial arm of the United Nations. It settles legal disputes between states in accordance with international law, as well as providing advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by UN organs and agencies. Countries can file a case with the ICJ against another signatory country, which will be reviewed by its 15 judges, who come from all over the world. Decisions are binding, but the court lacks its own enforcement power – more on that later. Confusingly, the ICJ is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, which is also home to the International Criminal Court (ICC), an entirely separate court that addresses war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by individuals, not states.
The ICJ initiative focuses on violations under CEDAW – effectively a bill of rights for women – to which Afghanistan became a party in 2003. Conventions are signed by countries, not governments, so they remain in force regardless of changes in government. So, although the Emirate will no doubt question the jurisdiction of CEDAW, it remains bound by it under international law. Noticeably, none of the countries taking this initiative addressed the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ in their statements, choosing instead to refer to the ‘de facto authorities’ or the Taleban. They also sought to underline, in the words of the German foreign minister in the statement cited previously:
[B]y doing this, we are not politically recognising the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. However, we stress that the de facto authorities are responsible for upholding and fulfilling Afghanistan’s obligations under international law.
The possibility that taking the IEA to the ICJ might contribute to its de facto recognition was a concern raised by women in consultations held over the past two years (such as one organised by the Afghanistan Human Rights Coordination Mechanism in January 2024, attended by the author). Parwana Ibrahimkhail Nijrabi, one of the women who led protests in Afghanistan after the fall of the Islamic Republic, who is now in exile, told AAN: “The ICJ initiative is a valuable and important effort, provided it does not result in the recognition of the Taleban.” Nijrabi adds: “In any process related to this initiative, it is essential that women, who have been victims of the Taliban’s crimes, are given an active and meaningful role.”
For Afghanistan’s rulers, however, it will undoubtedly seem unfair that they are bound by a treaty they did not sign, particularly when the complainant states do not recognise the Emirate as Afghanistan’s government. It puts the IEA in a bind: without recognition, it cannot represent the state of Afghanistan in order to withdraw or apply reservations to international conventions. At the same time, in order to receive recognition, it is possible that, among other things, it would need to stop violating CEDAW.
The IEA may, however, find some sympathy among some Muslim nations, some of whom have chosen not to ratify CEDAW, while others have done so with reservations (in an analysis of CEDAW in the Middle East and North Africa by Amnesty International in 2021, of the 14 signatories from the region, eight had registered reservations in the light of what they saw as parts that were incompatible with sharia law).[4] When the Interim Afghan Government ratified the treaty in 2003, it was the first Muslim country to do so (rather “unexpectedly” according to this academic review, CEDAW and Afghanistan, which notes a context in which the new government was under pressure to demonstrate a commitment to gender equality). It is also striking that the United States itself has never ratified CEDAW, on grounds that the IEA would sympathise with – legal sovereignty, interlaced with some conservative ‘family values’ (summed up in this Heinrich Böll article ‘CEDAW and the USA: When Belief in Exceptionalism Becomes Exemptionalism’).
How long could legal proceedings take?
There are two stages before the court could step in: negotiation and arbitration, as laid out in Article 29 of the Convention. The IEA has been notified and invited to resolve the alleged breaches of CEDAW and now there needs to be signs of a “genuine attempt” to resolve the situation through negotiation. No time period is stipulated for this stage.[5] The second stage, arbitration, has a six-month window. If the Emirate fails to respond, or arbitration cannot resolve the dispute, the case would go in front of the court.
Once a case reaches the court, final rulings can take years.[6] However, interim decisions, or ‘provisional measures’, can be issued within weeks or months. For example, in a case filed by South Africa on 29 December 2023 against Israel, which it accused of violating the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip, the ICJ issued provisional measures within 28 days. It is likely that the four countries in the Afghan case would request provisional measures when filing a complaint against the Emirate.
What impact can the court have?
The ICJ is limited to issuing orders, such as instructing compliance with international obligations.[7] For the most part, states adhere to ICJ rulings, although there are plenty of examples of states ignoring them.[8] Instructing compliance might seem a relatively benign prospect for the IEA, which is accustomed to being chastised for breaches of international law. However, the ICJ’s orders are legally binding and failure to comply could result in a referral to other UN entities, most significantly the Security Council.
The politics of the Security Council are never straightforward. There are no guarantees that it would back up the court to enforce measures against the IEA. Not only is the US a CEDAW abstainer, but another permanent member, China, has not agreed to CEDAW’s article 29, the provision that allows for the court to step in when states have a CEDAW dispute.
That said, a number of IEA officials are already subject to Security Council sanctions, so it is possible for additional sanctions and/or oversight mechanisms to be imposed. This is where the potential teeth of this initiative start to be seen – the Emirate would like travel bans eased, not further sanctions imposed. It also wants UN recognition with all that flows from it, including taking Afghanistan’s seat at the UN General Assembly and having its diplomats recognised in capitals around the world. Even provisional measures from the ICJ could therefore pose an impediment to Emirate ambitions.
The other way that the ICJ has an impact is on the behaviour of other states. The furore that surrounded another ICJ examination – relating to Israel and its occupation of Palestine (further to this request from the UN General Assembly in 2022) – shows the potential ramifications of the court’s involvement. The court ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory was “unlawful” and amounted to de facto annexation, adding that Israel was in violation of the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.
Israel itself has ignored the court, accusing it of antisemitism (see this statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), but the court ruling has ramifications for other states that could result in sanctions, arms embargoes, as well as other diplomatic and economic relations. There had been previous calls from the Human Rights Council and UN experts for an arms embargo on Israel, which had gone unheeded. But by finding that Israel violated human rights protections against apartheid, the ICJ put pressure not only on Israel but, as the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan stated: “The court has placed responsibility with all states and the United Nations to end these violations of international law.” This includes those that are signatories to the UN Arms Trade Treaty and the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. How an ICJ ruling could put pressure on states to act is explored in this opinion piece, ‘Why ICJ ruling against Israel’s settlement policies will be hard to ignore’ and this statement calling on other states to take action made by UN experts. In another case brought before the ICJ by Nicaragua, which aimed to stop German arms sales to Israel, the court chose in February 2024 not to issue provisional measures (finding that German arms sales had, in fact, decreased), but the judges did not dismiss the case and it seems that Germany may, in response, have halted arms sales.[9] A host of other legal efforts to stop arms exports to Israel are underway, all of which will be strengthened by the ICJ’s ruling.[10]
The ripple effect of an ICJ ruling – or even provisional measures – should, at least, give the IEA pause. If the IEA was found to be in breach of CEDAW, a strong court ruling or measure might have ramifications for how countries around the world and international organisations interact with it.
Who is behind the initiative
While Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands took the limelight when this move was announced, the initiative was the culmination of almost three years of advocacy by Afghan and international women’s rights defenders, which included identifying countries willing to lodge a complaint before the court.[11] The Open Society Justice Initiative has worked behind the scenes on this initiative for three years (as stated in this tweet), including providing this useful briefing on the process and hosting consultations with Afghan women. Among Afghan supporters, Shaharzad Akbar, Executive Director of Rawadari and former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), told AAN she hopes that “finally women in Afghanistan might see they are not forgotten.” Shukria Barakzai, former member of parliament and ambassador to Norway, is a co-founder of the Afghanistan Women’s Coalition for Justice, which has been engaged in advocacy on a range of justice initiatives, including supporting the ICJ route. Barakzai told AAN that “even with this simple announcement, it shows the Taliban they will be held to some kind of accountability.”
The countries bringing the complaint to the ICJ, however, are less than ideal for some advocates. All four states sponsoring the initiative previously backed the Islamic Republic and had troops on the ground in Afghanistan; the IEA will see them as inherently hostile actors. Moreover, although the German Foreign Ministry claimed its “partners” included “those from the Islamic world,” the list of 22 states supporting the initiative had only one Muslim majority country – Morocco.[12] Given the Emirate asserts that its policies on women and girls are ordained by sharia, this is not ideal. Finally, as noted above, Germany itself has been involved in a fraught wrangle at the ICJ over its close relationship with Israel despite that state’s violations of Palestinian rights, which undermines its legitimacy – both in terms of upholding international human rights law and in leading a legal action that will take on the IEA’s interpretation of divine law. Barakzai says this baggage was a real concern for the Afghanistan Women’s Coalition for Justice, but that they are trying to win more support from Muslim states, prominent Islamic scholars and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Other legal avenues being pursued
The ICJ is not the only proposal using international law to challenge the Emirate on its policies on women and girls. In February 2023, the Special Rapporteur, Richard Bennett asked the International Criminal Court to consider the crime of gender persecution in its Afghanistan investigation.[13] The ICC has taken strides to improve its track record in investigating and prosecuting gender-based crimes in recent years and in December 2022, released a new policy on gender persecution, a year later releasing a revised policy on gender-based crimes.[14]
If this route were pursued, the case would be against individuals within the IEA leadership, not Afghanistan, as a state, in contrast to the ICJ initiative.[15] As yet, though, the ICC chief prosecutor has said little in public about his Afghanistan investigation, to the frustration of victims who have already suffered years of delay (the court began its preliminary examination of the Afghanistan situation in 2006, but was only finally authorised to investigate in 2022).[16] The prosecutor had already decided that he would only investigate alleged crimes by the Taleban and ISKP, ‘de-prioritising’ those allegedly perpetrated by former Republic forces, the international militaries or the CIA.
It is not known whether he has chosen to include the crime against humanity of gender persecution as part of his investigation. It could be that he has already requested authorisation from the judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber for arrest warrants for this crime. Warrants can be issued ‘under seal’ (that is, in secret) to increase the prospects of apprehending the suspects (although given travel bans and the limited movement of the IEA leadership, the chances of arresting individuals while they visit an ICC-friendly country are already slim). Or the court might decide, if it did indict, that it would be better to make the warrants public, with the hope of it having a deterrent effect upon the IEA to the benefit of Afghan women and girls.
Alongside the push for legal proceedings against the Emirate for gender discrimination through the ICJ and possibly the ICC, since March 2023, a group of prominent Afghan and Iranian human rights defenders have led a campaign to establish a new crime of ‘gender apartheid’. The international crime of apartheid is defined in the Rome Statute as “inhumane acts” committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The new crime would broaden the definition of apartheid to include gender as well as racial hierarchies.
Creating new international crimes is not quick or straightforward, but one potential avenue for this is a new standalone treaty on Crimes Against Humanity (bringing it into line with treaties for war crimes and genocide). This process is creeping forward, but it has many obstacles – and years to go (see this article on ‘Adding Gender to Apartheid in International Law’).
Conclusion
In the short term, the women and girls of Afghanistan cannot expect any immediate benefits from the ICJ initiative, as the German Foreign Ministry acknowledged when making its announcement:
Making use of the possibilities of the women’s rights convention will not change the situation in Afghanistan today. But it gives the women of Afghanistan hope. We see you, we hear you. We speak for you when you are silenced.
The rights of Afghan women and girls have been mentioned constantly by diplomats and in international fora since the IEA returned to power in August 2021, with repeated demands to the Emirate to reverse their policies. Yet official edicts restricting women and girls have only tightened. Meanwhile, notes Akbar, “normalisation continues.” The initiative to take Afghanistan to the ICJ could “at the very least,” she says, “delay their recognition and normalisation.”
There is often a question among activists about whether yet more international pressure for women and girls might result in a perverse hardening of restrictions by the IEA. When asked if that was a risk, Barakzai took a breath. “Can they make it any worse? We can’t breathe oxygen directly. We can’t even laugh in our house with a loud voice. What is left to be worse?”
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process offers a periodic review of the human rights records of all UN Member States. On 29 April 2024, during the 46th session of the Human Rights Council, Afghanistan was presented with 243 recommendations from 70 states on a host of human rights issues, with many focused on the rights of women and girls. The outcome of the review can be downloaded here: ‘Universal Periodic Review – Afghanistan’, United Nations Human Rights Council.
See ‘How the Court Works’, International Court of Justice. See also: ‘Bringing a Case Before the International Court of Justice for the Rights of Afghan Women and Girls – Q & A Briefing,’ Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), April 2024. The OSJI briefing lays out the following possible actions: a formal declaration that Afghanistan has breached its obligations under CEDAW; an order for Afghanistan to perform its obligations under CEDAW; an order requiring Afghanistan to make assurances and guarantees that it will halt its violations of CEDAW; an order instructing Afghanistan to prevent the destruction and to ensure the preservation of evidence related to acts that violate CEDAW.
Nicaragua has also given notice of its intention to take the UK, Canada and the Netherlands to the court for their support to Israel. There are cases to try to stop arms exports also in domestic courts in the UK, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. See ‘More and more cases on war and genocide are being litigated at the ICJ,’ Chatham House, 4 September 2024.
↑11
The Open Society Justice Initiative’s Mariana Pena tweeted on the day of the announcement, “Together with Afghan partners, @OSFJustice has been researching and advocating for an ICJ case under CEDAW for the past three years.”
↑12
Albania, Andorra, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Finland, Honduras, Ireland, Iceland, Republic of Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malawi, Morocco, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden [see Baerbock Statement FN 2]. Albania was historically a Muslim majority state, but its most recent census showed that less than 50 per cent of the population identified as Muslim. ‘Albania’s Muslim population drops below 50% for first time in centuries,’ Turkey Today, June 28 2024.
The exit of the US forces and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover of Kabul in August 2021 has significantly reshaped the Afghanistan-Pakistan militant landscape, emboldening the Taliban’s allies and adversaries alike. Its ally, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistan’s largest militant group, has experienced a strong resurgence, intensifying attacks against Pakistani security forces while also operating from its safe haven in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Despite the Islamic State in Khorasan province (ISKP) – IS’s Afghan affiliate – facing senior leadership losses from the Taliban’s aggressive crackdown, the group has waged a persistent and deadly insurgency against Taliban forces and Afghan minorities, mainly Shia Hazaras. Concurrently, it has also diversified and expanded its recruitment and media campaigns. The group’s superior external operations capabilities are evident in its involvement in recent terror attacks across Russia, Iran, and Turkey, as well as recent terror plots in Europe, reflecting ISKP’s growing transnational threat.
Simultaneously, ISKP has also stepped up its constant flow of anti-Taliban propaganda campaigns through its mouthpiece, Al Azaim-media foundation, to undermine the Taliban’s governing credentials and religious authority. Specifically criticising the Taliban’s dealings with Western powers, ISKP argues that the Taliban’s actions are contrary to Islamic law. ISKP claims the Taliban has “abandoned the global jihad against infidel regimes” after being installed in power by Americans. The group further accuses the Taliban regime of serving as pawns of foreign powers like the US, Russia and China in return for international legitimacy and financial gain while ignoring the worldwide suffering of Muslims. Rooted in the ideological rift from the 1980s, ISKP, a Salafi jihadist group, accuses the Taliban of following the “highly flawed” Deobandi school of thought, labelling it as an apostate “Pashto-centric ethno-nationalist movement.”
However, in contrast to its aggressive posture toward the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other jihadist groups, ISKP’s interactions with the TTP have been notably distinct. Although ISKP was born out of the disaffected TTP and Afghan Taliban members, it had, until last year, largely avoided physical confrontations and open hostilities in its media propaganda with the group. This is to deprive their common enemy, Pakistani security forces, of any strategic advantage, with both groups ostensibly having tactically co-operated in their areas of control in Pakistan.
Furthermore, ISKP’s criticism of the TTP was relatively less belligerent, with the TTP’s relationship with the Afghan Taliban not being overtly targeted in its polemical rhetoric. However, since June, ISKP has produced media products issuing ideological rebuttals to attack the TTP’s apostasy, which it believes stems from its deep historical and organisational ties with the Afghan Taliban. This Insight explores ISKP’s recent anti-TTP and Taliban narratives disseminated through its mouthpiece, Al Azaim Foundation, and similar criticisms raised by pro-ISKP supporters.
TTP’s primary media outlet, Umar Media, has also increased its output of sophisticated media productions over the past two years. It releases print and audiovisual material in Pashto, Urdu, English, and Dari, predominantly propagating a virulent anti-state narrative while largely avoiding overtly reproaching IS or ISKP.
ISKP’s recent anti-TTP discourse
At the end of May 2024, in a video shared on X, Qari Shoaib Bajauri, a senior ideologue and member of the TTP leadership council, rebuked ISKP as being composed of ‘extremist elements from the TTP’, al-Qaeda, and the Afghan Taliban. He stressed that the TTP has no affiliations or agreements with ISKP, but is, however, not at war with them. He stressed the TTP’s primary objective is to wage jihad against the Pakistani state and establish its control in Pakistan’s tribal areas where it can enforce its own interpretation of Shaira.
Following this, ISKP’s Al-Azaim media retaliated by releasing a 47-minute audio message in July titled “They Lost Their Credibility in Islam by Whitewashing Themselves to the Infidels.” In this rebuttal, ISKP decried the statement of the senior TTP leader and said that the TTP defectors who joined ISKP initially, such as ISKP’s founding leader Hafiz Saeed Khan, Gul Zaman Fateh, were “authentic mujahideen”, dismissing any ideological affinity and cooperation between both the groups. ISKP further slammed the TTP as a ‘tribal Deobandi local militia’ that restricts its fight within the borders of Pakistan, contrary to its global offensive jihad. Since 2018, TTP has emphasised that it doesn’t have any regional or global agenda beyond Pakistan.
Furthermore, in the audio recording, ISKP argued that the Taliban not only directs the TTP’s ideological stance, but also wields control over its operational trajectory in Pakistan. It further slammed the TTP as a proxy of pro-democratic forces and Pakistan’s Islamist political parties like Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F), which has been regularly targeted by ISKP.
This later sparked similar discussions amongst pro-ISKP supporters on Telegram, who reiterated that the TTP has “strayed from its proper ideological path” following the killing of its leader, Hakeemullah Mehsud, in the US drone strike in 2013. Following his death, there were disputes over leadership succession, and TTP faced growing internal rifts, leading to the defection of its senior commanders, who went on to pledge allegiance to IS, subsequently forming ISKP in 2015.
ISKP supporters further contend that the Taliban regime “is desperate to establish official diplomatic ties” and curry favour with foreign states, mainly Pakistan and China, at the expense of TTP’s strategic interests. They allege the TTP has “allowed itself to be exploited by the Taliban regime,” which they claim has shielded Pakistan from TTP attacks and coerced TTP earlier into unsuccessful ceasefire negotiations with the Pakistani government. Further, in a book released in June 2024 discrediting the Taliban regime’s Islamic credentials (Figure 1), ISKP advised the “ignorant TTP leadership” to thoroughly study IS’s theological literature in depth to correct its theological beliefs that are dictated by the Afghan Taliban as shown in Figure 2. Yet, ISKP sympathisers argue that ISKP should avoid initiating hostilities unless provoked by the TTP and instead absorb its militants into ISKP’s ranks through proselytisation.
Figure 1: Cover page of ISKP’s book released by Al Azaim media foundation “TTP on the path of Taliban militia”
Figure 2: ISKP advises TTP to sever its ideological ties with the Taliban and instead adopt the Islamic State’s doctrine to rectify its beliefs.
Figure 3: Supporters in a pro-IS discussion room denounce TTP as a deviant group owing to its allegiance to the Afghan Taliban.
In a 71-minute audio released at the end of July, an ISKP ideologue rebuked former TTP deputy leader Sheikh Khalid Haqqani, who had questioned the legitimacy of the IS’s caliphate, arguing it lacked the essential conditions for establishing one due to a lack of expansive territorial control and disapproval from other jihadist groups and the Ummah (Muslim community). ISKP’s imam thus discredited Sheikh Khalid as an “uneducated mullah”, calling him a hypocrite and dismissing his criticisms as baseless.
The ISKP ideologue pointed out inconsistencies in the TTP’s own theological standards, questioning how the TTP could pledge allegiance to a “deviant” Taliban Emir Haibatullah Akhundzada, who only wields control over a “small corrupt emirate” in Afghanistan. He further asserted that the TTP’s scholars are attacking IS’s theological credentials to dissuade “believers” from joining its ranks. In recent issues of ISKP’s Pashto Voice of Khurasan magazine, denunciations of the TTP have become more nuanced. The TTP leadership is portrayed as prioritising worldly comforts over jihad, exploiting the religious sentiments of Pakistani youth to recruit them, appeasing foreign powers, and being backed by India.
In light of ISKP’s intensifying anti-TTP media offensive, it is notable that, unlike other jihadist groups that have overtly condemned IS and ISKP for their extremist violence, TTP leader Noor Wali Mehsud has shied away from declaring an official stance or openly denouncing ISKP. Meanwhile, the Taliban has aggressively countered ISKP’s hostile narratives through its Al Mirsad media website.
Conclusion
Despite frequent takedowns of ISKP’s official and supporter accounts on its digital lifeline Telegram, the group has become adept at evading moderation, continuing to produce and disseminate a steady stream of content in multiple languages, allowing the rapid circulation of its media propaganda, attack claims also running crowdfunding donations for their activities.
TTP and its supporter communities have primarily relied on Telegram and WhatsApp, to disseminate their propaganda, political commentaries, regional security developments and attack claims. Unlike IS and other extremist groups like Al Qaeda, as per the authors’ monitoring, TTP’s Umar Media and its supporter networks have faced fewer digital crackdowns on Telegram and other social media platforms.
This can be attributed to global intelligence agencies like Europol and tech companies prioritising the fight against more lethal global terror groups such as IS, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates, both on the battlefield and in the digital realm. As a result, terror groups with a local or regional focus, like the TTP, have been able to slip through the cracks to operate with relative freedom on Telegram. The TTP’s Umar Media, and other supporter TTP media channels with hundreds of subscribers and discussion groups on Telegram have been operating without interruption or bans for over a year. TTP media propagandists have also openly solicited donations for the organisation on Telegram, raising growing concerns about the platform’s enforcement of its content moderation policies. This comes at a time when Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, is already facing intense legal scrutiny for his application’s role in hosting and facilitating the spread of illicit content, such as child pornography and extremist propaganda.
Figure 4: TTP media propagandists posted a plea for donations for the organisation on Telegram.
In conclusion, tech companies should prioritise developing advanced AI detection systems to detect the unique propaganda tactics these groups employ, such as regional languages, dialects and coded language. Additionally, forming region-specific monitoring teams with expertise in militancy and security issues coupled with knowledge of local languages and cultures can enhance the effectiveness of content moderation. Finally, establishing stronger cross-platform coordination can prevent extremist groups from easily migrating their media content to other platforms.
Meanwhile, the online feud between ISKP and TTP has the potential to turn into violent confrontations, potentially benefiting Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts. To bolster their operational strength and longevity, TTP and ISKP have opportunistically forged strategic alliances and mergers with other like-minded groups operating in Pakistan’s newly merged districts bordering Afghanistan. TTP and ISKP have also, on multiple occasions, claimed responsibility for the same attacks, further reflecting growing competition amongst the groups for influence and recruits. Thus, the fluid militant landscape in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, marked by shifting alliances and deepening rivalries among insurgent groups, presents a formidable challenge to Pakistani and regional counter-terrorism agencies. This necessitates a rigorous monitoring of their operations and media propaganda to counter the growing terror threat from these groups.
TTP’s Alliance with the Afghan Taliban: In ISKP’s Crosshairs
A new book recovers the intellectual contribution of Haitian revolutionaries to ideas of freedom, equality, and sovereignty in the Atlantic World.
The cover of “Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution” by Marlene L. Daut. (UNC Press, 2023)
“Envision your cities shrouded in mourning… envision the care you took upon yourself, night and day, to revive your companions, envision your children, your soldiers, the peaceful inhabitants of the countryside crippled by the French,” wrote Louis- Felix Boisrond-Tonnerre, an early 19th-century Haitian thinker and former secretary to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, as he urged Haitians’ to remember their shared experience of the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution.
The gravity of the Haitian Revolution is incessantly muffled by constant news coverage spotlighting an impoverished Haiti while also criticizing its functionality as a free state. As a consequence, our shared memory of Haiti has forgotten the radical changes the Haitian Revolution and a sovereign Haiti brought to our modern world. Late 18th and early 19th-century Haitian thinkers, like Boisrond-Tonnerre, subjected to and shaped by the institution of enslavement, most certainly did not forget. Marlene L. Daut examines this collective remembrance in her book Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution. A book overflowing with the words of Haitian thinkers like Baron De Vastey, who knew not only the power of remembering their ancestral past but the significance of committing it to paper.
Today, as Haiti’s civil unrest dominates public media, it is hard to fathom that “Haiti” and “radical change” once existed in the same sentence. A Haiti free of disaster and political instability appears far from public imagination as conversations surrounding another military occupation emerge. For many years, the Western World has been fixated on how it can “fix” Haiti, ignoring its own responsibility for the country’s problems. As a Haitian-American and scholar of Haitian history, I find myself presented with the question “What is wrong with Haiti?” in conversations regarding Haiti’s history or its present situation. These conversations usually end with me, a spirited junior scholar, sharing a bullet point list with extensive verbal footnotes, of all the reasons why this line of questioning is problematic. “Fixing” Haiti has led to U.S. military occupations, economic stagnation, extraction, a large Haitian departure from the island, and a dismissal of Haitians’ intellectual contributions to our current world. It was the work of pioneering Haitian sociologist Jean Casimir, followed by scholars including Brandon Byrd, Chelsea Steiber, and Mame-Fatou Niang, who engaged with his texts that taught me how global hegemonic structures oppressed Haitians and subverted Haiti’s sovereignty. Marlene Daut is one of these crucial scholars whose contagious passion for Haitian history fuels this groundbreaking account of Haitian intellectual history.
Haitian thinkers not only exhibited a commitment to freedom for all in Haiti but also pledged themselves to the formation of a historical narrative composed by Haitians concentrated on Black freedom and sovereignty.Awakening the Ashes tells the story of the Haitian Revolution through the commitments, arguments, and ideals of the Haitian revolutionaries themselves. According to Daut, Haitian revolutionaries, pamphleteers, historians, and politicians utilized the long history of Saint Domingue as they advocated for freedom. A conscious consideration of colonization and Indigenous and African enslavement shaped their vision of a liberated Haiti. When Haiti achieved independence in 1804, Haitian thinkers not only exhibited a commitment to freedom for all in Haiti but also pledged themselves to the formation of a historical narrative composed by Haitians concentrated on Black freedom and sovereignty. This Haitian-made intellectual milieu is evident in the extensive spread of newspapers, books, and pamphlets circulated throughout Haiti and examined by Daut. Daut argues that it was this devotion to Haitian history that “justif[ied], defend[ed], [and made known] the existence of Haiti [to] a world of slavery and colonialism.”
The success of the Haitian Revolution influenced freedom movements in other regions, including Guadeloupe and Jamaica. Haiti’s newfound independence also impacted the debates over slavery in the United States, France, and Britain during the 19th century. Daut reminds readers of this fact and stresses how Haitian writers were dedicated to true definitions of liberty and basic human rights. They aimed to create a country and history devoted in both action and word to freedom for all.
Furthermore, Awakening the Ashes addresses a gap in current North Atlantic scholarship that continues “to silence the influence of Haitian thinkers, writers, and politicians on [developing] Western intellectual practices.” Daut makes this claim clear in her introduction by examining Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s recently translated and republished Tidife boule, the first account of Haitian revolutionary history written entirely in Haitian Creole. She suggests that English-language Haitian historiography has privileged Trouillot’s Silencing the Past over Tidife boule. North Atlantic scholars have disregarded Haitian writers due to minimal engagement with Haiti’s languages. This lack of engagement has resulted in current practices of “historical reading” that regard Haitians “as objects of study rather than producers of studies.”
The book consists of nine chapters split thematically into three parts to contribute to a Haitian-rooted storytelling of Haiti’s enslavement, colonialism, revolution, and state-making. Part I: Colonialism shows how Haitian intellectuals criticized Indigenous decimation, enslavement, and the development of color prejudice in Haiti. In this section, Daut exhibits how “Haitian authors developed a series of historical and political inquiries designed to disrupt the idea that colonialism was a harmless method of ‘settling’ the so-called new world.” This section relies heavily on the work of Haitian writers like Emile Nau, Baron de Vastey, and Julien Raymond to unsettle this ‘harmless’ notion of colonialism. Part II: Independence explores the Haitian Revolution’s process of decolonization and its impact on the transnational abolition of slavery and, most importantly, the potential global influence of the Haitian notion of liberty. Part III: Sovereignty explores Haiti’s journey towards state recognition by focusing on Haitian print culture like books, pamphlets, and newspapers. Post-revolutionary writing, according to Daut “provides distinct keys for understanding how sovereignty in Haiti unfolded (and eventually fell apart) in the nineteenth century after the Haitian Revolution.” It is in this section that we are able to view the Haitian response to Haiti’s “figurative and literal foreign occupation” as writers like Janvier and Delorme grappled with the threat of U.S. imperialism.
As a result, the book’s goal is to “go beyond simply mentioning Haiti ” in a larger historical narrative related to the Atlantic World in the post-revolutionary period. Instead, Daut aims to take Haiti’s liberation and intellectual history seriously. Haitian “anti-racist, antislavery, and anti-colonial revolutionary thought” is proven to not only exist but to have had a broader impact on the development of 19th-century global ideals of freedom. Specifically, the global centrality of Haitian thought is demonstrated through Daut’s examination of Haitian print material from writers like Toussaint Louverture, Louis Joseph Janvier, Julien Raimond, Herard Dumesle, Juste Chanlatte, Demesvar Delorme, and more. These writers, poets, and politicians provide additional Haitian literary accounts of the island’s colonization, enslavement, revolution, and statehood. These accounts do not just recount violent events but theorize the need to upend existing structures of colonial power to communicate ideas of racism, class, and decolonization. Daut brilliantly locates how Haitian writers described white supremacy in terms of racial class distinction and opposition to imperialism in the Haitian revolutionary period, developing what she terms “the 1804 Principle.”
The 1804 Principle embodies the rejection of colonialism and enslavement. Daut argues that the “modern understanding of freedom and equality in operation today… stems more acutely from Haitian revolutionary thought” than from the American or French revolution, despite popular perceptions to the contrary. Haiti’s 1804 Declaration of Independence created a “commonsense understanding” that slavery and imperialism were “incompatible with liberty.” Furthermore, the Haitian writers’ rhetoric during and after the Haitian Revolution created the foundation for “antislavery, and anti-racist ideas in the modern political grammar of Western philosophy.” Daut redefines intellectual history by focusing on a “history of ideas that regards both act and actes [deed and discourse] as intellectual.” The book considers both Haitian action and postulation as intellectual history because, according to Daut, revolutionary action is evidence of anti-colonial and anti-racist thought.
Daut has laid the groundwork for future scholars to examine the intellectual work of Haiti’s broader population who do not fully identify socially with prominent Haitian political figures.In Awakening the Ashes, Daut has produced an intellectual history of the Haitian Revolution that will inform the research of future scholars and graduate students. It is worth noting, however, that the writings of elite individuals—with access to publishing and printing networks— have often shaped the field of intellectual history. Consequently, by centering her analysis on the work of early Haitian writers who served as government officials or in other positions of political influence, Daut tends to favor the writing of Haiti’s formative, predominantly male, elite class. In doing so, Daut has laid the groundwork for future scholars to examine the intellectual work of Haiti’s broader population who do not fully identify socially with prominent Haitian political figures.
Awakening the Ashes is a significant advancement in Haitian scholarship that emphasizes the importance of Haitian history curated by Haitian minds. It is a call for scholars of the field to take Haitians seriously as thinkers, theorists, and historians by learning their language, culture, and dedicating the time to allow their words to inform new scholarships. Most of all, Daut invites readers to “awaken the ashes of the ‘numerous [Haitian] victims’ whom enslavers, colonists, and neo-colonists have sought to conceal, to ensure that we never forget.”
Rebeca Joy Blemur is a doctoral student in History at Baylor University.
Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (Review)
It is almost a year since, on 3 October 2023, Pakistan’s Prime Minister announced its decision to enact the Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan. Since then, more than 700,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland. These returns were not voluntary. Some Afghans were deported, while others fled in fear of arrest and expulsion. Some, born in Pakistan, had never before set foot on Afghan soil. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon has spoken to five returnees in different provinces and, together with AAN’s Jelena Bjelica, explores how they have been managing this utter upturning of their lives.
I returned from Pakistan around a year ago. I was the only one in my family without a Proof of Registration card. I was afraid the Pakistani police would arrest and deport me to Afghanistan and that my family would remain in Pakistan. I didn’t even dare to travel to the city. Finally, I decided to return with my family to Afghanistan.
Gul Muhammad, from Balkh province, is one of five returnees from different provinces whom we interviewed about their experience, having lived for most of their lives in Pakistan, of returning to Afghanistan and how they have been managing their lives, families, finances and the schooling of their children. They were among more than 722,000 Afghans who returned to Afghanistan between 15 September 2023 and 16 September 2024, according to the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) latest count, released in mid-September 2024. Out of this number, 33,400 were deported.[1] In this report, we speak about ‘returnees’, but, of course, many of those crossing into Afghanistan have never set foot on Afghan soil before. Born and brought up in Pakistan, the children or grandchildren of refugees, for some, this was their first time in Afghanistan.
According to UNHCR’s figures from March 2024 (see figure 1 below), there are about three million Afghans living in Pakistan; that is about a tenth of the 30 million Afghans who have ever lived as refugees there. Millions of Afghans fled east in the 1980s and 1990s to find safety during the various phases of the war in Afghanistan, the occupations and general turmoil. Most have since returned. Voluntary repatriations began as early as the late 1980s and included the mass repatriation that took place during the Islamic Republic in the early years of Hamid Karzai’s rule, incentivised by international donors and UNHCR and promoted as evidence of the success of the Islamic Republic ‘project’. However, there have also been deportations, including the mass forced returns of 2016 and 2017.[2] Over the years, many Afghans have also re-migrated to Pakistan. The most recent large outflux was after the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) when, according to Pakistani government figures reported to UNHCR, 600,000 Afghans crossed into Pakistan in the 17 months from August 2021 to 31 January 2023.
The three million Afghans now living in Pakistan are divided into three categories, as per their registration status (see figure 1 below): holders of Proof of Registration cards (PoR), jointly issued by UNHCR and the Pakistani government since 2006;[3] holders of Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), issued by the Pakistani government since 2017;[4] and undocumented Afghan refugees.[5] What documents individuals hold – or do not hold – in Pakistan also affects the amount of support given by UN agencies if they return to Afghanistan: UNHCR only looks after the PoR card-holders, and supports any returning voluntarily, while the ACC holders and undocumented receive less substantial support by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Figure 1: The approximate number of Afghans in Pakistan, broken down by their registration status. The number of undocumented Afghans includes those newly arrived between 2021 and 2023. UMRF refers to Unregistered Members of Registered Families. Source: UNHCR Situation report March 2024.
On 3 October 2023, Islamabad endorsed a plan to repatriate over a million foreigners, largely Afghans, who did not hold valid documents. The IEA urged Pakistan to hold off going ahead with the plan until the spring. In spite of these pleas, Islamabad gave a tight one-month deadline to the refugees to depart or it said it would forcibly deport them (see this UNHCR update and this Border Consortium update).
Almost two months later, at the end of November, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that Pakistani police and other officials were carrying out mass detentions of Afghans, seizing property and livestock and destroying identity documents in order to compel them to leave en masse. Around the same time, Islamabad decided that only those Afghans who held Pakistani visas would be allowed to enter Pakistan and that the Afghan ID card was no longer acceptable for any cross-border travellers any longer.[6] It called this “the first phase of refugees’ deportation.”
A UNHCR and IOMPakistan Flash Updatefrom 24 April 2024 found that most of those who returned (half a million at that point) were undocumented Afghans (89 per cent), followed by Proof of Registration holders (9 per cent) and Afghan Citizen Card holders (2 per cent). Among the deportees (around 30,000), 94 per cent were undocumented and 6 per cent had a Proof of Registration card. The most common reason given by undocumented and ACC holders for leaving Pakistan was fear of arrest (89 percent). “Returnees were most likely to return from Quetta (19 percent) and Peshawar (17 percent),” the report said, “and were most likely to go to Nangrahar (26 per cent), Kandahar (23 per cent) and Kabul (16 per cent).”
The returns continued into 2024, reaching their peak in May and June (38,000 returns in each of those months), the UN Agency for Refugees said. Finally, on 10 July 2024, ten days after the Proof of Registration cards, held by 1.45 million Afghan refugees, had expired, the Pakistan government approved a one-year extension (see Al Jazeera reporting). This granted the cardholders a stay until 30 June 2025.
Leaving Pakistan: Fear of deportation
Like Gul Muhammad from Balkh, whose words began this report, all our other interviewees – from Laghman, Kunduz, Kandahar and Helmand – left Pakistan because they feared being deported. All had been living in Pakistan since the 1980s and all returned to Afghanistan at some point during the last year. Two were registered refugees in Pakistan, with PoR cards, and three were unregistered, although Gul Muhammad’s family had been living in Pakistan for 37 years and he was the only unregistered member of his registered family.
Our interviewee from Kandahar province, father of eight, Hashim Khan, had lived in Pakistan for 43 years. He said he had returned because he was afraid he would be forcibly deported, despite the fact that he was registered in Pakistan and had a PoR card:
I returned now because I was afraid I’d be deported. There were families who had PoRs but were, nonetheless, deported. I was afraid that my family would be deported, and we’d also lose the money which the UNHCR gave us. … I don’t trust the Pakistani government. [However] they announced several times that after the deportation of the undocumented refugees, they’d turn to documented refugees.
He remembers the deportations of 2016/17, but said, then the Pakistani government was going only after individuals:
[At that time], they’d arrest individuals and deport them. The focus was on individuals, not entire families. There were people from our village who were arrested many times – they were jailed and then deported – but they actually had the chance to return to their families [in Pakistan] on the very same day. [For example], in 2017 a person from our village was arrested when he was travelling from a district to Quetta city. He was deported to Spin Boldak and delivered to the Afghan government, but the Pakistani police told him and other arrestees that they’d wait until they’d [the deportees] returned to Chaman and would then give them a lift back to Quetta, if they paid a bribe. I mean, the police were arresting and deporting people at different times, but it was not strict like it is now, that there wouldn’t be any way to cross the border back and the only option [once deported] is to stay in Afghanistan.
Hashim Khan was so afraid of deportation that he sold everything he had for half its value:
I had a cow which was worth 400,000 Pakistani Rupees (1,450 USD). I sold it for 200,000 Pakistani Rupees (720 USD). Everything lost its value and was worth practically nothing.
Helmandi Hashmat Khan, who has five children, had lived in Pakistan for 42 years and, like his countryman from Kandahar, had been registered in Pakistan. He said:
I came back from Pakistan last year on the brink of a harsh winter. I wasn’t deported. I willingly returned because I was hearing different kinds of rumours every other day. Sometimes they were saying that all refugees would be deported and sometimes that PoR holders would [be allowed to] stay. I was tired of hearing these rumours and, meanwhile, I was afraid of deportation.
The interviewee originally from Kunduz, who heads a household of 12, Khodaidad, had lived as an undocumented refugee in Pakistan for 38 years. He left after one of his sons was arrested by the Pakistani police:
Our family migrated to Pakistan 38 years ago because of the fighting. We returned once before to Afghanistan in 2017 and settled in Kabul. I bought a property in Kabul and built a house in Bagrami district because I didn’t have anything in Kunduz. We re-migrated to Pakistan again two months after the IEA takeover in 2021 because the economic situation didn’t look good. But last year, as the government of Pakistan turned harsher towards undocumented refugees, I packed up my belongings and told my son to rent a truck. He was arrested while searching for a rental track and kept in custody for two days and a night. I paid a bribe of 25,000 Pakistani Rupees (90 USD) to the police to get him released. As soon as he was free, we rented a truck and left Pakistan.
Laghmani Muhammed Ishaq was born in Pakistan and had lived his entire life as an unregistered refugee, making a living as a shopkeeper. He decided to return to Afghanistan with his wife and four children because his Pakistani friends and acquaintances were warning him that, this time, their government was serious about deportation.
My family migrated to Pakistan around 40 years ago. My father said that we migrated because of fighting in the country. I was born in Pakistan, but I don’t have refugee documents. Last year, I was so afraid the police would arrest me, I even didn’t dare go to my shop. I wasn’t deported, but I was sure that the police would deport me if they’d arrested me. We’ve been seeing and hearing of refugees being deported every day. I decided to return to my country. The government of Pakistan made the rules stricter many times during our presence in Pakistan in the past. But before, they only arrested people they found on the open roads between cities – they were not going after the shopkeepers or searching people’s houses. Even the Pakistani government officials that were customers in my vegetable shop, told me it is best to close the shop and leave. This is the first time I shifted my family to Afghanistan. I’d never tried before because I knew there is no job or house waiting for me and there was always the imminent risk of fighting.
Returning to Afghanistan: Where is home?
Housing and accommodation is a major problem for Afghan returnees. According to a December 2023 Save the Children survey of returnees, only a third had a place to return to,[7] with worse figures reported by UNHCR: they found only 17 per cent of returnees had no need of accommodation in their final destination. The majority of returnees do not own a property in their place of origin. Some had lost property due to neglect and the passage of time or in the destruction of war or it had been taken by cousins and nephews and land divided between multiple members of the family.[8] UNHCR found that, generally, those forced to return often chose not to live where they or their family were originally from because there were no job opportunities there or they did not have enough money to build a house.
Among our interviewees, just one had returned to his place of origin, two had returned to their province but not their district and two had headed elsewhere in the country. Possibly the most fortunate among the five was Khodaidad from Kunduz province, who has settled in Bagrami in Kabul province where he had bought land in 2017.He was the only one of our five interviewees who had a place to return to.
Muhammad Ishaq from Laghman province, by contrast, is now living with his wife and four children under the blue sky:
I don’t have a house to live in. A relative of ours has temporarily given me some land in the outskirts of the city. It’s walled land, but without a house. I’ve erected a tent, and we live in that tent.
He is not unusual. Nearly one in six returnee families are living in tents, according to the Save the Children survey.
Gul Muhammed from Balkh has rented a house, but said he can hardly afford to pay the rent and feed his six children:
I chose to settle in the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif for two reasons. First my home in our village was ruined in the fighting and I don’t have enough money to rebuild it. Second, I want my children to go to school. I’ve rented a house and pay 4,000 afghanis (55 USD) each month.
Hashim Khan, originally from Kandahar who returned from Quetta, told AAN he had neither house, nor land. He had rented a house in Daman district for 3,000 afghanis (40 USD) a month, but was struggling to pay the rent. He said he had heard the Islamic Emirate would provide housing for returnees, but “so far nobody has given me anything.”
The interviewee from Helmand, Hashmat Khan, has settled in Marja district of this province. Hebought a house with the money he had and spent more than half his savings to make it home. He is among the lucky minority who brought their assets back with them. Only a third of returnees had managed to do this, the Save the Children survey found, while 31 per cent of returnees (at the Spin Boldak crossing) and 12 per cent (at Torkham) indicated that their assets had been confiscated. “Most of the families,” said the report, had faced another hurdle: “[D]ue to their livelihood status, [they] did not have the means to transport their household assets back into Afghanistan and had opted to leave them behind or dispose of them.”
Feeding a family without a job
The lack of job opportunities, together with an insufficiency of aid, are two key difficulties facing returnees. Nearly half (47 percent) of those surveyed by Save the Children said there were no jobs in Afghanistan, with 81 percent saying they did not have skills that could lead to employment.
Among our interviewees, only two have been lucky enough to find work – of a sort. Hashim Khan from Kandahar said he had managed to open a shop in a cabin (ghorfa) in the district where his family lived. However, his earnings could not meet the needs of his family:
I’ve rented a cabin for 2,500 afghanis (35 USD) and I’m selling spices there because I have experience in this. But I can’t earn enough money to feed my family. I earn 150-200 afghanis [2.5-3 USD] a day, which is hardly enough to pay the rent of the house and the cabin. We’re buying food with the money UNHCR gave us. But I still hope that my small initiative will flourish.
The returnee from Helmand province, Hashmat Khan has also managed to find a job for himself, but said it was not only dangerous but also did not earn him enough money to support his family well:
I don’t have that money to start a small business. The only skill I have is driving. I tried to find a driving job, but I couldn’t… I went to Spin Boldak to talk to the people who [illegally] traffic cars to Quetta. Sometimes, I find a car to drive it and take it to a district of Quetta. This is a very risky job because it is possible that I could be arrested and jailed or killed by the police of either country, while I try to escape from them and I still don’t make enough to feed my children. It is also hard and tiresome.
Gul Muhammad from Balkh province recalled how he lost his job in Pakistan:
I was a teacher in an NGO school in an Afghan refugees’ camp in Quetta. I was fired by the NGO because I didn’t have a PoR card. The NGO told me I should have PoR because my salary had to be transferred to the bank and for that, I had to have a bank account, and it wasn’t possible for a refugee to open a bank account without a PoR card.
He said that upon return to Afghanistan he could not find a job and that he had married off his 16-year-old daughter for her bride price:[9]
I tried to find a job but failed to do so. In searching for work, unfortunately, I had an accident. Both my feet and one arm were broken. I can’t work now,and my life was badly affected. I’ve installed a shop in a cabin in front of my house and my 13 years old son is running it. But this shop can’t feed our family. Finally, I was compelled to marry my 16-year-old daughter off to someone. I know how bad it is to give a daughter and take the money, but what could I do?
Khodaidad, from Kunduz, who now lives in Kabul, said three members of his household were in constant search for work, but could hardly ever find any:
Our household is badly affected economically. I had some money when returning from Pakistan and bought a rickshaw for one of my sons and thought it would earn us some money here. But it didn’t. Finally, I sold it for less than I’d bought it. My other son and I’ve been going to the square near us. Hundreds of men are waiting there for work, but there is no work for them. For the last twenty days, we’ve been going to the square but finding no job.
Khodaidad, like around 40 percent of returnees surveyed by Save the Children, had to borrow food or rely on friends and relatives. He said he had no other option but to take a loan from relatives in Pakistan:
We can hardly earn 200 afghanis (3 USD) a day, but we spend more than three times that, 600 afghanis (6 USD), every day. So far, I’m indebted to the tune of 100,000 afghanis (1,400 USD) to my relatives living in Pakistan. Each month, I ask them to send me a loan because I don’t have food for my family members to feed them.
The returnee from Laghman province, Muhammad Ishaq, is desperate because he is jobless and has to rely on his family:
There are no jobs at all. Sometimes my relatives help me and buy some flour and other food for me. My heart is bursting now. I don’t know what to do.
Unemployment and economic distress in Afghanistan have, on many occasions, compelled people, especially young men, to attempt to cross to Iran and Pakistan and take any odd job that might earn them a passage to Turkey, where they do the same until they might earn enough to pay to cross into Europe. This is why they often readily accept hard, even life-threatening jobs. The current conditions in Afghanistan might trigger some returnees to think about trying to make the perilous journey to Europe, either themselves or young men in the family, although typically money, in some form is needed[10] (for more, see this 2022 AAN report ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: No good options for Afghans travelling to and from Turkey’).
A joint initiative of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the Asia Displacement Solution Platform (ADSP), which works to contribute to the development of comprehensive solutions for displaced populations across Asia, said in its May 2024 report:
Afghans are once again facing return to a context where conditions for sustainable reintegration are not met. Rights organisations have documented prior attempts to return Afghans, while research has shown that, if the causes of the initial departure remain unaddressed, returnees will probably leave again.
Deprived of education
While they were in Pakistan, Save the Children said, more than two-thirds of child returnees in the families surveyed had been going to school. That ratio is now reversed. Almost two-thirds (65 per cent) are now not going to school.[11] The majority (85 per cent) told Save the Children they did not have the necessary documents to register and enrol their children in Afghan schools. All our interviewees were also concerned that their children were being deprived of education, but blamed not lack of documents, but lack of schools. The sons of the interviewees in Balkh and Laghman were going to school, although their older daughters could not, while the returnees now in Kabul and Kandahar said there were not even nearby schools for their sons and younger girls. Hashmat Khan from Helmand also faced difficulties getting his only child of school age to school, but had managed to invest in transportation:
One of my sons was going to school in Pakistan. None of the others had reached school age. My son goes to school now as well. The school is around two kilometres away from my house. I bought a bicycle for him and he cycles to school every day.
Hashim Khan from Kandahar said that out of his eight children,
… four were going to school in Pakistan. My two elder daughters were in class eight and a son and one daughter were reading in class two. None of them go to school now because there’s no school in the village where I live. Even if there had been a school there or a high school for girls in the district centre, my older daughters couldn’t go because there’s a ban on girls’ schooling above class six.
Khodaidad, from Kunduz province, currently living in a village in Kabul, province had a similar story:
All my children – three sons and two daughters – were going to school in Pakistan. Two boys were in class four and one in class six and both my daughters were in class three. None of them go to school now because there aren’t any schools near our house. It’s a one-and-a-half-hour walk to reach the nearest school. We’d need to rent at least a rickshaw for them, if not a car. But we can’t afford either. We’re very unhappy to see them deprived of their education.
Gul Muhammad from Balkh province said he had chosen to settle in Mazar-e Sharif so that he could send his children to school, but the ban on girls’ schooling had dictated a different reality:
I didn’t return to my village, I chose to live in Mazar-e Sharif, instead. I thought my children would go to school. My eldest daughter had graduated from grade six in Pakistanand my sons and small daughters were in lower grades. My eldest daughter can’t continue [her education] because the IEA has banned girls [going to school] beyond grade six.
A morsel of aid
Upon arrival in Afghanistan, not all returnees are treated equally. Those with PoR cards who opted to return voluntarily receive a package of assistance from UNHCR. They are given one-off cash assistance of 375 USD per individual “to cover transportation and other immediate needs upon arrival” and each family should be granted 700 USD three months after arriving in their place of origin (see information about UNHCR’s care package here). Since 15 September 2023, some 109,700 individuals returning from Pakistan have been provided with cash assistance in Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad encashment centres, including over 69,500 PoR cardholders, the UNHCR reported in its 16 September 2024 update. However, undocumented returnees and ACC cardholders receive no assistance from UNHCR. They get more limited help, packages of food and non-food items, from IOM.
The Border Consortium, a collaborative initiative comprised of various humanitarian organizations aimed at addressing the needs of returnees and vulnerable populations in Afghanistan, particularly those returning from Pakistan, reported on 23 September 2024 that about 85 per cent of 553,4000 returnees had been assisted between 15 September 2023 and 30 June 2024 by different agencies. The Border Consortium report said that each returnee family received from the IEA government upon arrival a cash grant of 4,000 afghanis (60 USD) for families of two and up to 10,000 afghanis (140 USD) for families of five or larger and a sim card.[12]
Two of our interviewees, from Helmand and Kandahar and an interviewee from Balkh, who is an unregistered member of registered family, said they had received help from UNHCR on arrival into Afghanistan, but not yet the second amount of 700 USD which had been due in their area of origin after three months. For example, Kandahari Hashim Khan said:
A day after our arrival from Pakistan, I was provided with more than 2,600 USD by UNHCR [for his family of ten]. The IEA also granted me 10,000 afghanis (140 USD) and two free mobile SIM cards. I spent only one night in the waiting area, in a camp located in Takhta Pul district of Kandahar. After that, I came to Daman district of the province.
Our two other interviewees who were unregistered in Pakistan were assisted by IOM with food and non-food items when they arrived in Afghanistan and also said that, since then, they had received no aid. The returnee from Kunduz, who now lives in Kabul, said:
When our household arrived in Torkham, we were provided by the IEA with 30,000 afghanis (430 USD) for the whole household. As my two sons are married, they calculated us as three families, so they gave 10,000 afghanis (140 USD) to each family. They also gave us three cards, one for each family and told us that, with these cards, we’d receive food items for the first six months. After arriving in Kabul, we went to the Department of Refugees in Kabul and registered ourselves. But since then, we haven’t received any of the promised food items.
Muhammad Ishaq, the returnee from Laghman province, said that when he arrived in Nangrahar, the IEA gave him 20,000 afghanis (300 USD):
I was also provided with a food card, and told I’d receive rations for six months. They told me to keep the card on me. So far, I haven’t received anything, and the card has expired.
Afghan returnees from Pakistan, without question, are in a precarious situation, especially given that the whole country is struggling both with what the World Bank has called a “persistently stagnant” economy (AAN analysis here) and declining humanitarian aid. The Bank reported that the economy contracted by a quarter after the re-establishment of the Emirate. Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2024 has received only a quarter of the required 3.06 billion USD in funding, while the United Nations Strategic Framework for Afghanistan, 2023–2025, had, by August 2024 received only a third of the 2.9 billion USD required to meet the basic human needs of people in Afghanistan for 2024 (see the UN Security Council latest regular quarterly report on situation in Afghanistan, released on 9 September 2024).
Tough prospects
Being forced to uproot themselves, with little or no time to prepare, mostly unable to bring assets with them and not having a home or job to come back to – this is the uncertain and undesirable nature of ‘return’ for most Afghans arriving from Pakistan. Adding to this unappealing proposition is the difficulty of getting an education for their children, who are generally used to going to school; the boys and younger girls may get to school if there is one nearby, but older girls are now forced to sit at home. It comes as no surprise then that some returnees like Hashmat Khan from Helmand are venturing into illegal activities, such as vehicle smuggling, to try to scrape together a living. Most, however, still hope for some kind of help or financial aid that will help get them through this tough time.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, recently expressed his concern about “the challenges in scaling up capacities to absorb returnees and enable their sustainable reintegration,” a reason why, he said, “it is essential that the humanitarian appeal be funded sufficiently to help to address the immense needs of the Afghan people, particularly the most vulnerable.” The amount of humanitarian aid coming to Afghanistan, however, is in decline, while needs, are not.
These began after the December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. The TTP had claimed responsibility, describing it as revenge for Operation Zarb-e Azb, the Pakistani military’s offensive in North Waziristan that had begun in summer 2014. However, as Human Rights Watch said in November 2015, hostility towards Afghan refugees increased sharply during this period. The report said that during the second half of 2016, over a million Afghans were returned from Pakistan, more than half of whom had been registered with the Pakistani government. “Many were compelled to return to Afghanistan at short notice after receiving 48-hours and/or a week’s notice to leave Pakistan,” the report said.
The UNHCR and the Pakistani National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) started the issuance of PoR cards for Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 2006. The PoRs expired several times, but were renewed or their duration extended via an announcement. A Pakistani English newspaper, The Balochistan Times, reported on 10 July 2024 that the government of Pakistan had granted a one-year extension to PoR cardholders (see here). Before this, in April 2024, PoR cardholders were given a two-month extension, which ended on 30 June 2024. There are around 1.3 million Afghan refugees with PoR card currently living in Pakistan.
↑4
Between August 2017 and February 2018, the Pakistan government itself started registering all undocumented Afghan refugees by issuing them with Afghan Citizen Cards. These were originally valid until October 2019. The ACCs were part of Pakistan’s ‘Comprehensive Policy on the Voluntary Repatriation and Management of Afghan Nationals’, which was adopted in February 2017 (see European Union Agency for Asylum report here). Around 800,000 Afghans have been issued with this type of card.
↑5
There are around 800,000 undocumented Afghan refugees in Pakistan, according to UNHCR-IOM flow monitoring. Their number fluctuates. In 2017, there were 600,000 to 700,000 undocumented refugees (see here). These are people who were unable to get PoR or ACC cards and live in constant fear of deportation, while also being unable to access basic services like health and education. They cannot get formal employment and work in them informal sector which makes them easy prey for manipulations and exploitations.
↑6
Before this, Afghan ID card (tazkira) holders from Afghanistan were allowed to commute through Spin Boldak. The visa system had already been imposed on the Torkham crossing point to Peshawar in 2014.
↑7
The Save the Children survey was published in April 2024 and was based on data collected from 485 returnee households and 240 households in host communities in Nangarhar (60 per cent of families surveyed), Kunar (22 per cent) and Laghman (18 per cent). A survey questionnaire and key informant interviews were used for the primary data collection in November 2023. 73 per cent of the respondents were male and 27 per cent female.
“During this assessment, the returnees were asked about the type of place they currently live in, with 38 per cent indicating they live in their own house, 36 per cent being hosted by relatives, 15 per cent living in an unsecured area in tents, 9 per cent living in rented houses, and one per cent mentioning another” (see page 10).
↑8
The Border Consortium update from September 2024 found that among those who have lived in Pakistan longer than a decade renting a house is more common. The report suggested that length of stay may have an impact on social relationships in the return country.
↑9
See this AAN report which heard from fathers who married off far younger daughters because of poverty or debt.
↑10
Afghans without visas trying to get to Iran have to pay money to smugglers. It is usually taken as a loan from compatriots who are already in Iran and then the travellers have to earn money to pay off the loan to their fellow Afghans.
Going to Pakistan without a visa did not use to need paid help from smugglers, or at least far less than going to Iran. However, these days, it costs around 5,000 afghanis (USD 70), including the rent of a vehicle, to get there especially if going from Helmand to Baluchistan province.
↑11
International NGOs have pointed out the education deficit facing returnees, for example, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said on 6 May 2024: “The recent forced return of over 540,000 Afghans from Pakistan has left thousands of children in need of educational support. Many of the returning children are now out of school. It’s hard for them to get an education in Afghanistan, where resources are already stretched thin.” (See NRC’s tweet here).
↑12
The IEA also promised housing and land for returnees. An IEA official said on 9 December 2023 that the IEA would distribute 200,000 places for shelters in different provinces to returnees who do not have shelters, Afghan news agency, Pajhwok reported. The report said that the families with less than ten members would receive ten biswas (1,250 square meters) of land, while families with more than ten members would be granted 15 biswas (1,900 square meters) of land. No media has reported actual IEA distribution to date.
However, on 10 July 2024, the spokesman of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, Abdul Mataleb Haqqani, told RTA that construction work was ongoing on 46 townships in 28 provinces for returnees and that when these were completed, shelters would be distributed to the returnees (see RTA report here).
Returning from Pakistan: How are Afghan returnees coping back in their homeland?
BY JAMES DURSO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR The Hill09/23/24 1:00 PM ET
Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, recently declared he will defeat the Taliban “no matter the odds.”
For Massoud to mount a military threat to the Taliban, he would need the cooperation of the Central Asian republics, Iran or Pakistan (among others) to do the job. However, Afghanistan’s neighbors have no interest in another civil war in Afghanistan, as the violence and refugees would spill over their borders and cause economic dislocation and unrest all the way to Europe.
After two decades of U.S.-sponsored mayhem in the Hindu Kush, all the region wants is to recoup the missed opportunities of the “lost decades” of 2001-2021.
None of Afghanistan’s neighbors prefer the Taliban to any other group, and they object to the regime’s unrepresentative government and policies toward women. That said, their leaders must solve today’s problems despite their distaste for the Taliban’s retrograde ways.
The republics’ approach to Kabul has long been “neighbors forever” — or, for the pessimists, “captives of geography.” Kazakhstan removed the Taliban from its terrorist list in December 2023; Uzbekistan never declared the Taliban an extremist group, and in 2018 it publicly encouraged the Taliban to start negotiations with the Islamic Republic. Turkmenistan was mum on the topic of the Taliban in line with its policy of permanent neutrality. In September 2024, the chief of Tajikistan’s security service visited Kabul for talks that were described as “productive,” and the same month the Kyrgyz Republic removed the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations.
Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors are collaborating to ease trade and transport; renovate Afghanistan’s roads and railroads; help Afghanistan improve irrigation projects; ship natural gas from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India; build a railroad from Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s seaports; and build a multi-modal transport corridor from Kazakhstan to Pakistan, terminating in the United Arab Emirates.
Economic growth depends on an adequate supply of water; Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains form the headwaters of the region’s basins.
In March 2022, the Taliban launched construction of the 285-km Qosh Tepa canal, which will divert 10 billion cubic meters of water annually from the Amu Darya River, relied on by water-starved Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. They will suffer a 15 percent cut in the current supply. The project will cost $684 million, but it will irrigate 2100 square miles and create 250,000 jobs. Kabul feels it is critical to ensure food security for the emirate.
Tashkent and Ashgabat are unhappy with the project, but the Uzbeks offered technical assistance to Afghanistan to ensure the construction is “in accordance with international norms.” Now is a good time to consider inviting Afghanistan to join Central Asia’s regional water management organization, the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia.
Afghanistan also has unresolved water issues with Iran and Pakistan; those projects would be endangered, or further delayed, by a civil war.
According to the United Nations, there are now 7.6 million Afghans in Iran and Pakistan, most of them refugees. In 2023, Pakistan expelled over 540,000 Afghan refugees, and the next phase of the plan may see 800,000 more Afghans deported. Increased violence will likely reverse these flows and burden Iran and Pakistan, who cannot afford to support the refugees they have now.
China recently warned Pakistan it must get control of the violence that is endangering the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor . More violence north of the Durand Line will further delay the corridor, which may be seen as a strategic “win” in Washington but will hurt Central and South Asia.
In April 2022, the Taliban banned poppy cultivation and methamphetamine production. This benefits Iran, which has the highest rate of opium abusers in the world, according to the World Health Organization. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “More than 3,700 national law enforcement officials have been killed and over 12,000 have been maimed in counter-narcotics operations over the last three decades.”
That’s good news, but if Afghanistan must fund a war against groups like the National Resistance Front (and its foreign confederates), the ban on drugs may go by the wayside.
In fact, if the Taliban suspect a foreign hand in an attack, will it encourage al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to strike foreign targets? Sure, that will violate the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, where the Taliban agreed “Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies,” but the Taliban will note the Americans pledged, “The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”
Is the Taliban isolated? No, Seventeen countries, including every country that borders Afghanistan plus the European Union, maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul. Aaron Zelin reports “between August 2021 and February 22, 2024 the Taliban has publicly announced 1,382 diplomatic meetings with at least eighty countries.” China and the United Arab Emirates have accepted the credentials from Taliban ambassador to their capitals.
Pragmatism may be winning, regardless what governments or their citizens think of Taliban policies.
After Shohna ba Shohna(Shoulder to Shoulder) proved weak, it is time for the locals to lead, though Washington and Brussels can help by facilitating diplomatic and economic support of beneficial projects. The Americans, in particular, will need a broad aperture to understand the needs and opportunities of the region instead of obsessing about what might have been.
The defeat of the U.S. and NATO may have seen the end of the era of empires in Central Asia and Afghanistan, after the Russian Empire (1713-1917), the British interventions (1839-1919), the Soviet empire (1917-1991), and the American empire (2001-2021).
Some questionable characters will make a few bucks along the way, but that’s the price of repairing the damage caused by the crusade to reform Afghan culture as part of Washington’s post 9/11 war on terror, the “first grand global experiment of the twenty first century.”
James Durso is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. He served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Afghanistan’s neighbors don’t want another civil war
Afghanistan has a façade of domestic stability, with armed conflict decreasing since the U.S. withdrawal.
But dire economic, humanitarian and human rights conditions and Taliban violence build pressure on the population.
The international community remains vexed over how to engage the Taliban.
Lacking formal recognition from all member states, the Taliban will not be present at the U.N. General Assembly next week. Their absence speaks volumes about how the international community struggles to constrain a regime that has repeatedly defied U.N. treaties, sanctions and Security Council resolutions. Three years into Taliban rule, the Afghan people are beset by a host of human rights, economic and humanitarian challenges, with women and girls particularly impacted. Meanwhile, the international community still has no clear approach to dealing with the Taliban, with the regime rejecting a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a special envoy to develop a roadmap for normalizing Afghanistan’s relations with the international community.As world leaders prepare to gather and discuss the most difficult global problems, USIP’s Afghanistan experts examine the challenges of living in and engaging with Afghanistan under the Taliban and the implications of the present situation on moving forward.
How bad is the human rights situation, particularly regarding the Taliban’s approach to justice and civil liberties?
Belquis Ahmadi: Since taking control, the Taliban has issued over 100 decrees aimed at restricting the rights of women and girls to education, employment, healthcare and mobility, among other things. The Taliban’s latest vice and virtue law consolidates previous edicts and introduces harsher restrictions, including classifying a woman’s voice as awra — an intimate element that must not be heard publicly. The law marks a new phase in the Taliban’s systematic efforts to erase women from all aspects of Afghan society. If it is enforced, women will disappear from television and radio broadcasts, public employment and will be further restricted in getting an education.
Just as women’s fundamental rights are being eliminated, Afghans’ ability to seek justice has deeply eroded. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan’s justice system has been transformed from a system that, while imperfect, was grounded in the rule of law with civil society playing a crucial role in ensuring that decisions were consistent with the country’s legal framework, to one in which unqualified clerics can apply their own (mis)interpretations of Shariah. In one of their earliest actions after seizing power, the Taliban suspended the constitution, a document that, while recognizing the primacy of Shariah, also acknowledged the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enshrined the principle of equal rights before the law for both men and women.
Just as women’s fundamental rights are being eliminated, Afghans’ ability to seek justice has deeply eroded.
The Taliban have taken further steps to dismantle the existing legal framework, including the suspension of the Afghanistan Independent Bars Association, a vital institution that once played a key role in safeguarding legal rights, ensuring access to justice, advocating for fair trials and providing legal representation to those in need. Male lawyers are now subjected to a religious knowledge assessment, and only those who meet the Taliban’s criteria and expectations have been relicensed. This shift has subordinated the legal profession to the Taliban’s ideological agenda. Meanwhile, female lawyers, judges, prosecutors and court clerks have been dismissed from their positions.The Taliban’s so-called justice often consists of swift, brutal punishments, frequently ordered by a single judge with unchecked power. Since taking control, hundreds of Afghan men and women have been subjected to public floggings, followed by imprisonment for up to two years. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of force, where justice is not administered in courts but meted out through fear and violence.
Women face significant barriers in accessing justice, noted Richard Bennet, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, in a 2023 report. Obtaining legal aid and counseling is particularly challenging, as women often need to rely on a mahram (a male guardian) to access the courts. In some cases, the mahram may be the very reason the woman seeks justice, complicating the process further. The Taliban dismissal of female legal actors combined with restrictions on interactions between men and women, exacerbates these challenges and leaves women in a desperate situation.
How has the security situation evolved for Afghans over the last three years?
Joyana Richer and Jill Baggerman: Armed conflict has decreased now that the Taliban has ended its violent insurgency. Though threats of violence and terrorism remain, the Taliban can accurately demonstrate that large-scale violence is at its lowest level in decades. Afghanistan’s streets are clean and “safe” in some respects — as long as the Taliban’s harsh restrictions on women are heeded. Tourism is up and kidnappings are down.
However, the absence of armed conflict represents only a negative peace. Broader human security has decreased for much of the population due to increased poverty, hunger and the Taliban’s repression and structural violence. Human rights advocates, former government officials, and people who break the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law are subjected to extrajudicial killings, disappearances and floggings. The regime enforces it policies through fear, coercion and discrimination.
The current low level of violence shouldn’t be conflated with peace nor become a distraction from addressing remaining sources of conflict. Afghanistan’s history is marked by deep-seated grievances, cycles of revenge and resource disputes. The Taliban’s current approach to security suppresses these issues, but those long-standing divisions will persist until they are resolved in a way that meaningfully benefits all of Afghanistan’s diverse population. Throughout Afghan history, political exclusion has often led to armed resistance, frequently fueled by foreign patrons of different factions. Avoiding this cycle of repression and violence will require collaborative efforts between local communities and external actors, who could potentially leverage this stage of domestic physical safety to address long-standing root drivers of conflict.
What about the Afghan economy and humanitarian situation?
William Byrd: Over the past three years Afghanistan’s economy has gone through three phases, with a drastic initial economic shock stabilizing at a low-level equilibrium that shows little prospect of improving any time soon.
Free-fall in the months following the Taliban takeover, precipitated by the cut-off of some $8 billion per year of aid and large international military expenditures in-country, exacerbated by stoppage of foreign financial transactions, freezing of Afghanistan’s $9 billion of foreign exchange reserves, and other shocks. Afghanistan’s GDP fell by more than a quarter, unemployment and underemployment increased, inflation soared and personal incomes fell, with tens of millions of people dependent on humanitarian aid. The urban service sector (bloated by foreign inflows of money) shrank greatly. Afghan women suffered disproportionately due to Taliban gender restrictions. Rural areas saw improvements in security with the end of the war, but any economic “peace dividend” was overwhelmed by the aid cut-off and other shocks.
Subsequent stabilization of the economy at a low, arguably below-subsistence level supported by humanitarian support and better-than-expected Taliban economic management. Inflation fell back, poverty and unemployment seem to have stabilized albeit at high levels, the exchange rate improved, imports recovered, exports grew and revenues were effectively collected despite the weak economy. Humanitarian aid funding reached a peak of $3.8 billion in 2022, and associated U.N. shipments have in the past two and a half years injected $3.8 billion in cash into the economy. Human capital development, however, is being decimated by the prohibition against women and girls’ education and many boys dropping out to seek work.
Current economic stagnation with downside risks and little prospect for robust growth. Exports and revenues seem to have plateaued, and the World Bank projects limited growth in coming years. The Taliban’s opium ban has devastated millions of rural households previously dependent on poppy cultivation to make ends meet, while not stemming flows of opiates out of the country from existing inventories. Humanitarian aid funding was halved in 2023 (to $1.9 billion) and is unlikely to increase in 2024. Basic development assistance, perhaps amounting to several hundred million dollars per year, will not offset this decline. Moreover, development projects currently underway and envisioned will not contribute much to overall economic growth. Most of the projects, which could be labeled as either humanitarian or development, will require money on a recurrent, in many cases, yearly basis. So, there will be little or no reduction in aid dependency, and overall a bleak economic picture.
How does the international community see the Taliban’s rule three years on?
Baggerman: The international community lacks consensus on how to engage with the Taliban. No state has officially recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government. However, China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, multiple Arabian Gulf countries and a few others have cautiously moved toward a realpolitik acceptance of Taliban rule.
International actors’ core dilemma centers on principled versus pragmatic engagement. Many civil society groups and U.N. human rights bodies take a principled stance, focusing on promoting human rights, especially for women and girls. Pragmatic or tactical engagement — seen by the U.N.’s Doha meetings and humanitarian efforts — addresses immediate needs, but tends to normalize Taliban authority.
Most global engagement with the Taliban centers on counterterrorism. Taliban rule has created a safer haven for terrorist groups that threaten regional and international security. The Taliban has not expelled al-Qaida members, and ISIS-Khorasan (while opposed by the Taliban) has managed to secure a foothold in the country from where it has conducted recent attacks in Moscow and Iran. Pakistan is deeply threatened by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which the Taliban have given safe haven.
Overall, neither pragmatic nor principled approaches seem to have influenced senior Taliban policymaking in the last three years.
Regional nations take a pragmatic approach toward navigating shared challenges like border security, economic interdependencies and transboundary water challenges. Central Asian countries are apprehensive about infiltration by violent Islamic groups such as ISIS-K and ones with Central Asian roots but lack the power to change the Taliban and have thus resorted to policies of normalization and practical engagement. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have both removed the Taliban from terrorist lists. The region is enacting multiple deals that predated the Taliban takeover. For instance, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India energy transfer deal began in Afghanistan on September 11 and the Taliban’s construction on the Qush Tepa Canal deepen Central Asia’s engagement. Tajikistan has raised the most objections to accepting Taliban rule, but recent signals indicate this position may be veering toward normalization.Overall, neither pragmatic nor principled approaches seem to have influenced senior Taliban policymaking in the last three years.
What does this mean for U.S. policy?
Scott Worden: Afghanistan has largely disappeared from high-level foreign policy debates as more acute crises like Gaza and Sudan and more strategic challenges like China and Russia have come to the fore. Afghanistan has taken a back seat in U.S. foreign and defense policy and neither presidential campaign has put forward detailed policy proposals about how they plan to deal with the country’s challenges if elected. The current administration has also avoided significant discussion about Afghanistan policy beyond condemning women’s rights violations and noting the absence of terrorist attacks on the homeland despite having no troops on the ground. In the background of all this silence is an uncomfortable sense that there are few good ideas on how to change a frustrating and depressing status quo.
U.S. policy toward Afghanistan is also hampered by the same tensions between a principled vs. pragmatic engagement approach discussed above. On one hand, maintaining a functional relationship with the Taliban is needed to achieve core U.S. interests of counterterrorism cooperation on ISIS-K and individuals that have been wrongfully detained. On the other hand, the U.S. condemns the Taliban’s women’s rights restrictions and does not want to be seen as “rewarding” the Taliban for their authoritarian behavior. Economic assistance is caught in the middle. Sanctioning the Taliban and withholding development assistance is a normal response toward an adversarial regime — yet it ultimately hurts Afghans the U.S. wants to support and increases humanitarian needs. Essentially, the Taliban’s human rights violations provide a low ceiling for U.S. engagement and the need to mitigate terrorism and migration risks put a floor on the degree of isolation the U.S. can afford. Policy will likely fluctuate within this middle band for the foreseeable future unless and until some surprising security shock like a foreign terrorist attack jolts the system.
Where is Afghanistan Three Years into Taliban Rule?
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
