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Not all is well inside the Taliban

September 14, 2024

Lakshmi Venugopal Menon

PhD candidate at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University

Published On 14 Sep 2024
The recently announced vice and virtue law reflects efforts by the Taliban’s old guard to consolidate power at the expense of internal unity.

On August 21, a strict public morality law was issued in Afghanistan. The 114-page document outlining the legislation contains provisions that cover transportation, media, music, public spaces and personal conduct. Among its most restrictive provisions are a ban on music and on women singing or reading aloud in public.

The announcement of the law provoked widespread condemnation internationally and raised questions about the direction in which the Taliban government is taking Afghanistan given past promises to ease restrictions on women.

The law also caused a lot of unease in Afghanistan, even if opposition was not voiced publicly. This has prompted the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, to call for the group’s members to avoid division and embrace unity.

While the public morality legislation makes clear that the Taliban is pressing ahead with ultra-conservative policies in the face of international criticism, it also reflects growing tensions within its leadership.

Kandahar vs Kabul

In the lead-up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021, some Taliban officials sought to persuade the international community that a Taliban 2.0 had emerged, which held more moderate views on governance compared with the old guard’s highly conservative and stringent approach.

This new guard spoke the language of international diplomacy and made clear its desire to scrap more conservative policies to attract international support and secure legitimacy for the new Taliban government.

The formation of the interim cabinet, however, showed the first signs that the old guard was not ceding power. Promises of an inclusive government were not fulfilled, and some members of the old guard were given key roles, including Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the Taliban’s founders who was appointed prime minister; Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was appointed as his deputy; and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of another Taliban founder, Mullah Omar, who was made defence minister.

As the interim government took on the uneasy task of steering the country away from collapse, Akhundzada established his residence in Kandahar as another seat of power, declaring himself in charge of political, military and religious affairs.

Over the past two years Akhundzada has made clear he does not intend to step back from his hardline positions. In March 2022, on his order, girls and women were banned from attending secondary school and university.

He has also sought to concentrate power in his own hands and further tighten the old guard’s grip on the government. He ordered a number of cabinet reshuffles in which his loyalists were appointed.

In September 2022, Education Minister Noorullah Munir was replaced by Maulvi Habibullah Agha, one of the figures closest to the supreme leader. In May this year, Health Minister Qalandar Ebad, a trained doctor and the only technocrat in the Taliban government, was replaced by Noor Jalal, a hardline cleric and former deputy interior minister.

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While Akhundzada appears in control, signs of growing internal divisions have surfaced. In February 2023, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani implicitly criticised him, saying, “Monopolising power and hurting the reputation of the entire system are not to our benefit. … The situation cannot be tolerated.”

In his Eid al-Fitr message this year, the interior minister again hinted at internal troubles. He called on the Taliban to avoid creating divisions with the Afghan people.

Akhundzada, for his part, urged Taliban officials during Eid to set aside their differences and serve the country properly. He has repeated this call for unity frequently, most recently during a rare trip to northern Afghanistan, in which he met with local leaders.

Dissent and silencing

The public morality law codifies rules that the Taliban promoted before but did not fully enforce. Now, the law empowers the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to monitor, censure and punish any Afghan citizen found in violation of it.

The announcement of this legislation demonstrates that the old guard of the Taliban led by the supreme leader have an upper hand in directing policy. This is yet another sign that the Taliban 2.0 is not a more “moderate” version of the group that ruled in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Previously, Taliban representatives who touted the Taliban 2.0 idea hinted behind closed doors at international forums that certain hardline officials could be replaced to appease the international community.

But developments over the past year, including the vice and virtue law, show that the old guard, who believe in the need for a rigid stance to maintain unity within the group, are suppressing the voices of the new guard, creating a culture of conformity through fear, replacement and sidelining.

In interviews I have conducted with current and former Taliban representatives who do not support some of the conservative policies of the Taliban government, some have shared that they have relocated their families to other countries. One of them said: “The family is more comfortable abroad and the children’s education can seamlessly continue.”

The lack of public response to the vice and virtue law may signal that disgruntled Taliban members who disapprove of it would not risk breaking the unity of the group over policy disagreements.

Silencing of dissent, however, does not help with the two major problems the Taliban is facing: growing dissatisfaction among the Afghan population and continuing international isolation.

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The government in Kabul is feeling the pressure from the Afghan people, who are asking for services and jobs amid a collapsing economy and limited international assistance. That can be alleviated only by gaining international recognition of the Taliban government.

However, efforts of some Taliban members, including Haqqani, to reach out to the international community and seek engagement, more aid and investment are being undermined by Kandahar doubling down on policies like education bans for girls and women and the morality law.

In the end, Akhundzada’s strategy of consolidating power may have the opposite of the intended effect: It may sow more internal division that could lead to fragmentation or even rebellion.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

 

  • Lakshmi Venugopal Menon
    Lakshmi Venugopal Menon
    PhD candidate at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University
    Lakshmi Venugopal Menon is a PhD candidate at the Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University. She was previously a Research Associate at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences.
Not all is well inside the Taliban
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Will There Ever be Accountability for War Crimes in Afghanistan? Two reports take stock of past failures and make some proposals 

September 12, 2024

Kate Clark

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Accountability for war crimes and human rights violations in Afghanistan has been on the agenda this week at the 57th annual session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. For almost half a century, various Afghan factions, governments and foreign forces have perpetrated abuses – indiscriminate bombing, torture and rape, arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance, massacres and land grabbing. Women’s rights have been violated, as has the right to free speech, assembly and protest. While many of these crimes are well-documented, instances of accountability are rare in the extreme. This week, says AAN’s Kate Clark, two reports that take stock of accountability options have been debated at the Human Rights Council: the annual report on human rights in Afghanistan by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) and a second, far stronger report published by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. It addresses head-on the politics of why there has been so little accountability and has some suggestions for what could be done now.
Instances of accountability for war crimes and human rights violations committed In Afghanistan since 1978 are so few it is possible to list them in a few sentences. There have been a few trials: the Khalqi head of intelligence, Abdullah Sarwary, was convicted in 2006 by an Afghan court of mass killing[1] (AAN reporting here), while a handful of Afghans have been put on trial in Europe under universal jurisdiction – among them, Hezb-e Islami commander Faryadi Sarwar Zardad convicted in the UK in 2005 of hostage-taking and torture (AAN reporting here) and three Parchamis[2] convicted in the Netherlands, Pul-e Charkhi commander Abdul Razaq Aref (recently acquitted on appeal as AAN reported), Director of KhAD[3] Military Intelligence Hesamuddin Hesam and Head of KhAD Military Interrogation Habibullah Jalalzoy (more details here).[4]
Some states that fought in Afghanistan after 2001 have carried out investigations that have uncovered evidence of war crimes committed by their own forces. A United States Senate report detailed the CIA’s use of torture, rendition and black sites (published in redacted form in 2014; AAN analysis here). President George Bush had authorised the torture. President Barack Obama admitted it but also downplayed it – “we tortured some folks” – and effectively ruled out prosecutions.[5] President Donald Trump praised his country’s use of torture and said waterboarding was not harsh enough (see AAN reporting here). (He also pardoned four contractors who had been convicted of murder or manslaughter for killing fourteen Iraqi civilians, described as a “massacre” by FBI investigators). One Afghan, the last known person to be tortured by the CIA and rendered to Guantanamo, Muhammad Rahim, remains in the prison camp (AAN reporting here).

An inquiry by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force, Major General Paul Brereton, reported evidence in 2020 of the murders of 39 people and cruel treatment of two others by members of the Australian Special Forces: one man has been charged. An ongoing inquiry by the UK Ministry of Defence, begun in 2022, is looking into allegations of possible extra-judicial killings by UK special forces between 2010 and 2013.

The International Criminal Court began a preliminary examination into the situation in Afghanistan in 2006, but only, finally, got permission to investigate in 2022 (a timeline of events up to that point can be read here), at which point the Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, narrowed the focus to just looking into the Taleban and Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), ie he dropped the US military and CIA and the forces of the Islamic Republic from his investigation, thereby creating the impression of a hierarchy of victims and perpetrators.[6]

In Afghanistan itself, after 2001, great efforts at transitional justice programme were made over many years, but these were repeatedly stymied by hostile political actors – President Hamed Karzai, cabinet ministers, MPs, the United States and UNAMA – all of whom either did not want their own records, or those of their allies, laid bare, or they feared scrutiny would trigger instability. (For more on this see this recent report by the author. It also links to the 2004 UN Mapping Report, which brought together published documentation of war crimes from 1978 to 2002, was suppressed at the time and was recently posted by AAN). As to Afghan actors admitting wrongdoing, it is difficult to think of any, apart from General Abdul Rashid Dostum who made a public apology in 2013, which appeared to be a condition of his joining Ashraf Ghani’s ticket in the 2014 presidential election.[7] Instead, MPs in 2007 voted for a blanket amnesty for “[a]ll political factions and hostile parties who were involved in one way or another in hostilities before the establishing of the Interim Administration.”[8]

In light of such a poor record on holding those responsible for grave abuses and the current human rights situation in Afghanistan, which, according to the OHCHR report, is “very serious,” what more could or should be done?

Considering accountability at the UN

OHCHR’s annual report on the human rights situation was presented to the Human Rights Council on 9 September. After summing up the current situation, it presented a “stocktaking of accountability options and processes for human rights violations and abuses.”[9] The report does not grapple with why, after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, “there was little impetus for accountability or transitional justice processes at the national level,” nor does it address why “a number of initiatives to map and document past human rights violations and abuses and develop options for a domestic accountability and transitional justice process” failed to bear real fruit, including the 2004 UN Mapping Report, which OHCHR itself had undertaken and that was buried because of political pressure.

Far more substantial is the report published by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI), ‘Accountability for Human Rights Violations and Violations of International Humanitarian Law’, authored by Latifa Jafari Alavi, Mehdi J Hakimi, Kobra Moradi, Orzala Nemat, Haroun Rahimi, Huma Saeed and Ehsan Qaane.[10] The RWI report describes the “almost complete impunity for all state actors – of varied ideologies – that have held power, and for all armed forces, including those of foreign states, that took part in the conflict” and how “[c]ycles of violence have fed off each other … as those in power have replicated many of the same patterns of abuse and retribution against their foes as they had experienced when out of power, ensuring unstable transitions and fuelling grievances that have led to further violence.” It looks at attempts to analyse why previous efforts at accountability failed and proposes “ways that some progress could be achieved.” Like the OHCHR report, but far more emphatically, it embeds current concerns about human rights violations in the context of the last 46 years of conflict and includes, for example, an important section on economic crimes, such as land-grabbing, under the Republic, and even back to earlier conflicts and atrocities.

The RWI report lists the Emirate’s institutions of accountability, such as the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice and Hearing Complaints, which is the address for members of the public to complain about Emirate officials. It concludes, however, that the prospect of holding human rights offenders accountable under the current authorities is “discouraging.” Since taking power, the report says, the Emirate has “dismantled the existing institutional setup and in its place set up exclusionary institutions with narrow focus and questionable effectiveness, suggesting a lack of political will to hold human rights abusers to account.”

The report also lists a wide range of international accountability mechanisms, their shortcomings, potential benefits and problems that includes the ICC, the International Court of Justice, regional judicial bodies like the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and various UN mandates, such as special procedures, and the use of universal jurisdiction by courts outside Afghanistan. It has a final section on non-judicial, or not necessarily judicial routes to accountability – documentation, memorialisation, oral history, archiving and truth-telling initiatives.

The RWI report recommends the establishment of a UN-mandated international investigation and accountability mechanism that would look into past and current human rights violations and abuses by all parties to the conflict in Afghanistan.[11]

It calls on member states to support the work of the ICC, which should itself “[e]xpedite the Afghanistan investigation and avoid further delays.” It should also “reaffirm its mandate to address the most serious abuses by all parties to the conflict” and “reverse the decision to deprioritize” alleged crimes pursued in its preliminary investigation and widen the scope of its current investigation to include the US military and CIA and the forces of the Islamic Republic, the report urges. It goes on to call on the UN to enhance UNAMA’s monitoring and reporting function and ensure it cooperates with the ICC “particularly with regard to information on abuses contained in its database.” On sanctions, it calls for ways to be found “to ease current sanctions-related harm to banking and liquidity” and focus on targeted sanctions such as travel bans and asset freezes on individuals responsible for grave abuses.

The RWI report urges the UN to finally make public the 2004 Mapping Report and also has some interesting recommendations for international and Afghan civil society organisations, including looking into publishing the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC)[12] conflict mapping report, which documented alleged crimes committed between 1978 and 2001, based on historical documents and extensive field research in all of Afghanistan’s provinces. “This report likely includes information about perpetrators, the conditions and causes of violations,” the RWI report says, and their impact on affected populations. Its release is important for shedding light on past abuses, promoting transparency, and validating and recognizing the experiences of victims,” it says. It urges their collaboration on expanding the AIHRC Mapping Report to document alleged crimes to 2001-2024 and beyond, and the establishment of an online registry system for war victims in Afghanistan whereby Afghans inside and outside the country can access, submit information and register as war victims.[13]

Accountability after 2001, and after 2021

The main problem with pushing for accountability during the Republic was that those who had power opposed it. Even though major state backers of the government (and the government itself) spoke about human rights and democracy, the US, in its initial intervention, had facilitated the takeover of the Afghan state largely by men who were dogged by allegations of war crimes, but who had helped the US get rid of the Taleban. At every turn after that, Washington kept supporting its new allies, squashing moves to have a more representative government or curb the power of the new elites. The men who had come to power on the back of the US intervention viewed the now very lavishly funded state as a means of enrichment, enabling them to build up their networks and restrict or target their opponents. Technocrats who gained government positions, mainly later on, were often just as corrupt. In those early years, the US special forces and CIA hounded men they believed to be Taleban. They carried out mass arbitrary arrests and used torture, often duped by their Afghan allies to pursue personal or factional enemies. After that, allies in the police and NDS did the same, with police in Kandahar alone carrying out some 2,000 enforced disappearances – a crime against humanity. Meanwhile, those in power in the Afghan government, its Western backers and the UN blocked attempts to pursue transitional justice.

The opportunity lost after 2001 to deal with past crimes tastes even more bitter in hindsight than it did at the time. In those years, there had been enough of a rupture with the past to face up to it, especially as Afghans assumed the war was finally over and hopes for a brighter, fairer, peaceful future were commonplace. Yet, under the Republic, there was not merely a lack of accountability for past or continuing abuses but a failure to acknowledge or speak about those crimes. The gaslighting by the new elite after 2001 was extreme: groups and individuals that had perpetrated war crimes were publicly celebrated as national heroes and patriots and going against this hegemonic discourse was dangerous. However, if power and politics failed or obstructed any sort of accountability after 2001, the politics appear even worse now. The underlying problem is not a lack of evidence of wrongdoing or even a lack of accountability mechanisms, but the absence of political will.

The Islamic Emirate, for its part, is either proud of what activists say are human rights violations, including ‘gender apartheid’, or denies them, for example, accusations that it persecutes individuals from the former government and armed forces, or it feels it is acting positively on past abuses, for example, taking back state land that was usurped by powerful individuals during the Republic (AAN reporting here).

Meanwhile, Western backers of the Republic, who remain Afghanistan’s largest donors of civilian aid, have largely tried to ignore the country since the debacle of their forces’ withdrawal in 2021. There might be interest among some of them for backing an accountability mechanism that targeted the Emirate, but would they support something which put a spotlight on their own conduct or that of their former allies? It is difficult to imagine.

Now, yet another cycle of a regime falling and another rising in its place has only added a new layer to the complexity of the pain and suffering of Afghans and the difficulties of getting accountability. Veteran human rights activist Patricia Gossman (her first visit to Afghanistan was in 1990 when she interviewed President Nabjibullah) described in 2018 how, in various national and international surveys asking Afghans for their views on the conflict, “one common theme emerges as a minimum requirement for a functioning polity: the need for acknowledgement and truth about what has happened.” She also said that in interviews with victims of both insurgent bombings and coalition airstrikes, “the (predominantly poor) survivors” told her they wanted “acknowledgement by those who had caused their suffering, and they want material help, something reparations could potentially help address.” Researchers involved in the (still unpublished) AIHRC Conflict Mapping Report had also found, she said, the experience of interviewing victims across different districts and provinces revelatory, that they had a “shared history beyond what their own community, tribe or ethnic group has suffered.”

One reason, the author was told by an AIHRC commissioner that they never leaked the report was that its benefit as a stand-alone document was limited and indeed could have been harmful. It needed to be the spearhead of a push to open up a nationwide conversation about what Afghans had suffered, an acknowledgement of the crimes of the past, an opportunity for truth-telling, and perhaps reconciliation. That realisation of a shared history seems further away than ever now, while truth-telling by Western states, Moscow and Afghanistan’s neighbours as to the part they have played has been slow to come or remains non-existent.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

References

References
↑1 Sarwary was the head of the intelligence agency, AGSA, under President Nur Muhammad Taraki (1978-9): it carried out mass arrests, torture and forced disappearances. He was convicted in 2006 of conspiracy against the Burhannudin Rabbani government in 1992, arresting people who subsequently disappeared and mass murder. Patricia Gossman and Sari Kouvo’s special AAN report from 2013, ‘Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan’ called the trial “flawed and hasty.” Sarwary was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to death. In early 2007, an appeals court ruled the evidence was insufficient and reduced his sentence to 20 years imprisonment, beginning with the first day he was taken into custody in 1992. He was released in January 2017.
↑2 Parcham was a faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led by Babrak Karmal. It was active from 1967 to 1990.
↑3 Khadamat-e Etla’at-e Dawlati (KHAD), or the Government Information Services, was the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s (1978-1992) intelligence agency, from 1980 to 1992.
↑4 Hesam and Jalalzoy were both convicted of torture in 2005, while Aref was convicted of arbitrary deprivation of liberty, cruel and inhuman treatment, and assault on the personal dignity (of prisoners) in 2022. He was acquitted in 2024 after the Dutch appeal court decided there was no nexus between his actions and the armed conflict, so they could not be classed as ‘war crimes’.
↑5 Obama’s comments were made at a press conference ahead of the publication of the ‘Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program’. “It’s important,” he told the press, “for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”
↑6 See the author’s 2021 report, ‘Creating a Hierarchy of Victims? ICC may drop investigations into US forces to focus on Taleban and ISKP’.
↑7 See a translation of Dostum’s apology in the 8 October 2024 AAN report, ‘A Leader Apologises: General Dostum, elections and war crimes’.
↑8 For the text of the law, see Kouvo’s ‘After two years in legal limbo: A first glance at the approved ‘Amnesty law’ and for a discussion, Gossman and Kouvo’s report on Transitional Justice, pp28-31 [see FN1].
↑9 Document A/HRC/57/22, ‘A stocktaking of accountability options and processes for human rights violations and abuses in Afghanistan – Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ can be found on this webpage.
↑10 The RWI report was debated at a side event on 12 September, co-organised by RWI and the Human Rights Research League and co-sponsored by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) with Huma Saeed, Kobra Moradi, Richard Bennett, and Tom Syring.
↑11 See also this open letter signed by 73 Afghan human rights, women’s rights and pro-democracy organisations and backed by 17 international human rights organisations to the member states of the Human Rights Council, which also called for the establishment of such a mechanism.
↑12  The IEA dissolved the AIHRC in May 2022. However, it argued that since the IEA lacked international legitimacy, it had no authority to dissolve it (see here). The AIHRC was reconstituted as the human rights organisation, Rawadari, under the leadership of Shaharzad Akbar (who was chair of the AIHRC at the time of the Taleban takeover).
↑13 One interesting voice at the ‘Enhanced Interactive Dialogue’, which took place on 9 September at the Human Rights Council off the back of the OHCHR report, was the Center on International Cooperation’s Hanny Megally, who spoke about the need to consult victims and survivors about ‘their justice-based needs’ (see video of the session at 1.08.48 and Megally at 1.39.00).

In Iraq, he said, a survey of victims in 2003/4 had emphasised the need to find disappeared relatives, reparations and holding those responsible to account, including distinguishing between those who had given orders and those who obeyed them out of fear; de-Ba’athification in these circumstances, Megally said, may have led to a “failure of the justice project imposed from outside with little consultation.” In Morocco, victims had prioritised getting to the truth about torture and disappearances over state reparations, while also wanting those most responsible held accountable. Tunisians surveyed in 2012 wanted corruption dealt with, especially in the judiciary, as well as highlighting the need to tackle long-term social exclusion and regional inequality. Syrian activists stymied by the Security Council from getting the ICC to act, Megally said, had worked via the General Assembly to establish an international institution in 2016 to pursue criminal justice; their efforts also expanded to go after alleged perpetrators who had fled to Europe and elsewhere through the courts, using universal jurisdiction. Syrians also persuaded the General Assembly to set up an institution focussing on finding the truth about the disappeared and dead.

Megelly’s points were first, that ‘accountability’ can take many forms and criminal prosecution may not be priority of the victims and also that, as in Syria, pursuing criminal justice and the truth, can be done in complementary fashion.

 

Will There Ever be Accountability for War Crimes in Afghanistan? Two reports take stock of past failures and make some proposals 
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Sanctions are a key tool to support Afghan women and girls

September 10, 2024

Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security

By: GIWPS | September 10, 2024

Women are now forbidden from showing their faces or using their voices in Afghanistan after the Taliban issued a new restriction in August. Since their takeover three years ago, approximately 100 of the Taliban’s edicts have specifically targeted women and girls constituting what many consider gender apartheid. In a blow that is both substantial and symbolic, the Taliban’s so-called Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice–which is responsible for restricting women’s rights–now occupies the building where the former Ministry of Women’s Affairs once stood.

“I did not think we would be in prison and slaves again after 23 years,” said Dr. Sima Samar, Afghanistan’s Former Minister of Women’s Affairs.

To mark the third anniversary of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and the Afghanistan Policy Lab at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) hosted a day-long event to discuss Afghanistan’s economy, humanitarian situation, shrinking civic space, and ways forward.

“We need to have an honest conversation about how we can go forward, how we can leverage the tools that we have to try to have some impact in ways that will make a difference, no matter how difficult it is,” Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, told an audience of Afghan leaders in exile, experts, and policymakers.

Following a morning of private dialogue, Verveer moderated a public discussion featuring Afghanistan’s former Minister of Women’s Affairs Dr. Sima Samar, former US government official Lisa Curtis, and Afghanistan’s former chairman of the Independent Civil Service Commission Nader Nadery. Ambassador Adela Raz, Afghanistan’s former Ambassador to the United States and Director of the Afghanistan Policy Lab at SPIA, provided opening remarks.

A common refrain from panelists was that the international community cannot be complacent.

“For any country that believes in universal human rights, to allow what is happening in Afghanistan, is, simply, unconscionable,” said Curtis.

By allowing abuses to go unchallenged, the international community has empowered the Taliban to dictate the agenda and act with an air of legitimacy to which they are not entitled. Although the international community may be hesitant to crack down on the Taliban, the challenges of promoting accountability pale in comparison to the challenges that inaction will pose not only for Afghan women and girls, but women and girls worldwide.

Panelists offered clear strategies to advance a more peaceful, secure, and inclusive future for Afghanistan. A resounding call was to leverage sanctions to hold the Taliban accountable, using both US and United Nations authorities to target those implicated in grave human rights abuses and/or support for terrorism. 

  • Utilize the Global Magnitsky Act more broadly. The United States Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (“Global Magnitsky Act”) gives the US government authority to sanction perpetrators of “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” In December 2023, the US Treasury used the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction two Taliban officials, Fariduddin Mahmood and Khalid Hanafi, responsible for the closure of schools for women and girls. Panelists echoed a recent Washington Post oped by its Editorial Board to sanction more Taliban officials.
  • Utilize Executive Order 13224. Executive Order 13224 (“E.O. 13224”) gives the US government authority to sanction “persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.” The Taliban have utilized their de facto authority to support terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and should be held accountable.
  • Target sanctions evasion. Despite existing United Nations sanctions programs and individuals countries’ designations, notorious Taliban leaders have been able to travel freely. In June, Sirajuddin Haqqani–who has been sanctioned by both the US and United Nations–traveled to the United Arab Emirates. In July, the United Nations lifted travel restrictions on Haqqani and three other Taliban leaders–Abdul Kabir Mohammad Jan, Abdul-Haq Wassiq, Noor Mohammad Saqib–to travel to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj. The officials enjoying freedom of movement are those responsible for confining women to their homes.

Beyond sanctions, panelists called for codifying gender apartheid as a crime against humanity; monitoring and documenting human rights abuses and continuing the United Nations’  independent assessment on Afghanistan; and including Afghan women in decision-making about Afghanistan’s future.

“We lost the capacity of crying,” Dr. Samar told the audience, acknowledging the devastating and innumerable blows that Afghan women have suffered in the past three years. “It is against human dignity no matter where we are.” 

The international community is witness to the Taliban’s systematic persecution, gender apartheid, and crimes against humanity, and cannot stand idly by. The Taliban’s actions demand not only condemnation, but action. There are tools to uphold human dignity in Afghanistan. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that leaders use them.

Sanctions are a key tool to support Afghan women and girls
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The Taliban Have Reached a New Low. How Can the World Respond?

September 10, 2024
By Metra Mehran

Ms. Mehran is an Afghan activist and policy specialist.

The New York Times

September 9, 2024

Ever since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 with promises that — this time — they would be more moderate, they have played a deceitful game.

The Taliban government has introduced one decree after another, incrementally stripping away the rights of women and girls to education, employment, justice, freedom of speech and movement, and it has progressively criminalized their existence outside the home. Taliban leaders reached a new low last month when they published rules that, among other restrictions, make it illegal for a woman’s voice to be heard by male strangers in public.

Each new tightening of the screw has sparked international condemnation — but no real consequences for the Taliban. The mullahs merely wait for the outrage to subside before further entrenching their misogynist rule, undeterred by criticism, the threat of repercussions for violating international laws or even the risk of losing badly needed humanitarian aid.

But a potential new international treaty covering the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity may finally provide the world with more legal and diplomatic leverage — and a new way to hold the Taliban to account for the repression they have unleashed on millions of women in Afghanistan. This is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

In October a U.N. General Assembly legal committee will meet to decide whether the treaty should move forward to the stage of formal negotiations. The effort to create a better tool for prosecuting crimes against humanity has gained momentum because of growing alarm over conflicts in places such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Gaza, and the treaty includes a proposal to criminalize “gender apartheid.”

Fueled by the Taliban’s actions, the notion of making persons and states that enforce gender apartheid liable for criminal prosecution has gained global traction. Last October, I joined nearly 100 prominent organizations, jurists and individuals, including the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, in signing a legal brief that defines gender apartheid as the institutionalized, systematic subjugation of one gender. The brief urges U.N. member states to codify it as a crime against humanity in the proposed treaty. Many countries have indicated support for the proposal.

There is no better way to describe what Afghanistan’s women face than gender apartheid. Over the past three years, the Taliban have issued dozens of edicts curtailing or eliminating the basic rights of women and girls while abolishing laws and agencies that were dedicated to protecting those rights. The former Ministry of Women’s Affairs, for example, was disbanded by the Taliban and its building handed over to a reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which enforces the current government’s hard-line interpretation of Shariah.

Today, even when a woman is accompanied outdoors by a male relative, as required by law, judgments on the legality of her dress, behavior — and now even her voice — are at the total discretion of the Taliban’s ever-present morality enforcers. If one of them deems that a violation has occurred, a woman can be taken into custody, where many have reportedly been subjected to torture and rape. Afghanistan’s women now suffer from one of the world’s highest rates of gender-based violence, according to the United Nations. Women who complain about such violence have been sent to prison.

Women are now effectively confined to their homes and to the only roles deemed by the mullahs to be appropriate for them: caregiving and childbearing. Since men can be punished by the Taliban if their female family members break the rules, women are, in practice, under the strict control of their male relatives. All of this is counterproductive for the nation: By barring women from working outside the home, including as aid workers, the Taliban are harming the country’s economy and compounding its severe humanitarian crisis.

The Taliban’s new rules drag women even deeper into an abyss that seems to have no bottom. Besides muzzling women in public, the rules require women to completely conceal their faces and bodies and place new restrictions on their freedom of movement. I left Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, but my work as an activist in exile keeps me in contact with many women still there who tell me that the latest rules add to the hurdles they face in getting access to even their most basic needs. As one woman recently said to me, even speaking to a shopkeeper to buy food is fraught when her voice is now considered awrah — a term referring to the intimate parts of the body that must be concealed to avoid tempting and morally corrupting others.

The codification of gender apartheid in international law will, of course, not automatically eliminate the crime, and bringing perpetrators to account will not be easy. But it’s an important first step toward providing victims and the global community with legal pathways to hold violators responsible and to deter other governments from committing the same crimes.

Beyond the legal aspect, international recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity would have great moral power. The global condemnation of South Africa’s former apartheid regime galvanized political, legal and social resistance efforts that ultimately contributed to that system’s demise and later resulted in racial apartheid being classified as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

There is still much work to be done. If the U.N. committee agrees to move the treaty to the next phase, a range of legal and other issues will have to be worked out, including the potential inclusion of gender apartheid as a crime, and the treaty would need to be ratified internationally.

Several countries already expressed in previous committee meetings their openness to codifying gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. For this to become a legal reality, many more nations will need to step up and join in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan, particularly those countries that claim to be leaders on women’s rights or have female heads of government.

Metra Mehran (@Metra_Mehran) is an activist from Afghanistan currently in exile in the United States. She is an adviser to the End Gender Apartheid Campaign.

The Taliban Have Reached a New Low. How Can the World Respond?
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State Department Comment on House Foreign Affairs Committee Afghanistan Review

September 10, 2024 ,

U.S. Department of State

OFFICE OF THE SPOKESPERSON

SEPTEMBER 9, 2024

The Department appreciates the Committee’s longstanding interest in Afghanistan policy, and we strongly believe in Congress’s independent role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. We remain committed to working with Congress on its oversight requests and advancing the interests of the American people.

Since 2021, we have expended thousands of hours fulfilling congressional requests for documents, briefings, and interviews related to Afghanistan. The Department has provided approximately 20,000 pages of documents to Congress, conducted nine high-level briefings for committees and members of the House of Representatives and Senate, and made available or engaged 15 senior officials for transcribed interviews to House Foreign Affairs Committee staff and members. This includes the Department taking the unprecedented step of providing Congress with a highly-sensitive cable and internal memos related to the Department’s After-Action Review.

Additionally, Secretary Blinken has testified before House and Senate Committees 14 times on Afghanistan, including four times directly before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It was critical to have done so. Americans deserved to hear directly from their leaders on the decisions made to end America’s longest war and the steps taken to fulfill our commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of two decades.

As the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority and Minority members complete their review of the 2021 withdrawal from Kabul, the Department wants to especially recognize the dedicated State and Department of Defense professionals who showed extraordinary courage and tenacity as they worked tirelessly on the ground in Afghanistan, in Washington, and at other sites, alongside other critical U.S. Government and civil society partners, to evacuate and assist as many people as possible in the closing days of our presence in Kabul. Our people remain our greatest asset.

We also share our abiding respect and reverence for the 13 servicemembers whose lives were taken by ISIS-K during the withdrawal. These heroes embodied the very best of who we are as a nation and we owe them an immense debt we can never repay. Their selfless sacrifice in the line of duty saved thousands of lives. Our deepest sympathies are with the Gold Star families they left behind.

**

Ending America’s longest war was never going to be easy. But President Biden pledged to do so, and within months of taking office, he made the difficult but necessary decision to end America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan. He inherited an agreement his predecessor had reached with the Taliban to remove all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. As part of that agreement, the previous Administration compelled the Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including several top war commanders helping the Taliban achieve their strongest position in 20 years. Meanwhile, the agreement reduced our force presence to 2,500 troops.[1]   And while the Taliban had agreed to cease attacks on our troops, it was contingent that all were withdrawn by the May 31 deadline.

It was, and remains, a flawed agreement that hampered efforts to end the war through negotiations among Afghans. As General McKenzie, the CENTCOM Commander who served both the current and past administration, testified: “The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military…”[2] 

Due to this agreement, when the Biden Administration entered office it found a revitalized and emboldened Taliban, along with a decimated SIV program and a complete lack of planning for a withdrawal.

The President acted in the best interests of the American people when he decided to bring our troops home and end America’s longest war. This decision ensured another generation of Americans would not have to fight and die in Afghanistan — a full decade after Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice. It strengthened our national security by better positioning us to confront the challenges of the future and put the United States in a stronger place to lead the world.  It freed up critical military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other resources to ensure we are better poised to respond to today’s threats to international peace and stability – whether that be Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault on Ukraine, China’s increasingly assertive moves in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, or a persistent and global terrorist threat.

**

In the three years since the end of our country’s longest war, important questions have been asked about what could have been done differently. The Department has made every effort to answer these questions transparently – whether they be from Congress, members of the media, the American public, or our own workforce.

As the Department has undertaken this effort, regrettably, others have sought to advance their own interests or agendas that have almost nothing to do with learning important lessons to strengthen American national security. Even more unfortunately, misinformation about the Department’s role and efforts have sought to tarnish the reputation of dedicated non-partisan professionals, many of whom tirelessly worked on Afghanistan policy for years.

The Department has a deep respect for Congress’ legislative mandate and responsibility, and as stated above, cooperated extensively with the Congress to provide the information necessary to do that important work. This is why it remains frustrating that time and time again, Majority members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with their Republican counterparts in the House, issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture.

Their so-called midterm report on Afghanistan in 2022 did a deep disservice to the American people by further politicizing U.S. policy towards Afghanistan instead of focusing on bipartisan solutions. There is little reason to believe the final report will be anything different than the conclusion of a blatantly partisan exercise.

**

One of the most persistent misunderstandings of the leadup to the withdrawal was that the State Department lacked a strategy, specifically a “Noncombatant Evacuation Operations” plan to close operations in Afghanistan. This is not accurate.[3] 

Noncombatant evacuation operations – often called NEOs – are partnerships between the Department, the U.S. military, and the host government to “assist the Department of State (DOS) in evacuating noncombatants, nonessential military personnel, selected host-nation citizens, and third country nationals whose lives are in danger from locations in a host foreign nation to an appropriate safe haven and/or the United States,” as described by the United States Military Joint Publication.  The planning for a NEO originates within the State Department before the President approves the action to bring in the military to assist in any needed evacuations. It is a whole-of-government action — planned and decided through a National Security Council process — and statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are inaccurate.

State Department officials who spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee explained during their hours-long interviews that there was extensive planning by the State Department for a possible diplomatic exit from Afghanistan. Planning began in April 2021, with multiple inter-agency and embassy exercises, using a range of scenarios.  The inter-agency developed detailed indicators and warnings to inform a decision to declare a NEO — including the encirclement or siege of Kabul, the closure of HKIA, resumed attacks on American forces, and a declared or demonstrated Taliban intent to take Kabul.

As Brian McKeon, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources during the Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, described, there was continued development of a NEO between the State Department, the Department of Defense, and CENTCOM – with the latter traveling to Kabul in July of 2021 to “further refine the NEO planning.”[4] 

Additionally, the U.S. government intended for the U.S. Embassy to remain open after the end of the war — a decision Congress broadly supported. So, while U.S. military forces would end combat operations, Department personnel planned to operate out of Embassy Kabul to assist Americans and Afghan allies, coordinate diplomatic and development activity and investments, and help protect and advance U.S. national security interests after August 2021. Given those expectations, along with the continued operation of commercial flights out of Kabul until August 15, executing the NEO before that date would have signaled to the people of Afghanistan the U.S. had lost all confidence in the then-Afghan government and precipitated the very collapse we sought to avoid.

The government of Afghanistan controlled all 34 Provincial Capitals until August 6. Between August 6 and the 14, they began to fall rapidly, crossing the indicator and warning trip wires established by the inter-agency. On August 14, State initiated the NEO through an inter-agency agreement. On August 15, President Ghani abandoned his office and fled the country, and the Afghanistan Republic security services and government collapsed. The Taliban then entered Kabul.

Again, while the State Department formally triggers a NEO, the decision to do so is a collective, inter-agency one, coordinated by a National Security Council process that includes multiple Principal and Deputies Committee meetings.  Statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are false – moreover, principal-level discussions did not conclude a NEO should be initiated prior to the collective interagency decision that was reached on August 14.

Executing a NEO requires substantial military and diplomatic resources, so the State Department, alongside our military colleagues, quickly adapted to the situation on the ground.

Throughout the crisis, there was intense coordination between military and Department personnel. As former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass described, there was engagement “on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis in terms of the operational coordination of aspects of the NEO” engagement with “the senior military commanders regularly.”[5] 

A NEO is but one tool in the diplomatic toolbox, and one of last resort. And NEO planning was far from the only preparation State took in the weeks and months leading up to August 2021.[6] 

In March, the Department began urging Americans living in Afghanistan to leave the country. At the end of April, the State Department placed Embassy Kabul on ordered departure status.[7]  That same month, State senior leaders and officials traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan alongside Department of Defense personnel to prepare for the forthcoming absence of the United States military in the region.[8]  In total, between March and August, the Department sent 19 unique messages with warnings to Americans living in Afghanistan to leave, as well as offers of help, including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets.[9]

Despite these efforts, when Kabul fell, approximately 6,000 American citizens remained in Afghanistan — almost all dual nationals who had been living in Afghanistan for years or decades. Almost all were evacuated by August 31 thanks to a relentless effort by the State Department to identify them, contact them, and help bring them to the airport.  This effort included more than 55,000 phone calls and 33,000 emails in a two-week period.  It was unprecedented in scope and scale.

On August 31, several hundred American citizens remained in Afghanistan who could not or would not leave because they could not reach the airport, did not want to leave extended family members behind, or simply chose to remain.  Secretary Blinken vowed to facilitate the departure of any remaining Americans. “We’re continuing our relentless efforts to help any remaining Americans… leave Afghanistan if they so choose,”[10] the Secretary said publicly. Between September 1 and the end of 2021, the State Department made good on that pledge, facilitating the departure of nearly 500 American citizens.

In February of 2021, the President took a crucial step to ensure America lived up to its enduring commitment to the individuals who stood side-by-side with us in Afghanistan by issuing an executive order directing a review to improve the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which was undertaken with great care. Domestic resettlement agencies have traditionally welcomed Afghan SIVs to the United States, but these critical partners had been deliberately left in shambles by the previous Administration and needed massive investments to be reinvigorated.[11] 

As the White House’s summary of Pentagon reviews of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan details: “The Department of State began seeking transit agreements for Afghans with third countries in June, secured agreements with Qatar and Kuwait in July, and negotiated arrangements with other countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, UAE, Bahrain, Kosovo, and Albania. Setting up this network of transit sites— “lily pads”—would not have been possible without the support of international partners across the Middle East and Europe.”[12] 

In late July, the State Department, along with the Department of Defense and interagency partners, initiated Operation Allies Refuge to begin evacuating SIV applicants in the final stages of processing.[13]  U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Europe worked successfully and quickly with host government and Department of Defense personnel to establish temporary housing for tens of thousands of evacuees. During the U.S.-facilitated evacuation, vulnerable Afghans went to overseas Defense Department facilities for security screening, vetting, and the administration of public health vaccinations.[14]  Afghan evacuees were then transported by air to eight Department of Defense domestic safe-havens. More than 10,000 State, Defense, and Homeland Security personnel supported this unprecedented humanitarian effort alongside other U.S. Government partners and a cross-section of America.[15] 

Throughout the first half of 2021, the Administration was constantly assessing the likelihood of President Ashraf Ghani’s government’s staying in power and considered multiple scenarios.  Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict the government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained.  As General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has previously said, “Nothing I or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”[16]  In an August 14 2021, phone call to Secretary Blinken, President Ghani expressed his intent “to fight to the death” to stave off the Taliban takeover before subsequently fleeing the next day.[17] 

Nonetheless, we planned and exercised a wide range of contingencies.  Because of that planning, we were able to draw down our embassy and move remaining personnel to the airport within 48 hours and the military, which had  pre-positioned in the region, was able to secure the airport and start the evacuation within 72 hours.[18]

The U.S. Government achieved the largest airlift in U.S. history with approximately 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and third-country nationals departing Afghanistan in those final two weeks of August 2021.[19]

Throughout this process, the Department relied heavily on the expertise and guidance of those on the ground and across the globe to assess the fluid environment in Afghanistan. Secretary Blinken has spoken publicly of his respect and appreciation for the selfless work of all these individuals, who stepped up to help others in their time of need, and his commitment to hearing from any State Department employee who wanted to share their Afghanistan-related insights.

Much attention has been paid to the State Department’s highly-valued dissent cable – a way for State Department employees at all levels to directly reach a Secretary of State with dissenting views on U.S. foreign policy. As Secretary Blinken previously stated in public testimony before Congress, the cable did not suggest the Afghan government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure. As the Secretary also said publicly, the Department agreed with the concerns raised in the cable, and in fact, a number of the recommendations the cable made were already in motion before it was received. Still, the opinions expressed in the dissent cable were heard at the senior-most levels of State Department leadership. The Secretary personally read and oversaw a response to the dissent cable, and its contents were factored into his thinking.

“With regard to the so-called dissent channel cable, it’s something I’m immensely proud of. It’s a tradition that we have and you’re right, I read every such cable, I respond to it, I factor into it my own thinking and actions, and that cable did not predict the collapse of the government or security forces before our departure. It was very focused and rightly focused on the work we were doing to try to get Afghans at risk out of the country and pressing to speed up that effort,” the Secretary told the Congress.[20] 

The continued distortion of the dissent cable – which remains classified – by Members of Congress to further a political talking point is deeply disappointing, especially after the Department went to extraordinary lengths to allow members of the Foreign Affairs Committee the ability to review the document — the first time since the inception of the dissent channel during the Vietnam War this access had been granted.

**

The State Department remains committed to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of the past two decades.  As Secretary Blinken has said: our commitment to these individuals is enduring.

When President Biden took office, the State Department inherited an SIV program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by Congress involving multiple agencies – and a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applicants.  There had not been a single SIV applicant interview in Kabul in nine months, going back to March 2020.[21]  The program was basically in a stall as the previous Administration made no senior-level or interagency effort to address the SIV backlog or consider relocation and resettlement options for our Afghan allies and their families as they worked to negotiate a military withdrawal.

Within two weeks of taking office, State re-started the SIV interview process in Kabul.  On February 4, one of President Biden’s first executive orders directed the State to immediately review the program to identify causes of undue delay and find ways to process SIV applications more rapidly. Starting in the Spring, Secretary Blinken surged resources to the program, quadrupling the staff dedicated to processing applications by May 1 and increasing it six-fold by August 1.  The administration went from issuing 100 visas per week in March to more than 1,000 per week in August.

To date, the Administration has worked to resettle 165,000 Afghans who the American people have welcomed to communities across our country.[22] 

Our commitment to helping resettle thousands of Afghan allies has continued well past the withdrawal.

Over the past few years, we’ve worked to resettle tens of thousands of Afghan families within the United States, welcoming them to their new homes and communities and demonstrating the very best of American generosity. Many international partner nations and organizations assist us in this ongoing effort. Since September 1, 2021, the Administration has approved or welcomed to the United States more than 80,000 Afghans under the SIV program. In Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) alone we issued more than 18,000 Afghan SIVs, the most in a single year. In this fiscal year (FY2024), we have already surpassed that total.

The Department has also rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which was deliberately undermined and partially dismantled by the prior administration. Drawing on best practices from processing Afghan cases in near real-time has helped make this rehabilitation a success story and speaks to the strength and ingenuity of Department and interagency personnel, as well as our refugee resettlement nonprofit partners. So far for this fiscal year, we have interviewed more than 20,000 Afghan refugees in 44 countries, contributing to the admission of one of the highest numbers of refugees through USRAP in a single year in more than three decades.[23]

Ensuring we fulfill our promises to those individuals who stood by our side is one aspect of our continued commitment to the people of Afghanistan. Since August 2021, the United States has provided more than $2.2 billion in funding toward the humanitarian response inside Afghanistan and for Afghans in neighboring countries through established partners with rigorous vetting standards.[24]  The United States is also the single largest humanitarian donor for Afghans in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, providing more than $844 million in humanitarian assistance in FY 2023.[25] 

The Department also stands with the women and girls of Afghanistan and has repeatedly called for their access to education and careers to be restored following edicts by Taliban leaders banning women from universities and working with NGOs. For example, through the establishment of the Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience initiative, a public-private partnership between the Department of State and Boston University, the Department has catalyzed innovative and scalable partnerships between the private sector, civil society, academia, government, and Afghan women leaders to support Afghan women’s education, employment, and entrepreneurship.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a launching pad for terrorism, and we continue to push the Taliban to fulfill all their counterterrorism commitments. We are taking a whole-of-government approach to our Afghanistan counterterrorism efforts, cooperating with partners and allies. We are working vigilantly to prevent the re-emergence of external threats from Afghanistan.

**

There are valid and important criticisms of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and how it concluded, which is why the Department has remained focused on evolving and growing from this moment, learning important lessons and making sustainable changes to crisis operations.

In December 2021, the Secretary asked retired Ambassador Dan Smith — a long-serving veteran of the Department — to lead a review of how the Department carried out its duties between January 2020 and August 2021. Ambassador Smith and team interviewed 150 people — including Secretary Blinken — and had access to all contemporaneous records. Studying and learning from Ambassador Smith’s review is a vital component of building a stronger Department that is better prepared to respond to future challenges and to fulfill our mission.

This after-action review[26]  made recommendations on several areas where the Department could have done better by improving processes and systems.  In the interest of maximum transparency, the unclassified sections of this after-action review have been made public.  The Department has already taken more than 40 concrete actions and identified additional steps to guide itself in responding to future crises, including a new, state-of-the-art Operations Center opened in August 2022 with increased surge capacity and modern technology to facilitate information sharing, streamline coordination, and promote a common operating picture.

**

The Department once again expresses its respect for the Congress and its Members who remain dedicated to reviewing the actions taken ahead of and during August 2021. It is our sincere hope the Administration can work hand-in-hand with Congress to make improvements from the lessons learned from the withdrawal. The Department stands ready to work alongside any Member who expresses serious interest in finding legislative and administrative solutions. However, we will not stand by silently as the Department and its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.

State Department Comment on House Foreign Affairs Committee Afghanistan Review
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How Fares the Afghan Private Sector? Trying to run a business in a “stagnant” economy

September 8, 2024

Kate Clark • AAN Team

There is a consensus that the private sector is crucial to getting any real growth back into the Afghan economy – described by the World Bank as “persistently stagnant.” Long-term growth, it said, was contingent on a “more resilient, private-sector led economy that capitalizes on the nation’s inherent strengths.” Boosting the private sector is also high on the list of the Islamic Emirate’s policy aims; ‘Enabling the Private Sector’ was one of two topics chosen for discussion at the United Nations hosted Doha III conference, which brought Emirate officials and special envoys together on 30 June and 1 July. In this light, Kate Clark and the AAN team wanted to look deeply at the Afghan economy and the prospects for private-sector growth. However, their starting point was not World Bank analysis or the more positive take of Emirate officials, but interviews with Afghan business owners about their everyday struggles.

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

We spoke to seven men and two women, all with employees and all but one with a business pre-dating the fall of the Islamic Republic. Our nine interviewees, based in Nangrahar, Mazar-e Sharif, Paktia, Bamyan, Kandahar and Kabul, include the owner of a factory that processes pulses; an importer of crockery and glassware for domestic retail, a trader in potatoes and onions; the deputy manager of a factory making pressure cookers; a children’s clothes manufacturer; the owner of a rug-making factory; the owner of an embroidery business; and a herbalist. We also conducted a number of less in-depth interviews in Kandahar.

Three of the interviewees said their businesses were flourishing, one after a significant decline because of Covid-19, followed by the change of government and collapse in the economy. Most, though, were struggling and most had downsized. The businesspeople spoke of plummeting sales and having to lay employees off or dip into savings to retain staff when profits could not cover wages. They described problems ranging from shrinking consumer demand to delays and bureaucracy at customs, high taxes, cheap imports, lack of capital, problems with banking and a patchy electricity supply.

Their day-to-day problems provide the context for the second section of the report which scrutinises the national economy. It considers the main takeaways of the World Bank’s most recent ‘Afghanistan Development Update’, published in April 2024, which was packed with information and was gloomy in its outlook, and the Emirate’s responses, which were far more positive. This report considers the reasons behind the shrinking of the economy when the Republic fell and the resulting sharp contraction in consumer demand. It looks at dynamics about which Emirate officials are proud, but the Bank is worried about, such as deflation and the strong currency. It looks at Emirate revenue collection and spending, including its focus on the security services, and the economic impact of the opium ban and changing Pakistani policy on trade and exports/imports.

The paper ends by looking at what our nine businesspeople, the Bank and the Islamic Emirate say would help the Afghan private sector, as well as the wider economy, to flourish. All the policy options, the report concludes, are highly political and would involve the Emirate or donors backing down on principled positions, or difficult domestic considerations, or measures by neighbours and countries further afield that would go against their perceived interests. Yet until at least some of these changes happen, it is difficult to see Afghanistan finding its way to an upward path of real sustained growth.

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

How fares the Afghan private sector FINALDownload

AUTHORS:

Kate Clark

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AAN Team

How Fares the Afghan Private Sector? Trying to run a business in a “stagnant” economy
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Trump appears to have misled Gold Star families on troop deaths in Afghanistan

September 6, 2024
Analysis by

The Washington Post

“We didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then they took over that disaster.”

— Former president Donald Trump, in a video of him at Arlington National Cemetery speaking to the families of U.S. troops killed at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, posted on TikTok, Aug. 28

This TikTok of Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington, where he marked the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops during the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan overseen by President Joe Biden,has been viewed more than 11 million times. Federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries, but Trump’s entourage pushed past a cemetery employee who tried to prevent Trump’s aides from bringing cameras, according to the Army.

Those cameras appear to have recorded Trump saying these words to the Gold Star families. (The TikTok shows him talking to families as the words are spoken as a voice-over.) In his phrasing, it sounds as if no troops were killed in Afghanistan during the last 18 months of his presidency. That’s false, though as we will show, there was an 18-month gap with no fatalities across Trump’s and Biden’s combined presidencies.

The Facts

A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to queries about why Trump says there were no fatalities over 18 months. Using the Defense Casualty Analysis System, we first reviewed every 18-month period in Trump’s four years as president, looking only at deaths in hostile action in Afghanistan during Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, not accidental deaths such as in a vehicle or helicopter crash. There was no such period.

Then we focused on the last 18 months of his presidency — July 20, 2019, to Jan. 20, 2021. That makes the most sense since Trump referenced Biden’s taking over. The Defense Department database showed 12 deaths from hostile action in that period. We double-checked with the news releases issued by the Pentagon in that period and confirmed the 12 names

The last two deaths occurred on Feb. 8, 2020. Javier Jaguar Gutierrez of San Antonio and Antonio Rey Rodriguez of Las Cruces, New Mexico, both 28, werefatally ambushed by a rogue Afghan policeman. Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence, flew to Dover Air Force Base when the bodies arrived in the United States.

That was 11 months before Trump’s presidency ended. The suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed the 13 troops took place on Aug. 26, 2021 — seven months into Biden’s presidency. The last 11 months of Trump’s presidency and the first seven of Biden’s add up to 18 months.

In March 2020, Trump approved an agreement with the Taliban (not the Afghan government at the time) for all U.S. forces to leave the country by May 1, 2021. He sealed the deal with a phone conversation with Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and head of its political office in Qatar. “We had a good long conversation today and, you know, they want to cease the violence,” Trump told reporters at the time. “They’d like to cease violence also.”

Despite abandoning many of Trump’s policies, Biden honored this one, just stretching out the departure by a few months in 2021.

Trump even celebrated Biden’s decision to stick with the withdrawal. “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible,” he said in a written statement after Biden announced he would continue the departure set in motion by Trump.At a political rally on June 26 that year, weeks before the collapse of the Afghan government, Trump bragged that he had made it difficult for Biden to change course. “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process,” he said. “Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think? Twenty-one years. They [the Biden administration] couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.”

In about a half-dozen campaign rallies and media events last month, Trump mentioned his conversation with the Taliban leader and tied it to the 18-month period without deaths in hostile action. But often Trump left the impression — as in the TikTok with the Gold Star families — that this only happened on his watch. Here are some examples:

  • “Abdul was not playing games with me. You know, they were executing a lot of our soldiers. And I spoke to him, I said, ‘Abdul, don’t do it anymore. There’ll be no more.’ Anyway, I said it pretty tough. And you know what? For 18 months, we didn’t have one American soldier killed in Afghanistan. And then I left, and then I left, and there’s a bunch of incompetent people took over, and it all started up again.” (Rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 17.)
  • “We had no soldiers killed for 18 months while I was there because they knew — don’t play around with our soldiers.” (Rally in Asheboro, N.C., Aug. 21.)
  • “I dealt with Abdul, and he’s still the leader, strong man, smart man, but he understood that if he did anything because we were losing a lot of people to the snipers. … And he understood. And he said, ‘Yes, Your Excellency, I understand.’ He called me Your Excellency. I wonder if he calls that to Biden. I doubt it, right? But he understood that and he respected us. And for 18 months, not one American soldier was killed, not one.” (Remarks at a news conference in Bedminster, N.J., Aug. 15.)

But on occasion, Trump gets it close to correct, such as in these remarks during a news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8: “You know, if you go back and check your records, for 18 months, I had a talk with Abdul. Abdul was the leader of the Taliban, still is. But I had a strong talk with him. For 18 months, not one American soldier was shot at or killed, not even shot at, 18 months.”

The Defense Department determined that the suicide bomber, Abdul Rahman al-Logari, was not a member of the Taliban but part of the Islamic State-Khorasan, a regional branch of the Islamic State terrorist group. He was one of several thousand ISIS-K members released by the Taliban in mid-August 2021 and one of several possible suicide bombers the group had available for the attack, according to a review of the investigation completed in April.

Trump appears to have misled Gold Star families on troop deaths in Afghanistan
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The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, translated into English

September 3, 2024

John Butt

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The Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, has issued a new law laying out the duties, powers and punishments available to the enforcers of the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice. The law also specifies numerous acts and particular behaviour that the Emirate deems either obligatory or forbidden for Afghan citizens. Today, AAN has published a basic translation of the 114-page, 35-article law, without its extensive footnotes, by Islamic scholar, John Butt.* We plan to publish a full version with footnotes, as well as a review of the new law.
The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, in Pashto and Dari, can be downloaded from the Ministry of Justice website (search for 1452, using Arabic numerals, ie ۱۴۵۲). A working, basic translation of the law into English is available for preview and download below. 

The new law, issued on 21 August 2024, lays out the duties and powers of those enforcing it, the employees of the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, which the Emirate re-established when it retook power in August 2021. The enforcers (muhtasibin), the law says, should respect everyone’s social standing and human dignity, not pry into people’s private sins and avoid entering their homes. It gives them extensive powers to punish wrongdoers with penalties ranging from verbal admonishment to fines to prison.

The law details many acts which are forbidden or obligatory. Acts that enforcers should prevent include adultery, fornication, lesbianism, anal sex, gambling, animal and bird fighting, making pictures of animate objects, beard-shaving, befriending non-Muslims, observing Nawruz and Shab-e Yalda (festivals on the spring equinox and winter solstice) and dealing harshly with orphans. Enforcers, the law says, should refer those not praying, not fasting during Ramadan, or disobeying their parents to a court of law. Special injunctions apply to shopkeepers, farmers, artisans, taxi drivers and those responsible for beauty spots and tourist attractions.

The law orders women to cover their bodies and faces entirely and not speak or sing loud enough for non-family members to hear them. Men must dress so as to cover their bodies from navel to knee.

(See also a statement on the new law from the Ministry of Justice.)

We are publishing a basic translation of the law in response to demand from our readers, but are looking forward to publishing a complete translation, including the extensive footnotes, along with a separate section on praying, as well as a review.

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

Law on Virtue and Vice BasicDownload

 

*John Butt came to journalism and broadcasting from a traditional madrasa education; he was a graduate of the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in northern India. For the last thirty years, he has been responsible for setting up radio serial dramas – storytelling in a contemporary setting – including in Afghanistan – ‘New Home, New Life’ in the 1990s and, more recently, a cross-border radio drama called ‘Da Pulay Poray’.

His previous report for AAN, ‘A Taleban Theory of State: A review of the Chief Justice’s book of jurisprudence, reviewed a book by the Islamic Emirate’s Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani. ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance) is the fullest and most authoritative account yet of what the Taleban believe an Islamic state should be like. 

 

The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, translated into English
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Here’s how we can help oppressed women and girls in Afghanistan

September 3, 2024

The Guardian

Your harrowing report on the worsening oppression of women in Afghanistan reminds us that our business in that country, despite the withdrawal of troops in 2021, is not done (‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public, 26 August). Controversial though aspects of the Afghan campaign were, one undisputed success was the positive movement towards achieving the development goal of improving women’s education and rights. All that has been lost under the Taliban, and it would appear that they now wish to restrict women’s rights still further.

Short of another intervention, what can we do? For a start, we should open up the Afghan civil resettlement scheme still further: all those women thrown out of university by the Taliban should be offered visas and a chance to finish their studies in the UK. It will not be easy for them to get out, but it is not impossible.

Further, using the resources of the BBC World Service, we should offer a comprehensive distance-learning package to all women in Afghanistan.

The last element is to extract the costs of these measures from our bloated aid budget to Pakistan, which remains one of the major recipients of overseas development aid. While there is much need in Pakistan, it also manages to keep nearly 1 million (mostly) men under arms and has an active nuclear weapons programme. If it can afford those, it does not need our aid. Since the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, has historically supported the Taliban, the country’s responsibility for the plight of Afghanistan’s women is manifest.

In effect, by providing Pakistan with aid, we are subsidising both its militarism and the oppression of Afghan women – this must stop.
Simon Diggins
Defence attache, Kabul 2008-10

 The situation for all Afghan women and girls is indeed dire, as spelled out in your editorial (20 August). Just when 11- and 12-year-old girls in Britain are about to start at their secondary schools, their contemporaries in Afghanistan are denied any education, and only a small minority are able to access teaching online. Many young girls are being forced into child marriages, especially if their mothers are impoverished widows, and prohibited from working outside the home. Their futures tragically damaged, their hopes crushed. What can be done for them?

Recently, I was able to put one such girl in Kabul, who had managed to learn English online, in touch with an 11-year-old schoolgirl here, and they are now joyfully corresponding – opening their hearts and minds to each other, each one learning about another sort of life.

Is this not an arrangement that we can spread across the country? Fostering such relationships between young girls from different cultures could be a source of hope for future peace.
Margaret Owen
London

Here’s how we can help oppressed women and girls in Afghanistan
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Mani once sang of freedom in Afghanistan. Now, silenced, she’s desperate to escape. Will Australia help?

September 3, 2024

The Guardian
Sun 1 Sept 2024

This brave journalist and young women like her are bearing the brunt of the failed democratisation project: ‘Hope is fading’

It’s three years since Australia pulled its final troops out of Afghanistan. Their presence over two decades saw the country emerge from the ashes of civil war, embrace a relative peace and a fragile democracy before falling back into the darkness of fundamentalism under the Taliban.

Now young women like Mani are bearing the brunt of this failed democratisation project. Like other Afghan women and their families, she is desperately seeking asylum in Australia – somewhere safe to live.

I’ve known Mani for years. She’s a brave journalist hailing from Afghanistan’s Hazara minority and has faced crippling oppression under the onslaught of Islamic State and the Taliban. She has been threatened and chased by the terrorists because of her profession, her ideals and her identity. But this young journo is holding on; punching back at the militants with her critical reporting. She told me that she is now running out of time, options and, most importantly – hope.

During Australia’s presence from 2001 till 2021, Mani had the chance to study and dream of a life filled with opportunities and equality.

Now, at 25, she feels abandoned and left to suffer at the mercy of a regime that has aggressively removed women from all areas of public life.

“I had a dream and I was committed to nurture values of freedom and equality in Afghanistan through poetry and journalism,” she told me via phone from an undisclosed location.

“But the world left us alone at the mercy of the wolves who have no shame in beating, silencing and killing women.”

When I asked why she chose Australia for her humanitarian visa application, she said the country had been a second home for her ethnic Hazara community, who have thrived and contributed immensely to the society. “I have always admired [Australian Afghan broadcaster] Yalda Hakim and want to be like her,” she said.

Girls of Resistance and Enlightenment remains her favourite poem; she it sang at many public gatherings in Kabul to warn against the Taliban’s takeover of the country:

Beating their chests for freedom

Holding on to wisdom

Enlightened like the sun

Chanting for liberty

Girls of love and freedom

Girls of resistance and enlightenment

The Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has empowered his regime’s moral policing unit to ensure that women completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public.

This week the regime went further by introducing “frightening” laws that ban women from speaking in public. The laws label female voices as potential instruments of “vice” that need to be censored, regulated and silenced.

This means women must not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses. “Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face and body,” the new laws say.

Australia has condemned this latest effort to silence Afghan women and girls.

“We stand together with the women and girls of Afghanistan, and in support of their human rights,” the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, tweeted this week.

But is Australia really doing all it can to ensure that vulnerable and deserving women like Mani are getting a fair chance of life and a safe haven?

Mani submitted her visa application last year and only received a file number in February. “I haven’t heard anything [from the Department of Home Affairs] since then,” she told me. “I am in a desperate state of waiting while my options, resources and hope are fading.”

To halt the drastic erosion of human rights – and reverse this course towards the darkness in Afghanistan – Australia must indeed stand together with Afghan women and girls. This starts by expediting their humanitarian visa requests and giving them the freedom that they so badly deserve.

Only then can Australia say that it has ensured Afghan women are able to raise their strong voices – to never be silenced again.

  • Shadi Khan Saif is a Melbourne-based journalist and former Afghanistan and Pakistan news correspondent

Mani once sang of freedom in Afghanistan. Now, silenced, she’s desperate to escape. Will Australia help?
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