When I set foot inside the MCG, I felt a joy myself and other Afghan refugees won’t forget

November 13, 2022 Analytical articles

Shadi Khan Saif

The Guardian

10 Nov 2022

I will never forget seeing our world-class players on the international stage after all Afghanistan has been through

*Mohammad Nabi of Afghanistan takes photos with fans at Melbourne Cricket Ground. Photograph: James Ross*

Sitting inside the magnificent arena, I felt every moment of the experience. The joy of seeing my team up close lifted the gloom that I and other Afghan refugees had been feeling, bringing us, momentarily, back to life. I’ve never seen a single resettlement program deliver such joy and sense of belonging, and it made me desperately want to see more of it in the coming days as our team battles for survival – just like us refugees.

I hardly cared about the weather, which was a typical Melbourne day with the sun playing hide and seek with the clouds before the rain washed away the entire game. What meant most to me was seeing our world-class players on the international stage after all our country had been through. They brought with them a connection to the land that we were forced to flee when the Taliban took over last year. Many of us still remain torn apart from our families, who are waiting, anxiously, for visas.

The wait for the game began many days earlier. My housemates and I had gone on a hunt for T-shirts, flags and any other Afghan paraphernalia. We had very little success, apart from securing a few T-shirts from an eager online seller. The most important purchase was a tricolour flag. I know it sounds ultra nationalist, but, take it from me, it meant so much for the millions of Afghans watching the live broadcast around the world to see it hoisted high in the MCG in Australia, while it remained banned in Afghanistan under the Taliban. This was so much more than just a cricket match.

Keen on holding it high enough to grab the attention of the cameras, my housemate bought a large plastic pole, only to have to surrender it to security at the entrance. Before that, we threw a ball in Yarra Park to Afghan music as streams of colourfully dressed new Melburnians from various directions gathered around the gates.

Wearing the national T-shirts and carrying the flags, we got plenty of surprised glares on our way into the city from the south-eastern suburbs. A curious man had a nice chat with me and admired what an excellent player Rashid Khan is. Two young women on the train were surprised by the blue colour of the Afghanistan team’s jersey, which contrasted the green, red and black of the national flag.

I was constantly posting photos to social media, as well as texting and calling people, urging them to tune in so as not to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. On the walk to the stadium from Richmond train station, we got many return calls from friends who we hadn’t heard from in months.

Once inside the venue, the view of the world’s biggest cricket ground under the floodlights was mesmerising. We grabbed some local coffee and quickly found our seats.

I have never seen young Afghan men, women and children so happy since arriving in Australia. It made us miss our loved ones back home. Eventually the rain burst in and the covers were brought over to protect the pitch. We turned that into an opportunity to explore the MCG as it wasn’t fully booked and there were no restrictions to move around. What a wonderful place this is, I thought to myself.

The rain paused. The boys in blue came out on to the field. Afghanistan was supposed to play against the favourite, New Zealand. The greats, Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi, were warming up alongside emerging talents like Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran and Fazalhaq Farooqi. But then the rain came again and never stopped. The match was eventually abandoned.

Caught between a mix of joy and sadness, we decided to count our blessings. We headed back home, leaving the Afghan cricketers to battle with the thundering skies.

Shadi Khan Saif is an Afghan journalist based in Melbourne

Stability in Afghanistan: Prioritize human rights and women’s rights

November 9, 2022 Analytical articles

Opinion by Fawzia Koofi

Opinion contributor

The Hill

9 Nov 2022

I was recently jolted awake at 3 a.m. by a call. As I answered the phone, at first all I could hear was girls screaming in terror and sharp banging on a metal door. Seconds that felt like hours passed before I heard the trembling voice of a teenage girl on the line. “Help us Ms. Koofi, please help us! We are locked inside our dorms by the Taliban, they are going to kill us,” she told me.

Stability in Afghanistan: Prioritize human rights and women’s rights© Provided by The Hill

The caller was among 10 or so teenage girls from Afghanistan’s northern city of Mazar-i Sharif whom the Taliban held in their dorms to prevent them from protesting. The protests of these girls represented an existential threat to the Taliban.

From thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., I tried to comfort the girls by promising them that I would not let their suffering, which is the reality for countless women and girls across Afghanistan, go unheard. With a heavy heart, I hung up the phone. I tweeted about these girls and their terrifying experience. I then reached out to my contacts inside Afghanistan and nearby countries, seeking help to try and save these brave yet petrified girls.

The Taliban finally agreed to release the girls from captivity after videos of their treatment circulated on social media. I was relieved to see them released, yet the horror that these teenage girls went through that day provides only a small glimpse into the tragic saga of the fearless girls and women of Afghanistan who are languishing under Taliban’s gender apartheid regime.

Since returning to power last August, Taliban leaders have issued more than 30 edicts banning, banishing, sanctioning, and restricting girls and women in Afghanistan from life, liberty and the pursuit of their hopes and dreams. Although the Taliban’s ban prohibiting teenage girls from going to school seems to occasionally make the international news these days, the tragic and painful reality of Afghan women’s lives under Taliban is far more horrific. The Taliban have created an ecosystem of violence aimed at strengthening their gender apartheid regime to eliminate women and girls from all realms of public life. The ban on girls’ education is only one element of this.

I know this from personal experience. In 1996, I had just enrolled in medical school with high hopes of becoming a doctor. That same year the Taliban took over Kabul, banning me and millions of other girls across Afghanistan from education, employment and personal freedom. The Taliban’s first regime lasted five years before it was ousted following the Sept. 11 attacks, but it took me more than 20 years to readjust and recover.

After Taliban’s ouster in 2001, I enrolled in law school so I could contribute to creating a legal basis where women would never have to endure the unspeakable pain and suffering inflicted onto my generation. We came together as women and called for 25 percent of the seats in the parliament to be reserved for women, which was included in the new democratic constitution. We went door-to-door in remote villages to inform women and girls of their rights. We fought for inclusion of women in the media and for free press so we could educate the next generation.

Yet even in those early days of hope in 2000s, it was not easy! Although the Taliban had been ousted from power, the shadow of their dark ideology was still lingering. For example, when I was elected to the parliament, women MPs were not given the same amount of time to speak. And if we fought back, our mics would be cut off. We were regularly subjected to verbal abuse. But we remained steadfast and marched onwards.

Today, Afghanistan has changed drastically since 2001. Despite the Taliban’s ongoing brutal crackdown on girls and women, protests led by women for basic human rights continue in the country, the best evidence that the seeds of liberty planted and nurtured over the past 20 years have taken root, we have created our own Identity, in a country the base of politics is ethnicity or religious group, we the women of Afghanistan created women ethnic group with the aim to look beyond the initials causes of divisions among us!

While international attention has largely moved on since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, there is an urgent need for the US and international community to adopt engagement policies with the Taliban that go beyond security concerns and focus on human rights instead. If the Taliban are allowed to continue grossly violating Afghan women’s rights, Afghanistan will always remain dangerously unstable, and millions of Afghans will continue to flee the country to secure a better future for their female family members. And violence will never cease. After a brief respite last year, violence is once again rising. According to a recent report, nearly 3000 people have been killed and injured since the Taliban took over Afghanistan. If we consider undocumented killings carried out by the Taliban; estimates are substantially higher.

The situation in Afghanistan seems like a quagmire but righting the ship should begin with prioritizing human rights and intra-Afghan dialogue which pave the way for a political settlement between Taliban, a marginal reality of Afghanistan empowered by force and violence, and the larger reality which reflects the diverse society of my country. A similar space like Doha process, which provided Taliban with an address to engage in talks in 2013, should be made available for all anti-Taliban political opposition, including Afghan women and civil society, to lead the dialogue with the Taliban to reach a political settlement that provides a meaningful path to economic and political stability and protects and builds on the gains of the past 20 years.

Sadly, from my meetings with US officials and UN member states, it is clear that many in the international community see Afghanistan as a complete failure. However, the continued struggle and bravery of women in Afghanistan tirelessly fighting for their rights contradict this misperception.

It’s important to remember that lack of government inclusivity, gross violations of human rights, and unprecedented repression of women under the Taliban’s first regime in the 1990s had turned Afghanistan into the world’s top destination and safe haven for regional and international terror groups. This eventually culminated into the tragic events of 9/11.

The international community cannot afford to let Afghanistan return to pre 9/11 situation again. We cannot allow the seeds of freedom and women’s rights that were so carefully cultivated over the last 20 years to be uprooted by the Taliban. And we cannot stand idly by waiting for another 3:00am phone call.

Fawzia Koofi served as an Afghan parliamentary lawmaker and is an accomplished author and internationally known outspoken advocate for the rights of women and children, democracy and moderate Islam. Koofi was also one of the few women on the Negotiation Team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Doha.

In Afghanistan, Was a Loss Better than Peace?

November 9, 2022 Analytical articles

BY: Kate Bateman

United States Institute of Peace

Thursday, November 3, 2022

The American war in Afghanistan incurred staggering costs — for the United States, Afghans and others — over two decades. The U.S. government spent $2.3 trillion, and the war led to the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel, 3,917 U.S. contractors and 1,144 allied troops. For Afghans, the statistics are nearly unimaginable: 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians (although that is likely a significant underestimation) and some 53,000 opposition fighters killed. Almost 67,000 other people were killed in Pakistan in relation to the Afghan war.

The full extent of the indirect costs is greater still, considering injuries and illnesses, displacement, war widows and orphans, malnutrition, destruction of infrastructure and environmental degradation due to the war. Given these immense costs and the Taliban’s total victory, it is worth examining closely whether it was possible to achieve a compromise with the Taliban that would have preserved U.S. and Afghan government political objectives.

In a discussion at USIP, U.S. government officials and academic experts noted that for a long time the U.S. did not seek political negotiations because U.S. officials thought victory was possible and the political risks of talking to the Taliban too high. By the time that thinking changed, impatience and weak U.S. leverage made it impossible for Washington to secure any interests beyond the withdrawal of troops. Interagency silos, biases toward a need for vengeance and a focus on total victory fed misjudgments that ultimately resulted in a lack of meaningful attention to pursuing a political settlement.

Prioritizing Short-term Counterterrorism Above a Political Settlement

Over the course of four U.S. administrations, counterterrorism remained the United States’ primary goal in Afghanistan. “The peace process was never our priority,” said Tamanna Salikuddin, the director of South Asia programs at the USIP, during the discussion.

Dipali Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and a senior expert at USIP, noted that the primacy of counterterrorism put “the Afghan government in an impossible position. It demanded of them to engage as if they were a sovereign state when, in fact, they were a territory that was being used by the U.S. in service of this war. And the Taliban understood that.”

The reasons for U.S. inattention to a comprehensive political settlement shifted over the 20-year intervention. In the immediate wake of the attacks on 9/11 and the swift ousting of the Taliban government, “the focus was on building a new government in Kabul” and its legitimacy, Salikuddin said. “Even when senior Taliban leaders offered to surrender in exchange for amnesty, there was no space for consideration of it because ‘we were winning’ and ‘we would beat the terrorists.’ No one expected the Taliban would come back as a major threat.”

Mukhopadhyay observed that “logics of vengeance, triumphalism and political expediency” drove U.S. strategic decision-making in the early years of the war, and in large part persisted through 2021. Salikuddin similarly recalled that the failure to prevent 9/11 energized U.S. national security and intelligence institutions, and U.S. activities mirrored the need for vengeance. This contributed to a political climate in which talking to the Taliban “was just not acceptable,” and even in the Obama administration when U.S. officials pursued secret channels for talks, “it was taboo,” said Salikuddin. “We had sold the American public this idea that the Taliban were the worst terrorists … and there was no way we could negotiate with them. How would we then politically acknowledge that we were going to talk with them?”

U.S. government perceptions of the battlefield also continued to shape thinking about negotiating with the Taliban, even when those perceptions were flawed. Chris Kolenda, a retired U.S. Army colonel and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, pointed to critical factors that the United States misjudged or failed to appreciate: the Taliban’s external sanctuary in Pakistan, a degree of indigenous support for the Taliban and the Afghan Republic government’s inability to win the battle of legitimacy in insurgent-controlled or contested areas.

These factors were stacked against U.S. goals to degrade or defeat the insurgency and build a national government with an army and police forces capable of standing up to the Taliban. As Kolenda underscored, historically, no counterinsurgency effort has been successful when those factors were pointing in the wrong direction. The U.S. exit strategy, however, was premised on the vain hope that it could overcome those factors.

At crucial junctures, like the Obama administration’s troop surge, the U.S. government failed to invest in alternative, political paths to end the war. According to Salikuddin, who was a senior advisor to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2014-2017, the policy debates were about counterterrorism versus counterinsurgency, how to get Pakistan to cooperate and how to strengthen the Afghan government and security forces.

On the other hand, very few U.S. officials advocated for a comprehensive political process as the main line of effort. Indeed, for many years, some held on to a glimmer of hope that the United States would win the war. The low numbers of U.S. casualties meant that keeping troops in Afghanistan became an acceptable status quo.

The irony is that the idea of a political process to end the war gained traction and acceptance within U.S. policymaking circles at the same time that U.S. leverage was on the decline, as the American troop presence dwindled. By the Trump administration, the American public was increasingly war-weary and there was desperation to end America’s longest war. This in turn “made the peace process an expedience, a way to get out, not really a way to get a settlement,” said Salikuddin.

Kolenda stressed the consequences of U.S. impatience: “As soon as the U.S. began unilateral troop withdrawals, it became clear that the U.S. just wanted to get out. Then the Taliban could play for time and play hardball.” Nor were the incentives right for the Afghan Republic to negotiate an end to the conflict, Kolenda observed; the imperative for Republic leaders was to do everything they could to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

U.S. Bureaucracy Not Set Up to Pursue a Political Settlement

Salikuddin, Kolenda, and Mukhopadhyay concurred that there are significant structural obstacles within the U.S. government that militated against efforts to align political and military strategies, or even to conceive of ending a conflict through a negotiated settlement.

“The U.S. has no organized way of thinking about war termination beyond decisive, zero-sum victory,” Kolenda argued. Part of the problem is resource imbalances that privilege military tools of national power. U.S. agencies often operated in silos and without a strategic vision of a realistic end state. “We have nobody functionally in charge of our wars. There is nobody on the ground in Kabul in charge of all U.S. efforts on the ground. [Those efforts] are all silos reporting to Washington, and all doing their own things,” Kolenda said.

From the intelligence community to the Defense Department to the State Department to the U.S. Agency for International Development, each bureaucracy was focused on its own goals without an overarching strategy driving toward a common goal. These agencies may have been achieving milestones, Kolenda said, and therefore believed they were being successful. Meanwhile, the overall mission was in drift. “Instead of being a fist that moves as one, we’re like five fingers that we keep getting jammed.”

Why Did Lessons Go Unlearned or Ignored?

From the outset of the war, a vast amount of relevant knowledge could have informed U.S. policy, Mukhopadhyay said. For instance, empirical evidence existed on the role that spoilers could play in derailing peace, the importance of third-party peacekeeping forces, the risks of holding elections too early, the perverse effects of aid and the salience of sanctuary in the success of insurgencies. “Yet at every step of the way” she said, “the lessons within those empirical findings seem to have been ignored.” Even much of the evidence and research produced throughout the war seemed largely irrelevant to policy on the ground.

The use of knowledge and research, Mukhopadhyay said, emerged later as an attempt to do two things: “[T]o clean up messes that had already been made by decisions that were locked in early on, and to affirm or confirm a set of biases that were driving the spending of money, the movement of troops and the unrolling of one doctrine versus another.”

New research then fed into a “wartime information economy” that often “enabled projects, programs and ideas that maybe were working in a micro sense but weren’t actually shifting political facts on the ground in a meaningful way,” Mukhopadhyay said. Again, like the siloed “fingers” of agencies that Kolenda described, particular forms of research and evidence were used to justify certain activities, with the sum of the parts being less than the whole.

Much of this research was conducted by outsider organizations and individuals, who lacked a deeply rooted understanding of the country.

Mukhopadhyay pointed to numerous structural dynamics in how policy was made and implemented, which also “do not lend themselves to deeper reflection” and reassessment. These include the ways in which personnel were assigned, short tours, force protection and the insulated ways that embassies and organizations operated.

Mukhopadhyay described a kind of clash of civilizations between the worlds of the academy and of policymakers. The way academic work is published, its long timelines, decisions on hiring and tenure, and what kind of research gets funded do not correspond to the way policy is made or incentivize relevance to policy or timeliness. Further, the parameters of policy decisions tend to be complex and opaque to outsiders, curtailing their ability to contribute to those decisions.

Nevertheless, there were exceptions in Afghanistan: research on drone warfare, civilian casualties and the role of contractors “shed light on problems, shifted the needle in public discourse, and created debate within military and civilian institutions that seemed productive and important,” Mukhopadhyay said.

In the end, though, it wasn’t enough to move the needle in Afghanistan. The hope now is that these lessons can inform policy in future conflicts, preventing a repeat of the immense costs in blood and treasure seen during the Afghanistan war.

Biden, Democrats’ downward spiral began with Afghanistan

November 9, 2022 Analytical articles

OPINION

By Arthur Herman | Fox News

Published November 8, 2022

Historians will pinpoint Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan as the moment when Americans began to lose trust in their president

When historians look back at the pivot point for the Biden presidency—and what originally set up the coming expected Democrat meltdown in Tuesday’s midterms—they will point to Afghanistan, and the series of disastrous decisions the president made in July and August 2021. They not only led to the worst foreign policy debacle for the Unite States since the fall of Saigon in 1975. They also led the public to wonder whether the president they had just elected, was truly fit for office. It’s a question that’s only gathered negative momentum since. placeholder

Although Biden and the media would try to blame the chaos that resulted from his mishandling of Afghanistan on President Donald Trump, the truth was Biden had inherited a stable if uncertain situation in Afghanistan. While Trump had made it clear he was pulling American troops out of Afghanistan and winding up America’s longest war, he had also not set a timetable for departure. And no one—least of all the Taliban—doubted whether Trump would send U.S. troops back in-country if needed. The man who had stamped out ISIS was not a person to mess with.

When Biden took charge, however, he threw out any pretense of a carefully staged or thoughtful withdrawal.

First came the decision on July 2 to shutter Bagram Air Force base, the central hub of the U.S. presence and security. Six days later Biden shocked everyone, including the Afghan government, by announcing he was speeding up the U.S. withdrawal deadline to August 31—two weeks earlier than originally planned. By July 21 the Taliban controlled half of Afghanistan, despite Biden’s assurances to Americans that the collapse of the country was “not inevitable.” Three weeks later the Taliban took the capital Kabul, where the remaining American presence had shrunk to the U.S. embassy perimeter.

What happened next was a human tragedy and a series of disastrous optics. While Biden assured the public there would be no images of helicopters leaving the U.S. embassy roof as happened during the abandonment of Saigon in 1975, what they did get were images of desperate Afghans chasing after a U.S. C-17 on the Kabul airport runway–even clinging to the plane’s wheel wells as it took off, then falling to their deaths. Meanwhile, the embassy grounds were swamped by thousands of Afghans fleeing Taliban retribution.

Biden’s other broken promise was that no Americans would be left behind. In fact, hundreds of Americans were stuck in-country along with thousands of Afghans who had loyally served with us against the Taliban. It required private agencies like Project Dynamo to do what the Biden team was unwilling or unable to do, namely making sure Americans who wanted to get were able to get out.

Then on August 16 came the suicide bomber attack that killed 13 U.S. service members, followed by a botched attempt to take out another would-be bomber, which resulted in the death of an Afghan aid worker and seven children.

At the same time, Biden’s statement in an interview that none of his generals had disagreed with the decision to flee Afghanistan, turned out to be another falsehood.

But perhaps the final blow to Biden’s reputation came with the air strike on Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri as he was visiting Kabul. If the president and his team hoped this would make Biden look bad and bold—as when Donald Trump had taken out IRGC head Suleimani–the public realized this really meant Al Qaeda was back in business in Afghanistan.

In effect, we had come full circle, back where we were when Operation Enduring Freedom was first launched more than 20 years earlier. The Taliban decided to underline our humiliation with a victory parade with some of the $7 billion of captured US equipment, from Humvees to attack helicopters. That video became the emblem of the worst U.S. foreign policy disaster in more than 40 years—and the image of Biden as not only incompetent but dishonest.

That impression was reflected in the polls. When Biden first announced plans for a withdrawal from Afghanistan in April, his approval rating stood at 52.5 percent. By the end of August, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed his approval had slumped to 43 percent. It’s never recovered since.

If the Tuesday midterms turn out to be a disaster for Democrats, they can blame their policies on crime, on the border, on COVID lockdowns, and their promotion of CRT and drag queens in kindergartens.

But in the end it’s their president’s decisions in Afghanistan that set them off on their downward spiral. It was during July and August 2021 that–to paraphrase Winston Churchill–those terrible words were first pronounced against them: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Starting with their chief executive.

No Justice in Afghanistan for Slain Journalist 2 Years On

November 8, 2022 Analytical articles

Patricia Gossman

Associate Asia Director

Human Rights Watch

November 7, 2022

Yama Siawash, Other Attack Victims, Their Families Deserve Answers, Accountability

Two years ago today, former Tolo News TV presenter Yama Siawash was killed in a car bombing on November 7, 2020, moments after he climbed into a government-owned vehicle in Kabul. Despite the high-profile nature of the attack, the former Afghan government failed to carry out a thorough investigation or prosecute anyone for the crime.

Siawash was known among Afghans for engaging in heated debates with government officials on live television. He uncovered corruption and exposed the shortcomings of then-President Ashraf Ghani’s government, journalism that earned him threats from senior Afghan officials.

In April 2021, Afghan authorities claimed to have arrested 11 suspects who had allegedly confessed to the bombing and other crimes. Afghan authorities have a history of obtaining coerced confessions through use of torture. None of the 11 were prosecuted. A parliamentary inquiry concluded that the authorities also failed to carry out a forensic investigation and preserve critical evidence from the scene of the attack, including the remains of the car.

Siawash’s killing took place during a period of skyrocketing attacks on Afghan journalists. According to a United Nations report, 33 Afghan media professionals were killed between 2018 and 2021. The Taliban and groups linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) admitted responsibility for many of these, but the perpetrators of other attacks, including the one that killed Siawash, remain unknown. The UN found that impunity for these attacks had been “total.” With the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, access to justice has further narrowed as the group has dismantled the justice system and continues to carry out serious abuses against journalists.

The second anniversary of Siawash’s killing follows the International Criminal Court’s announcement that it can resume its investigation in Afghanistan. This investigation needs to address serious crimes by all parties to the conflict, including those for which former Afghan government officials may be responsible. The Siawash family is still seeking justice. His killing, and all attacks on journalists, activists, and other civilians should be at the forefront of any investigation.

Is There a Way Out of Afghanistan’s Economic Nightmare?

November 8, 2022 Analytical articles

by Masom Jan Masomy

National Interest

November 6, 2022

Despite the supply and delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, the people continue to experience acute food insecurity and economic tensions.

In its recent report, the World Bank has estimated that Afghanistan’s economy ‘faces critical challenges’ in which the country’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to contract further, with an accumulated contraction rate of around 30-35 percent between 2021-2022, in addition to having no improvements in per capita income. Moreover, since the re-establishment of the Taliban administration in 2021, Afghanistan has received around $1.8 billion in humanitarian aid from the international community. The United States has provided $1.1 billion in funds to assist the Afghan people during these tumultuous times. However, through relevant agencies of the United Nations, donor countries continue to provide aid to Afghanistan. Yet, despite this assistance, the Afghan communities continue to live in dire conditions accompanied by acute food insecurity, rising food prices, drought, and a lack of jobs.

Since the Taliban forcibly retook power in Kabul, the flow of humanitarian aid, provided primarily by the United States and European countries, has not effectively addressed the deepening economic dilemma of Afghanistan. According to UN calculations, twenty-five million people need urgent assistance, showing an increase compared to 18 million people from last year’s economic meltdown in Afghanistan. Public hospitals are also running out of medicine, and people, particularly children, have been infected by epidemic diseases such as cholera, measles, and malaria throughout the Taliban rule. Meanwhile, private investment has been fleeing the country. Because of economic hardships, no external financial support subsidizing private enterprises, and the reinvestment reluctance of investors and businessmen, the Public Private Partnership (PPP) status is at a zero level. These all have exacerbated the public mindset greatly.

The torn case of the Afghan economy substantially originating from the Covid-19 pandemic, political impasses, massive corruption by elites, and lingering insecurities in Afghanistan in 2020 continued to undermine the country’s economic growth. With the increased insecurity and the scheduled withdrawal of NATO and U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021, the country’s economy started to decline further, encompassing a wide gamut of critical areas and industries, such as education, health, investment, and trade, impacting daily living and the productivity of markets. Foreign organizations also steadily reduced their activities in Afghanistan and closed their missions in different working areas before the complete withdrawal of Western forces.

U.S. sanctions and the central bank’s $9.3 billion in frozen assets contributed to the economy’s sharp decline, resulting in the restriction of the Afghans’ interactions and engagements with the rest of the world. Sanctions and a weakened economy have intensely affected many people in Afghanistan. Some have reportedly resorted to selling their organs and children to buy food, and some even committed suicide. Furthermore, the massive flow of Afghan refugees to neighboring and western countries reflects the increasingly troubled economy, persecution, insecurity, and, more importantly, the ambiguous future of the country under the rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA).

Although the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) announced its annual budget for the first time in May, this year essentially rests on collecting national revenues and a significant dependency on coal exports to Pakistan for funding. However, more is needed to address the current economic catastrophe and the challenges ahead. Rising global prices coupled with Afghanistan’s crumbling economy after Russia’s war in Ukraine exacerbated Afghans’ social and economic conditions due to increasing inflation. The facts on the ground illustrate that many families will continue to suffer and endure poverty and food shortages if they do not receive considerable attention. In the latest Global Hunger Index 2022, Afghanistan ranks 109 out of 121 countries and has fallen six spots signaling a precarious future.

Fundamental Challenges to Afghanistan’s Economy Recovery

The Taliban has still not achieved international recognition because it has not met the pledges made to the international community concerning human rights, women’s rights, and inclusive governance in Afghanistan. It has also created domestic dissatisfaction with the Taliban and significant trauma to national legitimacy. Therefore, non-recognition has inevitably resulted in Afghanistan being internationally isolated along with critical trade curbs, banking systems fallouts, and constrained people-to-people contacts, all a considerable blow to the already weakening economy of Afghanistan.

Notwithstanding the improved security after the Taliban takeover, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an opposing group to the Taliban, has become a dominant and rising threat to Afghanistan’s security and stability, killing 700 and wounding 1,406 Afghans by carrying out bombs and suicide blasts coinciding with the Taliban’s rule. Such insecurity and threats have triggered apprehensiveness throughout all classes of Afghan society, particularly the wealthy businessmen, traders, and investors who show no interest in investing in Afghanistan’s private or public sectors. More importantly, Afghanistan has become ignored after the asymmetric media attention given to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the burgeoning ‘Great Powers Competition’ coming along with it.

Alternatives for Economy Recovery

Despite the supply and delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, the people continue to experience acute food insecurity and economic tensions. It implies that foreign assistance for Afghanistan’s people has been temporarily advantageous but not effective enough to resuscitate the devastating socio-economic conditions of the country. Hence, the international community should consider a unified, consistent, and balanced mechanism to address and encompass Afghanistan’s multi-dimensional challenges. Such potential models include developing community-based small and large projects in sectors such as health and education and subsidizing private enterprises through UN-affiliated agencies. Permitting foreign investment would be an effective and helpful approach that would create job opportunities for laborers instead of humanitarian assistance. Such microeconomic and grassroots techniques will actively help poor people to have income for their families.

In this regard, rather than China and Russia providing diminutive humanitarian assistance, the United States and European countries can play a more significant role in financing Afghans. This strategy will allow for a further loosening of the Taliban’s draconian laws and motivate them to uphold principles towards engagements. Accordingly, proactive engagements through efficient diplomatic channels and other interactions with the Taliban are critical to compelling the Taliban to abide by the pledges made to the international community for the prosperity and development of Afghans. Otherwise, there is a possibility of a further downward spiral reaching more instability, emerging threats, the spread of extremism under religious beliefs and ideology, and opium poppy cultivation that can spill over throughout the world.

Masom Jan Masomy is an assistant professor at the Regional Studies Centre, Afghanistan Academy of Sciences in Kabul, Afghanistan. He writes about Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia.

If the U.S. supports the idea of an inclusive government in Afghanistan, then it needs to have an inclusive engagement with all Afghan factions

November 4, 2022 Analytical articles

Afghanistan: The Next Chapter

Cornerstone Forum Series

RFI/Religious Freedom Institute

November, 2022

More than one year after the Taliban’s nearly unimpeded takeover of Afghanistan, religious freedom and associated rights in the country are spiraling towards an all-time low. The modest gains in these freedoms made over the past two decades risk complete erasure. The withdrawal of NATO forces and subsequent rapid fall of the previous government in 2021 sparked an emergency evacuation of the international community and of Afghans who supported their work. With energies focused on the closure of diplomatic offices and the withdrawal, there has been limited contact with actors remaining in Afghanistan.

This series invites scholars, diplomats, and regional and policy experts to share their insights into the country and provide recommendations to ensure protections for religious and ethnic minorities and other vulnerable communities, including women and children, across the country.

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After capturing Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban essentially had two options in dealing with their rivals and the local population: suppress them into silence or negotiate a settlement. The Taliban regime has chosen the former strategy. They banished Afghanistan’s constitution, appointed an all-male, all-Taliban acting cabinet, replaced the national flag with their party banner, and excluded women from public participation.

The rebel group signed a deal with the U.S. in 2020 which was a pivotal moment in running their violent campaign home. And, after forcefully seizing power, they harbored Al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahari in the capital of Afghanistan against the provisions of this deal. America subsequently killed al-Zawahiri by a drone strike.

Washington may wish to announce at home that “the war” in Afghanistan has come to an end, but reality dictates that we acknowledge it is not over yet.

Global Response

For twenty years, the United States and its global allies backed the former government of Afghanistan to fight terrorism with a narrow focus on Al-Qaeda, which had orchestrated the September 11 attacks in America. Then Washington assessed that Al-Qaeda was degraded enough to not have the capacity to target America, and that threats of terrorism were no longer confined only to the geography of Afghanistan.

Thus, the U.S. not only shifted its sights to withdrawal but also it negotiated with the Taliban—which had in the first place provided the breeding ground for Al-Qaeda—for safe passage on their way out. The U.S.-Taliban deal, which was endorsed by the United Nations, paved the way for the latter to overrun Afghanistan last year.

Ever since, the world, including the U.S., appears to remain in a season of policy drought regarding the country. The American administration has been grappling with one major question: engage the Taliban or isolate them?

Washington officials have run toward both poles at different times. But largely, the administration in America has hidden behind a pragmatic engagement as a middle ground to define its policy toward the Taliban.

This approach may have seen some short-term gains, but only in two areas: evacuating certain at-risk people and providing some humanitarian relief to the local population.

While it’s true that the US has imposed sanctions on the Taliban, which have been upsetting to the regime, it has also engaged the Taliban and lifted travel bans at times, upsetting anti-Taliban forces. Rather than doing whatever is most expeditious for the U.S.’s own interests in a given moment, the U.S. should maximize their efforts toward policies that understand their own well-being is bound up in the well-being of Afghanistan.

But engaging the Taliban alone is not the way to mutual well-being.

This tentative approach falls short of the U.S.’s policy, which also aims to counter terrorism and promote human rights in Afghanistan. The insufficiency of this approach is starkly depicted in recent and ongoing events inside the country. Neighboring Uzbekistan was hit by rockets fired from Afghanistan’s soil repeatedly over the last year. Al-Qaeda’s leader al-Zawahiri was found sheltered by the Taliban in Kabul when he was eliminated in July. The Taliban have continued to impose restrictions on women including their ban on education of teenage girls.

Conditions for Armed Conflict

A study of rebel regimes at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies shows that weak institutions, arms availability, and economic and political grievances—which are all existent in Afghanistan—create the conditions for new cycles of armed opposition. Suppression provides the motivation for the public to revolt.

U.S. officials have said they do not back another armed conflict in Afghanistan. However, they have also stated that it is not a matter of if but when the armed conflict reemerges. Their assertions have been supportive of forming an inclusive government to prevent the recurrence of full-scale violence. Pursuing these policies will require a more active effort than mere statements. Beyond the current tenuous policy, Washington should contribute to fostering the conditions for a political process that leads to the formation of a government that is shaped by all Afghans, not just the Taliban. As a start, the U.S. should adjust the degrees of its engagement with local factions in such a way that does not favor the Taliban over others.

When achieved, a peaceful political settlement will counter terrorism, advance human rights, stem further displacement of Afghans, and stabilize the humanitarian crisis.

Inclusive Engagement

Neither total isolation of the Taliban nor pragmatic engagement is conducive to these ends. The United States should instead proactively engage with all Afghan stakeholders including political factions, civil society activists, women, youth, and anti-Taliban armed groups.

Turning a blind eye to the existing and emerging opposition groups will not make them disappear. America should instead communicate with them, resisting the dichotomy of either ignoring or supplying these factions, to balance the scales of political engagement that currently weigh in favor of the Taliban. Congress needs to step in should the American administration shy away from such a stance.

It is true that the Taliban regime has actual power now: control over state institutions, government revenue, and arms. Opposition—be it political, civil society, or armed—may be in their initial stages of formation, but they carry a powerful potential: the ability to mobilize and threaten the regime.

America’s engagement with all Afghan factions, among other methods, can serve as a tool to exert pressure on the Taliban to consider talks with other local factions. It also broadcasts a confident message to the people of Afghanistan that America stands with them in their fight for a free and peaceful country, that America has not abandoned them.

This is the time to create history by actively promoting a settlement or allow the momentum toward conflict to determine the fate of Afghanistan and the world by extension—again.

Aref Dostyar is a Senior Advisor for the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development (AfPAD) at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Previously he worked as Afghanistan’s Consul General in Los Angeles, USA. Prior to that, Dostyar served at Afghanistan’s Office of the National Security Council in the positions of Director General for International Relations and Director of Peace and Reconciliation Affairs.

Dostyar’s writing and interviews can be found in the New York Times, the BBC, the Foreign Policy Magazine, the Middle East Institute, and several other publications.

Born and brought up in Afghanistan, Dostyar earned a master’s degree in International Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame through a Fulbright Scholarship.

SIGAR Quarterly Report to Congress

November 2, 2022 Analytical articles

SIGAR Quarterly Report to Congress

October 30, 2022

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2022-10-30qr.pdf

Let’s Not Kid Ourselves: Afghanistan’s Taliban Regime Will Not Become More Inclusive

October 28, 2022 Analytical articles

By William Byrd

Lawfare Blog

Monday, October 24, 2022, 8:31 AM

Ever since the August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there has been widespread, almost universal, rhetoric in international diplomatic circles—ranging from the United Nations to the European Union and the United States to Russia—that the Taliban need to form a more inclusive government, with varying definitions and views on what that means in concrete terms.

The U.S. had negotiated the Doha Agreement with the Taliban in 2020 and tried unsuccessfully to get the Taliban and the previous Islamic Republic government led by former President Ashraf Ghani to reach a negotiated end to the conflict and to embark on a peace process. When this completely failed with the final withdrawal of U.S. and other international troops followed by the unexpectedly quick Taliban victory last year, it was only natural to reach for inclusivity arguments; with peace negotiations no longer possible, the Taliban nevertheless should broaden the political base of their new regime by bringing in non-Taliban elements and influences. Unfortunately, the inclusivity argument is flawed and is undermined by patterns of historical experience.

What Is Wrong With the Conventional Wisdom

A retrospective perspective is important for absorbing lessons from the failure to negotiate a peace settlement in Afghanistan, but the salient question for Afghanistan in the immediate future is: Are there realistic prospects for the new regime to become more inclusive in response to international pressure and rhetoric? And would this be in the Taliban’s own self-interest?

Authoritarian regimes have their own dynamics and incentives, and efforts to influence them from outside must be informed by what makes sense in terms of their own overriding priority of regime as well as individual leadership survival and longevity. Asking an authoritarian regime to take actions that risk undermining—let alone toppling—it is, beyond a certain point, a fool’s errand.

Contrary to how democracies work, authoritarian regimes and their leaders are subject to different success factors. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith explore this issue in their book, “The Dictator’s Handbook ,” building on associated research. Whether authoritarian leaders and regimes can stay in power, the authors assert, depends on:

Keeping the ruling coalition small and manageable; not expanding the circle of power much beyond the minimum necessary to maintain control over the country.
For the authoritarian ruler (or ruling junta), reshuffling the coalition, especially in the immediate aftermath of coming into power, to keep potential rivals in check.
Controlling the country’s revenues, and deploying them to reward key supporters and constituencies, pay security forces, and more generally strengthen the regime.
In aid-dependent countries, this includes skewing aid in favor of the regime in various ways ranging from outright corruption to “taxing” aid in different ways and directing it to favored beneficiaries.
Cracking down on any opposition and preventing it from organizing, sometimes through extreme measures such as executions, massacres, starvation, forced relocations, and the like.

Beyond these general principles, what does historical experience tell us about how victorious insurgencies govern after they come into power? This has been an under-researched area, partly because there have been relatively few insurgent victories compared to other outcomes of civil wars, but several recent papers shed some light on this question.

Terrence Lyons argues that victorious insurgencies naturally gravitate toward becoming authoritarian regimes, reflecting their military background and leadership built up during their successful campaign as well as their wartime governance of the territory they took control over during the fighting. Moreover, Lyons argues, victory itself provides the insurgent group with some degree of legitimacy for their authoritarian tilt, and transitional processes postconflict can be used as instruments for consolidating power. This is, however, a debated area, with Monica Toft asserting that victorious insurgencies have an opening to become more democratic, whereas when governments win, they tend to become more authoritarian. Among non-elite populations, a study of the Balkans suggests that people exposed to war-related violence tend to embrace more authoritarian values.

Kai Thaler divides victorious insurgent groups into two broad categories: (a) programmatic, aiming to achieve long-term goals including transforming socioeconomic and political relations and providing public goods and services, and (b) opportunistic, viewing the state as a prize to win and motivated purely by power and material gain. Thaler argues that victorious programmatic insurgencies will focus on expanding the footprint of the state and its influence over social and economic issues, providing more public goods and services. Opportunistic victors, by contrast, will engage in minimal state building, retain or ignore existing state institutions, provide limited public goods and services, and focus instead on security forces and economic rent extraction, allocating resources for individual and group benefit. The stronger states that some victorious insurgencies build often become more repressive and authoritarian. Thaler notes that “[r]ebel victory can potentially provide peace and public benefits in the short term, but it may come at the cost of longer-term authoritarianism and repression.”

The Taliban, a religious ideology-driven anti-foreign movement, does not fit squarely into either of these two categories. Observed Taliban behavior demonstrates significant elements of opportunism: for example, taking over existing state structures rather than building new ones, not prioritizing provision of public goods and services, focusing on security and rent extraction, using government appointments to balance and reward important members of the group, and the like. But they do have a general program—albeit vague—of ridding the society of what they perceive to be un- and less-Islamic features and foreign influences. And personal greed appears to be less of a motivating factor among the Taliban than has been the case in purely opportunistic power grabs by other insurgents and rebels.

Are the Taliban Performing Like a Typical Authoritarian Regime?

How should the Taliban be assessed in light of these patterns of international experience? Overall, much of what the Taliban have done over the past year (typically the first six months to one year is the most dangerous period for the survival of a new authoritarian regime or leader) is not only understandable but largely sensible from the perspective of their own success factors and their leadership’s self-interest.

First, while taking over the formal state levers of power and existing government institutions from the fallen Ghani administration, the Taliban have not strayed from their authoritarian roots. The Taliban movement was formed in the authoritarian mold and developed as such during a quarter-century of civil war and insurgency. The movement is headed by a top religious figure (the Amir), with high-level decision-making by a sizable, but far from open, group of religious, military, and political leaders; there is no pretense of democracy.

Second, the Taliban have prioritized maintaining the broad outward unity of their movement despite emerging tensions between the Amir and his associates in Kandahar and formal government leaders in Kabul.

Third, the Taliban have brutally and effectively cracked down on opposition, especially any signs of armed resistance. International experience suggests that, however tragic for the country, this is an authoritarian regime’s typical response to dissent and leads to a higher probability of regime survival—at least for a while—compared to backing down or trying to accommodate opposition.

Fourth, the Taliban have resisted international and domestic pressures to broaden their government even symbolically, let alone become more inclusive in any meaningful sense. They face challenges in managing their own factions, which would be aggravated by broadening their governing coalition.

Fifth, the Taliban have been remarkably successful in collecting, consolidating, and centralizing customs revenue, while sharply curbing corruption in customs and getting rid of the bulk of the numerous road checkpoints that had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes under the previous government. Total revenue collected this year is likely to reach $1.5 billion, and possibly more; this is less than the peak collection under the previous government but impressive given the collapse of the Afghan economy, which has not led to a commensurate decline in revenue.

Sixth, the Taliban have stopped publishing any data on actual budget expenditures, nor have they published a full budget for the current fiscal year (March 2022-March 2023), just some headline numbers. Though sufficient data on revenues has been made available to assess performance, broadly confirmed by field research, no information is available on actual budget expenditure, which apparently is being treated as a “state secret” by the Taliban administration. While this is bad public finance practice and is harmful to good governance and accountability to the citizenry, budget secrecy allows the Taliban to deploy the resources they are mobilizing to benefit the regime with no external scrutiny.

Seventh, where they perceive it to be in their own interest, the Taliban strive to maintain capacity in several key government agencies, including the customs administration. (The automated customs software was quickly revived and is now employed more effectively than it was under the previous Afghan government.) It also appears that they have tried to maintain existing capacity in the intelligence agency, for obvious reasons.

Apparent Taliban Mistakes

Where do the Taliban seem to have gone wrong? Any conclusions must be tentative, since we don’t know much about the inner workings of Taliban decision-making and managing tensions within the movement behind the scenes. Nevertheless, certain actions seem at least superficially puzzling and contrary to their movement’s self-interest, such as:

The comprehensive opium ban announced by Amir Haibatullah, which, if implemented, will not only harm Afghanistan economically but also alienate some individuals and groups within and around the Taliban, particularly in the south and southwest of the country, who have been beneficiaries of the drug industry and could cause problems for the regime.
Beyond trade, transport, and taxation—where the Taliban have demonstrated competence and effectiveness—some of their actions suggest a lack of understanding of economic issues.
The back-and-forth over the closure of girls’ secondary schools in much of the country, even though women are allowed to apply to and attend university and private girls’ schools remain open, which undermines the public picture of Taliban unity and has damaged their international relations.
The blatant harboring of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul and the subsequent U.S. drone strike killing him, which embarrassed the Taliban domestically and internationally, undermining their claim that they are implementing counterterrorism commitments.
The inability to prevent domestic terrorist attacks by the Islamic State-Khorasan and occasional attacks from Afghan soil on neighboring countries, which undermines their narrative and selling point vis-a-vis the Afghan population and regionally that they are bringing security and stability to the country.

What explains these apparent departures from authoritarian good practice? There are several, not mutually exclusive, possibilities here: The Taliban are learning the ropes of running an authoritarian state, and perhaps they understandably are making some miscalculations; behind-the-scenes political economy dynamics, not fully apparent from the outside, may be influencing some of their actions; they may not focus on or care about certain issues; or the Taliban may be prisoners of their own ideology and rhetoric, which could outweigh considerations of narrower self-interest for the authoritarian regime and its leadership. (The opium ban, for example, went out of its way to be comprehensive and strongly stated, probably unnecessarily so.)

And the Taliban seem almost congenitally unable to make even minor gestures to the international community that would not compromise the regime’s power, authority, or core ideological principles, and would not make their regime more inclusive in any meaningful sense. An example is reaffirming the nominal autonomy of Afghanistan’s central bank (which is enshrined in current Afghan law), appointing non-Taliban technocrats to leadership positions there, and bringing in technical assistance where needed.

More generally, many authoritarian regimes that brutally repress their people maintain decent diplomatic and economic relations with the outside world—not least by putting forward distorted narratives and making announcements and commitments they don’t plan to adhere to but that superficially assuage international concerns. The Taliban have not succeeded in doing so.

What Can Foreigners Do—If Anything?

Informed by historical experience with other victorious insurgencies and authoritarian regimes, how should the U.S. and other countries approach and try to influence the Taliban? This is a major challenge, as little that has been tried over the past 14 months has worked in meaningfully influencing Taliban behavior and actions.

Unfortunately, what has not worked and will not work in the future is clearer than what might work. In particular, preaching international laws and norms, the need to form an inclusive government, and the like—even when incentivized by the possibility of recognition and implicit or explicit offers of aid—has not made much of a difference and is unlikely to change the Taliban in the future.

One set of actions that effectively influenced and changed regimes in Afghanistan’s own historical experience as well as in other countries—external support to armed groups—appears to be ruled out in the near-term future. Foreign powers—some of whom supported such groups in the past—are refraining from doing so now. They may be considering the likelihood that the resulting conflicts and, at the extreme, “proxy wars” risking a breakdown into general civil war would be more damaging to Afghanistan and to their interests than the present situation with the Taliban in power.

Leadership succession (through natural causes or otherwise) is the Achilles’ heel of many authoritarian regimes. Though it may sometimes present opportunities for change, it may also give rise to major risks such as widespread conflict during a succession crisis. External involvement in leadership changes and succession easily could prove short-lived, ineffective, or even counterproductive, as happened with U.S. and international interventions in several presidential election crises during the Islamic Republic regime. And—an example of direct, kinetic action to change leadership—the U.S. drone strike in 2016 that killed the preceding Taliban leader, Akhtar Mansoor, did not succeed militarily or politically and delayed incipient negotiations with the Taliban until a few years later when the military equation was even more favorable to them. Foreign governments, however, would do well to maintain sound knowledge, engagement, and flexibility with respect to the Taliban regime so as to be in a good position to respond to any succession developments and associated opportunities that may arise as well as to mitigate risks.

So, what might work in the short run to influence the Taliban? Given the experience over the past year, as well as in earlier peace negotiations and other interactions with the Taliban, expectations need to be modest.

A recent report from the Afghanistan Analysts Network admits that the Taliban’s collection of large amounts of revenue is unlikely to translate into some kind of “social contract” whereby much of the money is returned in the form of public services to the population, nor is it likely to give rise to some kind of tax revolt. The traders, transporters, and businessmen, however, who pay the bulk of taxes under Afghanistan’s narrowly based tax system (heavily reliant on customs duties and taxes paid at border crossings) have demonstrated the ability to exert some degree of influence over tax rates and other business issues that directly affect their profits, and thereby how much tax they can afford to pay. According to recent research, the Taliban seem aware of profitability considerations and have proved willing to renegotiate when, for example, private businesses argue strongly that high tax levies render their activities financially unviable.

Another segment of Afghan society that appears to be able to exert a degree of influence over the Taliban at the local level is traditional rural stakeholders, including tribal leaders, village elders, and the like. The strength of this channel of influence varies across different parts of the country and, perhaps, also the idiosyncrasies of local Taliban leaders and their relationships to the central regime.

Neither of these potential sources of influence should be overstated, and their impacts would tend to be around specific issues that are important to the stakeholders concerned and local problems. Moreover, foreigners attempting to exert leverage through these channels, however well intentioned, is especially risky since that could discredit the Afghan stakeholders and trigger a Taliban backlash—making the situation even worse.

The question remains whether intermediaries at least somewhat trusted by the Taliban could argue cogently in favor of actions in the Taliban’s own self-interest as an authoritarian regime and leadership. Again, such interventions cannot be seen to be orchestrated by international actors, as it would discredit the intermediaries. Nevertheless, there may be scope for some indirect advice to the Taliban, oriented toward the regime’s own self-interest.

One example might be to put forward technical arguments for the de-politicization of certain government functions that are not sensitive to the Taliban ideologically and would not threaten their power. The central bank may be a good example, and improvements there would be beneficial in helping to stabilize the economy.

Overall, the U.S. and other international partners are left with very limited levers to influence and change Taliban behavior—let alone to push them to become meaningfully more inclusive, which is not in their own self-interest. Recognizing this is the first step toward a more practical approach.

William Byrd is a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where he focuses on Afghanistan; the views expressed are his own. A development economist by background, he was previously with the World Bank and has worked on and lived in China, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Missteps and Missed Opportunities for Peace in Afghanistan

October 27, 2022 Analytical articles

The United States, successive Afghan governments and the Taliban missed several opportunities to achieve peace over the past couple of decades. Today, under the Taliban government, which is not recognized by a single country, Afghanistan is facing twin economic and humanitarian crises while the marginal gains made on women’s rights have all but evaporated.

A mural depicting Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, and Mullah Baradar shaking hands after the signing of a peace deal, in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 15, 2020. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

Masoom Stanekzai, a former chief peace negotiator for the Afghan government and director of the National Directorate of Security in Afghanistan, believes three historic mistakes were made in the decades-long peace process. First, he said, the exclusion of the Taliban from the Bonn Conference in 2001 that produced an agreement on a post-Taliban government was a “strategic mistake” that resulted in squandering a “unique opportunity” for peace. Second, Pakistan, through its support to the Taliban, played the role of spoiler in the peace process. And third, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 diverted attention away from Afghanistan at a critical moment.Steve J. Brooking, a former special advisor on peace and reconciliation at the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) who led U.N. engagement with the Taliban, quoting Lakhdar Brahimi, a former head of UNAMA, described the exclusion of the Taliban from the Bonn Conference as the “original sin.”

Habiba Sarabi, a former member of the Afghan government negotiation team led by Stanekzai, and former deputy chair of the Afghan High Peace Council, a body established in 2010 to negotiate with the Taliban, pointed out another flaw in the process. She said that when the peace process got underway participants were looking for a “quick fix” and, as a result, critical constituencies, particularly women, were ignored.

Stanekzai, Brooking and Sarabi participated in a panel discussion hosted by the United States Institute of Peace on October 25.

Missed Opportunities

Following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime in 2001, Stanekzai said Afghanistan was turned into a laboratory for experiments with peacemaking, development initiatives and security sector reform. But, he said, the disconnect between these efforts meant instability persisted.

In 2013, an opportunity for peace presented itself when the Taliban opened an office in the Qatari capital Doha following months of diplomatic negotiations. It was a good idea to have an official address where people could engage with the group’s leadership, said Brooking. However, that opportunity was lost because the Taliban opening of the office violated certain terms of a memorandum of understanding, which was brokered by Qatar. The Taliban shut the office following objections raised by the United States and then Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the Taliban’s use of its white flag and a sign that read “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — actions that were expressly prohibited in the memorandum of understanding.

By 2018, the peace process had gained momentum. Then U.S. President Donald J. Trump appointed Zalmay Khalilzad special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation and tasked him with striking a deal with the Taliban.

The United States engaged in direct negotiations with the Taliban in Doha. The Taliban had refused to negotiate with then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government, which it considered a puppet of the West, as it did the Karzai government before it. The fact that the Ghani administration was excluded from negotiations — just as the Taliban was excluded from the Bonn Conference in 2001 — delegitimized the Ghani government, said Stanekzai.

Khalilzad’s appointment marked the beginning of a process with the Taliban that Kristian Berg Harpviken, a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said caused “considerable unease” among Afghanistan’s neighbors “almost all of whom actually want the United States out, but then almost all of whom also worry about the consequences” of a U.S. withdrawal.

The United States’ priority was the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan, while for Afghans it was that this withdrawal be done in a responsible manner that results in peace, said Stanekzai.

Brooking said that after the United States signed the Doha agreement with the Taliban in 2020, the Afghan negotiating team was sent in “with one hand tied behind their back” and later when U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan it “cut the legs off the negotiating team.”

“After that, failure was inevitable,” Brooking said. By August 2021, the Taliban had overrun Kabul and Ghani had fled the country. Brooking said Karzai and Ghani were equally to blame for lost opportunities for peace. He said they had “scuppered various initiatives for peace, presumably for their own interests.”

Women Ignored in Peace Process

Describing women as strong peacebuilders, Sarabi, who as governor of Bamiyan province was the first female governor of an Afghan province, said they were “forgotten” and “ignored” in the peace process. “The peacebuilding that people are doing at the local level with the community is very important; the social peace,” Sarabi explained.

Sarabi said that when peace negotiations got underway, some organizations took the initiative to have an “inclusive mechanism for peace” with the aim of building a bridge between civil society, women’s groups and community elders and the peace negotiations team. However, she said, “the Taliban was not ready to listen to the voice of people and the voice of women.”

Sarabi pointed out that the Doha agreement did not contain a single word about women. “The quick fix announcement of [the] peace process damaged everything,” she said, adding, “Peace cannot be [achieved] within a month or some months.”

A big problem, Sarabi and Stanekzai said, was a lack of consensus among the United States, Afghan leaders and Afghan civil society on the definition of peace. For example, Sarabi explained, while there were many discussions about reducing violence these came to naught in the absence of a mechanism to reduce violence. Stanekzai said the U.S. and Afghan governments were focused on the peace process but not on the end state.

Managing the Spoilers

According to Stanekzai, Afghanistan’s stability has been impacted by several factors, including government corruption, extremism and the fact that the country is caught in the middle of global and regional power rivalries.

“In order to understand Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan we certainly have to understand Pakistan’s relationship to India,” said Harpviken, pointing to the longstanding rivalry between India and Pakistan.

Stanekzai described the detrimental role played by “spoilers” — specifically Pakistan — in the peace process, noting that neither the U.S. government nor the Afghan government properly managed this challenge.

“Pakistan has been a problem,” said Brooking, adding that while U.S. intelligence agencies and successive administrations were well aware of the support Pakistan was giving to the Taliban, nothing was ever done about it.

“The United States often has a myopic view of conflicts,” said Scott Worden, director of Afghanistan and Central Asia programs at USIP, who moderated the discussion. “We put ourselves at the center of the problem and then, in this case, we focused on Afghanistan” and then “recognized that Pakistan had a central role in both supporting the Taliban and affecting events on the ground in Afghanistan.”

In Bonn, Brooking recalled, the United States told the world “you are either with us or against us.” Pakistan reluctantly sided with the United States, but then the invasion of Iraq created a “massive distraction” which Pakistan exploited to rearm the Taliban, he said.

In 2010, with the establishment of the special representative’s office in Washington, “the policy of the day became Af-Pak,” said Harpviken. There was an eagerness to “pursue a genuine regional engagement,” but that goal was quickly shelved as “the strategy for the neighborhood morphed into primarily being about preventing Pakistan from undermining the project in Afghanistan,” he added.

Afghanistan’s neighbors pursued their own objectives that were largely informed by security threats. As a result, Harpviken said, despite the fact that there were “very attractive economic and social prospects” that they could have pursued, the immediate threat to these countries was “existential,” which is what shaped their relationship with Afghanistan.

Harpviken said the United States did not consistently pursue a regional concert in support of Afghan peace. As for Afghanistan’s neighbors, he asked: “Why was it that they didn’t see the potential for them in a peaceful Afghanistan?” The answer to that is quite simple, he said, adding: “The obstacles to getting to that objective, attractive as it was, seemed to them to be insurmountable. Therefore, minimizing risk would be the wise thing to do.”

‘Back to Square One’

Worden noted the shift in the United States’ global position in 2001 when it was a unipolar actor with greater economic and political leverage than it has today. Following its military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August of 2021, Worden said, the United States has become “increasingly reliant on the region to address the risks that come from Afghanistan, and Afghans themselves rely on the region to hopefully provide a source of additional stability.”

However, there may be only so much that regional powers can do. Harpviken said that while Pakistan has been “absolutely instrumental” in the Taliban’s ability to return to power, it now finds that the Taliban are “not obeying orders” and “in many ways we are back to square one.”

Unlike in the 1990s, when the Taliban government was recognized by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, no country today recognizes the government in Kabul. Nevertheless, Harpviken said many of Afghanistan’s neighbors have developed working relationships with the Taliban. “We do see a gradual adaptation,” he said, adding, “geography matters and if you are a next-door neighbor you want to minimize the risks.”

Eventually, Harpviken said, “A level of consistent engagement with the Taliban will be necessary, recognizing fully that we will not see dramatic reform within the Taliban neither in the short nor the long term.”

Opinion by Fawzia Koofi

Prioritizing Short-term Counterterrorism Above a Political Settlement

U.S. Bureaucracy Not Set Up to Pursue a Political Settlement

Why Did Lessons Go Unlearned or Ignored?

Afghanistan: The Next Chapter

Cornerstone Forum Series

Missed Opportunities

Women Ignored in Peace Process

Managing the Spoilers

‘Back to Square One’

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