It has been three weeks since the Taleban announced a new order, prescribing a strict dress code for women, that they should not leave the house without real need and if they do, should wear what is termed ‘sharia hijab’, with face covered entirely, or except for the eyes. The order made a woman’s ‘guardian’ – her father, husband or brother – legally responsible for policing her clothing, with the threat to punish him if she goes outside bare-faced. In this report, we hear from women about how they and their families have responded to the order and to what extent the new rules or guidelines have been enforced. Dress codes may seem less consequential than other changes, such as sending women workers home from government offices, hindering women’s travel or stopping older girls from going to school. Still, instructing women to cover their faces in public seems symbolic of the Emirate’s apparent desire to turn Afghan women into entirely invisible, private citizens again, argues Kate Clark, with input from Sayeda Rahimi.

What women wear outside the home varies across Afghanistan – from the burqa, known in Afghanistan as a chadori,to a more recent introduction, the Gulf-Arab style abaya (also known as a chapan siah), to big, baggy dresses with pleated trousers, to tight jeans and long shirts or coats. It has been extremely rare for Afghan woman, even in recent years, to choose to be seen in public bare-headed, but the style of a headscarf can vary from a very long, full, Iranian-style scarf which covers the head and clothes (often called chador namaz, as many women also wear it to pray) to much shorter and colourful scarves. Scarves can be worn to cover or almost cover the hair, or be tied to leave just the eyes exposed (niqab). The black scarves typically worn with an abaya often come with integral niqab and full face veil options, which can be adopted depending on how ‘exposed’ a woman wants to be – she may feel differently about revealing her face at work, for example, or in the bazaar, or in a shared taxi or bus, or in her own neighbourhood. In Herat, some women wear a magna, which is made-to-fit and pulls on over the head. It may show some or no hair, and may cover the chin, but not the rest of the face.

What women wear tends to differ with age, how conservative she, her family or her neighbours are, whether she works in paid employment and how safe or exposed she feels, and of course personal style. As a general rule, in times and places where women and girls feel safer, where they are in greater numbers outside and in the workplace and where probably also, their income is higher,^[1] clothing has tended to be more varied and more colourful, with some individuals wearing tighter-fitting clothing and smaller scarves, and more women showing their faces in public.

The Taleban’s new order has boiled all this variation down to two versions of what the Taleban consider to be ‘sharia hijab’ – either a burqa or “customary black clothing and shawl,” that is not too thin or too tight, which is presumed to be a reference to the abaya and which should be worn with a niqab.^[2] In doing this, the Taleban have taken to the state the right to make decisions about people’s personal lives which, in Afghanistan, would normally be the preserve of the family.

The best option for women, says the order, a translation of which can be read in an appendix to this report, is the burqa, which has been “part of Afghanistan’s dignified culture for centuries.” This is normal dress for most women in the rural south where most Taleban are from and where women typically live in purdah, ie secluded from all men, except close relatives. The order specifies that clothing should not be tight-fitting, and the material should not be so thin as to allow the body to be seen through it, nor so tight as to highlight “parts of the body.” Women are further obliged to cover their faces, except for their eyes, when face-to-face with men who are not their mahram. The very best ‘hijab’, it says, is for women not to leave their homes, unless there is a need.

The order rules that a woman’s male guardian (wali) should ensure she wears sharia hijab and it is he who will be punished for any violation, with an escalation of response: advice and warning at the first violation, then being summoned to the “relevant department,” then three days imprisonment, and finally, on a fourth violation, a court appearance and judicial punishment.

The new rule speaks of hijab as the noble Muslim woman’s “privilege,” something that gives her “dignity” and protects her from “being led astray or committing sin” and from “the evil and corruption of those who are [morally] corrupt” so that women “cannot easily fall prey to the intrigue of immoral circles.” The dress code prevents her appearance causing social disorder or fitna (the same word can also mean rebellion against a lawful ruler). The order casts women as responsible for men’s behaviour and implicitly blames them for any sexual harassment or worse that they suffer if their clothing reveals the face or shape of their bodies.

Up till now the Islamic Emirate had been giving mixed messages as to whether it intended to police women’s clothing and appearance, leaving the door open, apparently, for local variation. Now the Emirate, or at least the high-ranking commission responsible for the new rule, appears to have chosen almost the most rigid option of all – only slightly more ‘lenient’ than the code during the first Emirate, when women and adolescent girls had to wear burqas.^[3]

The nature of the order

The order was announced at a ceremony on 7 May 2022 in Kabul by Muhammad Khaled Hanafi, acting Minister for the Invitation and Guidance on Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, (Dawat wa Ershad amr bil maruf wa nahi al-munkir), usually shortened to Vice and Virtue or Amr bil Maruf (media report here). This is the Taleban ministry tasked with policing morality. The document is entitled, “Explanatory and implementation note [proposal, plan or draft] for sharia hijab”. It is signed by an ad hoc commission of senior Taleban, including the acting ministers of education, hajj and awqaf, and justice, and the deputy director of the Office of Administrative Affairs (the director holds a cabinet-equivalent post), which was chaired by Hanafi. Despite the ceremony, the status of the new rule is not completely clear.

The order is stamped with the seal of the Administrative Affairs Office director, suggesting it has the authority of Supreme Leader Hibatullah’s representative in Kabul, but there are no other stamps or notes detailing the registration of this order, nor a date. This might indicate the order was issued without the involvement of the bureaucratic machinery, and possibly was not registered or, because there is no consistency yet in this field, this may not be significant at all.^[4]

In the absence of a constitution, or clarity on the different types of official documents used by the Taleban, the status of the order is not completely clear. Drawing on traditions of Afghan statehood, it can be said that this is not a decree (farman), which is signed off by the head of state and carries the force of law. The text does contain a hukm, which is an order or command – weaker than a decree, but still with the weight of executive authority. A hukm would typically be used, for example, to grant a petition or appoint an official. However, in this case, the actual order in the document is an explicit, but very general, religious command: “Adherence to sharia hijab is obligatory for [all] noble Muslim females from adolescence onwards.” The rest of the document contains a definition of hijab, describes the different types of hijab, details whom the order applies to, and how it should be implemented. Some Taleban, including the influential Minister of Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani, have insisted the order is advisory only. However, the text leaves considerable room for interpretation on the ground, as AAN’s legal expert, Ehsan Qaane, points out:

Analysing this hukm, based on its provisions, only the part which deals with the punishments of the guardian of a woman deemed to be without hijab could be said to rise to the level of criminal procedures. The larger part of its provisions read as recommendations and guidance and do not fit the legal standards normally found in a legislative order (hukm). However, when it comes to the execution of orders like this one, it is a matter of how individual Taleban officials interpret the order and whether and indeed how they decide to execute it.

The commission’s proposal follows other moves by the state to restrict the actions of women and girls – banning most women from government offices, making it a legal requirement for women to travel only with a mahram (close male relative: either a husband, or a male relative whom she cannot marry, such as a brother, father, son or uncle), gender-segregating universities and keeping schools for older girls closed.

It has been noticeable that the Taleban have introduced rules and restrictions gradually since they took power and that they have recently become much harsher than in August and September 2021. This may be due to the Taleban in general consolidating their power and feeling increasingly able to impose their views on the population. There are also indications that the less ultra-conservative elements (often called ‘moderates’ or ‘pragmatists’) have been sidelined in policy decisions.^[5] In the case of public morality, however, even the ‘moderates’ within the Taleban, who generally favour less restrictive rules, believe in the state’s duty to impose norms of behaviour on the population, and many still focus their attention on what women do. Indeed, they may feel that not making the burqa, as it was in the 1990s, the only choice is a concession. (For an exploration of why the Taleban emphasise behaviour, outward appearance and ritual, our 2017 special report Ideology in the Afghan Taleban by Anand Gopal and Alex Strick van Linschoten is enlightening.)

The major question, now, is what the status of this order will turn out to be in practice, how it is received by the population and how assiduously the Taleban seek to enforce it.

To get an idea of what has been happening across the country since the release of the proposal, AAN has spoken to 14 women in 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Interviews were conducted in the week of 9 May (ie a few days after the order was circulated on the media). We asked interviewees what they and other local women were wearing before the order, how the order has been greeted locally, and whether the Taleban were moving to enforce it. We made a second round of calls just before publication to check if there had been any developments. The women are from the provincial capitals of Balkh, Badghis, Baghlan, Bamyan, Farah, Herat, Jawzjan, Kabul, Kandahar and Panjshir and are largely young and unmarried. Older women and those living in rural areas may have different perspectives, but even this small sample gives a flavour of the variety of pre-existing norms on what women wear in Afghanistan, the local mores and the concerns – or, in some cases, the relative lack of concern – of women and their families with regard to the Taleban’s enforcement of their dress code.

The impact of the order on how women dress in ten provinces

In Herat, a high-school graduate who works as a graphic designer said that in her city, most women tended to wear chador namaz (Iranian-style chador), a manteau (which could be short or long) or an abaya, and that burqas were worn only rarely. “The order,” she said, “has made no difference to what women are wearing in Herat. Some women are wearing face masks [of the type used to protect people from coronavirus infection], maybe out of fear of the Taleban. I myself wear a long manteau and don’t cover my face.” At the checkposts, she said, Taleban were not checking women’s clothing and Amr bil Maruf, the Taleban charged with ensuring public morality, were not active around the city. She doubted the Taleban could change what she and other women wore.

Herati people are very sensitive in what they will adapt to. The current clothing style is considered hijab in Herat, so no one can force us to change it. If the Taleban forced the people [to change their clothing], they will stand up and organise protests and campaigns – when the schools were closed after reopening, the people and schoolteachers protested. [After the protests, the schools did briefly re-open, before again being closed, the interviewee said.]

Her father, she said, had told her that her hijab was already “perfect” and the Taleban were attempting to impose their ideology on them.

Another interviewee,^[6] who is employed at the municipality and who goes into work once a week to sign an attendance form, said they had been ordered to cover their faces at work. She had not done so and had, as yet faced no trouble. She also thought there had been little change in women’s clothing in Herat city, although the number of women and girls now covering their faces with a face mask or a scarf had increased. For herself, she said: “I do not want to quickly obey the rules because if people do that, the Taleban will get used to [their obedience].” As yet, she said, she had not seen Amr bil Maruf inside the city.^[7]

A health worker in neighbouring Badghis, described a different situation in her province where most women already wore conservative clothing:

The order has made no difference to what women are wearing in Badghis. We were restricted in the past and we are restricted now. Before the Taleban, almost 70 per cent of older women in Badghis were wearing burqas, while younger women wore white chador namaz, which, in Badghis, women use a part of to cover their faces with. This chador is in our culture and even a 12-year-old girl doesn’t go outside without it. The women in Badghis are still following this style.

She described Amr bil Maruf officials visiting her office the previous week and telling women workers to wear either a burqa or an abaya with niqab. The following day, she said, when they were again at the office, they said her chador namaz did not break their hijab rules, and she could continue wearing it.

The Taleban at checkposts were not bothering women, she said, but were “serious” in their behaviour towards men; her 12-year old brother had returned home weeping the previous day after they had searched him. She thought families might now force their female relatives to start wearing burqas. “So, for instance in my family, even if I don’t want to wear a burqa, my father and brothers will force me to wear it. We Pashtuns are like this,” she said. “My father supports the order.” She said her mother, a school teacher who had herself always worn a burqa outside the house, was also happy with the order. “Afghan women have never lived,” the health worker said. “We have just been alive. Now, we are struggling just to stay alive.”

In another conservative province in the west, Farah, a student at a private university said women there already wore abayas and headscarves, and some wore the face-covering niqab or a face mask. She herself did not cover her face in public, except at the government university, where she said this was now mandatory for female students, as was wearing a black abaya. Her father and brothers, she said, did not agree with the Taleban keeping older girls out of school or compelling women to change their clothing. She said her father, who has seven daughters, was “really sad for us” and told them that everyone has the right to wear their favourite clothes. As a general rule, though, she thought most other people in Farah would have no problem with the order.

Farah is a province that has been restricted for a long time and people have not been free like in Herat and Kabul… Though educated girls might not accept the order and might stand against it, their families will never allow them to [protest]. 

In Panjshir, a young, now unemployed, woman said she had always worn “proper clothing,” but now her father had said she should get an abaya and her older brother had said she should start wearing a burqa outside the house She said that most of her friends who came to her house were now wearing abayas and “longer clothes,” while she had seen some women locally wearing burqas. It seems that not all of the impetus for change has come from the order itself. She said that due to the large numbers of Taleban fighters in the province, even in the more liberal provincial capital, girls started wearing burqas and abayas “just to be safe from the Taleban because they are so dangerous. Some families have even sent their daughters to Kabul due to fear of the Taleban.” When Afghan women feel unsafe, they typically go out less, and cover up more when they do, to try to attract the least attention from men they do not trust.

In Kandahar, a midwife with ten years’ experience working in private and government hospitals, said the Taleban did not need to enforce the order in her province because women were already following their dress code. “All men agree with the burqa because it has been part of their tradition for a long time,” while “the women who are a little bit freer and who live in Kandahar city are wearing abayas.” She said her female colleagues generally wore black abayas with niqab, as they had done previously, as did most of the women who visited the hospitals, while she herself wore a burqa, and felt “very comfortable with it.” There were times, she said, “when I’ve been speaking as the only woman in front of 70 men including foreigners, wearing a burqa.” Security was better now than under the previous government, she said, and because of that “women have become freer.”

In Baghlan a young woman said that before the Taleban takeover, women had been wearing a mix of clothing, some “clothes like women in Kabul” (presumably manteau, with trousers and a headscarf), while others “wore burqas or abayas.” So far, she said, nothing had changed and Amr bil Maruf had yet to appear in her city of Pul-e Khumri. The Taleban at checkposts had also not sought to impose the order. She said she was already wearing “long clothes” and had previously worn a burqa to go to many places, such as the bazaar, so the order might not make much difference to her life. However, if the Taleban forced her to wear it everywhere, “I’d feel bad because no one likes to be forced to do something.”

In Balkh, the choice facing women is complicated by the fact that secondary schools for girls have remained open since Nawruz, even after the Taleban nationally decided they should be closed. As a result, many women do not want to threaten one hard-won freedom by insisting on another. Our interviewee, who is a teacher, said:

Women are obeying the Taleban order because they don’t want to give them an excuse to close the schools… I think they will be able to enforce this order in Mazar because people don’t want the schools to close. 

She said that, given the choice on offer, women preferred to adopt the niqab, rather than the burqa. She herself had worn a burqa for one day following the takeover and found it difficult to breathe: “I couldn’t wear the burqa, but I think I would be able to adapt to it [if I really had to].” Wearing a burqa in hot weather in Mazar, she said, was “heroic.”

As for secondary-aged girls such as her sister, they were now wearing burqas so that they could go to school. The previous day in her street, she had seen Taleban stop two girls from attending class because they were not wearing burqas. She stressed that in her family, the men believed that a woman should not cover her face: “The burqa is not in Islam,” she said, “It is in Afghan culture.” She reported that since the order, the price of burqas in Mazar had gone up.

“I think the order was aimed at the women in Kabul,” said a bank employee in neighbouring Jowzjan. In the past, she said, some women in her province had been wearing “short clothes,” but after the Taleban takeover, that stopped and about 90 per cent of women were covering their faces – wearing a niqab, or a medical mask, or a burqa. Following the order, she said, the ten per cent who had been going outside bare-faced had dwindled further. “Only the elderly and those who have allergies don’t cover their faces,” she said. In her office, she wore a headscarf, in the city an abaya and when she went out into the districts for her work, a burqa. It was more “comfortable” in one aspect because “No one can recognise or disturb me,” but on the other hand, “It is difficult to wear in the hot weather, as I have allergies and become breathless.”

She said Amr bil Maruf were visiting offices and educational establishments offering courses:

They advise women that they must not wear tight, short clothes and must cover their faces, and they tell men and women that they must not see each other, and must study in separate classes… There are so many checkpoints, and, at these checkpoints, they advise the men to have beards and sometimes they even take the men out of the cars for advice. I have not been advised by them yet because I wear a burqa. 

She said there had also been an announcement that if women do not wear hijab, they would be fired from their jobs, and their families would be “asked” (to ensure they wore it) and, as a final step, the Taleban would imprison the woman.

Her male customers at the bank had told her the order was making life very difficult for their female relatives. From her own family, she said she had received sympathy and support. Her brother, after walking home from school one day wearing a black medical mask, said he ‘saluted’ the girls who were now wearing black scarves, abayas and niqab to and from school, course or office. Her father was also not happy with the order. She should wear an abaya, her family had said, but it was the up to her whether she covered her face or not:

My family said that if the Taleban came to make me and my sisters’ cover our faces, they would answer them and tell them that our clothing is Islamic, that we don’t wear makeup, and that it is a women’s own choice to cover her face or not. 

In Bamyan, a high school graduate said that older women there tended to wear either a chador namaz or a burqa and that girls wore “normal clothes” (presumably manteau, trousers and headscarf). Girls in the provincial capital were “very brave and confident; they wear what they think is suitable for them. The girls neither care what the Taleban think, nor are they afraid of the Taleban.” However, because the order made male relatives responsible for their clothing and the threat was directed towards their fathers and brothers, “many girls,” she said, “are obeying it.” However, in Bamyan, ‘obeying the order’ appears to mean wearing longer clothes and looser trousers than before, with more women and girls wearing an abaya and black headscarf (as our interviewee is now doing), but not covering their faces.

Our interviewee said her own brother had joined Amr bil Maruf, very reluctantly and only because there were no other jobs. He had had to tell her to be careful about her hijab, she said, because of his new role, but his heart was not in the new job. Local men, especially in Bamyan city, were supportive of women, she said. That included her father who had tried to reassure her: “He tells me to be relaxed because the Taleban will only be in power for a short time.”

In recent days, she said, the Taleban have put up several banners in Bamyan city’s bazaar and square, showing a woman with only her eyes visible and with the order: “My sister: Observe your hijab.” She also said Amr bil Maruf had put up notices on schools gates, shops and other places in the provincial capital reinforcing the order, threatening that “anyone who does not follow the Islamic hijab and the guidance of the Islamic Emirate will be dealt with by the law; the responsibility will lie with them.”^[8]

It is an irony that during the first Emirate, the banners and notices would themselves have been illegal. The Taleban then condemned all depictions of people, animals and birds as shirk – idolatry – and Amr bil Maruf punished people who violated this order.

In Kabul, known among Afghan women living outside the capital for its relative freedom when it comes to women’s clothing, we spoke to three women in this vast city, to give a flavour of the variety of experiences there.

A woman in charge of monitoring and evaluation for an NGO who lives in Dar ul-Aman and works in Qala-ye Fathullah, said: “A month ago, I was wearing normal clothes to the office, but now the environment is so restricted, I don’t have the confidence to go out without an abaya.” She had had a nasty encounter with a Taleb on a checkpost who shouted at her and two colleagues about their clothing. “Since that day,” she said, “we all are so afraid, we have face masks with us and put them on at checkpoints so the Taleban won’t say something or stop us.” Many more women were now wearing abayas, she said, and some even niqabs and black gloves:

In the past, women were not like this at all and this clothing style is absolutely what they do not want to wear. It is one hundred per cent forced and imposed on women, as it is on me and my family members. No one likes to be covered up this much in hot weather. Women are also human. We need to breathe. 

She said most of those enforcing the ban were Taleban at checkposts, whose responsibilities were not clear to her as they have “no specific uniform,” but, she said, they were “the worst”: “[They] are on the roads and have nothing to think about, other than that women must be covered.”

Contrary to the “many people” who had said that, as a Pashtun, she should welcome the order, she said her father had made no comments about what she should wear. She herself had chosen to wear an abaya, she said, to protect her male relatives from the Taleban and she would even wear a niqab if forced to, in order to protect them. She questioned the Islamic validity of the order:

Parents and guardians were Muslims before the Taleban and were careful of their daughters’ clothing in the past and women were observing hijab. My father has no issue with my clothing and has said nothing about it. If the Taleban question him, he’ll say that his daughter’s body is covered. If he has no problem with [what she’s wearing], then who are the Taleban to talk about his daughter’s clothes?

Another woman in Kabul, a teacher-training student who lives in Dasht-e Barchi, the Hazara-majority western neighbourhood, said people in her area were open-minded, which was why the clothing style had been “free” there: girls were wearing jeans, shirts (sometimes short), and long or short manteaux. In the first days of the Taleban takeover, she said women and girls were afraid, so had put on longer clothes or abayas, but slowly, as they observed that the Taleban were not restricting them, they began again to wear the clothes they had worn in the past. Many though, she said, put on an abaya or chador namaz when going outside Barchi, to university or work.

The Taleban’s Amr bil Maruf has not come to Barchi yet [this had changed by the time of the follow-up interview when Amr bil Maruf was present in the neighbourhood], but they stand at Pul-e Sukhta because most women are crossing there when they go to university and office. Many days in the morning I saw Amr bil Maruf questioning girls about why their faces were not covered or their hair not [properly] covered. Amr bil Maruf, in their white coats and white cars,^[9]are the ones enforcing this order; the ordinary Talebs and the Taleban police don’t say anything about women’s clothing. 

As for her, she said her family was a little religious, so she never had worn very short clothes, but after the Taleban took power, she had bought an abaya despite her father not being happy about it. “He said that in this hot weather, it is hard to wear black clothing.” As for wearing a burqa or niqab, she said that was just “excessive – what I am wearing now is hijab enough.”

A third woman we spoke to in Kabul is one of the small band of women still holding public protests. She said she was already wearing an abaya and covering her face:

I wear the niqab, not to obey the Taleban’s order, but to fight against their rules. In resistance, there are some tactics that we can use to achieve the desired aim. I wear the niqab so that I’m not recognised or arrested by the Taleban, because if they arrest me and my friends, there would be no [women’s rights] movement. 

She thought the Taleban’s tactic of making a woman’s guardian responsible for her clothing would ensure greater compliance: “Normally, women accept any kind of violence to keep their family, their father and brothers safe from disrespect and insult.” Because of this, she said, many women would feel forced to obey an order which they had had no part in making, nor any desire to uphold. She said, however, that she had the support of her family in her activism:

Even though my father and brothers are under serious threat, still they will never agree to the Taleban’s rules, not one of them. They also are against this order. It makes them worried about my security, but they do support me in the fight for the next generation of women. If today we don’t stand, tomorrow our children will not have the right to go to school or live freely. 

How the women we spoke to feel about the order

The interviews indicate that the impact of the Taleban’s new order, if strictly implemented, will be felt differently across Afghanistan. In places like Kandahar and Badghis, women’s local dress already largely complies with the new code. In other provinces and places, where women have been used to greater freedom and variety, many women have felt forced to amend what they wear, but are loathe to go all the way and cover their faces when they go outside.

Many of our interviewees spoke about feeling frightened, either directly of the Taleban, or of what the Taleban might do to their fathers and brothers if they judged them in violation of the new rules. Some spoke about the psychological impact of the order on their confidence, others of feeling they would not want to leave the house, if forced to wear the burqa or abaya and niqab. It was notable that in many cases their unhappiness was not just about the type of clothing they would have to wear, but the fact that they would be forced to wear it and would have no say of their own and, for those with supportive fathers and brothers, that their family’s autonomy to make decisions had been taken away.

In Mazar, our interviewee said that wearing a burqa or abaya with niqab felt like a necessary sacrifice so that older girls had the best chance of being allowed to keep going to school. In Panjshir, our interviewee described it as a necessary protection against hostile men, in this case Taleban. This matches the experience of those interviewees who were already wearing a burqa when they went to places where they expected to feel exposed, for example, rural districts, or the bazaar. For the women’s rights activist in Kabul, the niqab is a sort of necessary camouflage.

For those women and girls not used to wearing a burqa the thought of it, or the brief experience of trying it out, is nightmarish. The bank worker in Jowzjan said:

At the beginning of the takeover, I wore a burqa for a day. It was so difficult to bear the weight of it and to breathe…. If I have to wear it, I will feel like a free bird being caged. It would be like losing all my freedom to work, my choice, my movement. 

The bank worker from Jowzjan who wears a burqa when she goes to the field, also said it was like being a caged bird:

We must wear a burqa because most of the people are staring and the Taleban themselves are also staring. But when I wear a burqa, it gives me a feeling like I am a prisoner, a person who is unable to defend herself, a helpless human being. 

The health worker from Badghis said she also already wore a burqa when travelling to the districts, but, “It was my own choice; it would be difficult for me to accept it being forced on me.” She added:

[Being forced to wear it] would be like [the Taleban] were disappearing us completely from the world. 

In particular, the enforcement of face coverings, especially the burqa, is viewed by many of our interviewees not only as a physical imposition, but symbolic of the wider restrictions on them as women. As the NGO monitor from Kabul said: “Wearing a burqa or niqab would make me feel like forgetting my all and last hope as a woman.”

The women’s rights protester expressed a similar sentiment:

Human beings are created free, to be able to breathe, to be comfortable. [Choosing one’s] style of clothing is everyone’s basic right. All in all, the burqa is a cage, a chain and an insult. It would be difficult to work, study and move in a burqa, [but that is not all]; it would also be an insult to me. [Wearing] a burqa would be the start of me having no plans, no potential for development or aims because it would imprison not only my body, but also my professional identity and my talents. 

Like some of the other interviews, she also defined the issue as not about hijab per se: “Our people have no problem with hijab because hijab has always been valued in Afghanistan. Our protest is against obligatory clothing.” She classed forcing women to wear certain clothing as an act as shocking as removing women workers from government and non-government offices, closing schools for older girls and arresting women protestors; acts that were “anti-woman and violent,” intended to “roll back society.”

Many of our interviewees also disagreed with the Taleban’s contention that the order was about religion. “This clothing style is not in Islam,” said the NGO monitor in Kabul, while the health worker from Badghis argued:

Sin and clothing are personal. The government is not responsible for guiding us to jannah [heaven]. It is responsible for providing livelihoods, work, and other necessities for the people. 

If more women do follow the Taleban’s dress code, according to the bank worker from Jowzjan it will be because they have to; it will not be “from the heart.”

Concluding remarks 

It is not clear where it all goes from here. This may be an interim period before universal enforcement, as in Iran after the Islamic revolution. The order could be part of negotiations within the movement surrounding school opening and possibly women working. Amr bil Maruf may be trying to test the water to see if it has enough backing within the movement and whether the population seems acquiescent enough for it to clamp down harder on women’s clothing and possibly other rights. The order could also still be quietly treated as advisory.

For now, however, everywhere where the burqa or something similar was not already universally worn, interviewees reported that the order has had an impact on what women wear, as they amend their clothing, primarily in order to avoid potential trouble for themselves or their male relatives. In many places, there have been moves by Amr bil Maruf and/or Taleban at checkpoints to impose the order, usually phrasing it as ‘advice’, although, in Kabul, reported one of our interviewees, by shouting at women to obey it.

Our second round of calls, made in the last few days, showed the Taleban are still mainly disseminating messages about the hijab. In addition to the notices threatening legal action against violators in Bamyan, AAN also heard that in Daikundi’s provincial capital, Nili, Amr bil Maruf had mounted a speaker on top of a car and had driven round the city, advising women to observe Islamic hijab. In Kabul city, as well, a resident in west Kabul reported that the Taleban had put up a notice at the entrance of apartment blocks in her neighbourhood again telling women to observe hijab.^[10] There have been no reports of guardians of ‘hijabless’ women being contacted or punished. Nor have there been the sort of public beatings of women deemed to be breaking the Taleban’s dress code, or their guardians, that were seen in the 1990s.

Amr bil Maruf’s usefulness for the Taleban during the first Emirate, as the enforcer of rules on behaviour and appearance, always went beyond ensuring Afghans followed the Taleban’s idea of how good Muslim men and women should behave and dress in public. They were a key element of how the state controlled the population, especially in the cities, an effective means of keeping people frightened. The ministry’s intrusive role may well have helped the state gather intelligence and monitor for potential trouble-makers. It is not clear from the interviews conducted for this report if the role of Amr bil Maruf will turn out to be the same this time round. Interviewees spoke of them visiting mosques, offices and universities, but only a few spoke of them being present at checkposts and none had seen them patrolling the streets, as they did in the 1990s. This may change, of course.

During their first Emirate, the Taleban encountered little public protest against their rulings on behaviour and dress. The country had suffered the horrors of civil war; in Kabul, for example, which the group captured in 1996, tens of thousands of people had been killed and a third of the buildings destroyed. The defeated and demoralised population was relatively easy to control. There was disobedience to Taleban laws – some girls were taught and some women managed to do paid work, people watched videos and listened to music at home – but rule-breaking was done quietly, in secret and in fear, knowing that punishments could be severe. As to clothing, some women pushed at the boundaries: if they could afford it, some women in Kabul wore fashionable shoes, and ‘nice’ clothes under their burqas, which they allowed to billow as they walked to show off what they were wearing underneath.

Twenty years on, the population of cities like Kabul and Herat is far larger. Afghan women and girls and their families, in general, have become used to a much greater degree of freedom and autonomy to make their own decisions. The Taleban may face opposition to this new order, as they try to erase women’s lived experiences of greater freedom, and put their aspirations to be public citizens back in a box. Although, it may seem as if clothing is at the minor end of freedoms, what people wear is both personal and symbolic – and has political implications that are linked to the demonstration of power.^[11]

It is significant that the main thrust of the new order is about women covering their faces. The ruling follows two decades in which many women have had public faces and public voices, including as ministers, MPs, judges, professors, street cleaners, TV presenters, police and office workers. Of course, not every girl or woman has had the choice to go to school or get paid work or travel during the Republic – the enjoyment of legal rights was patchy, and corruption, incompetence and poverty meant education and other services did not reach everyone. However, as our special report Between Hope and Fear. Rural Afghan women talk about peace and war, published in July 2021, revealed, many women, even those living in very conservative areas, hoped that peace would bring more freedom when it came to education, travel and playing a greater role in their society. Yet, the end of the conflict has in practice enabled a clamping down on the freedoms that at least some women and girls had enjoyed, and a diminishing of the hopes of others.

Since the takeover, public protest has dwindled as it has become more dangerous. Women’s rights activists have proven the bravest of all, but the Taleban’s response has been harsh – detaining and, reportedly, beating women protesters. Still, the Taleban may find that pushing the state back into people’s lives will be more difficult, and less universally backed within the movement during their second Emirate than it was in the first.

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Annex: Translation of the text of the sharia hijab order^[12]

A brief descriptive and practical note [proposal, plan or draft] regarding sharia hijab

In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful

Although there were constant and systematic countrywide efforts to make women ‘hijabless’ [bi-hijab], fortunately 99 per cent of the proud women of [our] jihad-loving nation still adhered to hijab as sharia and a proud Afghan tradition. The remaining [one per cent] should also follow this obligatory sharia ruling [hukm] as there are no excuses and obstacles [preventing them].

Hijab ruling [hukm]:

Adherence to sharia hijab is obligatory for [all] noble Muslim females from adolescence onwards.

Definition of Hijab:

Any clothing covering the body is considered hijab, providing it is not so thin the body could be visible through it, nor so tight as to highlight body parts.

Hijab types:

• The burqa, which has remained part of the dignified Afghan culture for centuries, is the best form of sharia hijab.
• Customary black clothing and shawl called ‘hijab’ is also sharia hijab, provided it is not thin or tight.
• Not venturing out without cause is the first and best type of adherence to Sharia hijab.

Hijab observance classifications:

According to sharia guidance, females who are not too young or too old are obliged to cover their faces, except for their eyes, when face-to-face with men who are not their mahram [husband or other close male relative whom a woman cannot marry]. This is in order to prevent [social or sexual] disorder [fitna].

Benefits of observing hijab:

Methods and steps of hijab implementation

Encouragement:

• Explaining the importance and benefits of the hijab ruling and the harms of being without hijab through media and mosques.
• Displaying hijab-promoting texts and related stickers in markets, parks, and public places.

Warning and threats:

• For the first time, after identifying the home of a hijabless woman, her guardian should be issued with advice and warning.
• In the second instance, her guardian should be summoned to the relevant department.
• In the third instance, the guardian should be detained for three days.
• In the fourth instance, the guardian should be handed over to the Courts for appropriate punishment.
• Women not adhering to hijab while working in the Emirate administration, should be dismissed.
• If wives and daughters of government employees and civil servants do not adhere to hijab, their jobs should be suspended.

Assigned Team:

1. Sheikh Mawlawi Muhammad Khaled Hanafi, head [Acting Minister Amr bil Maruf]
2. Sheikh Mawlawi Abdul Hakim, member [assumed to be the Acting Minister of Justice]
3. Sheikh Mawlawi Nur Mohammad Saqeb, member [Acting Minister of Hajj and Awqaf]
4. Sheikh Mawlawi Shahabuddin Delawar, member [Acting Minister Mines and Petroleum and former member of Taleban negotiating team in Qatar]
5. Sheikh Mawlawi Nurullah Munir, member [Acting Minister of Education]
6. Sheikh Mawlawi Fariduddin Mahmud, member [Head of the Academy of Sciences]
7. Sheikh Mawlawi Nurulhaq Anwari, member [Deputy Director of Administrative Affairs and former member of Taleban negotiating team in Qatar]

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 2 Jun 2022

 

A major focus of the international humanitarian response to Afghanistan’s economic collapse has been a ramped-up distribution of food aid, as large parts of the population no longer have the income to buy enough food for their families. In this fourth instalment of our economic research based on interviews conducted across Afghanistan, we look at the reach, scope and implications of food aid distribution at the community and household levels. In our sample, we found that around half of the families had, by mid-February, received some form of food assistance at least once, although the quantity, food items and methods varied. Interviewees were grateful for the much-needed help and hoped it would continue, but there was also a recurring concern that those who needed aid the most may not be receiving it. Interviewees in particular described favouritism and interference in the selection of beneficiaries and, to a lesser extent, corruption and capture. And while the aid had provided relief and allowed the interviewees to feed their families, many were acutely aware that it did little to address their long-term need for employment, livelihoods and a revived economy.

 

Afghanistan’s economic collapse following the Taleban takeover in August 2021 led to widespread poverty, precariousness and food insecurity. The United Nations responded with a wide-ranging Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) to the tune of USD 4.4 billion – its largest single-country appeal to date. Around half of the requested funds were earmarked for food security and agriculture, and aimed to reach 22.1 million Afghans, which is around, or over, half of the country’s total population.^[1] The programme, however, has had to readjust its ambitions due to underfunding and may need to contract even more in the future.^[2] Whereas the UN had intended to increase the size of the food aid basket to accommodate 100 per cent of an average household’s needs, it has had to downscale to a smaller size of 50 or 75 per cent. It had also intended to increase the duration of aid per household, from four, to eight or twelve months, depending on the severity of the food insecurity.

According to the World Food Programme’s (WFP) 2021 annual country report, a total of 12.3 million people received WFP food aid in 2021 (15 million, if also counting nutritional aid) – a 67 per cent increase compared to 2020, and 14 per cent more than initially planned. In the month of December 2021, around 7.9 million people received food assistance, compared to 1.5 million people in August (when numbers were probably particularly low, due to the conflict and political upheaval of the Taleban takeover). Since then, WPF has significantly scaled up its assistance, reaching more than 17.5 million people in 2022 so far, and hoping to assist 18 million people in May.

In June, however, WFP will begin to scale down its assistance, to reach around 10 million people – almost halving the number of people who will receive food and nutritional aid. After that, the assistance will be scaled up again in October, in line with the onset of the ‘lean season’ –resources permitting. The scaling down in June will, according to WFP, be in line with the harvest season. However, it also reflects the impact of significant funding shortfalls, as indicated in the sombre warnings of the latest IPC, or Integrated Food Security Classification, report, which foresees the possibility of an even greater reduction in assistance:

With below average prospects for the harvest in most of the country, several factors are further expected to hamper the foreseeable seasonal improvement.… More specifically, at household level, the situation is compounded by the forecasted reduction of Humanitarian Food Assistance after the month of May.

HFA is expected to decrease from 38% of the population receiving on average two third food ration in the current period, to 8% in the June-November projection due to lack of funding.^[3]

The funding gap WFP currently faces is USD 1.4 billion for the 2022 response. It is beginning preparations for the much-needed prepositioning of food stock in hard-to-reach areas ahead of the 2023 winter season, but will require USD 150 million to do so.

Humanitarian programmes in Afghanistan had to scale up quickly, given the immense needs, and under difficult circumstances. They have, according to the 2022 HRP, been faced with impeded access, decreased operational capacity of partner organisations on the ground, ambiguities on the role of local Taleban authorities, a lack of clarity surrounding new rules, including around the employment of women, logistical problems and the difficulties posed by the country’s struggling banking system (see also this AAN primer). The lack of sufficient funding, moreover, means that difficult choices have needed to be made on where and how to focus resources. It is against this background that Afghans across the country spoke to AAN about their experiences of food aid, whether they had received any yet, and what they knew and thought about the distribution process.

AAN’s research

This report is part of AAN’s ongoing research on what it is like for Afghans to live in a country where the economy has collapsed. In our first round of interviews, carried out in November and December 2021, we found that some households had already received food aid. We then added a series of new questions to our second round of interviews, specifically focusing on people’s experiences and perception of the delivery of aid. The findings of this piece of qualitative research are based on thirty-six in-depth, semi-structured interviews, conducted between 24 January and 16 February, by phone or in person. The research sample includes men and women in twenty-two provinces across Afghanistan and represents a wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The findings are complemented by general information about the humanitarian food assistance programme provided by WFP.

In the interviews, we found that food aid distributions had indeed been taking place, including in remote areas. Almost all interviewees said there had been recent food aid provided in their village, district or neighbourhood and a little over half of the interviewees had themselves received aid at least once since August 2021. The few who said they did not know whether aid had been provided in their area, tended to be, sometimes previously, wealthy people who lived in a large city.^[4] The report focuses on the aid provided and administered by WFP, since this was what most of the interviewees had experience or knowledge about (although in a few cases other organisations were also mentioned).^[5]

The interview questions did not explicitly focus on problems with the aid distribution or beneficiary selection^[6] so it was striking how many interviewees told us that they thought the process was unfair and subject to manipulation. Many believed that the beneficiary selection was marred by favouritism and interference, and that the delivery of aid was vulnerable to corruption, capture and abuse. Several interviewees called on the UN and the NGOs who manage the food distribution programmes on the ground, to tighten local management and step up verification and monitoring efforts.

It is not always easy to determine from the interviewees whether the allegations may be true, or if they are mainly based on misunderstandings, or generalised perceptions of unfairness and abuse, but it was striking that it made very little difference whether interviewees were thankful that they had received aid, or frustrated that they had not been given any. Even people who said they had not pursued assistance because they believed they were better off than most, expressed misgivings about the fairness of the process. There was, in particular, a general sense that those in charge of the beneficiary selection favoured the people they knew, and/or were unable (or unwilling) to withstand the pressures to include those who were actually undeserving of aid.

In the report below, we will first look at who received aid, who did not, and what was received. Then we will look into the process of beneficiary selection, in urban and rural areas, and the allegations of favouritism, corruption and abuse. We will discuss how some communities have tried to sidestep these problems by redistributing the aid they received, as well as the slippery line between Taleban involvement and interference. We will then, finally, look at what humanitarian food aid can and cannot alleviate.

I. Who was selected to receive food aid and what did they get?

In terms of who had received food aid in our sample we found that:

• More than half of the interviewees – 20 out of 36 – reported that, by mid-February 2022, their household had received food aid at least once.
• Nine interviewees, or a quarter of the sample, indicated that they had not tried to receive aid or had even declined it when offered. They said they believed the aid was not meant for them, since they were not as poor as most others.
• Seven interviewees, or close to a fifth of the sample, had not received food aid by mid-February, even though their situations seemed dire as well. Three had been registered or surveyed in some manner, but had yet to be given actual aid distribution cards. Four others had not been surveyed or listed, even though they had tried a lot.

Interestingly, we found that in some cases the food assistance had been redistributed among a much larger group of people than it was intended for. At least three interviewees explicitly described the process, while two or three others also seemed to imply this is what happened in their area (see below, for more details). This means that more people reported to us that they had received aid than the NGOs providing the aid are likely to have counted. It also means that each person receiving aid in this way, received a lot less than WFP and its partners considered they were, nutritionally, in need of.

According to WFP, The contents of a standard food assistance package are calculated based on the daily caloric needs of an average household of seven and the IPC categorisations of the provinces. A 100 per cent daily kcal for people is 2100. In IPC-3 provinces – with a food security crisis – people receive 50 per cent rations, and in IPC-4 provinces – where they have a food security emergency – this is a 75 per cent ration size. In IPC 4 provinces, this translates to approximately 75 kg of wheat flour (or other cereals), 7 kg cooking oil, 9 kg of pulses (yellow split peas, red beans, lentils) and 0.75 kg of salt. In IPC 3 provinces this translates to approximately 50 kg of wheat flour (or other cereals), 4.5 kg of cooking oil, 6 kg of pulses and 0.5 kg of salt.

This package, however, may vary. In some cases, commodities may be substituted according to local availability or community preferences, while maintaining the kcal requirements – for example, by providing rice instead of fortified wheat flour. Access to funds and the timing of resources can also impact the availability of food. Procurement begins after the funds arrive and it takes on average 4-6 months from the time the funds arrive to deliver the assistance on the ground, especially when commodities are sourced regionally or internationally. Unforeseen supply chain disruptions can cause additional delays.

This largely matches what the interviewees told us. Out of the twenty families who had received food aid at least once, most of them had received a sack of flour and some bottles of cooking oil, with one or two, sometimes more, other items added.^[7]

I received aid four times in the past months. The first and second time, they gave me a sack of flour and a sack of wheat. The third time, I received a sack of flour and some yellow peas. This month, I received a sack of flour, yellow peas and five one-litre bottles of cooking oil. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband is away)

We received aid from WFP three times, with the same [aid distribution] card. The first time we received flour and salt, and the other two times they gave us flour, oil and 20 small packets of something that prevents malnutrition in children. – Former government employee from Badakhshan (extended family of twelve)

I received aid from WFP twice. Both times, they gave us a sack of flour and a five-litre bottle of oil. The first time they also gave us something for the children, to prevent malnutrition. – Teacher from Laghman (family of ten, with one son in Turkey)

We received aid once. In total, around 70 families in our area received [aid distribution] cards. They all received flour, oil and beans.– Muezzin from Balkh (household of four)

We received aid twice, a sack of flour and a bottle of oil. All the people [in our village] received it. – Teacher from Nuristan (household of nine)

I received aid twice. The first time I received a sack of wheat and some oil. The second time I received oil, a sack of flour and a small amount of lentils. – Labourer from Ghor (household of eight)

We received aid from WFP twice. Both times they gave us a sack of flour, 24 kg rice, a five-litre can of oil and 3.5 kg salt. – Former government employee from Paktika (extended family of fourteen)

The starting point of the assistance may vary per household, since WFP has been adding new beneficiaries each month. In terms of the duration, WFP had planned to provide monthly assistance to food insecure households for a period of eight or twelve months. This may, in practice, not materialise, due to funding shortfalls, issues with the availability or timing of resources, or possible reprioritisation based on overall levels of vulnerability.

Out of the twenty families in our sample who had received food aid between August 2021 and mid-February 2022, eight families had received aid once; seven families had received aid twice; four families had received aid three times and one family had received aid four times.

The woman who had received aid four times, had however been told that she had come to the end of the validity of her distribution aid card:

I received aid four times, once every month. But now my card’s expired. They told me my turn was finished and they’d given the new cards to our neighbours, even though some of them are rich and have big houses.… My other neighbour and I went to the provincial administration office recently to submit an aid request letter [arizeh], but they returned the paper and said it wasn’t possible. Now my name is not listed for any other future aid. I don’t know what to do. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband is away)^[8]

Another interviewee seemed to believe that people were listed – or possibly vetted – for each separate distribution:

I received aid from WFP, flour and oil, twice. WFP has again listed our name, but they haven’t contacted us yet. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)

Most households we spoke to, who had received aid cards, did not know how long the card would be valid for, or how often they would receive aid. This can probably be largely explained by the fact that funding uncertainties make it difficult for NGOs to make firm commitments to local communities, but it does add to a sense of insecurity and possibly a perceived lack of transparency.

Who had not received any food aid (yet)?

The sixteen interviewees who had not received any food aid (yet) could be divided into two groups:

• those who needed aid and often had proactively, but so far unsuccessfully, tried to get it – seven interviewees, or close to a fifth of the sample;
• those who indicated that the aid was not meant for them because they were better off than other people (or who simply had not commented on whether they needed the aid or not) – nine interviewees, or a quarter of the sample.

A former NGO cook in Kabul city, who had not been included in the neighbourhood’s food distribution (but whose family had received some food from an NGO that supported former government officials) blamed the system of beneficiary selection:

It is mostly NGOs and private [charity] organisations that distribute the aid. There is no problem with them; the problem is with the people who make the lists. For example, the wakil-e guzars don’t work honestly. They misuse their position and write the names of their relatives and people they know. There are families who are really needy, but who don’t get anything. And there are people who aren’t in need, who’ve received aid twice. It’s not done fairly. – Former NGO cook from Kabul city (extended family of fourteen)

A former mullah from Helmand described how in the end, all families in his area had been registered after the people had vehemently complained, but said that none of them had received any aid yet:

The staff of the NGO, together with the Taleban, came to our area once, but they registered only two families from four villages. When the people criticised the registration, saying: You registered only two families out of a total of 40! they promised to come back and register each family. And they did, but I haven’t seen any of these forty families receive any aid yet. I think aid is important. It’s very important, for those who can get it. But it’s useless for those who are only registered and who don’t receive it, or for those who aren’t registered at all. – Former mullah from Helmand (household now of six, after the recent death of his two-year old son)

Despite the fact that many of the interviewees believed the Taleban interfered in the process in favour of their own members and relatives, the one Taleb in our sample had not received any aid yet and had not even been able to register (his status within the movement is unclear). He told us:

So far, the NGOs have distributed oil, flour and lentils, but my family hasn’t received any. The commanders, area and village elders introduce people to the NGOs, but they haven’t introduced us yet. No one listed our name or surveyed our house. I went [to the NGO] and asked them to include us, but they told me to go and ask our local representative.… Out of ten beneficiaries who received aid, I think only one might be really needy. The rest are people who have wasita [connections] and most of them are already rich enough. Of course, the government plays a role in this corruption too. – Taleb from Logar (household of twelve)

A landlord from Kabul city told us he had voluntarily opted out of receiving aid. He was as critical of the process as those who had so far been involuntarily left out – something we also found in other interviews, as we shall explore below.

They distributed aid several times in my area: food items, like flour, cooking oil and beans, and also money. Someone, probably the representative of our area, came to my door one day and asked for my ID and phone number. My son called me and said they wanted to provide us with assistance, so I told him to thank them and tell them we weren’t deserving of it and that they should give it to the poor people instead. It’s the right of the poor people, but in reality those who don’t deserve it often get even more than the poor. – Landlord in Kabul city (household of seven)

Interestingly, one of the interviewees who in an earlier round of interviews in December 2021 had also told us he had opted out of aid, now said he had relented and received the aid that was offered, after all.^[9] This is a reminder that people’s situations, and perceptions of how much they can handle, can change over time.

II. The tension-ridden process of beneficiary selection and aid allocation

The part of the process that elicited the most consistent criticism was that of the beneficiary selection and, to a lesser extent, the aid allocation per district and village. The interviewees described a process in which the beneficiary selection was done by the NGOs with the help of local representatives, in particular the wakil-e guzars and wakil-e kuchas (heads of city neighbourhoods and street representatives) in cities and towns, village councils and village heads (qarya dars), and possibly also local mullahs, elders and commanders. In some areas, there also appeared to be a role for government officials, either directly in the beneficiary selection or in a more general capacity. Several interviewees described visiting delegations of local government officials that accompanied the NGO‘s staff. Others described how they had petitioned the governor’s office or other government departments in the hope of being added to an aid distribution list.

The interviewees’ complaints included favouritism and an unfair selection on the part of the local representatives, interference and corruption by Taleban officials and other members of the movement, and a failure to prevent, report or stand up to these practices by NGO staff. Several interviewees called for tighter monitoring and better management of the allocation, selection and distribution processes.

Because the interviewees may be describing processes that they do not have full visibility on, we asked WFP to describe the beneficiary selection and aid allocation processes to us. They are, in short, as follows:

At the central level, WFP draws up initial plans, including its provincial targets, based on the resources available, with the aim of assisting all those facing IPC (emergency) 4 and a percentage of people facing IPC 3 (crisis). Actual distribution plans are made based on vulnerability analyses at the district level which draw on WFP’s Integrated Context Analysis (taking into account the factors such as the impact of drought, mass unemployment, conflict, remoteness, lack of services, historical poverty and marginalisation). WFP uses this same process at the community level with the help of local stakeholders and partners who are considered to have knowledge and experience of the specific contexts and conditions of the area.

The individual household selection is done by a committee of key community stakeholders, that aims to be inclusive and representative, based on 13 vulnerability criteria.^[10] The vulnerability criteria for households include: headed by a woman or child; no adult male; dependency ratio of 9 or more; no adult male of working age or adult working women; headed by a person with disability, chronic illness, or elderly; poor asset holdings; residing with or hosting other households; living in emergency or makeshift shelter; relying only on borrowing, begging, or zakat; relying on casual labour by one member; no source of livelihood or income generating activities; one or more members having disability or chronic illness; referred by protection agencies; a pregnant breastfeeding mother and/or child under 5.

Cooperating partners, usually an NGO, are obliged to provide a list of committee members so that WFP monitors can verify that these people exist and have fulfilled the roles they were selected for. The committee’s preliminary beneficiaries list is verified by the cooperating partner, usually an NGO, through individual interviews and/or household visits. The process is followed by WFP staff who carry out spot checks, as well as a network of third-party monitors.

The beneficiary selection process as described by the interviewees

The interviewees’ description of the beneficiary selection process largely centred around the role of what WFP calls the local stakeholders and, to a lesser extent, the cooperating partners, or implementing NGOs.

In urban areas, many interviewees described a beneficiary selection process that seemed to hinge on the role of the wakil-e guzars (neighbourhood representative), who in a tiered system collected the relevant information from wakil-e kuchas (street representative) and passed it on to the NGO responsible for the distributions. Views on the exact role of NGOs in the beneficiary selection tended to vary. Several interviewees, like for instance this woman from Sheberghan, described how NGO staff carried out home visits to ascertain eligibility:

Our wakil-e kucha provided me with the aid card. He brought the observers to my home. They came and saw my house and kitchen. … Each month the [NGO] office gives out five new cards. They distribute the aid in turn, one village per day. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband is away)

Others, however, indicated that they believed the NGO staff simply let the wakil-e guzar decide the beneficiary list – for instance, this man from Kabul, who had not received any aid and had not been surveyed:

Since the international aid began, it has been given through the wakil-e guzar and the charity organisations. The local representatives each make a list of the people, with their phone numbers and ID card numbers, and give it to the wakil-e guzar, who gives it to the relevant municipal district and to the NGO that distributes the aid. Then the representative of the NGO contacts the people and asks them about their situation. Sometimes they check and survey their homes, but most of the time, they just call and then the wakil-e guzar selects the people. – Former gardener and taxi driver from Kabul city (household of ten)

Like many others, he believed that those selecting the beneficiaries favoured their own relatives.

Our family and the people who live close to us haven’t received any aid…. Out of 50 families, five were selected by the wakil-e guzar to receive aid. Then, in turn, another five families were selected. However, the wakil-e guzar and the street or area representatives try to select their own relatives and people who come from their own area. Those who are really in need don’t get anything. They’re even not on the list. – Former gardener and taxi driver from Kabul city

A student from Farah city told us that, although their home had been surveyed, the family had not yet received an aid distribution card.

They came and surveyed our house, several times, but we still haven’t been given anything. The last time they came was two weeks ago. They didn’t give us a card and they didn’t call us. They just took [the details of] our tazkeras. – Student from Farah city (extended family of fifteen)

She described her frustration that they had not been able to receive any aid, despite trying, while others who did not need it, were getting aid more than once.

I know the process is based on wasita because I’ve seen neighbours receive aid, even though they’re rich and aren’t vulnerable. No, they’re not with the Taleban; they’re just well off. My father talked with the wakil-e kucha many times and each time, the man told my father: “Just wait, we’ll give it to you.” But whenever the aid arrives, he tells us it’s already finished. Each time the aid comes, it’s supposed to be for five needy families on our street, but it’s given to the same families each time. And the cash donations that are meant for widows are given to girls who are still single or to women whose husbands are alive. The distribution process should be transparent and clear and aid should be given to the vulnerable, not to those who will only sell it in the market. But it’s not transparent, nor clear. They come and survey our houses and then give the aid to others. But what can we do? Even if we raise our voices, no one listens. – Student from Farah city

One of the interviewees, who himself was not in need of aid, described the problem in a more round-about way, by saying that he had talked to the wakil-e guzar in his own area in an effort to persuade him to act honestly and to direct the aid to those who need it (implying that the man is not doing that now).

In general, of the aid and donations that UNICEF and other international organisations distribute, at least 50 per cent isn’t given to the poor and needy. It is the wakil-e guzar and wakil-e kucha who have the responsibility to introduce people to the NGOs or to divide the aid themselves. In our area, the wakil-e guzar has a list of people according to their different economic levels.… I talked with our wakil-e kucha, because the situation is extremely bad. We have to act honestly according to what our religion has ordered. So I told him, it’s not good to include rich people in the list of the poor and needy. I think he’ll now try his best to divide the donations among the needy people. – University professor from Herat (extended family of twenty)

Others described the tensions within the community and the pressures the wakil-e guzars were under, and how that sometimes meant that poor people who did not advocate their case forcefully were left out.

Those who don’t deserve it also get assistance and they often get even more than the poor people. They quarrel with the wakil-e guzar and because he doesn’t want to stand up to them, he just registers anyone who quarrels. There are poor people who haven’t received any assistance, because they don’t want to quarrel. Actually, the assistance has spread violence and tension among the people. Sometimes people argue with the wakil-e guzars and sometimes they argue among themselves. – Landlord from Kabul city (household of seven)

One of the interviewees was a wakil-e guzar himself. He first described the process in general terms and then explained the difficulties he faced, since not enough aid was arriving in his community and many families would complain to him about the selection process. He clearly found his responsibility testing:

When the organisation came, they called me to come. They asked one tribal elder and one mullah from each mosque in our area. We all gathered in a mosque and shared the [details of the] population of our villages with them. I helped them and took them to see my area; they met the poor face-to-face and interviewed them. First, they listed the disabled, widows and orphans, and then they listed the other needy people.

In my guzar (area), where I prepared the list, we have 800 families and 11 mosques. So far, they gave aid to almost 60 families. When the distribution happened, the Taleban sent their observers to monitor the process. The NGO is still surveying and selecting beneficiaries. A few days ago, they called the people and took their biometric data for the next round. No one knows what they will distribute, because they don’t disclose that to anyone.

The way the NGOs distribute aid is problematic because they only help 10 per cent of the people. So when they leave, the people come to me and complain and say: “Why didn’t you give aid to us too?” All the people are poor and hungry, but the NGOs give aid to only a few families and then they leave. When the others complain, I have to tell them that I have no solution and can’t help them. It’s like that: if one person receives aid, the others will complain and be sad.

It has created a lot of discord. Some people link the process to ethnicity. They think the wakil-e guzars give aid to their own tribe and relatives, but in reality the NGOs do the distribution and the wakil-e guzar has no role or interference. It’s very difficult for us to make all these people understand how the NGOs operate.  – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)

Elsewhere in the interview, he had described how his own economic situation had been steadily deteriorating, as prices rose and his business floundered. The one distribution of food aid he had received had helped, but he would apparently not be given any again – precisely because he was a wakil-e guzar:

We received aid once: a sack of flour, oil and lentils, from WFP. It was good because it was at a time when we really needed it and it lasted for at least a few days. But they didn’t put me on the list for future aid because I am a wakil-e guzar. I told them to take my name, because I’m not rich and I need the aid, but they said it was their rule that they couldn’t do this for me. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)

In the rural areas, interviewees described a similar process, with lists of the village populations and vulnerable families drawn up by the village council and passed on to the NGO by the village council head. Several interviewees described how the staff of the NGO travelled to the area to survey the village:

We received the donation from an organisation that mainly works in the east of Afghanistan, I don’t remember the name, but they implement the WFP projects. They travel to different areas and villages to find needy people. When they came here, I told them that I needed help. They saw our house and gave us the card with which we could get the aid. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)

Although the selection process in the rural areas was sometimes described as more communal than in the urban areas, the criticism was similar. See for instance this former government employee from Paktika, who blamed those in charge for ensuring their own relatives benefited (even though he had also received aid twice):

The lists are drawn up by the local [village] council, in cooperation with the elders of each village, and handed over to the UN representative. Each village selects their families, depending on the number of people that live there. After they are selected, a card is made for them. Then, the organisation calls the people, in turns, to come to the district and receive the aid.

But the people who need it most haven’t been helped; in our area, we have ten families who are really starving [and who didn’t receive aid]. Aid is mostly given to the relatives of the Taleban and the local council and the village elders. They lie to the media and say: we helped the people who deserve it, but in reality it doesn’t reach them. People are living under the poverty line and are dying. We thank the countries of the world who are helping, but unfortunately the aid hasn’t reached the people who need it. – Former government employee from Paktika (extended family of fourteen)

Interviewees said they believed the amount of aid allocated per village or area was determined by population size, but the overall process was opaque to them and some of the interviewees alluded to controversies over possible manipulation, or bias.

Representatives of the institutions say: we take the list of your councils from the district and the province and divide the aid according to the population of the council. Based on that, the share of each council is determined, but I don’t know if this is exactly how it happens, or not. And sometimes there are controversies that this or that council was given a greater share. – Disabled shopkeeper from Daikundi (household of nine)

Others said they feared that the more remote areas were being overlooked, either due to discrimination or because it was simply a greater hassle to get there. A man from a remote village in Ghor’s Hazara-majority area, for instance, told us:

There have been other distributions in the district, but our village received help only once because it’s very far from the district centre. The aid is very good for the people, but the distribution is not fair. Employees of the NGOs do their own thing (khodsari mikonad) and don’t go to the remote areas. The local authorities are also not interested in a fair distribution and there’s no monitoring body. The NGOs always give good and excellent reports to their headquarters and donors, while the reality is different. If they had a monitoring section for the aid distribution process, I think the distribution would be more transparent. – Truck driver from Ghor (household of ten)

Several interviewees, like the truck driver from Ghor, said they believed that better monitoring mechanisms could make the distributions fairer and more transparent. We checked back with WFP to see what mechanisms were currently in place. They said that, in addition to the verification steps in the selection process described above, and the presence of monitors at distribution sites, there were several complaints mechanisms that allowed WFP to triangulate complaints about a particular targeting and selection exercise with the communities and cooperating partners. Families who feel unfairly excluded can, for instance, use community feedback mechanisms and the interagency AWAAZ call centre to complain.

However, not all people will know where to complain, not all complaints will be passed on, and in a programme this vast, with suspicions so widespread and access often precarious, it is unlikely that all complaints, or even most of them, can be followed up.

Community redistribution

In our interviews, we came across a specific practice of a community-level redistribution of aid. The interviewees who described the practice to us were all from remote Hazara-majority areas, but it is possible something similar may be happening in other tightly-knit communities as well.

Initially, the interviewees described the same beneficiary selection process as elsewhere.

It’s like this: representatives of the NGOs come and tell the chairman and members of the village council, “Based on the population and the list of your village council, we will give you so many aid distribution cards; you should introduce the most deserving people of your village.” Then the council gives them the ID card [details], according to the number of cards that were allocated. This is how the survey and identification of the poor is done. – Disabled shopkeeper from Daikundi

The difference however is that, in the end, everyone receives something, not just the people who were selected:

The village council had prepared the list of people who were in dire need of help. Whenever aid comes, the village council meets and divides the village residents into three parts: the poorest families who are put on every aid list; the families who are [also] deserving of help and; the families who are better off than the others. But in the end, they try to make it so that everyone receives some aid. Because everyone is poor, only the degree of poverty differs. – Former police guard from Daikundi (household of four)

The shopkeeper from Daikundi, who was quoted above, gave more details:

In our village council, we have a rule that if, for example, an NGO helps 30 people in the village, but we have 60 families, we will divide the aid for the 30 families among the 60. Whenever the aid is handed over and brought into the village, it is distributed among [all] the people of the village. Even though the NGO says that the card is the share of one family and nobody else has the right to that aid, the other residents don’t listen to them. Because the aid doesn’t reach everyone and there is always controversy over the distribution. – Disabled shopkeeper from Daikundi

Another interviewee from Daikundi told us that, although the redistribution was not fair to the poorest in the community, it was necessary to avoid tension and maintain village cohesion. This would, in turn, ensure that all villagers were able, and willing, to pay the new Taleban taxes, so that the village could avoid unwanted government attention and possible retribution.

After we receive the aid, regardless of how many poor people there are, it is equally distributed among all the families of the village. Of course, this is very cruel towards the poor, but they have no choice but to accept it. It was not like this before; it has only become like this in the last few months. Under the previous government, if someone was considered eligible and received aid, they wouldn’t have been willing to share it with anyone else. Now they have to, because if the aid is not divided, villagers may stop paying the government taxes and people are afraid of a quarrel with the government. So they have to come to terms among themselves. In my village, we have 30 families and whenever aid comes, everyone gets some of it, according to the general agreement. But it’s not a lot. I just got some flour. – School principal from Daikundi (household of five)

Such arrangements are most likely to take place, and be considered fair, within relatively homogenous or well-integrated communities that have a tradition of relative self-governance. There were allusions in other interviews to similar forms of community solidarity, but it was not clear whether this involved a similar systematic redistribution of aid.^[11]

III. Taleban involvement and interference

In the period shortly after the Taleban takeover in Afghanistan, discussions within donor countries often revolved around the question of whether it was possible to deliver aid to Afghanistan without dealing with the Taleban and how to ensure that the movement would not benefit from or be able to redirect the assistance. In practice, humanitarian agencies and NGOs need to, at the very least, engage with local authorities to coordinate activities and/or negotiate access, while upholding the humanitarian principles (impartiality, neutrality, operational independence and eligibility of assistance based solely on need). This is often a difficult balancing act.

The Humanitarian Response Plan has as one of the caveats to ramping up aid delivery that partners, usually NGOs, need to “have access to the affected population without any interference by the authorities.” At the same time, it mentions several incidents, including interference in the beneficiary selection “most likely as a result of attempts of de facto authorities to direct humanitarian aid to areas they deem to be more critical.”

What interviewees described to us ranged from the, possibly unproblematic, involvement of local government employees in aid allocation processes, beneficiary selection and aid distribution, to attempts or instances of outright interference and misdirection, as well as situations where the lines seemed blurred.

In some cases, interviewees seemed to indicate that the government employees were part of the aid allocation or community-based targeting process, as for instance described by a former NGO worker from Zabul, who himself had opted out of receiving aid because he said others needed it more.

The government, together with the NGOs, made a selection committee. The committee has representatives from the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA), the refugees’ department, different [technical] sectors, the provincial governor’s office and also from the community, such as the wakil-e guzar. – Former NGO staff from Zabul

A businessman from Baghlan told us:

Almost two months ago we received a sack of flour, oil and lentils from WFP. Their team came to the village and surveyed the needy and disabled; those who were vulnerable received coal, cash, and foodstuff. They coordinated with the department of rural development and the municipality, and were helped by the development councils. They took the list of the needy people from the department of rural development. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)

A teacher from Laghman described a similar process:

Seven people select the beneficiaries in the different villages. One person is from the organisation that distributes the aid, one from the national security service, one from the department of rural development, one from the department of agriculture and irrigation, and a few others. Together they travel to different areas to find the needy people. When they came here, I told them I needed help. They saw our house and gave us a card with which we could get the aid.

The Taleban are checking the organisation’s distribution process to see if it’s done honestly and correctly. Out of the seven people who are selecting the beneficiaries, six of them are Taleban government employees and only one of them is a WFP [NGO] worker. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)

Although he did not object, in principle, to the involvement of local Taleban/government officials, he criticised the fact that, in his view, the members of the selection committee manipulated the lists to make sure their own constituents were prioritised:

In villages where the families or relatives of the Taleban live, they call them first and include them in the list. For instance, if there are five families, they’ll say we have 20 families here, so that the five families are included in the list with the help of the Taleban who are there as observers. Then they also include five to seven other families from the village, so they won’t be questioned by anyone. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)

A farmer from Paktia blamed both the Taleban and the village maliks (heads) for favouring their own people. He suggested that a larger, more varied selection committee might be able to keep its members honest.

The UN provides the aid with the help of the Taleban and the village malik. There’s a survey going on now; they’re distributing cards to people. The head of the village prepares the list and gives it to the aid organisation. Then, a representative of the organisation, with a Taleb, goes from house to house to select the needy people. But they mostly select the people who are introduced by the Taleban and the head of the village. The people who are affiliated to them receive the largest share, because when the aid comes, the Taleban distributes it to their men and to the families who have lost members in the war. Poor people wait in line all day and don’t get help. Instead, we see people and vehicles belonging to the Islamic Emirate come and receive aid.

In my opinion, to identify the needy people, specific teams should go with the help of the elders. For example, a representative of the aid organisation, a representative of the Taleban and a representative of the village should go from house to house, in the presence of the imam of the mosque to correctly identify the needy and write down their names. It’s not fair when the malik makes a list, but then the aid is given based on the order of the Taleban. – Farmer from Paktia (household of twelve)

Several interviewees mentioned that they believed the Taleban was redirecting aid to their own people, however without providing details. For instance:

The humanitarian aid of the international community has been given to people who consider religion, region, tribe and ethnicity when distributing the aid. And some of them have committed corruption. … For the Taleban, the people who cooperated with them in the past 20 years are the most important. So they distribute the aid to their relatives and the people they know. Whether someone is a khan (landowner) or a poor man isn’t important to them. So the aid hasn’t been given to the needy, particularly not to the displaced people who came from other provinces to Khost. – Journalist from Khost (household of sixteen)

A few interviewees, from the more remote areas, mentioned instances of direct interference by local Taleban officials, including demands for money or aid, and attempts to influence which villages would receive assistance from NGOs. For instance, two interviewees from Daikundi said:

Very little aid arrives in our village, which is at the farthest point of the district, about 90 km away from the district centre. The aid that was distributed was very valuable to the people, but unfortunately, there was a lot of abuse in our district by those who were locally responsible. The Taleban gathered money from the shuras [councils] where aid was distributed for the second and third time, and kept it for themselves. They also took a share from the total aid, which they openly sold in the market. Nobody can say anything against it. – Teacher from Daikundi (household of three)

Of course, distribution of aid is very good if it’s well-managed, but unfortunately, it isn’t. Local employees of the Islamic Emirate interfere in the work of the NGOs and actively collect money from the people for themselves. Local employees of the NGOs, who are often Wardaki and Jalalabadi Pashtuns, don’t go to the remote villages very much, unless villagers bribe the district government officials. Then the officials force them to go to the remote villages. The NGOs are aware of this, but they keep silent and the local staff don’t report it to the foreign officials.

Corruption in the distribution of aid has become widespread. There is no authority to control the situation and people can go nowhere to complain; no one dares to say this Taleban official demanded or took a bribe from me. It’s as if the local officials of the Islamic Emirate are trying to devour the money of the Hazara people. It has become normal for them to take money under all kinds of pretexts. – Former government employee from Daikundi (household of ten)

On the other hand, one of the interviewees who described corruption in the distribution process said that not much had changed compared to the previous regime; the only thing that was new were the actors:

Both the government and NGOs provide aid in my area. But people say that if the Taleban distribute the donations, they don’t give it to everyone who needs it. For example, when the district governor receives cash to distribute among the people, he gives the money to his favourite people – his friends and followers. He doesn’t give it to the people who were in the previous government or army. I heard that one month ago he distributed cash donations of 15,000 or 20,000 AFS (170-200 USD) among his own people.

In the past, we [also] didn’t receive any aid or donations. During the previous regime, the aid distribution was the same as it is now; nothing has changed. The previous government also distributed aid among their own relatives and friends, just like the Taleban is doing now. There is so much aid and most of it isn’t distributed correctly. When the Taleban can access it, they even sell aid items because they don’t need them. Both now and before, during the previous regime, when the aid falls into the hands of a specific group, they never distribute it honestly. But if the people who need the aid actually receive it, of course a huge change can take place in their lives. – Teacher from Nuristan (household of nine)^[12]

A common refrain was the call for closer monitoring:

The international community should ensure that the donations are divided fairly, in a transparent way, in the presence of media representatives and civil society activists, so they can reach those in need. I think the international community should have full and direct control over the distribution of humanitarian aid to distribute it fairly to all provinces and not just to a particular class. ­– Journalist from Khost (household of sixteen)

IV. What the aid alleviates – and what it does not

It was clear from the interviews that the aid had alleviated real stress and suffering. For many, it had addressed the fear of or actual experience of hunger, at least for a short while, and several interviewees expressed gratitude and sense of relief.

I received aid four times, once every month. It was very helpful for me. I prayed a lot for those who gave me the aid. My husband is not here with us, and the aid enabled me to give some food to my children. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband was unsuccessfully trying to enter Iran in search of work)

I think these donations are the best thing in the current situation when most families don’t have food to eat. May God bless those who help the people because they have saved many lives. – Shopkeeper from Kunduz city (household of six)

I think the aid reached the people well and on time. Many families that I know in our village would not have had any food at all, if the aid hadn’t arrived. – Former police guard from Daikundi (household of four)

Two to three months ago, the situation was much worse. Everyone had lost their optimism and hope for the future because no one was receiving a salary. Now that the salaries are paid, people’s situations are better. And the aid that was distributed in the last three months changed people and had a positive impact on their morale. I can’t imagine what people might have done if the salaries hadn’t been paid and the aid hadn’t been distributed. The situation was so bad and was getting worse every day. – Former government employee from Badakhshan (extended family of twelve)

But even interviewees who clearly wanted to say something positive, probably for fear of sounding ungrateful or in hopes it might prevent the aid from stopping, often still hinted at tensions and problems:

The distribution of aid was very useful and important for the people and it reached them in a very good and timely manner. Although there are reports that the distribution of aid had its problems, the spirit of the aid was very good. – Local doctor from Daikundi (extended household of twenty-one people)

I didn’t receive aid from NGOs or the government because the aid is for the poor and vulnerable. In my area, I know 18 families that received aid; some received cash, others received food. Three of them were really poor; the other 15 families were rich people, some of them even had several shops. I think the distribution process is transparent, to some extent. Although rich people are also getting assistance, [at least] the poor are not left out. – Factory owner from Kandahar (extended family of ten)

Most of all, many interviewees commented on how the aid, though briefly helpful, was only a fraction of what was really needed, since it could only help some, and only for a while.

If we are speaking about emergencies, then yes, the aid helps. But overall, I don’t think this assistance will change the lives of poor people. It can save them from hunger for a few days, but it won’t benefit them longer than that. – Landlord from Kabul city (household of seven)

The people in the villages of Afghanistan are all in need. We could survey the people with our eyes closed and add all of them to the list because they’re all poor. They have no money, no shops and no businesses. They’re just waiting for spring and summer, hoping someone will ask them to work. The aid isn’t enough, both what they give to each family and the number of families that are listed. In my area of 800 families, only 60 received aid, which means that 740 families remain. Out of these 800 families, maybe 40 of them are rich, the rest are all needy. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)

Almost all people are poor here; if someone can pay for their winter food, he is the richest among us. If there was no aid, people could really die of hunger. So the aid helped everyone a lot. Some people had nothing to eat and now they at least have some food for one or two months. On the other hand, it’s not really enough. Families are big and there’s no income or work at this time of year. – Labourer from Ghor (household of eight)

Almost 95 per cent of people are poor in Afghanistan, so if the aid increased and each family received some, it would be so helpful. But it shouldn’t be corrupt, with one family receiving multiple times and another family not even once. I hope it’s done honestly, but I don’t think it’s transparent enough. And also, in general, it’s not enough: one bottle of oil and one sack of flour is not enough for a large family. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)

Finally, many of the interviewees hoped for the kind of aid that could create sustainable solutions, through jobs and livelihood opportunities, so they would no longer need to depend on donations.

I think the aid could be distributed in a better way. Now, the NGOs and international organisations buy the food from other countries for a high price and then distribute it here. They could create employment instead and provide salaries, or give people the aid in cash. Someone who is poor and needy will work for the money, but the way they’re doing it now the aid will be given to commanders and others. – Taleb from Logar (family of four)

I think the aid is not enough. And it’s not good that it makes people dependent. In the past 20 years, people received aid and they became used to it. Suddenly it stopped and now they’re in a bad condition. We shouldn’t wait for others to help us. If today they receive oil, wheat and flour, what will they do tomorrow, when it’s finished? We shouldn’t rely on short-term benefits. We should work on long-term solutions for our economic problems. – University professor from Herat (extended family of twenty)

If employment opportunities are provided, so people can earn money themselves, I think that’s better than this aid. Because the aid will make people into spongers, who will always have to wait for the help of others. – Psychosocial councillor from Sar-e Pul (family of seven)

Concluding remarks

This report, taking its cue from the people it interviewed, has explored the concerns that current processes may not ensure that food assistance is indeed reaching the people who need it most. At the same time, we don’t want to ignore the fact that over half of the interviewees had received aid – even in remote areas, and before the post-winter scale up – and that food aid is arriving in people’s homes in a significant way. This is a testament to the determination and hard work of countless NGO employees, community members, government civil servants and UN staff, often under extremely difficult circumstances.

The aid has clearly been important to the families and communities who received it. Many interviewees said they did not know how they would have managed without it. So it is concerning that the level of aid, in terms of quantity, duration and number of people reached, looks likely to be reduced as a result of funding shortfalls.

The findings of this report also point to problems, particularly with the beneficiary selection and, to a lesser extent, the aid allocation and the potential for capture, redirection and manipulation. It was striking how many interviewees talked about this without us asking. The aid distribution system is, in general, largely the same as it was before the Taleban takeover (even many of the actual individuals involved may still be the same, including some of the NGO staff, many of the local points of contact with the communities, and possibly even some of the local government officials, particularly the more junior and technical staff). What seems to have changed most of all is the size and scope of the operation and the fact that access has to be renegotiated and coordinated with the new authorities.

The implementation and monitoring of large-scale humanitarian aid in Afghanistan has always been difficult, even under the best of circumstances, but that does not mean that concerns can be ignored or set aside as minor issues of perception. Particularly, with a programme this size that had to be scaled up as fast as it was, it is likely that the monitoring and follow-up mechanisms have been unable to sufficiently keep up with the rollout.

The fact that the beneficiary selection leans heavily on local representatives – in particular the wakil-e guzars and village heads – seems to be both a strength and a potential vulnerability. While their close community relations provide local knowledge and a form of accountability, these ties can also leave them open to immense pressures and allegations of bias, favouritism and abuse.

It is, of course, not easy to determine from the interviewees to what extent the allegations are true. Distribution processes are often fraught and riddled with suspicion, especially when needs are so acute and widespread. Some of the complaints may be based on misunderstandings or generalised perceptions of unfairness and abuse, but in that case, it appears that greater transparency and clearer messaging, at both the local and central level – including on what people are supposed to receive, for how long and based on which criteria – could lessen the doubts and tensions.

It is also interesting to note how the reputation the Taleban may have had when they were still an insurgent movement, of being less corrupt than the then government, is now under pressure, as the movement seems to struggle – or is uninterested – to enforce discipline and accountability across its ranks.

At the national level, the Taleban government is seeking to formally increase its control over the aid delivery. In early May 2022, the Ministry of Economy announced the establishment of a committee to oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid, although it provided few details of what it would do. According to a prime-ministerial decree, dated 15 January 2022, provincial governors are now “barred from [allowing] aid distributions without coordination with the provincial ANDMA [Afghan National Disaster Management Agency].”^[13] Although coordination with ANDMA and other technical departments is in itself not an unreasonable request, the decree may embolden provincial governors and local officials to try to redirect or strong-arm the aid to their liking. It will probably continue to be a struggle for NGOs on the ground to stop engagement with and involvement by local authorities from veering into outright interference.

Fortunately, the fears of widespread famine that were raised last year did not materialise, at least not yet (although there are pockets, for instance in Ghor). The humanitarian food assistance definitely helped, as did the fact that the payment of government salaries restarted again, but it will in itself not be enough. Most of the people who received food aid continue to struggle to feed their families and meet their basic needs (see, in particular, this AAN report from March, where we discuss in greater detail how all the interviewees were doing economically when we spoke to them).

Afghans are resilient, determined and inventive, and they work hard to help themselves, and each other, but most communities are currently stretched far beyond their usual coping mechanisms and many people have depleted what reserves or options to borrow or sell they may have had. The current food aid allows them to feed their families, something at least, even if only for a short time, but Afghans desperately need their economy to restart, the government and its salaries to become dependable, and conditions for small businesses to improve.^[14]

 

Another wave of Covid-19 struck Afghanistan early in 2022 with doctors throughout the country reporting a rise in cases from January onwards. The devastation suffered by the Afghan health system since the suspension of most foreign aid following the Taleban takeover left it wholly unprepared to deal with the wave. While cases are now tailing off, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush and Thomas Ruttig (with input from Sayed Asad Sadat and Sayeda Rahimi) examine the impact of Taleban rule on Covid-19 reporting, assess the progress of vaccination campaigns and testing, and look at the many problems facing the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) as a result of the suspension of aid.

 

A very different MoPH under the Taleban

The fourth wave of Covid “is hitting Afghanistan hard,” the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned in late February. Doctors across the country confirmed the rise in cases to AAN. In Kabul, the 100-bed Afghan-Japan Communicable Disease Hospital was receiving between 85 and 90 patients daily in mid-February. According to several doctors at the hospital, around 80 per cent of patients were testing positive for the virus.[1] While numbers being tested have been extremely low, almost half the samples taken in diagnostic centres are showing positive results, according to the World Health Organisation quoted here. This, the IFRC said, indicated “an alarming spread of the virus.” Doctors at the Afghan-Japan Hospital said they lacked the means to identify the virus’s variety, but were almost certain it was the Omicron variant (see media reporting here). This wave came after the country had been cut off from foreign aid which had been supporting the health sector leading to the closure of many facilities. Meanwhile, just ten per cent of the Afghan population is fully vaccinated.

In spite of the rise in Covid figures, the MoPH under the Taleban has been reluctant to share information with the media and public about the pandemic, and when they do, there is generally a significant discrepancy between their reports and data from other sources. Given that the health sector was the area in which the Taleban retained the former Republic-era minister for longest (keeping Dr Wahid Majruh in place until 21 September while replacing all the other ministers immediately), this inertia has come as a surprise. It was thought that by retaining qualified health staff, the Taleban had understood the gravity of the health crisis (AAN reporting here). Indeed, the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan’s Reconstruction (SIGAR), in its regular quarterly report released in January 2022, had said that after the takeover, the Taleban authorities had “generally been supportive of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the provinces” and “endorsed the implementation of mosque-to-mosque vaccination efforts” in cities such as Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad. This was followed, according to SIGAR, by a national Covid-19 vaccination campaign launched by UNICEF and WHO to increase uptake and avoid approximately 1.9 million doses of available vaccines expiring on 16 October 2021. However, it is increasingly apparent that such efforts petered out. Certainly, when it comes to informing the public via the media, the Taleban now only share data via voice messages or video clips to a WhatsApp group for journalists once a week, if that.

The MoPH is led by acting minister Dr Qalandar Ebad,[2] appointed on 21 September 2021 (see AAN reporting here). He has appealed to people to protect themselves from the virus and to get themselves vaccinated: “According to Sharia, keeping yourself safe is a must. So please get Covid-19 vaccination to be safe from the virus,” he said in a televised broadcast on 29 January 2022 (see here). So far, however, other measures have not been forthcoming.[3]

Testing for Covid-19

Despite calls for people to ‘stay safe’, testing for the virus has drastically diminished since the Taleban takeover. Data as of 13 April 2022 indicates that of the almost milliontests carried out throughout the country since the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, only 185,690 (almost 20 per cent) of these had been conducted since the Taleban took power in August 2021.[4] This is at a rate of some 23,000 tests per month in the six months under the Taleban, compared to over 43,000 tests per month under the previous administration. The number of confirmed cases throughout the pandemic gives some indication of the severity of each Covid wave that has hit the country, with the third wave (in June 2021) seeing the highest number of recorded daily cases at 2,023 per day.[5] Since the Taleban takeover, the highest number of cases registered has been 992 per day (on 10 February 22). However, given the low number of samples now being analysed, it is likely thatthe realnumber could be much higher. This supposition is supported by WHO data, which indicates that almost half (47.85 per cent) of the samples collected have been positive.

During the first wave, there were 34 labs throughout the country able to process Covid-19 tests, AAN reported, with an overall capacity for testing 6,565 samples per day, although that level was never reached during the first two waves (the first wave in June 2020 and the second was in November 2020). It was only in spring 2021 during the third wave, that labs were examining more than 6,000 samples a day (AAN reporting here). Following the Taleban capture of power, the most samples examined in any one day has been 2,073. According to WHO, however, there are now 38 functioning Covid-19 labs across the country with a maximum capacity for analysing 10,250 samples per day. Although the number of labs analysing Covid-19 samples has increased, according to WHO, the number of daily cases reported has decreased. This indicates that fewer people are getting tested. Not a single case of Covid was reported throughout January or February 2022 in five provinces: Badakhshan, Jawzjan, Daikundi, Farah and Uruzgan. Other provinces have similarly reported very few cases in these two months.

Given the high positive rate when patients are tested, the low reporting of Covid indicates low levels of testing rather than low prevalence of the disease. In hindsight and according to official figures, the wave’s peak appears to have come in mid-February, when about 900 cases were being reported daily nationwide. By April, confirmed cases were noticeably lower: since 1 April, daily cases reported nationwide have ranged between 24 and 100. We spoke to hospital staff in three different provinces to get some idea of how the wave is tailing off.

From the Covid hospital in Lashkargah in Helmand province, Dr Massud told AAN they were still seeing between 10 to 80 patients every day. He thought numbers would be higher were it not for the opium harvesting season, which means many people are reluctant to leave their land. He said they were hospitalising at least three to four patients every day. On the day we spoke, 13 April, they had hospitalised 11 people, seven women and four men.

From Paktia and the 50-bed Covid hospital there, Dr Khaled said that, compared to the winter, Covid-19 cases had certainly decreased in the province. They were still seeing patients and currently had two in hospital with serious symptoms, but in general, they were advising people to stay home if they had mild symptoms because of their limited facilities – two labs, but a shortage of medicine.

In Kapisa, Abdul Mutaleb Hamed, who is in charge of the province’s Covid-19 hospital also said fewer patients with Covid-19 symptoms were seeking help. He estimated that seven in ten people in the province have been infected with Covid-19, likely the Omicron variant. His current concern is a lack of vaccines: there was still demand in the province, he said, but no vaccinations were available and he had asked MoPH about this.

Suspension of foreign aid means fewer hospitals open and a lack of equipment

The decrease in the number of people getting tested is linked to the breakdown of large parts of the health system since the Taleban took power, due to a halt in development aid. Among the clinics and hospitals that had to shut were around three-quarters of the country’s public Covid health facilities, although the number of Covid clinics closing is unclear, and accounts differ. In late December 2021, Pajhwok reported the MoPH as saying that, of the 38 Covid-19 clinics, 17 remained active and 21 were inactive “due to the financial crisis.” On 26 February, MoPH spokesman Jawed Hazhir confirmed this figure to AAN, saying there was one clinic per province in Kabul, Balkh, Ghazni, Helmand, Herat, Kandahar, Kapisa, Khost, Kunar, Nangrahar, Nuristan, Paktia, Panjshir, Parwan, Samangan, Wardak and Zabul. Those that had closed due to the financial crisis, he said, were in Badakhshan, Badghis, Baghlan, Bamyan, Daikundi, Farah, Faryab, Ghor, Jawzjan, Kunduz, Laghman, Logar, Nimruz, Paktika, Sar-e Pul and Uruzgan.

The IFRC has reported a much lower number, saying fewer than ten Covid-19 hospitals were functional and that they had been unable to keep up with demand. Al-Jazeera reported only five functional clinics in the country, saying that 33 others had been forced to close due to a lack of doctors, medicine and heating (see this Al-Jazeera report). WHO noted that out of the 11 that were active, nine were partially functional. Their January 2022 report confirmed the closure of Covid-19 hospitals in Logar, Bamyan, Daikundi, Badakhshan, Farah and two hospitals in Kabul, the Qasab 100-bed and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The foreign funding that does remain is a lifeline, but also only a drop in the water. The Pajhwok report said the main hospital in Kabul was funded by WHO, while those in Nangrahar, Herat, Helmand and Kandahar were funded by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). Both eyewitness and media reports from various provinces have confirmed that very few hospitals are still operational.

Zalmai, a resident from Khost, told AAN on 1 March that the Covid-19 section in their provincial hospital (still open in late February, according to the Taleban) was no longer active and there was neither medicine nor oxygen. Similarly, in Nimruz, the Covid-19 hospital closed for a period, as staff had not been paid; however the NGO, Cooperation and Humanitarian Assistance (CHA), had picked up the costs at the 20-bed clinic for two months, enabling the clinic to reopen on 20 March (see Hasht-e Sobh reports here and here). It said that this was a result of the US government allowing certain emergency transactions into Afghanistan again after 25 February when the US treasury introduced new waivers to US sanctions. In Ghor, CHA funding has dried up and while the main hospital is still open, doctors have not been paid since before the Taleban took over, according to the head of the Covid-19 hospital there, Muhammad Sharif Qazizada. There is no more medicine, he said, and two of its four doctors had left because they had not been paid. CHA told AAN in March that UNDP had reissued their contract to fund the Covid-19 hospital in Ghor after the Taleban takeover, but that UNDP had only provided funds for a month. In Laghman, the head of primary healthcare, Dr Muhammad Asef Safi, told AAN on 9 March that after their 20-bed Covid-19 hospital was shut down on 15 January due to a lack of funding, the number of Covid-19 cases started rising in the eastern provinces:

Covid-19 patients come to the central hospital of Mehtarlam because we have a lab there, but after diagnosis, they are sent to [the regional centre] Jalalabad for treatment because the hospital here does not have medicine or equipment. Also, after the [Taleban] takeover, the number of patients coming to public hospitals has increased, but there’s also no medicine or equipment. Staff members at the central hospital in Mehtarlam have not had any salary for the past six months.

Daikundi’s Covid-19 hospital, formerly funded through the multi-donor Sehatmandi programme, has been closed since December 2021. The deputy director of the provincial public health department, Dr Sayed Eshaq Hussaini, told AAN on 10 March:

There was a hospital built by funding from Ayatollah Sayed Ali Sistani in Daikundi [Ayatollah Sistani is a leading Shia cleric in Iraq, with many followers in Afghanistan. The hospital was inaugurated on 23 Saur 1399 / 12 May 2020]. It’s named Amir ul-Mumenin Hospital. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was allocated for [treating] Covid-19 and then, the [Afghan] NGO, Move Welfare Organisation (MOVE), started supporting it. Then, another hospital was built for Covid-19 patients in Daikundi. WHO provided a PCR machine for testing. However, now that hospital isn’t active. It’s been closed for four months. Staff have not received their salaries for four months either. Patients come to the central hospital in [Daikundi’s provincial centre] Nili. They have signs and symptoms of Covid-19, but the PCR testing and diagnosis [equipment] is not active.

In Badakhshan, the provincial director of public health, Dr Majdud ul-Hakim, told AAN on 8 March that the hospital in Faizabad had shut down:

Covid-19 cases have been on the rise since the weather got cold, but the hospital is not active anymore. It is because all services such as tracking Covid-19 cases and hospitalisation have stopped due to lack of funding. Patients refer to private doctors and get some medicine. There is a PCR lab in the provincial hospital, but very few people refer there. No one exactly knows the number of people infected with Covid-19 recently. Many people do not go to the public hospital because no service is provided to them.

In Bamyan, without donor support, the hospital would not be functioning. A doctor at Bamyan’s public hospital, Dr Na’im, told AAN on 5 March thatthe Agha Khan Foundation had been funding doctors and nurses to work with Covid patients. “The Covid-19 section has ventilators and oxygen,” he said, “but people have to buy medicine from pharmacies outside the hospital.”At the same time, said another doctor at the hospital, Azim Besharat, Bamyan’s capacity to take in Covid patients has been reduced. He told AAN in early March that there used to be 20 bedsallocated for Covid patients in Bamyan’s government hospital. This special ward has now been moved to a new wing, but only has ten beds. He said the Agha Khan Foundation had hired three doctors and three nurses. In Herat, MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) is supporting the Shahid Razi Covid-19 hospital in Guzargah, in Herat city and it is running as normal. In Kabul, the Afghan-Japan Hospital alone remains open for Covid patients, although doctors there said in March they had not been paid in five months (see here).

On 11 April, health officials in Faryab told Salam Watandar News that the 40-bed Covid-19 hospital there had closed. They said they had to close it because their salaries haven’t been paid for the past nine months.

Various organisations – WHO, NGOs and foundations – have stepped in to fill the funding and support gap for some hospitals around the country. Without that, there would be no operational Covid-19 treatment centres in Afghanistan at all. Some hospitals are only able to remain open because local staff are continuing to work despite not being paid in months. Moreover, according to WHO, the Covid-19 hospitals that are still active are facing other difficulties, such as shortages of food, fuel and other supplies. A doctor at the Esteqlal public hospital in Kabul, which had offered treatment for Covid-19 patients during the first, second and third waves, told AAN that the situation with hospitals in the city was “very bad.” Many doctors, especially women, he said, had left the hospital and that Covid patients were not being treated there anymore. An MoPH staff member told AAN: “You go, you work, but there is no food and no heating in this cold weather. Staff are not getting their salaries regularly either.” Raising concerns about the influx of non-professional officials under the Taleban, he said, “not only hospitals, but also the ministry looks like a mosque.”

Vaccinations

Thanks to donations from various countries, the number of vaccinations went up in Afghanistan after the Taleban takeover, but overall, they remain low. On 1 January, India donated half a million doses of Covid-19 vaccines and promised to send another half a million (though the second batch has yet to arrive). In December 2021, China donated 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, one of three million doses it said it would deliver to Afghanistan.

There seems to be a discrepancy between the number of people who have been fully vaccinated, according to Taleban and according to the IFRC. On 1 April, MoPH spokesman Hazhir in the video clip sent to journalists and also posted on his Facebook said that at least 8.5 million Afghans had already received the Covid vaccine and that the process was ongoing in 377 Covid-19 vaccination centres throughout the country (of which 16 are in Kabul). He said that since the Taleban came, China, Italy, Austria, India, France as well as the COVAX programme – a partnership between WHO, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and UNICEF  – have donated 4.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to MoPH. In addition, China, Asian Development Bank (ADB), India and COVAX have promised to donate 6.6 million more doses of Covid-19 vaccines by mid-2022.

Hazhir also said that before the takeover, 1,200 vaccination centres were open and active, but then due to lack of support, they were reduced. In a press release, however, the IFRC said that only ten per cent of the population (circa three million) was fully vaccinated (with either two doses of AstraZeneca or a single dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine). WHO statistics also show a substantial decrease in the number of Afghans currently being vaccinated. In its January 2022 bulletin, the humanitarian health cluster reported that in December 2021, 420,372 individuals had been fully vaccinated while the figure was at 115,739 in January, almost a quarter of December’s figures.

Despite an announcement at the end of February of a public health campaign being launched to promote nationwide vaccinations and the MoPH’s claim on 1 April that it had 2.8 million doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccines, 600,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines and 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca, there has been no campaign so far. Vaccinations are, however, ongoing in hospitals and vaccination centres.

Growing poverty, overburdened hospitals and limited awareness of Covid

The suspension of so much foreign aid has not only had a devastating impact on the country’s health system, but also on people’s livelihoods generally. Many can no longer afford private health treatment and must rely increasingly on government-run health centres and hospitals, which are both under-equipped and lack capacity. (Read AAN’s latest economic reports here, here and here ). The head of monitoring and evaluation at the Afghanistan Medical Council, Dr Khesraw Yusufzai, told AAN on 12 March:

After the fall of the former government, 90 per cent of the health facilities collapsed. Fortunately, the Sehatmandi project has resumed in all provinces. However, the national hospitals, as well as Covid-19 centres still have a lot of problems. Covid-19 cases, particularly of the Omicron variant, are on the rise, but there is no donor [analysing possible cases of] it. In addition, national [ie government-run] hospitals do not have any budget either. The government pays the salary for the staff, but you even cannot find a syringe at those hospitals. Patients have to buy everything from the drugstores.

Furthermore, many people simply cannot access Covid hospitals, even in the provinces where they exist, given that many live in remote areas and cannot afford transport to provincial centres, as a resident of Jaghatu district of Ghazni, Khatira Hedayat, explained:

A month ago, three members of my family got sick. They had symptoms of Covid-19, like fever, headache, coughing and a sore throat. There is only one clinic in our area, which doesn’t provide enough health services, so how can they take care of patients with critical conditions? We had to take my family members to Ghazni city, but there, also, the hospital doesn’t provide good services. We had to see private doctors and buy some medicine. Many people live in remote villages in districts of Ghazni and when they get sick, particularly if they are infected with Covid-19, financially, it’s difficult for them to go to the city for treatment.

Yet even without people pouring in from remote areas, hospitals are still overwhelmed. In Parwan, between 1,200 to 1,300 people are being referred daily to the only public hospital in the province, Hasht-e Sobh daily reported. According to the hospital’s director, Abdul Qasim Sangin, they only have the capacity to treat 300 to 400 patients per day. Paktia’s Covid-19 clinic is also buckling beneath the burden of so many daily referrals. Dr Khaled, who works there, told AAN on 1 March:

Because the Covid-19 hospital in [the neighbouring province of] Paktika is closed, patients come to Paktia for treatment. We don’t have enough capacity. We’ve asked the MoPH to send us Covid-19 diagnosing kits, but they’ve not sent them yet. We have two Covid-19 labs, but we’re faced with a shortage of kits. We don’t have enough supplies and medicine.

Given the difficult working conditions, patchy salary payments and many other issues (such as the ban on secondary education for girls), it is no surprise that the health system is losing professionals. Dr Yusufzai of the Afghanistan Medical Council pointed to this as a serious problem facing the Afghan health system since the Taleban takeover:

Our specialists and cadres have left the country. There are others leaving these days. If they cannot go to European countries, they can get visas and go to Pakistan and Iran. Every day I see hundreds of people at the gates of Pakistan and Iran embassies in Kabul. They get visas and leave the country.

Pervasive, widespread poverty has limited the public’s awareness of Covid-19 and its readiness to take precautions. Many Afghans have simply been preoccupied with very real daily difficulties, without the extra burden of having to wear a mask or keep their distance from others, as AAN reported in 2021 (see for example here and here). Women’s access to health has been particularly hampered by Taleban restrictions, although for many women, especially those living in rural areas, problems with access have just continued, before and after the fall of the Republic, because of poverty, cultural norms and previously, insecurity (see this 2021 special report).

The public health system under the Republic was already underfunded (see this AAN report). Many provinces only had basic health services. The system was not free as the law stipulated: many personnel charged fees for (scarce) medication, often sending patients to buy it from private pharmacies linked to or directly owned by them. The same was the case with clinics: doctors working in public hospitals that lacked resources used to refer patients to their own (better-equipped) private clinics.

Omicron does appear to be less serious than earlier variants with relatively lower mortality and hospitalisation rates, and while the vaccination rate in Afghanistan is low, the fact that many people have been infected previously will also give some protection.[6] Afghans reported to us that people generally had become less concerned about Covid, treating it as an ‘ordinary disease’ and were therefore taking fewer precautions to limit infections or get treatment. “Even if people have signs and symptoms, they just take medicine such as painkillers, but they don’t go to any clinic or hospital,” Abdullah said. He said people were more concerned about poverty. Muhammad Taqi from Mazar told AAN that people with symptoms did not bother going to hospital to be tested:

They only buy medicine from pharmacies. People don’t take Covid-19 seriously. They don’t maintain social distancing. They don’t wear masks either. They’re not afraid of being infected with Covid-19 and consider it an ordinary disease.

Similar sentiments came from residents of Kabul, Khost, Gardez and from Badakhshan, where Matiullah from Baharak district said:

I think a lot of people have already had Covid-19. Many people here have had a cough, a sore throat and fever, but they see private doctors and take some medicine. They don’t take Covid-19 seriously. They don’t wear masks. The Covid-19 hospital is not active anymore to test people if they have Covid-19 and provide them treatment.

The particular risk from the Omicron variant of ‘Long Covid’, when symptoms last longer than three months, is not yet clear, given its relatively recent emergence.

Conclusion

With Afghans struggling with a whole host of problems, given how the breakdown of the economy has exacerbated the already widespread poverty, it is not surprising that there has been less public attention to the still ongoing Covid pandemic. The lower risk to patients of the Omicron variant may also be playing a part in this. However, the Taleban administration’s response to the most recent wave has been unsystematic, at times even seemingly playing down its scope, with the slow provision of up-to-date, detailed information especially glaring. They are also lagging in reacting to a countrywide measles outbreak (more about this in a forthcoming AAN report).

The was a glimmer of hope in the qualified praise by UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, in her 2 March 2022 briefing to the Security Council in New York for “progress that we have been making with the de facto authorities on expanding the polio programme.” Cooperation on anti-Covid vaccination also indicates that the Taleban are capable of reacting to public health needs, but in other areas, there is still much that needs to be better.

The weak response to the fourth wave of Covid is also symptomatic of a much wider health crisis in Afghanistan, with women, in particular, facing particular problems since the Taleban cracked down on their ability to move freely including to health facilities. The suspension of foreign aid has had a devastating impact on the country’s already ailing health system, leaving fewer hospitals and clinics open. Those still running often lack the necessary medical supplies or equipment to deal with the pandemic or money to pay staff. With qualified medics fleeing the country, the outlook for the health sector is bleak. Despite efforts by NGOs and international agencies to provide stopgap help to a handful of hospitals around the country, Afghanistan’s healthcare needs are vast and immediate and will not end with the waning of this latest wave of Covid-19.

Edited by Emilie Jelinek and Kate Clark

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[1] A doctor at the Bamyan hospital told AAN, “Every day around 20 people are tested. If we were to test everyone, 70 per cent would probably be positive on Covid-19.” He said all 23 patients who had tested positive since 5 February, including 15 women had had to be hospitalised. At a Covid-19 centre in Paktia, a doctor told AAN, “We had 20 patients today, ten of whom were hospitalized in our emergency ward. This means Covid-19 cases are on the rise and we are already experiencing the new wave.” In Mazar-e Sharif, resident Muhammad Taqi said that at the beginning of March, “around two weeks ago, many people got sick. Everyone I saw told me that all his family members were sick. They had sore throat and cold. It is not clear if they were infected with corona.”

[2] According to his official bio on the MoPH website, Dr Ebad reportedly holds degrees from medical faculties in Jalalabad and Islamabad.

[3] The ministry has not responded to AAN’s queries, either via phone or messenger.

[4] Data received by AAN via the MoPH’s Whatsapp group under the Islamic Republic just a few days before the Taleban takeover shows that a total of 738,599 samples had been tested since the start of the pandemic.

[5] Figures were higher in the initial phase of the virus ( see this AAN report), with around 400 per day; the figure was at 290 per day during the second wave at its highest (on 24 November 2020) and during the third wave 2,203cases per day (on 17 June 2021,as per AAN’s previous reports on Covid-19 here and here).

[6] See research from Imperial College London, published on 17 March 2022, here: “After adjusting for a number of factors, the risk of hospital admission for Omicron cases was found to be less than half (59% lower) compared to the risk for Delta cases. The risk of dying was 69% lower for those with Omicron compared to those with Delta infections.” Vaccination, the research found, lowered the risk greatly, as did having previously been infected: “Having had COVID-19 previously also offered some protection, likely due to the immunity from a past infection: the risk of hospital admission was 45% lower for unvaccinated cases who had had a known past infection, compared to unvaccinated cases for whom the infection was their first.”

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This article was last updated on 19 Apr 2022