China’s willingness to partner with the Taliban undermines American efforts to influence the extremist group’s behavior through pressure campaigns and sanctions.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, in Kabul, Mar. 24, 2022. Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan“China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in September 2021, shortly after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan. Late last month, China reciprocated this enthusiasm by hosting members of the Taliban in addition to the foreign ministers from Afghanistan’s neighbors to discuss the Taliban-led country’s economic development and security.Beijing’s courtship of the Taliban only adds to instability in the region, challenging the U.S. and its allies to find new ways to deal with the combined threat.A week prior to the foreign ministers’ meeting, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, stopped by Kabul for discussions with acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. Conversations reportedly focused on improving Afghanistan’s mining sector as well as Afghanistan’s role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Wang is the most senior Chinese official to visit since the Taliban seized control of the country. His arrival in Kabul came one day after the Taliban faced robust international criticism for reversing its earlier pledge to allow secondary schooling for girls.China’s burgeoning relationship with the Taliban should come as no surprise, as improving ties has been a public goal of Beijing even prior to the U.S. withdrawal. In August 2021, after the fall of Kabul, China issued a statement saying it “respects the right of the Afghan people to independently determine their own destiny” and will develop “friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan.” Although China hasn’t yet formally recognized the Taliban, China’s rhetoric and continuing engagement suggest official recognition may not be far off. Beijing is pursuing two main objectives through its outreach to the Taliban. The first is assurance from the Taliban that they will mitigate threats posed by extremist groups that operate close to China’s borders. In particular, Beijing wants the Taliban to stop the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which supports Uyghur separatism, from expanding and potentially carrying out attack targeting Chinese interests in the region.Second, Beijing wants to protect the investments it has already made in Afghanistan and plans to make through programs like the BRI. Proposals by Chinese companies to extract and develop Afghanistan’s copper and oil deposits have been on hold for more than a decade due to political instability. With the United States gone, China hopes the Taliban can stabilize the country enough to resume these projects.China’s willingness to partner with the Taliban undermines American efforts to influence the extremist group’s behavior through pressure campaigns and sanctions. Beijing has directly lobbied on Kabul’s behalf, demanding that Washington return Afghanistan’s frozen assets, a step that would only weaken U.S. leverage. At the aforementioned foreign ministers meeting, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s statement called for more aid for Afghanistan and made no mention of the Taliban’s human rights record.Although Washington cannot stop China from working with the group, the United States and likeminded partners can take steps to mitigate China’s growing influence in Afghanistan.Specifically, Washington should seek New Delhi’s guidance in leading multilateral diplomacy, and developing political alternatives for Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan’s institutions are weak and threatened by the Taliban, Washington should follow New Delhi’s lead and support civil society organizations, businesses, and media alternatives to the Taliban both within Afghanistan and in the diasporic community.
To be sure, India has historically been reluctant to serve as the balancing power to China that Washington seeks in South Asia. Yet the Biden administration should understand India’s national interest in preventing regional dominance by Pakistan and China. A hostile Afghanistan supported by Pakistan and China would diminish India’s positive regional influence and further place New Delhi at the mercy of its rivals. China’s outreach to the Taliban also reaffirms the necessity for future conversations about mitigating Chinese influence in the broader Indo-Pacific as part of continuing dialogue among Australia, India, Japan, and America, also known as the Quad.
The Biden administration should also consider listing the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In 2002, then-President George W. Bush listed the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity (SDGT) to limit its access to the U.S. financial system, but the Taliban never appeared on the State Department’s FTO list. An FTO would be a stronger designation as it institutes a visa ban, requires U.S. banks to block the assets of the organization, and establishes criminal prohibitions on any U.S. person who provides the FTO with material support. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, Republicans in Congress introduced a bill arguing that the Taliban fit the criteria of an FTO and therefore warrant inclusion on the FTO list.
Yet the Biden administration has so far refused to add the Taliban to the list, likely fearing that such a step would undermine talks between Washington and Kabul. Given the Taliban’s continued rejection of international calls for reform, however, the White House should reconsider the value of talks.
Recent meetings between representatives from Beijing and Kabul threaten to subvert American interests for peace and stability in Asia. China’s actions undermine U.S. leverage and further legitimize the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan.
China’s Embrace of the Taliban Complicates US Afghanistan Strategy
Seven and a half months after they took power in Afghanistan, the Taleban have officially banned opium. Observers had been waiting to see if they would implement their promise to ban narcotics made shortly after they captured Kabul. The ban has come at the beginning of the opium harvest and at a time when Afghans across the country are already suffering under the strain of economic collapse triggered by the Taleban’s military capture of power. The cultivation of opium and export of opiates is hugely important for the Afghan economy as a whole and any implementation of the ban will have wide-ranging consequences, says AAN’s Jelena Bjelica (with input from Kate Clark) as they probe the Taleban’s possible motives for banning opium and the similarities between this ban and the one the Taleban implemented in July 2000 when they were last in power.
On 3 April 2022, the Taleban government issued the ban on opium and other narcotics:All Afghans are informed that from now on, the cultivation of poppies has been strictly prohibited across the country. If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated according to the Sharia law.[1]
If implemented, this ban will have far-reaching consequences. The production of opiates – opium, morphine, and heroin – is “Afghanistan’s largest illicit economy activity,” according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The agency estimated that the gross value of the Afghan illicit opiate economy in 2021 was USD 1.8 to 2.7 billion: the total value of opiates, it said, “including domestic consumption and exports, stood at between 9 to 14 per cent of Afghanistan’s GDP, exceeding the value of its officially recorded licit exports of goods and services (estimated at 9 per cent of GDP in 2020)” (see here).
Afghanistan has already lost most of its other foreign income in the form of on and off-budget support, both civilian and military, since the Taleban captured power. Banning the cultivation of opium and export of opiates would be another grievous blow to the economy. The opiates industry ultimately provides livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of Afghans, as well as possible revenue still to the Taleban if they carry on taxing farmers and traders as they did when they were an insurgent group.[2] The opiates industry support the stability of the local currency, the afghani, and provides a much needed financial boost to the country as a whole. Opiates are among the few real export earners in a country where imports dwarf licit exports, six to one.
Globally, in 2020, Afghanistan contributed some 85 per cent of global opium production, supplying about 80 per cent of all opiate users in the world, UNODC reported in its 2021 Annual Opium Survey, so a ban fully implemented over the long-term would also have major consequences for the world.
Announcing the ban
The ban came as no surprise to this author. Many observers had been waiting to see whether the Taleban would follow up on a promise, given at a 17 August 2022 press conference – two days after they took power – by Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed, that “Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country.”[3] He also asked donors to help with assistance for alternative crops. Also, given the Taleban are a movement of Islamic clerics, banning a narcotic crop should not be unexpected. See for example, the religious arguments and careful thinking they undertook before banning cannabis in areas under their control in March 2020. However, banning opium will hurt Afghans, including those living in areas which have often been more likely to support the Taleban. The domestic economic and political consequences of implementing this ban are potentially grave.
Despite Mujahed’s announcement of the imminent drug ban, Afghan opium farmers harvested and sold their opium crop undisturbed in 2021. Thanks to an increase in yield, the estimated 6,800 tons of opium harvested in 2021 was eight per cent more than 2020, even though less land had been sown with poppy – 177,000 hectares in 2021, down 47,000 from 2020, a decrease of 21 per cent, UNODC reported in its annual survey. “Production has exceeded 6,000 tons for an unprecedented fifth consecutive year,” UNODC said, adding that “this amount of opium could be converted into some 270 to 320 tons of pure heroin.”
The most significant change that came with the Taleban takeover was a hike in opium prices. Since 2018, the price of opium had remained relatively low, UNODC reported, because the international market for Afghan opiates had been “saturated, with little space to grow – unless more Afghan opiates are actively pushed into existing markets or new markets are established.” However, the hike in opium prices since mid-August 2021 was likely not a response to a change in the international opiates market, but a reaction to change of power in Kabul or what UNOC has described as a “perception of uncertainty.”
This price increase was an undisputed incentive for farmers to plant opium poppy again in the 2021/22 growing season,[4] as interviews with farmers from Kandahar, Herat, Farah, Laghman, Balkh conducted by AAN in late October 2021 showed. All mentioned the price hike and the Taleban’s silence on opium. In Kandahar, where prices for opium doubled and even tripled, a farmer from Kandahar explained the price rise: in 2020, he had got 30,000 to 35,000 Pakistani Rupees (USD 175 to 200) for 4.5 kilograms (equal to one man, an Afghan unit of weight) of raw opium; in 2021, he had got 60,000 to 100,000 Pakistani Rupees (USD 345 to 580) for the same amount. The farmer was also confident that he would be able to sow poppy again: “The Taleban have not announced a ban on the cultivation and trade of poppy so far, but the people know that they won’t forbid it, at least not this year.”
Some of our interviewees were cautious about their sowing choices for 2021/2022 and not only for fear of a Taleban ban, but also because of the general lack of water in the country caused by prolonged drought. Although the opium poppy is resilient and known for its drought-resistant qualities, ie it is a plant that does not need much water and can grow in desert-like conditions, this concern indicates just how scarce water had become. Still, most of the farmers we spoke to planned to sow their opium in autumn 2021.
Those farmers have now heard about the ban and may be relieved that it has, at least, come at the beginning of the harvest season (see footnote 3). This timing has lead to British expert on Afghanistan’s illicit drug economy, David Mansfield, among others, thinking this makes it “very unlikely [the ban] will be enforced this season” (see his Twitter thread on the ban here). It is likely only to be in the autumn, therefore, when farmers in poppy-growing areas are deciding what to sow that it will be clear how serious the Taleban are in enforcing this ban, and farmers in obeying it.
However, it is significant that the Taleban have chosen to ban this crop despite farmers already struggling to make ends meet, having been hit by drought, the damage wrought by conflict and the collapsed economy that followed their capture of power (and with it, the flight of most aid and military support and the newly-imposed UN and US sanctions on Afghanistan). This situation is remarkably similar to the first time the Taleban have banned opium when they were last in power.
The 2000 ban
The Taleban’s 2000 ban on opium was made in an edict by then leader Mullah Muhammad Omar on 27 July 2000. According to David Mansfield, it was the Taleban’s sixth attempt at banning opium. At the time, then head of UNODC research unit Sandeep Chawla praised the ban as “one of the most remarkable successes ever,” but later clarified that “in drug control terms it was an unprecedented success, but in humanitarian terms a major disaster” (see here).
At the time, the Taleban were under UN sanctions. UNSC Resolution 1267, passed in October 1999 (see this UN report), demanded that the Taleban turn over the head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, to a country where he had been indicted and that the Taleban cease providing “sanctuary and training for international terrorists and their organizations.” The resolution also cited the Taleban’s discriminatory policies against women and girls and Afghanistan’s production and trade in opium.[5] AAN co-director and then BBC correspondent, Kate Clark, said that it seemed that of the three issues the international powers were most insistent the Taleban address – bin Laden, women’s rights and opium – opium was the least difficult for the Taleban to take action on.
Mansfield thought the ban was driven by the Taleban’s desire for international recognition (it was only ever recognised as the legitimate Afghan government by three states, Pakistan, Saudi Arabic and the United Arab Emirates) and need for funds to assist a population affected by protracted droughts.[6] The lead economist responsible for the World Bank’s limited programme of work on Afghanistan at the time and subsequently the Bank’s country manager, Bill Byrd, writing in the 2004 World Bank report, Afghanistan’s Opium Drug Economy, attributed the ban to “a combination of [the Taleban] attempting to lever development assistance out of the international community, obtain official recognition as the government of Afghanistan from the UN, manipulate opium prices, and avoid international sanctions that were about to be imposed.” Many were sceptical that the ban would be enforced – a US government spokesperson said they doubted the Taleban had the “political will” to impose the ban – but as Clark and other observers found, the Taleban applied the ban vigorously; this was not just propaganda. It “was strictly enforced,” wrote Byrd, through a combination of religious messages, severe sanctions, threats, and promises that the international community would provide development assistance.”
The harm caused to Afghan farmers by the 2000 ban was profound. Those in debt found it difficult to survive the winter without the promise of an opium harvest and were forced to default or reschedule their seasonal loans.[7] Some had to resort to selling land and livestock and to even marrying off very young daughters to service their debt (see here). The opium ban was immensely unpopular in opium-growing areas and along with growing upset about the Taleban conscripting young men to fight their compatriots in the north, may have been a factor in the precipitous collapse of the regime the following year.
The ban’s success in terms of drugs control was also, ultimately, questioned. In January 2001, regional head of the previously-named UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Bernard Frahi, pointed to the huge stockpiles of opium inside Afghanistan. The ban on cultivation, he said, would only be felt once those stocks were exhausted, in three to five years, unless the Taleban destroyed the stocks. Speculation that the ban was actually intended to drive prices up was slammed by then Taleban Information Minister, Qudratullah Jamal, who told Clark the ban was there to stay. In the end, whether the ban would have lasted is debateable as the Taleban fell from power later that year. Their successor, the Islamic Republic, also ruled that opium was illicit, but was unable or unwilling to successfully eradicate it and replace it with alternative crops, meaning the Taleban ban on opium was effective for one harvest only.[8]
It is a fact that since the 2000 ban, opium cultivation has been on the rise in Afghanistan. According to the 2021 UNDOC report opium cultivation “has been increasing steadily over the past two decades, with an average rise of 4,000 hectares each year – albeit with strong yearly fluctuations.” After the 2001 slump, the area under opium cultivation in Afghanistan has also steadily increased compared to what it had been before the 2000 ban. In fact, it had doubled by 2007 and it increased almost fourfold by 2017 (see the table below).
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan 1996 to 2021. Data from UNODC annual opium surveys. Table by AAN.
The similarities between the situation in Afghanistan today and conditions back in 2000 are striking: severe drought, few or no countries recognising the Taleban government, sanctions, and a need for aid. The Taleban are again facing a demand to suppress opium production and export, but also the old demands as well: respect women’s rights and human rights, and stop supporting international jihadist organisations, al-Qaeda and others. The political risk for the Taleban of implementing the ban could also again be high, given that it would take away the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in rural areas. For farmers then as now, cultivating opium is a trusted option in uncertain times. It is relatively drought-resistant; relatively easy to sell – traders come to the farmer’s door; it preserves very well, so is useful as capital or savings and; it is an annual crop which does not need the investment of planting an orchard. (To see what farmers growing food crops in Kandahar, an opium-growing province, are up against, see our latest report on their struggles to survive.) Given that most opium fields require additional paid work force at time of harvest that is labour intensive, it is a crop that also benefits the rural landless and poor.[9] There are other differences, as well. Opium is far more extensively grown than it was in 2000 and any implementation of the ban would be much more widely felt. Whereas in 2000, the Taleban had come to power in many of the opium-growing areas with barely a fight, and only implemented the ban after having been stably in power for several years, this time, they have taken power after fierce and bloody battles; the conflict ended only recently and they have moved swiftly to announce the ban. The population is also greater than in 2000, so landholdings typically have to support more people (opium is, in general, an excellent crop for bringing income to families even on small landholdings). All this means that, although there are many parallels with 2000, the politics feel very different this time and the economics of households and the nation even more precarious.
The timing of the edict does mean that, unless the Taleban want to start destroying harvests and stockpiles, they have some time to consider or reconsider this ban. Indeed, Mansfield has suggested in the same Twitter thread, it may be an attempt to recast the political debate “to distract from the things the Taliban government doesn’t want to talk about – girls education & human rights”:
An effort to put pressure on the international community to respond to what will be portrayed as the Taliban’s act of ‘altruism’ – banning drugs used by others: a favour to the world. To press the donors for recognition, provide development assistance and lessen economic sanctions.
Such a tactic did not work for the first Islamic Emirate. Although the Taleban did get some narcotics funding, they also got additional sanctions. The first Emirate did secure USD 43 million in counternarcotics funding in 2000 thanks to the opium ban (see Mansfield, page 129), but it did not save the regime from further sanctions: the UN Security Council imposed additional measures (UNSC Resolution 1333) in December 2000 (see this New York Times report). In 2000/2001, the presence of al-Qaeda on Afghan soil was more important for the United States and other international actors than the opium harvest. In 2022, the banning of secondary school education for girls seems to be the totemic issue, embedded as it is in wider concerns about restrictions on women’s rights, the often violent curbs on a free media and on dissent and reprisal attacks on activists and former members of the security services. If the Taleban wanted to distract from the schools issue, the edict may fall flat. Moreover, especially given the Republic’s failure to curb opium cultivation, production and trafficking despite several billions of counter-narcotics aid dollars spent,[10] the issue may not even be one that donors want to dwell on. Moreover, the edict came less than a week after an international pledging conference in London raised USD 2.44 billion of a 4.4 billion UN appeal to help alleviate the dire humanitarian need in the country. As a tactic to persuade donors to give more money, it was strangely timed.
If the first Taleban ban taught us anything about their political rationale, as Mansfield rightly points out, both opium bans witnessed so far have been used as barging chips rather than well-thought-out policies. As was the case in 2000, this decree was introduced without apparent previous planning or long-term thinking. This is very different, it seems, from the internal decision-making taken by the Taleban as an insurgent group over banning cannabis in areas under their control in March 2010 when they took time to meticulously develop the religious arguments and careful thinking beforehand. Also noticeable, however, was that they only implemented the ban initially in some areas and not the major cannabis-growing provinces, as if in fear of a backlash farmers and traders. (See this AAN report on the Taleban 2020 cannabis ban).
The other side of the ban
The new edict also prohibits the use of drugs. There are between one and two million Afghans who regularly use alcohol and other drugs, including pharmaceuticals, for non-medical purposes, according to the two most recent national drug use surveys carried out in 2009 and 2015.[11] In recent years, the use of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine has also increased. UNDOC 2020 data shows that in 2019 about 12 per cent of people aged 13 to 18 years of age (14 per cent of the boys and 8.5 per cent of the girls surveyed) reported using a substance, including alcohol, at least once in the past 12 months.
Shortly after the Taleban took power, they embarked on a campaign to round up drug users (see here and here). In Kabul, this meant raids on places where users gather such as the Pul-e Sukhta bridge in west Kabul (see this AAN report from 2015) The drugs users were taken to ill-equipped drugs treatment centres. In October 2021, the London-based daily The Independent reported the situation in one treatment centre:
The men are stripped and bathed. Their heads are shaved. Here, a 45-day treatment program begins…. They will undergo withdrawal with only some medical care to alleviate discomfort and pain.… The hospital lacks the alternative opioids, buprenorphine and methadone, typically used to treat heroin addiction.
The regime change also made it more difficult for drug users to find drugs, as one man in the Pul-e Sukhta area told AAN in October 2021: “I can’t buy any drugs. The Taleban treat us badly. They don’t let us sleep anywhere. They burn our tents and beat us.” He said the street price of drugs had also gone up since August:
I used to buy one small pack (about 6 grams) of opium, enough for two or three doses for 100 afghanis (about USD 1.30 based on the exchange rate before the takeover). Now, we buy it for 200 to 250 Afghanis (USD 2.27 to 2.80 based on the current exchange rate). A pack of chars (cannabis) used to cost 50 to 100 afghanis (USD 0.66 to 1.33). Now, it goes for 200 to 300 afghanis (USD 2.27 to 3.40). Everything is expensive now.”
An increase in the street price and scarcity of drugs was expected, given the increased risks to those selling it. However, it is noteworthy that this happened immediately after the Taleban takeover, before any ban on using drugs was officially announced. This suggests that the Taleban’s strict and vigorous enforcement of previous bans – when they were in power in the 1990s and those introduced in the areas under their control when they were an insurgent group – was vividly playing on people’s minds (see this AAN report on the Taleban 2020 cannabis ban).
It is self-evident that this edict, if implemented, will cause harm to many Afghans dependent on illicit drugs industry. It will put even greater pressure on farmers and labourers already struggling to survive economically, and further dehumanise drug users put under compulsory and brutal treatments. Whether it brings much goodwill from Afghanistan’s donors, however, seems doubtful; their concerns about Afghanistan’s opium cultivation is, for now, eclipsed by the Taleban’ ban on older girls going to school, their restrictive policies on women’s rights across the board and attacks on media freedom and the right to dissent.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
The full text of the Taleban leader Amir al-Mumenin Haibatullah Akhundzada’s decree prohibiting poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is available here. English translation from Al-Emarah website below:
As per the decree of the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), All Afghans are informed that from now on, the cultivation of poppies has been strictly prohibited across the country.
If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated according to the Sharia law. In addition, usage, transportation, trade, export and import of all types of narcotics such as alcohol, heroin, tablet K, hashish and etc., including drug manufacturing factories in Afghanistan are strictly banned. Enforcement of this decree is mandatory. The violator will be prosecuted and punished by the judiciary.
↑2
As insurgents, the UNODC study estimated, the Taleban earned around 160 million USD from taxing opium cultivation, production and trafficking in 2016. This is equal to 5.4 percent of the total gross value of the Afghan opiate economy (3.02 billion USD in 2016). Overall, UNODC said that insurgents taxed an estimated 56 per cent of the opium harvest in 2016. In addition, over 100 million USD were collected from taxing manufacturing and trafficking. Similarly, the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee report estimated the overall annual income of the Taleban (drugs and other sources) in 2016 at around 400 million USD; half of which, it said, was likely to have been derived from the illicit narcotics economy (see this AAN report).
↑3
See the full transcript from the press conference here. Zabihullah Mujahed told the media on 17 August:
We are assuring our countrymen and women and the international community, we will not have produce any narcotics. In 2001, if you remember, we had brought narcotics content production to zero in 2001, but our country was unfortunately occupied by then and the way was paved for reproduction of narcotics even at the level of the government – everybody was involved.
But from now on, nobody’s going to get involved, nobody can be involved in drug smuggling. Today, when we entered Kabul, we saw a large number of our youth who was sitting under the bridges or next to the walls and they were using narcotics. This was so unfortunate. I got saddened to see these young people without any faith in the future. From now on, Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country but it needs international assistance. The international community should help us so that we can have alternative crops. We can provide alternative crops. Then, of course, very soon, we can bring it to an end.
↑4
The winter opium poppy is planted in October/November and harvested in April/May. The spring and summer seasons, mainly in the south, are short from April to July and July to September, respectively.
↑5
The resolution also cited the Taleban’s breaches of International Humanitarian Law and the capture by the Taleban of the Consulate-General of the Islamic Republic of Iran and murder of Iranian diplomats and a journalist in Mazar-e Sharif in 1998.
↑6
See David Mansfield, A State Built on Sand: How Opium Undermined Afghanistan. Oxford University Press, 2016.
↑7
From 1994 to 1999, farmers had an estimated average annual gross income of 1,500 US dollars per hectare; by 2000, their earnings had fallen to about 1,100 US dollars, close to what they would have made from cultivating legal crops which, at the time, amounted to around 900 US Dollars per hectare (see this 2002 UNODC study on the Afghan opium economy). In 2002, as a direct consequence of the Taleban 2000 opium ban, the average annual income for farmers rose to about 16,000 US dollars per hectare. The average plot in opium-growing areas was less than a third of a hectare in 2002, generating an annual income of about 4,000 US Dollars for a farmer at harvest and about 500 US dollars for a labourer.
↑8
Bill Byrd in the World Bank report cited above summed up its impact:
Although production slumped, the flow of opium out of Afghanistan did not diminish. Border and consumer prices remained high, while producer prices shot up…. The eradication campaign pauperized many farmers, and led to them incurring considerable debts which they are still repaying. The action effectively benefited the very interests that a war on drugs should first combat – the criminal trafficking interests (whose large holdings of opium inventories multiplied in value) and their political networks
↑9
Additionally, given that the new ban also prohibits “the usage, transportation, trade, export and import of all types of narcotics,” a significant number of Afghans working in the booming methamphetamine industry would also be left without a source of income. The decree does not mention methamphetamines by name, although it does cover “all types of narcotics such as alcohol, heroin, tablet K, hashish and etc., including drug manufacturing factories in Afghanistan.” The methamphetamine industry in Afghanistan has been expanding rapidly in Afghanistan since 2015, as this 2020 report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction found. This omission of methamphetamines by name could just be oversight or a function of the speed with which the edict was written, or the Taleban maybe unaware of the size and importance of the industry.
↑10
The US government alone from 2002 to2017 allocated approximately 8.62 billion US dollars for counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan. “This included more than 7.28 billion US dollars for programs with a substantial counternarcotics focus and 1.34 billion US dollars on programs that included a counternarcotics component,” the report on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found.
↑11
UNODC attributes the use of drugs in Afghanistan in part to self-medication “for treatment of physical ailments (common cough, cold, acute and chronic pain, etc) as well as in case of psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, depression or trauma” due to a lack of access to adequate health care across the country.
The New Taleban’s Opium Ban: The same political strategy 20 years on?
When the Taliban took over Kabul in August, like millions of other Afghans, it came as a shock to me. Within the first days of their rule, the office of Daily Outlook Afghanistan newspaper, where I worked as a journalist, was closed and a number of my colleagues decided to leave the country immediately.
One of them, Alireza Ahmadi, whom I had worked with for four years, lost his life trying to do so. On August 26, he went to Kabul airport to get on an Italian military flight to Rome, but fell victim to a suicide bomber of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) who blew himself up in a crowd of Afghans waiting to be evacuated.
When I learned of his death on social media, I went numb and burst into tears. His death made me lose my peace of mind. I kept imagining the same fate for myself.
In the following months, I continued trying to find a job in the hope of remaining in my homeland. I did some reporting for foreign media but failed to find a permanent job. Working as a journalist was never safe in Afghanistan but under the Taliban, it became extremely difficult. Media outlets were shut down one after the other; journalists were beaten up and tortured; and the freedom we used to have to go out and report was clearly gone.
Unemployment and lack of security made me think of leaving the country and Iran seemed like the only immediate option I had.
On January 25, I and two friends set off to travel to the Iranian border. The plan was to apply for a master’s degree in a third country, such as Turkey or Germany, and then try to get a visa from their consulates in Iran. If that did not work, we planned to look for an informal job in Iran.
And so we joined the mass exodus of Afghans, who, driven by job loss and starvation, have been leaving the country en masse. When we reached Islam Qala border crossing, there were hundreds of people trying to cross the border. Men, women and children were standing in long queues with heavy suitcases, waiting to have their passports stamped and luggage scanned.
Afghans crossing the borders has turned into a lucrative source of income for Iran, as getting a visa costs between $87 and $130. It is issued for a maximum of three months and to renew it, one has to pay again. Afghans also have to get a COVID-19 test in order to be allowed to cross, which costs about $10.
We were lucky that day: it took us five hours to pass through border security and passport control; we had heard that the process can take up to two days, depending on how crowded the border crossing gets.
Once we were on Iranian territory, we travelled to the city of Mashhad. On our first day there, we visited the Shrine of Imam Reza, a holy place for Shia people, and had breakfast in a nearby restaurant. As we were getting up to leave, an Iranian man, a customer of the restaurant, said, “Oh, thank God you did not carry out a suicide attack!”
I could not believe my ears. It was painful to hear such acrimonious words from a fellow Muslim.
In the following days, I heard a lot of stories from other Afghans about how they had been treated with disrespect. There seems to be little recognition that Iran, too, has been involved in Afghanistan’s conflict in some ways and is not just a passive host of Afghan refugees.
Currently, there are some 3.6 million Afghans in Iran, but just 780,000 have received refugee status. The vast majority of them live in poverty and struggle to survive, earning the bare minimum through backbreaking labour. Among them are many educated Afghans who taught at universities, worked for NGOs or the state bureaucracy.
I am one of them.
After spending much money in Iran, I started searching for a job as a manual labourer, as working an office job is not really an option for Afghans in Iran, even if they have the qualifications. I have to worry now not only about my expenses, but also about the fee for visa renewal, which I have to pay every 45 days and which can cost as much as $100 if I use a middleman to facilitate it.
Meanwhile, I am also waiting for a response from the Turkish consulate in Mashhad. When I arrived, I tried to apply for a student visa after getting accepted into a private Turkish university and paying the admissions fee. It took a month just to be able to submit my documents, as many Afghans were also lining up to do the same.
Now I have been told that I need to wait a few more months for an answer to the visa application and that the chance of getting a visa is very low, given the great number of Afghans trying to enter Turkey.
I feel lost and in despair, as I struggle to survive in Iran. I had hoped that I would be able to find a well-paying job and send money back home but I have failed. My heart hurts every time I think of my two little daughters and the goodbyes I said to them a few months ago. Wiping their tears, I had promised to send money, so they could have a comfortable life.
Talking to my family has been tough. They complain of struggling to make ends meet, as food prices are skyrocketing, and persistent insecurity, as explosions continue to take place. One day, the Taliban came to search our house and looked through my books and personal belongings, allegedly searching for weapons.
Like many Afghans in Iran, I face a terrible dilemma: to stay in the country and continue to struggle with poverty, destitution and constant insecurity over my legal status; to return to my country and face starvation and violence; or to risk my life and embark on a dangerous journey to the West.
I realise that by now, for much of the world, we, Afghans, have become faceless numbers, statistics that UN officials blurt out while warning of impending doom in Afghanistan. But we are not. Each of us has a story, worth hearing, and a life worth living in dignity and safety. We do not deserve to be forgotten and ignored.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
An Opinion Video investigation reveals the Taliban have been on a campaign of revenge killings against former U.S. allies.
By Barbara Marcolini, Sanjar Sohail and Alexander Stockton
Ms. Marcolini is an investigative journalist. Mr. Sohail is the founder of the Afghan newspaper Hasht e Subh Daily. Mr. Stockton is a producer with Opinion Video.
Link to video: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/12/opinion/taliban-afghanistan-revenge.html
When the Taliban swept into Kabul last year and reassert
ed control over Afghanistan, they suggested that their rule would be kinder, less extreme and more forgiving than it had been the last time they were in power.
Taliban leaders insisted they would be merciful toward those who had opposed them, declaring a general amnesty for former government workers and members of the nation’s security forces. For some, they even wrote letters of guarantee that they would not seek revenge against their old adversaries.
“We are assuring the safety of all those who have worked with the United States and allied forces,” the Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said during the group’s first news conference after retaking control of the country last August.
But in the Opinion video above, we show that the Taliban’s promises were hollow, with grave import. The video, the product of a seven-month investigation by the Opinion Video team of The New York Times, reveals that nearly 500 former government officials and members of the Afghan security forces were killed or forcibly disappeared during the Taliban’s first six months in power.
Confirmed killings and forced disappearances by the Taliban
We built the most extensive database of revenge killings in Afghanistan to date using a variety of verification methods that included conducting forensic video research, confirming local news reports, collaborating with human rights organizations and interviewing survivors and family members.
The revenge killings were widespread, touching every region of the country, shattering families and communities, and giving a lie to the Taliban’s promises of tolerance and moderation.
After initially denying that such killings were occurring, the Taliban leadership has come to acknowledge some of them, though has insisted that those acts were the work of rogue commanders and not an authorized campaign.
But the number of killings, and their ubiquity, might suggest otherwise. So would their ruthlessness, including summary executions that were captured on video and are included in our short documentary above. We argue that the United States can still do a lot more to help its former allies — many of whom remain in hiding — find a way to escape the country.
Be forewarned: These are deeply disturbing images to watch. But they also provide key insight into the character of the Taliban and highlight the dangers that the group’s critics still face.
The Taliban Promised Them Amnesty. Then They Executed Them.
The school I worked in has been forced to close. Our dreams are shattered and we urge you, people of the west, to help
I am a woman living in Kabul and I am a teacher. Until eight months ago, I was one of the staff at The City of Knowledge (COK), an educational centre that helped women go to university and pursue the careers of their choice. Through my work, I witnessed the ambition and hope of many women in my country. Since the Taliban came back, our life has drastically changed. We are like moving bodies without souls. Our dreams, and the knowledge we could have had, are shattered.
I always believed life was a progression, but I have seen in the past few month’s my country’s rapid regression to the middle ages. Before, women and girls were still taking tiny steps towards a better future. Now, just going to school has become an unattainable dream for hundreds of thousands of them.
Our lives were far from perfect before the Taliban returned to power. Every day my young students risked their lives to get to schools and tuition centres like ours, which were targets in the war. But the moment the girls entered the school, they bloomed – despite the bloody attacks outside and a dire economic and security situation, I could see their hopes for fruitful careers as doctors, engineers and lawyers.
But with just a stroke of his pen, US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the US “peace agreement” with the Taliban, threw us into a dark pit of ignorance, terror and brutality within a matter of hours.
A few months ago, the Taliban pledged to reopen girls’ schools. Unsurprisingly, they are now backtracking on that commitment. Women cannot work or leave their homes without a burqa, they cannot laugh, wear makeup or heeled shoes, they cannot be with a man who is not their mahram (father, brother, husband or son). They cannot go to school or university.
As a teacher, I dreamed that my students would become Afghanistan’s future doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, artists and technical experts, inspiring countless others to do the same. With the Taliban once again in complete control of our country, our school has been forced to close. Many of my fellow teachers have fled our country, fearing for their lives.
I remember telling my students the news. Some of them said: “Is this not our right? Is it a crime to seek education? For god’s sake, billionaires are going into outer space and we are not even allowed to attend a school!” The west has played a horrible game with our country over the decades. I think it is the biggest crime against humanity to never let a country progress. The US and its allies handed our already battered motherland over to a bunch of criminals and terrorists, and it is women and girls who are paying the price now.
Afghanistan is far from free, so the responsibility to help push for change in our country falls to those outside our borders who have the liberty and means to raise their voices.
Ultimately, the policies and approach the US and other western powers have towards the wellbeing, equality and empowerment of women worldwide will only change if the people of their countries demand it. And so my message is for you, the people in the west, who elect these governments. You have a moral obligation to accept more refugees from Afghanistan and other countries, and to increase aid to organisations working for the empowerment and protection of women in the world’s most dangerous places.
If the politicians currently in power are unwilling to take these steps, it is imperative that western populations take action to replace them with leaders who will. You have the power to elect your representatives, we do not. As a woman living in Kabul, I urge you to show your solidarity and courage and to support and stand with us. Help us empower women and girls once again.
The author is a former teacher at the now closed COK, an education centre in Kabul for girls and women supported by the charity V-Day. Her name has been changed to protect her security
The girls I taught in Kabul were Afghanistan’s future. The Taliban has taken that away
Farmers across Afghanistan have been hit hard by drought and fighting in recent years. In this report, we look at how this has affected agriculture in one province, Kandahar, famous for its fruit production. Much of the fruit crop is – or should be – exported, yet the frequent and unpredictable closure of crossings into Pakistan has been an additional headache for farmers and exporters in the province. Those trying to dry and process food crops in Kandahar’s industrial park have also been hit by its collapse since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taleban. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon has been hearing from farmers and others about the woes affecting Kandahar’s agricultural economy.
Agriculture is the backbone of Afghanistan’s economy, accounting for 44 per cent of all jobs in the country overall and more than half (52.6 per cent) of jobs in rural Afghanistan (see Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey (ALCS) 2016-2017: Analysis Report here). While agriculture’s share in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been on the decline, down from 30 per cent in 2007 to 22 per cent in 2016, the sector has remained an important source of livelihoods for rural communities and plays a critical role in determining the price of basic food items on the domestic market, according to the 2016-17 ALCS. Afghanistan’s agriculture has again risen in importance now that many other sectors of the country’s aid-dependent economy have collapsed. (see AAN’s reporting on the economy here, here and here).Kandahar province has long been viewed as one of Afghanistan’s agricultural hubs. The provincial economy is heavily reliant on farming, with around 45 per cent of the workforce engaged in the sector in 2007, which according to the World Bank, is the only year for which this data is available (see here).[1] Kandahar’s main export products — grapes, pomegranates and figs — are grown in Arghandab and Arghistan districts in the north and northeast of the province, respectively (in particular pomegranates), Panjwayi and Zheray in the west and southeast, respectively (especially grapes) and Shah Wali Kot, the northernmost district bordering Uruzgan and Zabul provinces (mainly figs).
Its famed fruit accounts for a large part of Afghanistan’s total fresh and dried fruit exports, according to the director of the Fresh and Dry Fruits Association of Kandahar, Haji Nany Agha (see Pajhwok report here). In the Afghan solar year 1398 (2019-2020), the head of the province’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Haji Nasrullah Zaheer, told Pajhwok news in February 2020, Kandahar exported 168,000 tons of dried and fresh fruit with an estimated value of USD 198 million. This, he said, was despite the 2019/20 harvest having been badly affected by fighting and drought.
However, agricultural productivity in Kandahar has been weakened over the long term by recurrent droughts and poor water resource management. Over the past two decades, droughts have forced farmers to dig deeper wells in search of precious water to irrigate their farms and orchards, costing them thousands of dollars and depleting underground water resources. One farmer, Esmatullah, told AAN that only those who had saved considerable sums of money from the sale of their fruit in previous years could afford to invest in digging deeper wells. The past two years of severe drought meant tens of thousands of acres of rain-fed land, mainly in Daman, Khakrez and Maiwand districts, did not have enough water to grow heavily water-dependent crops, such as wheat and melons. (See AAN’s report on the effects of drought and global warming in Afghanistan here).
Years of fighting over territory between the Taleban and the former government forces and its international backers have also made it difficult for farmers to tend their fields and orchards and left them struggling to transport their produce to markets. All were severely affected in the last round of fighting that intensified in November 2020 (see reporting here), with a Taleban offensive that was beaten back by Afghan government forces with the help of US airpower, but resumed and continued until Kandahar city fell to the Taleban on 13 August 2021.
In addition, protracted closures of the Spin Boldak/Chaman crossing into Pakistan have hit farmers hard. These closures led to large-scale spoilage as fruit-laden trucks were left waiting in the hot sun. When the crossings were open, delays in processing and inefficiencies in customs clearance procedures pushed up the costs of doing business for exporters.
A final threat affecting Kandahar’s farmers and food exporters has been the dire problems facing Kandahar’s industrial park, where fruit drying and packaging and animal feed production take place. Agro-industry accounts for more than 90 per cent of manufacturing in Afghanistan, as a whole, according to the 2014 World Bank Report Revitalizing Agriculture for Economic Growth, Job Creation and Food Security, and depends on domestic raw materials. However, similar to other areas of activity in the manufacturing sector, over the long run, agro-industries have faced barriers to growth, including a lack of reliable electric power, rural road networks and transport facilities, working capital and access to industrial land. Since the change of government in August, the Kandahar industrial park has nearly collapsed, with factory owners forced to cease operations because of a lack of electricity. Many factory owners, not just those dealing with agricultural produce, are considering moving their businesses abroad to Pakistan and Iran.
This report will look in turn at how the conflict, border closures and the collapse of the industrial park have hit agriculture in Kandahar. It begins with a scrutiny of the toll taken by the conflict on farming in several districts, especially Arghandab, and at what could be done to improve matters now the conflict is, at least for now, over.
The conflict’s toll on one district: Arghandab
The Taleban’s November 2021 offensive came in the middle of what is many people in Arghandab a crucial time, the pomegranate harvest (October to January). It is also when farmers prepare and irrigate their fields for the coming year. Several residents told AAN the Taleban had pulled back after farmers warned them the population would rise up against them if people were not allowed to work their land, although US airstrikes were also reported as the cause of the Taleban’s withdrawal. However, in December, just as farmers were starting the critical task of ploughing their fields and fertilising their orchards, the fighting started up again. By early February, residents told AAN that the Taleban had captured around 90 per cent of Arghandab district and were steadily progressing. Fighting then moved on to other districts such as Panjwayi, Zheray, Maiwand and Shah Wali Kot.
According to residents, in April, government forces again drove Taleban fighters out of the district. On 4 April, the government declared that it had cleared the entire district but warned that the Taleban had planted thousands of mines that could pose a danger to returning populations. A local journalist told AAN that mine clearance operations were slow because the demining agency apparently needed prior permission from the Taleban. The slow pace of mine clearance hampered the return of the area’s residents and made it difficult for farmers to harvest their crops and tend to their land. Moreover, after the brief ceasefire agreed between the government and Taleban to mark Eid-ul Fitr (13-15 May), the fighters resumed their attacks.
During the fighting, even though it was sporadic and only sometimes intense, many houses were destroyed and orchards damaged, and crops and the harvest harmed. There was large-scale displacement. A resident of Arghandab told AAN that only those who did not have the means to leave or wanted to stay to protect their houses and orchards remained in the district. One farmer told AAN that due to the severe fighting, displacement and water shortages, the district’s farmers had been unable to grow their traditional crops of maize, pulses, peanuts and vegetables, such as radish and okra, in 2021. Shortages of irrigation water had been caused by fighting in Shah Wali Kot, where the province’s only large dam, Dahla Dam, is located. It regulates the water flow of the Arghandab River which irrigates not only Shah Wali Kot and Arghandab, but also five other districts, Zheray, Panjwayi, Dand, Daman and Maiwand. Drought meant there was less water in the dam, and by the time it had increased to allow for irrigation, the Taleban had captured the dam and stopped the flow of water; this allowed them to cross the river when they needed to.
By May 2021, Kandahar’s farmers were fed-up – they needed to irrigate their crops. They sent a delegation to the Taleban to ask for water to be sent to their districts. At the time, the Taleban were again being pushed back from Arghandab district and the government was planning an offensive in Shah Wali Kot. The Taleban told the delegation they would allow the river to flow on the condition that the government refrained from starting its operation in Shah Wali Kot district. Finally, after about two months of negotiations led by the Zonal Water Management Authority, an agreement was reached between tribal elders and the Taleban and water from the Dahla Dam was finally allowed to flow to the province’s parched fields and orchards.
For many farmers, this was too late. They tried their best to save the harvest, but yields were much lower than normal (see Pajhwok reporting here and here). Abdul Khaliq, an experienced pomegranate grower, told AAN that when pomegranate orchards are not watered on time, a long period without water followed by water can cause the pomegranates to burst. Esmatullah, a farmer in Arghandab district, told AAN that because of the damage to his harvest, he was only able to sell his pomegranates for half the price of what he had been able to sell them for in the previous year:
When the orchard needed to be watered and sprayed, we couldn’t do it because of the fighting. We were displaced to Kandahar city and there were mines on all the roads to the district [so we couldn’t reach our fields]. We didn’t spray the orchard. We couldn’t take care of it and water it on time. This is why the pomegranates burst and burst pomegranates sell for very little in the market.
The effects of heavy fighting on farming in other districts
Arghandab was not the only district in Kandahar that saw intense fighting. In early 2021, people from Panjwayi, Zheray and Shah Wali Kot fled the violence, seeking refuge in Kandahar city. It was a crucial time in the farming calendar when Kandahar’s farmers irrigate their fields and spray their orchards for agricultural pests. A farmer from Panjwayi district, Nur Muhammad, told AAN that because of the fighting, he and many others in his district suffered a serious income loss:
I usually get around 800,000 Pakistani Rupees (around USD 4,500) every year for my grapes, but I made only 150,000 Rupees (around USD 850) this last year. The grapes were very good in the beginning, but because of the fighting, I was unable to spray and water my vines on time. The grapes either dried on the vine or were spoiled by pests and disease.
There was agreement for the Taleban to cease their attacks in May 2021, brokered by tribal elders. That would have allowed Panjwayi farmers to work their land and water their orchards, wheat fields and vegetable crops. However, a Kabul-based journalist from Panjwayi district, who asked not to be identified, told AAN that the Taleban violated the agreement and government troops responded in kind.
By mid-June, the Taleban had captured three districts, Maiwand, Ghorak and Khakrez. By early January Mianashin, Shor Abak and Panjwayi districts had fallen. The strategic district of Spin Boldak – where there is a major customs office managing exports to Pakistan – fell to the Taleban on 14 July, and Dand, the district nearest Kandahar City, fell two days later. A month later, the government lost Zheray, Takhtapol and Daman districts (all 13 August) and finally, after experiencing a month of fierce fighting, Kandahar City became one of the last holdouts to fall to the Taleban, also on 13 August, a day before the Taleban entered Kabul (see AAN reporting on the fall of districts to the Taleban here).
In addition to destroying or damaging orchards and spoiling wheat fields, the conflict also caused damage to homes and raisin-drying ‘houses’. Gul Ahmad, a farmer in Zheray district, detailed his losses: his vineyards and three raisin houses valued at 500,000 Pakistani Rupees (USD 2,800) were destroyed and the money he earned from selling his grapes was much lower than in previous years – not enough to repay his loans. He said he still owes USD 2,000. Many other farmers in Zheray district, he said, “couldn’t collect even a single sack of wheat – they’d been unable to water or harvest it” because of the heavy fighting.
How to recover now peace has come?
The Taleban takeover of Afghanistan brought an end to the fighting, but many farmers are still struggling to cope with the heavy losses sustained in 2021 and wonder how they will manage to plant and bring in a harvest in the coming year. There is hope that relief in the form of international support to Kandahar’s farmers could be on its way. Agriculture has been identified as one of the sectors prioritised for assistance and the United States Department of Treasury General Licence 15 allows for “the exportation or reexportation of agricultural commodities” to Afghanistan (see GL 15 here). The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has already contributed USD 65 million to the FAO to “provide crop and livestock inputs, including wheat seeds, fertilisers, to help 150,000 smallholder wheat producing families (see here).
On 1 February, the FAO Representative in Afghanistan, Richard Trenchard, visited Kandahar to assess the needs of farmers and met with provincial governor, Muhammad Yousuf Wafa. Trenchard said that before the fall of the Republic, FAO had supported the agriculture sector in 14 districts in Kandahar and there were plans for the organisation to resume operations and expand them to all the districts. He said FAO would begin with five or six projects to build check dams and clear canals (see Ariana News report here).
The severe drought that has plagued production over the past two years is set to ease this year, with winter rainfall fuelling hopes of recovery. The Dahla Dam is nearly full and farmers hope to use it for irrigation. Many farmers have also planted crops in rain-fed fields, including in Daman, where Najibullah Khan told AAN farmers had planted wheat. Another farmer in the same district, Muhammad Akram, said people were ploughing and preparing their land to grow melons. The rise in the water table, he said, would allow farmers to irrigate their melon fields using solar-powered well-pumps. In Panjwayi district, Samiullah reported that the water table was now higher than it was last year at this time and people had planted wheat and were watering their orchards.
Samiullah also said that farmers were also hedging their bets by planting opium poppies. Poppy cultivation has increased in Panjwayi this year, he said, because farmers were hoping that more water for their fields would mean a strong poppy harvest. They also think that an anticipated ban on opium cultivation by the Taleban, as they did when they were last in power in the 1990s, would increase market price and profits. In a Kabul press conference on 17 August, their first since they took power, Taleban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said: “From now on, Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country but it needs international assistance.” He urged the international community to step in with assistance for alternative crops (see the full transcript here). As anticipated, an official ban on opium cultivation was decreed by the Taleban on 3 April 2022.
Closed crossings … and rotting fruit
Afghan traders have long complained of the adverse effects of frequent border closures on their ability to export agricultural products to Pakistan. Afghanistan’s trade routes to Pakistan, as well as India and other international markets through the port of Karachi, are vulnerable to crossing point closures, particularly during crucial post-harvest periods, when delicate fresh fruit is susceptible to rot in unrefrigerated containers which can wait, sometimes for weeks, at crossings. The focus of this report is how border closures harm those growing and exporting food crops. The impact on imports is just as import and although outside the scope of this report is touched on in an annex.
The closure of official crossings often linked to political squabbles or security concerns have ailed trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan for years. For example, for several weeks in 2016, crossings at Torkham in Nangrahar and Chaman in Kandahar were closed in response to “several deadly attacks across Pakistan in mid-February” (see this Diplomat report) and tensions over Pakistan’s plans to build a fence at the Torkham crossing, which escalated into a gunfight between border guards (see Al-Jazeera here). In August of the same year, the gate was shuttered again after a group of Afghan youth, reportedly celebrating the country’s independence day, vandalised the border post and burned a Pakistani flag (see RFE/RL here).
In another high-profile incident, the Spin Boldak/Chaman gate closed in 2017 after a battle erupted between Afghan and Pakistani border forces. The fight was triggered by a registration process carried out by Pakistan on Afghan soil in Luqman and Jahangir villages of Spin Boldak. Although the battle lasted less than two days, the gate remained closed for 23 days (See AAN report here).
Even when customs offices are open, poor infrastructure and processing systems often mean long delays and high costs associated with exports. Fluctuations in Pakistan’s import policies also periodically interrupt trade (see, for example, here and here). In an international metric of the cost of doing business, the World Bank 2020 Doing Business Indicators, Afghanistan ranked 177 out of 190 countries and received a score of 31 out of 100 for trading across borders; export processing (completing all required documents and clearing customs) in 2020 took an average of 276 hours (compared to an average 127 hours in South Asia) and costed USD 797 (compared to an average USD 468 in South Asia).
According to the 2017 World Bank report, these difficulties at official crossings, together with a lack of sufficient infrastructure such as cold storage facilities, serve as a disincentive to traders who often opt to export lower value non-perishables such as raisins instead of higher value perishables such as grapes (see here). It cited delays at customs checkpoints as one of the main barriers to trade:
Such closures increase spoilage of perishable commodities and thereby reduce incentives for farmers to grow and trade perishables. Traders are also prone to losing contracts for the supply of nonperishable commodities that have been voided by late delivery. For instance, one trader reported that the “closure of Torkham border … delayed for 20 days my loaded vehicle [shipment of almonds and pistachios to India] and as a result of which the deal with the Indian importer was terminated because of late delivery.” Another firm reported that “it lost US$150,000 because its shipment of apples and grapes spoiled due to closure of Waga port.”
Over the years, closures at Spin Boldak have exacted a heavy toll on Kandahar’s agriculture sector, with estimated daily losses of USD three million, according to Zubair Motiwala, chairman and president of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which he said had left “hundreds of stranded goods trucks loaded with fresh fruits, vegetables, poultry and other edible items” to rot at the gate in 2017 (see VOA report).
There are bilateral agreements between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but so far, they have failed to make exporting more reliable and efficient. These include the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) which aims to “facilitate [the] uninterrupted flow of transit trade between the two countries” as well as bilateral accords reached in the Pakistan-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Forum which was held during the two-day visit of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan to Kabul in January 2021.
In 2015, Pakistan was Afghanistan’s main export destination,[2] but by 2019, India had overtaken it, with a share of 47 per cent or USD 410 million. Pakistan was pushed to the number two spot with a share of 34 per cent or USD 298 million (see here). The increase in exports to India was largely thanks to a bold move in 2017 to establish an air corridor between Kabul and New Delhi, which improved access to the lucrative Indian markets for Afghan farmers and their perishable produce (see here). As a result, exports of Afghan fruits and nuts to India nearly doubled from USD 114 million in 2016 (the year before the air corridor was established) to USD 232 million in 2019. Pakistan logged USD 82 million worth of imported Afghan fruits and nuts in 2019, about the same as it had done in 2016 (USD 84 million). While there were hikes in the value of Afghanistan’s export of fruits and nuts to Pakistan in 2017 ( USD 158 million) and 2018 (USD 131 million), these figures were well below the value of the same exports to India in the same period which stood at USD 225 million and 215 million respectively.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic further confounded political efforts to keep the customs checkpoints open to trade. Pakistan closed the Spin Boldak/Chaman crossing on 2 March 2020 (see here). It did not re-open for six months (see here) and continued to sporadically close to trucks and pedestrians as new waves of the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in early 2021. Pakistan closed the gate again on 14 July 2021 when the Taleban captured the Spin Boldak crossing (see here). It briefly opened for a few days on 14 August after two rounds of negotiations between the Taleban and Islamabad (see here), but closed again in early September after clashes broke out and several people were injured in a stampede as tens of thousands of Afghans tried to flee the country (see here, here, here and this video).
In Kandahar, many were hopeful that the takeover of the Taleban, a close ally of Pakistan, would herald a new era of genial relations between Kabul and Islamabad and bring unremitting closures at Spin Boldak to an end. Those who had managed to bring in a harvest, despite the fighting and drought, were optimistic that they would be able to get their produce to market in Pakistan and beyond. Their hopes soon faded and optimism gave way to frustration as the gate remained largely closed for several months (see here and here). When it finally did open on 2 November, it was too late to save most of the harvest. The extended closure also led to clashes, as the thousands of Afghans trapped behind closed gates began to protest, demanding Pakistan and the Taleban re-open the gate.
Pakistan closed the Spin Boldak gate again on 24 February 2022 after clashes erupted between the Pakistani and Taleban forces at the border, following Pakistani attempts to repair a damaged fence along the Durand Line (see VOA Deewa Radio report). “Both sides blamed each other for starting the clashes that later spread to several nearby villages,” reported Reuters. “Two civilians were killed and 22 wounded on [the] Afghan side, a local Taleban spokesman Mohammad Asif Hakimi said. Five Taleban soldiers were also wounded…. Pakistani officials said several wounded includ[ing]four security officials,” Reuters reported. According to reports from Kandahar, the crossing was reopened after the Nawruz holiday (21 March) to trade traffic, with the two countries agreeing on temporary licences for lorry drivers to facilitate the transit of goods (see Tolonews here).
Ongoing disputes over the siting of the border itself have stymied negotiations between the Taleban and Pakistan. In October 2021, a Taleban official, Rahmatullah Naraywal told the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) that negotiations were underway and looking promising (see Etilaat-e Roz report here). However, according to another unnamed local source cited by Etilaat-e Roz, negotiations broke down after Pakistan insisted that a barbed-wire fence it has constructed along the Durand Line remain in place for nine years, a demand that, given the controversy over the Durand Line among Afghans of all political stripes, the Taleban government rejected.
The ongoing controversy about border closures has exposed existing fault lines. Pashtun nationalist politician and former Pakistani senator in the Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Afrasyab Khatak, for example, has slammed Islamabad on ethnic lines for closing the gates. He told Khabaryal newspaper in 2020: “In addition to terror-lordism, Pakistan is economically murdering the great Pashtun nation” (see report here). Several farmers whom AAN spoke to echoed similar sentiments; they also accused Pakistan of using the closures, particularly during the harvest season, as a tool to exert political pressure on successive Afghan governments and a way to try to weaken the country’s economy.
On the ground, the closures hit farmers hard. Haji Nany Agha, the head of Kandahar’s Fresh and Dry Fruits Association, reiterated to AAN how this year the closing of the Spin Boldak gate fell right in the middle of the grape harvest (July to October). As a result, fresh grapes either spoiled in the trucks as they were waiting for the gate to open or were left to spoil on vines by farmers who did not even bother to pick them.
The owner of a large vineyard in Zheray district told AAN that his grapes had made him 2,000,000 AFS (around USD 11,500) in profits last year, but in the 2021 season, he had only earned 100,000 AFS (around USD 570). He blamed the closure of transit routes for the losses. There was no fighting in his area and he was able to bring in the harvest as usual, he said, but Spin Boldak closed in early July and he had had to send his grapes to Pakistan through Abadini, a crossing point in the Shamulzai district of Zabul province that leads to the Killa Saifullah district in Pakistan’s Balochistan. However, this was not an ideal option; for one thing, Abadini is far from Zheray and without refrigerated trucks, much of his harvest rotted during the several days-long journey. For another thing, the cost of transporting his grapes using this route was much higher, eating into his profits.
In October 2021, with the country’s banking sector paralysed, trader Jalalulrahman from Kandahar told the London-based Financial Times that “his latest consignment of lorries carrying figs and raisins took eight days to cross the Wesh-Chaman border with Pakistan, instead of the usual two hours” (see here). He commented on the difficulties traders face as a result of the collapse of the banks:
“There is no transfer of white [legal] money to banks…. Half of our money is blocked here in the banks and half is back with our customers in India…. We still try to export just to survive, but there are too many problems.”
He said the only alternative to banking was the region’s ‘underground’ hawala system, in which informal money transfers are arranged through a network of dealers. However, his customers were hesitant to use the system, which is illegal in India and Pakistan.
The impact of the near-collapse of Kandahar’s industrial park on agriculture and food processing
Kandahar’s industrial park also suffered the ill effects of the fighting, recurrent closures of the Spin Boldak crossing and the country’s sudden change in fortunes. Many factories were forced to cease business activities as electricity supplies became increasingly expensive and unreliable and raw materials (such as for poultry feed and packaging) harder to source. The impact of its collapse is wider than just on agriculture, but as it has been so important for processing crops, it is included in this report.
Kandahar’s industrial park, established by the Karzai government, is located in the Shur Andam area along the Kandahar-Spin Boldak road. The Ghani government had plans to further develop the area by establishing a fire brigade, a hospital and paving the roads. These plans, however, did not materialise – only one kilometre of road was asphalted. Haji Sayed Muhammad, a factory owner, told AAN that the central government asked factory owners repeatedly to invest in the park, telling them this would improve the image of the private sector in the province. However, he said, the lack of political will, mismanagement and corruption at the provincial level made them reluctant to do so.
The industrial park had long been on shaky footing and struggling to live up to its potential. Faizullah Mashkani, the head of Kandahar’s Industrial Association, told AAN that 600 factories had been built by the 776 people who had received parcels of land from the government. These factories, which he said employed 5,000 people, processed foodstuffs such as fruit, oil, grain and snacks as well as non-food items such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), paint, shampoo and soap. However, only 375 operated year-round. The others were active only seasonally, for example, after the harvest to dry and package fruit.
Mashkani emphasised that times have been hard and many factories have either collapsed or are near collapse. A few factory owners, he said, had tried keeping their factories running by installing their own solar panels or generators, but the rising cost of fuel was outpacing their profits, making it difficult if not impossible to continue their operations. Currently, about half of the 375 factories that had been active before the fall of the Republic have closed down, including some which only needed a little power to operate and some whose owners had installed their own solar panels, factory owner, Haji Sayed Muhammad told AAN. The rest are only partially functional.
Originally, the park was powered by massive generators supplied by the US aid agency, USAID. They ran for ten hours per day, one factory owner told AAN. However, after the withdrawal of US forces in 2014, USAID stopped providing fuel (see here). The Afghan government stepped in to supply the park with fuel at the cost of seven afghanis (around USD 0.09 based on the exchange rate before the takeover) for each unit of power and installed supplemental solar panels to power the park with three hours of solar energy each day. However, the solar panels could only run with the help of external power, according to Haji Qasam Khan, who is a member of the industrial park’s management committee. When the government installed the solar panels, it did not install the power inverter needed to convert DC (direct current) into AC (alternating current), leaving the park to rely either on electricity provided by the national power grid or the generators for the five megawatts needed to use the solar panels.
Problems with a stable electricity supply are far wider than just for the industrial park. Most notably, technical issues at the Afghanistan power company [Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS)] mean that a significant amount of the power generated by the USAID-funded 10-megawatt Dynasty solar power plant go to waste. A 21 April 2021 SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) report found “almost half of the electricity generated by the solar power plant is being wasted due to technical problems with the Kandahar electrical grid” (see SIGAR report here).
After the collapse of the Republic, supplies of fuel from the government ceased and the generators stopped working. As donor assistance dried up, neighbouring countries who were selling electricity to Afghanistan either cut off or reduced the flow of electricity to Afghanistan and Kandahar’s power shortage worsened (see here). In addition, the drought reduced the flow of water in the Helmand River and the Kajaki power plant could not generate enough energy for Kandahar city to support the solar system in the industrial park.
Muhammad told AAN that people in the industrial park still hold out hope that things will improve and are trying to keep operations going to protect their, often significant, investments.
A group of factory owners had recently met with Taleban officials to ask for electricity for the park, Haji Qasam Khan told AAN. The Taleban, he said, had promised they would look into solutions for their electricity problems, including the possibility of buying a power inverter for the solar panels at the cost of one million US dollars. Nothing has yet transpired.
The industrial park was an important source of income, not only for the traders and the people who worked there but also for farmers from Kandahar and other provinces who sold their produce and grains to factory owners for processing. Now, many factory owners are looking to relocate their operations across the border to Pakistan or Iran, taking their capital and badly needed jobs and taxing the province’s already ailing economy (see this Tolonews report).
Conclusion
The cessation of fighting should mean that farmers in Kandahar, as elsewhere in Afghanistan, have at least a chance for better harvests this year. However, what looked to be a wetter winter and spring for snow and rain is now looking less hopeful, expert on Afghanistan’s climate, Mohammad Assem Mayar, has said – February and March were drier than usual, with drier predictions for April and May as well (see his twitter feed here). Moreover, as Mayar also commented, in a report for AAN on climate change, Afghanistan’s long-term prospects for precipitation are not good. While the hope must be that Afghanistan does not return to active conflict, global warming means more droughts coming more regularly are anticipated in the coming decade. Meanwhile, exporting produce remains difficult and unreliable because of the unpredictability of crossing into Pakistan and there is no sign, as yet, of any solution to getting Kandahar’s industrial park back up and fully running. Farmers in Kandahar, as in the rest of Afghanistan, still face worryingly uncertain times.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Hannah Duncan
Annex: The impact of border closures on imports from Pakistan to Afghanistan
In September 2020, the Express Tribune reported that about 15,000 Afghanistan-bound shipping containers, which is more than double the normal number, were stuck at Pakistani ports, including 3,500 containers stranded in Peshawar and Chaman. According to this report, the backlog resulted from COVID-19-related border closures and a decision by the Pakistani Federal Board of Revenue to ensure a 100 per cent scanning of all Afghan cargo.
A year later, things had not improved: “A number of traders say that they have suffered huge losses as a result of transit problems on [the] Chaman-Boldak route,” reported Pajhwok news. Haji Abdul Rahim, a trader who imports cooking oil from Malaysia through Pakistan’s Karachi port to Afghanistan, told Pajhwok: “In the past, 500 containers of transit were transporting on the route on [a] daily basis, but now only 70 to 80 of them are allowed,” adding that on the day of the interview, only “22 containers entered from Pakistan to Afghanistan.”
Abdul Rahim said that truck drivers’ associations had also increased transport fees. In the past, they charged 150,000 Pakistani rupees (USD 850) to transport one container from Karachi port to Spin Boldak but said the cost had now increased to between 250,000 to 300,000 Pakistani rupees (USD 1,400 to 1,700).
Haji Jalaluddin, a transit trader in Kandahar, told AAN that Afghanistan imported a mere 20,000 to 25,000 containers of food and non-food items via Spin Boldak this year compared to last year’s 130,000 containers. Jalaluddin said that these delays had increased the cost of doing business for traders who import raw materials from China, Japan, Dubai and Korea. Not only do they have to pay higher rents for the containers, which they use to import raw material and export Afghan products, but they are also charged USD 150 demurrage per day for not returning the containers on time. He said traders used to return the containers in seven days, but border closures made it impossible to meet this deadline and the shipping companies extended the time, first to 21 days and then to 28 days.
To make matters worse, the Covid-19 pandemic has created a global shortage of containers (see here and here). For this reason, local sources told AAN, shipping companies are disinclined to rent their containers to Afghan traders and blackball those who fail to return containers by the 28-day deadline. The result, according to Jalaluddin, is that many Kandahari-owned export and import companies with offices abroad, for example, in Japan, China and Dubai, closed their businesses in 2022. He said this had further damaged Kandahar’s prospects for trade and reduced job opportunities for the province’s workforce.
References
References
↑1
For an in-depth discussion on the province’s economy and labour force, see this 2011 Samuel Hall report commissioned by Mercy Corps and this undated GRM International profile of Kandahar province.
↑2
This and other export calculations are according to official trade data available on UNCOMTRADE (see here).
REVISIONS:
This article was last updated on 9 Apr 2022
Crops not Watered, Fruit Rotting: Kandahar’s agriculture hit by war, drought and closed customs gates
Moscow appears to have underestimated its adversary this time, just as it did then
The Kremlin had banked on a quick, trouble-freedecapitation to solve the problem of a neighbor appearing to stray too far from Moscow’s orbit.
But after its vaunted army thundered across the border, very little went according to plan.
The invading troops met fierce resistance from outgunned fighters defending their homeland. International allies, including the United States, rushed to aid the underdogs. And a war that Moscow had seen as a chance to show off its might became instead a bloody and embarrassing display of weakness — one that threatened the stability of its deeply entrenched regime.
So has gone Russia’s stumbling, five-week-old invasion of Ukraine. But the same description applies to the Soviet Union’s ill-fated adventure in Afghanistan, which precipitated collapse at home and the Cold War’s end.
Now the history of that four-decade-old conflict looms over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision-making as he tries to navigate through a self-inflicted quagmire. Veterans of the Afghanistan war say he has already failed to heed some of its most critical lessons, including by overestimating his military’s capabilities and misjudging his adversaries.
“The Russians underestimated the Afghans in the 1980s,” said Bruce Riedel, who worked on the CIA’s covert program to aid the rebels. “They seem to have underestimated the Ukrainians today.”
Riedel said there’s irony in that failure: Putin, in invading Ukraine, has appeared bent on restoring the glory lost when the Soviet Union broke up, an event he has described as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
Yet, by making some of the same mistakes that haunted Soviet leaders until the day their empire fell apart, Putin has put Russian power — not to mention his own future — in doubt.
“In setting out to reverse history,” another CIA veteran of the Afghanistan war, Milton Bearden, recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, “he may instead be repeating it.”
Of course, there are vast differences between Ukraine now and Afghanistan then. To name a few: Ukraine’s government is democratically elected, while Afghanistan already had a Soviet-backed communist regime before the invasion. Today’s war is being fought alarmingly close to NATO’s front lines, rather than a battlefield seen as distant to many in the West. Russian troops have been in Ukraine for barely over a month; the Soviets lingered in Afghanistan for nearly a decade.
Yet, if anything, analysts say, this war is going far worse for Moscow.
When Soviet troops poured over the Hindu Kush Mountains and into Afghanistan on Christmas Eve in 1979, they achieved initial success. Their goal was to eliminate Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, whom the KGB falsely believed to be having a dalliance with the CIA. Soviet paramilitaries did just that, gunning him down in his Kabul palace.
The war, it appeared, had been won.
In Ukraine, Russia analyst Anatol Lieven said, Putin was apparently hoping for a similarly quick victory, one in which “the Russians would march in, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky would run away, and the Ukrainian resistance would collapse.”
“The difference with Afghanistan,” said Lieven, who covered the Afghanistan war as a journalist, “is that that plan failed.”
It would ultimately fail in Afghanistan, as well. But that would take longer — just as it later did for the United States’ own star-crossed intervention in Afghanistan.
In plotting to oust Amin, the Soviets had not counted on the fervor or resilience of Afghan rebels — known as mujahideen — who launched a David vs. Goliath rebellion against what was then the world’s largest conventional army.
Nor had they anticipated the cohesion of their international adversaries, who banded together to hatch a secret strategy for bleeding the Red Army.
The Kremlin had believed that the United States and its president, Jimmy Carter, would be too distracted by domestic turmoil and by recent foreign policy flops to seriously engage on Afghanistan. But within weeks of the Soviet advance, crates of U.S.-funded weapons were being unloaded in the Pakistani port of Karachi, for onward delivery to the mujahideen.
Riedel, who was working in the CIA’s operations center on the night that Soviet paratroopers began landing in Afghanistan, said U.S. policymakers had rapidly seized on the idea that “this could be the Soviet Union’s Vietnam.” Washington could help by supplying money and arms to the rebels, funneling that assistance through Pakistani partners.
“The U.S. role [in Afghanistan] was basically the quartermaster of the war,” said Riedel, who now directs the Brookings Intelligence Project. “That’s the role that Biden and company envision for the U.S. again.”
As was true in Afghanistan, Moscow appears to have been caught off-guard by the backing that Ukraine is getting from beyond its borders. Before the invasion, NATO, the European Union and the United States were all racked by internal division. President Biden had just overseen his own humiliating retreat from Afghanistan and was believed to have little appetite for confrontation.
But the West has shown unexpected unity in sticking up for Ukraine. And this time, the support is coming not in the shadows, but in the wide open.
The weaponry, too, is more sophisticated now. Much of the early assistance to the mujahideen came in the form of small arms, such as rifles, with antiaircraft Stinger missiles arriving only after years of combat.
In the case of Ukraine, the United States and NATO have supplied thousands of Stingers as well as thousands more antitank Javelins, weaponry that has dramatically raised the cost in Russian blood and treasure.
A top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, said this week that Russia has lost more than 10,000 troops — approaching the 15,000 dead that the Soviets acknowledged in Afghanistan. While the latter figure is widely believed to be an underestimate, the pace of casualties in this war is clearly much higher.
“In Afghanistan, it took nine years to wear the Soviet Union down,” said Lieven, who is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “It’s happening much quicker in the case of Ukraine.”
That’s one reason, Lieven said, that he believes Putin could seek a diplomatic off-ramp that allows him to cut his losses.
Moscow has sent mixed signals in recent days about its attitude toward negotiations, and analysts say that while an agreement is possible, it’s also conceivable that Putin opts to escalate.
That’s what Russia did in Chechnya in the 1990s. When initial Russian hopes of a lightning-fast victory faded, the military shifted to carpet bombing and besieging cities and towns. The result was a devastatingly costly war for both sides that left much of Chechnya in ruins.
In Ukraine — particularly in the southern port city of Mariupol — the Russian strategy has at times seemed to mimic the playbook in Chechnya.
When the Russian plan to seize Kyiv failed, “there was no backup plan,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, “so they resorted to a massive, indiscriminate bombardment instead.”
Those tactics have left a dismal toll: The United Nations said this week that more than 4 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the war began. The U.N. human rights agency has confirmed the deaths of more than 1,200 civilians, although it says the true count is far higher.
More than a million Afghans are believed to have been killed during the Soviet occupation; some 6 million more became refugees.
“When I see these pictures of Ukrainians leaving their country, I relate to them,” Ali Ahmad Jalali said. “I had to leave my country, traveling over the mountains with my family.”
Jalali, who had been an Afghan army officer, later returned to join the rebels.
Initially, he said, “nobody thought the mujahideen would be able to force the Soviets out. The mujahideen themselves didn’t think they would be able,” said Jalali, who became Afghanistan’s interior minister after the Taliban government was deposed and who is now a professor at National Defense University. “They didn’t care. It was the right thing to do.”
But as Moscow’s losses accumulated, he said, “it broke the spell of Soviet invincibility.”
Mikhail Minakov, as a young Ukrainian, experienced that from within. He was training in military medicine and expected to be deployed to treat Soviet troops in Afghanistan. It was a scary prospect: His professor brought in veterans to speak to the class, men who had lost eyes or legs on the battlefield.
It is not clear how much Russians today know of the casualties their side is taking, given extreme controls on the media. But Minakov said Russians can’t help but be aware of the economic toll brought on by sanctions, which are reversing Putin’s primary achievements: economic integration with the West and a rising standard of living.
“Putin has destroyed the social contract that brought him to power and kept him in power,” said Minakov, a senior adviser at the Kennan Institute.
That’s one reason, Minakov said, that he believes the Russian president — whose grip on power had long been considered unassailable — is far more vulnerable now than before the invasion began. But Putin, he said, is still dangerous and has shown he is not above dangling the threat of nuclear war.
It’s a risk, said Hudson Institute senior fellow Husain Haqqani, that cannot be taken lightly.
When Soviet troops were battling Afghan insurgents armed with U.S.-financed weapons in the 1980s, Haqqani said, both sides were careful to avoid undue escalation. The Americans stayed off the battlefield. The Soviets resisted expanding the fight into Pakistan. Pakistan’s leader, military dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, talked often of keeping the war set to simmer, while never allowing it to boil over.
“The rules of the game were firmly established,” said Haqqani, who covered the war as a journalist and later became Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. “The Soviets and Americans took the threat of nuclear conflict seriously.”
But now, he said, “Putin has upended the rules of the game.”
Adding to the peril: Pakistan was never a NATO member, but four countries on Ukraine’s border are: Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. If any are attacked, the alliance would be obliged to defend them.
As Putin’s options narrow, his unpredictability may grow, said Bearden, the former CIA officer. Less than three years after the last Soviet troops retreated across the Amu Darya River, the Soviet Union was no more. The Russian president, Bearden said, is acutely aware of that history — and will be doing all he can to avoid allowing his mistakes in Ukraine to turn fatal: “What I see Putin trying to do now is figure out, ‘How do I not let this thing bring me down?’ ”
Robyn Dixon in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
In Putin’s Ukraine quagmire, echoes of Soviet failure in Afghanistan
The United Kingdom, Germany, Qatar and the United Nations are co-hosting a virtual, ministerial-level, international, pledging summit for Afghanistan, today. It aims to raise USD 4.4 billion for lifesaving humanitarian support to 22.1 million Afghans who are at “immediate and catastrophic levels of need.” Afghanistan’s Taleban government, in power since August 2021 but not recognised by any state is, notably, not among the invitees. In this report, AAN’s Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark have been looking at what is in the Humanitarian Response Plan, and what is not there, and at potential problems hanging over the conference like last week’s Taleban ban on secondary schooling for girls, which for donors couldcomplicate the provision of aid beyond the strictly humanitarian.
This report looks at two questions in detail. Firstly: What is in the Humanitarian Response Plan? We go into some detail, bringing the highlights from this 150 page document, looking at sectoral activities, beneficiaries and noted problems with access and operational capacity. We also outline highlights from the separate bid for funding for refugees.The second half of the report looks at what is not being asked for at this conference, ie assistance beyond the humanitarian. We look at how, for donors, such apolitical aid is what they feel they can manage – and have an obligation to provide, but how Afghanistan’s more fundamental needs continue to remain largely unaddressed. These needs are acknowledged, in the Humanitarian Response Plan and in UNAMA’s Transitional Emergency Framework. However, the wider political context – donors’ antipathy towards a government which has taken power by force and against which existing US and UN sanctions applied, together with restrictions on women and girls and a crackdown on dissent and the media – make it difficult for donors to feel they can do more at this stage. The Taleban, for their part, are also not prepared to compromise on what they see as their principles and Afghanistan’s sovereignty.
What is in the Humanitarian Response Plan?
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) launched the 150-page long 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) on behalf of humanitarian organisations working in Afghanistan in January. It requests USD 4.4 billion in assistance – the UN’s largest appeal ever for a single country – to support 22.1 million people in need, up from 17.7 million in 2021. A little over half, USD 2.66 billion, is envisioned for food security and agriculture (see breakdown by sector and population group below).
Planned Humanitarian Response by Sector
Sector
People in Need
Planned Reach
%Targeted
Cost per beneficiary (USD)
Cost per Beneficiary in 2021(USD)
Financial Requirements (USD)
Education
7.9M
1.5M
19%
108
84
162.1M
Emergency shelter and non-food items (ES/NFI)
10.9M
1.9M
18%
193
109
374.0M
Food Security and Agriculture
24.0M
21.6M
90%
123
39
2.66B
Health
18.1M
14.7M
81%
26
16
378.0M
Nutrition
7.8M
5.9M
76%
48
46
287.4M
Protection
16.2M
4.5M
28%
30
29
137.3M
WASH
15.1M
10.4M
69%
32
26
332.8M
Aviation
85.0M
Coordination
26.6M
Source: 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP)
Planned Humanitarian Response by Demographics in 2022 and 2021
Planned Response by population group
Population group
People in need 2022
Planned reach 2022
People in need 2021
Planned reach 2021
Vulnerable people with humanitarian needs
23.8M
22.1M (93%)
16.9M
13.8M (81%)
Cross-border returnees
785.4K
592.1K (75%)
714K
714K (100%)
Internally displaced people
504.4K
504.4K (100%)
705K
679 (96%)
Shock-affected non-displaced people
150K
150K (100%)
500K
450K (90%)
Refugees and asylum seekers
72.4K
72.3K (99%)
72K
72K (100%)
Persons with disabilities
2.0M
1.8M (90%)
1.5M
1.3M (86%)
Planned Response by Gender
Boys
6.8M
6.2M (91%)
5.1M
4.3M (84%)
Girls
6.3M
5.7M (90%)
4.7M
3.9M (84%)
Men
5.8M
5.2M (90%)
4.6M
4M (87%)
Women
5.5M
5.0M (91%)
4.1M
3.5M (85%)
Planned Response by Age
Children (0-17)
13.1M
11.9M (91%)
9.7M
8.2M (85%)
Adults (18-64)
10.6M
9.6M (90%)
8.2 M
7.1M (87%)
Elders (65+)
657K
591K (90%)
505K
436K (86%)
Source: 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) and 2018-21 HRP (revised in 2021)
The response plan is an attempt to address the enormous increase in the number of Afghans in need of humanitarian assistance, including because of an unprecedented hike in acute food insecurity and decline in basic services, including health and education, which the plan says, has led to a need to:
[S]cale-up activities in nearly every part of the country, addressing both those who have been chronically in need and those whose coping mechanisms have been undermined…. [including] people facing vulnerabilities such as extreme household debt burdens; mental and physical disability; the use of dangerous negative coping strategies; and those living in households headed by women, children or the elderly whose positions in society put them at a disadvantage.
Strategic objectives of the Humanitarian Response Plan
There are three strategic objectives for humanitarian activities in Afghanistan in 2022 (emphases added):
Reduce illness and death through humanitarian assistance to all Afghans in need by providing emergency shelter (usually tents or tarpaulins and ropes), water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health, education, psychosocial, protection, and non-food items such as blankets, plastic sheets, buckets, jerry cans, cooking pots, and soap) to 21 million people. Alleviate hunger and malnutrition through food distributions (both in-kind and cash-based) and mother and child feeding programmes to address severe and moderate acute malnutrition (SAM and MAM) for 21.56 million people. Decrease illness and death from preventable diseases, outbreaks, and trauma as well as reproductive and mental health services through WASH and health services and de-mining for 14.4 million people.
Ensure that all beneficiaries have dignified and equal access to humanitarian support regardless of ethnicity and gender and that aid workers have safe access to beneficiaries. In addition, this objective will prioritise protection from gender-based violence (GBV), sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) and safeguarding children through mainly community-based mechanisms because state-run protection mechanisms have collapsed.
Address the underlying causes of humanitarian need by providing livelihoods support to vulnerable households to help them become more resilient in the future, such as providing rural communities with agricultural inputs and livestock regardless of ethnicity and gender. This includes providing essential services, such as WASH and education, to internally displaced people as well as returnees from Iran and Pakistan.
Planned response by sector
Humanitarian activities will be carried out by UN agencies and NGOs organised into groups called ‘clusters’, with each cluster working in one or more of seven sectors:
Education
Emergency Shelter And Non-Food Items
Food Security And Agriculture
Health
Nutrition
Protection
Each cluster developed an annual plan after conducting an evidence-based assessment of needs called the Humanitarian Needs Overview, or HNO (see the 2022 HNO here). The HNO is then used to inform sectoral plans for the humanitarian response. The following section provides a brief overview of the planned response, sector by sector.
Education
The Humanitarian Response Plan aims to provide schooling to 1.5 million children through Community-Based Education (CBE), which sees out-of-school children, especially girls, attend classes in community buildings, houses and sometimes mosques. This includes Accelerated Learning Classes (ALCs) which offer a condensed curriculum, in this case, two school years in each calendar year, and Temporary Learning Spaces (TLS), which provide displaced children with the ability to keep up with their schooling for one academic year, or until they can re-enrol in formal education. There is also support in the plan for some government schools to repair/rehabilitate buildings, but no general support for the state education system, such as paying teachers’ salaries.
Taleban officials had promised to allow older girls to resume their education from the start of the new school year, on 23 March 2022, following the Taleban’s closure of most secondary schools for girls after they took power. This promise was made in the face of enormous pressure from parents, teachers, Afghan women’s rights activists and donors. Taleban officials have highlighted the need for international support to get the education sector (as well as other sectors) up and running. “Education for girls and women ‘is a question of capacity,’” Taleban spokesperson and deputy culture minister Zabiullah Mujahed told the Associated Press in a 15 January interview (see here). Speaking on the sidelines of the Oslo meeting (see below) on 26 January, the Emirate’s Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, also highlighted Taleban expectations that international support would be forthcoming: “From these meetings we are sure of getting support for Afghanistan’s humanitarian, health and education sectors.” (see here).
This anticipation of support for schools came even though the Taleban have prioritised education spending in their budget and appear to have funds available. The donors, for their part, have also committed to support the Afghanistan Education Sector Transitional Framework (AESTF), a two-year programme to keep Afghan children who have been left out of school as a result of recent events, displacement or natural disasters in education, meaning that the USD 162 million requested for education in the Humanitarian Response Plan had been due to be fully funded. However, the Taleban’s abrupt decision on 23 March to keep older girls out of education after all may make donors question giving funds that could support a discriminatory public education environment, particularly where the response plan envisions support for some public schools to repair/rehabilitate buildings (see AAN’s report on the ban on secondary education for girls).
Emergency Shelter and Non-Food Item (ES-NFI)
The response plan envisions supporting 1.9 million of the 10.9 million people in need, ie 10 per cent, with emergency and transitional shelter (tents, tarpaulins and pre-fabricated housing), non-food items, shelter repairs and winterisation. However, the response plan highlights that in the past, funding for this cluster has been “sub-optimal.” In 2021, according to UNOCHA’s Financial Tracking System (FTS), the ES-NFI cluster received USD 50 million, or less than half of the USD 109.2 million it had requested (see FTS data here). Available funding has been used for “less expensive, short-term emergency responses.” For example, in 2021, only one per cent of the people who were assisted and in 2020, only three per cent received shelter repairs or upgrades. In 2022, the cluster aims to increase its activities and reach significantly to include more Afghans in need, particularly in areas that were previously inaccessible because of the conflict, including Helmand, Farah, Nimruz, Uruzgan, Nuristan, Laghman and Maidan Wardak.
Food Security and Agriculture
Afghan families are experiencing unprecedented difficulties in getting adequate, affordable food. This food insecurity is a consequence of the conflict, two years of severe drought and poor harvests, and the economic collapse in the wake of the Taleban takeover of the country. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, which made predictions about food insecurity for the period November 2021 to March 2022, the number of people facing critical levels of food insecurity (IPC phase 3 or above[1]) was expected to reach 22.8 million, or 55 per cent of the population. That was nearly 35 per cent higher than the same period last year (16.9 million people).
This cluster plans to provide food and livelihood support to 21.6 million people who are in IPC Phase 3 or above (17.9 million people in rural areas and 4.9 million in urban areas). This will include support to farmers, herders and the landless for local food production with seeds (wheat, maize, pulses, fertilizers), animal feed and support for backyard gardens for women. The provision of seeds may be particularly important as AAN has heard (unconfirmed) reports that some farmers have used the seeds saved for planting for food, while others may not be able to afford to buy them.
There will also be support-term income support, for example, through cash for work schemes. Cash distributions to two million people are also planned either as unconditional grants to households headed by women, people with disabilities or the elderly, or as cash for work schemes to rehabilitate or build individual or community assets such as irrigation canals or watering points. There are also plans to provide people in urban areas with vocational training in carpentry, embroidery, plumbing, and computers.
Health
Since the fall of the Republic, access to health services across Afghanistan has diminished, leading to a hike in the number of people needing humanitarian health assistance to an estimated 18.1 million in 2022, up from 14.5 million in 2021 – an increase of 20 per cent. The cluster plans to improve access to primary, secondary and tertiary health care in all provinces by scaling up the delivery of the basic package of health services (BPHS) and the essential package of hospital services to 14.6 million people (a 42 per cent increase compared to 2021), including 2.9 million women of childbearing age (15-49 years old). Those tasked with providing healthcare will have to ensure that women have safe and equal access to services, including reproductive health and information to survivors of gender-based violence. In addition, the cluster aims to strengthen emergency health services, including trauma and triage, and prevent and respond to outbreaks of infectious/communicable diseases, particularly COVID-19, Acute Watery Diarrhoea, and Dengue Fever.
Nutrition
Support will be provided in all provinces to 5.9 million children and women who are pregnant or lactating through static and mobile facilities. However, some provinces will be prioritised based on existing malnutrition rates among children under five, including Badakhshan, Badghis, Bamyan, Daikundi, Ghor, Helmand, Jawzjan, Kabul, Nuristan, Paktika, Panjshir and Samangan.
Protection
The response focuses on monitoring violations of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law; supporting victims of gender-based violence; ensuring families at risk have access to child protection services; strengthening housing, land and property rights, especially for IDPs and; supporting de-mining activities. The cluster plans to reach 4.5 million people, with a focus on border areas with large IDP and returnee populations. The response will pay special attention to the most vulnerable groups, including the internally displaced, refugees and returnees, to identify persons in need of assistance and refer them to other clusters to receive support.
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
Afghanistan is experiencing a water crisis precipitated by two years of severe drought that has caused grave water shortages, both for drinking and handwashing, and degraded the quality of water available to urban and rural populations, with the situation in 18 provinces classed as catastrophic, compared to none in 2020. The economic crisis and the moratorium on development funding that followed the Taleban takeover have caused a significant loss of capacity of the state entity in charge of the water supply and sewage, the Afghanistan Urban Water Supply and Sewage State Owned Corporation (UWASS). As a result, rural water supply projects have stalled and the urban water supply is plagued by a lack of electricity and chlorination and water leakages.
There have been increased reports of outbreaks of diseases such as Acute Watery Diarrhoea and cholera. The WASH cluster plans to help 10.4 million people get access to adequate water by ensuring safe drinking water supplies, for example, by providing households with chlorination tablets, solar water pumps or water purification facilities for communities, monitoring the water system to detect and repair leaks, monitoring ground water levels and ensuring quality levels are maintained by providing early warning of contamination. Finally, sanitation activities will focus on waste water and sewage management to control outbreaks of Acute Watery Diarrhoea and root out the breeding grounds of disease-bearing mosquitos.
Regional support to refugees
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched a separate annual appeal for USD 623 million to support 5.7 million Afghan nationals (including registered refugees and asylum seekers and projected new arrivals) mainly in Iran and Pakistan and with smaller numbers in Central Asia, as well as 1.77 million people in the communities that host the refugees and five host governments (see breakdown below and the 2022 Afghanistan Situation Regional Response Plan here).
Target Populations and Funding Requirements
Projected Afghan Refugees 2022
Targeted Undocumented Afghans
Targeted Host Community
Total Targets
Funding Requirements (USD)
Pakistan
1,427,000
800,000
1,200,000
3,427,000
258.73M
Iran
1,068,000
585,500
550,000
2,203,500
310.44M
Tajikistan
23,000
340
23,000
46,340
40.45M
Turkmenistan
2,700
100
800
3,600
3.14M
Uzbekistan
5,410
13,648
3,000
22,058
10.63M
Total
2,526,110
1,399,588
1,776,800
5,702,498
623.41M
Source: Afghanistan Situation Regional Refugee Response Plan 2022
Iran and Pakistan have long hosted large populations of Afghan refugees and undocumented Afghans who have relocated there in search of jobs or sanctuary. UNHCR estimates that an additional 1.4 million Afghan refugees will arrive in Pakistan in 2022, another one million will seek asylum in Iran and a smaller number of refugees, 31,000, will go to Central Asia. These numbers will add to the already significant population of refugees and undocumented Afghans in these countries.
This response plan will deliver humanitarian services, focusing on community-based interventions and finding long-term sustainable solutions to the needs of Afghan refugees and their hosts. The plan focuses on four primary areas: 1) Support for Afghan refugees and host communities with livelihoods activities and basic services such as health and education through the national systems where possible; 2) Support for host governments to ensure access to asylum and protection, including admission, registration, documentation and non-refoulement; 3) Provide humanitarian assistance across sectors, particularly to children and youth, women, the elderly, and persons with disabilities and; 4) Support host government efforts to ensure that emergency response measures are in place for new arrivals, such as shelter, non-food items, or registration facilities.
Financial Requirements by Sector in Iran and Pakistan (USD)
Sector
Total by sector
Iran
Pakistan
Education
72.2M
27.5M
41.4
Food Security
57.9M
22.3M
28
Health and Nutrition
119.14M
69.6M
44.4
Livelihoods and Resilience
88.3M
27M
54.9
Logistics and Telecoms
17.5M
7M
9.2
Protecting
99.2M
27.3M
64
Shelter and NFIs
77M
42.5M
23.3
WASH
91.9M
35.2M
44.9
Total by country
259M
310M
Source: Afghanistan Situation Regional Refugee Response Plan 2022
Acknowledged difficulties with access
Access to beneficiaries is a prerequisite for delivering humanitarian support and yet, there are reported troubles there. According to the Humanitarian Access Group (HAG), cited in the Humanitarian Response Plan, the number of incidents restricting NGO access nearly doubled in the first 11 months of 2021 (figures are not yet available for December): 2,016 incidents, up from 1,095 in 2020. In August alone, humanitarians logged 378 incidents (nearly twice the monthly average for the year) during the Taleban’s final push for power. These incidents included interference in humanitarian programming, active conflict, movement restrictions, road closures, robberies and threats. Active interference by the Taliban, armed criminal groups and communities (in that order) were the primary barriers to access for aid workers. The number of incidents did drop to below 100 a month in October and November, but that was at the same level as in 2020.
Humanitarians are also concerned over the lack of clarity and unified Taleban policy concerning the participation of women in the humanitarian response. This issue seems to have been resolved, for now, with partial agreements (16 provinces) and full agreements (18 provinces) in place across the country that allow for women to participate in the response. However, in light of recent Taleban policies concerning women, particularly the prohibition on women travelling without a mahram (a close male relative), this may change.
Operational capacity is another area for careful consideration. While the Humanitarian Response Plan puts the number of ‘humanitarian partners’ at 158 organisations – 78 national NGOs, 69 international NGOs and 11 UN organisations, it also says that some of those partners have had to halt or hibernate their programmes due to the conflict and in the wake of uncertainties following the fall of the Republic. Many organisations are struggling to work in the face of the banking crisis, which made paying staff and other expenses difficult. Indeed, the latest Humanitarian Response Dashboard put the number of active partners at just 68 organisations in January 2022 – 28 national NGOs, 33 international NGOs, six UN agencies and the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. Given the short timeframe for implementing the Humanitarian Response Plan, humanitarian NGOs will have to have access to adequate resources and infrastructure to scale up operations.
What is not up for funding? Going beyond the humanitarian
Humanitarian assistance is indispensable, given the scale and urgency of the economic crisis now facing Afghans. Yet, as the Humanitarian Response Plan acknowledges, repeatedly, Afghanistan needs help with long-term development to address the underlying causes of humanitarian need. AAN has addressed these fundamental problems with the economy in in two papers, from September 2021, and Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg: Afghanistan’s economic distress post-15 August, from November 2021.[2] They include: the abrupt cut to income and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) when the Taleban captured power – most aid was cut, as was funding of the security services and the money spent by foreign armies deployed to Afghanistan; far-reaching UN and especially US sanctions, which although subsequently watered down by wide-ranging waivers enacted by the US Treasury, still mean the fear of breaking sanctions is making international banks averse to dealing with NGOs, businesses and individuals in Afghanistan and; job losses, inflation, depreciation of the afghani and limited purchasing power for buying imports (Afghanistan had been importing six times more by value than it was exporting, with the deficit covered by aid and other unearned foreign income).
One acknowledgement that Afghanistan’s problems go beyond the humanitarian is the Transitional Engagement Framework (TEF), launched by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also in January, to be “the overarching strategic planning document for the UN system’s assistance in 2022.” In other words, it is the UN’s joint appeal for funding for both humanitarian and development activities. It has three strategic objectives/outcomes:
Provide lifesaving assistance;
Sustain essential services;
Preserve social investments and community-level systems essential to meeting basic human needs.
A far shorter document than the Humanitarian Response Plan, just 20 pages, the Transitional Engagement Framework lacks the kind of depth one would expect from “the overarching strategic planning document for the UN system’s assistance in 2022,” that comes with an 8 billion USD price tag – 4.4 billion for outcome one and 3.7 billion for outcomes two and three. To put this in context, this is far more than the last budget of the Republic, USD 6.14 billion, which was for all government spending, including the spending on the military, security and police, which relied on on-budget support or the government’s own domestic revenues.
The Transitional Engagement Framework is ambitious in its aspirations, but given the political realities on the ground and the short timeframe for its implementation – just one year, it is surprisingly scant on data, detail, analysis and strategic priorities. The framework offers three outcomes if its planned activities are fully implemented (ie fully funded) – save lives, sustain essential services and preserve community systems – but does little to flesh out what this would mean. For example, the “outcome funding matrix” section provides lists of “indicative activities” which are organised by outcome but are not prioritised and nor do they give details such as the number of beneficiaries to be reached or how each activity will be designed and implemented.
It is merely a framework, as its name states, which is intended to be used as broad guidance and convey an overall vision. The fact that the humanitarian community launched its regular annual appeal in January 2022 would certainly bear out this idea. The 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan, which is the focus of the 2022 London pledging summit, provides a detailed and strategic vision for humanitarian action in Afghanistan in 2022, including costings down to the cost per individual beneficiary. It is precisely this kind of detail and strategy that would be required from development actors.
However, the problems with going beyond the humanitarian are not just to do with providing a more professionally-organised plan. They are fundamentally political. The Concept Note for today’s conference appears to refer to this, as well as to the wider economic problems and to the difficulties currently hampering the provision of humanitarian aid when it gives one of the conference’s aims as:
Raise awareness of other challenges that are also critical to the survival of Afghanistan’s people, including basic needs, the functioning of its economy and availability of basic social services, while taking into account the political realities and situation on the ground.[3]
Donors are presumed to be on board with the Humanitarian Response Plan precisely because it is humanitarian, and therefore officially apolitical. They are able to square this sort of aid with their wider political concerns over supporting a country whose government took power by force, which they do not recognise and whose senior leadership is subject to sanctions by the United States and United Nations, with several senior leaders wanted on terrorism charges. It is also feared that support beyond the humanitarian would allow the Taleban to divert resources to other activities, such as intelligence and security services, and in general stabilise and support their rule.
Since August, doubts have only increased given the Taleban’s resistance to calls from all sides to make itself more inclusive (it remains all-male and almost completely Pashtun and clerical), that continues to attack the media, detains journalists and human and women’s rights activists, has banned protests and continues to detain and allegedly disappear former members of the security services. Goodwill over doing any more than the strictly humanitarian has been further eroded by recent further restrictions on women’s rights to travel and work and their abrupt about-face on their promise earlier this year to re-open all girls’ schools. The US cancelled a meeting with Taleban officials in Doha because of the ban on secondary education for girls; the meeting, due to be held on 25 March, was to have included World Bank and UN representatives and according to US officials speaking to Reuters, was set to address key economic issues. An official said they “had made clear that we see this decision [on girls’ education] as a potential turning point in our engagement.”[4]
The World Bank has also put on hold plans to give USD 600 million from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ATRF) in development aid to fund four projects in agriculture, education, health, and livelihoods via UN agencies. Given the Bank’s “strong focus on ensuring that girls and women participate and benefit from the support,” as stated in the press release announcing the aid, it has decided to only seek approval from ATRF donors for going ahead with the projects only “when the World Bank and international partners have a better understanding of the situation and confidence that the goals of the projects can be met” (quote via Reuters). The Bank has given no timeline for this.
Even providing humanitarian assistance, however, is hampered by this wider context. There are still, for example, problems with getting money into the country because, despite wide-ranging waivers to sanctions enacted by the US Treasury, the fear of breaking sanctions is still making international banks averse to the risk of dealing with NGOs, businesses and individuals in Afghanistan. Problems with liquidity and currency shortages mean humanitarian actors and others still face problems with withdrawing cash held in Afghan bank accounts and with transferring money between accounts within the country (see here).
In the long-term, the question remains: What path can Afghanistan take toward a functioning economy, what state institutions can donors engage with and how might this engagement be possible in light of sanctions and the absence of formal recognition. These concerns complicate donors’ ability and willingness to make significant pledges without imposing strict conditionalities. The Taleban, however, have repeatedly stated their opposition to any conditionality to the aid provided to Afghanistan; they view such conditions as an interference in the country’s domestic affairs.
References
References
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In IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) households either: have food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition; or are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies
The first two aims of the conference are: “Secure scaled-up resources to address the unprecedented level of humanitarian needs in Afghanistan in 2022; Highlight the capacity and commitment of humanitarian partners to implement lifesaving assistance across the country.”
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The US Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Tom West, did however, travel to China for a meeting of the ‘Extended Troika’, the three world powers plus Pakistan. At the same time, another meeting was being held in China: foreign ministers from Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Qatar and the Taleban’s own Amir Khan Muttaqi.
REVISIONS:
This article was last updated on 1 Apr 2022
A Pledging Conference for Afghanistan… But what about beyond the humanitarian?
The Taleban’s abrupt decision to keep girls’ secondary schools closed, despite promising for months that they would re-open, has caused distress to girls, parents and teachers alike. The Taleban’s justification was confused, with various officials giving different reasons for the closure, from lack of teachers to inappropriate school uniforms. Eventually, a formal announcement cited the need for a “comprehensive plan, in accordance with sharia and Afghan culture.” Guest author Ashley Jackson* has been looking into what happened behind the scenes that lead to this policy reversal and argues that the ultimate cause may have had less to do with religion than the unpredictable nature of Taleban power politics.
We were in class, geography, for almost 30 minutes when a teacher came in and told us they’d been ordered to close the school… We asked them why, but they said the reason wasn’t clear…. Almost all the students were crying… Like everyone else, I had my new school uniform, my books, school bag and stationery – I’d even prepared materials to study for the Kankor [university entrance] exam… When I got home, my family had already heard the news…. My dear father was so sad and worried: it’s your last year, he told me, and this school closure could harm you. 16 year old girl in Kabul, daughter of a shop-keeper and home-maker
In the past, my daughters would arrive home from school at 12 or 1 o’clock, but on that day they were back by 10. I was shocked, worried about what might have happened to them, and then they described the situation with tears in their eyes. I felt disappointed, helpless and insulted because, despite many difficulties and economic problems, I have tried to provide for my girls so that they can study and be the future of this country… They are the wealth of our Afghanistan. If they don’t study, the country will stay backward…
Vegetable seller in Ghazni city with daughters in 7th, 10th, 12th grades (ages 12-18)
The acute grief and disappointment of older girls and their parents and teachers that girls have not been allowed to resume their studies has been all too evident. There is also fear, both for the prospects for girls under the Islamic Emirate and for what this policy means for the future of their country. The Taleban authorities speak of this as a temporary measure in place until they can put measures in place to allow schools to open, but given a plan to reopen girls’ secondary schools has been promised since the Taleban took power in August, many now do not trust that such a plan will ever be enacted. The fear that this will be an indefinite ban has led to some families now considering leaving the country, but that is not an option for the majority who are too poor to leave. “I have no plan,” the vegetable seller from Ghazni quoted above who said he cried over his girls being barred from school. “What I can do! A person in a weak economic position cannot manage to migrate.” He said his girls were now studying at home and their elders were helping them, but he thought it would be of no use; they needed a formal system and a more certain future.
Since the closure of girls’ secondary schools on 23 March, there have been a few small demonstrations (see here, in Kabul and here, in Herat), but as yet, no sign of the sort of mounting popular pressure that might influence Taleban policy on this issue. However, AAN’s recent publications looking at Taleban policy on education traced how demand for schools for boys and girls has grown and become mainstream in much of Afghan society, including among certain sections of the Taleban leadership. Closing girls’ secondary schools would seem to be an unpopular move with many Afghans, but was taken anyway. It seems important, therefore, to understand why the Taleban leadership decided to reverse policy. This is the main subject of this report. It starts with brief background on the Taleban’s policy on girls’ education since they took power in August 2021, and then explores how the Taleban’s 23 March decision came about. The report concludes by examining what might happen next. It is based on a series of interviews conducted in the aftermath of last week’s decision by the author and the AAN team. Sources included two government officials, four Afghan students and parents, six interlocutors within or close to the Taleban, and eleven diplomats and aid officials.
Background
On 23 August 2021, the Taleban’s Education Commission announced the closure of all schools following their takeover of the country. While they declared that primary schools would reopen on 28 August, they indicated that secondary schools would resume at a later date still to be determined. On 17 September, the Ministry of Education announced that “all male schoolteachers and male pupils must be present at their work” – implying, but not explicitly stating, that female teachers and students should stay at home.[1]In practice, this became a de facto ban on female secondary education. The international reaction was swift, with many Afghans, various United Nations bodies and foreign governments, condemning the decision and urging the Taleban to allow older girls to resume their schooling (see here, here, here and here.)
In fact, the Taleban’s de facto ban was not applied uniformly across the country. AAN’s analysis found that many girls’ secondary schools were allowed to keep running, either because of supportive local Taleban leadership or strong pressure by parents or teachers. Numerous private education institutions and universities also continued teaching girls, even in places where government secondary schools for girls were closed. In December 2021, Taleban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told AP that government secondary schools for girls were open in ten of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, and private schools and universities were open for female students.[2]
To some extent, this reflected the Taliban’s pre-August 15 position as well as practice in the 1990s. While the Taleban government in the 1990s banned girls’ schooling, the authorities did turn a blind eye to some schooling in some places, especially for younger girls – although the threat of punishment also hung over pupils and teachers. The post-2001 insurgency, although at first opposed to all ‘modern’ schooling, eventually adopted an ambiguous stance in the face of parental demand for schools. Commanders typically allowed at least female primary education, but hardly any girls’ secondary schools operated in Taleban strongholds.[3] They neither encouraged nor banned female secondary or higher education. Instead, the insurgency’s education commission policy was worded in such a way as to leave the door open to permitting it under certain vaguely articulated conditions.[4] This ambiguity allowed the Taleban to accommodate contradictory opinions on this issue within the leadership, as well as on the ground among commanders and communities. It also enabled the Taleban to sidestep pressure during talks from diplomats and donors who wanted the movement to explicitly endorse female education, as well as potential resistance from those within the Taleban who would have objected.
Since the August 2021 closures, the Taleban government has faced enormous pressure to reinstate full female access to education. Taleban officials have made numerous statements suggesting that it would do so, provided certain requirements were met. Implicit in these statements has been an expectation of international support for the education sector. Taleban Acting Minister of Education Nurullah Munir and Deputy Minister of Education Abdul Hakim Hemat have underscored that the government does not oppose female education. They assured various diplomats and media outlets that older girls would return once they could “create a safe environment for girls” (see here, here, here and here). In January 2022, Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Zabihullah Mujahid told AP that the government “hopes to be able to open all schools for girls across the country” from the start of the new school year on 23 March 2022. At the same time, he emphasised the lack of capacity and the need for international cooperation. Again, the implicit message was that the Taleban, at least in these ministries, expected the donor community to provide funding for education.
In response, international donors have pledged to support the education sector and broader humanitarian response. On 22 January 2022, United States Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West told BBC Pashto that the US government would pay all teacher salaries if the government reopened girls’ schools. In early March 2022, the World Bank announced it had secured more than USD one billion of frozen assets in the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) to fund education, health, and other vital services. A major donor conference, co-hosted by the UK, Germany and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), was announced for 31 March 2022. The summit was meant to help the UN raise USD 4.4 billion to meet urgent humanitarian needs – the largest amount that the UN has ever requested for a single country. Finally, there is also movement towards longer-term plans for support. The Education Cluster, a coordination body which includes UN agencies as well as Afghan and international NGOs, recently finalised a comprehensive framework for emergency education support over the next two years (the Afghanistan Education Sector Transitional Framework, AESTF). The AESTF has been endorsed by donors and includes a budget of USD 162 million.
None of this funding would go directly to the Taleban government. However, the payment of teacher salaries and parallel programming (implemented by NGOs and the UN) would keep the state education system running. It would also alleviate the need for the government to fund much of the education sector, and presumably free up money for other government activities. Education is a priority for the Taleban, receiving the largest share of resources after the security sector in the national budget.[5] It is now unclear how the Taleban’s decision to keep older girls out of school will affect donors’ promised funding for education, or indeed, the wider humanitarian response.
What happened
Piecing together what happened from interviews with local sources including within and those close to the Taleban, aid workers, donors and diplomats, it appears that several factors combined to bring about the 23 March fiasco. Cabinet members and other high-level Taleban officials had gathered for a three-day summit in Kandahar on 20 March and there was speculation, reported in Etilaat-e Roz, that a cabinet shake-up was imminent or that the meeting was called to resolve internal disputes among various factions. In fact, the meeting was meant to be the culmination of several months of discussion. Consultations – and horse-trading – had already been taking place for several weeks. Among some of the key measures agreed were an order banning the old tricolour Afghan flag replacing it with the monochrome Taleban flag and the removal of Nawruz as an official Afghan holiday. Several sources described these as token measures granted to religious conservatives so that they would back more significant measures. Many expected concrete decisions to be unveiled on several key issues, including girls’ education, also cabinet and other high-level appointments, and a sense of the Taleban’s strategy to achieve recognition. Few sources inside the Taleban government said they expected the long-promised reopening of girls’ secondary schools to be in danger of reversal.
The Taleban’s decision-making has historically been generally opaque, but all the more so with regard to controversial issues. The Taleban is typically referred to as a consensus-based movement, with the Rahbari, or leadership, Shura advising the amir ul-mumenin, Haibatullah Akhundzada, who has ultimate authority as the movement’s leader. But the balance of power is more delicate than this suggests, especially when opinion within the movement is sharply divided. Much comes down to personalities and perceptions. Unlike his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, Haibatullah appears unwilling to take controversial decisions. He is widely viewed as personally opposing female education. Yet, he had been expected to act in accordance with the consensus view, which was thought to be in favour of allowing girls’ schooling. Instead, he sided with a minority who were against.
This might be a convenient narrative which lays the blame on a few unnamed ‘hardliners’ and absolves the amir. Yet there are also indications that the reversal is a symptom of the movement’s broader failure to create a clear mechanism for making national policy decisions. Exactly how the Taleban would decide the issue of female education had been debated for months. One proposed mechanism was to take the issue to the Kandahar ulema council, which already plays a key role in advising the amir. Another was to create a new national ulema council, which would then consider the issue and make a recommendation to the amir. Still another was to bring the matter to the de facto cabinet. But none of this happened, and it is not immediately clear why.
Instead, a group of ulema spoke in the Kandahar meeting against girls returning to school. It has not been possible to pin down an exact account of what occurred, but the two most credible narratives suggest a similar series of events. In one version, recounted by several Taleban and diplomatic sources, nearly two dozen influential ulema – including Chief Justice Abdul Hakim and Acting Minister of Religious Affairs Nur Muhammad Saqeb – discussed issuing a fatwa opposing the reopening of girls’ schools. It is not clear what the text of this fatwa would have been, or how they would have justified a stance which would be so contrary to the Islamic emphasis on learning. However, religious conservatives place great emphasis on the protection of female ‘modesty’, through segregation, dress and avoiding travel without a close male relative or mahram. This was also reflected in a 26 March edict to airlines from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice banning women from traveling by plane without a mahram. There is also clearly a view among some religious conservatives that when girls reach the age of puberty, they should be secluded at home until marriage (a view shared by some non-Taleban religious conservatives). For such people, the idea of marriageable girls en masse walking to school in public view, even in hijab or niqab, is deeply disturbing and provoking social unrest.
Looking back at changing Afghan attitudes to education over the last forty years (see AAN report here), the belief that non-madrassa education is ‘western’ or ‘foreign’ or bent on indoctrinating Afghan schoolchildren weaves in and out of Afghan politics. It has driven the policy of some governments and the armed resistance of some groups. Yet, steadily, that strand of belief has become less popular and less widespread. Attitudes have changed over the last forty years within the population as a whole and also, more belatedly, within the Taleban. Even so, suspicion of schooling, especially of girls and especially of older girls, has remained in some places and some communities. Such suspicion is probably most likely to be found among southern rural ulema.
In another account, also provided by several Taleban interlocutors, including a source in Kandahar, and a well-placed diplomatic source, influential members of the leadership – again including Hakim and Saqeb – spoke out against older girls returning to schools. In both versions, few others were willing to challenge the conservative opposition. The decision then appeared to be at the mercy of internal politics and personalities: because it was left so late, and because there was no organised counterforce, and because Haibatullah was unwilling to go against the conservatives or perhaps agreed with these objections, the voice of a powerful minority decided for the majority.
Yet the opposition to girls’ schooling voiced at the meeting does not appear to be solely concerned with religion or ideology. Many religious conservatives have reportedly not felt included in the Taleban’s major decisions and so, in voicing their opposition to female education, they were voicing their displeasure at the direction of the government overall. Their power to stop the Taleban from moving ahead with something that many, if not most Afghans favour and much of their own leadership is willing to allow – reportedly including all three deputies of the movement (Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Ghani Baradar, Acting Minister of Defense Mullah Yaqub and Acting Minister of Interior Serajuddin Haqqani) – illustrates the importance of a small circle of ultra-conservative clerics in shaping policy.
Several sources blame the amir. As a widely respected, conservative religious scholar and former head of the Taleban’s courts,[6] Haibatullah, they argue, should have been able to get the ulema to endorse an issue of such political importance. However, Haibatullah has also long been seen as deferential rather than decisive, and moreover, himself religiously ultra-conservative, (even by Taleban standards). It may be that Haibatullah, while not personally in favour of female education, had expected the ulema to go along with what had been public policy, communicated by the Taleban to schools, the wider Afghan public and donors. The ulema’s acquiescence would have given him political cover. But, as with much else since August, he had simply not prepared the ground, or his base, for a key governance decision. An alternate explanation is that while Haibatullah delayed his decision, the pragmatists around him tried to create one through public statements – only to find their leader had no intention of going along with it.
Caught off guard
It is hard to pin down exactly when the decision against the resumption of girls’ secondary education was taken, but it was clearly not communicated to those concerned. Ministry of Education officials, teachers and pupils all continued preparing for the resumption of girls’ schooling after the winter break on 23 March. In many places across the country, girls in higher grades and their teachers actually came to class, before being told to go home. A mother in Ghazni described her daughters purchasing uniforms, books and school supplies in anticipation of finally going back to school, only to return home in tears. “When I saw my daughters in that situation, I cried,” she said. “I’ve tried to provide things for my daughters so that they could study and be the future of this country.” Aid officials and diplomats were also caught off guard. “We were blindsided,” UNICEF’s communications chief in Afghanistan Sam Mort told AP. “All the messages, all the actions that had been taking place led us to believe that schools were opening, and as we understand it, that’s what our counterparts in the Ministry of Education believed as well.”
As late as 21 March, the Ministry of Education was insisting that “all schools for girls and boys would be open,” according to an NGO official who attended briefings with ministry officials. A Ministry of Education official stressed to the NGO official that there would be no formal announcement of girls’ secondary schools being reopened, but that this would be implied in the announcement of all schools reopening. The lack of a clear endorsement of older girls returning did raise concerns, the NGO official said, but Ministry of Education officials “were constantly reassuring us that there were absolutely no problems and everything was on track.” One source at the Ministry of Education, however, insists that he communicated to several donors and aid agency representatives that there had been not yet been a final decision on girls’ education from the leadership.
It is hard to see this coming at a worse time, ahead of the donor pledging conference scheduled for 31 March. The decision has been widely criticised by governments and international organisations (see here, here and here). The US cancelled “planned meetings” with the Taleban on the sidelines of a conference in Doha on 26 and 27 March. According to Reuters, issues for discussion included the details of a humanitarian exchange governing hundreds of millions of dollars of ARTF funding earmarked for education.
Many diplomats and analysts are now asking themselves how they miscalculated and misread the Taleban. Some (the author included) had believed that increasing numbers of girls’ schools would open and others would not. The best that could be hoped for, in this view, was that the government would continue its strategic ambiguity. This could have been interpreted by at least some donors as a sign of progress, which would allow them to justify to themselves and to tax payers continued financial support to Afghanistan. The lure of Taleban ambiguity has long allowed many to project hope onto what might otherwise feel like a situation beyond repair. The closure of girls schools have led many diplomats and donors to lose patience with Taleban interlocutors who have long promised change and failed to deliver. Some feel that this decision has confirmed their worst fears: a minority of Taleban ‘moderates’ has once again overstepped their remit and fooled the donors into believing they could – at long last – bring the religious conservatives around. There has been a clear loss of faith among the diplomatic community which may be difficult to repair. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is taking increasing funding and political attention.
Now what?
More than anything, the decision on girls’ education demonstrates that the Taleban’s leadership remains stubbornly conservative, with religious officials exerting political influence that many within the movement resent. This decision already appears to have emboldened conservatives, generating a wave of retrogressive policies, including the news on 28 March that male government employees must wear beards and ‘Islamic dress’ and a day earlier, that parks must be gender-segregated. More conservative elements may also feel they can try to block other decisions, calculating that Haibatullah is supportive, or at least unwilling to rein them in. More pragmatic officials, like those who pressed ahead on girls’ education, may now be less willing to favour certain policies for fear of being overruled.
The three-day conference in Kandahar that was meant to provide a united front has only revealed the Taleban’s divisions. There is still no permanent cabinet and no real plan for working towards international recognition of the new government. The way in which the girls’ education decision was made, and the larger tensions within the movement that have been rumoured for months, underscore more fundamental issues. The failure to cultivate consensus on key issues hints at a deeper failure to communicate a clear vision and strategy to the wider Taleban movement and to the Afghan public. In other words, this is a crisis of leadership, the growing dominance of retrogressive clerics and a movement in disarray. It is a rare instance of where internal Taleban disagreements spill out into the public domain. The about-turn on policy has also stoked the flames of power struggles that will play out over the coming weeks and months. It should have been a priority to establish a clear position on an issue so important to the majority of the Afghan population, and which is seen as a yardstick of their legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world.
There are already, apparently, efforts to work on some sort of internal compromise. This would entail likely informal permission for older girls to return to classes in areas where schools had been open in the autumn. A series of incremental measures might lay the groundwork for the ‘comprehensive plan’ that the government has promised would allow older girls to return to school, through more reassurances on things like dress codes, gender segregation and transportation. This, however, is the best-case scenario.
Even in places like Mazar-e Sharif, where some girls’ secondary schools are still open, the Taleban’s decision has set students and teachers on edge. One tenth-grader in the city, with hopes of becoming a doctor, said nearly half of her classmates were staying at home and they no longer had enough teachers. She said the school principal had already introduced further dress restrictions in hopes that this would safeguard the school from Taleban closure. The larger effect the Taleban’s decision will have on demand and attitudes toward female education remains to be seen. A father in Kabul said he worried that now the schools were closed, his daughters would lose interest in studying altogether. His older daughter is still attending university, but he worries the Taleban will shut university doors to her any day now.
In such a messy situation, it is hard to see where the international leverage might lie to help turn things around. Public condemnation and punitive consequences – while fully warranted – may make things worse and risk further politicising the issue. Recriminations and ultimatums may force the leadership to retrench. The more other Islamic scholars, Afghan or foreign publicly criticise the Taleban government, the more the Taleban ulema will feel the need to justify their decision. The more donors and diplomats publicly criticise, the more female education will be seen as a foreign demand. Those inside the government trying to walk this decision back then risk being seen as capitulating to outsiders, which will ultimately make their job harder. There are few good policy options left.
Some believe that Haibatullah, and the Taleban as whole, need more time to process the enormity of their miscalculation. The argument is that they simply did not understand the impact this would have on their chance for international recognition and aid, and their standing even among other conservative Muslim countries.[7] It might be difficult to imagine just how out of touch they would have to be, to be so ignorant of the consequences – but it is entirely plausible. If this is indeed the case, then private dialogue and sustained pressure is required to engage them about the far-reaching costs of this reversal. It is also important for internationals to diversify the Taleban interlocutors that they speak to.
Even if this line of reasoning proves to be overly optimistic, there are no better alternatives. Shutting down channels of communication will cede more ground to the more conservative, less pragmatic voices in the Taleban. Outside engagement may – in some limited way, as it has in the past – help more pragmatic actors to push for change inside the movement. All of which is to say: continued dialogue may not yield much progress right now, but there simply is not much else outsiders can do at present.
Under the circumstances, it is difficult to argue that donors and diplomats should exercise restraint, or that the government should not feel the full consequences of such a cruel decision. But it is ultimately Afghan citizens – not the government – who will suffer the most from international isolation, and who desperately need the world to stay engaged.
Regardless of what the Taleban ultimately decides, some Afghans girls are unlikely to give up without a fight, though such protests may be dangerous. The Taleban have responded with brutality to women protestors in recent months, but as one Afghan schoolgirl in Kabul told AAN: “Despite school closures and not letting girls go to school, I am not going to stop or surrender.” She vowed to “show them that a girl’s success is not dependent on their decisions and that they can never stop us.”
Edited by Rachel Reid and Kate Clark
* Ashley Jackson is a researcher, and author of Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations under the Taliban, Hurst & Co., 2021.
References
References
↑1
For a more comprehensive overview of this decision, see AAN’s analysis here.
↑2
Many female pupils and teachers had been bracing for more restrictions since the Taleban takeover in August, and were devastated by the ban. One student told The New York Times, “When we think about our future, we can’t see anything.” Other protested. A 15 year old girl named Sotooda Forotan, when selected to read a poem at a religious event in Herat, instead delivered a speech pleading with the Taleban officials in the audience to allow her to go back to school. A video of Forotan’s speech posted online quickly went viral, as reported by Afghan women’s media organisation Rukhshana, and local Taleban officials subsequently announced that girls’ secondary schools would reopen in Herat.
↑3
See the author’s previous analysis on this issue here. It is also important to stress that access to education for older girls’ was already deeply constrained before the Taleban takeover. According to a 2017 Human Rights Watch report, 66 percent of lower secondary school age girls (12 to 15 years old) were out of school and approximately 200 out of Afghanistan’s 398 districts had no higher secondary school (typically for students aged 15 and above) open to girls.
↑4
Two articles in the policy pertained to formal female education. Article 15 reads “All young girls who are not obliged to wear the Hijab due to their young age should be provided with Islamic education in a mosque or madrasa or at the home of a reliable scholar, so that this class will not be deprived of Islamic studies. The Provincial Education Officer shall take serious measures in this regard.” Article 16, pertaining to education beyond the primary level, states: “When the ground is prepared, the Islamic Emirate, in the light of a procedure in line with Islamic principles, Hanafi jurisprudence and Islamic Emirate’s perspectives on education, shall take action to provide women with Islamic and other required sound studies.” Quoted from Rahmatullah Amiri and Ashley Jackson, Taliban attitudes and policies towards education, ODI, 2021.
For a biography of Haibatullah, see AAN’s reporting here.
↑7
Qatar and Turkey both released statements criticising the decision (see here and here). AFP also reported that Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and Qatar’s Deputy Foreign Minister Lolwah Al Khater have already jointly met with Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to request the Taleban reconsider its decision (see here).
The Ban on Older Girls’ Education: Taleban conservatives ascendant and a leadership in disarray
Sometimes 20 years can fall away like nothing. Sometimes time telescopes into a vivid memory of a flash of red above a sea of blue.
On March 23, 2002, I was 12 years old, living in Kabul, walking into an all-girls public school for the first time in my life. The Taliban — the extremists who from 1996 to 2001 had essentially outlawed girls’ education — was gone, its regime fallen, its edicts swept away. It was the first day of the new school year.
But I remember the fear in our school courtyard that day. How it flowed around me in deep blue tides. Our school uniform was a black outfit and a white headscarf, but so many girls had chosen to cover up with the blue burqa because there were rumors that Taliban members were out there, watching, looking for girls in uniforms so they could throw acid in our faces.
That was our fear, that the Taliban members would find us and hurt us if they knew who we were. And I remember our school principal in the midst of that blue sea, standing tall and proud and composed. She wore a long skirt with a blazer, and an elegant headscarf, and bright red lipstick.
I was afraid for her. “They’ll get her first,” I thought.
They didn’t. The school year continued, and as it did, I started to understand the lesson she was teaching us that day. “You don’t have to be afraid,” she was saying. “You’re free. Times have changed. You can go back to what we used to call normal.”
And as spring became summer and summer became fall, I watched that blue tide start to turn. I watched it drain away from our courtyard, and I watched what was hidden beneath come into view: black outfits, and white headscarves, and faces, and smiles.
We were Afghan girls. And we were back.
I thought about our principal last week, on March 23, 2022, when the Taliban broke its promise to fellow Afghans and to the entire world and announced it wouldn’t allow girls to attend school beyond sixth grade.
That day, I saw girls standing in their black outfits and white headscarves. I saw them outside their school gates in tears. I heard the Taliban mouth the excuses: There are not enough female teachers available, the school uniform for girls is not appropriately modest, the time just isn’t right.
Educated girls become educated women, and educated women are independent women. This is what members of the Taliban know. This is what they accept in their own families. This is what they fear in their own nation.
What they fear wears black outfits and white headscarves, and they hope to cover their fear in a new blue tide, just like they did when I was a child, when Afghan women and girls vanished, and the world looked away.
This cannot happen again. I will do my part. My Afghan girls’ school, now in Rwanda, is recruiting new students from our nation’s refugee diaspora. We intend to enroll the largest class in our history this fall. We will educate Afghan girls, and nothing and no one will ever deter us.
To Afghan men, I say: This is your moment. Don’t let your wives and daughters and sisters protest alone. Don’t let armed men tell you what their futures must look like. To other Muslim nations, I say: This is your moment. Raise your voices. Follow the example of Qatar and Turkey. Call out the Taliban’s un-Islamic decree, and in the strongest terms.
And to the rest of the world, I say: Do not give the Taliban the legitimacy it seeks until it first seeks its legitimacy from Afghan women.
Here we stand, tall, proud and unafraid. This is the lesson we learned as girls.
This is the lesson we teach to the girls to come.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh, a Washington Post Global Opinions contributing columnist, is co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan.
Opinion: The world can’t allow Afghan girls to vanish from classrooms again
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
