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The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?

June 23, 2022

Mhd Assem Mayar

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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The earth has only one atmosphere, and the effects of climate change transcend political boundaries. Afghanistan is one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases, but among the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change. The harm is already evident in the increased frequency of droughts, which are causing hunger and distress, and unfortunately, it is now clear that 2022 will be yet another year of drought in most parts of the country. AAN guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar*, a water resource management expert, looks at how the climate crisis is already affecting Afghanistan and at the likely projections for the future. He considers what the Republic did – or did not do – to reduce the harmful effects of global warming and finally discusses how climate change could be tackled under Taleban rule, now that Afghanistan is poorer, more isolated and subject to sanctions.
Looking to the skies for rain and snow

Every year, in winter and spring, Afghans look to the sky to see if snow and rain will fall that year. This last winter began well with higher than average snowfall in the end of December and early January.[1] After that, February and March were drier than average; only in the second week of March was there rainfall.

Winter snow is crucial for agriculture in Afghanistan: in the highlands, the snow acts as a reservoir, melting into the summer season and providing water for irrigation – although if the summer or spring is too hot, fast melting can cause disaster downstream, a lack of irrigation water into the summer or even worse, flooding. In the lowlands, snow moistens the soil, but not enough for rainfed crops to flourish. There, it is spring rain which is needed for rainfed agriculture to yield.

The good snowfall in the end of December 2021 and early January 2022 created hope in the hearts of farmers, and in provinces such as Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Balkh, they sowed their rain-fed lands, even the steep, high slopes of hills inaccessible to tractors. Since then, hopes have faded; the growth of wheat cultivated in rainfed areas has been weak and may not yield a harvest this year. Those with livestock are also concerned. At the beginning of April, herders in Dasht-e Gabar in the west of Baghlan-e Jadid district of Baghlan province told a colleague:

The grass is stressed because of the sun and the weather being hotter than in the past. Grass, which previously had grown to above a half-metre at this time of the year is now only about 10 cm high and turning black in the sunshine. Herders are very worried about the situation – if it doesn’t rain in the coming days, we’ll have to sell our cattle.[2]

Those with access to water from snowmelt are faring better in the north of Afghanistan. However, in the south, the situation is already dire: irrigation water is looking scarce. According to discussions with local people in Jaghatu district of Wardak province and Kandahar city, multiple wells have dried up and people are now lacking drinking water. On 5 April 2022, the Taleban announced they would release Dahla reservoir’s water for twenty-two days to enable farmers irrigate pomegranate orchards, but then stopped the water early. The Dahla reservoir in Kandahar, like the Kajaki in Helmand, did not fill fully. In a normal year, at this time, these dams would be overflowing. Recently, Azadi Radio reported that a person was killed in a water dispute between two villages in the Chak district of Wardak province. Such cases are expected across the country in the future if climate change-induced droughts are not handled.

The Taleban government has not yet declared a drought, and may yet do so this month, as the Republic did. However, it is now evident that in most of Afghanistan, 1401/2022 is another drought year. Moreover, Afghans are learning that what is ‘normal’ in their climate and weather patterns has changed, and changed for the worst.

The upward trend in temperatures is not easily discernible to the general public, unlike the changes in rain and snow fall, but they are evident in the long-term data records. The consequences of higher temperatures are serious, as global warming affects the water cycle, intensifies extreme events such as floods, droughts, glacier melt and storms, and is leading to a rise in sea levels.[3] The earth only has one atmosphere and global warming harm transcends political boundaries.

The release of large amounts of greenhouse gases[4] into the earth’s atmosphere that began with the industrial revolution is the primary cause of the ongoing climate crisis. Developed countries still play the major role in the production of these gases, while poorer countries, smaller emitters of greenhouse gases per head of population, are among the most vulnerable to climate change owing to their dependency on natural resources and their limited capacity to cope with climate variability and extremes. Afghanistan is in the latter category. It is one of the lowest contributors of greenhouse gases (179th out of 209 countries), but is in the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change (see the graphic illustrating this here).

The very specific driver of the recent droughts is the varying temperature of water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the so-called El Nino (warmer than usual) and La Nina (cooler than usual) effects, which plays a significant role in the world’s weather conditions. Variation from year to year is natural, but global warming is making these variations more frequent and more intense, with consequences for many countries, including Afghanistan.

2018 was a severe drought year in Afghanistan because there was a La Nina in the Pacific. The following year was extremely wet and good for farmers in Afghanistan, although with flooding, owing to El Nino in the Pacific. Subsequently, 2020 was a normal year for precipitation in Afghanistan, while 2021 again saw an extreme drought due to the reoccurrence of the La Nina. La Nina is still affecting the Pacific Ocean, and together with the fact that cumulative precipitation over the past six months of the current ‘water year’, which runs from October to September (map is available here), is up to 45 per cent less than average, meaning that Afghanistan’s drought is continuing. Drought and flood extremes in four out of five years show the change in the water cycle in Afghanistan. The increased frequency of these extreme conditions in the last five years are a result of climate change.

The effect of climate change on Afghanistan up to now: from temperature to river flow 

Comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of climate change and its projections for the future for Afghanistan was carried out by NEPA with the technical support of UNEP and WFP in 2016, and are available here and here. These analyses highlighted that:

  • Temperatures have been increasing across the country over the past thirty years. According to this UNEP report from 2016, Afghanistan’s mean annual temperature, which had risen by 0.6°C from 1960 to 2008, had since increased significantly and dramatically, by a further 1.2°C. This shift has intensified glacier and snow melt and led to an increase in the number of flash floods, glacial lake outburst floods and river flooding.
  • Climate change has doubled the number of droughts compared to the previous decades. Statistically, this affects the long-term average of precipitation and indeed, analyses by WFP, UNEP and NEPA showed a decline in annual precipitation in most of the country’s north and centre.
  • Afghanistan’s glaciers are melting. Over 14 per cent of the total area of glaciers in Afghanistan’s highlands was lost between 1990 and 2015, researchers found. This pace of decline is expected to continue. (For more details about Afghanistan’s melting glaciers, please read AAN’s report here). Glaciers and snow melt provide base flow to the rivers in the summer and their early melting or decline affect river flow in the summer.
  • The shifts in precipitation pattern and temperature have also affected patterns of river flow. For example, the author’s research findings reported that river flow in the Kabul River basin has changed slightly with an increase in the number of high and low flow days. This means that flood days, as well as low flow or dry days during the summer season have both increased, with obvious repercussions for water management and the utilisation of water in agriculture and other sectors along the year. It is assumed there have been similar changes in Afghanistan’s other river basins.

Projections for future climate change in Afghanistan

Projections for the climate are made using Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, which vary as to the level of greenhouse gases emitted globally up to the end of the 21st century.[5] Four RCP scenarios were used for climate modelling in the period up to the fifth global assessment report in 2014.[6] Since then, new RCPs have been adopted, but as analysis for Afghanistan using the new climate scenarios has yet to be carried out, the older scenarios are cited in this report. All of the scenarios foresee Afghanistan getting hotter and receiving less precipitation, but to a greater or lesser extent. It is worth stressing that the failure of the world to start seriously to tackle greenhouse gas emissions means that models based on the newer RCP scenarios show even more severe harm to the climate, globally.

Projection of mean annual temperature for Afghanistan for a base period (grey: 1975-2005) and a scenario period (2006-2100) showing the effect on temperature of relatively limited greenhouse gas emissions (green, RCP 4.5, emissions peaking in 2040 and then declining) and uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions (red, RCP 8.5). The spread of the models are depicted as transparent areas and the means as lines. Both trends are statistically significant and depicted as a dashed line. The magnitudes of the trends are plotted in their relative colours. Source: UNEP and NEPA

Modelling of what would happen to Afghanistan’s climate was carried out by WFP, UNEP and NEPA in 2015. The projections using what they called a “moderate” scenario, (RCP 4.5) would see greenhouse gas emission peaking in 2040 (see their report here) included:

  • Temperatures in Afghanistan would increase by more than the global average and there would be further melting of glaciers and snow cover, a shift in precipitation from snow to rainfall and a rise in demand for water for crops, with plants possibly requiring extra irrigation.
  • There would be an increase in drought and flood risks. Local droughts would become the norm by 2030, while floods would be a secondary risk.
  • Snowfall would diminish in the central highlands, potentially leading to reduced spring and summer flows in the Helmand, Harirud-Murghab and Northern River basins, while spring rainfall would decrease across most of the country.
  • In the northeast and small pockets of the south and east, along the border with Iran, there might be a five per cent or more increase in ‘heavy precipitation events’ that can lead to flash floods. However, these potentially devastating events might actually decrease across most of the south and other parts of the north.
  • In the medium-term, the frequency of snowmelt-related floods in spring might increase simply due to accelerated melting associated with higher spring temperatures.

Assessing how the effects of climate change would translate into economic impacts is complicated, although some attempts have been made, for example by the World Economic Forum estimated that climate change could wipe off up to 18 per cent of GDP from the world-wide economy by 2050. However, in developing countries, such as Afghanistan, which are more dependent on agriculture and water resources, the losses from climate change will be more severe than the worldwide average and will directly threaten their food security as well as resilience to natural disasters.

What could be done to help Afghans cope with the looming climate crisis

Attempts to limit the impact of climate change can generally be divided into two categories: climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. Mitigation is adapting the economy to reduce greenhouse emissions and is less of a priority for Afghanistan, given it is such a low emitter of greenhouse gases, just 0.19 per cent of the global total. However, adaptation is crucial and urgent. Afghanistan is in the top ten of countries which will be harmed by climate change, which means it is imperative to adapt the economy, agriculture, water management, energy and environment to reduce the harm, and strengthen communities’ resilience as quickly as possible.

Tackling climate change requires multi-dimensional actions, including: institutional development (administrative frameworks, strategy, policy, planning, and procedures), legalisation, capacity development and investment on physical infrastructures. Therefore, best practice is to design and implement a comprehensive programme which includes all the affected sectors.

However, in the meantime, implementing local and small-scale adaptation measures can also help to reduce the effects of climate change. For example, rainwater could be harvested by constructing small ponds and dams, storing the water for later use, and playing a vital role in reducing flood risk. Constructing such harvesting structures would be useful nationwide, but especially so in the catchment of karezs. A karez, also known as a qanat, is an ancient irrigation system, with long horizontal tunnels and vertical wells, that taps into the groundwater table in the hillsides, using gravity, rather than any external power. It is the only water resource in many remote areas in the south of Afghanistan.  Many karezs are reported to be dry, but small investments could replenish this ancient sustainable water resource. In the winter, when there is less work, people could build small ponds and water barriers in the valleys of their villages using stones and local materials, enabling karezs to operate longer and avoiding them from drying up. Such voluntary, communal work, known as hashar, is familiar to most Afghans.

On a bigger scale, the glaciers in the highlands, which are so crucial for providing meltwater for agriculture, but which are thinning and shrinking, could be compensated for by creating new artificial glaciers. These are developed by slowing down the flow of water during the cold season so that it freezes, enabling additional water to be stored and released more gradually. A detailed article by the author about the feasibility of artificial glaciers in Afghanistan is available here in Pashto and a more explanation in English can be read here.

Furthermore, as climate change affects snow accumulation and melting process, mountain snow now plays less role as a natural reservoir of water for the summer season. Thus, the assessment of what and where reservoirs are needed, conducted during Daud Khan’s regime in the 1970s to determine the country’s hydropower and irrigation potential, is out of date. It did not recommend dams in the highlands; a new assessment is required, which would recommend additional reservoir sites for regulating water to meet the new demand. This would help to better implement any drought risk management strategy and would play a considerable role in mitigating the risk of floods.

Avoiding water losses in any irrigation system helps to ensure a greater area can be irrigated. Investment in the rehabilitation of intakes, canals and water conveyance structures is required. New irrigation technology, such as drip or sprinkler irrigation, although expensive to implement, enables farmers to use water effectively and expand their area of cultivation. A policy of subsidisation could help farmers switch from the less effective furrow irrigation method, where small channels are dug to carry water to crops, to the much more effective drip irrigation method. Afghanistan’s neighbours, Iran and Uzbekistan, have already implemented such policies, waiving farmers adopting such new technology, from taxation for several years.

Reforestation is another adaptation measure that reduces the harm of climate change. Local people can avoid deforestation and work toward expanding the forest cover. Applying drip irrigation technology could easily help expand forests on the hillsides, particularly in the major cities, and would also improve air quality and help to reduce ‘heat islands’ which boost temperatures in the summer months. Forestation also improves the stability of the hillsides, helping prevent landslides and also reduces the risk of flooding by slowing water flow.

As to reducing Afghanistan’s own greenhouse gas emissions, there could be a wider adoption of solar, wind and other renewable energies. Afghanistan has a high potential for solar energy across the country and for wind energy in its western provinces. A policy for prioritising and utilising solar energy by government, in the private sector, by international organisations and wealthier Afghans who use generators when mains electricity fails, could considerably reduce carbon emissions. In rural areas, small ‘discretised’ grids could be established using renewables to provide electricity for homes. This technology has been used, but for extracting groundwater, which is unsustainable and should be avoided. To make groundwater extraction using solar energy sustainable, farmers would have to make sure the aquifers were recharged with an equivalent amount of rainwater.

Tackling climate change in Afghanistan during the Republic

Under the Republic, combatting climate change focused on two types of activities: (1) developing institutions, passing legalisation and formulating policies and strategies; and (2) efforts to secure finance to pay for tackling climate change. Each of these activities is discussed separately below.

What will become clear is how, despite 15 years of efforts, the Republic carried out very little climate change adaptation despite resources, including technical support, being relatively plentiful. The opportunity for adaptation, which Afghans need so urgently, may already have been lost, or at the very least delayed. Since August 2021 and the capture of Afghanistan by the Taleban, the country has again become isolated, far poorer, with deep cuts to development aid, and UN and US sanctions applied suddenly not to an armed opposition group, but to the government and therefore the whole country. Finding ways to help Afghanistan cope with the already devastating effects of climate change has become far, far more difficult.

Institutional development and legislation

Afghanistan had to establish various standard mechanisms and laws as a precondition for getting the help it needed – both technical expertise and funding – to first analyse the likely effects of climate change and then try to mitigate the harm. Such a pathway was deemed necessary in the early 2000s after the Republic was established. However, it should be stressed that it was taken with little urgency by the politicians of the Republic, who seemed to view global warming primarily as yet another demand of the donors that needed paying lip service to, or a new opportunity to gain funds.

Although the global warming trend has been identified since the 1930s, it was not until the 1980s that thoughts about combatting it began and, globally, institutions and platforms to address climate change began to be established. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The convention entered into force with a secretariat headquartered in Bonn on 21 March 1994. The first annual United Nations climate change conference (COP1) was held in Berlin in 1995.

Afghanistan signed this framework convention in 1992, but ratified it only in 2002. That decade was one in which war and isolation meant climate change and its harmful consequences were rarely spoken about in Afghanistan. With the establishment of the internationally-backed Republic at the end of 2001, environmental institutions and laws were gradually established. NEPA was established in April 2005. Afghanistan’s first environmental law was promulgated in early 2007. That law defined NEPA’s function, power and position as Afghanistan’s environmental policy-making and regulatory institution. NEPA’s mandate and institutional structure gradually evolved and in 2010 a division devoted to climate change was established, as one of the six key divisions.

To obtain funds for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, NEPA prepared a nationwide assessment and other documentation for tackling climate change. It developed a National Adaptation Programme of Action in 2009, following consideration of a wide variety of potential adaptation measures across all sectors. Afghanistan submitted its first national report to the UN framework convention on climate change in 2013 with help from the Green Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nation’s Environment Programme.[7] (By comparison, Afghanistan’s northern neighbour, Tajikistan, submitted its initial communication in 2002). The first report said that “Afghanistan does not have the institutional arrangement to provide information and know-how on the environmental sound technologies to get easy access by private companies and individuals.”

In 2013, Afghanistan ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which serves to implement the UN framework convention on climate change UN framework convention on climate change objective of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere in order to stop dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate.

In 2016, NEPA with the technical support of UNEP and WFP and the financial support of GEF completed a comprehensive analysis of already observed climate change in Afghanistan and projections for the future. In the same year, with the technical support of the United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP), NEPA developed a Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan for Afghanistan (ACCSAP). Following this research and analysis, in 2017, Afghanistan was able to submit its second national communication; it aimed at providing updated information on the country’s steps towards the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It included a greenhouse gas inventory, a list of sources of emissions, quantified using standardised methods, and the systematic collection and analysis of national climate data. There was also information on how national strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation were being developed and the strengthening of the National Climate Change Committee as the lead inter-ministerial coordination mechanism on climate change. (For more information about the climate change and governance in Afghanistan please read here).

Climate change affects a wide range of sectors and this was reflected in the National Adaptation Programme of Action and Initial National Communication as: i) agriculture; ii) biodiversity and ecosystems; iii) infrastructure and energy; iv) forestry and rangelands; v) natural disasters; and vi) water. It was recognised that climate change would need to be incorporated into the legislative frameworks, sectoral policies and strategies of the ministries of agriculture, energy and water, rural development, public health, urban development and mining, as well as NEPA and the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority. The Ministry of Agriculture, with the support of FAO developed a drought risk management strategy that took climate change into account. Other ministries, including energy and water, had yet to finalise their policies and strategies when the Republic fell and have not done so since.

After fifteen years of institution-building, law-making and fact-finding, a generous conclusion would be that the former Afghan republic had been on the path to incorporating efforts to mitigate the harm of climate change into its policies and strategies. A less generous assessment would be to point to how little it actually achieved. As to the Taleban, on the first day of the COP26 international conference in Glasgow in November 2021, senior Taleban official in Doha, Suhail Shahin, called for the resumption of climate change-related projects which had “already been approved and were funded by Green Climate Fund, UNDP, Afghan Aid” (see his tweets here). Since then, to the best knowledge of this author, climate change risks have not been discussed in any of numerous discussions conducted between the Taleban and representatives of the donor countries in Doha. However, the Taleban have spoken about the need for better water management, which is one of the key components of climate change adaptation.

Efforts to secure financing to tackle the climate crisis

Despite all the documentation and information on funding needs, which are detailed below, the Republic itself did not allocate any specific budget for responding to climate change. The Ministry of Finance in its national budget narrative for the year 2021/1400 claimed that risks due to climate change were not measurable. Thus, it recommended all sectors to finance the consequences of climate change from their available financial resources. The same text was copy-pasted in multiple years’ budgets with no addition or further details, suggesting how little importance was attached to climate change. The one partial exception was the Ministry of Energy and Water which constructed some check dams, small structures built across waterways to store water and reduce erosion, prior to the collapse of the Republic, which could be seen as an action to mitigate the harm of climate change.

Instead, with regard to climate change caused largely by developed-country gas emissions, major efforts focused on securing international financing for addressing the effects of the climate crisis. According to Afghanistan’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)[8] submitted to the UN framework convention on climate change in 2015, the Republic estimated that it would need more than one billion USD per year from donors during the following decade to “overcome the existing gaps and barriers toward sufficiently addressing its climate change adaptation needs.” The government planned to allocate 70 per cent of the 10.7 billion USD expected as financial support for climate change adaptation (until 2030) to watershed management and the expansion of irrigated agriculture. Furthermore, it said that 6.6 billion USD would be needed to reduce greenhouse gases emission in order to meet 2030 goals.[9]

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has funded most of the climate change-related projects in Afghanistan after 2002. Since the establishment of NEPA, GEF funded various projects through third-party implementers, such as UNDP and UNEP. GEF also funded several projects regarding climate adaptation under the framework of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and other ministries. Third-party implementers (UNEP, UNDP) also secured funds from GEF’s Least Developed Countries Fund programme, established in 2001 in recognition that delays in addressing adaptation needs could increase vulnerability or costs in the future. Those funds supported the preparation of Afghanistan’s National Communications to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the National Adaptation Programme of Action and the execution of three full-size climate change adaptation projects (LDCF-1 from 2013-2016 , LDCF-2 from 2014-2019, and LDCF-3, undated in literature).

More funds became available to developing countries to promote low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways after the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up in 2011 under the UN framework convention on climate change. Afghanistan, however, has not yet received funds from the GCF directly as the government administrations tackling climate change (ministries of energy and water, agriculture, irrigation and livestock, rural rehabilitation and development, and NEPA) still lack the capacity (this was even before the Taleban takeover). NEPA established an inter-ministerial board to facilitate development of proposals to the GCF in 2016, but has yet to be accredited for applying for funds.

During COP21 in 2015, a new international climate agreement (the Paris Agreement), applicable to all countries, was signed, aiming to keep global warming at between 1.5°C and 2°C, in accordance with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The agreement said that 100 billion US Dollars in public and private resources will need to be raised each year from 2020 onwards to finance projects that enable countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change (rise in sea level, droughts, etc) or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This funding will gradually increase and some developing countries will also be able to become donors, on a voluntary basis, to help the poorest countries.

Afghanistan does not have an accredited national implementing entity for applying directly to the GEF or GCF for funds. Besides, owing to the low-institutional capacity, even under the Republic, the government could not directly secure the required funds. Therefore agencies like the Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNEP, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the WFP, and the World Bank, which are all accredited for securing this funding, are brokering the process.[10]

The Adaptation Fund is another funding agency that finances adaptation projects and programmes aimed at reducing the adverse effects of climate change on communities, countries, and sectors. The UNDP, on behalf of Afghanistan, submitted a proposal in 2019 to the Adaptation Fund for 9.4 million USD grant in order to rehabilitate karezs. This project was planned to be jointly implemented by UNDP and Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development before the Taleban takeover. Furthermore, the International Fund for Agriculture Development also supported projects under the ministry of agriculture, and of rural development in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan gained the approval for a 17.2 million USD grant of GCF and 4.2 million co-financing of other organizations through UNDP in August 2020 to initiate renewable energy in rural areas of Afghanistan. As of January 2021, 4 million USD of the total 21.4 million USD earmarked for the project had been disbursed, but, since the Taleban takeover, the programme has been suspended.

Under the Republic, considerable technical support and resources were also available to Afghanistan, including the Climate Technology Centre and Network hosted by UNEP which aims to enhance the transfer of climate smart technologies in order to promote adaptive capacity and climate change mitigation efforts in developing countries.[11]

Recent research found that only six per cent of nations had managed to obtain climate change-related funds through their national institutions. Others relied on international bodies to broker the process. According to Carbon Brief, Afghanistan has been among the countries which did not receive funding directly from the UN’s Green Climate Fund. This was the case before and after the fall of the Republic. “Unfortunately, most climate vulnerable, least-developed and developing countries have found it a bit difficult to access,” Dr Emmanuel Tachie-Obeng of the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency and the Climate Vulnerable Forum, told Carbon Brief in January 2022.

After the Taleban takeover

The rupture between Afghanistan and its erstwhile donors and the international system in general, that followed the Taleban’s takeover on 15 August 2021 has hit many activities aimed at mitigating the harm of climate change. The Taleban government has not been recognised by any state, meaning Afghanistan had no delegates at COP26 in Glasgow – although some climate activists tried to independently represent Afghanistan in COP26, they were unable to secure visas. However, the repercussions go much further than this.

The significance of UN sanctions, which targeted named individuals in the Taleban and the Haqqani network, and US sanctions, which targeted the group as a whole expanded suddenly when the Taleban were no longer an armed opposition group but the government of Afghanistan. Programmes which built up government agencies or worked through them were suspended, as was development aid. UN Security Council Resolution 2615 issued in December 2021, provided a more permissive environment, making humanitarian and basic human needs aid much easier to implement, while the US Treasury’s General license 20 (GL-20), issued in late February 2022, loosened up that country’s sanctions “for commercial and financial transactions in Afghanistan, including with its governing institutions” said the press release. The aim, it said, was to ensure US sanctions “do not prevent or inhibit transactions and activities needed to provide aid to and support the basic human needs of the people of Afghanistan and underscores the United States’ commitment to working with the private sector, international partners and allies, and international organizations to support the people of Afghanistan.”

However, the August 2021 rupture also meant that donors have been more careful about funding anything that involves the Taleban administration. Some climate change mitigation measures such as flood protection or drought resilience are classed as humanitarian. However, the major climate crisis programmes that had already been agreed or that were in the pipeline have been suspended. They include:

  • Funding for significant drought prevention and water management projects such as the 222.50 million USD World Bank project to develop early warning and response systems, the Asian Development Bank’s Arghandab Integrated Water Resources Development project and the Afghanistan Drought Early Warning Decision Support Tool, which was in a test phase.
  • The 21.4 million USD project for initiating renewable energy in rural areas of Afghanistan implemented by UNDP and the Ministry of rural development has also been halted and faces an uncertain future.
  • The karez rehabilitation project funded by the International Fund for Agriculture Development and implemented by UNDP and MRRD has been suspended.
  • A 9.9 million USD-funded irrigation project implemented by FAO and the Ministry of Energy and Water and funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency was suspended.
  • Without the now-suspended technical assistance of UNEP and other supporting agencies, NEPA on behalf of Afghanistan will not be able to submit the next national communication reports to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This will also suspend understanding of the climate change effect and monitoring of any progress achieved.[12]

It should be noted that most funding sources would anyway have demanded a full re-appraisal of a programme if the main executing agency had changed as it is the case after the Taleban takeover, ie even in the absence of sanctions.

What can be done to tackle the climate crisis in Afghanistan now?

The potential actions to help Afghans adapt to the looming ravages of climate change are already known. They include: schemes to harvest rainwater, including from small check dams to much larger reservoirs; rehabilitating karezes; changing from furrow to drip irrigation and tillage adaptation; projects that replenish groundwater to support water extraction during drought; introducing crops and trees that require less water; seeding and improving rangeland; constructing artificial glaciers to reduce the variability of meltwater flow and improve water storage; stopping deforestation and; supporting Afghan technical and scientific capacity. They range from community-level projects to major engineering works to social and educational action.

Many questions could be asked about why more was not done during the Republic when funds and technical expert help was plentiful. Now, following the Taleban takeover, far less support is on offer. Some small-scale, community-level improvements are being carried out via UN agencies and NGOs, including aspects even of some of the GEF-funded programmes, especially following the UN resolution of December 2021 and US Treasury waiver of February 2022 eased restrictions. Finding even small ways through the political impasse is still tricky. Generally, work that does not involve the Taleban government and is not aimed at building up government capabilities is the simplest to continue, or to begin. Nationwide, the work going ahead on climate change adaptation is patchy and absolutely inadequate to the scale or urgency of the crisis. Whatever activities are going on could be described, at best, as pathways to be expanded when and if the political situation improves. Adaptation at scale, though, needs government.

It should be significant that adaptation to climate change is not controversial for the Taleban, nor for donors, nor the wider population. Unlike, for example, education, there is the potential for a broad consensus that action is necessary and urgent. Afghanistan also has a strong tradition of communal work so there are grassroots structures and traditions to draw on. Given the political impasse, however, for more donor-funded programmes to get approval, the Taleban would need to accept that state involvement is currently anathema to donors, so if they want climate change adaptations to go ahead, even thought they are the ‘de facto authorities’, they could not expect too much involvement in programmes. For a group determined to emphasise its sovereignty in the land, this is difficult.

And/or, donors would need to reconsider their absolute ban on working with the Taleban government. For example, there could be some re-engagement with those parts of the administration where there are still competent and experienced, politically neutral, technical staff, such as in the Ministry of Rural Development, with possibly a step-by-step engagement that involved monitoring while those ministries proved their bona fides and capability. The donor decision to implement aid programmes via UN agencies without recourse to the Afghan state necessarily diminishes the slowly built-up capacity of Afghan state agencies such as NEPA and ministries such as agriculture, energy and water and rural development. Also, while UN agencies might be the safe choice of donors, reluctant to sustain the Taleban in power, they are exorbitantly expensive, less efficient and tend to know the country less well than Afghanistan’s own civil society. However, working at anything scaled-up needs some state involvement.

The Earth’s climate crisis has been caused by developed countries. The Paris Climate Agreement recognises this and requires them to compensate poor countries for the effects of climate change through sponsoring adaptation initiatives. That agreement recognises that countries like Afghanistan are suffering out of all proportion to the contribution they have made to damaging the planet’s atmosphere and climate. For Afghans, it is additionally unfair that the change of government means programmes backed by global funds are largely blocked when the climate emergency is already hitting the country hard, causing hunger and distress. The need for adaptation is urgent, yet the political impasse over aid and recognition looks to be enduring, and consequently also, the block on most aspects of the major, globally-funded, already-agreed programmes. However, unlike all the other causes of crises facing Afghanistan, the climate change emergency will continue to worsen, regardless of whatever and whenever a political settlement eventually materialises.

Edited by Kate Clark

* Dr Mohammad Assem Mayar is a water resource management expert and former lecturer at Kabul Polytechnic University in Kabul, Afghanistan. This year, he completed his doctorate at the Institute for Modelling Hydraulics and Environmental Systems at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He tweets via @assemmayar1.

References

References
↑1 The cause was what is called a Madden–Julian Oscillation event in December 2021.  This is an eastward moving disturbance of clouds, rainfall, winds and pressure that traverses the planet in the tropics and returns to its initial starting point after an average of 30 to 60 days. According to one study, it can result in a 23% increase in daily precipitation relative to the mean in Afghanistan.
↑2 A recent follow-up call to Baghlan indicates that rainfed agriculture failed. A Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) map backs this up and also shows the failure of rainfed crops in Kunduz. Crops in Badghis, Faryab and Jawzjan provinces are faring better than last year.
↑3 The continuous movement of water in atmosphere (from vapour to liquid and solid phases) is called the water cycle. Water exists in the atmosphere as cloud vapours, and precipitate as rain and snow. Consequently, water flows on the earth before evaporating back into the atmosphere.
↑4 Gases that are emitted from the earth into the atmosphere and trap heat resulting in global temperature rises. Carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons are examples of greenhouse gases.
↑5 RCP pathways are adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to help modellers work out different climate futures, all of which are considered possible, but vary according to the volume of greenhouse gases emitted in the years to come. RCPs are labelled after their ‘radiative forcing value’, ie the size of the energy imbalance in the atmosphere – more incoming energy from sunlight than the earth radiates to space – as measured in watts per square metre, so RCP2.6 is a scenario with an imbalance of 2.6 W/m2, RCP4.5 an imbalance of 4.5 W/m2, and so on.
↑6 The four scenarios assume that: greenhouse gas emissions peak between 2010-2020 and then decline (RCP2.6); greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 and then decline (RCP4.5); greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2080 and then decline (RCP6) and; greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century (RCP8.5).
↑7 The regular reports, called National Communication are a requirement made by the fund called Green Climate Facility from all parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
↑8 The INDC represents a country’s steps to decrease national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
↑9 As one example of climate change mitigation during the years of the Republic, under the Montreal Protocol, which sets binding progressive phase-out obligations for developed and developing countries for all the major ozone-depleting substances, including chlorofluorocarbons, halons and less damaging transitional chemicals such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). Afghanistan is committed to reducing its use of HCFCs, chemicals that are used in refrigeration and air conditions that destroy ozone layer and contribute to climate change, by 35 per cent of by 2020 and 67.5 per cent by 2025. To achieve this milestone, the Afghan republic’s cabinet in 2018 banned imports of HCFC-based equipment, which came into effect in November 2018. Following that, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation was supporting the Afghan republic in training technicians for customs  to implement ban on HCFC equipment. In addition, Afghanistan once restricted importing vehicles more than a decade old , but then abandoned the rule because of the protests from traders, claiming they had placed orders for old cars and Afghans could not afford newer models.
↑10 For example, FAO and the Green Climate Fund joined forces in 2019 to implement the first-ever GCF-funded project in Afghanistan. It had focused on building the capacity of NEPA. Later, another proposal was submitted to extend this project for two more years. The implementation of these projects aimed at enabling NEPA to independently handle GCF-funding projects and lead government coordination on GCF projects. A list of the small projects implemented in Afghanistan and sponsored by various donors is available here.
↑11 In addition, the Asian Development Bank funded a joint master degree programme of integrated water management implemented by the Kabul Polytechnic University and Griffith University of Australia for the employees of the ministry of Energy and Water. Funds for this project were transferred to the Kabul Polytechnic University’s account from ADB at the start of the project, which meant that, after a three-month break following the takeover of the country by Taleban, the programme could resume as normal.
↑12 As UNEP was assisting NEPA in preparing the national communication report for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, it could continue this task without the Taleban government’s involvement in order to avoid a pause in climate change monitoring and fill the gap of submitting regular reports to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 14 Jun 2022

 

The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?
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Why Have the Wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine Played Out So Differently?

June 23, 2022

BY: William Byrd, Ph.D.

United States Institute of Peace

June 23, 2022

The United States, NATO, national leaders and security forces failed in Afghanistan but not in Ukraine.

The Taliban insurgency and U.S. troop withdrawal, and Russian incursions culminating in the February 24 invasion, constituted existential “stress tests” for Afghanistan and Ukraine, respectively. Ukraine and its international supporters have succeeded in preventing an outright Russian victory, imposing severe and continuing costs on Russia — ranging from high casualties to financial sanctions. Whatever happens next, the invasion has solidified Ukraine’s national will, status and orientation as an independent, Western-oriented sovereign country. In sharp contrast, Afghanistan’s government and security forces collapsed within a month after U.S. troops left the country, its president and many others fled, and the Taliban rapidly took over.
Ukraine’s success and Afghanistan’s collapse came about despite both countries facing messy politics in recent decades (including disputed elections, irregular changes of government and political violence), neighboring countries’ interference, widespread corruption (both countries have been more corrupt than most of their neighbors, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index) and security sector weaknesses. The many differences between the two countries include some that favor Ukraine: far higher level of development and average per capita income; proximity to Europe; 100 percent literacy versus 37 percent in Afghanistan; far better human and social indicators more generally; and much less ethnic fractionalization. Other differences, however, should have favored Afghanistan: its centuries-long history as an independent country and the Taliban’s weakness as compared to Russia. Strikingly, the same external actors — the United States, NATO and its member states — failed in Afghanistan but have more effectively supported Ukraine. What key factors explain success and failure?

Two Different Conflicts

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Ukraine have been fundamentally different. Ukraine is in a defensive conventional and hybrid war against Russia. Afghanistan was subjected to a counterterrorism (CT) intervention in 2001 that morphed into a massive counterinsurgency (CI) effort involving military action, security sector support, development programs and institution building. Moreover, Afghanistan was a focal point for the global war on terror going back to 9/11 and earlier, whereas Ukraine never was. Not being a nexus in that “war” arguably was a success factor in post-conflict transitions to stable peace.

The narrative of foreign invasion was a positive factor for Ukraine but not for Afghanistan. The absence of U.S. and NATO combat forces was conducive to a Ukrainian narrative of Russian aggression and building a unified and effective national response, but in Afghanistan this factor was unfavorable for the previous government. The massive and comprehensive U.S.-led international engagement meant the Afghan government could not credibly characterize the conflict as its own fight, let alone against foreign forces. The Taliban narrative of fighting a jihad against foreign invaders was more credible, even though the Taliban received essential support from Pakistan and elsewhere.

Counterinsurgency Challenges

The CI effort in Afghanistan depended on key success factors that were not in place. Although most insurgencies around the world fail, Afghanistan has been an exception, having seen two victorious insurgencies against great powers in the past 40 years. Government victory in CI requires a long time horizon and certain prerequisites. In particular, it has been virtually impossible to decisively defeat an insurgency if it has access to reliable and durable sanctuaries outside the country. Pakistan never wavered in providing sanctuary for the Taliban, and indeed their headquarters was in Quetta. Moreover, the international military intervention and security sector and stabilization initiatives as well as the Afghan government’s own efforts were plagued by short-termism, not looking out much into the future let alone planning five to 10 years ahead in line with the time required for sustainable success at CI.

NATO was not set up for CI, but the United States should have learned from its own CI experience. NATO, as a defensive alliance designed to deter and defend against a Soviet conventional or nuclear attack, was much better positioned to support Ukraine’s defensive war with Russia than to successfully pursue CI in Afghanistan. However, the United States had extensive experience from Vietnam as well as other, smaller CI efforts. Moreover, there was ample scope for learning from experience during the nearly two decades of the intervention in Afghanistan, as well as for cross-learning between Afghanistan and Iraq. Some lessons from past experience were laid out in the U.S. Army-Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual, but efforts to apply its doctrines did not lead to better outcomes.

Different Security Sector Reform Outcomes

Security sector reform in Ukraine worked, but Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) failed. There is no sugarcoating the collapse of the ANDSF versus Ukrainian security forces’ successful resistance against Russia. The latter gained valuable experience during the post-2014 conflict in the eastern Donbas region, whereas the ANDSF did not appear to learn that much from being trained and mentored by U.S. and other NATO forces as well as working alongside them against the Taliban over more than a decade, and never became able to operate fully independently.

The United States and NATO effectively supported Ukraine’s security sector reform but not the ANDSF. The same external actors (the United States, the NATO alliance and various NATO member countries) were engaged in supporting Ukraine and Afghanistan’s security sectors, with strikingly different results. A crucial difference was that the Afghan Army and police were built from scratchon a new foundation and model, whereas security sector reform in Ukraine was evolutionary, starting small when the country joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1994 and accelerating from 2014 onward.

Unlike in Ukraine, there was enormous built-in ANDSF dependence on unending foreign support. The cost of the ANDSF — equivalent to more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product and funded almost entirely by foreign aid — exceeded that of any other country and could never be covered by domestic revenues. Dependency also encompassed logistics, maintenance (by foreign contractors) and key enablers such as airpower. Though Ukraine effectively absorbed increasing amounts of foreign military equipment in the run-up to the Russian invasion, the share of its security costs covered by aid was small before 2022.

The sheer size and dominance of U.S. and NATO support militated against the success of the ANDSF. Compared to targeted assistance and never more than a handful of foreign military advisors and trainers in Ukraine, international military forces in Afghanistan peaked at well over 100,000 during the 2009-11 “surge” period, and enormous aid resources went into the ANDSF over nearly two decades. International experience suggests that the success of security sector reform has been negatively correlated with the magnitude of foreign involvement and the degree of reliance on foreign models.

Complicated Politics

Both Ukraine and Afghanistan suffered from difficult politics, but this played out differently. Ukrainian political groupings and leaders coalesced against the Russian threat, despite differences among them including in views toward Russia. In two successive post-2014 presidential elections, peaceful transfers of power occurred, and all political parties came together in response to the Russian invasion on February 24. In Afghanistan, all presidential elections after 2004 were disputed, leading to an extra-constitutional National Unity Government in 2014 and competing presidential “inaugurations” after the 2019 election. Even when it was abundantly clear that most or all U.S. troops would be leaving and their combat support to ANDSF was ending, Afghan politicians continued their internecine disputes and did not come together against the Taliban threat.

Wishful Thinking Versus Realism

There was wishful thinking on Afghanistan versus realism, even pessimism, regarding Ukraine. U.S. assessments of ANDSF’s capabilities tended to be excessively rosy, whereas assessments of Ukraine’s ability to resist a full-scale Russian military onslaught were conservative and turned out to be overly pessimistic. Domestically, there seemed to be a remarkable degree of (at least outward) complacency among Afghan non-Taliban political elites that the U.S. troop presence would continue, even in the face of the increasingly clearly expressed U.S. intention to withdraw militarily. While Ukrainian leaders and political elites expressed the hope that Russia would not attack — which may have reflected wishful thinking — this did not inhibit an effective national response to the invasion when it happened.

U.S. troops’ Afghan exit strategy gave rise to distortions, but this was not an issue in Ukraine. The perceived viability, effectiveness and sustainability of the ANDSF were seen as key to the exit of U.S. and other NATO troops from the country. This generated pressure to “show progress” in the development and capabilities of the ANDSF, even if it was not really there, or was not tested in combat. The absence of U.S. combat troops in Ukraine obviated the need for optimistic assessments to justify an exit strategy.

Unlike the mixed messaging on Afghanistan from different U.S. agencies, there was more unified, consistent messaging on Ukraine. In recent years, there were firm top-level political declarations that the United States would be completing the drawdown of its troops in Afghanistan, but also indications of a tug-of-war with the Pentagon, which did not particularly hide its desire for at least a small U.S. troop presence to stay on indefinitely. While not excusing Afghan complacency, this mixed messaging did provide some ammunition for wishful thinking on their part. There was no such semi-public disconnect in U.S. messaging to Ukraine as well as to Russia and more generally.

The United States and NATO had serious contingency plans and preparations for Ukraine but not for Afghanistan. In the case of Ukraine, there was a pre-invasion U.S. and NATO buildup on the country’s western borders and military aid was increased, and then a swift, multipronged response when the invasion occurred, including a sharp acceleration of military aid, large amounts of civilian aid and imposition of drastic sanctions against Russia. In Afghanistan, all eggs seem to have been put in the ANDSF “basket,” with little in the way of a “Plan B” against the Afghan collapse that materialized.

Shifting U.S. Priorities

The United States showed growing fatigue over Afghanistan, but this is not yet the case for Ukraine. The sheer longevity of the intervention in Afghanistan is what was surprising, not that fatigue eventually set in. The U.S. staying power over nearly two decades, though remarkable, was a symptom of the failure to set Afghanistan on a sustained course toward post-conflict stability, and during its second decade reflected inertia and the search for an exit. The key shortcoming was the lack of realistic preparations for the withdrawal of U.S. troops — forecast as early as 2011 and increasingly on the cards under the two most recent U.S. administrations. U.S. and European fatigue over Ukraine may set in at some point, but Ukraine’s resistance and the support provided by its Western partners has prevented an outright Russian victory.

Afghanistan became increasingly peripheral to U.S. national security interests, while Ukraine is more central. As time elapsed after 9/11 — especially after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan nearly a decade later — the original CT justification for the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan weakened and looked increasingly out of line with its huge size and cost. Ukraine’s location in Europe and Russia’s 2014 incursion enhanced Ukraine’s centrality to U.S. national security interests. Russia’s full-scale invasion has the potential to destroy the rules-based international order in Europe, which depends on respect for countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity. An independent, sovereign Ukraine, therefore, has become central to broader U.S. and global security. Afghanistan, in contrast, was a high-priority focus of U.S. national security policy — until it was not.

Why Have the Wars in Afghanistan and Ukraine Played Out So Differently?
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Isolated Afghanistan may face struggle for aid after earthquake

June 23, 2022

Diplomatic editor
The Guardian
Wed 22 Jun 2022 12.45 EDT

Analysis: humanitarian appeals for Taliban-ruled country have had poor responses and there are sanctions complications

 

As Afghanistan reels from a powerful earthquake and starts to bury its more than 1,000 dead, the Taliban leadership in Kabul have appealed to the international community to clear any barriers created by sanctions and come to their aid.

“The government is working within its capabilities,” tweeted Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban official. “We hope that the International Community & aid agencies will also help our people in this dire situation.”

On the basis that most of the urgent relief work can be classified as humanitarian as opposed to development aid, countries should be able to argue the assistance is permitted under US treasury sanctions waivers. Although there are grey lines between the two forms of aid, money to respond to an earthquake falls clearly under humanitarian work, and the UN relief agency OCHA was immediately coordinating a response in liaison with aid agencies.

But humanitarian aid appeals for Afghanistan have had poor responses this year despite drought and a collapse of the economy, and without replenishment the crisis will put further strains on funds. The number of aid agencies operating in the country has fallen, as has access through the international airport.

The International Rescue Committee – probably the largest remaining agency, with as many staff as the UN or even more – said it was deploying mobile health teams and working with authorities to provide support and cash assistance. The Italian medical aid group Emergency said it had sent seven ambulances and staff to the areas closest to the quake zone.

The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross said its disaster teams were on the way to Afghanistan and money would be released from its disaster relief emergency funds. In addition to the cash assistance, the Afghan Red Cross said it was sending 4,000 blankets, 800 tents and tarpaulins, 1,500 washing containers and hundreds of mattresses, pillows, blankets and cooking utensils.

Ambulances were heading to Logar, Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces, but in the short term the issue is access to the earthquake-devastated areas, which are in one of the country’s most inaccessible regions. The rudimentary Kabul international airport will be put to the test. Flights operate regularly in and out of the airport but security has proved a problem.

Iran, Germany and the EU were among the countries and institutions coming forward with offers of help. But that does not mean there will not be complications under sanctions law, since aid agencies have been excessively risk-averse in sending cash to Afghanistan if it could be deemed likely to touch Taliban-linked accounts.

The episode may serve to remind the international community how badly underfunded the general aid effort is in Afghanistan. Overall, the diplomatic trajectory remains not to recognise the Taliban, largely owing to their discrimination against women.

This week the UN banned two Afghan education ministers from travelling abroad for any peace and stability talks, after its security council removed them from a sanctions exemption list. The UN agreed that 13 officials could remain on the exemptions list for another three months, unless after two months a UN member objects to the extension.

The Taliban backtracked in March on their pledge to lift a ban on girls attending high school, saying they would remain closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law for them to reopen. The decision has left the Taliban deprived of access to its overseas assets and to much World Bank funding. The previous regime was dependent on overseas aid.

Isolated Afghanistan may face struggle for aid after earthquake
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THE FIGHT FOR AFGHANISTAN RAGES ON

June 22, 2022

BY ADNAN NASSER 

Diplomatic Courier

17 June 2022.

Despite the rapid fall of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, resistance to Taliban rule has continued. This has come from both armed and unarmed actors in the country writes Adnan Nasser.

The Taliban have returned to power in Kabul. Following U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to end America’s longest war, the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani’s government collapsed rapidly. The world was shocked to see the western trained and supplied Afghan army capitulate without a serious fight. Without U.S. support, provinces and cities fell to a blitzkrieg-like advance from Taliban forces—in some cases without a shot being fired. This quickly destroyed the hopes of the Biden administration that there would be a long war in which both sides would be forced to negotiate a political solution. Now a united democratic form of government in Afghanistan seems unlikely. For some however, resistance to the Taliban—both through armed and unarmed actions—continues.

In the mountainous region of the Panjshir valley, there is an organized movement made up of remnants of the old Northern Alliance—those who fought Taliban rule before the U.S. invasion—and soldiers of the former Afghan army that refused to surrender to the Taliban. The group is known as the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) or the Second Resistance. The NRF claims the Panjshir valley’s capital—Barzarak—did not fall to the Islamists. However, the Taliban reject this claim, saying the stronghold was “completely conquered” after two weeks of intense combat. A NRF spokesman, Ali Nazary, responded that, “The resistance is still all over the valley.”

The NRF is being led by Ahmed Maasoud, the son of the legendary Ahmad Shah Massoud who led the Northern Alliance against the Taliban until his assassination at the hands of Al-Qaeda suicide operatives in September 2001. The young guerrilla leader said he was ready to follow his father’s footsteps by promising to help assemble a new resistance movement to liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban. While the NRF have not been able to mount a serious counter-offensive, they have managed to hold the line against the Taliban in the Panjshir valley.

However, the NRF are not the only ones who are actively struggling against Taliban rule. Ordinary Afghan civilians are resisting as well, particularly the most vulnerable of them—women. Many women recall life under the first Taliban reign (1996-2001) and do not wish to surrender the gains that have been made. They can already feel the encroachment on their rights and freedoms as the Taliban impose a strict draconian way of life on them, justifying it in the name of Islam.

In March, the Taliban reneged on an earlier promise to keep girls’ secondary schools open. Female students enrolled in secondary schools were sent home and instructed to await further notice—meaning that education for teenage girls and women has essentially been eliminated. A Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani, confirmed that the order to close girls’ schools was carried out. At the time, the Ministry of Education announced schools would remain closed until a system in accordance with “Islamic law and Afghan culture” was established. Thousands of teenage girls were heartbroken to be barred from pursuing their education and are now unsure of their own futures.

Likewise, in May, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue passed a decree forcing women to wear full head-to-toe burqas. The decree included punishment for male members of families that do not enforce the order, including three days in jail. These new edicts go against the Taliban’s promises to the international community to respect the rights of women after they regained control.

Some are prepared to take on the risk of defying the Taliban. In a demonstration last year, one woman marched with her brother saying she was not afraid as it was better that they kill her once than die gradually. Likewise, shortly after the Taliban returned to power, hundreds of women marched across northern and central Afghanistan in an impressive social media campaign—defiant in the face of Taliban’s attempts to control their fates, women held guns in the air and chanted anti-Taliban slogans.

But brave demonstrations and pockets of rebel activity will not be enough to stop the Taliban’s hold on Afghanistan. Despite being unable to rid the country of the Taliban, resistance to Taliban rule is likely to continue—just as it did when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. So long as the Taliban continue to repress their population, there will always be resistance to their rule and individuals will raise their voices even at the risk of facing the consequences. Dissent—both armed and unarmed—will continue in the face of Taliban rule.

:
Adnan Nasser is a Diplomatic Courier Correspondent and an analyst focused on the Middle East. He has a BA in International Relations from Florida International University.
THE FIGHT FOR AFGHANISTAN RAGES ON
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Policing Public Morality: Debates on promoting virtue and preventing vice in the Taleban’s second Emirate

June 18, 2022

Sabawoon Samim

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The Taleban’s ‘religious police’ are back in force, leaving many Afghans fearing a return to the notorious brutalities of the Taleban’s 1990s Amr bil-Maruf ministry. Yet, two decades on, argues guest author Sabawoon Samim* (with input from Roxanna Shapour), Taleban views on the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice have evolved, as has Afghan society. While the Taleban still believe it is an Islamic state’s duty to actively police public morality, he also traces the emergence of a new generation of Taleban leaders, some of whom are less conservative, and asks whether they may take a softer approach to policing public morality than their predecessors.
As when they were first in power, in 1996-2001, ‘promoting virtue and preventing vice’ has emerged as a top priority for the new Taleban administration. In their view, it is one of the requirements of an Islamic system of government. The Taleban re-established the Ministry of Dawat wa Ershad Amr bil-Maruf wa Nahi al-Munkar or Invitation and Guidance on Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice – often referred to by the shorthand ‘Vice and Virtue’ or ‘Amr bil-Maruf’ – when they announced the first appointments to their post-takeover cabinet on 12 September. In the same announcement, they abolished the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Its building was turned over to Vice and Virtue (see here). The move raised questions as to whether, despite the many changes in Afghan society since the 1990s, the Taleban intended to return to the unforgiving social policies of their first period in government when they banned women from leaving the house without a close male relative and without wearing a burqa, outlawed activities such as playing music and watching TV and imposed harsh punishments for those violating their code, including public beatings.

Drawing on 45 interviews with Taleban officials, fighters, tribal elders, teachers and others in five provinces, plus the capital, Kabul, conducted before and after the Taleban captured power [1] this report looks at Amr bil-Maruf in the two Taleban administrations twenty years apart. It considers the religious injunction that Muslims should hold each other accountable by promoting virtue and discouraging vice. We take a look at what was problematic about Amr bil-Maruf in the Taleban’s first Emirate and how it changed during the insurgency. We relay ideas generally among the Taleban about what policing public morality should involve and at the re-established Amr bil-Maruf ministry – at how and why it has differed, so far, from the 1990s. In particular, the author looks at what sets at least some members of the new generation of Taleban leaders apart from their predecessors, and at how this might influence the Taleban’s approach to policy and practice when it comes to policing public morality.

What is the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice?

Amr bil-maruf wa nahi an il-munkar[2] is one of the tenants of Islam under sharia law, both Sunni and Shia, and is rooted in the Islamic principle of hisbah (accountability), which makes it incumbent for the umma (community of Muslims) to ensure public law and order and preserve community morals by taking steps to enjoin people to do what is good (maruf) and forbidding people from doing what is reprehensible (munkar).[3] One of the aims of such actions in promoting order is to protect Muslims from fitna, social disorder or chaos, which can itself facilitate sin. ‘Fitna’ has many meanings within Islamic thought, but in the context of Amr bil-Maruf, interviewees used it to describe how the normalisation of munkar in a Muslim society would lead to fitna, to social disorder and sin.

For the most part, the Taleban interviewed for this report insisted that it is not enough for people themselves to observe the rules of sharia in their daily lives; Muslims are also obliged to look the part of good Muslims by ensuring that their outward appearance adheres to Islamic conventions of attire and grooming. While nearly all Muslims believe amr bil-maruf to be an obligation that helps keep the faithful on the straight and narrow, there have been centuries-old debates among Islamic scholars over the proper mechanisms for its enforcement and to what extent it should be allowed to infringe on the privacy of community members. Just a few Muslim countries have formalised amr bil-maruf as a state institution to police the lives and behaviour of their citizenry, notably Iran and Saudi Arabia (with sharply curtailed powers since 2016).[4]

Importantly, it was not the Taleban who first formalised amr bil-maruf as a state institution in Afghanistan. According to the Ministry of Justice’s official website, the Directorate of Ihtisab (accountability), also known as Amr bil-Maruf, was first introduced by King Nader Khan, in 1929, and formalised in 1930. It was only later, during the tenure of Zahir Shah, Nadir’s son, that the directorate, now made up of 20 ulema, began to work within the framework of the Supreme Court (see here).[5]

Later, the mujahedin government of Burhanuddin Rabbani (1992-1996) established a Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to regulate people’s behaviour and outward appearance per their interpretation of sharia (see here). It was this ministry that was retained and expanded by the Taleban when they captured Kabul and announced their Emirate in 1996.

How Amr bil-Maruf emerged during the first Emirate

The first generation of Taleban leaders were predominantly traditional mullahs and veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, with a largely illiterate rank and file. Most, if not all, had grown up in Afghanistan’s rural south and received basic religious tuition in their home regions. The relative isolation of their upbringings meant they were unfamiliar with other cultures and religious practices, even within Afghanistan. They took the narrow and traditional interpretation of Islam ubiquitous in the villages where they lived and the hujras (community-level religious schools) and few madrasas in which they had studied, to be the norm for God-fearing Muslims. It was not only adherence to their understanding of sharia law that drove the first Emirate’s outlook on vice and virtue, but also culture shock. In newly-captured cities, the Taleban encountered activities that, while perfectly normal in those urban areas were wholly alien to the Taleban’s rural experience and the cultural norms of the southern Pashtun village they had grown up with. It was against this backdrop that the first Emirate’s Ministry for the Promotion of Vice and Prevention of Virtue, a remnant of the previous mujaheddin government, was retained and transformed into one of the most important state institutions by the Taleban.

The Taleban’s ‘morality police’ were used to rigorously and often violently enforce laws which banned or made obligatory certain behaviour and dress. Men had to grow beards and wear the baggy trousers and long shirts known as piran wa tonban, while women could only go outside wearing face-covering burqas. Men might be forced to attend public prayer in mosques, if for example, they were outside at the time or were shopkeepers. Many everyday activities were banned, such as family picnics, playing music, watching television, and publishing or possessing photographs of people or animals.[6]

Women, in particular, suffered under the Taleban’s severe restrictions. Adult women were forbidden to leave the house without a mahram (close male relative) and banned from working outside the home, except in the health sector (see details in this 2001 US State Department report), while girls were banned from education. Vice and Virtue was empowered to inflict on-the-spot punishments, including beatings, lashings, and detention. Several interviewees who lived through those days, such as this shopkeeper in Kabul, told AAN that public beatings and other punishments were their enduring memory of the feared ‘morality police’ (see for example here):

They beat people in front of a crowd when they thought someone hadn’t performed his prayer or had trimmed his beard…. When a woman was not wearing proper clothes and didn’t wear a burqa, they beat her mahram severely because they could not beat the woman herself.

Many women also remember being beaten themselves, as a 1999 United Nations report on the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan documented.

These rules were not derived from scholarly readings of sharia law. Indeed, the first Emirate had no well-drafted body of literature to inform policy and practice. For the most part, they were based on the orders of individual Taleban leaders, most notably, the movement’s founder, Mullah Omar. Most of these men, including Mullah Omar, had not completed their religious studies, apart from local and largely informal hujra studies.[7] Personal preferences also played a major role, as did the general norms and traditions of the areas where they had grown up and lived, ie Pashtun villages in the south. All of this informed an individual Taleban leader’s definition of a sharia-based life and, thus, his conception of proper behaviour. As a Taleban commander put it: “In those days, everyone acted as Amr bil-Maruf [and ordered] what he thought was fair or good.”

For the Taleban, Amr bil-Maruf was not just about enforcing what they considered to be Islamic behaviour and dress on the population. The ministry was also a powerful tool to control other Afghans, especially those living in cities, to keep them fearful and obedient. Outward conformity demonstrated the power of the Taleban state.

After 2001, the Vice and Virtue ministry closed and its officials disappeared from Afghanistan’s city streets. Given how many Afghans embraced watching television, listening to music, more relaxed dress codes, girls going to school and some women working pointed to the shallow-rootedness of what had been compulsory, while full mosques suggested that people’s faith carried on regardless. Amr bil-Maruf itself did not entirely disappear, but lived on as a relatively powerless directorate under the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs (see here).

Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice policy during the insurgency

In the early years of the insurgency, the Taleban were loosely organised and overwhelmed with fighting the enemy. They established a shadow government only after they had gained significant territory, governing areas under their control via commissions, such as for health and education. While some of these commissions were established early on, the Amr bil-Maruf commission only started its work around 2016-17, after the Taleban had strengthened their grip on rural areas and following Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada’s rise to the leadership. A traditionalist mullah from Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province with a background as a judge, rather than military commander, Hibatullah sought to police moral behaviour immediately after taking over the movement, ordering the establishment of an Amr-bil Maruf commission. However, even then, provincial and district-level branches of Amr bil-Maruf were mostly active in the areas where the Taleban had full territorial control and a robust and unchallenged presence.

For the most part, in areas where Taleban control was fragile and under threat, an organised Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice commission was not established. According to one Taleban interviewee, where control was “weak,” combat-related priorities and strengthening their presence took precedence over running an organised vice and virtue commission. For example, in Badakhshan, there was an active vice and virtue commission in Yawan district where the Taleban had a strong and unchallenged presence, but in Tishkan, where the Taleban frequently fought against the Afghan National Army, Amr-bil Maruf did not exist.

During this period, the commission’s activities varied significantly from region to region. In some areas, the Taleban appointed civilian officials, or more rarely, military commanders as directors for district and provincial branches of the commission. For example, in Andar district in Ghazni province, a former Taleban judge was appointed as the commission’s district director. The director and other Taleban members were helped by the military commanders whenever necessary. In other areas, the Taleban hired sympathetic local mullahs for the role. These mullahs tended to work through sermons, advising and threatening individuals whom they viewed as violators of sharia. For example, in Zabul, mullahs affiliated with the Taleban preached about virtue in mosques and other public gatherings and ceremonies, such as weddings and funerals, and reported acts of vice to the military wing, which helped enforce the rules when called upon to do so.

Elsewhere, in the absence of an active commission, rank-and-file fighters and commanders took on the responsibility, occasionally announcing decrees, and policing people’s lives, for example checking phones and harassing young men about their hairstyles. According to several residents of Raghestan district in Badakhshan, for instance, young men ran the risk of being harassed and even beaten by local commanders for activities such as playing music and, less often, shaving their beards.

While the application of amr bil-maruf varied, district to district, during the insurgency, one thing remained consistent with the Taleban policy during the first Emirate – there were no official policies or precise guidelines. The lack of cohesive, movement-wide policies and guidelines meant that the fate of violators was determined, locally, either by Amr bil-Maruf or directly by local commanders, in cooperation with the local ulama and often with some variation in line with local sensibilities.

For the most part, in this period, the Taleban used ‘soft’ approaches, such as preaching, advising in private, and only to a lesser degree, threats and punishments. One Zabul resident recalled:

In our area, the local ulema, by order of the Taleban, went to mosques, bazaars and ceremonies [ie weddings, funerals etc] to preach about Islamic sharia. They also spoke personally to individual wrongdoers, such as those who listened to music. And if specific individuals repeated their wrongdoings, they threatened them and sometimes beat them.

For example, a 35-year-old shopkeeper in Zabul province said that if the Taleban found “anti-sharia content[on someone’s phone], they would either delete it or take the phone from him and tell his parents about it. We also heard about a few cases when they beat youths after frequent violations.” A farmer in his early 40s from Farah province also said:

[The Taleban] always stayed in the mosques. Sometimes they asked locals in a friendly way why they were not coming to the mosque. Sometimes they asked the youth what they had on their phones, and occasionally, they checked the phones of those who looked like they were doing something sinful. And sometimes they advised village elders to mind the behaviour of the youth [in the village]. They also did the same thing in the bazaars.

The absence of a unified policy meant that the personal attitude of individual Taleban commanders played a crucial role in shaping policy and approach at the local level. For example, in the eastern province of Kunar, where an Amr bil-Maruf commission did not operate, it was the attitudes of the local Taleban military that shaped the approach. Most commanders in that province turned a blind eye to things like trimming beards. One resident described their attitude as “dissatisfied, but not reproachful,” meaning that Taleban commanders in his area did not bother people for what they considered minor infractions. However, in southern Zabul province, some local commanders were hostile to violators. As one interviewee commented: “They just don’t like you if you’ve trimmed your beard because you are going against sharia.”

Consequently, many individual commanders banned certain activities such as playing music, and some games, including cricket, and directed other commanders to routinely infringe on people’s privacy, including checking their smartphones. There were harsh punishments for violating bans, for example, playing music at weddings and other ceremonies. In July 2020, when the author visited Andar district in Ghazni province and Muta Khan district in Paktika province, he found the Taleban had banned music in Andar and repeatedly warned the district’s residents that violators would be punished. Residents said the Taleban had beaten some young people for playing music inside their homes. Residents in Paktika’s Muta Khan said the Taleban had beaten men for egg-fighting (hagay jangawall) – a traditional game played during Eid, as described in this report,which the Taleban condemn for being a vehicle for gambling. In many instances, even in places where an Amr bil-Maruf commission existed, local commanders acted autonomously to punish people for engaging in activities they deemed immoral.

In general, during the insurgency, actions were highly localised and driven by conditions on the ground, with the military wing in the lead even where official Amr bil-Maruf commissions existed. In other words, the ulema and the official Amr bil-Maruf commission often took a back seat to local military commanders. The softer approach was partly due to a desire to garner, or at least not alienate, vital local support for the insurgency. However, said one Taleban respondent, it was also because we “did not have the responsibility to implement sharia in the society at a time when there is no full control and a complete Islamic system.”

In the second Emirate, different ideas about amr bil-maruf

Views of hisbah among Taleban are currently complex; there are no coherent or precise guidelines compiled for the movement and a range of views. A starting point is that most of our interviewees were critical of Amr bil-Maruf’s approach during the first Emirate, saying it had been unjust and unfair. For example, a Taleban fighter from Farah said:

In the previous Emirate, people were questioned and beaten even for something that was ‘mustahab’ [recommended, but not compulsory]. [Not carrying out] a mustahab action isn’t a sin, so one can hardly beat someone for not carrying it out .

The Taleban we spoke to suggested that in the 1990s, those working in the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had been unqualified: they did not know what was actually permitted by sharia and what was not, as a commander from Ghazni said:

If someone says I’ve performed my prayer, we aren’t going to beat him – because he might be telling the truth. Even if he didn’t perform his prayer, we don’t have the right to beat him. In the previous tahrik (movement), there were people in the Taleban who wanted to ruin our reputation by beating people without any question or authority. They were even forcing people to pray twice, and in sharia, when someone has prayed once, they couldn’t and shouldn’t be forced to pray a second time.

However, almost all the interviewees, of whatever rank, thought the opinions of their predecessors on vice and virtue, such as the ban on playing music, had been correct. Significantly, they also considered the promotion of virtue and prevention of evil to be an integral component of an Islamic system of governance. In this, the Emirate is at odds with most other Muslim states which have chosen not to set up state bodies to promote virtue and prevent vice. However, the Taleban could be said to be part of a broader Afghan tradition of having such state agencies going back to Nader Shah. Where our interviewees differed was on enforcement. They generally fell into two distinct trends of thought.

The first trend suggested that some acts, as a Taleban-affiliated scholar from Zabul described them, are “only a minor wrongdoing by an individual and do not affect society.… [These] are [an individual’s] own responsibility and as rulers and fellow Muslims we should only advise him.” Within this group, however, any consensus on which acts are minor violations and which are “harmful to society” appears elusive. When asked to enumerate which acts constitute minor infractions, some interviewees said trimming beards was a personal matter and a minor sin that should be addressed by instructing or informing the individual. Others, however, disagreed, saying that shaving beards should be prohibited by force, as one Taleban commander explained:

Having a beard is Sunna [following the example or words of the Prophet Muhammad]. Some ulema even say it’s wajib [compulsory, according to Islam]. So if someone who lives in a Muslim society and interacts with fellow Muslims goes against Sunna, he also encourages others to violate it. That’s why a strict ban on shaving beards should be enforced.

Differences of views were also evident when it came to music. Almost all Taleban encountered by this author believe that listening to and playing music is haram, forbidden by Islam, with the exception of acapella devotionals that do not have complex harmony or instrumental accompaniment and tarana (Pashto chants) praising the Taleban.[8] However, the Taleban’s approach to dealing with violators varies vastly. While some of the Taleban interviewed by AAN said that most forms of music should be banned and every violator punished, others suggested that not everyone who hears music should be punished. A mid-level Taleban official working in one of the civilian ministries said:

Listening to music is a major sin. There are enough hadiths to explain the prohibition on music in sharia. But you don’t have the right, under sharia, to beat someone who listens to it in his own car or his home as long as he doesn’t bother or encourage others to do so. It means that if only he himself listens to it, only advising him is enough from a sharia point of view. But if he bothers others [by the music] or encourages others to listen, then you must do something to stop him.

In contrast, a second trend in thinking among our interviewees argued that all actions and behaviour deemed to violate sharia should be eradicated in an Islamic society. The interviewees falling into the second group were resolute in their belief that adherence to sharia law was an absolute, and should be strictly enforced under an Islamic system of governance. Without strictly imposing the rules of sharia law, one commander said, “You can’t ensure that people follow sharia in these evil times.” Another interviewee said:

It’s the responsibility of the Islamic system to bring order to an Islamic society. If people accept sharia and go on that way, there is no problem. But not going on the path of sharia creates fitna in society. Therefore, any act that is against sharia should be banned in whatever way possible. Otherwise, you can’t bring order to society, nor implement sharia.

While they supported an authoritarian and vigorous ban on particular issues, most interviewees following this second trend in thinking still disagreed with the general approach of their predecessors in the 1990s. Interviewees’ support for the use of force to implement amr bil-maruf only extended to specific issues. For example, they opposed said one Taleban commander from Kunar province “beating people for not wearing a turban.” A Taleban district level official in Badakhshan province explained:

If someone is living under an Islamic system, they must know every single rule of Islam and should obey them. For example, they shouldn’t trim their beards, shouldn’t listen to music, shouldn’t gamble, women should wear hijab and only leave home when necessary. If someone does not obey these rules, it is the responsibility of the Emirate to make people obey them either through financial fines or other punishments.

Some interviewees, especially those from the second school of thought, suggested that enforcement should be hardened gradually. For example, a mid-level Taleban official in the provincial Department of Education in his 30s from Ghazni province:

In sharia, some bans came gradually, not swiftly in one order. For example, the ban on wine during the time of the Prophet Muhammad came in three phases. First, it was in the form of advising that drinking wine isn’t good, then a second order came a little later which forbad it during prayer times and the final and complete ban came in the third order. So, some issues that are major sins and damaging [to society] could be dealt with in this way.

Many from this second group argued that an Islamic system “should first only tell someone about a particular sin, then a few months or days later if they repeat it, you should threaten them and finally, if a rule is repeatedly violated, it must be banned by force.”

How the differing views on Amr bil-Maruf translate into policy

The re-founded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is fast emerging as one of the dominant state institutions in the second Islamic Emirate. Its acting minister is Sheikh Muhammad Khalid Hanafi, who is from the eastern province of Nuristan and said to be a well-educated teacher of hadith. Hanafi joined the Taleban after 2001, and rose quickly, working in the Taleban’s judiciary during the insurgency. According to a department director at the ministry, policy will not be based on the arbitrary orders of individuals, but will be in line with sharia law and deliberated by the Taleban’s own ulema. Hanafi himself is among the less conservative Taleban, following the first trend in thinking described above. However, sources at the ministry said that within ministry ranks, there is a variety of ulema, including the more conservative and hardline when it comes to enforcement. Several ministry staffers suggested to AAN that Hanafi’s aim is to fashion a ministry staffed by individuals well-trained in sharia who will bring Afghanistan’s community of Muslims to live the ideal Islamic life by advising or gentle cajoling, at least for now. One symbol of that is that the new generation of Amr bil-Maruf enforcers of sharia wear white piran wa tonban and sometimes also white lab coats and drive white vehicles. A softer approach may also be taken on pragmatic grounds. For example, one ministry official said: “For two decades, the West invested in directing Afghans towards infidelity in the name of modernisation. So we need even more time and wisdom, not beatings, to return people to the Islamic way of life.”

The ministry is made up of three directorates: the directorate of muhtasebin (implementing hisbah) has ten staff stationed in each police district to promote virtue and prevent vice by providing advice to individuals at checkpoints, ceremonies, shops and other public places. Multiple sources inside the government told AAN that the ministry has started holding short courses on vice and virtue for civil servants. A second directorate provides ‘amnesty’ or ‘pardon’ cards (in Pashto, da a’fwi kartona, and in Dari, kart-e afu) to officials of the former regime and is tasked with ensuring their safety. Finally, according to ministry sources, the dawat wa ershad directorate is a replica of Amr bil-Maruf for the Taleban themselves, monitoring and keeping track of their own ranks in vice and virtue-related cases. It is also apparently a military unit charged with addressing complaints filed against Taleban members (see also here).

Some of those Taleban wanting to have a very different Amr bil-Maruf from the first Emirate’s have had their ideas transformed by their experience in exile. Those from the political wing of the Taleban who have been living in Qatar have developed less rigid views on promoting virtue and preventing vice, partly through exposure to a different, but still pious, Muslim society, and partly through a more scholarly education (more on this below). According to one well-informed source with strong connections to senior members of the Taleban, and an active second-tier job inside the Emirate, many senior leaders from this wing, as well as younger Taleban who have also lived in Qatar and Pakistan, have “very moderate and even open-minded views.” A Taleban official who heads up the communications and media team at a line ministry told AAN: “Many of them don’t care whether you have trimmed your beard or not, or whether you wear a turban or a cap.” These Taleban believe that the focus should be on building a strong government that is not isolated from the world and that concentrates on economic and political priorities rather than the heavy-handed and controversial enforcement of amr bil-maruf.

However, according to a source close to the leadership, the Taleban’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, along with his close circle, are unhappy with “the current moderate policy” of the ministry and “want sharia to be implemented at full-scale.” According to the same source, Taleban ministers and other leaders in Kabul are trying to convince the supreme leader to temper his position in some cases, but have so far not succeeded. Rather, he and his close circle of advisers would like to see the clock turned back, to some degree, to the 1990s and are not prepared to change policies or forgo their traditionalist interpretation of sharia in favour of gaining either national and international legitimacy. According to one Taleban source, “He wants to move on the path of loy mullah sahib [Mullah Omar] and implement sharia the same way.” Other Taleban, though, as we have seen believe differently.

Diverging views became apparent, for example, after the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, on 28 March, ordered all male government employees to wear a cap and grow beards (Reuters report, here). According to a source close to the leadership, the decision came directly from the Amir and the ministry had no role in the decision. After it was announced, some Taleban officials publicly criticised it on social media, revealing contrasting ideological positions within the movement. For example, in a 28 March tweet, a member of the Taleban’s cultural commission, Asad Barai, tweeted: “Could Amr bil-Maruf employees bring a single case from the history of Islam where those who have trimmed their beards [have been] punished? … [These are] attempts at defaming the government.” A mid-ranking security official who was unhappy with the decision told AAN:

The leadership should move carefully and with wisdom, and understand the priorities of both sharia and the people. Sharia isn’t only confined to growing a beard, nor are there solid justifications for forcing people to grow beards.

In a tweet which has since been deleted, the head of the Administrative Office of the Emirate’s media team, Qari Abdul Sattar Said, who is a prominent and respected intellectual among the younger generation of Taleban, said: “In the history of Islam, there are almost no instances when a Muslim has been beaten, detained or punished for trimming his beard or [for having a particular] hairstyle.” Interestingly, following immense criticism of the decree by individual Taleban themselves both on social media and in private discussions, enforcement of it dwindled. A similar battle, although not involving Amr bi Maruf per se, on what is permissible appeared to have taken place behind the scenes concerning older girls’ education.[9]

Revealing the distance even of ‘moderates’ within Amr bil-Maruf from the view of many Afghans as to what their religion deems to be proper was another ruling on dress, announced on 7 May 2022. Women, the order said, should cover their faces in public, preferably by wearing a burqa – the better option – or  loose, black clothing (probably a reference to the Gulf Arab-style abaya) with a shawl and a niqab. Best of all, the order said, is not to leave home at all unless necessary (see AAN’s analysis here). The order was drafted and signed by a senior-level commission headed by Hanafi and including the ministers of education, justice and hajj and awqaf. Unlike the order on male government workers wearing caps and growing beards, the order on women’s dress did not trigger widespread criticism within the Taleban and indeed was generally welcomed. Most Taleban find it acceptable that women should cover their faces in public. Even those who say a reading of sharia reveals no obligation for women to cover their faces may support it as the best option in what one interviewee called “this evil time.” ‘Moderates’ may also consider the current order a step forward from the 1990s when women were only allowed to wear burqas, especially as it seems the ultra-conservatives among the Taleban would have preferred a burqa-only policy.

Nationwide, the Taleban’s approach to amr bil-maruf, has so far, been similar to the highly-variable approach taken during the insurgency, when local sentiment and especially commanders’ preferences dominated. This is to be expected given the lack of a fully operational, nationwide vice and virtue infrastructure or a precise compliance and enforcement policy. A mid-level official in the ministry told the author during an interview in late April that the ministry had started appointing district-level officials only recently and staffingwas still incomplete, with some districts and even provinces still having no director or other staff. In many provinces, Taleban military commanders and other officials were still intervening in matters of behaviour and dress. In Helmand, for instance, the Taleban provincial director of vice and virtue, according to a local resident, “threatened youths that they had to grow beards and thereby align themselves with the Islamic and Afghan way of appearance.” However, in Andar district of Ghazni province, where most forms of music had been banned, including the traditional drum duhool. The duhool is now permitted, but only after the Taleban district governor and police chief were changed. This was also the case with egg-fighting in Paktika’s Muta Khan district. When the author visited the district during the last Eid, in early May 2022, egg-fighting was permitted by the provincial authorities. In general, during the nine-month Taleban rule, the approach to amr bil-maruf has been softer than it was during the insurgency. The mid-level official in the ministry interviewed in April said that “We [the vice and virtue ministry] lack personal and mujahedin [religious police] to enforce the bans.”

Some variation in enforcement can be laid at the door of individual beliefs within the Taleban, with regional norms continuing to play a significant role in attitudes. Society in southern Afghanistan, for instance, embroiled in intense fighting and famous for its conservatism, has seen much less change when it comes to social norms in the last two decades, and neither have its Taleban. Those from eastern, southeastern, central and northern Afghanistan today demonstrate a greater degree of acceptance where norms have changed locally. To give one example: in Kandahar, according to media reports, the Taleban closed a local radio station and detained its three employees for music on air (See here and here), while in Khost province, according to multiple residents, the local FM radio channel continues to play music.

Change has come in how amr bil-maruf is implemented now compared to during the insurgency in the make-up of areas that the Taleban control. Pre-August 2021, they only controlled some rural areas where behaviour and dress tends to conform more to their expectations of what is required of a good Muslim. Now, the Taleban are again in charge of cities and as during the first Emirate, Amr bil-Maruf activities are chiefly focused on urban centres, particularly Kabul. Many Taleban believe city dwellers are Westernised and fail to follow correct behaviour for good Muslims. Amr bil-Maruf, for its part, sees itself responsible for leading these urban dwellers on the road to a lifestyle in line with the Sunna of the Prophet.

Also important to note is that the street-level enforcers of amr bil-maruf are largely experienced and well-disciplined, rank-and-file fighters, who are largely illiterate and have no great depth of understanding of sharia. By virtue of their diverse backgrounds and exposure to the social freedoms during the 20 years of the Republic, however, even they are not as conservative as the Taleban of the 1990s. Moreover, they also do not enjoy the same power and autonomy as their predecessors in the first Emirate had, neither when it comes to enforcing amr bil-maruf, nor influencing policy.

Finally, Mullah Hibatullah is not the charismatic leader that Mullah Omar was. He could personally steer every action of the movement and give the final word to settle ambiguities or disputes. Along with the absence of a robust body of ideological literature means that crafting policy on amr bil-maruf is not straightforward. Rather, various factors jostle for prominence: the scholarly interpretation of sharia law, the sensibilities of discordant elements within the movement coloured by regional mores and their life experiences and the also varying expectations of the Afghan people.

To sum up, Taleban generally believe the state should enforce public morality, but most are critical of the violent approach taken by Amr bil-Maruf during the first Emirate. Some Taleban believe ‘minor’ infringements of sharia are an individual responsibility, although there is disagreement about what minor infractions are. Others believe the state must come down hard on any violation of sharia, although even then, the preference is for sharia to be enforced through ‘softer’ or graduated measures, rather than punishments at the first violation. While Taleban leader Mullah Hibatullah would like to see a more hardline approach and within the ministry, there is a variety of views, the minister tends towards the softer approach. The ministry is not yet fully up-and-running nationally. Many positions are as yet unfilled and there are no national guidelines. Policy and enforcement varies, as it did during the insurgency, but Amr bil-Maruf is stronger and more organised in the cities – as it was in the 1990s – where Taleban believe the need for getting the ‘Westernised’ urbanites back on the straight and narrow is most acute.

Exploring what has changed in both Afghan society and the Taleban in the last twenty years that underpins the Amr bil-Maruf that is now emerging, and the differences with its 1990s iteration is the subject of the final part of this report.

Changing society and changing Taleban

Afghan society has been transformed since the Taleban were last in power. Two decades of international engagement, as well as greater opportunities for education, better communications, for some years, at least a stronger economy, and mass migration to the cities have all driven rapid social change, particularly the urban areas. Under the Republic, individual liberties, press freedom and women’s roles in society, including their political participation, improved significantly. In the past two decades, Afghanistan achieved the highest literacy rate in its history. School education, not only for boys but also for girls, became a norm and a major demand in many parts of the country. By 2020, according to the World Bank, women accounted for 19 per cent of the country’s total paid workforce and the number of girls in secondary education had increased from seven per cent in 2004 to 40 per cent in 2020. According to the Ministry of Higher Education, 78,000 Afghan women sat the university entrance exam in 2013, up from 1,000 in 2003 (see here).

Importantly, these changes were not limited to urban areas; rural Afghanistan also transformed to a great extent and the gap between urban and rural narrowed, leaving the Taleban to govern an Afghan society with greater expectations from the state, such as for girls’ education and personal freedoms than when they were in power the first time around.

During the insurgency, the Taleban took control of territories where many activities that had been banned in the first Emirate had become common practice (more on this later). Many of the urban habits that seemed extraordinary to rural Afghans in the 1990s have become established norms even in the Taleban’s birthplace of the rural south, as well as activities which new technology has made possible. Music and mobile phone selfies, for instance, are commonplace pastimes even in remote regions. Afghan men trimmed their beards and sported ‘Western’ hairstyles. Families sent their daughters to school and some women were also taking up jobs outside the home. During the insurgency, Taleban commanders were relatively tolerant of such activities – they needed to keep residents on side – even though, in general, Taleban rule was authoritarian, strong on tax collection, ready to use violence and not brooking dissent. (For detail on this, see AAN Dossier: Living with the Taleban here).

Some of the changes within the Taleban, including the greater variety of opinions on amr bil-maruf stem from the much broader and more diverse base of officials and fighters it now has and reflect the general changes in Afghan society. While Mullah Hibatullah represents a continuity of view from the 1990s, in both his understanding of sharia and that, in many cases, it needs rigid enforcement by the state, more flexible interpretations of what amr bil-maruf demands come because of the life experiences and education of many Taleban in exile.

A great number of senior Taleban leaders have enjoyed life in cities, such as Doha in Qatar and Peshawar, Islamabad, and Karachi in Pakistan. This generation of Taleban leaders has availed itself of the trappings that modern life has to offer, such as the internet – they have proven particularly adept at using social media for propaganda purposes – and even sent both sons and daughters to schools (see AAN reporting here). That exposure to urban life, including outside Afghanistan in societies which are still Muslim and God-fearing, but different from Afghanistan’s rural south has helped drive a change in some attitudes. Also important, however, has been education.

Many Taleban cadres and leaders, and even scholars from the previous generation, are better versed in Hanafi jurisprudence than the Taleban leaders of the 1990s. Over the past two decades, the curriculum of the madrasas in Afghanistan and Pakistan where most Taleban study have expanded with newly-acquired books, allowing them to progress to advanced levels and develop a more nuanced understanding of sharia. Most senior leaders and other officials have attained advanced levels, such as mawlawi, mufti and sheikh ul-hadith,[10] as a Taleban official explained:

In the past, there were fewer chances for the ulema (Muslim scholars) to get an advanced education [in sharia] due to several problems such as a lack of madrasas, and qualified teachers, and fighting. The ulema didn’t have ready access in nearby areas or they couldn’t afford it. Therefore, they mostly studied a few books in local madrasas and mosques and became mullahs. But now there is everything, madrassas are everywhere, books are easily accessible and there are more [religious] teachers. In the past, the ulema also rarely wanted to take on the responsibility that came with a higher degree in Islamic studies such as [becoming a] mufti. It is a huge responsibility and people rarely dare to take it.

The Taleban have also had close interactions with other Islamic movements and ideologies – and not just al-Qaeda. As AAN’s 2017 thematic report on the Taleban ideology highlighted: “Whereas the movement had once banned books by Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood, it now actively promoted works from these sources and regularly defended Islamist groups within the general context of anti-Imperialism.[11] However, there is little to no evidence that this exposure has led them to amend any part of their own broader interpretations of Islam, such as their continued rejection of democratic elections, something the Muslim Brotherhood formally espouses.

There has always been some tension among the Taleban between the demands of Islam and tribal culture (that tension was explored in Thomas Ruttig’s special report How Tribal Are the Taleban? and Gopal and strick van Linschosen’s report on Taleban ideology (see, for example, pages 26-27.) In the 1990s, Mullah Omar banned ‘baad’ marriages, when a girl is married into another family to resolve a blood feud, a tribal custom, which is not permitted by sharia.[12] However, it was quite rare for the Taleban’s rules of the 1990s, couched as Islamic, to break from the familiar Pashtun mores, where these were in conflict. Among the new generation of Taleban leaders, however, are scholars and ideologues who have had a more advanced madrassa education and scholarly understanding of Hanafi fiqh (jurisprudence). Their espousal of Islam is, in contrast to the 1990s, somewhat less coloured by tribal mores and more firmly rooted in a scholarly understanding of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islamic thought. In some instances, they are attempting to develop more scholarly and clearer definitions of what should be enjoined and what prevented and formulate sharia-based fatwas (religious edicts).

For instance, the author knows of several cases where the Taleban have intervened in disputes involving women’s issues, such as the right of a widow to marry a man of her own choosing or a woman’s inheritance rights. The Taleban’s supreme leader issued a decree on 3 December 2021 which banned forced marriages and insisted on a widow’s right to inherit and a woman’s right to choose her own husband (see the official decree here). A provincial Taleban judge in Ghazni province described the issue in an interview in November:

We solved more than three dozen critical issues in the past three months. In one case, a girl was being forced to marry one of her relatives. She didn’t want to. Before she was engaged to the relative, she [with the help of her brother] complained to us and we told their family that, from a sharia point of view, they can’t force her to marry someone she doesn’t like. We warned her father that he would be punished if he went ahead [with his plan].

The author has also tracked multiple instances of Taleban backing a woman’s Islamic right to inheritance after the woman approach them. For instance, in Farah province, a Taleban mid-level official told AAN that “when a woman approaches us and demands her portion of inheritance, we immediately resolve the issue in accordance with sharia.” This new generation of scholars and ideologues insist that fiqh trumps tribal attitudes, even in such sensitive family issues. This is to say, instead of ignoring such matters, some Taleban tend to solve them in accordance with sharia, at least for now.

Some interviewees gave examples of how Taleban views have changed since they were first in power, when it comes to the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, including the following:

After taking control of Kabul in the 1990s, the Taleban banned women from any public space without an accompanying mahram (close male relative). Currently, however, the official rule is that women can leave the house without a mahram to travel a distance of up to 72km (45 miles) or for up to three days (it is not yet implemented), as a provincial official of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice described:

Women can travel without a male relative for up to three days. It means they can go on a trip that lasts three days or, in today’s technology, they can travel by car to a destination almost 45 miles away. For a longer distance [such as travelling abroad], or for more than three days, they should have a mahram with them.

In the 1990s, the Taleban imposed one particular type of hijab, the burqa, but Taleban interviewees pointed out that prescribing a particular hijabis not mandated by sharia. According to one interviewee, “when a woman covers her face, her hands, and her body with whatever sort of hijab she wants, it is fine.” Another interviewee said: “covering the face with hijab isn’t ordered [in sharia], but in this evil time, if the face is covered, it is the best option for a woman.” Many Taleban interviewees suggested that covering the face is necessary in a time where “fitna is spread everywhere and for avoiding [more] fitna, women should cover their faces.”

The Taleban rigorously policed men’s beards during the first Emirate. Amr bil-Maruf would measure the length of a man’s beard, check to see if any of his facial hair had been trimmed and punish violators. However, Taleban respondents now argue that sharia provides specific rulings not only for trimming beards, but also for trimming moustaches. A Taleban member described it:

Growing a beard and trimming the moustache is Sunna in Islamic sharia and something our Prophet did all the time – it reaches the level of wajib (compulsory). Trimming your moustache is as important as not shaving your beard. So, he who calls himself a Muslim should obey all the obligations and follow the path of our Prophet. If someone shaves his beard and leaves his moustache to grow, he is in sin all the time, and he who doesn’t trim his beard, but fails to trim his moustache to the degree that the sharia calls for is also in sin.

During the first Emirate, the Taleban religious police forced men to pray publically and beat those who failed to do so. However, most Taleban we interviewed now see the issue differently, as one from Nangarhar province explained:

You should encourage people to pray, not force them, because the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice is a way of encouragement and wisdom. In many cases, you should only describe the wrong and the correct to someone. Forcing someone to pray is the wrong approach completely. If someone prays because they are afraid, it [their prayer] isn’t accepted by Allah. So, no one should force anyone to pray as it will not be accepted by Allah. If we force people to pray, who can ensure that they are reciting the words correctly? Have they done their ablutions? It is completely wrong. It’s prohibited by sharia and should not be repeated in the future.

The Taleban have also retreated from their earlier ban on images of living creatures, based on their understanding that they amounted to shirk, idolatry. In the 1990s, they banned all photos of living beings, and off the back of that television and video. During the insurgency, and in the light of the need for effective propaganda, Taleban ulema reassessed the decision and now believe these are allowed under sharia, as a Taleban commander explained:

Pictures and videos were banned in the first Emirate but are now allowed because we know their value. They’re very important and are a huge need nowadays. It’s also good for our cause, for Islam through which we can spread our message to the world. So we investigated, and most ulama agreed that it’s not considered a sin under sharia, given the need. So now the whole Emirate appreciates their value.

Given the Taleban belief that sharia should be followed, the fact that Amr bil-Maruf is not following up on all violations is an important question. For instance, the Taleban admit that all women should be given their inheritance, but are yet to generally enforce this. The same is true for girls getting an education: Taleban officials often posit, not only in public but also in private discussions, that education is a right for all (see for example here, here and here), but so far have failed to deliver it for all girls. They also consider trimming the moustache to a specific length to be the Sunna of the Prophet just like not shaving the beard, but in practice, only insist on men not trimming beards : is the moustache less important than the beard?

What might happen next?

The Taleban maintain the belief that it is the state’s duty to enjoin virtue and prevent vice among the population. Within the broader movement of the Taleban, there is an excessive sense of disdain for those they view as violating sharia law, but members of the movement have differing views of how this should be achieved and whether minor infractions of sharia should be policed. The evidence suggests that even today’s conservatives do not want to return to the violent and repressive enforcement of amr bil-maruf as seen in the 1990s. Yet even the softest of amr bil-maruf policies could not concede individual Afghans the freedom to make all their own choices on dress and behaviour, as some non-Taleban Afghans would like.

However, the Taleban, in government once again, face a population which has itself been transformed in the last twenty years, not everyone and not everywhere, but in general, considerably so. Many, probably most Afghans already consider themselves to be following sharia and the Sunna of the Prophet. So far, there has been little public protest against the Taleban’s enforcement of its interpretation of sharia, as enshrined in orders and decrees. The exception here are women’s rights activists who have courageously continued to demonstrate for the return of lost freedoms. Yet, there is uneasiness among population, amounting to, as yet, quietly-voiced dissent, especially over some issues – older girls’ education, rules on dress and women working. As AAN’s report on the Taleban’s order for women to cover their faces showed, there are many complexities in Afghan society, down to the family level, as to what is correct behaviour and dress for Muslims and whether the state has the right to dictate what many Afghans consider to be family matters. At the same time, as this report has shown, greater study of fiqh by some Taleban means a greater appetite among some to also get involved in matters such as women’s inheritance, and whether girls and widows have given their consent to marriages. Restricting women’s rights on dress, education, work and travel could go hand-in-hand with promoting them in other areas of the law. In so doing, they would be taking on, not just urban, but also rural interests, including generally supportive populations. (It would be similar to the ban on narcotic production and trade – which is clearly prohibited by sharia, but also crucial to the national economy and many people’s livelihoods.)

Behind all the discussion is the matter of the relative power of state versus society. Kabul in 2022 is not the half-destroyed city of 1996 when it was captured by the Taleban and they were able to impose on the demoralised population what many Kabulis considered to be the culture of the southern Pashtun village. And nationally, Afghanistan is a changed country with different expectations of the state. The Taleban and Amr bil-Maruf may have changed in terms of how they want to enforce particular behaviour and dress, but they still think it is right to impose their reading of sharia on other Afghans. After two decades of rule by the Republic, this represents a massive grab for power by the state – which may yet not go unopposed.

Edited by Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 Data for this research was derived from 45 interviews, three by phone and the rest face-to-face. 19 of the interviews were conducted between October and December 2020 in Badakhshan, Farah, Ghazni, Kunar and Zabul and were with individuals who had local awareness of the areas in which they were interviewed, including tribal elders, local Taleban officials, former officials and teachers with links to the Taleban, as well as local journalists and community members. An additional 26 interviews were conducted after the Taleban captured power nationally, from 15 August 2021 to April 2022, and were with Taleban ideologues, officials, fighters, commanders and senior officials, including three high-ranking) in Kabul and the provinces mentioned above.
↑2 In this report, we use ‘amr bil-maruf’ (small letters) to describe this concept and ‘Amr bil-Maruf’ (capital letters) for a ministry or other state body set up to enforce it.
↑3 The duty of Muslims to encourage good and discourage evil is mentioned several times in the Quran and the Hadith (a collection of texts containing sayings and accounts of daily practices (the Sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad) which in addition to the Quran make up the guiding principles for Muslims. For example:

Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: they are the ones to attain felicity (Surah Al-Imran, Verse-104, Yusuf Ali translation).

It is the believers who repent, who are devoted to worship, who praise their Lord, who fast, who bow down and prostrate themselves, who encourage good and forbid evil, and who observe the limits set by Allah. And give good news to the believers. (Surah at-Taubah, verse 112, Dr Mustafa Khataab translation)

On the authority of Abu Sa’eed al-Khudree (ra) who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (saw) say:

“Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith i

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 34: Forbidding Evil with the Hands, Speech, and Heart).

Translations from Sunnah.com’s Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi.
↑4 This system also operates with varying degrees of authority in several other Islamic countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Malaysia (see here). The controversial enforcement tactics employed by some of these state entities have been implicated in violations of international human rights, particularly in Iran (see for example here) and Saudi Arabia, where in 2016 the government curtailed the state entity’s powers to reporting perceived violations rather than enforcement (see here). In Iran, attempts by activists and politicians, most recently in 2016 by then president Hassan Rouhani, to reign in the religious police have so far been unsuccessful.
↑5 See also Afghanistan in the Course of History, Ghulam Muhammad Ghobar, Second Volume, Dari, page 43.
↑6 Gopal and Strick van Linschoten explore why the Taleban were so rigid about monitoring and enforcing outward appearance. The rules “all have roots in pre-1979 village norms,” and to a particular thinking “that links outward behaviour to inward belief, and which regulates the act over the intent.” (p15) They argue that:

The distinction here between intent and act is not a trivial one, because for the Taleban it was precisely the latter that was the object of surveillance and discipline. Unlike in Islamism or Western liberalism, interior states were largely irrelevant under the Islamic Emirate; instead, the jurisdiction of Taleban discipline was the exterior state, the act—and the public spectacle of discipline was itself a performative act, a way (in the minds of the Taleban) of collectively reconstructing virtue for an entire society. (p26
↑7 See, for example, Anand Gopal and Alex Strick van Linschoten, Ideology in the Afghan Taliban, page 12 Afghanistan Analysts Network, 2017 here.
↑8 Taleban tarana – poems which praise their fighters – are, Fabrizio Foschini wrote in a November 2021 AAN report on music censorship, “grounded in melodies and texts deeply rooted in Pashtun folk culture, but unaccompanied by instruments. The absence of instruments is a major criterion for the perceived lawfulness of music…. These tarana became a major propaganda tool for the Taleban during their nearly two-decades-long insurgency, possibly one of central importance for winning the fight “for hearts and minds” of Pashtun youths in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They had, however, already been composed and performed by the Taleban in the 1990s…. [T]he only other forms of musical performance endorsed by the Taleban are compositions in their praise or strictly devotional music, such as marsyeh (requiem) and na’t (a recitation in praise of the Prophet Muhammad)… [the] distinction seems to be largely between vocal and instrumental performances, rather than devotional versus secular, as the musical gatherings at the Sufi Chishti Khanaqah in Old Kabul, a devotional practice considered as ghaza-ye ruh (food for the soul) have all but stopped since the Taleban’s takeover. See also this 2012 paper on the songs of the Taleban.
↑9 The Ministry of Education organised the reopening of schools for just after Nawruz, but saw their plans countermanded on the day by an order from Kandahar – apparently prompted by ultra-conservative clerics advising the Supreme Leader – to keep the schools closed until a “comprehensive plan, in accordance with sharia and Afghan culture” could be developed. The abrupt change of policy appeared to have been prompted by concerns about dress and adolescent girls being outside the home en masse – see analysis and background in this AAN report. Girls education, however, is an area where policy could move on, given that support for older girls’ education can be found among many Taleban officials, including those working in the powerful intelligence and security ministries.
↑10 In Afghanistan, a mawlawi is a person who has studied hadith, tafsir (Quranic exegesis) and fiqh (jurisprudence) from a recognised madrassa such as the Dar ul-Ulum Deoband and holds a sanad, degree, or is an ijazat-e hadith, an authority on hadith. A mufti is the next highest-ranking Islamic scholar, one who has specialised in one field such as fiqh and is in a position to issue a fatwa (formal written ruling on a particular issue) and is most commonly is associated to a dar ul-ifta (house of fatwas). Sheikh is an honorific title used to refer to a person of respect, such as sheikh ul-hadith (teacher of hadith) or sheikh ul-Islam (Islamic scholar).
↑11 Gopal and Strick van Linschoten, Ideology in the Afghan Taleban, page 35, Afghanistan Analysts Network, 2017, here.
↑12 It was reported at the time, writes one of this report’s editors, that Mullah Omar was prompted by a touching storyline about the plight of one such girl in the popular BBC radio soap opera, New Home, New Life. See also this media report and AAN obituary).

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 15 Jun 2022

 

Policing Public Morality: Debates on promoting virtue and preventing vice in the Taleban’s second Emirate
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Four Ways the U.S. Can Help Prevent Mass Atrocities in Afghanistan

June 18, 2022

Belquis Ahmadi;  Lauren Baillie;  Scott Worden

United States Institute of Peace

14 June 2022

The Taliban’s takeover has increased the risk of mass atrocities. Here’s how the United States can help prevent them.

Following the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover, the risk of mass atrocities in Afghanistan has risen considerably, with multiple groups facing imminent threats of violence. Ethnic and religious minorities, including the Hazaras, have been subjected to violence emanating from both the Taliban and ISIS-Khurasan Province (ISIS-K). Tajik civilians in the northeast Panjshir province have suffered retributive attacks for their resistance to Taliban rule. Throughout the country, women and girls have been denied educational and economic opportunities and been pushed to the margins of society. And Afghans associated with the national government have been targeted for violence, including torture, murder and forced disappearance.
The situation is exacerbated by a massive humanitarian crisis, which has made access to essential resources difficult for much of the population, particularly women and minorities. This dire scenario presents challenges for the United States in protecting vulnerable civilians. Addressing these challenges and identifying priorities for U.S. engagement was the focus of an expert discussion co-hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The conversation considered four priorities for U.S. engagement to prevent further atrocities in Afghanistan.

1. Provide resources to the special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan.

On April 1, the U.N. Human Rights Council appointed Richard Bennett as special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan to monitor and report on the human rights situation and make recommendations to improve it, including supporting the de facto government in fulfilling its human rights obligations and civil society in engaging the government and international bodies. Special rapporteurs operate in a personal, unpaid capacity, making them independent from U.N. human rights bodies, but they are still dependent on limited U.N. resources. Special Rapporteur Bennett is understaffed and underfunded to meet the scope and breadth of his mandate. The United States should strengthen his ability to fulfil his mandate through political and financial support, particularly in conducting outreach and collecting information from affected populations. Such support could include financing regular trips to Afghanistan, providing a secure storage platform for information collected, technological and forensic tools, or connecting the special rapporteur with affected communities.

Special Rapporteur Bennett might benefit from sharing experiences with the special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews. Andrews, a former anti-genocide advocate and Maine congressman, issues regular public commentaries about the worsening human rights situation in Myanmar following the 2021 coup, is highly visible in the media, and has carried out his work with political and financial support from the U.S. government. His past experiences advocating to the U.N. and in Congress have allowed him to tailor his reporting and political messages to disseminate them more broadly. And he uses the language of mass atrocities in assessing the behavior of the junta, highlighting the severity of threats presented to civilians. Andrews’ mandate is also quite broad and includes support to the government and civil society, although he has prioritized civil society support in the wake of the coup. Andrews has led calls for sanctions against Myanmar officials and industries for the junta’s treatment of civilians, many of which have been adopted.

Special Rapporteur Bennett should similarly consider prioritizing protection of civilians within his mandate. This includes using the language of mass atrocities where applicable. As Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, noted, invoking the language of mass atrocities is a powerful tool for recognizing the suffering of victims, particularly in Afghanistan where such crimes are often framed as terrorism.

2. Document atrocities now to identify perpetrators and risks to vulnerable communities.

Documentation is critical to any future transitional justice process in Afghanistan — even if prospects for accountability are currently slim. Farkondeh Akbari, a postdoctoral fellow in Monash University’s Gender, Peace and Security Centre, said documentation is crucial to recognizing the harm suffered by Afghan civilians. Documentation captures testimony from victims and witnesses and can strengthen transitional justice processes even if victims and witnesses are not able to participate directly. Transitional justice processes from Argentina to Cambodia to Guatemala have used documentation as a basis for criminal investigations, supporting truth and reconciliation efforts, and/or memorializing the harms suffered by victims.

The Taliban’s takeover and evacuation of many human rights defenders has made documenters’ work riskier and limited their capacity to operate, particularly in documenting ongoing crimes. This, in turn, requires more robust support from the United States and other members of the international community committed to atrocity prevention. U.S. supported, locally led documentation initiatives are ongoing in Syria, South Sudan and Ukraine, where documenters and victims face similar risks in collecting information related to ongoing atrocities. The United States provides capacity building assistance that has allowed these initiatives to operate professionally, transparently and securely, strengthening their ability to support ongoing or future transitional justice processes. Such expertise should be applied to Afghanistan. As U.S. Special Envoy Rina Amiri noted, the United States must “support human rights actors and local actors through funding, cybersecurity training, and other tools to give them a fighting chance to carry out their work under incredibly challenging circumstances.”

3. Create an independent U.N. investigative mechanism.

Creating an independent U.N. investigative mechanism to collect evidence of atrocities in Afghanistan would send an important message to perpetrators and potential perpetrators about the U.N.’s commitment to accountability and civilian protection. Human rights monitoring and reporting roles are currently split between the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the U.N. special rapporteur, but neither institution is explicitly charged with collecting, preserving and analyzing evidence of crimes in a way that could be used for future transitional justice processes. Bennett’s mandate allows him to “seek, receive, examine, and act on information from all relevant stakeholders,” which provides him authority to operate similarly to an investigative mechanism, but does not require it. Given his resource constraints, fulfilling this role would be a monumental task. Creating a U.N. investigative mechanism would fill that gap.

Three U.N. investigative missions are currently underway, in Myanmar, Syria and Iraq. Each relies heavily on partnerships with local documentation efforts. Of these, the U.N. Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) — established through a Security Council resolution in 2017 — may provide the most useful framework, but also requires the most political capital to establish. UNITAD currently works in Iraq to support the Iraqi government in bringing perpetrators of ISIS crimes to justice and is the first U.N.-led investigative mechanism with an in-country presence. Its capacity to directly collect evidence lends additional credibility to its investigations. Because of its in-country presence, however, UNITAD required Security Council authorization and host-state consent to operate. While the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria do not maintain an in-country presence — and as a result must rely on submissions from stakeholders for evidence collection — they were established by General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, making them far easier to stand up.

To effectively respond to the needs of vulnerable communities, the United States should advocate for the establishment of an investigative mechanism empowered to collect evidence of crimes committed by all perpetrators in Afghanistan. In considering how best to develop an investigative mechanism for Afghanistan, the United States should consider both the needs of Afghans in interfacing with such a mechanism and the political feasibility of creating such a mechanism through U.N. bodies, particularly given the current dysfunction in the Security Council.

4. Break the cycle of impunity by supporting the International Criminal Court and universal jurisdiction cases.

Impunity is a major driver of atrocities. It emboldens perpetrators and drives victims away from justice processes. The legacy of impunity runs particularly deep in Afghanistan, where atrocities have been committed by numerous actors over decades with little — if any — accountability. As two of these authors recently noted, the international community has largely come to accept impunity for crimes committed in Afghanistan, a reality made all the more galling by the swift action taken to provide accountability for crimes committed in Ukraine. Breaking this cycle is essential to providing justice to victims of atrocities.

Accountability for atrocities in Afghanistan is not currently possible through Afghan courts. As Shukria Dellawar, the legislative and policy manager for the prevention of violent conflict at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, noted, “every time the government shifts, or a new government comes in, there is no rule of law.” The International Criminal Court (ICC) is typically viewed as the best prospect for international justice for Afghan victims, but the status of the ICC prosecutor’s investigation is unclear, and the ICC is unlikely to prosecute more than five to 10 defendants given its mandate and resource constraints. Afghan victims should continue to provide evidence and impact statements to the ICC to support its investigation and to hold those most responsible for atrocities accountable, but should also have clear expectations about the Court’s limitations in delivering justice.

Universal jurisdiction may provide an opportunity to hold perpetrators accountable, particularly given how many Afghans are currently living in the diaspora, and the United States should support such efforts through political and, where feasible, financial support. Universal jurisdiction cases are criminal prosecutions in states that have incorporated international crimes into their domestic law. They require that the defendant be physically present in the state’s territory.

Universal jurisdiction has been used to hold Syrian regime officials accountable for crimes committed in Syria. A German court recently convicted two former officials of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s security apparatus of war crimes for their role in torturing detainees — the first time regime officials have held formally accountable for such crimes. A similar strategy should be applied in Afghanistan, and several efforts are currently ongoing. Universal jurisdiction cases have been brought on behalf of Afghan victims of atrocity crimes in the Netherlands and Germany for abuses committed by officials prior to the Taliban’s rise to power in the 1990s. Germany has also pursued a case against a Taliban defendant, who is currently on trial for war crimes for his involvement in the murder of an Afghan police officer. While universal jurisdiction cases may not immediately address ongoing crimes committed by the Taliban, ISIS-K and other armed groups, these cases will set important precedents that perpetrators will be held accountable for their crimes, sending a message to Taliban leaders that they too may be held to account.

While the risks of mass atrocities in Afghanistan are high and the prospects for justice seem distant, responding to atrocities in Afghanistan is a moral and national security imperative for the United States and like-minded allies, particularly given the extent of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan since 2001. Actions taken now put pressure on the Taliban regime, provide moral support for victims, and increase the chances for accountability, breaking the cycle of impunity and establishing benchmarks for the Taliban for legitimacy and credibility in protecting civilians.

Four Ways the U.S. Can Help Prevent Mass Atrocities in Afghanistan
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Afghanistan is not ours to fix

June 18, 2022

BY FORMER AMBASSADOR DAVID ROBINSON

OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
The Hill
06/17/22

The United States Air Force announced on Monday exonerated and returned to flight status the crew of a C-17 military plane after body parts had been found in its wheel well.

The remains were likely Afghani, the awful result of the plane’s emergency departure from Kabul airport on August 16, 2021, while it was being overrun by civilians hoping to flee the Taliban.  Scores of people surrounding and clinging to the plane as it took off became the graphic and pitiful emblem of America’s failure after nearly 20 years of “security assistance” and “democracy building” in Afghanistan, an effort most participants had known but refused to admit was futile. Comparisons with the last American helicopter leaving the U.S. Embassy in Saigon 46 years earlier were precisely on-target.

In making the announcement, the Air Force said the crew had exercised “sound judgment.” The same cannot be said for the long line of policymakers from both political parties that ultimately led to the tragedy. The war was badly conceived from the start by, among others, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and was prolonged and misdirected throughout, as documented by Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko.  Only two outcomes were ever possible and neither looked like success. Either the United States would have to remain in Afghanistan permanently or it would have to do what President Biden eventually did — simply leave at a certain date regardless of the optics and human cost. There was no right choice.

Congressional hand wringing about America’s damaged reputation and waning influence began as soon as the besieged C-17 took off from Kabul in full view of the world’s media. Afghanistan was the graveyard of empires and it had just claimed another one. The shame was more painful because America’s failure was self-inflicted. Afghanistan’s importance on the world stage was a U.S. creation: It was an easy target for direct action, an opportunity to showcase American resolve after a serious wounding and to set in motion a more comprehensive transformation in the region. Driving Al Qaeda from its safe-haven made sense — but morphing the invasion into a long-term democracy-building exercise did not.

The effort to modernize Afghanistan that ended with the debacle at the airport was neither noble nor necessary. While most development indicators ticked upward during the U.S. presence, including women’s rights, media freedom, health care and education, the hearts and minds battle was never decisively won.

Throughout the U.S. presence, Afghanistan remained a desolate agrarian backwater dominated by warlords and corruption. Driving out the Taliban as well as flooding the economy with assistance money and war dollars may have improved urban life and catered to both well-meaning elites and kleptocratic opportunists, but it did little to improve life for the majority subsistence-level population. As always, they floated in ambiguity, leaving the front door open for the West and the backdoor ajar for the Taliban. The speed of the Taliban’s final advance last August was shocking but not surprising.

The question now is how to move forward. The United States did not create the Taliban or the conditions for its return to power. Failure to lift Afghanistan out of its own dark ages does not translate into an ongoing commitment to keep trying, and there is no pressing geopolitical urgency to reforming Taliban misrule. Afghanistan’s reputation as the nemesis of great powers is overblown. It just historically has not been worth the cost of continued attention.

In fact, Afghanistan has little strategic significance for the United States and offers scant leverage for U.S. regional priorities. Geography alone is not sufficient reason to exaggerate its importance and there is nothing to be gained by trying to expiate national guilt for abandoning, once again, friends and partners who misjudged America’s commitment to them. It is time to move on.

Attention now needs to focus on emergency humanitarian relief rather than long-term political reform. Taliban incompetence and oppression are producing the predictable results, deprivation and flight, and neither sanctions nor development assistance is likely to fundamentally change their methods or trajectory. Instead, international efforts need to focus narrowly on immediate humanitarian relief delivered through international organizations and aid agencies and not through bilateral donations with political strings attached. In other words, it is time for national politicians to muzzle themselves and let international professionals do their work, an optimistic scenario, at best.

In the meantime, concerns about America’s supposedly tarnished reputation are beside the point and reflect fragile egoism more than rational analysis. Most consequential observers expected little else. Still, there are lessons to be learned from the United States’ prolonged engagement in Afghanistan. The most important is this:  When the writing is on the wall, read it.

Politicians and policymakers failed to heed the warning signs in Vietnam and showed the same disregard for similar messages a half-century later. They preferred good news to bad, validation to correction, and they were eager to convince themselves that just a little more time and a few more lives would turn temporary gains into permanent transformation. Wishful thinking is not a strategic plus.

Ambassador David Robinson is a retired emissary to Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Venezuela, Bolivia and Guyana.

Afghanistan is not ours to fix
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What are the prospects for Afghan-US relations?

June 10, 2022
From: The Bottom Line

What are the prospects for Afghan-US relations?

Former US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad has had a front-row seat to relations between Washington and Kabul for decades.

Normal relations between Afghanistan and the United States are not on the horizon after 20 years of war.

Host Steve Clemons speaks with Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan and has worked with several US administrations on Afghan affairs. Khalilzad has been the US representative to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations. Most recently, he was US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation under former President Donald Trump.

In this wide-ranging interview, Khalilzad talks about the chances for national reconciliation in Afghanistan, the country’s $7bn reserve fund held by Washington, and US foreign policy.

Published On 9 Jun 2022
What are the prospects for Afghan-US relations?
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The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?

June 7, 2022

Mhd Assem Mayar

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The earth has only one atmosphere, and the effects of climate change transcend political boundaries. Afghanistan is one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases, but among the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change. The harm is already evident in the increased frequency of droughts, which are causing hunger and distress, and unfortunately, it is now clear that 2022 will be yet another year of drought in most parts of the country. AAN guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar*, a water resource management expert, looks at how the climate crisis is already affecting Afghanistan and at the likely projections for the future. He considers what the Republic did – or did not do – to reduce the harmful effects of global warming and finally discusses how climate change could be tackled under Taleban rule, now that Afghanistan is poorer, more isolated and subject to sanctions.
Looking to the skies for rain and snow

Every year, in winter and spring, Afghans look to the sky to see if snow and rain will fall that year. This last winter began well with higher than average snowfall in the end of December and early January.[1] After that, February and March were drier than average; only in the second week of March was there rainfall.

Winter snow is crucial for agriculture in Afghanistan: in the highlands, the snow acts as a reservoir, melting into the summer season and providing water for irrigation – although if the summer or spring is too hot, fast melting can cause disaster downstream, a lack of irrigation water into the summer or even worse, flooding. In the lowlands, snow moistens the soil, but not enough for rainfed crops to flourish. There, it is spring rain which is needed for rainfed agriculture to yield.

The good snowfall in the end of December 2021 and early January 2022 created hope in the hearts of farmers, and in provinces such as Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Balkh, they sowed their rain-fed lands, even the steep, high slopes of hills inaccessible to tractors. Since then, hopes have faded; the growth of wheat cultivated in rainfed areas has been weak and may not yield a harvest this year. Those with livestock are also concerned. At the beginning of April, herders in Dasht-e Gabar in the west of Baghlan-e Jadid district of Baghlan province told a colleague:

The grass is stressed because of the sun and the weather being hotter than in the past. Grass, which previously had grown to above a half-metre at this time of the year is now only about 10 cm high and turning black in the sunshine. Herders are very worried about the situation – if it doesn’t rain in the coming days, we’ll have to sell our cattle.[2]

Those with access to water from snowmelt are faring better in the north of Afghanistan. However, in the south, the situation is already dire: irrigation water is looking scarce. According to discussions with local people in Jaghatu district of Wardak province and Kandahar city, multiple wells have dried up and people are now lacking drinking water. On 5 April 2022, the Taleban announced they would release Dahla reservoir’s water for twenty-two days to enable farmers irrigate pomegranate orchards, but then stopped the water early. The Dahla reservoir in Kandahar, like the Kajaki in Helmand, did not fill fully. In a normal year, at this time, these dams would be overflowing. Recently, Azadi Radio reported that a person was killed in a water dispute between two villages in the Chak district of Wardak province. Such cases are expected across the country in the future if climate change-induced droughts are not handled.

The Taleban government has not yet declared a drought, and may yet do so this month, as the Republic did. However, it is now evident that in most of Afghanistan, 1401/2022 is another drought year. Moreover, Afghans are learning that what is ‘normal’ in their climate and weather patterns has changed, and changed for the worst.

The upward trend in temperatures is not easily discernible to the general public, unlike the changes in rain and snow fall, but they are evident in the long-term data records. The consequences of higher temperatures are serious, as global warming affects the water cycle, intensifies extreme events such as floods, droughts, glacier melt and storms, and is leading to a rise in sea levels.[3] The earth only has one atmosphere and global warming harm transcends political boundaries.

The release of large amounts of greenhouse gases[4] into the earth’s atmosphere that began with the industrial revolution is the primary cause of the ongoing climate crisis. Developed countries still play the major role in the production of these gases, while poorer countries, smaller emitters of greenhouse gases per head of population, are among the most vulnerable to climate change owing to their dependency on natural resources and their limited capacity to cope with climate variability and extremes. Afghanistan is in the latter category. It is one of the lowest contributors of greenhouse gases (179th out of 209 countries), but is in the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change (see the graphic illustrating this here).

The very specific driver of the recent droughts is the varying temperature of water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the so-called El Nino (warmer than usual) and La Nina (cooler than usual) effects, which plays a significant role in the world’s weather conditions. Variation from year to year is natural, but global warming is making these variations more frequent and more intense, with consequences for many countries, including Afghanistan.

2018 was a severe drought year in Afghanistan because there was a La Nina in the Pacific. The following year was extremely wet and good for farmers in Afghanistan, although with flooding, owing to El Nino in the Pacific. Subsequently, 2020 was a normal year for precipitation in Afghanistan, while 2021 again saw an extreme drought due to the reoccurrence of the La Nina. La Nina is still affecting the Pacific Ocean, and together with the fact that cumulative precipitation over the past six months of the current ‘water year’, which runs from October to September (map is available here), is up to 45 per cent less than average, meaning that Afghanistan’s drought is continuing. Drought and flood extremes in four out of five years show the change in the water cycle in Afghanistan. The increased frequency of these extreme conditions in the last five years are a result of climate change.

The effect of climate change on Afghanistan up to now: from temperature to river flow 

Comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of climate change and its projections for the future for Afghanistan was carried out by NEPA with the technical support of UNEP and WFP in 2016, and are available here and here. These analyses highlighted that:

  • Temperatures have been increasing across the country over the past thirty years. According to this UNEP report from 2016, Afghanistan’s mean annual temperature, which had risen by 0.6°C from 1960 to 2008, had since increased significantly and dramatically, by a further 1.2°C. This shift has intensified glacier and snow melt and led to an increase in the number of flash floods, glacial lake outburst floods and river flooding.
  • Climate change has doubled the number of droughts compared to the previous decades. Statistically, this affects the long-term average of precipitation and indeed, analyses by WFP, UNEP and NEPA showed a decline in annual precipitation in most of the country’s north and centre.
  • Afghanistan’s glaciers are melting. Over 14 per cent of the total area of glaciers in Afghanistan’s highlands was lost between 1990 and 2015, researchers found. This pace of decline is expected to continue. (For more details about Afghanistan’s melting glaciers, please read AAN’s report here). Glaciers and snow melt provide base flow to the rivers in the summer and their early melting or decline affect river flow in the summer.
  • The shifts in precipitation pattern and temperature have also affected patterns of river flow. For example, the author’s research findings reported that river flow in the Kabul River basin has changed slightly with an increase in the number of high and low flow days. This means that flood days, as well as low flow or dry days during the summer season have both increased, with obvious repercussions for water management and the utilisation of water in agriculture and other sectors along the year. It is assumed there have been similar changes in Afghanistan’s other river basins.

Projections for future climate change in Afghanistan

Projections for the climate are made using Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, which vary as to the level of greenhouse gases emitted globally up to the end of the 21st century.[5] Four RCP scenarios were used for climate modelling in the period up to the fifth global assessment report in 2014.[6] Since then, new RCPs have been adopted, but as analysis for Afghanistan using the new climate scenarios has yet to be carried out, the older scenarios are cited in this report. All of the scenarios foresee Afghanistan getting hotter and receiving less precipitation, but to a greater or lesser extent. It is worth stressing that the failure of the world to start seriously to tackle greenhouse gas emissions means that models based on the newer RCP scenarios show even more severe harm to the climate, globally.

Projection of mean annual temperature for Afghanistan for a base period (grey: 1975-2005) and a scenario period (2006-2100) showing the effect on temperature of relatively limited greenhouse gas emissions (green, RCP 4.5, emissions peaking in 2040 and then declining) and uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions (red, RCP 8.5). The spread of the models are depicted as transparent areas and the means as lines. Both trends are statistically significant and depicted as a dashed line. The magnitudes of the trends are plotted in their relative colours. Source: UNEP and NEPA

Modelling of what would happen to Afghanistan’s climate was carried out by WFP, UNEP and NEPA in 2015. The projections using what they called a “moderate” scenario, (RCP 4.5) would see greenhouse gas emission peaking in 2040 (see their report here) included:

  • Temperatures in Afghanistan would increase by more than the global average and there would be further melting of glaciers and snow cover, a shift in precipitation from snow to rainfall and a rise in demand for water for crops, with plants possibly requiring extra irrigation.
  • There would be an increase in drought and flood risks. Local droughts would become the norm by 2030, while floods would be a secondary risk.
  • Snowfall would diminish in the central highlands, potentially leading to reduced spring and summer flows in the Helmand, Harirud-Murghab and Northern River basins, while spring rainfall would decrease across most of the country.
  • In the northeast and small pockets of the south and east, along the border with Iran, there might be a five per cent or more increase in ‘heavy precipitation events’ that can lead to flash floods. However, these potentially devastating events might actually decrease across most of the south and other parts of the north.
  • In the medium-term, the frequency of snowmelt-related floods in spring might increase simply due to accelerated melting associated with higher spring temperatures.

Assessing how the effects of climate change would translate into economic impacts is complicated, although some attempts have been made, for example by the World Economic Forum estimated that climate change could wipe off up to 18 per cent of GDP from the world-wide economy by 2050. However, in developing countries, such as Afghanistan, which are more dependent on agriculture and water resources, the losses from climate change will be more severe than the worldwide average and will directly threaten their food security as well as resilience to natural disasters.

What could be done to help Afghans cope with the looming climate crisis

Attempts to limit the impact of climate change can generally be divided into two categories: climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. Mitigation is adapting the economy to reduce greenhouse emissions and is less of a priority for Afghanistan, given it is such a low emitter of greenhouse gases, just 0.19 per cent of the global total. However, adaptation is crucial and urgent. Afghanistan is in the top ten of countries which will be harmed by climate change, which means it is imperative to adapt the economy, agriculture, water management, energy and environment to reduce the harm, and strengthen communities’ resilience as quickly as possible.

Tackling climate change requires multi-dimensional actions, including: institutional development (administrative frameworks, strategy, policy, planning, and procedures), legalisation, capacity development and investment on physical infrastructures. Therefore, best practice is to design and implement a comprehensive programme which includes all the affected sectors.

However, in the meantime, implementing local and small-scale adaptation measures can also help to reduce the effects of climate change. For example, rainwater could be harvested by constructing small ponds and dams, storing the water for later use, and playing a vital role in reducing flood risk. Constructing such harvesting structures would be useful nationwide, but especially so in the catchment of karezs. A karez, also known as a qanat, is an ancient irrigation system, with long horizontal tunnels and vertical wells, that taps into the groundwater table in the hillsides, using gravity, rather than any external power. It is the only water resource in many remote areas in the south of Afghanistan.  Many karezs are reported to be dry, but small investments could replenish this ancient sustainable water resource. In the winter, when there is less work, people could build small ponds and water barriers in the valleys of their villages using stones and local materials, enabling karezs to operate longer and avoiding them from drying up. Such voluntary, communal work, known as hashar, is familiar to most Afghans.

On a bigger scale, the glaciers in the highlands, which are so crucial for providing meltwater for agriculture, but which are thinning and shrinking, could be compensated for by creating new artificial glaciers. These are developed by slowing down the flow of water during the cold season so that it freezes, enabling additional water to be stored and released more gradually. A detailed article by the author about the feasibility of artificial glaciers in Afghanistan is available here in Pashto and a more explanation in English can be read here.

Furthermore, as climate change affects snow accumulation and melting process, mountain snow now plays less role as a natural reservoir of water for the summer season. Thus, the assessment of what and where reservoirs are needed, conducted during Daud Khan’s regime in the 1970s to determine the country’s hydropower and irrigation potential, is out of date. It did not recommend dams in the highlands; a new assessment is required, which would recommend additional reservoir sites for regulating water to meet the new demand. This would help to better implement any drought risk management strategy and would play a considerable role in mitigating the risk of floods.

Avoiding water losses in any irrigation system helps to ensure a greater area can be irrigated. Investment in the rehabilitation of intakes, canals and water conveyance structures is required. New irrigation technology, such as drip or sprinkler irrigation, although expensive to implement, enables farmers to use water effectively and expand their area of cultivation. A policy of subsidisation could help farmers switch from the less effective furrow irrigation method, where small channels are dug to carry water to crops, to the much more effective drip irrigation method. Afghanistan’s neighbours, Iran and Uzbekistan, have already implemented such policies, waiving farmers adopting such new technology, from taxation for several years.

Reforestation is another adaptation measure that reduces the harm of climate change. Local people can avoid deforestation and work toward expanding the forest cover. Applying drip irrigation technology could easily help expand forests on the hillsides, particularly in the major cities, and would also improve air quality and help to reduce ‘heat islands’ which boost temperatures in the summer months. Forestation also improves the stability of the hillsides, helping prevent landslides and also reduces the risk of flooding by slowing water flow.

As to reducing Afghanistan’s own greenhouse gas emissions, there could be a wider adoption of solar, wind and other renewable energies. Afghanistan has a high potential for solar energy across the country and for wind energy in its western provinces. A policy for prioritising and utilising solar energy by government, in the private sector, by international organisations and wealthier Afghans who use generators when mains electricity fails, could considerably reduce carbon emissions. In rural areas, small ‘discretised’ grids could be established using renewables to provide electricity for homes. This technology has been used, but for extracting groundwater, which is unsustainable and should be avoided. To make groundwater extraction using solar energy sustainable, farmers would have to make sure the aquifers were recharged with an equivalent amount of rainwater.

Tackling climate change in Afghanistan during the Republic

Under the Republic, combatting climate change focused on two types of activities: (1) developing institutions, passing legalisation and formulating policies and strategies; and (2) efforts to secure finance to pay for tackling climate change. Each of these activities is discussed separately below.

What will become clear is how, despite 15 years of efforts, the Republic carried out very little climate change adaptation despite resources, including technical support, being relatively plentiful. The opportunity for adaptation, which Afghans need so urgently, may already have been lost, or at the very least delayed. Since August 2021 and the capture of Afghanistan by the Taleban, the country has again become isolated, far poorer, with deep cuts to development aid, and UN and US sanctions applied suddenly not to an armed opposition group, but to the government and therefore the whole country. Finding ways to help Afghanistan cope with the already devastating effects of climate change has become far, far more difficult.

Institutional development and legislation

Afghanistan had to establish various standard mechanisms and laws as a precondition for getting the help it needed – both technical expertise and funding – to first analyse the likely effects of climate change and then try to mitigate the harm. Such a pathway was deemed necessary in the early 2000s after the Republic was established. However, it should be stressed that it was taken with little urgency by the politicians of the Republic, who seemed to view global warming primarily as yet another demand of the donors that needed paying lip service to, or a new opportunity to gain funds.

Although the global warming trend has been identified since the 1930s, it was not until the 1980s that thoughts about combatting it began and, globally, institutions and platforms to address climate change began to be established. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The convention entered into force with a secretariat headquartered in Bonn on 21 March 1994. The first annual United Nations climate change conference (COP1) was held in Berlin in 1995.

Afghanistan signed this framework convention in 1992, but ratified it only in 2002. That decade was one in which war and isolation meant climate change and its harmful consequences were rarely spoken about in Afghanistan. With the establishment of the internationally-backed Republic at the end of 2001, environmental institutions and laws were gradually established. NEPA was established in April 2005. Afghanistan’s first environmental law was promulgated in early 2007. That law defined NEPA’s function, power and position as Afghanistan’s environmental policy-making and regulatory institution. NEPA’s mandate and institutional structure gradually evolved and in 2010 a division devoted to climate change was established, as one of the six key divisions.

To obtain funds for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, NEPA prepared a nationwide assessment and other documentation for tackling climate change. It developed a National Adaptation Programme of Action in 2009, following consideration of a wide variety of potential adaptation measures across all sectors. Afghanistan submitted its first national report to the UN framework convention on climate change in 2013 with help from the Green Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nation’s Environment Programme.[7] (By comparison, Afghanistan’s northern neighbour, Tajikistan, submitted its initial communication in 2002). The first report said that “Afghanistan does not have the institutional arrangement to provide information and know-how on the environmental sound technologies to get easy access by private companies and individuals.”

In 2013, Afghanistan ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which serves to implement the UN framework convention on climate change UN framework convention on climate change objective of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere in order to stop dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate.

In 2016, NEPA with the technical support of UNEP and WFP and the financial support of GEF completed a comprehensive analysis of already observed climate change in Afghanistan and projections for the future. In the same year, with the technical support of the United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP), NEPA developed a Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan for Afghanistan (ACCSAP). Following this research and analysis, in 2017, Afghanistan was able to submit its second national communication; it aimed at providing updated information on the country’s steps towards the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It included a greenhouse gas inventory, a list of sources of emissions, quantified using standardised methods, and the systematic collection and analysis of national climate data. There was also information on how national strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation were being developed and the strengthening of the National Climate Change Committee as the lead inter-ministerial coordination mechanism on climate change. (For more information about the climate change and governance in Afghanistan please read here).

Climate change affects a wide range of sectors and this was reflected in the National Adaptation Programme of Action and Initial National Communication as: i) agriculture; ii) biodiversity and ecosystems; iii) infrastructure and energy; iv) forestry and rangelands; v) natural disasters; and vi) water. It was recognised that climate change would need to be incorporated into the legislative frameworks, sectoral policies and strategies of the ministries of agriculture, energy and water, rural development, public health, urban development and mining, as well as NEPA and the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority. The Ministry of Agriculture, with the support of FAO developed a drought risk management strategy that took climate change into account. Other ministries, including energy and water, had yet to finalise their policies and strategies when the Republic fell and have not done so since.

After fifteen years of institution-building, law-making and fact-finding, a generous conclusion would be that the former Afghan republic had been on the path to incorporating efforts to mitigate the harm of climate change into its policies and strategies. A less generous assessment would be to point to how little it actually achieved. As to the Taleban, on the first day of the COP26 international conference in Glasgow in November 2021, senior Taleban official in Doha, Suhail Shahin, called for the resumption of climate change-related projects which had “already been approved and were funded by Green Climate Fund, UNDP, Afghan Aid” (see his tweets here). Since then, to the best knowledge of this author, climate change risks have not been discussed in any of numerous discussions conducted between the Taleban and representatives of the donor countries in Doha. However, the Taleban have spoken about the need for better water management, which is one of the key components of climate change adaptation.

Efforts to secure financing to tackle the climate crisis

Despite all the documentation and information on funding needs, which are detailed below, the Republic itself did not allocate any specific budget for responding to climate change. The Ministry of Finance in its national budget narrative for the year 2021/1400 claimed that risks due to climate change were not measurable. Thus, it recommended all sectors to finance the consequences of climate change from their available financial resources. The same text was copy-pasted in multiple years’ budgets with no addition or further details, suggesting how little importance was attached to climate change. The one partial exception was the Ministry of Energy and Water which constructed some check dams, small structures built across waterways to store water and reduce erosion, prior to the collapse of the Republic, which could be seen as an action to mitigate the harm of climate change.

Instead, with regard to climate change caused largely by developed-country gas emissions, major efforts focused on securing international financing for addressing the effects of the climate crisis. According to Afghanistan’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)[8] submitted to the UN framework convention on climate change in 2015, the Republic estimated that it would need more than one billion USD per year from donors during the following decade to “overcome the existing gaps and barriers toward sufficiently addressing its climate change adaptation needs.” The government planned to allocate 70 per cent of the 10.7 billion USD expected as financial support for climate change adaptation (until 2030) to watershed management and the expansion of irrigated agriculture. Furthermore, it said that 6.6 billion USD would be needed to reduce greenhouse gases emission in order to meet 2030 goals.[9]

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has funded most of the climate change-related projects in Afghanistan after 2002. Since the establishment of NEPA, GEF funded various projects through third-party implementers, such as UNDP and UNEP. GEF also funded several projects regarding climate adaptation under the framework of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and other ministries. Third-party implementers (UNEP, UNDP) also secured funds from GEF’s Least Developed Countries Fund programme, established in 2001 in recognition that delays in addressing adaptation needs could increase vulnerability or costs in the future. Those funds supported the preparation of Afghanistan’s National Communications to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the National Adaptation Programme of Action and the execution of three full-size climate change adaptation projects (LDCF-1 from 2013-2016 , LDCF-2 from 2014-2019, and LDCF-3, undated in literature).

More funds became available to developing countries to promote low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways after the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up in 2011 under the UN framework convention on climate change. Afghanistan, however, has not yet received funds from the GCF directly as the government administrations tackling climate change (ministries of energy and water, agriculture, irrigation and livestock, rural rehabilitation and development, and NEPA) still lack the capacity (this was even before the Taleban takeover). NEPA established an inter-ministerial board to facilitate development of proposals to the GCF in 2016, but has yet to be accredited for applying for funds.

During COP21 in 2015, a new international climate agreement (the Paris Agreement), applicable to all countries, was signed, aiming to keep global warming at between 1.5°C and 2°C, in accordance with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The agreement said that 100 billion US Dollars in public and private resources will need to be raised each year from 2020 onwards to finance projects that enable countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change (rise in sea level, droughts, etc) or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This funding will gradually increase and some developing countries will also be able to become donors, on a voluntary basis, to help the poorest countries.

Afghanistan does not have an accredited national implementing entity for applying directly to the GEF or GCF for funds. Besides, owing to the low-institutional capacity, even under the Republic, the government could not directly secure the required funds. Therefore agencies like the Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNEP, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the WFP, and the World Bank, which are all accredited for securing this funding, are brokering the process.[10]

The Adaptation Fund is another funding agency that finances adaptation projects and programmes aimed at reducing the adverse effects of climate change on communities, countries, and sectors. The UNDP, on behalf of Afghanistan, submitted a proposal in 2019 to the Adaptation Fund for 9.4 million USD grant in order to rehabilitate karezs. This project was planned to be jointly implemented by UNDP and Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development before the Taleban takeover. Furthermore, the International Fund for Agriculture Development also supported projects under the ministry of agriculture, and of rural development in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan gained the approval for a 17.2 million USD grant of GCF and 4.2 million co-financing of other organizations through UNDP in August 2020 to initiate renewable energy in rural areas of Afghanistan. As of January 2021, 4 million USD of the total 21.4 million USD earmarked for the project had been disbursed, but, since the Taleban takeover, the programme has been suspended.

Under the Republic, considerable technical support and resources were also available to Afghanistan, including the Climate Technology Centre and Network hosted by UNEP which aims to enhance the transfer of climate smart technologies in order to promote adaptive capacity and climate change mitigation efforts in developing countries.[11]

Recent research found that only six per cent of nations had managed to obtain climate change-related funds through their national institutions. Others relied on international bodies to broker the process. According to Carbon Brief, Afghanistan has been among the countries which did not receive funding directly from the UN’s Green Climate Fund. This was the case before and after the fall of the Republic. “Unfortunately, most climate vulnerable, least-developed and developing countries have found it a bit difficult to access,” Dr Emmanuel Tachie-Obeng of the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency and the Climate Vulnerable Forum, told Carbon Brief in January 2022.

After the Taleban takeover

The rupture between Afghanistan and its erstwhile donors and the international system in general, that followed the Taleban’s takeover on 15 August 2021 has hit many activities aimed at mitigating the harm of climate change. The Taleban government has not been recognised by any state, meaning Afghanistan had no delegates at COP26 in Glasgow – although some climate activists tried to independently represent Afghanistan in COP26, they were unable to secure visas. However, the repercussions go much further than this.

The significance of UN sanctions, which targeted named individuals in the Taleban and the Haqqani network, and US sanctions, which targeted the group as a whole expanded suddenly when the Taleban were no longer an armed opposition group but the government of Afghanistan. Programmes which built up government agencies or worked through them were suspended, as was development aid. UN Security Council Resolution 2615 issued in December 2021, provided a more permissive environment, making humanitarian and basic human needs aid much easier to implement, while the US Treasury’s General license 20 (GL-20), issued in late February 2022, loosened up that country’s sanctions “for commercial and financial transactions in Afghanistan, including with its governing institutions” said the press release. The aim, it said, was to ensure US sanctions “do not prevent or inhibit transactions and activities needed to provide aid to and support the basic human needs of the people of Afghanistan and underscores the United States’ commitment to working with the private sector, international partners and allies, and international organizations to support the people of Afghanistan.”

However, the August 2021 rupture also meant that donors have been more careful about funding anything that involves the Taleban administration. Some climate change mitigation measures such as flood protection or drought resilience are classed as humanitarian. However, the major climate crisis programmes that had already been agreed or that were in the pipeline have been suspended. They include:

  • Funding for significant drought prevention and water management projects such as the 222.50 million USD World Bank project to develop early warning and response systems, the Asian Development Bank’s Arghandab Integrated Water Resources Development project and the Afghanistan Drought Early Warning Decision Support Tool, which was in a test phase.
  • The 21.4 million USD project for initiating renewable energy in rural areas of Afghanistan implemented by UNDP and the Ministry of rural development has also been halted and faces an uncertain future.
  • The karez rehabilitation project funded by the International Fund for Agriculture Development and implemented by UNDP and MRRD has been suspended.
  • A 9.9 million USD-funded irrigation project implemented by FAO and the Ministry of Energy and Water and funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency was suspended.
  • Without the now-suspended technical assistance of UNEP and other supporting agencies, NEPA on behalf of Afghanistan will not be able to submit the next national communication reports to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This will also suspend understanding of the climate change effect and monitoring of any progress achieved.[12]

It should be noted that most funding sources would anyway have demanded a full re-appraisal of a programme if the main executing agency had changed as it is the case after the Taleban takeover, ie even in the absence of sanctions.

What can be done to tackle the climate crisis in Afghanistan now?

The potential actions to help Afghans adapt to the looming ravages of climate change are already known. They include: schemes to harvest rainwater, including from small check dams to much larger reservoirs; rehabilitating karezes; changing from furrow to drip irrigation and tillage adaptation; projects that replenish groundwater to support water extraction during drought; introducing crops and trees that require less water; seeding and improving rangeland; constructing artificial glaciers to reduce the variability of meltwater flow and improve water storage; stopping deforestation and; supporting Afghan technical and scientific capacity. They range from community-level projects to major engineering works to social and educational action.

Many questions could be asked about why more was not done during the Republic when funds and technical expert help was plentiful. Now, following the Taleban takeover, far less support is on offer. Some small-scale, community-level improvements are being carried out via UN agencies and NGOs, including aspects even of some of the GEF-funded programmes, especially following the UN resolution of December 2021 and US Treasury waiver of February 2022 eased restrictions. Finding even small ways through the political impasse is still tricky. Generally, work that does not involve the Taleban government and is not aimed at building up government capabilities is the simplest to continue, or to begin. Nationwide, the work going ahead on climate change adaptation is patchy and absolutely inadequate to the scale or urgency of the crisis. Whatever activities are going on could be described, at best, as pathways to be expanded when and if the political situation improves. Adaptation at scale, though, needs government.

It should be significant that adaptation to climate change is not controversial for the Taleban, nor for donors, nor the wider population. Unlike, for example, education, there is the potential for a broad consensus that action is necessary and urgent. Afghanistan also has a strong tradition of communal work so there are grassroots structures and traditions to draw on. Given the political impasse, however, for more donor-funded programmes to get approval, the Taleban would need to accept that state involvement is currently anathema to donors, so if they want climate change adaptations to go ahead, even thought they are the ‘de facto authorities’, they could not expect too much involvement in programmes. For a group determined to emphasise its sovereignty in the land, this is difficult.

And/or, donors would need to reconsider their absolute ban on working with the Taleban government. For example, there could be some re-engagement with those parts of the administration where there are still competent and experienced, politically neutral, technical staff, such as in the Ministry of Rural Development, with possibly a step-by-step engagement that involved monitoring while those ministries proved their bona fides and capability. The donor decision to implement aid programmes via UN agencies without recourse to the Afghan state necessarily diminishes the slowly built-up capacity of Afghan state agencies such as NEPA and ministries such as agriculture, energy and water and rural development. Also, while UN agencies might be the safe choice of donors, reluctant to sustain the Taleban in power, they are exorbitantly expensive, less efficient and tend to know the country less well than Afghanistan’s own civil society. However, working at anything scaled-up needs some state involvement.

The Earth’s climate crisis has been caused by developed countries. The Paris Climate Agreement recognises this and requires them to compensate poor countries for the effects of climate change through sponsoring adaptation initiatives. That agreement recognises that countries like Afghanistan are suffering out of all proportion to the contribution they have made to damaging the planet’s atmosphere and climate. For Afghans, it is additionally unfair that the change of government means programmes backed by global funds are largely blocked when the climate emergency is already hitting the country hard, causing hunger and distress. The need for adaptation is urgent, yet the political impasse over aid and recognition looks to be enduring, and consequently also, the block on most aspects of the major, globally-funded, already-agreed programmes. However, unlike all the other causes of crises facing Afghanistan, the climate change emergency will continue to worsen, regardless of whatever and whenever a political settlement eventually materialises.

* Dr Mohammad Assem Mayar is a water resource management expert and former lecturer at Kabul Polytechnic University in Kabul, Afghanistan. This year, he completed his doctorate at the Institute for Modelling Hydraulics and Environmental Systems at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He tweets via @assemmayar1.

References

References
↑1 The cause was what is called a Madden–Julian Oscillation event in December 2021.  This is an eastward moving disturbance of clouds, rainfall, winds and pressure that traverses the planet in the tropics and returns to its initial starting point after an average of 30 to 60 days. According to one study, it can result in a 23% increase in daily precipitation relative to the mean in Afghanistan.
↑2 A recent follow-up call to Baghlan indicates that rainfed agriculture failed. A Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) map backs this up and also shows the failure of rainfed crops in Kunduz. Crops in Badghis, Faryab and Jawzjan provinces are faring better than last year.
↑3 The continuous movement of water in atmosphere (from vapour to liquid and solid phases) is called the water cycle. Water exists in the atmosphere as cloud vapours, and precipitate as rain and snow. Consequently, water flows on the earth before evaporating back into the atmosphere.
↑4 Gases that are emitted from the earth into the atmosphere and trap heat resulting in global temperature rises. Carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons are examples of greenhouse gases.
↑5 RCP pathways are adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to help modellers work out different climate futures, all of which are considered possible, but vary according to the volume of greenhouse gases emitted in the years to come. RCPs are labelled after their ‘radiative forcing value’, ie the size of the energy imbalance in the atmosphere – more incoming energy from sunlight than the earth radiates to space – as measured in watts per square metre, so RCP2.6 is a scenario with an imbalance of 2.6 W/m2, RCP4.5 an imbalance of 4.5 W/m2, and so on.
↑6 The four scenarios assume that: greenhouse gas emissions peak between 2010-2020 and then decline (RCP2.6); greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 and then decline (RCP4.5); greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2080 and then decline (RCP6) and; greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century (RCP8.5).
↑7 The regular reports, called National Communication are a requirement made by the fund called Green Climate Facility from all parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
↑8 The INDC represents a country’s steps to decrease national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
↑9 As one example of climate change mitigation during the years of the Republic, under the Montreal Protocol, which sets binding progressive phase-out obligations for developed and developing countries for all the major ozone-depleting substances, including chlorofluorocarbons, halons and less damaging transitional chemicals such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). Afghanistan is committed to reducing its use of HCFCs, chemicals that are used in refrigeration and air conditions that destroy ozone layer and contribute to climate change, by 35 per cent of by 2020 and 67.5 per cent by 2025. To achieve this milestone, the Afghan republic’s cabinet in 2018 banned imports of HCFC-based equipment, which came into effect in November 2018. Following that, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation was supporting the Afghan republic in training technicians for customs  to implement ban on HCFC equipment. In addition, Afghanistan once restricted importing vehicles more than a decade old , but then abandoned the rule because of the protests from traders, claiming they had placed orders for old cars and Afghans could not afford newer models.
↑10 For example, FAO and the Green Climate Fund joined forces in 2019 to implement the first-ever GCF-funded project in Afghanistan. It had focused on building the capacity of NEPA. Later, another proposal was submitted to extend this project for two more years. The implementation of these projects aimed at enabling NEPA to independently handle GCF-funding projects and lead government coordination on GCF projects. A list of the small projects implemented in Afghanistan and sponsored by various donors is available here.
↑11 In addition, the Asian Development Bank funded a joint master degree programme of integrated water management implemented by the Kabul Polytechnic University and Griffith University of Australia for the employees of the ministry of Energy and Water. Funds for this project were transferred to the Kabul Polytechnic University’s account from ADB at the start of the project, which meant that, after a three-month break following the takeover of the country by Taleban, the programme could resume as normal.
↑12 As UNEP was assisting NEPA in preparing the national communication report for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, it could continue this task without the Taleban government’s involvement in order to avoid a pause in climate change monitoring and fill the gap of submitting regular reports to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 6 Jun 2022

 

The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?
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Women across Afghanistan navigate the Taleban’s hijab ruling

June 3, 2022

“We need to breathe too”

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

What women wear outside the home varies across Afghanistan – from the burqa, known in Afghanistan as a chadori,to a more recent introduction, the Gulf-Arab style abaya (also known as a chapan siah), to big, baggy dresses with pleated trousers, to tight jeans and long shirts or coats. It has been extremely rare for Afghan woman, even in recent years, to choose to be seen in public bare-headed, but the style of a headscarf can vary from a very long, full, Iranian-style scarf which covers the head and clothes (often called chador namaz, as many women also wear it to pray) to much shorter and colourful scarves. Scarves can be worn to cover or almost cover the hair, or be tied to leave just the eyes exposed (niqab). The black scarves typically worn with an abaya often come with integral niqab and full face veil options, which can be adopted depending on how ‘exposed’ a woman wants to be – she may feel differently about revealing her face at work, for example, or in the bazaar, or in a shared taxi or bus, or in her own neighbourhood. In Herat, some women wear a magna, which is made-to-fit and pulls on over the head. It may show some or no hair, and may cover the chin, but not the rest of the face.
What women wear tends to differ with age, how conservative she, her family or her neighbours are, whether she works in paid employment and how safe or exposed she feels, and of course personal style. As a general rule, in times and places where women and girls feel safer, where they are in greater numbers outside and in the workplace and where probably also, their income is higher,[1] clothing has tended to be more varied and more colourful, with some individuals wearing tighter-fitting clothing and smaller scarves, and more women showing their faces in public.

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

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

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

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

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

The nature of the order

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

Screen shot of the hijab ruling posted by The Jurist on Twitter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the women we spoke to feel about the order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The women’s rights protester expressed a similar sentiment:

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

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

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

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

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

Concluding remarks 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hijab ruling [hukm]:

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

Definition of Hijab:

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

Hijab types:

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

Hijab observance classifications:

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

Benefits of observing hijab:

  • Sharia hijab is the command of God Almighty, and its observance is obedience to his command.
  • Hijab is the privilege of noble Muslim women.
  • Women wearing hijab are safe from being led astray or committing sins.
  • [Hijab makes them] dignified and honourable.
  • [Hijab] protects them from the evil and corruption of those who are [morally] corrupt.
  • [With hijab] they cannot easily fall prey to the intrigue of immoral circles.

Methods and steps of hijab implementation

Encouragement:

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

Warning and threats:

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

Assigned Team:

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

References

References
↑1 Even in places where some women generally wear less conservative clothing, like Kabul, poorer women may prefer a burqa because it hides clothes they may not feel proud of. Additionally, during the Republic, some women who were working and who had previously worn burqas said they felt the abaya and headscarf, and possibly niqab, or even a full face-veil were ‘smarter’ and more fitting for someone earning an income, while still protecting their modesty.
↑2 Whereas in much of the Arab and wider Muslim world, ‘hijab’ refers to a woman covering her head, ie a headscarf, in Afghanistan, hijab tends to be used for clothing that covers the head and body more fully. In parts of Afghanistan – as in the Taleban’s order – a woman may be considered ‘bi-hijab’, ie without hijab, if wearing, for example, a long Iranian-style manteau and headscarf, or shalwar chemise (piran wa tomban or punjabi) and headscarf.
↑3 There were then extremely few exemptions: the Taleban never forced Kuchi women to cover their faces, even when their caravans travelled through Kabul and other cities, and were never able, or perhaps did not want to police women in remote rural areas where the burqa had never been customary. The author recalls just two other women who were allowed to be bare-faced in public: General Suhaila Sidiq, then-director of the 400-bed military hospital in Kabul, and her sister, Shafiqa, who had been a professor at Kabul Polytechnic when it was open. According to a 2002 Guardian interview quoted in this AAN obituary, a precondition laid down by Suhaila for her to return to work as a surgeon after the Taleban captured Kabul in 1996 was that neither sister would be forced to wear the burqa; her skills were much needed given the ongoing war and the Taleban’s war-wounded.
↑4 Even during the Republic, it was only in the latter years that a law on legislative documents formally defined different types of order (hukm) and decree (farman).
↑5 The pronouncement, for example, that secondary schools for girls would remain closed after the start of the new Afghan school year after Nawruz, in late March, after the Ministry of Education had planned and prepared their re-opening, appeared to have come about because of the weight of conservative, rural mullahs within leadership circles – see our report here.
↑6 Our first interviewee was not available for the follow-up call, so we spoke to a second woman in Herat.
↑7 Our second interviewee said that at Herat University, the Taleban had attached banners with a famous poem quoting a saying attributed to Fatima Zahra, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (used also by the Islamic Republic and Iran and Afghanistan’s Shia mujahedin militias):

Oh woman, this is how Fatimah addresses you:

The highest value of a woman [lies in her] observing the hijab.
↑8 For the attention of the dear fellow citizens of Bamyan 

This is to notify all Muslim and pious sisters and mothers that from now on, they should observe the Islamic hijab seriously [and] avoid any kind of clothes that are short, tight or leave the face open [uncovered]. From now on, anyone who does not follow the Islamic hijab and the guidance of the Islamic Emirate will be dealt with by the law; the responsibility will lie with them.

With respect

The Department for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice

The Complaints Registration Office of Bamyan province

8 Jawza 1401 [29 May 2022]
↑9 “White coats” refers to the new uniform for Amr bil Maruf, ie white piran wa tomban and sometimes white lab coats.
↑10  In the follow-up calls, only the interviewees in Herat and Bamyan reported further changes in how women dressed since we first spoke to them shortly after the ruling was circulated; in Bamyan, our interviewee reported that more women were now wearing abayas and black headscarves, but no one was covering their face, while our second interviewee in Herat said she had seen increasing numbers of women and girls covering their faces with a scarf or face mask.
↑11 In Afghanistan’s history, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, forced veiling or unveiling has marked out various changes of regime. Imposing conformity of clothing can also be a vehicle for achieving political ends, for example, as described by Rema Hammami in Gaza in the late 1980s. At that time, the forerunners of the Islamist group, Hamas, the Mujamma, “through a mixture of consent and coercion” and the failure of secular Palestinian men to defend a woman’s right not to cover their heads, managed to transform how Gaza ‘looked,’ thus establishing “a kind of cultural dominance” that belied the group’s actual popularity or strength. Changing what almost all women wore in a matter of months succeeded in bolstering the actual political strength of the Mujamma immeasurably. Rema Hammami, Women, the Hijab and the Intifada, MERIP, 164-165, May/June 1990.
↑12 With thanks to Daud Junbish for the translation from the original Pashto.

REVISIONS:

This article was last updated on 2 Jun 2022

 

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