Afghan analysts suggest that commitments made by the Islamic Emirate in Doha during their talks with the United States need to be fulfilled.
US-based research organization, RAND Corporation, has offered three options for Washington’s policy on Afghanistan, suggesting the United States should either come up with engagement, isolation, or opposition.
Explaining its suggested options, RAND says in a 28-page research paper that a “policy of engagement with the Taliban regime offers the prospect of advancing US interests to the degree that the Taliban show some willingness to engage constructively in return.”
It suggests that cutting ties with the al-Qaeda network, and observing human rights, particularly girls’ access to education, are the main conditions that need to be considered by Kabul.
About its second option, isolation, it says that such a policy “would seek to punish and weaken the Taliban regime and change its behavior while signaling the US and broader international disapproval of that regime.”
As a third option, the research organization suggests a policy of opposition to remove the Islamic Emirate from power, but it adds that “there are two fundamental problems with a regime change strategy: First, it is not feasible under current conditions… and second, even if it were feasible and would succeed, the US would find itself once again supporting a dependent government in Kabul against local resistance with no better prospects of ultimate success than its last such effort.”
However, the research organization says that although engagement offers the only possibility of actually advancing American interests in Afghanistan even marginally, isolation remains the default choice.
“It is the proverbial alternative B nestled between alternative A, surrender, and alternative C, nuclear war, in the classic caricature of a Washington options memo,” the research organization concludes.
This comes as concerns are growing by the international community about the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan along with other matters, including the future of girls’ education and women’s role in society.
An Islamic Emirate spokesman, Inamullah Samangani, said that relations between Afghanistan and the US “will benefit other countries too.”
“There is no other option but engagement for any side and there should be an official engagement between the Islamic Emirate and the international community,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Russian special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, in an interview with ET said that respecting human rights, women’s access to work and girls’ access to education are the main preconditions for recognition of the Islamic Emirate.
“While Russia has allowed a Taliban representative at the Afghan diplomatic mission in Moscow, we have not officially recognized the Taliban government. The Taliban flag is not flying atop the Afghan Embassy in Moscow. The ball is in the Taliban’s court. They have to create a politically inclusive government in Kabul. Russia is also not happy in the way the Taliban is treating the women and girls,” Kabulov said in the ET interview.
Afghan analysts suggest that commitments made by the Islamic Emirate in Doha during their talks with the United States need to be fulfilled.
“They (Islamic Emirate) should fulfill the decision and pledges they made in Doha. This can be the only option to prevent the US from criticism; otherwise, there will be no engagement” said Sayed Ishaq Gailani, head of the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan.
Download full RAND report: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1540-1.html
RAND Offers Three Options for US Policy on Afghanistan
(CNN) Whether it’s providing a safe haven for terrorist groups like al Qaeda or installing officials who face United Nations sanctions in cabinet positions, the Taliban is up to its old ways, according to a new report issued by the UN on Friday. While the report does not mention former President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden by name, it is an indictment of their administrations’ failed policies in Afghanistan. The 25-page report says that the Taliban “remains close” with al Qaeda, which now has “increased freedom of action” in Afghanistan.
Underlining that increased freedom of action, the leader of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, “has issued more frequent recorded messages,” appearing in eight videos since the Taliban took over Afghanistan last August, according to the UN report. And al Qaeda has renewed its pledge of allegiance to the leader of the Taliban.
The UN also points out that an astonishing 41 members of the Taliban who are on the UN sanctions list have been appointed to the cabinet and other senior-level positions in Afghanistan. Among them is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Taliban Haqqani Network, which the UN says now controls key Afghan ministries such as the interior ministry and the departments of intelligence, passports and migration.
A previous UN report identified Haqqani, Afghanistan’s acting interior minister, as being part of the leadership of al Qaeda, marking the first time that the terrorist group has had a member in a senior cabinet position anywhere in the world. Haqqani is also on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
All of this demonstrates how deeply flawed a strategy it was for the Trump administration to negotiate a “peace” agreement with the Taliban — and how misguided it was for Biden to abide by that agreement once he assumed office.
In 2018, the Trump administration started negotiating directly with the Taliban, eventually coming to an agreement that the United States would withdraw from Afghanistan providing that the Taliban would not let the country become a haven for terrorists and agree to enter into genuine peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
The Trump team signed the agreement with the Taliban in 2020 and Biden, who said he was forced to either abide by that deal or escalate the fighting in Afghanistan, chose to pull out all US troops in August last year.
It’s worth noting this agreement wasn’t ratified by the US Senate, and instead was a deal negotiated with a terrorist/insurgent group that failed to stick to their end of the agreement. It was also a deal that had been struck without any substantive involvement of the elected Afghan government.
As the new UN report makes clear, the Taliban did not break with al Qaeda, noting that the terrorist group has instead “used the Taliban’s takeover to attract new recruits and funding” while the core al Qaeda leadership “is reported to remain in Afghanistan: more specifically, the eastern region from Zabul Province north towards Kunar and along the border with Pakistan.”
And of course, the Taliban didn’t come to a peace agreement with the Afghan government. As the Americans hastily withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban instead overthrew the elected Afghan government.
After they seized power in Afghanistan in August, Taliban leaders gave their first press conference and told the assembled journalists bald-faced lies about how they respected women’s rights. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, “Our sisters, our men have the same rights; they will be able to benefit from their rights.”
This was, of course, nonsense, but some wishful thinkers had bought into the fantasy of some kind of “Taliban 2.0.”
Instead, we now have just the same old Taliban. They have banned girls from school above the sixth grade; they have insisted that women need a close male relative to escort them if they travel long distances; they have declared that women need to be covered from head to toe and have instituted punishments for male “guardians” who don’t enforce this; more than 200 media outlets have closed in Afghanistan, and the Taliban have presided over an economy that is in free fall.
The UN report states that the Taliban “are, in large part, the same Taliban movement that was deposed in 2001.” The UN also notes that the top posts in the Taliban government “have been given to the Taliban’s ‘old guard.'”
Meanwhile, the Taliban continue to allow foreign terrorist groups to use Afghanistan as a base. The largest such group is the Pakistani Taliban, which numbers several thousand fighters, according to the UN.
For the past six months, the Taliban have also imprisoned without charge five British citizens, including businessman Peter Jouvenal, a friend of mine who once worked with CNN as a cameraman. The Taliban have also held American contractor Mark Frerichs for more than two years.
The UN report does have some qualified good news, concluding that the Afghanistan branch of ISIS and al Qaeda are not believed to be “capable of mounting international attacks until 2023 at the earliest.”
This is a more optimistic projection than the one delivered by a top Pentagon official, Colin Kahl, in October 2021. Kahl testified before a US congressional committee that ISIS’s affiliate in Afghanistan could mount external operations “somewhere between six and 12 months” while “al Qaeda would take a year or two to reconstitute that capability.”
That said, the Taliban is in a stronger position today than the last time it was in power. That was before the 9/11 attacks, when it was fighting the Northern Alliance, a not insignificant opposition force.
The Taliban today hasn’t significantly changed any of its social policies, nor has it abandoned its alliance with al-Qaeda. We have seen how this movie plays out in the past. To paraphrase an observation attributed to Mark Twain, while history may not repeat itself, it certainly may rhyme.
Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His forthcoming paperback is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own. View more opinion on CNN.
Opinion: Trump and Biden were both foolish about Afghanistan. Now we’re all paying the price
A major focus of the international humanitarian response to Afghanistan’s economic collapse has been a ramped-up distribution of food aid, as large parts of the population no longer have the income to buy enough food for their families. In this fourth instalment of our economic research based on interviews conducted across Afghanistan, we look at the reach, scope and implications of food aid distribution at the community and household levels. In our sample, we found that around half of the families had, by mid-February, received some form of food assistance at least once, although the quantity, food items and methods varied. Interviewees were grateful for the much-needed help and hoped it would continue, but there was also a recurring concern that those who needed aid the most may not be receiving it. Interviewees in particular described favouritism and interference in the selection of beneficiaries and, to a lesser extent, corruption and capture. And while the aid had provided relief and allowed the interviewees to feed their families, many were acutely aware that it did little to address their long-term need for employment, livelihoods and a revived economy.
Afghanistan’s economic collapse following the Taleban takeover in August 2021 led to widespread poverty, precariousness and food insecurity. The United Nations responded with a wide-ranging Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) to the tune of USD 4.4 billion – its largest single-country appeal to date. Around half of the requested funds were earmarked for food security and agriculture, and aimed to reach 22.1 million Afghans, which is around, or over, half of the country’s total population.[1] The programme, however, has had to readjust its ambitions due to underfunding and may need to contract even more in the future.[2] Whereas the UN had intended to increase the size of the food aid basket to accommodate 100 per cent of an average household’s needs, it has had to downscale to a smaller size of 50 or 75 per cent. It had also intended to increase the duration of aid per household, from four, to eight or twelve months, depending on the severity of the food insecurity.
According to the World Food Programme’s (WFP) 2021 annual country report, a total of 12.3 million people received WFP food aid in 2021 (15 million, if also counting nutritional aid) – a 67 per cent increase compared to 2020, and 14 per cent more than initially planned. In the month of December 2021, around 7.9 million people received food assistance, compared to 1.5 million people in August (when numbers were probably particularly low, due to the conflict and political upheaval of the Taleban takeover). Since then, WPF has significantly scaled up its assistance, reaching more than 17.5 million people in 2022 so far, and hoping to assist 18 million people in May.
In June, however, WFP will begin to scale down its assistance, to reach around 10 million people – almost halving the number of people who will receive food and nutritional aid. After that, the assistance will be scaled up again in October, in line with the onset of the ‘lean season’ –resources permitting. The scaling down in June will, according to WFP, be in line with the harvest season. However, it also reflects the impact of significant funding shortfalls, as indicated in the sombre warnings of the latest IPC, or Integrated Food Security Classification, report, which foresees the possibility of an even greater reduction in assistance:
With below average prospects for the harvest in most of the country, several factors are further expected to hamper the foreseeable seasonal improvement.… More specifically, at household level, the situation is compounded by the forecasted reduction of Humanitarian Food Assistance after the month of May.
HFA is expected to decrease from 38% of the population receiving on average two third food ration in the current period, to 8% in the June-November projection due to lack of funding.[3]
The funding gap WFP currently faces is USD 1.4 billion for the 2022 response. It is beginning preparations for the much-needed prepositioning of food stock in hard-to-reach areas ahead of the 2023 winter season, but will require USD 150 million to do so.
Humanitarian programmes in Afghanistan had to scale up quickly, given the immense needs, and under difficult circumstances. They have, according to the 2022 HRP, been faced with impeded access, decreased operational capacity of partner organisations on the ground, ambiguities on the role of local Taleban authorities, a lack of clarity surrounding new rules, including around the employment of women, logistical problems and the difficulties posed by the country’s struggling banking system (see also this AAN primer). The lack of sufficient funding, moreover, means that difficult choices have needed to be made on where and how to focus resources. It is against this background that Afghans across the country spoke to AAN about their experiences of food aid, whether they had received any yet, and what they knew and thought about the distribution process.
AAN’s research
This report is part of AAN’s ongoing research on what it is like for Afghans to live in a country where the economy has collapsed. In our first round of interviews, carried out in November and December 2021, we found that some households had already received food aid. We then added a series of new questions to our second round of interviews, specifically focusing on people’s experiences and perception of the delivery of aid. The findings of this piece of qualitative research are based on thirty-six in-depth, semi-structured interviews, conducted between 24 January and 16 February, by phone or in person. The research sample includes men and women in twenty-two provinces across Afghanistan and represents a wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The findings are complemented by general information about the humanitarian food assistance programme provided by WFP.
In the interviews, we found that food aid distributions had indeed been taking place, including in remote areas. Almost all interviewees said there had been recent food aid provided in their village, district or neighbourhood and a little over half of the interviewees had themselves received aid at least once since August 2021. The few who said they did not know whether aid had been provided in their area, tended to be, sometimes previously, wealthy people who lived in a large city.[4] The report focuses on the aid provided and administered by WFP, since this was what most of the interviewees had experience or knowledge about (although in a few cases other organisations were also mentioned).[5]
The interview questions did not explicitly focus on problems with the aid distribution or beneficiary selection[6] so it was striking how many interviewees told us that they thought the process was unfair and subject to manipulation. Many believed that the beneficiary selection was marred by favouritism and interference, and that the delivery of aid was vulnerable to corruption, capture and abuse. Several interviewees called on the UN and the NGOs who manage the food distribution programmes on the ground, to tighten local management and step up verification and monitoring efforts.
It is not always easy to determine from the interviewees whether the allegations may be true, or if they are mainly based on misunderstandings, or generalised perceptions of unfairness and abuse, but it was striking that it made very little difference whether interviewees were thankful that they had received aid, or frustrated that they had not been given any. Even people who said they had not pursued assistance because they believed they were better off than most, expressed misgivings about the fairness of the process. There was, in particular, a general sense that those in charge of the beneficiary selection favoured the people they knew, and/or were unable (or unwilling) to withstand the pressures to include those who were actually undeserving of aid.
In the report below, we will first look at who received aid, who did not, and what was received. Then we will look into the process of beneficiary selection, in urban and rural areas, and the allegations of favouritism, corruption and abuse. We will discuss how some communities have tried to sidestep these problems by redistributing the aid they received, as well as the slippery line between Taleban involvement and interference. We will then, finally, look at what humanitarian food aid can and cannot alleviate.
I. Who was selected to receive food aid and what did they get?
In terms of who had received food aid in our sample we found that:
More than half of the interviewees – 20 out of 36 – reported that, by mid-February 2022, their household had received food aid at least once.
Nine interviewees, or a quarter of the sample, indicated that they had not tried to receive aid or had even declined it when offered. They said they believed the aid was not meant for them, since they were not as poor as most others.
Seven interviewees, or close to a fifth of the sample, had not received food aid by mid-February, even though their situations seemed dire as well. Three had been registered or surveyed in some manner, but had yet to be given actual aid distribution cards. Four others had not been surveyed or listed, even though they had tried a lot.
Interestingly, we found that in some cases the food assistance had been redistributed among a much larger group of people than it was intended for. At least three interviewees explicitly described the process, while two or three others also seemed to imply this is what happened in their area (see below, for more details). This means that more people reported to us that they had received aid than the NGOs providing the aid are likely to have counted. It also means that each person receiving aid in this way, received a lot less than WFP and its partners considered they were, nutritionally, in need of.
According to WFP, The contents of a standard food assistance package are calculated based on the daily caloric needs of an average household of seven and the IPC categorisations of the provinces. A 100 per cent daily kcal for people is 2100. In IPC-3 provinces – with a food security crisis – people receive 50 per cent rations, and in IPC-4 provinces – where they have a food security emergency – this is a 75 per cent ration size. In IPC 4 provinces, this translates to approximately 75 kg of wheat flour (or other cereals), 7 kg cooking oil, 9 kg of pulses (yellow split peas, red beans, lentils) and 0.75 kg of salt. In IPC 3 provinces this translates to approximately 50 kg of wheat flour (or other cereals), 4.5 kg of cooking oil, 6 kg of pulses and 0.5 kg of salt.
This package, however, may vary. In some cases, commodities may be substituted according to local availability or community preferences, while maintaining the kcal requirements – for example, by providing rice instead of fortified wheat flour. Access to funds and the timing of resources can also impact the availability of food. Procurement begins after the funds arrive and it takes on average 4-6 months from the time the funds arrive to deliver the assistance on the ground, especially when commodities are sourced regionally or internationally. Unforeseen supply chain disruptions can cause additional delays.
This largely matches what the interviewees told us. Out of the twenty families who had received food aid at least once, most of them had received a sack of flour and some bottles of cooking oil, with one or two, sometimes more, other items added.[7]
I received aid four times in the past months. The first and second time, they gave me a sack of flour and a sack of wheat. The third time, I received a sack of flour and some yellow peas. This month, I received a sack of flour, yellow peas and five one-litre bottles of cooking oil. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband is away)
We received aid from WFP three times, with the same [aid distribution] card. The first time we received flour and salt, and the other two times they gave us flour, oil and 20 small packets of something that prevents malnutrition in children. – Former government employee from Badakhshan (extended family of twelve)
I received aid from WFP twice. Both times, they gave us a sack of flour and a five-litre bottle of oil. The first time they also gave us something for the children, to prevent malnutrition. – Teacher from Laghman (family of ten, with one son in Turkey)
We received aid once. In total, around 70 families in our area received [aid distribution] cards. They all received flour, oil and beans.– Muezzin from Balkh (household of four)
We received aid twice, a sack of flour and a bottle of oil. All the people [in our village] received it. – Teacher from Nuristan (household of nine)
I received aid twice. The first time I received a sack of wheat and some oil. The second time I received oil, a sack of flour and a small amount of lentils. – Labourer from Ghor (household of eight)
We received aid from WFP twice. Both times they gave us a sack of flour, 24 kg rice, a five-litre can of oil and 3.5 kg salt. – Former government employee from Paktika (extended family of fourteen)
The starting point of the assistance may vary per household, since WFP has been adding new beneficiaries each month. In terms of the duration, WFP had planned to provide monthly assistance to food insecure households for a period of eight or twelve months. This may, in practice, not materialise, due to funding shortfalls, issues with the availability or timing of resources, or possible reprioritisation based on overall levels of vulnerability.
Out of the twenty families in our sample who had received food aid between August 2021 and mid-February 2022, eight families had received aid once; seven families had received aid twice; four families had received aid three times and one family had received aid four times.
The woman who had received aid four times, had however been told that she had come to the end of the validity of her distribution aid card:
I received aid four times, once every month. But now my card’s expired.They told me my turn was finished and they’d given the new cards to our neighbours, even though some of them are rich and have big houses.… My other neighbour and I went to the provincial administration office recently to submit an aid request letter [arizeh], but they returned the paper and said it wasn’t possible. Now my name is not listed for any other future aid. I don’t know what to do.– Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband is away)[8]
Another interviewee seemed to believe that people were listed – or possibly vetted – for each separate distribution:
I received aid from WFP, flour and oil, twice. WFP has again listed our name, but they haven’t contacted us yet. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)
Most households we spoke to, who had received aid cards, did not know how long the card would be valid for, or how often they would receive aid. This can probably be largely explained by the fact that funding uncertainties make it difficult for NGOs to make firm commitments to local communities, but it does add to a sense of insecurity and possibly a perceived lack of transparency.
Who had not received any food aid (yet)?
The sixteen interviewees who had not received any food aid (yet) could be divided into two groups:
those who needed aid and often had proactively, but so far unsuccessfully, tried to get it – seven interviewees, or close to a fifth of the sample;
those who indicated that the aid was not meant for them because they were better off than other people (or who simply had not commented on whether they needed the aid or not) – nine interviewees, or a quarter of the sample.
A former NGO cook in Kabul city, who had not been included in the neighbourhood’s food distribution (but whose family had received some food from an NGO that supported former government officials) blamed the system of beneficiary selection:
It is mostly NGOs and private [charity] organisations that distribute the aid. There is no problem with them; the problem is with the people who make the lists. For example, the wakil-e guzars don’t work honestly. They misuse their position and write the names of their relatives and people they know. There are families who are really needy, but who don’t get anything. And there are people who aren’t in need, who’ve received aid twice. It’s not done fairly. – Former NGO cook from Kabul city (extended family of fourteen)
A former mullah from Helmand described how in the end, all families in his area had been registered after the people had vehemently complained, but said that none of them had received any aid yet:
The staff of the NGO, together with the Taleban, came to our area once, but they registered only two families from four villages. When the people criticised the registration, saying: You registered only two families out of a total of 40! they promised to come back and register each family. And they did, but I haven’t seen any of these forty families receive any aid yet. I think aid is important. It’s very important, for those who can get it. But it’s useless for those who are only registered and who don’t receive it, or for those who aren’t registered at all. – Former mullah from Helmand (household now of six, after the recent death of his two-year old son)
Despite the fact that many of the interviewees believed the Taleban interfered in the process in favour of their own members and relatives, the one Taleb in our sample had not received any aid yet and had not even been able to register (his status within the movement is unclear). He told us:
So far, the NGOs have distributed oil, flour and lentils, but my family hasn’t received any. The commanders, area and village elders introduce people to the NGOs, but they haven’t introduced us yet. No one listed our name or surveyed our house. I went [to the NGO] and asked them to include us, but they told me to go and ask our local representative.… Out of ten beneficiaries who received aid, I think only one might be really needy. The rest are people who have wasita [connections] and most of them are already rich enough. Of course, the government plays a role in this corruption too.– Taleb from Logar (household of twelve)
A landlord from Kabul city told us he had voluntarily opted out of receiving aid. He was as critical of the process as those who had so far been involuntarily left out – something we also found in other interviews, as we shall explore below.
They distributed aid several times in my area: food items, like flour, cooking oil and beans, and also money. Someone, probably the representative of our area, came to my door one day and asked for my ID and phone number. My son called me and said they wanted to provide us with assistance, so I told him to thank them and tell them we weren’t deserving of it and that they should give it to the poor people instead. It’s the right of the poor people, but in reality those who don’t deserve it often get even more than the poor. – Landlord in Kabul city (household of seven)
Interestingly, one of the interviewees who in an earlier round of interviews in December 2021 had also told us he had opted out of aid, now said he had relented and received the aid that was offered, after all.[9] This is a reminder that people’s situations, and perceptions of how much they can handle, can change over time.
II. The tension-ridden process of beneficiary selection and aid allocation
The part of the process that elicited the most consistent criticism was that of the beneficiary selection and, to a lesser extent, the aid allocation per district and village. The interviewees described a process in which the beneficiary selection was done by the NGOs with the help of local representatives, in particular the wakil-e guzars and wakil-e kuchas (heads of city neighbourhoods and street representatives) in cities and towns, village councils and village heads (qarya dars), and possibly also local mullahs, elders and commanders. In some areas, there also appeared to be a role for government officials, either directly in the beneficiary selection or in a more general capacity. Several interviewees described visiting delegations of local government officials that accompanied the NGO‘s staff. Others described how they had petitioned the governor’s office or other government departments in the hope of being added to an aid distribution list.
The interviewees’ complaints included favouritism and an unfair selection on the part of the local representatives, interference and corruption by Taleban officials and other members of the movement, and a failure to prevent, report or stand up to these practices by NGO staff. Several interviewees called for tighter monitoring and better management of the allocation, selection and distribution processes.
Because the interviewees may be describing processes that they do not have full visibility on, we asked WFP to describe the beneficiary selection and aid allocation processes to us. They are, in short, as follows:
At the central level, WFP draws up initial plans, including its provincial targets, based on the resources available, with the aim of assisting all those facing IPC (emergency) 4 and a percentage of people facing IPC 3 (crisis). Actual distribution plans are made based on vulnerability analyses at the district level which draw on WFP’s Integrated Context Analysis (taking into account the factors such as the impact of drought, mass unemployment, conflict, remoteness, lack of services, historical poverty and marginalisation). WFP uses this same process at the community level with the help of local stakeholders and partners who are considered to have knowledge and experience of the specific contexts and conditions of the area.
The individual household selection is done by a committee of key community stakeholders, that aims to be inclusive and representative, based on 13 vulnerability criteria.[10] The vulnerability criteria for households include: headed by a woman or child; no adult male; dependency ratio of 9 or more; no adult male of working age or adult working women; headed by a person with disability, chronic illness, or elderly; poor asset holdings; residing with or hosting other households; living in emergency or makeshift shelter; relying only on borrowing, begging, or zakat; relying on casual labour by one member; no source of livelihood or income generating activities; one or more members having disability or chronic illness; referred by protection agencies; a pregnant breastfeeding mother and/or child under 5.
Cooperating partners, usually an NGO, are obliged to provide a list of committee members so that WFP monitors can verify that these people exist and have fulfilled the roles they were selected for. The committee’s preliminary beneficiaries list is verified by the cooperating partner, usually an NGO, through individual interviews and/or household visits. The process is followed by WFP staff who carry out spot checks, as well as a network of third-party monitors.
The beneficiary selection process as described by the interviewees
The interviewees’ description of the beneficiary selection process largely centred around the role of what WFP calls the local stakeholders and, to a lesser extent, the cooperating partners, or implementing NGOs.
In urban areas, many interviewees described a beneficiary selection process that seemed to hinge on the role of the wakil-e guzars (neighbourhood representative), who in a tiered system collected the relevant information from wakil-e kuchas (street representative) and passed it on to the NGO responsible for the distributions. Views on the exact role of NGOs in the beneficiary selection tended to vary. Several interviewees, like for instance this woman from Sheberghan, described how NGO staff carried out home visits to ascertain eligibility:
Our wakil-e kucha provided me with the aid card. He brought the observers to my home. They came and saw my house and kitchen. … Each month the [NGO] office gives out five new cards. They distribute the aid in turn, one village per day. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband is away)
Others, however, indicated that they believed the NGO staff simply let the wakil-e guzar decide the beneficiary list – for instance, this man from Kabul, who had not received any aid and had not been surveyed:
Since the international aid began, it has been given through the wakil-e guzar and the charity organisations. The local representatives each make a list of the people, with their phone numbers and ID card numbers, and give it to the wakil-e guzar, who gives it to the relevant municipal district and to the NGO that distributes the aid. Then the representative of the NGO contacts the people and asks them about their situation. Sometimes they check and survey their homes, but most of the time, they just call and then the wakil-e guzar selects the people. – Former gardener and taxi driver from Kabul city (household of ten)
Like many others, he believed that those selecting the beneficiaries favoured their own relatives.
Our family and the people who live close to us haven’t received any aid…. Out of 50 families, five were selected by the wakil-e guzar to receive aid. Then, in turn, another five families were selected. However, the wakil-e guzar and the street or area representatives try to select their own relatives and people who come from their own area. Those who are really in need don’t get anything. They’re even not on the list. – Former gardener and taxi driver from Kabul city
A student from Farah city told us that, although their home had been surveyed, the family had not yet received an aid distribution card.
They came and surveyed our house, several times, but we still haven’t been given anything. The last time they came was two weeks ago. They didn’t give us a card and they didn’t call us. They just took [the details of] our tazkeras. – Student from Farah city (extended family of fifteen)
She described her frustration that they had not been able to receive any aid, despite trying, while others who did not need it, were getting aid more than once.
I know the process is based on wasita because I’ve seen neighbours receive aid, even though they’re rich and aren’t vulnerable. No, they’re not with the Taleban; they’re just well off. My father talked with the wakil-e kucha many times and each time, the man told my father: “Just wait, we’ll give it to you.” But whenever the aid arrives, he tells us it’s already finished. Each time the aid comes, it’s supposed to be for five needy families on our street, but it’s given to the same families each time. And the cash donations that are meant for widows are given to girls who are still single or to women whose husbands are alive. The distribution process should be transparent and clear and aid should be given to the vulnerable, not to those who will only sell it in the market. But it’s not transparent, nor clear. They come and survey our houses and then give the aid to others. But what can we do? Even if we raise our voices, no one listens.– Student from Farah city
One of the interviewees, who himself was not in need of aid, described the problem in a more round-about way, by saying that he had talked to the wakil-e guzar in his own area in an effort to persuade him to act honestly and to direct the aid to those who need it (implying that the man is not doing that now).
In general, of the aid and donations that UNICEF and other international organisations distribute, at least 50 per cent isn’t given to the poor and needy. It is the wakil-e guzar and wakil-e kucha who have the responsibility to introduce people to the NGOs or to divide the aid themselves. In our area, the wakil-e guzar has a list of people according to their different economic levels.… I talked with our wakil-e kucha, because the situation is extremely bad. We have to act honestly according to what our religion has ordered. So I told him, it’s not good to include rich people in the list of the poor and needy. I think he’ll now try his best to divide the donations among the needy people. – University professor from Herat (extended family of twenty)
Others described the tensions within the community and the pressures the wakil-e guzars were under, and how that sometimes meant that poor people who did not advocate their case forcefully were left out.
Those who don’t deserve it also get assistance and they often get even more than the poor people. They quarrel with the wakil-e guzar and because he doesn’t want to stand up to them, he just registers anyone who quarrels. There are poor people who haven’t received any assistance, because they don’t want to quarrel. Actually, the assistance has spread violence and tension among the people. Sometimes people argue with the wakil-e guzars and sometimes they argue among themselves.– Landlord from Kabul city (household of seven)
One of the interviewees was a wakil-e guzar himself. He first described the process in general terms and then explained the difficulties he faced, since not enough aid was arriving in his community and many families would complain to him about the selection process. He clearly found his responsibility testing:
When the organisation came, they called me to come. They asked one tribal elder and one mullah from each mosque in our area. We all gathered in a mosque and shared the [details of the] population of our villages with them. I helped them and took them to see my area; they met the poor face-to-face and interviewed them. First, they listed the disabled, widows and orphans, and then they listed the other needy people.
In my guzar (area), where I prepared the list, we have 800 families and 11 mosques. So far, they gave aid to almost 60 families. When the distribution happened, the Taleban sent their observers to monitor the process. The NGO is still surveying and selecting beneficiaries. A few days ago, they called the people and took their biometric data for the next round. No one knows what they will distribute, because they don’t disclose that to anyone.
The way the NGOs distribute aid is problematic because they only help 10 per cent of the people. So when they leave, the people come to me and complain and say: “Why didn’t you give aid to us too?” All the people are poor and hungry, but the NGOs give aid to only a few families and then they leave. When the others complain, I have to tell them that I have no solution and can’t help them. It’s like that: if one person receives aid, the others will complain and be sad.
It has created a lot of discord. Some people link the process to ethnicity. They think the wakil-e guzars give aid to their own tribe and relatives, but in reality the NGOs do the distribution and the wakil-e guzar has no role or interference. It’s very difficult for us to make all these people understand how the NGOs operate. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)
Elsewhere in the interview, he had described how his own economic situation had been steadily deteriorating, as prices rose and his business floundered. The one distribution of food aid he had received had helped, but he would apparently not be given any again – precisely because he was a wakil-e guzar:
We received aid once: a sack of flour, oil and lentils, from WFP. It was good because it was at a time when we really needed it and it lasted for at least a few days. But they didn’t put me on the list for future aid because I am a wakil-e guzar. I told them to take my name, because I’m not rich and I need the aid, but they said it was their rule that they couldn’t do this for me. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)
In the rural areas, interviewees described a similar process, with lists of the village populations and vulnerable families drawn up by the village council and passed on to the NGO by the village council head. Several interviewees described how the staff of the NGO travelled to the area to survey the village:
We received the donation from an organisation that mainly works in the east of Afghanistan, I don’t remember the name, but they implement the WFP projects. They travel to different areas and villages to find needy people. When they came here, I told them that I needed help. They saw our house and gave us the card with which we could get the aid. – Teacher from Laghman(household of ten)
Although the selection process in the rural areas was sometimes described as more communal than in the urban areas, the criticism was similar. See for instance this former government employee from Paktika, who blamed those in charge for ensuring their own relatives benefited (even though he had also received aid twice):
The lists are drawn up by the local [village] council, in cooperation with the elders of each village, and handed over to the UN representative. Each village selects their families, depending on the number of people that live there. After they are selected, a card is made for them. Then, the organisation calls the people, in turns, to come to the district and receive the aid.
But the people who need it most haven’t been helped; in our area, we have ten families who are really starving [and who didn’t receive aid]. Aid is mostly given to the relatives of the Taleban and the local council and the village elders. They lie to the media and say: we helped the people who deserve it, but in reality it doesn’t reach them. People are living under the poverty line and are dying. We thank the countries of the world who are helping, but unfortunately the aid hasn’t reached the people who need it. – Former government employee from Paktika (extended family of fourteen)
Interviewees said they believed the amount of aid allocated per village or area was determined by population size, but the overall process was opaque to them and some of the interviewees alluded to controversies over possible manipulation, or bias.
Representatives of the institutions say: we take the list of your councils from the district and the province and divide the aid according to the population of the council. Based on that, the share of each council is determined, but I don’t know if this is exactly how it happens, or not. And sometimes there are controversies that this or that council was given a greater share. – Disabled shopkeeper from Daikundi (household of nine)
Others said they feared that the more remote areas were being overlooked, either due to discrimination or because it was simply a greater hassle to get there. A man from a remote village in Ghor’s Hazara-majority area, for instance, told us:
There have been other distributions in the district, but our village received help only once because it’s very far from the district centre. The aid is very good for the people, but the distribution is not fair. Employees of the NGOs do their own thing (khodsari mikonad) and don’t go to the remote areas. The local authorities are also not interested in a fair distribution and there’s no monitoring body. The NGOs always give good and excellent reports to their headquarters and donors, while the reality is different. If they had a monitoring section for the aid distribution process, I think the distribution would be more transparent. – Truck driver from Ghor (household of ten)
Several interviewees, like the truck driver from Ghor, said they believed that better monitoring mechanisms could make the distributions fairer and more transparent. We checked back with WFP to see what mechanisms were currently in place. They said that, in addition to the verification steps in the selection process described above, and the presence of monitors at distribution sites, there were several complaints mechanisms that allowed WFP to triangulate complaints about a particular targeting and selection exercise with the communities and cooperating partners. Families who feel unfairly excluded can, for instance, use community feedback mechanisms and the interagency AWAAZ call centre to complain.
However, not all people will know where to complain, not all complaints will be passed on, and in a programme this vast, with suspicions so widespread and access often precarious, it is unlikely that all complaints, or even most of them, can be followed up.
Community redistribution
In our interviews, we came across a specific practice of a community-level redistribution of aid. The interviewees who described the practice to us were all from remote Hazara-majority areas, but it is possible something similar may be happening in other tightly-knit communities as well.
Initially, the interviewees described the same beneficiary selection process as elsewhere.
It’s like this: representatives of the NGOs come and tell the chairman and members of the village council, “Based on the population and the list of your village council, we will give you so many aid distribution cards; you should introduce the most deserving people of your village.” Then the council gives them the ID card [details], according to the number of cards that were allocated. This is how the survey and identification of the poor is done. – Disabled shopkeeper from Daikundi
The difference however is that, in the end, everyone receives something, not just the people who were selected:
The village council had prepared the list of people who were in dire need of help. Whenever aid comes, the village council meets and divides the village residents into three parts: the poorest families who are put on every aid list; the families who are [also] deserving of help and; the families who are better off than the others. But in the end, they try to make it so that everyone receives some aid. Because everyone is poor, only the degree of poverty differs. – Former police guard from Daikundi (household of four)
The shopkeeper from Daikundi, who was quoted above, gave more details:
In our village council, we have a rule that if, for example, an NGO helps 30 people in the village, but we have 60 families, we will divide the aid for the 30 families among the 60. Whenever the aid is handed over and brought into the village, it is distributed among [all] the people of the village. Even though the NGO says that the card is the share of one family and nobody else has the right to that aid, the other residents don’t listen to them. Because the aid doesn’t reach everyone and there is always controversy over the distribution. – Disabled shopkeeper from Daikundi
Another interviewee from Daikundi told us that, although the redistribution was not fair to the poorest in the community, it was necessary to avoid tension and maintain village cohesion. This would, in turn, ensure that all villagers were able, and willing, to pay the new Taleban taxes, so that the village could avoid unwanted government attention and possible retribution.
After we receive the aid, regardless of how many poor people there are, it is equally distributed among all the families of the village. Of course, this is very cruel towards the poor, but they have no choice but to accept it. It was not like this before; it has only become like this in the last few months. Under the previous government, if someone was considered eligible and received aid, they wouldn’t have been willing to share it with anyone else. Now they have to, because if the aid is not divided, villagers may stop paying the government taxes and people are afraid of a quarrel with the government. So they have to come to terms among themselves. In my village, we have 30 families and whenever aid comes, everyone gets some of it, according to the general agreement. But it’s not a lot. I just got some flour. – School principal from Daikundi (household of five)
Such arrangements are most likely to take place, and be considered fair, within relatively homogenous or well-integrated communities that have a tradition of relative self-governance. There were allusions in other interviews to similar forms of community solidarity, but it was not clear whether this involved a similar systematic redistribution of aid.[11]
III. Taleban involvement and interference
In the period shortly after the Taleban takeover in Afghanistan, discussions within donor countries often revolved around the question of whether it was possible to deliver aid to Afghanistan without dealing with the Taleban and how to ensure that the movement would not benefit from or be able to redirect the assistance. In practice, humanitarian agencies and NGOs need to, at the very least, engage with local authorities to coordinate activities and/or negotiate access, while upholding the humanitarian principles (impartiality, neutrality, operational independence and eligibility of assistance based solely on need). This is often a difficult balancing act.
The Humanitarian Response Plan has as one of the caveats to ramping up aid delivery that partners, usually NGOs, need to “have access to the affected population without any interference by the authorities.” At the same time, it mentions several incidents, including interference in the beneficiary selection “most likely as a result of attempts of de facto authorities to direct humanitarian aid to areas they deem to be more critical.”
What interviewees described to us ranged from the, possibly unproblematic, involvement of local government employees in aid allocation processes, beneficiary selection and aid distribution, to attempts or instances of outright interference and misdirection, as well as situations where the lines seemed blurred.
In some cases, interviewees seemed to indicate that the government employees were part of the aid allocation or community-based targeting process, as for instance described by a former NGO worker from Zabul, who himself had opted out of receiving aid because he said others needed it more.
The government, together with the NGOs, made a selection committee. The committee has representatives from the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA), the refugees’ department, different [technical] sectors, the provincial governor’s office and also from the community, such as the wakil-e guzar. – Former NGO staff from Zabul
A businessman from Baghlan told us:
Almost two months ago we received a sack of flour, oil and lentils from WFP. Their team came to the village and surveyed the needy and disabled; those who were vulnerable received coal, cash, and foodstuff. They coordinated with the department of rural development and the municipality, and were helped by the development councils. They took the list of the needy people from the department of rural development. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)
A teacher from Laghman described a similar process:
Seven people select the beneficiaries in the different villages. One person is from the organisation that distributes the aid, one from the national security service, one from the department of rural development, one from the department of agriculture and irrigation, and a few others. Together they travel to different areas to find the needy people. When they came here, I told them I needed help. They saw our house and gave us a card with which we could get the aid.
The Taleban are checking the organisation’s distribution process to see if it’s done honestly and correctly. Out of the seven people who are selecting the beneficiaries, six of them are Taleban government employees and only one of them is a WFP [NGO] worker. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)
Although he did not object, in principle, to the involvement of local Taleban/government officials, he criticised the fact that, in his view, the members of the selection committee manipulated the lists to make sure their own constituents were prioritised:
In villages where the families or relatives of the Taleban live, they call them first and include them in the list. For instance, if there are five families, they’ll say we have 20 families here, so that the five families are included in the list with the help of the Taleban who are there as observers. Then they also include five to seven other families from the village, so they won’t be questioned by anyone. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)
A farmer from Paktia blamed both the Taleban and the village maliks (heads) for favouring their own people. He suggested that a larger, more varied selection committee might be able to keep its members honest.
The UN provides the aid with the help of the Taleban and the village malik. There’s a survey going on now; they’re distributing cards to people. The head of the village prepares the list and gives it to the aid organisation. Then, a representative of the organisation, with a Taleb, goes from house to house to select the needy people. But they mostly select the people who are introduced by the Taleban and the head of the village. The people who are affiliated to them receive the largest share, because when the aid comes, the Taleban distributes it to their men and to the families who have lost members in the war. Poor people wait in line all day and don’t get help. Instead, we see people and vehicles belonging to the Islamic Emirate come and receive aid.
In my opinion, to identify the needy people, specific teams should go with the help of the elders. For example, a representative of the aid organisation, a representative of the Taleban and a representative of the village should go from house to house, in the presence of the imam of the mosque to correctly identify the needy and write down their names. It’s not fair when the malik makes a list, but then the aid is given based on the order of the Taleban. –Farmer from Paktia (household of twelve)
Several interviewees mentioned that they believed the Taleban was redirecting aid to their own people, however without providing details. For instance:
The humanitarian aid of the international community has been given to people who consider religion, region, tribe and ethnicity when distributing the aid. And some of them have committed corruption. … For the Taleban, the people who cooperated with them in the past 20 years are the most important. So they distribute the aid to their relatives and the people they know. Whether someone is a khan (landowner) or a poor man isn’t important to them. So the aid hasn’t been given to the needy, particularly not to the displaced people who came from other provinces to Khost. – Journalist from Khost (household of sixteen)
A few interviewees, from the more remote areas, mentioned instances of direct interference by local Taleban officials, including demands for money or aid, and attempts to influence which villages would receive assistance from NGOs. For instance, two interviewees from Daikundi said:
Very little aid arrives in our village, which is at the farthest point of the district, about 90 km away from the district centre. The aid that was distributed was very valuable to the people, but unfortunately, there was a lot of abuse in our district by those who were locally responsible. The Taleban gathered money from the shuras [councils] where aid was distributed for the second and third time, and kept it for themselves. They also took a share from the total aid, which they openly sold in the market. Nobody can say anything against it.– Teacher from Daikundi (household of three)
Of course, distribution of aid is very good if it’s well-managed, but unfortunately, it isn’t. Local employees of the Islamic Emirate interfere in the work of the NGOs and actively collect money from the people for themselves. Local employees of the NGOs, who are often Wardaki and Jalalabadi Pashtuns, don’t go to the remote villages very much, unless villagers bribe the district government officials. Then the officials force them to go to the remote villages. The NGOs are aware of this, but they keep silent and the local staff don’t report it to the foreign officials.
Corruption in the distribution of aid has become widespread. There is no authority to control the situation and people can go nowhere to complain; no one dares to say this Taleban official demanded or took a bribe from me. It’s as if the local officials of the Islamic Emirate are trying to devour the money of the Hazara people. It has become normal for them to take money under all kinds of pretexts. – Former government employee from Daikundi (household of ten)
On the other hand, one of the interviewees who described corruption in the distribution process said that not much had changed compared to the previous regime; the only thing that was new were the actors:
Both the government and NGOs provide aid in my area. But people say that if the Taleban distribute the donations, they don’t give it to everyone who needs it. For example, when the district governor receives cash to distribute among the people, he gives the money to his favourite people – his friends and followers. He doesn’t give it to the people who were in the previous government or army. I heard that one month ago he distributed cash donations of 15,000 or 20,000 AFS (170-200 USD) among his own people.
In the past, we [also] didn’t receive any aid or donations. During the previous regime, the aid distribution was the same as it is now; nothing has changed. The previous government also distributed aid among their own relatives and friends, just like the Taleban is doing now. There is so much aid and most of it isn’t distributed correctly. When the Taleban can access it, they even sell aid items because they don’t need them. Both now and before, during the previous regime, when the aid falls into the hands of a specific group, they never distribute it honestly. But if the people who need the aid actually receive it, of course a huge change can take place in their lives. – Teacher from Nuristan (household of nine)[12]
A common refrain was the call for closer monitoring:
The international community should ensure that the donations are divided fairly, in a transparent way, in the presence of media representatives and civil society activists, so they can reach those in need. I think the international community should have full and direct control over the distribution of humanitarian aid to distribute it fairly to all provinces and not just to a particular class. – Journalist from Khost (household of sixteen)
IV. What the aid alleviates – and what it does not
It was clear from the interviews that the aid had alleviated real stress and suffering. For many, it had addressed the fear of or actual experience of hunger, at least for a short while, and several interviewees expressed gratitude and sense of relief.
I received aid four times, once every month. It was very helpful for me. I prayed a lot for those who gave me the aid. My husband is not here with us, and the aid enabled me to give some food to my children. – Homemaker from Jawzjan (five children, husband was unsuccessfully trying to enter Iran in search of work)
I think these donations are the best thing in the current situation when most families don’t have food to eat. May God bless those who help the people because they have saved many lives. – Shopkeeper from Kunduz city (household of six)
I think the aid reached the people well and on time. Many families that I know in our village would not have had any food at all, if the aid hadn’t arrived.– Former police guard from Daikundi (household of four)
Two to three months ago, the situation was much worse. Everyone had lost their optimism and hope for the future because no one was receiving a salary. Now that the salaries are paid, people’s situations are better. And the aid that was distributed in the last three months changed people and had a positive impact on their morale. I can’t imagine what people might have done if the salaries hadn’t been paid and the aid hadn’t been distributed. The situation was so bad and was getting worse every day. – Former government employee from Badakhshan (extended family of twelve)
But even interviewees who clearly wanted to say something positive, probably for fear of sounding ungrateful or in hopes it might prevent the aid from stopping, often still hinted at tensions and problems:
The distribution of aid was very useful and important for the people and it reached them in a very good and timely manner. Although there are reports that the distribution of aid had its problems, the spirit of the aid was very good. – Local doctor from Daikundi (extended household of twenty-one people)
I didn’t receive aid from NGOs or the government because the aid is for the poor and vulnerable. In my area, I know 18 families that received aid; some received cash, others received food. Three of them were really poor; the other 15 families were rich people, some of them even had several shops. I think the distribution process is transparent, to some extent. Although rich people are also getting assistance, [at least] the poor are not left out. – Factory owner from Kandahar (extended family of ten)
Most of all, many interviewees commented on how the aid, though briefly helpful, was only a fraction of what was really needed, since it could only help some, and only for a while.
If we are speaking about emergencies, then yes, the aid helps. But overall, I don’t think this assistance will change the lives of poor people. It can save them from hunger for a few days, but it won’t benefit them longer than that. – Landlord from Kabul city (household of seven)
The people in the villages of Afghanistan are all in need. We could survey the people with our eyes closed and add all of them to the list because they’re all poor. They have no money, no shops and no businesses. They’re just waiting for spring and summer, hoping someone will ask them to work. The aid isn’t enough, both what they give to each family and the number of families that are listed. In my area of 800 families, only 60 received aid, which means that 740 families remain. Out of these 800 families, maybe 40 of them are rich, the rest are all needy. – Businessman from Baghlan (household of ten)
Almost all people are poor here; if someone can pay for their winter food, he is the richest among us. If there was no aid, people could really die of hunger. So the aid helped everyone a lot. Some people had nothing to eat and now they at least have some food for one or two months. On the other hand, it’s not really enough. Families are big and there’s no income or work at this time of year. – Labourer from Ghor (household of eight)
Almost 95 per cent of people are poor in Afghanistan, so if the aid increased and each family received some, it would be so helpful. But it shouldn’t be corrupt, with one family receiving multiple times and another family not even once. I hope it’s done honestly, but I don’t think it’s transparent enough. And also, in general, it’s not enough: one bottle of oil and one sack of flour is not enough for a large family. – Teacher from Laghman (household of ten)
Finally, many of the interviewees hoped for the kind of aid that could create sustainable solutions, through jobs and livelihood opportunities, so they would no longer need to depend on donations.
I think the aid could be distributed in a better way. Now, the NGOs and international organisations buy the food from other countries for a high price and then distribute it here. They could create employment instead and provide salaries, or give people the aid in cash. Someone who is poor and needy will work for the money, but the way they’re doing it now the aid will be given to commanders and others. – Taleb from Logar (family of four)
I think the aid is not enough. And it’s not good that it makes people dependent. In the past 20 years, people received aid and they became used to it. Suddenly it stopped and now they’re in a bad condition. We shouldn’t wait for others to help us. If today they receive oil, wheat and flour, what will they do tomorrow, when it’s finished? We shouldn’t rely on short-term benefits. We should work on long-term solutions for our economic problems. – University professor from Herat (extended family of twenty)
If employment opportunities are provided, so people can earn money themselves, I think that’s better than this aid. Because the aid will make people into spongers, who will always have to wait for the help of others. – Psychosocial councillor from Sar-e Pul (family of seven)
Concluding remarks
This report, taking its cue from the people it interviewed, has explored the concerns that current processes may not ensure that food assistance is indeed reaching the people who need it most. At the same time, we don’t want to ignore the fact that over half of the interviewees had received aid – even in remote areas, and before the post-winter scale up – and that food aid is arriving in people’s homes in a significant way. This is a testament to the determination and hard work of countless NGO employees, community members, government civil servants and UN staff, often under extremely difficult circumstances.
The aid has clearly been important to the families and communities who received it. Many interviewees said they did not know how they would have managed without it. So it is concerning that the level of aid, in terms of quantity, duration and number of people reached, looks likely to be reduced as a result of funding shortfalls.
The findings of this report also point to problems, particularly with the beneficiary selection and, to a lesser extent, the aid allocation and the potential for capture, redirection and manipulation. It was striking how many interviewees talked about this without us asking. The aid distribution system is, in general, largely the same as it was before the Taleban takeover (even many of the actual individuals involved may still be the same, including some of the NGO staff, many of the local points of contact with the communities, and possibly even some of the local government officials, particularly the more junior and technical staff). What seems to have changed most of all is the size and scope of the operation and the fact that access has to be renegotiated and coordinated with the new authorities.
The implementation and monitoring of large-scale humanitarian aid in Afghanistan has always been difficult, even under the best of circumstances, but that does not mean that concerns can be ignored or set aside as minor issues of perception. Particularly, with a programme this size that had to be scaled up as fast as it was, it is likely that the monitoring and follow-up mechanisms have been unable to sufficiently keep up with the rollout.
The fact that the beneficiary selection leans heavily on local representatives – in particular the wakil-e guzars and village heads – seems to be both a strength and a potential vulnerability. While their close community relations provide local knowledge and a form of accountability, these ties can also leave them open to immense pressures and allegations of bias, favouritism and abuse.
It is, of course, not easy to determine from the interviewees to what extent the allegations are true. Distribution processes are often fraught and riddled with suspicion, especially when needs are so acute and widespread. Some of the complaints may be based on misunderstandings or generalised perceptions of unfairness and abuse, but in that case, it appears that greater transparency and clearer messaging, at both the local and central level – including on what people are supposed to receive, for how long and based on which criteria – could lessen the doubts and tensions.
It is also interesting to note how the reputation the Taleban may have had when they were still an insurgent movement, of being less corrupt than the then government, is now under pressure, as the movement seems to struggle – or is uninterested – to enforce discipline and accountability across its ranks.
At the national level, the Taleban government is seeking to formally increase its control over the aid delivery. In early May 2022, the Ministry of Economy announced the establishment of a committee to oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid, although it provided few details of what it would do. According to a prime-ministerial decree, dated 15 January 2022, provincial governors are now “barred from [allowing] aid distributions without coordination with the provincial ANDMA [Afghan National Disaster Management Agency].”[13] Although coordination with ANDMA and other technical departments is in itself not an unreasonable request, the decree may embolden provincial governors and local officials to try to redirect or strong-arm the aid to their liking. It will probably continue to be a struggle for NGOs on the ground to stop engagement with and involvement by local authorities from veering into outright interference.
Fortunately, the fears of widespread famine that were raised last year did not materialise, at least not yet (although there are pockets, for instance in Ghor). The humanitarian food assistance definitely helped, as did the fact that the payment of government salaries restarted again, but it will in itself not be enough. Most of the people who received food aid continue to struggle to feed their families and meet their basic needs (see, in particular, this AAN report from March, where we discuss in greater detail how all the interviewees were doing economically when we spoke to them).
Afghans are resilient, determined and inventive, and they work hard to help themselves, and each other, but most communities are currently stretched far beyond their usual coping mechanisms and many people have depleted what reserves or options to borrow or sell they may have had. The current food aid allows them to feed their families, something at least, even if only for a short time, but Afghans desperately need their economy to restart, the government and its salaries to become dependable, and conditions for small businesses to improve.[14]
References
References
↑1
The UN’s Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) uses a population estimate for Afghanistan of 41.7 million. This differs significantly from the figure of 33.5 million used by the National Statistics and Information Agency of Afghanistan (NSIA); see explanatory note in this IPC report.
↑2
According to UNOCHA’s latest HPR overview, aid delivery in early 2022 was enabled by USD 542 million carried over from the previous year and 600 million in new funding. By 20 May 2022, the UN HRP had received USD 1.34 billion in new funding, of which WFP had received USD 573 million, or 42 per cent.
↑3
Since IPC uses a total population figure of 41.7 million, the worst-case reduction in assistance would be from the current reach of 15.8 million people in April to less than 3.5 million people in summer, if the current funding shortfall continues.
↑4
For an example of a previously wealthy interviewee who had no information about aid, see for instance this factory owner from Kabul city, who told us:
We didn’t receive any aid and I don’t know if aid that was distributed in my area, but in the past and during COVID, the government distributed aid through the wakil-e guzar. I think there’s a real need for it now. I see long queues in front of the bakeries in my area [waiting to be given some without paying]; many people can’t even afford to buy bread.
About his own situation and that of other people, he said: “I think I’m still in a better situation than many other people, even though some [other] people still have a good income; they either receive cash from abroad or have well running businesses. But to be honest, I don’t really know. In the past, I knew about my relatives and friends’ income, but now people don’t talk about it. Actually, everyone complains.”
↑5
Other sources of aid that interviewees mentioned included an “Iranian organisation” (most probably the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation) that had provided support to victims of the mosque blast in Kunduz; the office of the representative of Grand Ayatollah Fayyaz (also spelled al-Fayadh) that provided support to widows with children, for instance in Daikundi and Ghor; the ulema council (in Baghlan, with no further details given), the Afghan Red Crescent and a few smaller international NGOs or local Afghan charities, for instance in Paktika and Paktia.
↑6
After a series of questions exploring the economic situation of the household – focusing on recent changes, sources of income, large expenses and loans – we asked:
Has anyone in your family received any aid or donations? What did they receive?
Who gave the aid or donation? How did they know about your situation? (Note: Get many details about the system of selection and distribution)
Have you received aid or a donation in the past, or was this the first time? (Note: If they received aid before: When? How often? What did you receive?)
Has any other aid been distributed in your street/village/area/district that you know about? Do you know how many people received aid? Do you know what they received and how they were selected?
What do you think about the aid that is being given?
↑7
One interviewee in Khost described a more substantial package: 50 kg flour, 24 kg rice, 10 litres cooking oil, 7 kg pulses, 2 kg salt and 1 kg green tea. However, he had not received the aid himself (his family was relatively well off), so he may well have been describing a planned, announced or rumoured package, possibly in different tranches, rather than one that had actually been handed out in a single go.
↑8
Several other interviewees also indicated that they believed people were given turns to receive food aid, for instance a former gardener and taxi driver from Kabul (quoted more extensively later on in the report), who said that “Out of 50 families, five were selected by the wakil-e guzar to receive aid. Then, in turn, another five families were selected.” According to WFP, however, their beneficiary selection is not about ‘turns’, but about who is the most in need of food assistance.
↑9
In December, the interviewee told us he had not accepted the aid that was meant for the victims of the Kunduz mosque bombing because he had been only lightly wounded. Then in February 2022, he told us:
We received aid from an Iranian organisation. They were distributing aid to families of those who were killed and injured in the bomb explosion in the mosque in Kunduz. I had a small injury; that’s why they listed my name too. Almost 80 per cent of the people in our area received this aid. We received one sack of flour, one 5-litre bottle of oil and 10 kg of rice. We also received aid on behalf of the family of my uncle, who was killed in the explosion. We sold the food and sent the money to his wife and daughter in Iran.
He had not received any WFP-administered aid at the time of the interview, but his household had recently been surveyed.
↑10
The vulnerability criteria have, according to WPF, been quantitatively validated against years of large scale joint national food security assessments in Afghanistan, endorsed and used by the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster and other food security actors in the country, confirmed to correlate to the likelihood of severe food insecurity and are generally observable.
↑11
For instance, a teacher from Nuristan told us: “We received aid twice, a sack of flour and a bottle of oil. All the people [in the village] received it.”
The labourer from Ghor told us: “We went and brought the aid to our village and distributed it among the people. We paid the rent of the vehicle that carried it here. Then the village leaders distributed the aid to us. … All the people in my area have received aid.”
Not quite the same, but possibly similar, an interviewee from Panjshir said that the families in her village received aid in turn, like in other areas, but also that all families had been included in the list, since “everyone needs help nowadays.” She additionally described a system whereby relatives who lived abroad sent money to the bank accounts of the village councils for redistribution within the village.
Another interviewee from Kabul (who had not received any aid yet) told us that the families in his area who had received aid, and who were not related to the wakil-e guzar, had been told by the wakil to share their food items with five other families.
↑12
This was not the only mention of cash being distributed by, or through, Taleban authorities. Another teacher, from Panjshir, told us: “We didn’t receive any aid or donations, although aid was distributed in our area: flour, oil and rice. There was also aid given by the Taleban for IDPs. The Taleban paid them 250 [US] dollars, two months ago.”
A psychosocial councillor from Sar-e Pul told us: “When I was in Mazar, some of my friends who are teachers said they’d received winter aid from the Islamic Emirate – oil and flour, for six months – instead of the money they would normally get for doing extra tasks. They weren’t paid for this work under the previous government either, but [now] the Emirate is giving them aid instead of money.”
↑13
AAN has seen a copy of the decree, which was sent to provincial governors and relevant provincial departments. The underlying decree consists of a pishnehad (proposal) and a hokm (decision). The proposal, signed by Al-Haj Mulla Muhammad Abbas Akhund, Acting Head of ANDMA, states that: Aid is being distributed to individuals without considering standards, which is contrary to accountability and transparency norms. It is therefore proposed that aid distributions should be carried out by the provincial governors’ office to stop arbitrary distributions and ensure that those in need receive aid in line with a proper work plan.
The decision, dated 15 January 2022 and signed by Prime Minister Mullah Hassan Akhund, states that: Provincial governors are barred from [allowing] aid distributions without coordination with provincial ANDMA as per written text. In a subsequent letter from the local authorities in Bamyan province, dated 27 March 2022, which AAN has seen, all foreign and domestic NGOs in the province were informed that they should “seriously consider the guidance of the provincial governor and coordinate all projects with the provincial ANDMA.”
The worst-case scenario for Afghan women is playing out before our eyes. The international community cannot sit by idly.
The Taliban continued this week to roll back Afghan women’s rights by decreeing women must be fully covered from head to toe — including their faces — to appear in public. This follows decrees limiting women’s ability to work, women’s and girls’ access to education and even limiting their freedom of movement. Afghan women are rapidly facing the worst-case scenario many feared when the Taliban took over last summer. While the Taliban justify these moves as in accordance with Islam, they are, in fact, contradicting Islamic tradition and Afghan culture as the group looks to resurrect the full control they had over women and girls when they ruled in the 1990s.The two-page order says that because “99 percent of Afghan women are already observing Islamic hijab there is no reason for the remaining one percent not to follow the Shariah-prescribed hijab.” The order further states that black clothes and scarves that are not tight-fitting are an acceptable type of hijab along with the preferred burqa. But the first and best form of “obeying hijab” for women — meaning covering their faces — is to “not leave home without necessity.”Domestic violence in Afghanistan is already high: A 2021 poll of over 200 women’s rights experts ranked Afghanistan as the worst place in the world to be a woman. Before the Taliban’s takeover, there were laws and policies, and governmental and non-governmental institutions mandated to protect women’s rights. Since their takeover in August, the Taliban have suspended Afghanistan’s constitution and other laws protecting women’s rights. Additionally, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, independent commissions such as the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Commission to Eliminate Violence Against Women, and women’s rights organizations have all been suspended.In the absence of protection mechanisms for women, violence against women at home and other forms of abuse perpetrated against Afghan women and girls are on the rise and can be expected to increase more due to this decree.
The Taliban Prove They Haven’t Changed
Rather than changing their reviled policies from the 1990s, the Taliban are reverting to form as they seek to demonstrate their hardline credentials over groups like Islamic State-Khorasan Province and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The Taliban have even called on Afghan media to explain the importance of the hijab for women.
The second part of the Taliban’s order lists punishments for violators: First a warning to the (male) head of the household, then a summons to a government office, followed by three days in jail for the male guardian and ultimately a court case with even harsher punishments to follow. The order is silent on whether women who do not cover properly will be beaten as they were in the 1990s, but it does specify that “women who conduct activities within organs related to the Emirate and do not observe hijab are to be dismissed from their positions.”
The Taliban say the decrees is based on Islam although the vast majority of Muslims — outside Iran and Saudi Arabia — do not follow the type of dress code the Taliban are prescribing for Afghan women. Given that Afghanistan is an overwhelmingly Muslim, traditional and patriarchal society, a significant number of conservative Afghan men will not object to the Taliban’s decision.
The Taliban are reinforcing Afghanistan’s patriarchal system, where men decide for and on behalf of women. The order legitimizes men’s control over women and the humiliation of women in public, paving the way for increased domestic violence, harassment and oppression of Afghan women and girls. Further, the decree gives ammunition to conservative Afghan men who aim to prevent women from exercising their right to participate in public life. It essentially encourages harassment and oppression of women and girls. Fundamentally, it shows that the Taliban’s policies concerning women have not changed.
The Taliban’s hijab decree not only runs counter to Afghanistan’s history and culture, but it also demonstrates their narrow understanding of Islam.
An Affront to Afghan history
While the exact time when the burqa was introduced as a cover for women in Afghanistan is unknown, Afghans believe that the burqa — or chadari as Afghans refer to it — was imported from Persia and later in the 20th century from India. It is therefore a relatively modern and foreign phenomenon. Over the past several decades Afghan women have categorically rejected the narrative that the burqa is a part of an Afghan traditional dress code for women.
Afghanistan is an agriculture-centered country, where women have been active in farming. Loose clothing and head scarves have been and continue to be worn by women throughout the country to allow them to work on farms, forests and livestock.
The Taliban are undermining Afghan culture and imposing a type of hijab that was foreign to a majority of Afghan women before the 1990s. Some Afghan women have made the personal choice to wear a burqa in a public setting. But it wasn’t until fundamentalist mujahedeen groups took control of the country in 1992 that many women were forced to wear a burqa to disguise their identity and avoid being harassed by mujahedeen fighters and criminals. Despite the mujahedeen’s decision that women must be fully covered while in public, the vast majority did not submit to this requirement.
In 1996, when the Taliban took control of the country they enforced the state-imposed burqa on women. It wasn’t only the type of cover they imposed on women, but the color of the burqa itself and the clothing underneath was also prescribed. Women found to wear stylish and bright color clothes under the burqa were publicly beaten, whipped and humiliated. There was no way around it.
A Narrow Understanding of Islam
The Taliban’s justification for imposing the hijab in the name of Islam and Shariah is contradictory to the spirit of Islam. The Taliban use “hijab” as a synonym for women’s clothing and cover. However, Quranic references to the hijab are not necessarily about women’s clothes. Islam ordained a perdah, or “curtain,” for the wives of the Prophet, not for all Muslim women. A majority of Islamic scholars agree that hijab refers to the curtain in the front a door of a home that women in the Prophet Muhammad’s household were obliged to use. According to the Quran and other important Islamic texts and traditions, the face, hands and the feet are not included as part of required forms of Islamic dress.
The Taliban’s proposed penalties for violating their dress code are another point of dubious Islamic legality, stating that the male guardian of any woman who does not follow the obligations in this order will be punished. Yet according to basic legal principles and Shariah norms one cannot be arrested or punished for the action of others — not to mention the implication that women are under the control of the men who would be punished for their alleged transgressions.
Perhaps the most troubling point about the Taliban’s order, however, is that essentially calls on woman to avoid public life: “The best way to obey the hijab for women is to not go out of the home.” Again, to stay at home was an option for women in the Prophet’s household not for all Muslim women, as the Quran clearly states in Chapter 33:33.
By ordering women to stay at home, the Taliban are throwing more obstacles in front of women to prevent them from taking part in public life. This seemingly ignores the vital role Muslim women have played in social, political, economic and cultural life throughout the history of Islam. For example, one of the Prophet’s wives, Khadija, was a successful businesswoman who managed and employed men as her subordinates and partners, including the Prophet. Women have held positions as mayors, judges, military commanders, teachers, architects and so on throughout the Muslim world. Justifying restrictions on women’s mobility and access to rights has nothing to do with Islam. If anything, it proves the Taliban’s ignorance of Islam — and the ignorance of others who have employed Islam to suppress women.
Now What?
In response to the hijab decree, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said Monday, “We’ve addressed it directly with the Taliban … There are steps that we will continue to take to increase pressure on the Taliban to reverse some of these decisions, to make good on the promises that they have made.”
Since taking power, the Taliban have shown that they are largely immune to pressure. Despite harsh sanctions and the withholding of diplomatic recognition, they have remained unbowed and unwilling to concede. While the international community has predicated diplomatic recognition on maintaining Afghan girls’ access to education, the Taliban have made moves to limit such access. After 20 years of hard-won gains, Afghan women and girls are watching their rights evaporate before their eyes.
“What is happening right now in Afghanistan is the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world today,” Heather Barr, the associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, recently wrote. The international community cannot sit by idly. The U.N. Security Council is meeting today to discuss the Taliban’s decree. Closed door conversations and statements of condemnation are not enough — urgent action is needed now.
Afghanistan is also in the midst of a massive humanitarian and hunger crisis. The Taliban need financial assistance and sanctions relief to address these humanitarian challenges. They also want formal diplomatic recognition. The United States and concerned partners should leverage financial assistance and sanctions relief to incentivize the Taliban to respect women’s rights. It is the least that can be done for the brave Afghan women who have and continue to stand up against the Taliban and their repression.
Mohammad Osman Tariq is a senior advisor for the Religion and Inclusive Societies program at USIP.
Afghanistan may have fallen out of international headlines, but violent trends are once again on the rise. Our team at Afghan Peace Watch (APW), alongside colleagues at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), have been tracking violent trends based on hundreds of incident reports recorded between September 2021 and March 2022. The report, Tracking Disorder During Taliban Rule in Afghanistan, provides one of the only comprehensive data-backed glimpses into the changing threat environment, based on 238 sources in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan.
The data is clear: While violence overall has decreased from the height of armed clashes between former Afghan government forces and the Taliban between May and August 2021, there has been a marked shift in violence against women, journalists, and educators that was simply not there under the previous government’s rule. Women have been forced to cover their faces and all but forbidden from public space. The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan (ISKP) has launched several high-profile terrorist attacks, fueling ethnic and religious tensions. Other trends in the data reveal a worrying rise in violence against former Afghan government forces, recently confirmed by the New York Times, and intense infighting between various Taliban factions and interests.
These factors present significant risks for renewed conflict in Afghanistan and the region, and underscore two important points. First, it is critical to continue data collection efforts despite the risks in order to accurately and independently assess violent trends under Taliban rule. Second, tracking trends on terrorist threats in Afghanistan may provide one of the only sources of credible information on resurgent terrorist activity, particularly transnational terrorist groups that already have an established foothold in the region, such as al-Qaida, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), and Central Asian terrorist groups.
During the reporting period, APW recorded hundreds of incidents related to bombings, assassinations, abductions, and other forms of violence perpetrated by the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Using its exhaustive local networks and social media monitoring, APW is also working to map the leadership and interlinkages between these terrorist groups as they swap loyalties and engage in intense infighting, leading to new terrorist agendas and greater risks for the entire region.
Between August 2021 and March 2022, APW and ACLED recorded 33 incidents of Taliban infighting. Highly successful efforts made by the Taliban during their campaign last year to co-opt key actors in the north and other non-traditional Taliban strongholds seem particularly tenuous now, as there are inadequate spoils of war to placate these actors and their patronage networks. The Taliban government has coalesced around its real centers of gravity — the southern Kandahari leadership, the notorious eastern Haqqani network, and the emerging Ghazni-led intelligence apparatus — leaving little space for other ethnic and minority groups.
In the last few months alone, at least six new armed opposition groups have been announced opposing Taliban rule, many made up of former Afghan security forces (ANDSF) left behind and continually targeted for retribution by the Taliban, despite the general amnesty announced last year.
While the National Resistance Front (NRF) was the first group to engage in armed resistance against the Taliban under the leadership of the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud in Panjshir, several former ANDSF groups have also been more recently announced, including the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) and the Pashtun-led Afghanistan Liberation Movement (ALM), demonstrating wide ranging and multiethnic opposition to the Taliban, including from within the Pashtun majority.
Between Taliban infighting, the plethora of emerging armed opposition groups, and the ever-changing terrorist landscape, violence in Afghanistan is set to rise with the fast-approaching summer fighting season. As the Taliban fail to placate their rank and file, or deliver on basic governance, the façade of a strong and united Taliban that governed effectively from the shadows is likely to dissipate. The reduction in violence visible in the data between September and December last year, interpreted by some as implicit evidence of local support for the Taliban, may be short lived.
Afghanistan fatigue remains high among international donors as fraught evacuation efforts and an impasse over girls’ access to education continue to dominate diplomatic overtures to the Taliban. The horrific events unfolding in Ukraine, which pose a direct and immediate threat to NATO, have also, understandably, diverted attention away from Afghanistan.
But just like the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the collapse of the Soviet Union before that, history suggests that when the international community abandons Afghanistan, violence and extremism tend to simmer before they explode onto the international stage. The question now is has the international community learned its lesson or are we doomed to repeat the same mistake in Afghanistan again?
As the World Looks Away, Violence Is on the Rise Again in Afghanistan
Kabul, Afghanistan, May 12, 2022 — A new IRC report confirms that the economic crisis that has engulfed Afghanistan since August 2021 is now the primary driver of persistent food insecurity threatening the survival of nearly 20 million Afghans, who are experiencing extreme hunger in the face of continuing political uncertainty and economic calamity.
Unemployment and poverty are now the greatest drivers of internal displacement. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) sees firsthand that humanitarian aid cannot replace a functioning economy and state. In Afghanistan, the collapse of both is driving 97 per cent of the population into poverty. The current humanitarian crisis could kill far more Afghans than the past 20 years of war.
For the first time in almost a decade, some Afghans are experiencing famine. New analysis from the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) shows that 20,000 people are experiencing IPC 5 – the most extreme level of food insecurity. New assessment findings show that economic shocks, not conflict, COVID or drought, are the most common challenge facing households and the most common driver of needs.
In response to these trends Afghans are forced to turn to increasingly desperate coping mechanisms. 43% of Afghanistan’s population is living on less than one meal a day, levels of household debt are rising driven by the need to buy food, and reports of child marriage and labour as well as organ sales are rising.
Meanwhile, the escalating conflict in Ukraine is having a devastating impact on global food supplies. As the price of grain increases and seed oil imports are jeopardised, countries like Afghanistan are being pushed further towards famine.
Vicki Aken, IRC Afghanistan Director, said, “The fact that Afghanistan is facing record high figures of food insecurity is an indictment of the policies adopted by the international community towards Afghanistan. Although we are nearing the end of the lean season, the country is still in the grips of one the worst droughts in decades, which has severely hampered food production and left millions without a source of income. But it is the economic crisis that has pushed Afghans to the brink.
“The crisis in Afghanistan is evolving into a catastrophe of choice as the policies of international donors designed to economically isolate the Taliban are simultaneously collapsing the Afghan economy and pushing nearly 20 million Afghans into a state of acute food insecurity. The freezing of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves, the grounding of the banking system, and halting of development assistance, which financed most government services, have had swift and catastrophic impacts for ordinary Afghans. Today 90% of Afghans surveyed report food as their primary need. Between 2021 and 2022 the number of households reporting debt has risen from 78 to 82. The cause of rising family debt is easy to identify – the need to buy food.
“At the same time, the role of women in society is continually called into question and it is becoming more difficult for them to access work. With over thirty years of experience in delivering humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, the IRC knows that women play a vital role in accessing the communities who need it most as they are the only people who can reach the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. Recent decrees on girls’ education and other restrictions are making it increasingly difficult for them to do so, and we are profoundly fearful that the situation could continue to deteriorate.
“This is a pivotal moment for Afghanistan; the world cannot afford to look away as its economy teeters on the brink of collapse and the progress of the last twenty years is lost. The international community can and should do much more to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of innocent Afghans, with action to avert Afghanistan’s slide into total economic collapse urgently needed.”
To date, the US and other Western governments have focused on providing humanitarian funding based on a famine prevention strategy, putting in place important humanitarian exemptions and offering much-needed clarity on sanctions regimes at the bilateral and multilateral levels. However, the severity of the situation facing ordinary Afghans requires more than humanitarian solutions.
The report outlines key recommendations for immediate actions to support public service delivery and the humanitarian response, such as:
Fully fund the humanitarian appeal and quickly translate humanitarian donor pledges into funding for frontline responders and support their ability to operate.
Launch the UN’s Humanitarian Exchange Facility (HEF) as a temporary mechanism to provide liquidity.
Disperse the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) immediately to support critical service delivery, including health, livelihoods, agriculture and education services which remain available; commit to replenish the ARTF.
Steps needed towards international engagement in support of the Afghan economy include:
Urgently convene key stakeholders including IFIs, UN and key donors on the Afghan economy.
Deploy technical assistance to Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB).
Provide guidance and reassurance to the private and banking sector.
To read more detailed recommendations, view the report here.
The IRC began work in Afghanistan in 1988, and now works with thousands of villages across ten provinces, with Afghans making up more than 99% of IRC staff in the country. As Afghanistan struggles to recover from ongoing conflict and natural disasters, the IRC: works with local communities to identify, plan and manage their own development projects, provides safe learning spaces in rural areas, community-based education, cash distribution provides uprooted families with tents, clean water, sanitation and other basic necessities, and helps people find livelihood opportunities as well as extensive resilience programming.
New IRC report calls for specific actions to avert growing needs in Afghanistan, as almost half the population lives on less than one meal a day
Panicked Afghans by the thousands tried to escape their country as the United States evacuated last year. They feared that a victorious Taliban would offer no more respect for basic rights, especially those of women, than the movement did when it ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. For its part, the Taliban issued soothing promises of an “inclusive” government that would eschew the executions, persecution and forced veiling of women that marked its first reign.
Those who fled distrusted the Taliban, and evidence is mounting that they were right. Having announced in March that it would break a promise to reopen secondary schools to girls, the Taliban on May 7 ordered almost all Afghan women to wear clothing that covers them from head to toe, preferably the shapeless garment known as a burqa. The decree further urged women to stay home except when necessary, and made their male relatives — “guardians” — legally responsible for violations of the dress code. It amounts to quasi-house arrest for half the country’s people.
Small but courageous groups of women staged protest marches in Kabul on Tuesday. In at least one instance, they were met by Taliban operatives, who threatened to shoot them, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — though there were apparently no casualties or reported arrests. Other women in Kabul appear to be resisting the new edict passively, refusing to don a burqa and continuing to travel through the city unaccompanied, according to a May 8 Associated Press report. The Taliban has not yet enforced the rule strictly, though whether because of some unofficial grace period or because of policy disagreements within the ruling group is impossible to say.
What is clear is that women must fear enforcement, because hard-line opposition to their freedom is now the Taliban’s official declared position. “Islamic principles and Islamic ideology are more important to us than anything else,” said Shir Mohammad, a spokesman for the Taliban Ministry for the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. Theocracy of this stripe is wrong in principle. In this case, moreover, the Taliban appears to be articulating its own extreme traditions rather than any religious consensus. Of course, there is no opportunity for democratic discussion on such matters in Afghanistan, since the ultimate decision-maker is the Taliban’s leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is not only unelected but also — almost literally — invisible. He has appeared in public only twice since 2016; subordinates issued the new decree in his name.
The Taliban’s reversion to repressive type presents a challenge for the United States and other democratic countries, which — laudably — decried this latest broken promise. The U.N. Security Council took up the matter Thursday at the request of Norway, but at a closed session. The Biden administration has conditioned diplomatic recognition and economic aid on Taliban respect for human rights. Though a difficult line to draw, given the Afghan people’s desperate humanitarian needs, the United States has been right to draw it; this country and its allies cannot bankroll a regime that so blatantly subjugates women. We, too, have basic principles to uphold.
The Biden administration has established a sponsorship program to help admit and support tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, but too many Afghan evacuees, including some who helped U.S. troops and personnel, have been left without adequate support in this country or spurned altogether.
For many of the 80,000 or so Afghans who made it to the United States after the fall of Kabul last year, the challenges they face in acclimating to a new country are mounting. Thousands of others still in Afghanistan or nearby countries have been denied entry to the United States or wait in limbo. Congress could help but has not.
Most Afghans who arrived here were airlifted from Kabul during last summer’s chaotic U.S. withdrawal, then housed in temporary quarters at military bases. They have since been resettled in communities across the country, but often without the financial and logistical support normally accorded refugees by the government. That’s because Afghans, including thousands who assisted our troops and risked their lives doing so over years, have not been granted refugee status — and because the Trump administration gutted the infrastructure for resettling refugees.
Around the United States, scores of private groups staffed by volunteers have formed to help. They have provided Afghans with funds, as well as assistance in forming community attachments, navigating red tape to apply for asylum and accessing government aid. That help has been critical, but it is a poor substitute for systematic government assistance. Aid to some Afghan refugees has run dry, leaving them unable to pay rent or facing eviction.
In March, the Biden administration offered temporary protected status (TPS) for 18 months to Afghan refugees who had already been admitted, a designation that can be and often is extended. It did so after announcing the same benefit for Ukrainians already here. TPS also comes with work authorization, but it provides no pathway to legal permanent residence or citizenship. Without those gateways, many Afghans are effectively stateless, unable to return to their country and uncertain of their long-term prospects in this one.
Meanwhile, there are tens of thousands of unluckier Afghans who did not manage to board a flight to the United States last summer. Many remain in Afghanistan, at risk from the Taliban; others are in nearby countries. About 45,000 have requested humanitarian parole to come to the United States, overwhelming Washington’s processing capacity. Only a few hundred have been approved; 2,200 have been denied, while the rest remain in limbo.
That raises a question: Why can’t the administration stand up a program for U.S.-based individuals and groups to sponsor Afghan refugees to come here, as it has done for Ukrainians? Or why can’t it streamline admissions processing for Afghans who helped U.S. personnel, escaped their country and want to come here? After all, many are as qualified as the refugees admitted en masse last summer.
Congress has not moved to grant a path to citizenship for Afghan refugees, as it did for Cubans after Fidel Castro took power, Vietnamese following Saigon’s fall and Iraqis after the wars in Iraq of recent decades. Many Afghan refugees, having worked side by side assisting Americans in a dangerous place, might now wonder whether they have a future in this country.
Don’t forget the Afghan refugees who need America’s support
Another wave of Covid-19 struck Afghanistan early in 2022 with doctors throughout the country reporting a rise in cases from January onwards. The devastation suffered by the Afghan health system since the suspension of most foreign aid following the Taleban takeover left it wholly unprepared to deal with the wave. While cases are now tailing off, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush and Thomas Ruttig (with input from Sayed Asad Sadat and Sayeda Rahimi) examine the impact of Taleban rule on Covid-19 reporting, assess the progress of vaccination campaigns and testing, and look at the many problems facing the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) as a result of the suspension of aid.
A very different MoPH under the TalebanThe fourth wave of Covid “is hitting Afghanistan hard,” the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned in late February. Doctors across the country confirmed the rise in cases to AAN. In Kabul, the 100-bed Afghan-Japan Communicable Disease Hospital was receiving between 85 and 90 patients daily in mid-February. According to several doctors at the hospital, around 80 per cent of patients were testing positive for the virus.[1] While numbers being tested have been extremely low, almost half the samples taken in diagnostic centres are showing positive results, according to the World Health Organisation quoted here. This, the IFRC said, indicated “an alarming spread of the virus.” Doctors at the Afghan-Japan Hospital said they lacked the means to identify the virus’s variety, but were almost certain it was the Omicron variant (see media reporting here). This wave came after the country had been cut off from foreign aid which had been supporting the health sector leading to the closure of many facilities. Meanwhile, just ten per cent of the Afghan population is fully vaccinated.
In spite of the rise in Covid figures, the MoPH under the Taleban has been reluctant to share information with the media and public about the pandemic, and when they do, there is generally a significant discrepancy between their reports and data from other sources. Given that the health sector was the area in which the Taleban retained the former Republic-era minister for longest (keeping Dr Wahid Majruh in place until 21 September while replacing all the other ministers immediately), this inertia has come as a surprise. It was thought that by retaining qualified health staff, the Taleban had understood the gravity of the health crisis (AAN reporting here). Indeed, the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan’s Reconstruction (SIGAR), in its regular quarterly report released in January 2022, had said that after the takeover, the Taleban authorities had “generally been supportive of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the provinces” and “endorsed the implementation of mosque-to-mosque vaccination efforts” in cities such as Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad. This was followed, according to SIGAR, by a national Covid-19 vaccination campaign launched by UNICEF and WHO to increase uptake and avoid approximately 1.9 million doses of available vaccines expiring on 16 October 2021. However, it is increasingly apparent that such efforts petered out. Certainly, when it comes to informing the public via the media, the Taleban now only share data via voice messages or video clips to a WhatsApp group for journalists once a week, if that.
The MoPH is led by acting minister Dr Qalandar Ebad,[2] appointed on 21 September 2021 (see AAN reporting here). He has appealed to people to protect themselves from the virus and to get themselves vaccinated: “According to Sharia, keeping yourself safe is a must. So please get Covid-19 vaccination to be safe from the virus,” he said in a televised broadcast on 29 January 2022 (see here). So far, however, other measures have not been forthcoming.[3]
Testing for Covid-19
Despite calls for people to ‘stay safe’, testing for the virus has drastically diminished since the Taleban takeover. Data as of 13 April 2022 indicates that of the almost milliontests carried out throughout the country since the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, only 185,690 (almost 20 per cent) of these had been conducted since the Taleban took power in August 2021.[4] This is at a rate of some 23,000 tests per month in the six months under the Taleban, compared to over 43,000 tests per month under the previous administration. The number of confirmed cases throughout the pandemic gives some indication of the severity of each Covid wave that has hit the country, with the third wave (in June 2021) seeing the highest number of recorded daily cases at 2,023 per day.[5] Since the Taleban takeover, the highest number of cases registered has been 992 per day (on 10 February 22). However, given the low number of samples now being analysed, it is likely thatthe realnumber could be much higher. This supposition is supported by WHO data, which indicates that almost half (47.85 per cent) of the samples collected have been positive.
During the first wave, there were 34 labs throughout the country able to process Covid-19 tests, AAN reported, with an overall capacity for testing 6,565 samples per day, although that level was never reached during the first two waves (the first wave in June 2020 and the second was in November 2020). It was only in spring 2021 during the third wave, that labs were examining more than 6,000 samples a day (AAN reporting here). Following the Taleban capture of power, the most samples examined in any one day has been 2,073. According to WHO, however, there are now 38 functioning Covid-19 labs across the country with a maximum capacity for analysing 10,250 samples per day. Although the number of labs analysing Covid-19 samples has increased, according to WHO, the number of daily cases reported has decreased. This indicates that fewer people are getting tested. Not a single case of Covid was reported throughout January or February 2022 in five provinces: Badakhshan, Jawzjan, Daikundi, Farah and Uruzgan. Other provinces have similarly reported very few cases in these two months.
Given the high positive rate when patients are tested, the low reporting of Covid indicates low levels of testing rather than low prevalence of the disease. In hindsight and according to official figures, the wave’s peak appears to have come in mid-February, when about 900 cases were being reported daily nationwide. By April, confirmed cases were noticeably lower: since 1 April, daily cases reported nationwide have ranged between 24 and 100. We spoke to hospital staff in three different provinces to get some idea of how the wave is tailing off.
From the Covid hospital in Lashkargah in Helmand province, Dr Massud told AAN they were still seeing between 10 to 80 patients every day. He thought numbers would be higher were it not for the opium harvesting season, which means many people are reluctant to leave their land. He said they were hospitalising at least three to four patients every day. On the day we spoke, 13 April, they had hospitalised 11 people, seven women and four men.
From Paktia and the 50-bed Covid hospital there, Dr Khaled said that, compared to the winter, Covid-19 cases had certainly decreased in the province. They were still seeing patients and currently had two in hospital with serious symptoms, but in general, they were advising people to stay home if they had mild symptoms because of their limited facilities – two labs, but a shortage of medicine.
In Kapisa, Abdul Mutaleb Hamed, who is in charge of the province’s Covid-19 hospital also said fewer patients with Covid-19 symptoms were seeking help. He estimated that seven in ten people in the province have been infected with Covid-19, likely the Omicron variant. His current concern is a lack of vaccines: there was still demand in the province, he said, but no vaccinations were available and he had asked MoPH about this.
Suspension of foreign aid means fewer hospitals open and a lack of equipment
The decrease in the number of people getting tested is linked to the breakdown of large parts of the health system since the Taleban took power, due to a halt in development aid. Among the clinics and hospitals that had to shut were around three-quarters of the country’s public Covid health facilities, although the number of Covid clinics closing is unclear, and accounts differ. In late December 2021, Pajhwok reported the MoPH as saying that, of the 38 Covid-19 clinics, 17 remained active and 21 were inactive “due to the financial crisis.” On 26 February, MoPH spokesman Jawed Hazhir confirmed this figure to AAN, saying there was one clinic per province in Kabul, Balkh, Ghazni, Helmand, Herat, Kandahar, Kapisa, Khost, Kunar, Nangrahar, Nuristan, Paktia, Panjshir, Parwan, Samangan, Wardak and Zabul. Those that had closed due to the financial crisis, he said, were in Badakhshan, Badghis, Baghlan, Bamyan, Daikundi, Farah, Faryab, Ghor, Jawzjan, Kunduz, Laghman, Logar, Nimruz, Paktika, Sar-e Pul and Uruzgan.
The IFRC has reported a much lower number, saying fewer than ten Covid-19 hospitals were functional and that they had been unable to keep up with demand. Al-Jazeera reported only five functional clinics in the country, saying that 33 others had been forced to close due to a lack of doctors, medicine and heating (see this Al-Jazeera report). WHO noted that out of the 11 that were active, nine were partially functional. Their January 2022 report confirmed the closure of Covid-19 hospitals in Logar, Bamyan, Daikundi, Badakhshan, Farah and two hospitals in Kabul, the Qasab 100-bed and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The foreign funding that does remain is a lifeline, but also only a drop in the water. The Pajhwok report said the main hospital in Kabul was funded by WHO, while those in Nangrahar, Herat, Helmand and Kandahar were funded by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). Both eyewitness and media reports from various provinces have confirmed that very few hospitals are still operational.
Zalmai, a resident from Khost, told AAN on 1 March that the Covid-19 section in their provincial hospital (still open in late February, according to the Taleban) was no longer active and there was neither medicine nor oxygen. Similarly, in Nimruz, the Covid-19 hospital closed for a period, as staff had not been paid; however the NGO, Cooperation and Humanitarian Assistance (CHA), had picked up the costs at the 20-bed clinic for two months, enabling the clinic to reopen on 20 March (see Hasht-e Sobh reports here and here). It said that this was a result of the US government allowing certain emergency transactions into Afghanistan again after 25 February when the US treasury introduced new waivers to US sanctions. In Ghor, CHA funding has dried up and while the main hospital is still open, doctors have not been paid since before the Taleban took over, according to the head of the Covid-19 hospital there, Muhammad Sharif Qazizada. There is no more medicine, he said, and two of its four doctors had left because they had not been paid. CHA told AAN in March that UNDP had reissued their contract to fund the Covid-19 hospital in Ghor after the Taleban takeover, but that UNDP had only provided funds for a month. In Laghman, the head of primary healthcare, Dr Muhammad Asef Safi, told AAN on 9 March that after their 20-bed Covid-19 hospital was shut down on 15 January due to a lack of funding, the number of Covid-19 cases started rising in the eastern provinces:
Covid-19 patients come to the central hospital of Mehtarlam because we have a lab there, but after diagnosis, they are sent to [the regional centre] Jalalabad for treatment because the hospital here does not have medicine or equipment. Also, after the [Taleban] takeover, the number of patients coming to public hospitals has increased, but there’s also no medicine or equipment. Staff members at the central hospital in Mehtarlam have not had any salary for the past six months.
Daikundi’s Covid-19 hospital, formerly funded through the multi-donor Sehatmandi programme, has been closed since December 2021. The deputy director of the provincial public health department, Dr Sayed Eshaq Hussaini, told AAN on 10 March:
There was a hospital built by funding from Ayatollah Sayed Ali Sistani in Daikundi [Ayatollah Sistani is a leading Shia cleric in Iraq, with many followers in Afghanistan. The hospital was inaugurated on 23 Saur 1399 / 12 May 2020]. It’s named Amir ul-Mumenin Hospital. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was allocated for [treating] Covid-19 and then, the [Afghan] NGO, Move Welfare Organisation (MOVE), started supporting it. Then, another hospital was built for Covid-19 patients in Daikundi. WHO provided a PCR machine for testing. However, now that hospital isn’t active. It’s been closed for four months. Staff have not received their salaries for four months either. Patients come to the central hospital in [Daikundi’s provincial centre] Nili. They have signs and symptoms of Covid-19, but the PCR testing and diagnosis [equipment] is not active.
In Badakhshan, the provincial director of public health, Dr Majdud ul-Hakim, told AAN on 8 March that the hospital in Faizabad had shut down:
Covid-19 cases have been on the rise since the weather got cold, but the hospital is not active anymore. It is because all services such as tracking Covid-19 cases and hospitalisation have stopped due to lack of funding. Patients refer to private doctors and get some medicine. There is a PCR lab in the provincial hospital, but very few people refer there. No one exactly knows the number of people infected with Covid-19 recently. Many people do not go to the public hospital because no service is provided to them.
In Bamyan, without donor support, the hospital would not be functioning. A doctor at Bamyan’s public hospital, Dr Na’im, told AAN on 5 March thatthe Agha Khan Foundation had been funding doctors and nurses to work with Covid patients. “The Covid-19 section has ventilators and oxygen,” he said, “but people have to buy medicine from pharmacies outside the hospital.”At the same time, said another doctor at the hospital, Azim Besharat, Bamyan’s capacity to take in Covid patients has been reduced. He told AAN in early March that there used to be 20 bedsallocated for Covid patients in Bamyan’s government hospital. This special ward has now been moved to a new wing, but only has ten beds. He said the Agha Khan Foundation had hired three doctors and three nurses. In Herat, MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) is supporting the Shahid Razi Covid-19 hospital in Guzargah, in Herat city and it is running as normal. In Kabul, the Afghan-Japan Hospital alone remains open for Covid patients, although doctors there said in March they had not been paid in five months (see here).
On 11 April, health officials in Faryab told Salam Watandar News that the 40-bed Covid-19 hospital there had closed. They said they had to close it because their salaries haven’t been paid for the past nine months.
Various organisations – WHO, NGOs and foundations – have stepped in to fill the funding and support gap for some hospitals around the country. Without that, there would be no operational Covid-19 treatment centres in Afghanistan at all. Some hospitals are only able to remain open because local staff are continuing to work despite not being paid in months. Moreover, according to WHO, the Covid-19 hospitals that are still active are facing other difficulties, such as shortages of food, fuel and other supplies. A doctor at the Esteqlal public hospital in Kabul, which had offered treatment for Covid-19 patients during the first, second and third waves, told AAN that the situation with hospitals in the city was “very bad.” Many doctors, especially women, he said, had left the hospital and that Covid patients were not being treated there anymore. An MoPH staff member told AAN: “You go, you work, but there is no food and no heating in this cold weather. Staff are not getting their salaries regularly either.” Raising concerns about the influx of non-professional officials under the Taleban, he said, “not only hospitals, but also the ministry looks like a mosque.”
Vaccinations
Thanks to donations from various countries, the number of vaccinations went up in Afghanistan after the Taleban takeover, but overall, they remain low. On 1 January, India donated half a million doses of Covid-19 vaccines and promised to send another half a million (though the second batch has yet to arrive). In December 2021, China donated 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, one of three million doses it said it would deliver to Afghanistan.
There seems to be a discrepancy between the number of people who have been fully vaccinated, according to Taleban and according to the IFRC. On 1 April, MoPH spokesman Hazhir in the video clip sent to journalists and also posted on his Facebook said that at least 8.5 million Afghans had already received the Covid vaccine and that the process was ongoing in 377 Covid-19 vaccination centres throughout the country (of which 16 are in Kabul). He said that since the Taleban came, China, Italy, Austria, India, France as well as the COVAX programme – a partnership between WHO, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and UNICEF – have donated 4.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to MoPH. In addition, China, Asian Development Bank (ADB), India and COVAX have promised to donate 6.6 million more doses of Covid-19 vaccines by mid-2022.
Hazhir also said that before the takeover, 1,200 vaccination centres were open and active, but then due to lack of support, they were reduced. In a press release, however, the IFRC said that only ten per cent of the population (circa three million) was fully vaccinated (with either two doses of AstraZeneca or a single dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine). WHO statistics also show a substantial decrease in the number of Afghans currently being vaccinated. In its January 2022 bulletin, the humanitarian health cluster reported that in December 2021, 420,372 individuals had been fully vaccinated while the figure was at 115,739 in January, almost a quarter of December’s figures.
Despite an announcement at the end of February of a public health campaign being launched to promote nationwide vaccinations and the MoPH’s claim on 1 April that it had 2.8 million doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccines, 600,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines and 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca, there has been no campaign so far. Vaccinations are, however, ongoing in hospitals and vaccination centres.
Growing poverty, overburdened hospitals and limited awareness of Covid
The suspension of so much foreign aid has not only had a devastating impact on the country’s health system, but also on people’s livelihoods generally. Many can no longer afford private health treatment and must rely increasingly on government-run health centres and hospitals, which are both under-equipped and lack capacity. (Read AAN’s latest economic reports here, here and here ). The head of monitoring and evaluation at the Afghanistan Medical Council, Dr Khesraw Yusufzai, told AAN on 12 March:
After the fall of the former government, 90 per cent of the health facilities collapsed. Fortunately, the Sehatmandi project has resumed in all provinces. However, the national hospitals, as well as Covid-19 centres still have a lot of problems. Covid-19 cases, particularly of the Omicron variant, are on the rise, but there is no donor [analysing possible cases of] it. In addition, national [ie government-run] hospitals do not have any budget either. The government pays the salary for the staff, but you even cannot find a syringe at those hospitals. Patients have to buy everything from the drugstores.
Furthermore, many people simply cannot access Covid hospitals, even in the provinces where they exist, given that many live in remote areas and cannot afford transport to provincial centres, as a resident of Jaghatu district of Ghazni, Khatira Hedayat, explained:
A month ago, three members of my family got sick. They had symptoms of Covid-19, like fever, headache, coughing and a sore throat. There is only one clinic in our area, which doesn’t provide enough health services, so how can they take care of patients with critical conditions? We had to take my family members to Ghazni city, but there, also, the hospital doesn’t provide good services. We had to see private doctors and buy some medicine. Many people live in remote villages in districts of Ghazni and when they get sick, particularly if they are infected with Covid-19, financially, it’s difficult for them to go to the city for treatment.
Yet even without people pouring in from remote areas, hospitals are still overwhelmed. In Parwan, between 1,200 to 1,300 people are being referred daily to the only public hospital in the province, Hasht-e Sobh daily reported. According to the hospital’s director, Abdul Qasim Sangin, they only have the capacity to treat 300 to 400 patients per day. Paktia’s Covid-19 clinic is also buckling beneath the burden of so many daily referrals. Dr Khaled, who works there, told AAN on 1 March:
Because the Covid-19 hospital in [the neighbouring province of] Paktika is closed, patients come to Paktia for treatment. We don’t have enough capacity. We’ve asked the MoPH to send us Covid-19 diagnosing kits, but they’ve not sent them yet. We have two Covid-19 labs, but we’re faced with a shortage of kits. We don’t have enough supplies and medicine.
Given the difficult working conditions, patchy salary payments and many other issues (such as the ban on secondary education for girls), it is no surprise that the health system is losing professionals. Dr Yusufzai of the Afghanistan Medical Council pointed to this as a serious problem facing the Afghan health system since the Taleban takeover:
Our specialists and cadres have left the country. There are others leaving these days. If they cannot go to European countries, they can get visas and go to Pakistan and Iran. Every day I see hundreds of people at the gates of Pakistan and Iran embassies in Kabul. They get visas and leave the country.
Pervasive, widespread poverty has limited the public’s awareness of Covid-19 and its readiness to take precautions. Many Afghans have simply been preoccupied with very real daily difficulties, without the extra burden of having to wear a mask or keep their distance from others, as AAN reported in 2021 (see for example here and here). Women’s access to health has been particularly hampered by Taleban restrictions, although for many women, especially those living in rural areas, problems with access have just continued, before and after the fall of the Republic, because of poverty, cultural norms and previously, insecurity (see this 2021 special report).
The public health system under the Republic was already underfunded (see this AAN report). Many provinces only had basic health services. The system was not free as the law stipulated: many personnel charged fees for (scarce) medication, often sending patients to buy it from private pharmacies linked to or directly owned by them. The same was the case with clinics: doctors working in public hospitals that lacked resources used to refer patients to their own (better-equipped) private clinics.
Omicron does appear to be less serious than earlier variants with relatively lower mortality and hospitalisation rates, and while the vaccination rate in Afghanistan is low, the fact that many people have been infected previously will also give some protection.[6] Afghans reported to us that people generally had become less concerned about Covid, treating it as an ‘ordinary disease’ and were therefore taking fewer precautions to limit infections or get treatment. “Even if people have signs and symptoms, they just take medicine such as painkillers, but they don’t go to any clinic or hospital,” Abdullah said. He said people were more concerned about poverty. Muhammad Taqi from Mazar told AAN that people with symptoms did not bother going to hospital to be tested:
They only buy medicine from pharmacies. People don’t take Covid-19 seriously. They don’t maintain social distancing. They don’t wear masks either. They’re not afraid of being infected with Covid-19 and consider it an ordinary disease.
Similar sentiments came from residents of Kabul, Khost, Gardez and from Badakhshan, where Matiullah from Baharak district said:
I think a lot of people have already had Covid-19. Many people here have had a cough, a sore throat and fever, but they see private doctors and take some medicine. They don’t take Covid-19 seriously. They don’t wear masks. The Covid-19 hospital is not active anymore to test people if they have Covid-19 and provide them treatment.
The particular risk from the Omicron variant of ‘Long Covid’, when symptoms last longer than three months, is not yet clear, given its relatively recent emergence.
Conclusion
With Afghans struggling with a whole host of problems, given how the breakdown of the economy has exacerbated the already widespread poverty, it is not surprising that there has been less public attention to the still ongoing Covid pandemic. The lower risk to patients of the Omicron variant may also be playing a part in this. However, the Taleban administration’s response to the most recent wave has been unsystematic, at times even seemingly playing down its scope, with the slow provision of up-to-date, detailed information especially glaring. They are also lagging in reacting to a countrywide measles outbreak (more about this in a forthcoming AAN report).
The was a glimmer of hope in the qualified praise by UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, in her 2 March 2022 briefing to the Security Council in New York for “progress that we have been making with the de facto authorities on expanding the polio programme.” Cooperation on anti-Covid vaccination also indicates that the Taleban are capable of reacting to public health needs, but in other areas, there is still much that needs to be better.
The weak response to the fourth wave of Covid is also symptomatic of a much wider health crisis in Afghanistan, with women, in particular, facing particular problems since the Taleban cracked down on their ability to move freely including to health facilities. The suspension of foreign aid has had a devastating impact on the country’s already ailing health system, leaving fewer hospitals and clinics open. Those still running often lack the necessary medical supplies or equipment to deal with the pandemic or money to pay staff. With qualified medics fleeing the country, the outlook for the health sector is bleak. Despite efforts by NGOs and international agencies to provide stopgap help to a handful of hospitals around the country, Afghanistan’s healthcare needs are vast and immediate and will not end with the waning of this latest wave of Covid-19.
Edited by Emilie Jelinek and Kate Clark
[1] A doctor at the Bamyan hospital told AAN, “Every day around 20 people are tested. If we were to test everyone, 70 per cent would probably be positive on Covid-19.” He said all 23 patients who had tested positive since 5 February, including 15 women had had to be hospitalised. At a Covid-19 centre in Paktia, a doctor told AAN, “We had 20 patients today, ten of whom were hospitalized in our emergency ward. This means Covid-19 cases are on the rise and we are already experiencing the new wave.” In Mazar-e Sharif, resident Muhammad Taqi said that at the beginning of March, “around two weeks ago, many people got sick. Everyone I saw told me that all his family members were sick. They had sore throat and cold. It is not clear if they were infected with corona.”
[2] According to his official bio on the MoPH website, Dr Ebad reportedly holds degrees from medical faculties in Jalalabad and Islamabad.
[3] The ministry has not responded to AAN’s queries, either via phone or messenger.
[4] Data received by AAN via the MoPH’s Whatsapp group under the Islamic Republic just a few days before the Taleban takeover shows that a total of 738,599 samples had been tested since the start of the pandemic.
[5] Figures were higher in the initial phase of the virus ( see this AAN report), with around 400 per day; the figure was at 290 per day during the second wave at its highest (on 24 November 2020) and during the third wave 2,203cases per day (on 17 June 2021,as per AAN’s previous reports on Covid-19 here and here).
[6] See research from Imperial College London, published on 17 March 2022, here: “After adjusting for a number of factors, the risk of hospital admission for Omicron cases was found to be less than half (59% lower) compared to the risk for Delta cases. The risk of dying was 69% lower for those with Omicron compared to those with Delta infections.” Vaccination, the research found, lowered the risk greatly, as did having previously been infected: “Having had COVID-19 previously also offered some protection, likely due to the immunity from a past infection: the risk of hospital admission was 45% lower for unvaccinated cases who had had a known past infection, compared to unvaccinated cases for whom the infection was their first.”
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This article was last updated on 19 Apr 2022
The Fourth Wave of Covid-19 Hits Afghanistan: “According to Sharia keeping yourself healthy is a must”
China’s willingness to partner with the Taliban undermines American efforts to influence the extremist group’s behavior through pressure campaigns and sanctions.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, in Kabul, Mar. 24, 2022. Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan“China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in September 2021, shortly after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan. Late last month, China reciprocated this enthusiasm by hosting members of the Taliban in addition to the foreign ministers from Afghanistan’s neighbors to discuss the Taliban-led country’s economic development and security.Beijing’s courtship of the Taliban only adds to instability in the region, challenging the U.S. and its allies to find new ways to deal with the combined threat.A week prior to the foreign ministers’ meeting, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, stopped by Kabul for discussions with acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. Conversations reportedly focused on improving Afghanistan’s mining sector as well as Afghanistan’s role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Wang is the most senior Chinese official to visit since the Taliban seized control of the country. His arrival in Kabul came one day after the Taliban faced robust international criticism for reversing its earlier pledge to allow secondary schooling for girls.China’s burgeoning relationship with the Taliban should come as no surprise, as improving ties has been a public goal of Beijing even prior to the U.S. withdrawal. In August 2021, after the fall of Kabul, China issued a statement saying it “respects the right of the Afghan people to independently determine their own destiny” and will develop “friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan.” Although China hasn’t yet formally recognized the Taliban, China’s rhetoric and continuing engagement suggest official recognition may not be far off. Beijing is pursuing two main objectives through its outreach to the Taliban. The first is assurance from the Taliban that they will mitigate threats posed by extremist groups that operate close to China’s borders. In particular, Beijing wants the Taliban to stop the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which supports Uyghur separatism, from expanding and potentially carrying out attack targeting Chinese interests in the region.Second, Beijing wants to protect the investments it has already made in Afghanistan and plans to make through programs like the BRI. Proposals by Chinese companies to extract and develop Afghanistan’s copper and oil deposits have been on hold for more than a decade due to political instability. With the United States gone, China hopes the Taliban can stabilize the country enough to resume these projects.China’s willingness to partner with the Taliban undermines American efforts to influence the extremist group’s behavior through pressure campaigns and sanctions. Beijing has directly lobbied on Kabul’s behalf, demanding that Washington return Afghanistan’s frozen assets, a step that would only weaken U.S. leverage. At the aforementioned foreign ministers meeting, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s statement called for more aid for Afghanistan and made no mention of the Taliban’s human rights record.Although Washington cannot stop China from working with the group, the United States and likeminded partners can take steps to mitigate China’s growing influence in Afghanistan.Specifically, Washington should seek New Delhi’s guidance in leading multilateral diplomacy, and developing political alternatives for Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan’s institutions are weak and threatened by the Taliban, Washington should follow New Delhi’s lead and support civil society organizations, businesses, and media alternatives to the Taliban both within Afghanistan and in the diasporic community.
To be sure, India has historically been reluctant to serve as the balancing power to China that Washington seeks in South Asia. Yet the Biden administration should understand India’s national interest in preventing regional dominance by Pakistan and China. A hostile Afghanistan supported by Pakistan and China would diminish India’s positive regional influence and further place New Delhi at the mercy of its rivals. China’s outreach to the Taliban also reaffirms the necessity for future conversations about mitigating Chinese influence in the broader Indo-Pacific as part of continuing dialogue among Australia, India, Japan, and America, also known as the Quad.
The Biden administration should also consider listing the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In 2002, then-President George W. Bush listed the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity (SDGT) to limit its access to the U.S. financial system, but the Taliban never appeared on the State Department’s FTO list. An FTO would be a stronger designation as it institutes a visa ban, requires U.S. banks to block the assets of the organization, and establishes criminal prohibitions on any U.S. person who provides the FTO with material support. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, Republicans in Congress introduced a bill arguing that the Taliban fit the criteria of an FTO and therefore warrant inclusion on the FTO list.
Yet the Biden administration has so far refused to add the Taliban to the list, likely fearing that such a step would undermine talks between Washington and Kabul. Given the Taliban’s continued rejection of international calls for reform, however, the White House should reconsider the value of talks.
Recent meetings between representatives from Beijing and Kabul threaten to subvert American interests for peace and stability in Asia. China’s actions undermine U.S. leverage and further legitimize the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan.
China’s Embrace of the Taliban Complicates US Afghanistan Strategy
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
