A hundred years ago, tribes led by local mullahs in the area around the town of Khost in southeastern Afghanistan rose up against King Amanullah and his modernisation programme. These events became known as the ‘Khost’ or ‘Mangal’ Rebellion, named after the region where it erupted and the Pashtun tribe that was first to revolt. At one point, the rebels proclaimed their own amir. Twice, they came close to threatening Afghanistan’s capital. Amanullah’s government mobilised lashkars – traditional irregular groups of armed men – among other Pashtun tribes and ethnic groups. By the end of 1924, Amanullah’s forces were finally able to suppress the rebellion: its mullah leaders were publicly executed in May 1925, while the rebel pretender to the throne managed to flee. On its centenary, this themed report brings together two reports on the Khost Rebellion. The first, by AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, looks at the events of the revolt and the interpretations given to it by historians. The second, by guest author German historian David X Noack, focuses on the role of Britain and Germany during the revolt, based on newly tapped archival sources.
Illustration: Payne, W. H. Letts’s bird’s eye view of the approaches to India. [London: Letts, Son & Co. 19–?], 1900, Map. Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/2006636637/You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.
The 1920s represent a momentous period in the history of Afghanistan. For long decades, the country had been shut to both major internal socio-economic developments and the outside world. This had come as a consequence of the competition between the Russian and British empires, as well as an internal status quo enforced by Afghan monarchs dependent on subsidies from and peaceful relations with the colonial powers. The scenario was suddenly altered by the ascent to power of a group of more dynamic policymakers centred around the figure of Amir Amanullah, from whose reign (1919-29) this period came to be known as the Amani era.
This period was marked by increased government attempts at radically transforming the country and by the reactions against its project. In more recent times, Amanullah has been identified with the struggle for both national independence (by Afghan governments and rebels of all leanings) and modernisation (by reformist-minded Afghans from liberals to leftists).
However, if some features of the Amani era have, in due time, turned into widely-referenced symbols in Afghan politics, the relevance of this decade’s events to an understanding of the more recent vicissitudes experienced by Afghanistan has never been appreciated enough. This may be due to the fact that it is separated from the political upheavals and conflicts that have shaken the country since the mid-1970s by forty years of comparative stability – largely coinciding with Zaher Shah’s reign (1933-1973). Those forty years have often been portrayed as a ‘golden age’ of peace and prosperity under the cloak of a timeless ‘tradition’ by those, Afghans and foreigners, keen to point to a widely acceptable model to which the country could return. Under the pacified surface, however, the tensions and fault lines that first emerged during the Amani decade never disappeared completely.
During the past five, more recent, decades of turmoil, references to the Amani era have usually been limited to assessing contemporary forces at play in Afghanistan’s political arena and then identifying them with the two ‘camps’ that first emerged in the 1920s – secular reformists vs religious fundamentalists. However, besides the clash between secular and religious leaderships and the competition between state law and sharia, there are other relevant aspects from that era which deserve attention.
During Amanullah’s reign and in its aftermath, issues came to the fore which were to prove central for any subsequent Afghan government. These included: the challenges of developing and funding an efficient state machinery and acquiring a monopoly on violence; the need for foreign economic support and the quest for political independence; the risk that centralisation turns into the imposition of political hegemony by one group over others and that local elites, in turn, defend their power and prerogatives in the name of resisting state oppression. Moreover, Afghanistan’s international relations, which were boosted by Amanullah after he wrested control of the country’s foreign affairs from the British in 1919, started then to become an important arena for the Afghan government to manoeuvre politically and seek economic opportunities. In these years, Afghanistan’s diplomatic relations became a sensitive, multi-polar international matter, calling for the attention and involvement of a greater number of nations across the world.
These issues, recurring nowadays under different circumstances, make it all the more important to look back at all the episodes of that decade, not just the most known and debated. As part of its attempts to understand today’s Afghanistan, AAN has always been keen to return to past events and assess their lasting significance. Likewise, we are happy now to present these two contributions, brought together in a themed report, on a lesser known but pivotal episode of Afghan history on the occasion of its centenary: the Khost rebellion of 1924, which was the first major challenge faced by the reformist project of an Afghan government.
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.
Before the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel and Israel’s continuing war in Gaza, the relationship of the Islamic Emirate towards Hamas could be described as cordial, but not actively supportive. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig (with input from Roxanna Shapour) wanted to look at whether this standpoint has changed since those attacks. By combing through official statements and Afghan media reporting, he has explored the dynamics at play and the context. His report starts with one of the key events of this year, the assassination, likely by Israel, of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in neighbouring Iran, on 31 July 2024 when he came to Tehran to see the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.Acting Deputy Prime Minister, Abdul Ghani Baradar, and Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, meet Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on the sidelines of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, 23 May 2024
The Emirate on the assassination of Haniyeh
Kabul was among the few capitals to issue an official statement regarding the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. The statement was released in the name of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), rather than from a specific entity or official, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or IEA spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid. This may suggest that the supreme leader, Amir al-Mu’minin Hibatullah Akhundzada, likely approved it. Various Emirate-controlled media outlets, including the English-language government newspaper The Kabul Times, published the 267-word official statement on 1 August 2024 which expressed the government’s profound sorrow at his ‘martyrdom’.
Martyr Ismail Haniyeh was a distinguished, wise, and resolute Palestinian leader who made significant sacrifices in his successful struggle and Jihad, fulfilling his commitment in this manner. For a Muslim and a fighter, martyrdom represents a tremendous victory; he has succeeded and left behind a legacy of resistance, selflessness, patience, perseverance, struggle, and practical sacrifice for his followers.
The IEA statement is full of catchphrases central to the Taleban’s Islamist ideology, such as ‘mujahed’, ‘jihad’ and “martyrdom”: The “martyrdom of this great figure,” it said, was a “significant loss to the Islamic Ummah and the Jihadist cause” and “defending Hamas and the sacred land of Palestine” was “both an Islamic and humanitarian duty.”
The IEA strongly condemned the “atrocities, bombings, and genocide perpetrated by the Zionist regime against Palestinian Muslims as egregious crimes against humanity.” It makes no mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas during its 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. It also glosses over the presence of Christian Palestinians (now few in number in Gaza, but more, proportionally, in the West Bank, Israel and the diaspora), referring to the Palestinian people as Muslim only.[1] It called for action, although notably made no promises as to what Afghanistan could do:
We reiterate our call to influential parties, particularly within the Islamic and Arab world, to intensify their efforts to thwart the Zionist invasion and its associated atrocities. The ongoing crimes of the Zionist regime will undoubtedly lead to further instability in the region and its countries, with the resulting disturbances and adverse outcomes falling squarely on the shoulders of the invading Zionists and their supporters.
The statement did not explicitly call for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Whether this – and its avoidance of using the term ‘Israel’ in most statements indicates a tacit denial of Israel’s right to exist is difficult to answer.[2]
The Emirate’s response to Haniyeh’s assassination and several analyses by various media and median platforms that did not sound fully convincing or even biased led the author to want to delve deeper into its relationship with Hamas and its stance on Palestine/Israel in general. The analysis begins with the Emirate’s response to the 7 October attacks before looking back at relationship with Hamas before then. It then scrutinises how that relationship has developed.
The Emirate on Hamas/Palestine/Israel until October 2023 attacks
Until October 2023, little information was available regarding the relationship between the IEA and Hamas, even in specialised media outlets. However, shortly after Hamas attacked Israel, Afghan-born journalist Akram Dawi, working for the Voice of America (VoA), highlighted the “conspicuous silence of the senior Emirate official on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza” in an analytical article (see here). He noted that neither the Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, nor acting Prime Minister, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, nor his three deputies had commented on the event, which he said was “in sharp contrast to the daily sharp comments from neighbouring Iran.” Dawi referenced (without direct quotes or cited sources) a statement posted on the social media platform X by the IEA’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, on 14 October, condemning “Israel’s siege of Gaza” and calling “on the international community to address the crisis.”
The IEA’s position on the issue, quoted in the Dawi article, was most pointedly summed up by acting Interior Minister Serajuddin Haqqani: “We do not interfere in others’ internal affairs, but we have faith-based sympathy with Muslims.” In short, the Emirate’s official messages were largely in line with “expressions of solidarity and support for the Palestinians” made by other Muslim countries, as Michael Kugelman of the US think tank Wilson Center told Dawi.
On key aspects, however, the statement clearly differs from the stated positions of other countries in the region, as pointed out by Shujauddin Amini, an author for the US-based Afghan news website Hasht-e Subh: “The Taliban did not call Hamas a liberation movement like the Turkish authorities, nor did they call Israel a usurper and infanticidal regime like the Islamic Republic of Iran. They also did not support the position of Saudi Arabia and Egypt in talking about the necessity of creating two countries in the pre-1967 borders.”
Sporadic contacts, no official relations
The Emirate does have official diplomatic relations with Hamas; their interactions, however, have mostly been limited to sporadic contacts and exchanges of greetings.
In August 2021, after the Emirate was re-established for the second time, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called its deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani, also known as Baradar, to congratulate him on the “end of the US occupation,” as reported by the Turkish news agency Anadolu, citing the Hamas website. Haniyeh said the end of the United States occupation in Afghanistan was “a prelude to the demise of all occupation forces, foremost of which is the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Baradar, for his part, thanked Haniyeh for his call and expressed his hope for a Palestinian “victory and empowerment as a result of their resistance.” He also conveyed his wishes for the “oppressed” Palestinian people to defeat their occupiers with God’s help and through their resistance. The Emirate also asserted that it was only able to defeat the USA “with God’s help,” see for example this speech by acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. He called on all countries to support the Palestinian cause.
A few weeks later, in early October 2021, Haniyeh called the Emirate again, as Anadolu reported. This time, he spoke to Muttaqi. He again praised the Taleban’s victory over the US, but also urged Muttaqi to keep the topic of Palestine present in his speeches, “especially Jerusalem and the ongoing [Israeli] violations there.” Haniyeh also expressed his hope that the Emirate “could have a role in supporting their brothers in Palestine to liberate Jerusalem,” according to the report. Anadolu reported that Haniyah “expressed his pride in the struggle of the Palestinian people and their steadfastness in Jerusalem,” but there was no indication of any promise of concrete support. This pointed to a cautious approach on the part of the Emirate to steer clear of a conflict far away from home and on the heels of their own victory in Afghanistan.
There have also been a few meetings between Emirate and Hamas officials. These were likely not the first such encounters and did not represent dedicated bilateral discussions, but were rather meetings as part of broader diplomatic or religious events. For example, in early October 2022, spokesman Mujahid met Hamas representatives, including Haniyeh, during a conference of Islamic scholars in Istanbul and reportedly discussed regional issues, including developments in Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to the US-based website The Long War Journal (LWJ). In April 2023, the IEA envoy to Qatar and Haniyeh met at an Iftar celebration in Doha, according to a report by the Indian think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
While the LWJ described such meetings as “an attempt by the Taliban to expand ties with Hamas,” the initiative seems to have come from Hamas, perhaps in an effort to secure (at least verbal) support. Mujahid remained non-committal during his meeting with Haniyeh and referred to Palestine merely as an “issue for the entire Muslim Ummah,” according to a report published by the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI). No concrete agreements or even arrangements were reported after this or similar meetings. In their May 2024 report published by ORF (cited above), Kabir Taneja and Shivam Shekhawat wrote:
The Taliban has not shown any proactive support for Hamas and has almost never mentioned them by name. … The Taliban has not been vociferous on the Gaza war. On the contrary, it has aired its views and made its position clear, but tried not to wade into either being overtly [in the same camp as the] pro-Iran or pro-Arab states.
While not all meetings between the Emirate and Hamas have been public, or written about, what is certain is that there are bound to have been numerous occasions for them to rub shoulders. Former Hamas representative in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, Mustafa Yusuf Al-Lidawi, is quoted by MEMRI as saying:
It is not unreasonable [to assume] that Afghanistan will become a new base of operations for Hamas… whose gains will multiply as a result the Taliban rule there. For Hamas met with the Taliban leadership for years during their joint stay in Qatar, and formed close ties with it that can be characterized as natural and expected. Hamas will also gain credit with its allies, its affiliates, those who benefit from its ties [with other elements] and those who seek to expand the resistance axis. Iran, [for example], has an interest in ensuring its security and the security of its border with Afghanistan, and Hamas can play a significant role in this context and gain considerable achievements that will count in its favor and burnish its reputation.
There is no confirmation that this assertion is correct from any other source, and – according to this author’s reading – the meetings were not particularly substantive at all.
Acting Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar meets with Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Doha, Qatar.
Photo: Globe Eye News via X, undated.
Emirate reactions after 7 October 2023
As elsewhere, interest in the Israel/Palestine conflict increased in Afghanistan after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack and the all-out war Israel launched in response in Gaza and later southern Lebanon. In line with its thus far cautious attitude, the Emirate made no official statement at all about the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 – neither condemning nor approving it. Given the number of casualties on the Palestinian side and Israel’s concrete actions in Gaza and the West Bank, however, they, like others, also toughened their tone in official statements, however, without resorting to threats or considering entering the war.
In its various statements, the IEA and its officials have condemned specific Israeli attacks, which they deem “criminal.” For example, in October 2023, the Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” (see this post on X) the bombing of a hospital in Gaza “by Zionist forces,” calling it “barbaric and a crime against humanity.”[3] It is probably using the term ‘genocide’ for the first time in this context: “We stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, and with countries and organizations calling for the immediate end of the ongoing genocide and bringing its perpetrators to justice.” Two months later, in December 2023, the foreign ministry condemned the bombing of the same hospital in almost identical terms and voiced concern about a regional conflict “spiraling out of control” and declared its “solidarity” with “the Palestinians.” The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, also weighed in to condemn the United States’ veto of the Gaza ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council on 8 December 2023:
IEA-MoFA deems position of the United States regretable and condemnable vetoing UNSC resolution & international consensus calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, thus openly making the United States complicit in the ongoing atrocities in Gaza (see his thread posted on X).
Acting Foreign Minister Muttaqi, speaking at what was billed as a High-Level Political Consultative Conference on Palestine in Tehran on 23 December 2023, introduced another element into the Emirate’s position, namely the parallels it sees in the West’s behaviour in Gaza and, before 2021, in Afghanistan (see the text of his speech on the IEA Ministry of Foreign Affairs website). He criticised the West’s “double standards” and spoke of a “paradox” that:
[I]n a world where countries are sanctioned under the pretext of the slightest violation of human rights or on political grounds through the instrumentalization of the human rights paradigm … at the same time, the unremitting genocide of a nation by a regime that is breaching all human standards in its war is not even dealt with the slightest objection!” He added that it was “grotesque to see my country, Afghanistan, being sanctioned by instrumentalizing of human rights – when we are taking steps towards security and stability following more than four decades of foreign invasions!
Indeed, Muttaqi questioned whether “the current world order with all these contradictions, founded following World War ll, could still “address the needs of people in the 21st century.”
However, he still did not go beyond condemning “the ongoing atrocities of the Zionist regime in the Gaza Strip and occupied Palestine,” describing “the struggle of the Palestinian nation as legitimate and legal based on the texts of Sharia and international law” and calling again on “the influential Islamic countries” to “play a more effective role in ending the murder of innocent Palestinians by the Zionist regime and holding the Zionist regime accountable.” He called for a “permanent and just” solution to the Palestine issue “that would ensure the Palestinian people have a state established in the historic land of Palestine.”[4] This, again, was neither a demand for a two-state solution nor that the whole land should be for Palestinians, nor that Israel should cease to exist.
Mutaqqi went on to stress that “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan stands ready, within its capabilities, to accompany the Islamic world in this humanitarian and Islamic issue.” Again, this statement does not include any suggestion of action, such as a threat against Israel or of the Emirate being willing to get directly involved.
The following year, on 2 April 2024, the IEA Foreign Ministry issued a statement slamming Israel’s airstrike on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus, Syria. It condemned the strike “in the strongest possible terms,” calling it a “blatant violation of diplomatic norms and a provoking attempt towards escalating insecurity in the region.”
Following Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel on 14 April, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi termed the action as Iran’s “legitimate right to self-defense” and accused Israel of diverting attention from the “genocide” it was committing against the people of the Gaza Strip by violating other countries’ airspace and thereby destabilising the region. He also reiterated the IEA’s call for “all influential world & regional states to expedite their efforts of halting the crimes of the Zionist regime in order to prevent further escalation of the crisis,” (see his post on X).
Similarly, the Eid al-Fitr message of the IEA’s Amir al-Mu’minin, published by Bakhtar News on 6 April, used the same language, albeit in more general terms:
The Islamic Emirate’s foundation lies on the principles of Islam and the well-being of the Muslim community. We share common faith, beliefs, and convictions, binding us together. In times of joy and sorrow, we stand united, supporting each other with equal participation and collaboration, leveraging our abilities to the best of our capabilities.
This is followed by a two-paragraph section titled “Palestine”:
The issue of Palestine is indeed a concern for the entire Islamic Ummah. We stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza against Israeli aggression and occupation. It is incumbent upon the Islamic Ummah to address the plight of the oppressed Palestinians and to collectively condemn any form of injustice or aggression perpetrated by Israeli invaders. We must mobilize our resources and support Palestine in every possible way to alleviate their suffering and work towards a just resolution of the conflict.
It is regrettable that the international community often falls short in effectively addressing the injustices faced by the people of Palestine. Despite claims of upholding human rights, there is a lack of meaningful action to curb the ongoing oppression and to hold perpetrators of these injustices accountable. This is indeed a source of profound sorrow, and it underscores the urgent need for all responsible parties to fulfill their obligations in addressing this grievous situation.
Individual IEA officials have expressed their support for Hamas, albeit on their personal social media accounts. For example, acting Deputy Education Minister, Mawlawi Sebghatullah Wasil, posted a video message on 8 October 2023, praising Hamas for “their recent operations in Gaza” and “ability to maintain the secrecy of their operations, their preparation, their speed of execution and their skill in carrying out their attacks.” (His statement was cited in a 9 October 2023 post on X by Afghan Analyst). Wasil reportedly stressed that Afghan youth and the ulema were in solidarity with Palestine and expressed their sincere support. He further stated, according to Afghan Analyst, that Hamas’ attack had strengthened the belief that the only viable way against oppression was jihad and resistance.
Similarly, acting Deputy Foreign Minister and the Taleban’s former chief negotiator in Doha, Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanikzai, posted a floral pattern and the word ‘Palestine’ laid into the borders of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza on X on 22 October 2023, accompanied by the comment (see here):
The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. #FreePalaestin [sic]
The Emirate’s acting Deputy Prime Minister, Muhammad Abdul Kabir, had several meetings with various Iranian officials, including Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, where, according to Tehran-based news outlet Khabar Online, on 2 August 2024, he said:
Afghanistan, together with the Islamic Republic of Iran, supports the oppressed people of Gaza, and perhaps if we had a common border with the occupying regime [Israel], we would have gone to war with the Zionists to defend the oppressed people of Gaza.
A handful of Iranian sources picked up this quote, but it was not widely reported by other news outlets, including the Afghan media. For the most part, media coverage of Kabir’s visit focused on strengthening Kabul-Tehran relations, Afghan refugees in Iran and counter-narcotics (see, for example, Omid Radio, ToloNews and the Iranian Students’ News Agency, ISNA). AAN was unable to find any IEA or other sources either confirming or denying Kabir’s comments.
While encounters between IEA officials and Hamas have continued since 7 October 2023, there has been no indication that these signify a strengthening of contacts. Both sides’ representatives met again in May 2024 when attending the funeral of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, who had died in a helicopter crash (see India Today). On the IEA side, acting Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and confidant of the late Taleban founder, Mullah Muhammad Omar, Mullah Baradar, attended. Photos of this event were distributed by deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hafiz Zia Amin (see his post on X). Importantly, it does not appear that the IEA delegation had travelled to Tehran specifically in order “to meet the Emir of Qatar and the head of the Hamas Political Bureau,” as reported by the US think tank Jamestown).
The Emirate’s final encounter with Haniyeh came when acting Deputy Prime Minister, Mawlawi Abdul Kabir attended the inauguration of Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on 30 July (see al-Emarah). From there, Kabir went to Doha to attend Ismail Haniyeh’s funeral on 4 August, accompanied by Muhammad Na’im Wardak, the charge d’affaires of the Emirate’s embassy in Qatar (see ToloNews). There, he “met with former Hamas chief Khalid Mashal, deputy chief of Hamas Musa Abu Marzooq and Ismail Haniyeh’s son Abdul Salam Ismail Haniyeh, to express condolences,” as Afghan broadcaster Ariana reported.
Possible fake report about Taleban fighters in Palestine
There have been reports of a more active role for the Emirate in supporting Hamas/the Palestinians. They caused a stir, but ultimately proved dubious. On the very day of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, a post on social media caused a stir. An X-account calling itself “Taliban Public Relations Department,” which has since been suspended, claimed that the IEA foreign ministry had contacted Iran, Iraq and Jordan to obtain transit permits for Taleban fighters to travel to Palestine to support Hamas. VOA reported the tweet on 9 October 2023:
This evening, the foreign office contacted his counterparts in #Iran, Iraq and Jordan, asking for permission for our men to cross their sovereign territory on their way to the holy land. We are preparing and hoping for the good news from our neighbors.#Gaza #Israel #Palestinepic.twitter.com/ZuHTMeQc7q — #FreePalestine 🇵🇸 (@TalibanPRD__) October 7, 2023
The author could not find this tweet and the account has been inactive since 14 October 2023. Moreover, an institution under such a name does not exist in the IEA system; rather, there are public relations departments in various ministries. There are, however, several other accounts on X with almost the same name, such as “Taliban Public Relations Department, Commenitary” (sic) under the handle @TalibanPRD1 (see here), which on 12 October 2023, claimed that an Afghan “mujahid” from Khost had been a “martyred” in Palestine (see here ).
The Emirate was quick to deny that it was trying to facilitate getting it fighters to get to Palestine to support Hamas; the same VOA report quoted the head of the IEA political office in Doha, Mohammad Suhail Shaheen, as saying the “information” was “inaccurate” and spokesman Mujahid reiterating that the IEA’s position had not changed.
It appears that, in October 2023, the IEA had blocked any member from trying to get to Palestine: an order instructed the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) to tell its staff to prevent Taleban fighters leaving Afghanistan for ‘jihad’ in Palestine. The order stressed that the “ideological mujahedin” must remain in Afghanistan and that those who disregarded this order would be punished (see a copy of the letter posted by Afghan Analyst on X).
Also in October, acting Interior Minister Serajuddin Haqqani stressed that: “The Taliban, as the IEA, are prohibited from engaging in Jihad outside Afghanistan,” said Afghan Analyst in a 15 October 2023 post on X. He also went on to note that there were discussions on “internal WhatsApp groups … about supporting about assisting individuals with [obtaining] passports for attending Jihad in Palestine.”
“Numerous pro-Taliban accounts,” Afghan Analyst reported more recently, on 20 March 2024, had claimed that a certain “Yasir, also known as Abu Yosuf al-Afghani,” was killed on 18 March during fighting with Israeli forces in Rafa. According to these sources, Yasir had travelled from Afghanistan to Syria in April 2023 and joined the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir ul-Sham there. In January 2024, he allegedly moved to Palestine “with other Arabs” and took part in fighting there (see the post on X). Afghan Analyst, however, casts doubt on the veracity of this claim by pointing out that his death had already been reported months earlier. He quoted a post by Afghan journalist Wais Barakzai highlighting “recent propaganda efforts by pro-Taliban accounts, which involve misinformation and disinformation.” In his post, Barakzai identified the individual shown in photos posted by various social media accounts and that he was a person “from Syria and was killed several months ago, was also introduced as a Taliban” (see his post on X.
“The authenticity of this claim [is] not known,” said Director of Research at The Khorasan Diary, Riccardo Valle, which focuses on the “greater ‘Khorasan’ region” (broadly speaking, a region that encompasses West and Central Asia) (see his post on X). Valle stressed that the “only source of information has been Afghan Taliban and TTP accounts, it could be a PR move. However, infiltrations [of individual Afghans into Gaza] can be possible.”
It remains unclear whether the episode happened as reported, or even at all. Presumably, Israeli sources would have reported such an incident prominently if there was any truth to it. An internet search yielded no results except a MEMRI report, which also referred only to the posts on X.
The ‘Yasir, also known as Abu Yosuf al-Afghani’ post could be the work of activists involved in – probably mostly private – psychological warfare operations by the Emirate’s opponents. They know that something like this would be picked up and quickly circulated, often without fact-checking, by those who believe the Emirate capable of anything. High-ranking politicians such as the Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Michael McCaul, certainly proved the point when he told VoA that he had seen ‘“indications that the Taliban want to come to ‘liberate Jerusalem,’ in their words, to ‘fight the Zionists.’”
Public sentiments in Afghanistan
It is difficult to glean real public sentiments regarding Palestine from Afghan media reports. It can, however, be assumed that Afghans feel a great deal of sympathy for Palestinians not only as fellow Muslims but also as people who have suffered decades of conflict and occupation. That the GDI appear to have put in place procedures to stop Afghans trying to go to Palestine suggests sentiments were strong enough to make some men at least talk about travelling to fight. The younger generation, regardless of their support for the Emirate or lack of, is likely very sympathetic to Palestinians, which could mirror public sentiments in neighbouring Pakistan. “Pakistani society almost universally feels solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. But that doesn’t rub off on Hamas. Very few people here show solidarity with them,” head of the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Pakistan, Birgit Lamm, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle:
In early August, the Emirate held a public rally to mourn Haniyeh’s death at Kabul’s Eidgah Mosque, where the IEA and Palestinian, but not Hamas flags, were displayed (see Afghan Analyst’s post on X). The rally attracted “hundreds” of participants who carried “banners denouncing the injustices perpetrated by the Israeli occupation and the repression faced by Palestine and Gaza,” according to reports in the pro-Emirate media (see, for example, this Hurriyat Radio post on X).
There were also earlier pro-Palestinian street demonstrations, for example, in Kabul one week after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s military response (see ToloNews).
It is difficult to determine how much of this was organised by the state and how much was a genuine expression of solidarity by the Afghan public. The Emirate certainly does not permit any public expression of opinion that diverges from their views.[5]
The Emirate does, however, allow rallies supportive of it, or its stances. For example, see a pro-IEA women’s gathering on 11 September 2021 in a Kabul university (see this New York Times report) or street protests in Khost against Pakistani cross-border attacks that killed Afghan civilians in April 2022 (see VoA).
Some IEA officials are more strident on social media than they would be in official statements. The Ministry of Higher Education’s Director of Publications, Information and Public Relations, Hafiz Ruhullah Rohani, for example wrote: “We, God willing, will come to the aid of our oppressed Palestinian brothers from the land of the graveyard of empires. It just takes some time,” in a post on his personal X account in early August (see quote and screenshot here):
Some “prominent Taliban propagandists,” ie not officials, have started a “Boycott Israeli Products” campaign on X, Afghan Analysts reported on 3 July (see this post on X). It is unclear if Israeli goods are even on the Afghan market, or whether such utterances represent online bravado or could translate into concrete action or even an indication that the IEA’s official, previously reserved position might be about to change.
Conclusion
Following Hamas leader Haniyeh’s assassination, various media and news platforms – both Afghan and international – discussed the relationship between the Taleban/Islamic Emirate and Hamas. Much of the analysis seemed to the author at least partially superficial, while some sounded biased, insinuating a much closer – and sinister – relationship then was the case in reality.
One could certainly argue, though, as MEMRI does, that the (sparse) Hamas-Emirate relations are inspired “by the shared position of jihadism” and by their experiences of “occupation.” When, in 2017, AAN guest authors, Anand Gopal and Alex Strick van Linschoten looked into how Taleban ideology had developed since the fall of the first Emirate, Hamas was one of the movements they compared it to, along with Ahrar al-Sham in Syria and al-Nahda in Tunisia, similar in how their “Islamic Nationalism … was focused on the goal of ‘national liberation’.” Hamas has never been active in Afghanistan and the Taleban have shown little interest in becoming actively engaged in Gaza or the wider Middle East conflict, or indeed any country outside Afghanistan. Both groups are focussed on their own country, not interested in others’ affairs, except as it affects them. In an interview with al-Jazeera in August 2022, an IEA spokesman did not even seem to rule out diplomatic relations with Israel in principle since they have no [immediate] problems with Israel (quoted by MEMRI TV).
Given the geographical distance between Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine, intensive interaction between the two is unlikely. Historically, many volunteers from Arab countries, including some Palestinians, participated in the mujahidin’s fight against the Soviet occupation, a segment of which later became the Taleban. But no particularly close relationships emerged from this. Signs that this might be changing are hard to find beyond some individual online statements.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are some 40,000 Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank, 850 in the Gaza Strip, and 4,000 in Jerusalem (quoted by Anadolu Agency). The US Department of State’s ‘2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Israel, West Bank and Gaza also provides a figure of 138,000 living inside Israel. Even greater numbers live in the Palestinian diaspora.
↑2
We were only able to find one exception, in an Islamic Emirate statement posted on X by spokesman Mujahid dated 13 October 2024, where the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Israelis’ were used. States and individuals especially hostile to Israel typically do not name it, using such phrases as ‘Zionist entity’, instead.
↑3
The statement referred to an attack on the al-Ahli hospital, formerly the al-Mamadani. The cause of the explosion is actually contested, with some sources including Israel, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Canada saying they believe it was a result of a failed rocket launched from within Gaza by either the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) or Hamas (see, for example, The Guardian and Al-Jazeera). Other sources, such as Goldsmith University’s Forensic Architecture, assert that the blast was the result of “a munition fired from the direction of Israel” (see here). Several other organisations have since examined satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts, but so far have been unable to determine who was to blame for the attack on the hospital with certainly (see, for example, The New York Time’s ‘A Close Look at Some Key Evidence in the Gaza Hospital Blast’). The hospital was established by theAnglican Church’s Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1882 and is currently operated by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem (for more information on the hospital and its history see Barnett, Carlton Carter, Anglo-American Missionary Medicine in Gaza, 1882-1981, Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2021 available on the Wayback Machine here).
↑4
Muttaqi was not explicit about the geographic boundaries when he referred to “the historic land of Palestine.”
↑5
Shortly after taking power, on 19 September 2021, the IEA published an 11-point code of conduct for the media (see Reporter without Borders and UNAMA’s November 2024 report ‘Media Freedom in Afghanistan’), which stipulates that all reports “must be in an Islamic format and in accordance with Afghanistan’s tradition” and align with the “national interests.” The code includes the vaguely worded warning: “If there is any illegal action, it will be addressed” (see ToloNews). What precisely constitutes a contradiction of Islam and Afghan tradition, however, is left open to interpretation by the rulers. The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, issued on 21 August 2024, tasks the virtue and vice ministry’s muhtasiban (enforcers) “to ensure that those working for the press and news organisations” comply with these stipulations (see AAN’s basic translation). In September 2024, the IEA imposed additional restrictions on the media. According to a report by the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), they included prohibiting criticism of the IEA’s laws and policies, as well as banning the broadcast of live political shows. Media bosses were informed of the new guidelines in a meeting on 21 September, where they were told that the Emirate must first approve topics for political shows. Furthermore, they were told, that they could only interview guests from an approved list, which includes 64 individuals designated by the IEA (see the list of 64 individuals who have been approved by the IEA to be interviewed by the media in this Zamzam News tweet).
Birds of a Feather, in Ideology: What is the relationship between the Islamic Emirate and Hamas?
Taken too far, incoming US president’s pragmatic disengagement policy in Afghanistan could badly backfire.
Since Donald Trump’s re-election as United States president, there has been growing discussion about what his incoming administration’s policies towards Afghanistan might look like.
Many anticipate a tougher stance against the Taliban, but a closer look at Trump’s track record and statements on the issue indicates he is unlikely to make any drastic changes to the pragmatist and staunchly anti-intervention policies he pursued during his first term in power.
During his first term as president, Trump made his stance against protracted foreign engagements and especially the decades-long US presence in Afghanistan clear. He was the architect of the 2020 Doha Agreement between the US and the Taliban, which paved the way for the US withdrawal from the country and ultimately allowed the Taliban’s return to power.
The Doha Agreement was a major turning point in America’s Afghanistan strategy. Dissatisfied with the progress of his administration’s South Asia policy, frustrated by a perceived lack of accountability among military advisers and eager to prove to his voting base that he could indeed end one of America’s longest and most costly wars, Trump began to look for a fast way out of Afghanistan. And after all the traditional strategies failed to produce a workable exit plan, he entered into direct negotiations with the Taliban to end the conflict.
Advertisement
After his re-election, Trump is likely to stick to this business-minded approach to foreign policy, which remains popular with his base, and favour pragmatic deals over costly confrontations and military entanglements in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Taliban itself seems to believe the Trump presidency could be beneficial for its future prospects. For example, the Afghan government hopes the future Trump administration “will take realistic steps toward concrete progress in relations between the two countries and both nations will be able to open a new chapter of relations”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said in a post on X in November soon after Trump’s victory in the US election.
The Taliban’s optimism for future relations stems from its positive interactions with the first Trump administration. After all, the first Trump administration negotiated directly with the Taliban, started the process of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan and prepared the ground for its return to Kabul.
However, although he has been more open to a pragmatic collaboration with the Taliban than President Joe Biden and firmly against any direct military confrontation, Trump is unlikely to let the Taliban do as it likes with the country or give it everything it needs without extracting a price. If the Taliban fails to make progress in fulfilling the commitments it made as part of the Doha Agreement, for example, Trump would likely curtail US assistance or condition it on tangible progress in specific areas.
Advertisement
Trump has consistently argued for cutting back foreign aid as part of an “America First” approach, and he can also reduce US assistance to Afghanistan significantly without offering a reason or condition. He also would not hesitate to impose severe economic sanctions on the Taliban government if he concludes that it is harming American interests in one way or another.
US humanitarian aid amounting to about $40m a week since the Taliban takeover is an important lifeline to Afghanistan’s impoverished population. Any limitation or reduction in US aid would have significant consequences for its wellbeing and that of the fragile Afghan economy. Such a decision would deepen Afghanistan’s economic crisis and further erode progress in education, healthcare and food security.
Since Trump’s last term as president, global attention has moved away from Afghanistan. After the US withdrawal and with the beginning of globally consequential hot conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, the country became somewhat peripheral to Washington’s foreign policy agenda. As an “America First” president who will have to spend considerable time dealing with crises in the Middle East and Europe, Trump is highly unlikely to treat Afghanistan as anything other than a problem he already solved.
However, Trump’s isolationist tendencies in foreign policy coupled with the aid cuts and economic sanctions he may impose on the Taliban could easily result in the collapse of the Afghan economy and once again turn Afghanistan into an urgent problem for the US and its allies.
Advertisement
Afghanistan’s economic collapse could trigger a new migration crisis, significant regional instability and create fertile ground for extremist groups, such as the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province, to flourish.
While Trump’s noninterventionist stance appeals to an American audience wary of foreign intervention, the ripple effects of a weakened and further impoverished Afghanistan could present longer-term security challenges.
Such a scenario would also have severe consequences for the Afghan people – worsening economic hardship and causing a potential collapse of health services, renewed conflict and further isolation from the rest of the world.
Once Trump is back in the White House and trying to deliver on his “America First” agenda, Afghanistan is unlikely to be a priority in his mind. Nonetheless, the choices he makes regarding Afghanistan will have important consequences not only for the long-suffering Afghan people but also the entirety of the international community.
In short, in his second term, Trump will need to find the right balance between pragmatic disengagement and responsibilities of global leadership to be successful in his Afghanistan policy and ensure that his efforts to end one conflict do not create a worse one down the line.
Amin is a writer and analyst currently serving as a fellow at the Oxford Global Society think tank in Oxford, United Kingdom and the Brenthurst Foundation.
In Afghanistan, Trump will have to play a balancing game
An Afghan woman amongst ruins caused by ongoing conflict in the country.
Medical institutions were the last hope for Afghan girls and women seeking higher education since the Taliban banned schools and universities for women
“Why do you torture us every day? Just give us poison and end it all,” a heartbroken Afghan medical student told Taliban forces, expressing the despair of thousands of girls whose dreams of becoming healthcare professionals were shattered by the Taliban’s latest decree.
The hardline group has banned all female medical students from pursuing education, marking the closure of nursing and midwifery programs across Afghanistan, the last lifeline for girls seeking higher education in a country where women’s rights have been systematically eroded since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
The Taliban’s recent decree, issued directly by the group’s supreme leader, Hebatullah Akhundzada, has caused immediate devastation.
For the past three years, nursing and midwifery were the only remaining fields of study open to women after the Taliban banned girls from attending secondary schools and universities. The abrupt closure of these institutions has ignited widespread despair across Afghan society.
The ban comes a few months after the Taliban banned women’s voices and faces in public under so-called new vice and virtue laws.
Health Policy Watch spoke to several nursing students who expressed frustration and sadness.
‘Are we not human?’
“I was about to graduate. After the closure of universities, nursing institutes were our last hope. Now, they are closed too. I feel completely hopeless,” said Sumaya*, a nursing student in her final semester.
Hameeda*, a nursing student in Kabul, echoed the despair: “We don’t have the means to study abroad. We are asking the Taliban: ‘Are we not human? Don’t we have the right to education? God has made men and women equal in their rights.”
“I have turned homeless, wandering aimlessly,” one student said in a viral video. Her words, along with others like it, have echoed through Kabul and beyond as girls wearing full-body black veils, many in tears, left their classrooms for the final time, uncertain if they would ever return.
Fariba*, a mother from Kabul, received devastating news when her daughter, Parwana, called early one morning, sobbing uncontrollably.
“She never calls at this time,” Fariba, who once taught elementary education to girls, told Health Policy Watch. “It’s when she’s in class.”
Her daughter Sara* had been studying nursing after her dream of attending university to study computer science was dashed by the Taliban’s closure of higher education for girls.
“Now, we are left without hope,” Sara, 20, lamented. “Our dreams are shattered. We are being pushed into the darkness.”
Conservative estimates suggest that around 35,000 girls were enrolled in over 150 private and 10 public medical institutions offering diplomas in fields such as nursing, midwifery, dentistry, and laboratory sciences before the Taliban’s ban.
These programs were the last available option for young Afghan women who sought to contribute to their communities, particularly in healthcare.
The abrupt suspension has left students in shock. The administrator of one of the nursing institutes sent a message to all female students: “With a heavy heart, I must inform you that until further notice from the Islamic Emirate, you must not come to the institute for studies.”
Deepening health crisis
Training to be a nurse or midwife was the sole remaining career option for Afghan women after the Taliban takeover in 2021.
This move not only marks the end of the academic ambitions of girls and women, but also deepens the country’s already precarious healthcare crisis.
Afghanistan’s healthcare system was already under strain before the Taliban’s return to power, with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
In 2020, the country saw 620 women die for every 100,000 live births – a stark contrast to just 10 deaths in the UK, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Less than 60% of births were overseen by trained health personnel in 2019, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which estimates that Afghanistan requires an additional 18,000 skilled midwives to meet the needs of its women.
Despite the overwhelming need for female healthcare workers, the Taliban’s decision to block access to medical education for women will exacerbate the crisis.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that the country’s lack of female healthcare professionals would directly impact the provision of essential health services, especially maternal care.
“There is no healthcare system without educated female health practitioners,” said Mickael Le Paih, MSF’s Country Representative in Afghanistan.
“In MSF, more than 41% of our medical staff are women. The decision to bar women from studying at medical institutes will further exclude them from both education and healthcare.”
The healthcare sector’s reliance on female professionals is especially critical in Afghanistan, where cultural norms often prevent women from being treated by male doctors.
Dr Ahmed Rashed, a Kabul-based health policy expert, warned that the Taliban’s latest decree would create numerous social challenges, especially for Afghan women who prefer to be treated by female healthcare workers.
“If girls cannot attend secondary school, and women cannot study at universities or medical institutes, where will the future generation of female doctors come from?” Rashed asked. “Who will provide healthcare to Afghan women when they need it most? For essential services to be available to all genders, they must be delivered by all genders.”
International outcry
Last week, the United Nations (UN) Security Council criticized the medical education ban and the “vice and virtue” law issued in August in a unanimous resolution voicing concern about “the increasing erosion” of human rights in the country.
“If implemented, the reported new ban will be yet another inexplicable, totally unjustifiable blow to the health, dignity, and futures of Afghan women and girls. It will constitute yet another direct assault on the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan,” according to UN Special Rapporteurs working on women’s rights, human rights and health.
“It will undoubtedly lead to unnecessary suffering, illness, and possibly deaths of Afghan women and children, now and in future generations, which could amount to femicide.”
The Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC), which trains female healthcare workers in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, reported that it had been verbally informed that classes for women would be “temporarily suspended.”
As the Taliban’s gender-based restrictions continue to devastate the lives of millions of Afghan women and girls, the question remains: What is the future of Afghanistan’s healthcare system? Without access to education, Afghan women will be barred from becoming the doctors, nurses, and midwives their country so desperately needs.
This decision, experts warn, will not only create immediate social and healthcare challenges but will have long-term consequences for generations to come.
* Names changed to protect their identities
Manija Mirzaie is an Afghan journalist now based outside that country.
‘Are We Not Human?’ Afghan Women in Despair After Taliban Ban Them from Nursing and Midwifery Women’s Health
House prices and rents in the Afghan capital are on the rise again, according to estate agents and tenants. There was a sharp decline in both prices and rents when the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) took power in August 2021. Now, people who need to move are discovering just how difficult it is to find a place they can afford to live in. AAN’s Sayed Asadullah Sadat and Kate Clark have been speaking to real estate agents and tenants, finding out why rents and property prices plummeted in 2021, why, in 2024, they are again on the rise and how this is affecting the citizens of Kabul.A view of Kabul city centre, with unplanned houses perched on the mountain slope of Koh-e Asmai/Asamai (aka TV Hill), comprising the western side of the Deh Afghanan neighbourhood, and upscale projects in the background. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2012
I’ve been living in rental houses for 30 years. I’ve never faced such a situation before. It’s hard to find a vacant house in Kabul. If you do find one, someone has already reached an agreement with the owner to rent it. Rahmatullah has rented his four-room home in the Yekeh Tut area in district 9 (PD9) of the capital since the 2021 takeover. He was paying 5,000 afghanis (USD 73) a month, but the owner recently more than doubled the rent, putting it up to 12,000 afghanis (USD 176). He has been looking for another house to rent at a more reasonable rent, but is finding that his landlord’s deal is probably the best on offer:
I have to leave this house because I can’t afford it. It’s been a month since I started looking for another house, but I still can’t find one. I went to many property dealers. There are houses with very high rents. Wherever you go, you can’t find four-room houses with rents lower than 16,000 [USD 235]. During the Republic, I also lived in a rental house. I used to pay 7,000 afghanis [USD 100], but it’s now 12,000 afghanis [USD 176].
Rahmatullah even tried to fund a home with a gerawi mortgage,[1] but found they were too high as well. His experience is typical, according to other tenants and estate agents we interviewed. Aminullah, an estate agent in Qala-ye Fathullah in PD10, said that under the previous government, “the price of buying, selling, rent and mortgage in this area was high,” but prices “dropped to unprecedentedly [low] levels,” with the change in government. The fall of the Republic was accompanied by the mass emigration of Afghans with links to other countries: according to The New Humanitarian, around 124,000 Afghans were evacuated from Afghanistan on or just after 15 August 2021 when the Taleban re-took power. More left later or considered trying to leave (see also BBC report here). Those leaving “sold their houses for half the price,” said Aminullah, “and that reduced rents and mortgages.” Another estate agent, Sayed Hamidullah, in the Kart-e Naw area in PD8 also said that, in the central areas of Kabul, such as Shahr-e Naw, Qala-ye Fathullah and Taimani, many NGOs run by foreigners who had paid high rents, closed, again dampening the market.
In the first year after the takeover, Hamidullah also remembered that some people with two or three houses feared the new government would take or destroy their properties, so they sold them at low prices. At the same time, people in Kabul who had money were reluctant to buy property because the future was uncertain. People worried that the economic situation would worsen, he said, or there would be war. House prices fell, as did rents.
Tenants were delighted. Kabul resident Harun told Tolonews on 15 September 2021 that he was glad the exorbitant rents of the Islamic Republic were over: “I have lived in a rented house for 20 years and was paying 10,000 afghanis [USD 145] for a three-room house. I am very happy that the rent of the house has now been reduced to 5,000 afghanis [USD 72].”
Map of Kabul with police district boundaries marked. Source: iMMAP for AAN, 2018
Estate agents were less happy. Immediately after the takeover, reported Pajhwok, their business came to a standstill. Rents for an average three-room house, one broker told the news agency, were down by a third, from 300 USD to 200 USD: “Overall,” he said, “there is no business, no one rents a house, no one buys it.” In early 2022, estate agents reported that rents, prices and mortgages had fallen by more than 50 per cent in the previous six months (see Pajhwokreporting).
The new rents
The tide has now turned well and truly. Estate agents supplied us with rental price increases that they have witnessed:central districts, such as Shahr-e Naw, Qala-ye Fathullah, Kart-e Char and Kart-e Naw, they say, have witnessed a 40 per cent increase in rents this year, they said, while in the suburbs of Kabul, rents have increased by 20 to 30 per cent. Demand also varies within neighbourhoods. Estate agent Aminullah said demand was still low for renting or buying big houses in his neighbourhood of Qala-ye Fathullah, but the market was hot for small houses, leading to a hike in prices for these dwellings (see also this online property dealer website). Another estate agent, Sayed Hamidullah, in the Kart-e Naw area in PD8, described the increase in the price of land and housing in Kabul as unprecedented. “In some areas,” he said, “prices are increasing to such an extent that ordinary people and even the middle class are unable to buy. Selling and buying lands in these areas is only for the rich and high-ranking government officials” (see also RFL reporting).
One broker gave some average rents to illustrate the general fall and rise – see the figure below.
Average rents and real estate prices in Qala-ye Fathullah and Kart-e Naw since August 2021, in USD.
The shooting up of rents and prices has made life difficult for many. Mursal, who lives with her husband and only child in a rented house in Kart-e Naw in the 8th district of Kabul, said that at the beginning of Islamic Emirate rule, she was paying 6,000 afghanis (USD 85) in rent, but now the house owner has increased the rent to 9,000 afghanis (USD 135). Looking to see if she could get a cheaper rent if she moved, she said: “Wherever you go, you can’t find a two-room house to rent for less than 12,000 afghanis [USD 171] and apartments aren’t so cheap either.”
Another resident, Ahmad Shah, who rents an apartment in Stanakzai Mina in PD8, said the rent rises “have made life difficult for those who don’t own a home,” but “whatever rent the owner asks for, you need to pay it.” Recent rises have been crippling, he said, a three-room apartment renting for less than 200 USD three years ago is now going for 300 USD. “There is no authority to control apartment rents in Kabul,” he complained and stressed that the hikes have added to the struggles many people have to afford basic necessities. He also said that for those with roots in the countryside, going home is also not the safety net it used to be:
We don’t know where to go. … It used to be good that when there was no work in the city, you’d go to your village and work on the farms, but now there’s no [work] in the villages either – there isn’t enough water to irrigate the lands. The economic situation of the rural people is very bad. Here, if there’s nothing, a dry piece of bread can be found. At least, if there’s no work, we can sell plastic bags to get a piece of bread, but in the countryside, there’s nothing.
Rahmatullah, who lives in the Yekeh Tut area, is a hawker supporting a family of seven and is no longer allowed to sell goods inside the city. He said he is squeezed from both sides by high rents and little earning potential:
We are confused and don’t know what to do. Food prices are very high, but rents have also got so high … [how] should we pay the rent and have something to eat? I earn 100 to 200 Afghanis [USD 3] a day and use it all for daily expenses. At the end of the month, I’m in debt for the rent. Right now, I’m in debt to the landlord for three months. I don’t know where I’ll find the money. The landlord has told me to leave the house because the rent’s increased to 12,000 afghanis [USD 171]. The government neither controls house rents nor does it allow hawkers to work in the city, but beats them [if they do]. What can we do? Where can we go?
Tenants under particular pressure – those whose homes have been demolished
In October 2022, the IEA established the Land-Grabbing Prevention and Restitution Commission within the Ministry of Justice. Its purpose is to investigate past grabbing of state land and reclaim it. (For a December 2023 overview of how the commission works in different cities, including Kabul, see AAN’s ‘Land in Afghanistan: This time, retaking instead of grabbing land?’). The decree that established the commission demanded that homeowners living on usurped land now rent what had been their property from the government; this was the case even if they had bought the land in good faith. Others, however, have seen their homes demolished. This was the case if the municipality decided the land was needed for expanding roads. Some of those who have lost their homes had lived in their houses for many years and have been left without shelter. Moreover, not all who lost their homes to the commission were compensated, which makes moving all the more difficult.
One Kabuli to lose her home is Sahar. She was widowed in one of the suicide attacks that struck Kabul during the Republic and now heads her family – four little girls and her elderly parents – in the Hawa Shanasi area near Kabul Airport in PD9. Her father, she said, is very old and can no longer work and his government pension has stopped. She also lost her office job with the coming of the Emirate. They now have no income – and no home. Last year, she said the municipality destroyed the home her family had lived in for 40 years because of road development:
At first, the municipal officers came and told us that the government was obliged to pay us to cover the cost of our house and land. They asked us for property documents. When people presented the documents of their houses to the Kabul municipality, they reviewed and checked them and then said: “The land belongs to the government, so we won’t pay you anything for it. We’ll only pay you for the house you built there.”
Exacerbating all her difficulties was the extremely tight deadline they were given to evacuate their homes – just 15 days – and the fact that hers was one of more than 500 households who had been living in the neighbourhood, all needing to move. (The municipality said it gave them six months to leave.) “There were just no houses in our area to rent,” said Mursal, “or the rent was excessively high.” For a whole month, she said she went from street to street and house to house, looking for an affordable house to rent, but could not find one.When the deadline was over, she said she tried to get the municipality to give her a stay of execution, but they refused. She had gone, in a matter of days [or weeks], from homeowner to homeless and in desperate need of somewhere, urgently, to rent:
Eventually, I found a two-room, mud-built house in a remote area at a high rent. Such a house would not have been rented for more than 2,000 afghanis [USD 28] during the Republic, but I had to pay 5,000 [USD 71]. I had no choice. Even then, the owners said they’d only rent us the house if I paid six months’ rent in advance. I begged them to accept two months and finally they agreed.
All 500 families made homeless, she said, were like her own, poor people who had lived in Hawa Shanasi for a long time and built their houses with a lot of difficulty. She asked the officials about the promised compensation, she said: “They told me, ‘We don’t have any budget now. When there is money, we’ll give it to you.’ … Now I’m wondering what to do. I’m a widow and in charge of my family. There’s no man in our family to work.” Sahar and her family have had to move twice. She was evicted the first time because she could not pay the rent and did not have the proper paperwork (more on this below). Her children, she said, now have to go without enough food because they have to prioritise the rent.
Another interviewee, Sayed Ikram, who was also living in Hawa Shanasi and saw his home destroyed, said that, according to the law, the municipality must pay compensation first, before it demolishes people’s houses. (According to Articles 2 and 8 of the Kabul municipal law, the municipality must pay and acquire property first, and then it can start the demolition.) Ikram complained that acquisition forms were not given out properly: some people received them and some did not, but even those who filled out the forms have yet to be compensated. Even so, the municipality went ahead and destroyed their houses.
In his case, he said, people were given neither enough time to move nor paid what was owed them. “Our request,” he said, “is to receive the money or land they promised us as soon as possible so we can use it to support our lives or buy a house elsewhere.”
Ikram and Sahar appear not to be alone. Other residents have spoken to the media about unpaid compensation (see, for example, Tolonews report here). However, a representative of Kabul municipality, Nematullah Barakzai, pledged that all those who were eligible for compensation would be paid in full. “Over the past year, during 2023, 2,398 properties have been expropriated, and compensation for more than a 1,000 of these properties has been paid out … [with] more than 1.5 billion afghanis already distributed to the people. We have also allocated another half a billion afghanis for this same purpose,” he said during Kabul Municipality’s 2024 accountability session on 12 September.[2] He did, however, stress:
If the land is government land, it’s undoubtedly the government’s property and cannot be acquired under any circumstances. In special cases, if necessary, payments will be made to those whose houses have been damaged. If the land’s private, apart from paying for the building, compensation is also given for the land.
Why are rents and house prices increasing?
Supply and demand
In Afghanistan, there is no rent control – something many interviewees, like Ahmad Shah and Rahmatullah above, complained about. Property dealer, Haji Baryali, of Qala-ye Fathullah in the 10th district of Kabul city said there was nothing estate agents could do about rising rents either:
House rents have been increasing every year. The owners set the rent as they wish and no government body has the right to interfere. Property dealers have nothing to do with this either. They only have consulting roles and sign contracts between landlords and tenants according to the law and real estate policy.
Instead, the market – supply and demand – determines real estate prices and rents. Demand for homes in the capital has surged, said Barylai, because more Afghans want to live in the city – and that is a long-term trend:
More than 70 per cent of the people who fled Afghanistan to neighbouring countries in the 1980s and 1990s were rural people. But [in exile], they lived in cities, in urban areas, and when they returned to Afghanistan, they started living in cities here. Some people still living in the [Afghan] countryside have also moved to Kabul city, which has also pushed rents up.
Baryalai said that migration to Kabul was again pushing up demand for houses. Baryalai and many other interviewees pointed to a surge of people, including Taleban, coming from the countryside to the cities. Sayed Hamidullah commented that “people are trying to come to the city and live here because there’s no work in the provinces and rural areas. Their economic situation is very bad. They have come to the city. Everyone is busy in the city trying to find something for their family to eat.” There are also returnees forced to leave Pakistan who are coming to Kabul (almost three-quarters of a million in the year up to the end of September, according to the International Organisation for Migration, IOM). One contact pointed to another trend, of Afghans living abroad who have second passports returning.
All interviewees, including Baryalai, pointed to Taleban employees and “the new authorities” coming to live in Kabul as another factor pushing up demand for housing and contributing to the hike in rents. Estate agent Aminullah said: “Most Taleban authorities have two, three or even four wives and they rent a separate house for each,” driving up rents more generally, he claimed, and driving down supply. Mursal said the Taleban “pay more rent than other people and therefore rents have gone up again.” Rahmatullah in Yekeh Tut area in PD 9 also claimed that Taleban are bringing their families to Kabul and “can pay high rents, but we are jobless, so how can we pay rent and provide for our families?”
Estate agent Aminullah said that, in general, following the first bleak year after the takeover, the economic outlook had improved and rich people had begun to invest again. Most of the NGOs also resumed their activities, he said, and houses that had been empty, especially in Qala-ye Fathullah, Shahr-e Naw, Wazir Akbar Khan and Shirpur, were now rented. All this drove up property prices and rents.
Bureaucracy makes it harder to move
Ahmad Shah also pointed to another driver of the rent rises. More stringently enforced bureaucracy was making it more difficult to move, so once a person was in a house, they would swallow rent increases rather than try to find a cheaper home to rent:[3]
To rent a home, you have to have a passport-e sahawi or you have to apply for one, and two people have to guarantee you and you have to give it to the relevant police district and the property dealer. If someone doesn’t have a passport-e sahawi, they can’t rent a place to live elsewhere. That’s why many people don’t move. They keep living in the same house even if the rent is very high. Once someone rents a house, they don’t leave it. Because if you move to a new area, you must bring a guarantee from the house-owner where you used to live and the wakil-e guzar [head of the neighbourhood] and police district should confirm you lived in that area and that you didn’t commit any crime there.
There is also another form for changing your location, with permission from the police district. The relevant district and the wakil-e guzar must confirm that you’ve lived there and for how long. They must also confirm that you haven’t committed any crime. You also need to explain in the form why you want to leave that area and this too has to be confirmed by the old police district and the wakil-e guzar. After that, they will send your form to the wakil-e guzar in the new area where you want to live.
The passport-e sahawi system also existed under the Republic, but was not implemented so seriously. Ahmad said its rigorous implementation has “created a lot of problems for people. On the one hand, there’s unemployment and on the other hand, there are high house rents, these relocation forms and the challenges of getting guarantees – it’s all very hard for people.”
This system hit Sahar badly. She was forced to leave the neighbourhood where her family had lived for four decades and everyone knew them and then move twice, needing a new passport-e sahawi each time: “It’s very problematic because if you move to an area where you don’t know anyone,” she said, “they don’t guarantee you and you can’t rent.”
Demolitions, the Kabul master plan and supply-side problems
After the IEA established a special court in 2022 and banned construction on state land, many settlements built during the Republic, as well as land that had been seized and sold to the people by powerful figures in the past, were declared state-owned (read examples of rulings here and here). The IEA appears to have different responses to this in different areas. It has rented some houses back to their old owners, while destroying some houses built on state land. (It should be noted that the Amir has also reserved for himself the right to give away state property, including land and property.)[4]
The demolition of homes built on state land may also be affecting the supply side of housing in the capital. According to Kabul Municipality representative Barakzai, the municipality has expropriated almost 2,400 properties in the past year. Whether these were also destroyed or just taken over and rented back to the old owners, as the decree setting up the land-grabbing commission demands (text here), he did not say (see his interview with Salam Watandar here).
Demolitions may only hurt the total supply side of housing marginally, but can still be significant locally, especially in working-class neighbourhoods, as in Sahar’s case. Key neighbourhoods affected by demolitions are Qasba in PD15, Sar Kotal-e Khairkhana in PD17, Hawa Shanasi in PD9), Kart-e Naw in PD8, Dasht-e Barchi in PD13, Kot-e Sangi in PD5 and Kompani in PD5. However, one of the most upmarket neighbourhoods has also come under the commission’s scrutiny. In late November 2024, it declared that more than 60 hectares had been declared state land in Shepur, according to media, including Ariana News. “The Islamic Emirate claimed,” reported Ariana, “that no documentation had been provided by occupants to prove private ownership of the parcels of land and instead the area had been developed ‘arbitrarily and against planned designs.’”
Sherpur was where then Minister of Defence Fahim Qasim ordered the bulldozing of poor people’s homes built on ministry land in 2003 and then redistributed plots to commanders, cabinet ministers and other well-connected individuals, about half of whom were from his faction, Shura-ye Nizar, which had captured Kabul in 2001.[5] It was in one of the mansions built on this land where al-Qaida leader Aiman al-Zawahri was living when the United States killed him in a drone attack on 31 July 2022 (see AAN reporting here).
Estate agent Aminullah in PD 10 said the commission’s actions and orders were having an impact on the housing supply, and not just because of the demolitions. All real estate brokers have been banned, he said, from buying and selling land and houses built on what the land-grabbing commission has decreed is usurped state land. No real estate agent is allowed to buy or sell houses in areas that are not in the municipality’s master plan (see Fabrizio Foschini’s backgrounder on the Kabul master plan ‘Kabul Unpacked: A Geographical Guide to a Metropolis In The Making’). The strict adherence to the Kabul master plan, said Aminullah, has implications for the housing supply, as it was pushing down the supply and helping to drive up rents and prices.[6] Estate agent Hamidullah, in the Kart-e Naw area in PD8 of Kabul agreed:
Kabul municipality doesn’t allow building houses in areas, which are not in its master plan. In the past, people used to build houses in those areas and there were a lot of one-storey buildings and families were living there. Then, when their family members were increasing, they were either getting separated and living in different houses or were changing their old houses to two-storey buildings. However, now no one has the right to build or construct anything. Only the people who live in areas that are based on the master plan can build houses with the permission of the municipality. Otherwise, they can’t build until further notice. This also caused the prices of houses and rents to increase.
The municipality’s policy was outlined by Kabul Municipality representative Barakzai at a press conference on 5 August 2023, that the municipality was indeed preventing the construction of homes and other development in the state land or area. He added: “Construction is ongoing in Kabul City, but the municipality does not allow construction on government and usurped properties, as well as unplanned areas.” (Kabul Municipality’s reports can be read here and here). Barakzai, speaking to RTA on 20 November 2024 about road and house-building, also outlined the procedure for those wanting to build:
First, permission should be obtained from Kabul Municipality.Second, the land should be specified where it is, whether it is government land or private and if it is in a green area. Then, the municipality will allow him to work and the person can builda house there. If it is government land or a green area, the municipality will never let any construction there.
Kabul municipality has pushed back on criticism, including in apparent response to a hard-hitting 18 November article in The Guardian alleging that Kabul’s ‘regeneration’ programme had made thousands of people homeless and had an ethnic bias. In a series of tweets published on 24 November, it insisted that compensation was being given and proper procedures followed: “The citizens whose properties are being purchased for new road building projects are also notified by Kabul Municipality to complete the administrative stages of their paperwork as soon as possible,” it said, “and to contact Kabul Municipality to claim their rights.” It described the municipality as “a vast service-provider administration that implements its objectives in accordance with balanced development principles” and said that Kabul is the “home of all Afghans.”
Conclusion
In 2021, the Islamic Emirate took over a capital city that, in terms of houses built legally, was a mess. According to estimates by the World Bank, already in 2004, informal settlements, that is, houses built outside of the master plan and in most cases on state-claimed land, accounted for 70 per cent of residential areas and were where 80 per cent of the population in Kabul. The Republic neither tried to demolish them nor discouraged new building, which in fact continued up to 2021. Nor did it recognise residents’ legal ownership or uniformly expand public services (including healthcare, schools, sanitation, transport) to those areas. This knotty problem was widely perceived and debated already under the Republic, but attempts at addressing it were frustrated by the rivalry between the Kabul Municipality and the Ministry of Urban Development Affairs, the economic interests of powerful actors and the difficulty of coping with the high numbers of returnees and new urban residents.[7] It is possible, then, that the amount of land in Kabul that the land-grabbing commission has thus far declared to belong to the state, on which properties may or may not then be demolished, is the tip of an iceberg.
The informal settlements have compounded Kabul’s sanitation and transportation problems because the settlements were allowed to expand without the municipality providing services. It seems the IEA is keen on tackling transport, at least as far as building roads, which have been the driver of most of the demolitions so far.
Even so, the land-grabbing commission’s actions and orders are but one factor, and not the most important one, driving up the cost of real estate in Kabul. Increased demand for urban housing, hottest in the Afghan capital, is outpacing supply, pushing up house prices and rents. At the same time, bureaucratic procedures are exacerbating the tendency of sitting tenants to try to stay where they and accept any rent increases because moving is so difficult.
As rents and house prices have skyrocketed, anxiety is growing among many citizens: How can they pay the rent and feed their children when paid work is scarce and living expenses are soaring? Kabul Municipality insists that “Afghanistan is a unified nation, and Kabul City is home to all Afghans.” This, however, stands in sharp contrast to the realities faced by the city’s poorest residents. For them, the gap between the haves and the have-nots in Afghanistan’s capital seems to be widening, and their voices are yet to be listened to.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
References
References
↑1
Gerawi is an agreement whereby a person pays a large amount of money to the house owner for using his or her house, for example, for a year and the house owner repays the money if the person leaves the house after a year.
↑2
More recent figures have come from the head of Kabul Municipality’s Acquisition Department, Abdul Matin Hanif, who tweeted on 24 November that the mmunicipality “has disbursed around AFN 2 billion (USD 28,985,507) to the 2000 residents whose properties have been acquired over the last three years, and this number is expanding on a daily basis.”
↑3
Ahmad Shah refers to a passport-e sahawi, (seen here). It is a form which wakil-e guzars and property dealers give to residents [or people moving] to fill in and submit to their district police station. Only after receiving the form back will the owner or property dealer rent out the home. The form shows the logos of the Ministry of Interior, Kabul Municipality and General Department of Intelligence and is in three parts: the house owner must enter his or her name and all the details of the house address in the first part; the tenant must enter their name and the details of any family living with them; and two personal guarantors for the tenant must sign the third part.
↑4
In October 2021, the amir banned land-grabbing for a second time (for land whose ownership was unclear). The decree also said that the amir, “Based on necessity and expediency, can give [such land] to a member (of the Muslim community) as property.” The decree drew a parallel with what it said was the amir’s right to “withdraw from the public coffer [bait ul-maal]” and presumably give money to someone, again because of expediency. In March 2023, the ban on officials selling land, or transferring land to individuals or corporations, was repeated, unless there was a specific decree from the amir (for the texts of the decrees up to March 2023 and an accompanying report, (see here and here).
↑5
The opulent homes built on the seized land became known as ‘poppy palaces’ because of the alleged links of their owners with the narcotics trade. They became, as Joanna Nathan writing for the Middle East Institute (MEI) described, “monuments to the powerlessness of ordinary Afghans and a daily reminder to Kabulis of the impunity of the new administration and international inaction.” For more on this, see our 2023 report into the Emirate’s land-grabbing commission, which includes a list of those receiving plots compiled by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), published by MEI, with added biographical information from AAN. See also a September 2003 statement by Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing and this Watandar Plus video report on the ongoing demolitions in Sherpur).
↑6
The distinction is underwritten by property owners having different legal documents: those whose lands or houses are part of the master plan have legal deeds (qabala-ye sharayi); those in areas which are not part of the municipality master plan have customary deeds (qabala-ye urfi).
↑7
For more on informal housing under the Republic, see this 2017 USIP report by AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini.
A Place to Call Home: What is driving up house prices in Kabul and pushing the poorest residents into homelessness?
Opium poppy cultivation fell again in 2024, the second year of the Taliban’s ban.
Poppy has been replaced by wheat, a low-value crop, boding ill for the economy, poverty and the ban’s future.
Foreign influence on Taliban drug policies is limited, but dialogue must be based on good data.
The Taliban’s opium ban, coupled with Afghan farmers’ replacement of poppy largely with low-value wheat, is likely to worsen dissatisfaction and political tensions. The Taliban’s persistence in enforcing the ban has been notable, especially in 2024. If the ban remains in place, it would demonstrate the regime’s strength but also worsen rural poverty, increase dissatisfaction among landholders and spur political instability. This will likely lead to increased humanitarian needs and more pressures for outmigration to nearby countries and beyond, both of which are of interest to the U.S. and other Western countries. Conversely, if the ban weakens in response to pressures and resistance, a revival of widespread poppy cultivation could undermine the regime’s authority. Aid alone will not offset the economic shock of the ban, nor stimulate the long-term growth needed to effectively combat the opium problem.
Making Sense of the Data
The most accurate available data, compiled by the geospatial technology firm Alcis, shows that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell sharply in 2024, contrary to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) estimate that it increased. This clearly demonstrates that the Taliban’s opium ban has intensified, not weakened, in its second year of implementation, highlighting the importance of informing analysis and policy debates with high-quality, timely data.
As with other core Taliban ideological priorities, such as severe and worsening gender restrictions, international influence over their drugs policies is, at best, limited. However, at the very least, dialogue on the opium ban and related issues should be based on accurate and timely information. Additionally, the international community should avoid giving the Taliban false hope that large amounts of aid will be forthcoming in response to the ban or that, even if it were, such aid would solve the opium problem — let alone quickly. As shown by experience in other countries and in Afghanistan, the solution lies in rural development and robust economic growth over an extended period, during which the country and its economy can gradually reduce their dependence on illegal drug crop production.
Sharply Contrasting Trends at the National Level
The outcome of the second year of the Taliban’s opium ban is now clear. Data compiled through sophisticated satellite imagery analysis by Alcis show a further major reduction in the area of poppy cultivated in Afghanistan in 2024 — from an estimated 22,693 hectares in 2023 to 7,382 hectares, a drop of 67 percent. This follows the enormous nearly 90 percent reduction in 2023 and contrasts with UNODC’s estimate that cultivation increased by 19 percent in 2024, from 10,800 hectares in 2023 to 12,800 hectares. As a result, whereas UNODC’s figure for 2023 was far lower than that of Alcis — well under half — its 2024 estimate is 35 percent higher. These large differences have significant implications for assessing the effectiveness of the Taliban’s ban.
The author’s 2023 publication compared the methodologies for estimating the area of opium poppy cultivation used by UNODC and Alcis, firmly concluding that the latter’s approach yields more accurate data. Looking toward 2024, it stated: “relying on 11,000 hectares as the baseline would be highly misleading if UNODC’s estimate becomes more accurate next year … falsely implying a spurious large expansion of poppy cultivation.”
Alcis’ results are generated by machine learning models run against an extremely large stack of satellite images repeatedly collected across all agricultural land in Afghanistan. This approach is more accurate than UNODC’s long-standing methodology, which relies on a few satellite images covering only a fraction of the agricultural area — just 17 percent of arable land in 2023 and 18 percent in 2024. UNODC uses two approaches for different provinces: (1) sampling for provinces with a significant percentage of their agricultural land expected to be cultivated with poppy, as the accuracy of sampling improves when this percentage is higher; and (2) targeting for provinces with low levels of opium poppy cultivation, where satellite imagery collection locations are guided by field reports on where poppy is being cultivated.
With such low levels of poppy cultivation and its much smaller share of total agricultural land over the last two years, the sampling approach has become even less accurate. As a result, the vast majority of provinces should have been targeted rather than sampled. However, in 2023, 16 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces were sampled, and in 2024, 17 provinces were sampled, despite the near-certainty that cultivation would be low everywhere except in Badakhshan.
Beyond the major differences in methodology, UNODC never revised its figure for 2023, even in light of the very different estimate by Alcis and advancements in satellite imagery and analytical tools. This resulted in UNODC showing a spurious increase in poppy cultivation in 2024. Alcis, on the other hand, revised its data for poppy cultivation in 2023 and earlier years, reducing the 2023 figure from 31,000 hectares to 22,693 hectares. While this represents an improvement in data accuracy, it does not alter the trends. Moreover, the revised data are fully consistent with the methodology used to derive the 2024 estimate, ensuring the two years can be accurately compared.
Even Greater Differences at the Provincial Level
Badakhshan province, which became Afghanistan’s largest cultivator of opium poppy after the Taliban ban was enforced, provides an even more striking example of how less accurate data can be misleading and cause problems for analysis. In 2022, Alcis and UNODC’s estimates for Badakhshan — 4,913 hectares and 4,305 hectares, respectively—were reasonably close, and trends in earlier years were broadly similar. In 2023, however, they diverged markedly, with UNODC’s estimate indicating a sharp decline to 1,573 hectares (a 63 percent drop), but Alcis’ estimate showing a 38 percent increase to 6,795 hectares.
In 2024, the contrast is even sharper: Alcis figures show provincial poppy cultivation falling (from 6,795 hectares in 2023 to 3,636 hectares in 2024, i.e., a 46 percent drop). Thus, the serious opposition the Taliban faced in Badakhshan did not prevent the observed reduction in 2024. This decline primarily reflected farmers’ greater caution toward planting poppy, rather than eradication efforts, which achieved only very limited success.
UNODC’s estimates, in contrast, indicate that poppy cultivation in Badakhshan surged by 371 percent (from 1,573 hectares in 2023 to 7,408 hectares in 2024). It is highly implausible that cultivation was so low in 2023, let alone that it saw such an enormous rise in 2024. This example strikingly demonstrates the distortions that arise when earlier years’ data are not revised in light of better information. Despite the relative weakness of Talban enforcement in Badakhshan compared to other provinces, there is no indication that it became much laxer in 2024, let alone so weak as to allow a nearly fourfold increase in poppy cultivation.
Trends for other provinces also differ as between UNODC and Alcis estimates. Alcis found that in 2023, four provinces had poppy cultivation well in excess of 1,000 hectares each: Kandahar (5,685 hectares), Daykundi (2,165 hectares), Uruzgan (1,878 hectares) and Baghlan (1,474 hectares) — a total of 11,202 hectares or half the national total. In 2024, further demonstrating that the Taliban ban intensified, this substantial poppy cultivation was largely wiped out, with Kandahar cultivating only 777 hectares and the other provinces cultivating much less. However, the UNODC estimates show Daykundi and Baghlan as “poppy-free” (less than 100 hectares) in both 2023 and 2024. As a result, around 3,600 hectares of 2023 poppy cultivation in these two provinces was missed.
Inaccurate magnitudes and trends can lead to misinterpretation and misleading analysis, whether in mediareports or when researchers and analysts use UNODC data uncritically. For example, a recent paper focuses on Badakhshan and includes useful background and qualitative insights, but it simply accepts the UNODC cultivation estimates without questioning them.
What Is Happening to Land Previously Cultivated with Poppy?
Alcis’ comprehensive satellite imagery-based data can shed light on what crops are being planted on the large area of land previously devoted to poppy — over 200,000 hectares of Afghanistan’s total cultivated agricultural land area, which ranges from 1.1 to 1.5 million hectares — following the ban.
Poppy has largely been replaced by wheat, a low-value crop that does not allow poor farmers to make ends meet, which bodes ill for the ban’s sustainability. In 2023, a 194,000-hectare increase in the estimated area cultivated with wheat was slightly larger than the 188,000-hectare reduction in the opium poppy area after the Taliban ban. In effect, the land vacated by poppy was entirely replaced with wheat.
Looking at Helmand province, by far the country’s largest opium producer prior to the Taliban ban, poppy cultivation collapsed from an estimated 129,640 hectares in 2022 to a mere 740 hectares in 2023 — a precipitous drop of 128,900 hectares. Wheat cultivation increased by 81,116 hectares — equivalent to 63 percent of the poppy decline. However, the total cultivated agricultural area fell by 45,262 hectares, and these two factors together accounted for 98 percent of the decline in poppy cultivation. So, although wheat did not replace poppy one-for-one in Helmand, wheat plus additional uncultivated land was equivalent to nearly the entire reduction in poppy cultivation.
In 2024, the estimated total national agricultural cultivated area fell significantly by nearly 20 percent, but the estimated area devoted to wheat fell by a smaller percentage (15 percent), and far less than the 67 percent drop in poppy cultivation from 2023. Thus, the share of wheat in the total rose — further underlining the unsustainability of the ban.
Wheat is a low-value crop that cannot provide sufficient food or income for land-poor farmers to survive. The only advantage that wheat, an annual crop, offers to farmers is that it is easy to shift back from wheat to poppy in the future — a prospect many of them may be expecting. There is no sign of a substantial shift toward higher-value cash crops that could replace opium on a more sustainable basis, let alone of any robust growth in the broader economy, which would provide non-agricultural employment and livelihoods.
Conclusion
Beyond the poverty and deprivation it causes, the Taliban’s continuing ban on opium, and the fact that poppy is being replaced primarily by wheat rather than other, more remunerative cash crops, means that dissatisfaction and possible political tensions will likely worsen.
As shown by independent researcher David Mansfield, larger landholding farmers can feed their families by cultivating their land with wheat and other food crops, covering remaining expenses by gradually selling off their opium inventories accumulated from bumper crops in 2022 and earlier years. Indeed, they can prosper based on the capital gains from inventories sold at much higher prices due to the ban. As these inventories get depleted, however, pressures for a return to poppy cultivation will intensify. Moreover, the Taliban’s recent, stronger efforts to crack down on the processing of opium and trade in opiates may further exacerbate discontent and associated tensions among groups extending well beyond the smaller poppy farmers.
The Taliban have exhibited unprecedented persistence and staying power in pursuing the poppy ban, except to some extent in Badakhshan — but even in that province, cultivation has fallen substantially in 2024. If the ban doesn’t fray much in 2025, which will be its third year in effect, it will bode ill for Afghanistan’s already poor and suffering rural population, lead over time to increasing dissatisfaction on the part of influential landholders and others and potentially give rise to political tensions and instability.
Early signs of poppy planting suggest that the ban may start to weaken in response to these pressures. However, even a selective, de facto relaxation could lead to a snowballing revival of widespread poppy cultivation, potentially undermining the perceived authority and effectiveness of the Taliban regime. On the other hand, if the ban is maintained more or less intact for several more years, it would demonstrate the regime’s strength but harm the economy and worsen poverty. Aid alone, even in large amounts (which are very unlikely to materialize in the current situation), will not be able to offset the economic shock of the drug ban, nor stimulate sustained robust economic growth and rural development — the sine qua non for lasting success against opium.
Understanding the Implications of the Taliban’s Opium Ban in Afghanistan
In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from a woman who did most of her growing up under the first Islamic Emirate which banned girls of all ages from going to school. She came late to education, but strove to be a good student and managed to graduate from high school and secure a teaching qualification. Then, administrative corruption and bureaucracy under the Islamic Republic blocked her path into teaching and she had to put her dream of being an educator on hold. Instead, she began a tailoring business, working from home, in order to support her family. It is a reminder that barriers to Afghan women and girls fulfilling their dreams predate the current government’s restrictions on their work, education and movement.This research has been funded by UN Women. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of UN Women, the United Nations or any of its affiliated organisations.
A difficult start in life
I was born in Jeghatu district of Ghazni province in 1988. My parents had moved back to our village from Kabul because of the war and also because my father didn’t want to serve in the communist regime’s army. We didn’t have much money and our family always struggled to make ends meet. I didn’t have an idyllic childhood. There were no carefree moments of child fancy and no time for kid’s games. It gets cold in our area long before winter arrives elsewhere in Afghanistan and children like me are sent to the hills to collect wormwood [artemisia, rawana in Dari] to burn as firewood. This was a very difficult task. For several hours each day, we gathered wormwood and other twigs, tied them up with twine, carried the bundles home on our backs and stacked them in a small shed.
I didn’t go to school back then because, by the time I was old enough in 1994, the Taleban had come to power for the first time and the only girls’ school in our area closed. But I went to classes at the local mosque to read the Quran and learn to read and write a little bit of Dari. My family stayed in Ghazni until 1999 when we moved to Kabul, where my father, a master tailor, had found a job working in a tailoring shop.
The chance to get an education
In 2001, two years after we moved to Kabul, the first Islamic Emirate fell and the transitional government led by Hamid Karzai was established. This marked a turning point not only for Afghanistan but also for me and my education. In 2002, my parents took me to one of the newly reopened schools in Kabul’s Dar ul-Aman neighbourhood. I had to sit for an assessment test and [at the age of 14] was enrolled in grade four. I can still remember my excitement on that first day of school. I wore my brand new uniform and white headscarf with pride and bore the weight of the books in my bag with delight.
In those early days, the schools were in a sorry state. Most of our classrooms didn’t have roofs and we had to sit on the floor because there were no chairs or desks. Things improved later when the government started building schools and hiring qualified teachers. I was determined to do well in school, but some classes, like maths and physics, were more difficult for me. Our school had a hard time finding qualified teachers to help us learn these subjects and I took to studying at home, spending most evenings pouring over textbooks. My efforts paid off and I quickly became one of the top pupils in my class.
I graduated from high school in 2010, but the gaps in my learning were not without effect and I didn’t pass the university entrance exam. This was a huge disappointment and it took me a couple of years to recover from the setback. But my parents encouraged me to look into enrolling in one of the private colleges that had opened since the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was established. Unlike state universities, these colleges weren’t free, but I’d been working weaving rugs since childhood to help with my family’s expenses and I knew I could earn enough to pay the fees. My mother too had been putting a little money aside every month for a rainy day. This, they said, was that rainy day. The matter was settled. My earnings as a rugmaker and my mother’s nest egg would be an investment in my education, which would pay for itself a hundred times over once I graduated and found a steady job.
By then, I’d lost one brother and his wife to the conflict and my sister and brother had married and settled in Iran with their families. They did what they could to send money to Kabul, but they had very little to spare. It was up to me to plan for the future and make sure our little family would be on financially solid ground when my father was too old to work.
This was how, four years after leaving school, I enrolled in a two-year teachers’ training course at a private college. The tuition was 15,000 afghanis [USD 200] for each semester. Money was tight and, on top of my studies and weaving carpets, I had to get a second job working for a woman in our neighbourhood who ran a tailoring shop from her home.
Bureaucracy, corruption and unfulfilled dreams
I will never forget the pride on my parents’ faces when I graduated in 2016. All the years of hardship had finally paid off. I had dreams of getting a job teaching Dari literature, which I’d studied in college along with the teachers’ training course. Being a teacher would afford me a place of respect in the family and the community, and a steady pay cheque would finally help ease the financial hardship my family had endured for so many years.
Armed with my degree, I headed to the Ministry of Education to apply for a position. But my enthusiasm quickly gave way to frustration as I discovered that securing an application form would prove nearly impossible. On my first visit to the ministry, the staff informed me that all application forms had already been distributed. “Come back next week. We’ll have new ones by then,” they said. But when I went back the following week, they informed me that the forms had not arrived. I visited the office several times, but the response was always the same. People said I needed a contact at the ministry to let me know when the new forms had arrived, but I didn’t know anyone there. Then, one day, as I walked up to the counter, an employee reached under the counter and handed me an application form.
When I submitted my application for a teaching position, I was informed I’d need to wait for a call inviting me to sit an exam, and if I passed, I’d then enter a more formal hiring process that could lead to a placement at a school. I went to the ministry several times to ask when the exam would take place, but they kept telling me that I’d get a call when it was scheduled. It felt like they were giving me the brush-off. In conversations with family and friends, I learned about the unspoken realities of navigating the government’s hiring process. People said that only those with a waseta [contact] could secure government jobs. “If only you knew someone or had money to pay a bribe,” they’d say, their voices tinged with resignation.
Finally, I gave up on the idea of getting a job teaching at a state school and decided to try my luck with private schools instead. I can’t even remember how many schools I went to. They were all very polite as they looked over my transcripts and my college degree, but explained they couldn’t hire me because I didn’t have any teaching experience. But how was I supposed to gain teaching experience if no one was willing to hire me as a teacher?
A dream differed
I’d learned tailoring at my father’s knee when, as a little girl, I watched his fingers deftly move over pieces of cloth to fashion clothes for his customers as the rhythmic sound of the sewing machine filled his workshop. During my two years of working for the tailor, I also honed my skills in the delicate needlework and embroidery required for women’s party dresses. Other than my teaching certificate, weaving carpets and sewing were my only marketable skills. I had to put away my dreams of teaching and start using my tailoring skills to make a living. I began to sew clothes for people in the neighbourhood at home.
Every morning, after prayers and helping my mother prepare breakfast, I get to work. I take a short break for lunch and, after a quick bite, I go back to my sewing machine and keep working until the call for the evening prayer. I do fine work, even if I say so myself, and my prices are reasonable. A simple dress costs around 200 Afghani [USD 2.30] and a more elaborate one is 350 Afghani [USD 4]. My reputation has grown with customers coming from all over the city to place orders not only for everyday dresses but also for garments that require fine workmanship – elaborate wedding dresses, elegant ones for special occasions like Nawruz or Eid and even smart overcoats. A couple of times a year, I get lucky and get an order for an entire wedding party – the bride, her sisters and mother as well as her in-laws. On those occasions, I can afford to bring on some help and teach my young helpers the finer points of tailoring.
Business is not as brisk as it used to be before the economy went bad. People now have a lot of financial problems; many, especially women, are unemployed, and new clothes are not top of their priorities. Still, I’m grateful that I have enough customers to give me financial independence and that the business gives my family and me a living, a roof over our heads and food on the table. That I can earn a living and care for my ageing parents is a blessing I don’t take for granted. Yet, I still dream of being a teacher one day, whenever that becomes possible. I hope such a day comes when all Afghan women and girls can work in their chosen fields and take up the work that interests them.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
Deferring a Dream: How one young woman blocked from teaching now runs a thriving tailoring business
WASHINGTON, December 4, 2024—The Afghan economy is showing signs of moderate growth, but still faces significant headwinds, including fiscal constraints, trade imbalances, and a limited capacity for public investment, according to the World Bank’s latest Afghanistan Development Update.Afghanistan’s economic recovery remains uncertain. Modest GDP growth of 2.7%, driven by private consumption, has recouped only about 10% of past economic losses, indicative of the slow and fragile nature of the recovery.This level of growth has done little to address deeper structural issues and significant vulnerabilities within Afghanistan’s economy. Enabling women’s participation in the economy, strengthening domestic resource mobilization, maintaining price stability, and addressing critical deficits in human capital—particularly in education and healthcare, and especially for women—will be essential for long-term recovery and reducing vulnerability to future shocks.“Afghanistan’s long-term growth prospects depend on tapping into the substantial potential of the domestic private sector and improving the overall business environment,” said Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan. “Key to this is increased investment, providing access to finance to small businesses, and supporting educated and skilled women entrepreneurs so their businesses can thrive. Without this, the country risks prolonged stagnation with limited prospects for sustainable development.”
The partial recovery, coupled with falling food prices, has contributed to a gradual improvement in household welfare. But most Afghan households continue to struggle to meet basic needs and poverty remains widespread. Vulnerable groups, including women, children, and displaced populations, continue to bear the brunt of the economic hardship, due to the lack of social protection mechanisms. Night-time lights data analysis further indicates the uneven nature of economic recovery and the evolving landscape of economic activity in the country. In 2021, provinces whose economy was more heavily reliant on foreign aid and security spending —particularly Kabul and the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, and Zabul—experienced the sharpest declines in economic activity compared to 2020. Similarly, by 2023, the level of economic activity captured by civilian night-time lights remains sizably below its 2020 baseline in Parwan, Kapisa, Zabul and, notably, in Kabul.
Afghanistan’s trade dynamics remain a significant challenge. In 2023-24, the country’s exports remained stable, but imports surged, leading to a widening trade deficit. However, the appreciation of the Afghani made imports cheaper, fueling demand for foreign goods, while domestic industrial activity revived, increasing the need for imported inputs. The trade deficit, exacerbated by Afghanistan’s reliance on imports for essential goods like fuel, food, and machinery, might pose a risk to the country’s economic stability.
The Afghanistan Development Update is part of the World Bank’s Afghanistan Futures program, which includes research, monitoring, and analytical reports on the Afghan economy and society. The program aims to support evidence-based policymaking and inform the international community on the economic developments in Afghanistan.
In the spring of 2023, a campaign was launched to create a new international crime of gender apartheid. Campaigners argue that the oppression of women and girls is so total and severe in Afghanistan and Iran that it is akin to the systematic and hierarchical racist oppression practised by apartheid South Africa. Their hope is that gender apartheid will be included in a new Crimes Against Humanity Convention, which happens to be scheduled for negotiation in the coming years. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) shows no sign of moderating its policies towards Afghan women in the face of widespread global criticism, which it dismisses as foreign interference in domestic and religious matters. AAN’s Rachel Reid considers the campaign, the legal issues and how codification might happen. In March 2023, a group of Afghan and Iranian women launched the End Gender Apartheid campaign, which seeks to codify a new international crime of gender apartheid.[1] “The Taliban have sought not only to erase women from public life, but to extinguish our basic humanity,” women’s rights campaigner Zubaida Akbar told the United Nations Security Council on International Women’s Day, when the campaign launched. “There is one term that accurately describes the situation of Afghan women today – gender apartheid.”[2]
The term ‘apartheid’ originated in South Africa, where it described the system of racial segregation and discrimination towards black South Africans and other non-white South Africans by the minority white government. It lasted from 1948 to 1990 (for more on this history, see here). In 1976, apartheid was established as an international crime against humanity and defined by the Apartheid Convention as:
[I]nhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.
Campaigners argue that this same language fits the situation of Afghan women and girls if ‘gender’ is substituted for ‘racial group’. Gender persecution is already criminalised (see a discussion of it in relation to Afghanistan by Ehsan Qaane for AAN here). However, campaigners argue that it does not sufficiently capture the deliberate, ideological and systematic nature of discrimination and segregation seen in Afghanistan and Iran.[3]
Gathering support: from protestors to top UN officials
The campaign quickly took off, including inside Afghanistan where some women protestors incorporated the call for gender apartheid into their protests (see here). Key officials soon started to adopt the language. In June 2023, the demand for codifying gender apartheid was joined by UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan Richard Bennett and the UN’s Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls in a joint report presented to the Human Rights Council. They argued:
[G]ender apartheid could be understood as inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one gender group over any other gender group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime. This is an accurate description of the situation documented in the present report, in which systematic discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule.
At the Human Rights Council session, their call drew important support from South Africa’s representative, who called on “the international community to take action against what the report describes as ‘gender apartheid’, much like it did in support of South Africa’s struggle against racial apartheid.” South Africa’s endorsement carried huge weight given how intertwined the term apartheid is with the struggle against racial apartheid there (though as discussed later, its support has since waned).
Another important voice in favour of codification was the Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Bahous, who in September 2023 told the UN Security Council:
[L]end your full support to an intergovernmental process to explicitly codify gender apartheid in international law. The tools the international community has at its disposal were not created to respond to mass, state-sponsored gender oppression. This systematic and planned assault on women’s rights is foundational to the Taliban’s vision of state and society and it must be named, defined, and proscribed in our global norms, so that we can respond appropriately.
The roll call of human rights grandees continued to grow, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk offering his support for codification in a speech in October 2024. In the same month, support also came from the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in its General Recommendation 40 (accessible here).
Iran and Afghanistan
The End Gender Apartheid campaign was jointly launched by Afghan and Iranian women. Yet, many of those advocating for codification have highlighted the actions of the IEA, rather than the Iranian government. Even the legal brief of the End Gender Apartheid campaign itself only cites Emirate policies. While there are similarities in the experiences of women and girls in Iran and Afghanistan, Iranian campaigners are the first to acknowledge that the situation in Afghanistan is, quite clearly, more extreme.
Iranians, however, point to a range of restrictions on women and girls, not least the ‘chastity and hijab law’,[4]described by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran described in September 2023 as a form of gender apartheid, which imposes harsh punishments for violations of the compulsory dress code for women.[5] It also expands the authority of the intelligence agency, the judiciary and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to identify and prosecute violations (see this brief from Human Rights Watch). While Iranian women have greater freedoms overall – including to education and freedom of movement – their government has been brutal in punishing rule-breakers. After Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died in custody on 16 September 2022 after having been arrested on allegations of violating the hijab rule, protests sprang up, spearheaded by women and centred on women’s rights within a wider call for civil rights. The Iranian authorities killed hundreds of protesters, men and women, and detained thousands more, some of whom were later executed (see Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports).
Despite Iran’s authoritarian fundamentalism resonating with campaigners, it is the policies of the IEA that has propelled their effort. Since 2021, the list of Emirate laws and practices that discriminate against women and girls in Afghanistan has steadily grown, from denying access to education for older girls to restrictions on freedom of movement, speech and employment (see here a list by the US Institute of Peace). In the face of protests by Afghan women, resolutions from the Security Council and statements from UN experts and special rapporteurs, the European (and other) parliaments condemning the mistreatment of women and girls, the IEA has dug in. Emirate officials have consistently dismissed accusations that the Emirate violates women’s human rights. For example, in a tweet on 26 September 2024, deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said:
The Afghanistan Islamic Emirate is blamed for violation of human rights and gender apartheid by some countries and factions. Human rights are protected in Afghanistan and no one is discriminated against.
Officials often argue that the Emirate is merely upholding religious values, sometimes also invoking cultural or Afghan norms. Emirate Minister of Higher Education Nida Muhammad Nadim, for example, on 4 December 2022, lambasted “Western-style” schooling for women as “against Islam and Afghan values” (see BBC Persian reporting). This was just before girls were banned from universities. In other comments by the minister, also cited in the same BBC Persian report, he referred to two earlier Afghan kings and how they had encouraged women’s education. King Amanullah (r1999-1929) had introduced the idea of women’s schooling, he said, from “the West and the infidels,” and had brought “a version of prostitution and blasphemy to Afghanistan.” The Emirate, he said, was just doing the same.[6]
IEA officials also frequently invoke Afghan sovereignty to defend their policies on women and girls, insisting that any criticism is an attempt to interfere in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, for example, responding to a reporter’s question as to whether women’s rights would be on the agenda of the Doha III conference, said: “We acknowledge women are facing issues, but they are internal Afghan matters and need to be addressed locally within the framework of Islamic Sharia.” He told reporters that “IEA meetings, such as the one in Doha or with other countries, have nothing to do with the lives of our sisters, nor will we allow them to interfere in our internal affairs” (reported by Voice of America).
In response to IEA implacability and resistance to domestic or international pressure to amend its laws and policies on women and girls, Afghan women’s rights defenders have increasingly looked to international legal measures for relief and demanded international support in this effort. This has been seen not only in the gender apartheid campaign, but in the attempt to take Afghanistan to the International Court of Justice, explored by this author in an October report for AAN.
Legal and political arguments for having a new law
Proponents for the codification of the new crime argue that it addresses a gap in international law and that neither the crime against humanity of gender persecution nor the prohibitions on gender discrimination under international human rights law are sufficient to deal with the situation in Afghanistan. They say only gender apartheid captures the elements of animus and intent and is able to capture both the totality and the gravity of oppression. These are looked at in turn, below.
Reflecting the animus and intent
Proponents argue that gender apartheid, unlike other legal frameworks, captures the underlying ideology that considers women inferior to men and makes this a central guiding principle in the exercise of state power, just as black South Africans were cast as racially inferior and governed accordingly. One of the leading voices in favour of codifying gender apartheid is Karima Bennoune, a law professor and former UN Special Rapporteur for Cultural Rights, who writes that for the Taleban, “domination of women is a core element of the group’s ideology and a key prong of its governing platform.” Such animus is what legal scholar Patricia Williams referred to in the South African context as being “so deeply painful and assaultive” that it constitutes “spirit murder.” The crime of gender persecution, like racial persecution, does not require the presence of a motivating hatred or animus. Similarly, gender discrimination under international human rights law does not require intent to be present.
Reflecting the totality of the crimes
Proponents argue that the totality of the Taleban’s oppression of Afghan women and girls – its systematic and institutionalised nature – is better captured by apartheid than persecution. The crime of gender persecution can potentially be applied to severe abuses against women and girls, including widespread denials of education and freedom of movement or forced marriage, but it does not require that the persecution is institutionalised across the system of governance. An individual could, for example, be prosecuted on the basis of a narrow subset of acts that come under gender persecution, such as forced sterilisation, if it met the contextual requirements of all crimes against humanity.[7] This idea was captured by the written comments of the government of Malta in October 2023 in relation to the Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention:
The codification of the crime of gender apartheid will enable victims and survivors – present and future – to hold perpetrators to account for the totality of crimes committed by systematized oppression which the crime of gender persecution alone cannot and does not capture.
It is worth noting that gender persecution has been sorely underutilised – there has been only one charge of gender-based persecution ever brought to trial at the International Criminal Court (which largely failed, for reasons explained in this analysis). The court is taking steps to rectify this neglect – in December 2022, it released a new policy on gender persecution, and a year later, released a revised policy on gender-based crimes. Consequently, the discussion about the distinction between gender apartheid and gender persecution takes place without much case law.
Reflecting the gravity of crimes
A distinction that intersects with the arguments that only gender apartheid captures the elements of animus and can capture the totality and the gravity of oppression is that its codification would better convey the gravity of the harms, in terms of the severity of individual and collective acts. Human rights commissioner Volker Turk, when lending his support to the codification, spoke of gender apartheid better capturing “the extent and severity” of the impacts of “institutionalised regimes of systematic oppression and domination of women.”
Complicity by second states
Another benefit of codifying gender apartheid, say proponents, is that it would clarify the obligations of second states and international organisations, including the UN, because there would be a duty to avoid complicity in apartheid. The prohibition on apartheid contained in the Apartheid Convention, in addition to numerous resolutions at the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council condemning apartheid and reiterating states’ obligations, is seen as having made a significant contribution to ending the apartheid regime in South Africa. This was described in a 21 February 2024 letter of support to the gender apartheid campaign from South African jurists:
The international community responded comprehensively to the crime of racial apartheid, forcing accountability on the South Africa apartheid state, and imposing the obligation of member states at the United Nations to eradicate the institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination of black South Africans. Broadening the definition of the crime of apartheid to include gender would enable a structured global approach that is responsive to the institutionalized systems of domination and oppression of women, girls and others.
Similarly, Karima Bennoune argued at the Security Council in September 2023 that a “powerful aspect of the ‘gender apartheid approach’ is that no Member State can be complicit in or normalize the Taliban’s actions, as was the case with racial apartheid in South Africa.” One of the women spearheading the campaign, an Iranian lawyer at the Atlantic Council, Nushin Sarkarati, believes codification of the new law could provide a degree of clarity about state engagement that is lacking at present: “When we call for principled engagement it’s not clear how the General Assembly can make that happen. To hold other states responsible, in terms of trade, interactions, even humanitarian aid, we need to create more proper monitoring mechanisms.”
International Legal Equity
Finally, campaigners argue that a simple question of equity in international law is at stake, a point made to AAN by Human Rights Watch’s Heather Barr: “The question experts and scholars keep asking is ‘Why should crimes that are identical be ignored if it’s about gender rather than race.’” If the need was felt to criminalise both racial apartheid and racial persecution, Barr asked, surely the same should be true for gender apartheid and gender persecution. Nushin Sarkarati told AAN she is familiar with this double standard: “Any time you try to improve gender justice norms the push back is – why isn’t what you have already enough? But nobody says – why do you need racial apartheid when you already have racial persecution and discrimination.”[8]
Support from LGBTQI+ groups
Support for codification has also come from Afghan and international LGBTQI+[9] activists, who hope that persecution on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity would also fall under ‘gender apartheid’. Civil society groups have documented a worsening of abuses against LGBT people in Afghanistan since 2021, particularly those in same-sex relationships. However, an article supporting codification by an activist from the Afghan LGBT Organisation (ALO) and a women’s rights NGO Madre, also raised concerns about the risks of creating and interpreting new crimes involving the term ‘gender’ amid an increasingly fraught global discourse about definitions of sex and gender. Madre published an open letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres in September 2024, requesting a global study on the crime of apartheid to address this and other definitional concerns which one of the authors told AAN they expect “may be positively received” and be “completed within a year”.[10] This is well within the timeframe that codification of gender apartheid entails, as explained below.
Political Obstacles: Back pedalling from South Africa
One potential political obstacle to the campaign emerged in 2024, when South Africa withdrew its support. This was a blow to campaigners since throughout 2023, it had been a prominent state supporters of codification in official venues, lending a degree of legitimacy that no other state could provide. At the Human Rights Council in June 2023 when Bennett and the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls report that supported codifying gender apartheid was discussed, the South African representative had spoken in favour, saying:
As a country that prizes the promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls, my delegation therefore calls on the international community take action against what the report describes as “gender apartheid”, much like it did in support of South Africa’s struggle against racial apartheid.
Again, on 22 September 2023, South Africa co-sponsored a side event on gender apartheid at the UN General Assembly. A delegation from the End Gender Apartheid campaign, including Pakistani feminist campaigner Malala Yousafzai and Afghan campaigner Metra Mehran, visited South Africa in early December 2023. Mehran told AAN that their meetings in South Africa were very positive:
Based on the interactions we had in South Africa and with South African missions, everyone is very supportive. They echo our arguments, and the arguments that the women of Afghanistan make, that what is happening in Afghanistan is apartheid – it is systemic and institutionalised.
The ground shifted soon after this visit. By the time the Human Rights Council discussed gender apartheid again in June 2024, South Africa had reversed its position, expressing concern that the inclusion of gender apartheid might ‘dilute’ the original meaning of apartheid (see this summary of discussions).
What seems to have triggered this shift was South Africa throwing all its diplomatic weight into a legal challenge against Israel for its alleged genocide against the Palestinians; on 29 December 2023, it launched a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The historical context for South Africa’s action was the alliance between Israel and apartheid South Africa and the decades-long common cause felt by the African National Congress (ANC) towards the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Palestinians in general. Since the end of white minority rule, the ANC as the governing party, has consistently used the term ‘apartheid’ to describe the Palestinians’ situation (documented in this timeline of the term in relation to Israel/Palestine; see also this Guardian article). This is also a position that has found recent legal backing at the International Court of Justice.[11]
The ICJ case was a bold move for South Africa. An editorial in The Conversation[12] argued that it has brought a politically weak government much-needed popular domestic support and burnished its image on the international stage. Mehran speculated that the South African government might be concerned that the gender apartheid campaign could “overshadow” the genocide case it is making against Israel at the ICJ. It may also feel it needs to use its political capital to garner support for the ICJ case, including, but not limited to, Muslim-majority states that might support Palestine but prefer to avoid the ramifications of gender apartheid being codified for conservative Islamic states.
Asylum, Potential Second State Responsibility and UN concerns
Another issue that may be problematic for campaigners is whether states fear that their asylum obligations might be affected by codifying gender apartheid. An article by human rights lawyer Mélissa Cornet cites a “European diplomat” admitting that many countries are concerned about “the political consequences of recognising gender apartheid, especially because it would bring pressure to grant unconditional asylum to Afghan women and girls.” It is not clear how much credence this position holds in practice, given that the European Court of Justice, the UN agency for refugees, and a growing list of countries have already said that Afghan women and girls should automatically be granted asylum based on the persecution they face as a class of people (as discussed in this AAN article). However, since one of the appeals for activists of codifying gender apartheid is that its recognition imposes greater responsibilities on second states, given the context of a growing hostility voiced by many Western states towards asylum seekers, this may be a factor in whether they support the gender apartheid campaign.
Another setback for campaigners appears to have come from the UN Secretary-General. AAN has heard from several sources that his office has circulated a memorandum, requesting UN staff to refrain from using the term ‘gender apartheid’. This does not appear to reflect a disagreement with the term itself, but a fear that by using it there could be implications for UN operations, even without it being codified in law.
Supporters of the gender apartheid campaign have speculated to AAN that for the UN to recognise that it is operating in a country where gender apartheid is practised would require it to distance itself for fear of being regarded as complicit with that apartheid regime. There has been a tense debate about degrees of diplomatic engagement and how humanitarian aid can be equitably delivered since the Emirate emerged in 2021, and UNAMA is already involved in a delicate dance around the employment of women in Afghanistan, where Emirate law banning the UN from employing women sharply diverges from the UN’s own equal opportunity employment obligations. The UN was also criticised for accepting IEA conditions for the June 2024 Doha III, in particular, that the only Afghans present would be its officials, with no other Afghans, including no women or civil society present (censure came from states, civil society and in this opinion editorial by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett). For the UN to recognise gender apartheid would only strengthen the case of those who argue against its engagement with the Emirate.
AAN has not seen a copy of the memorandum and is unclear about the scope of the censorship it orders, but it would, at the very least, cover those staff who work directly for the Secretary-General, such as his Special Representative (SRSG). It would not, however, curtail the freedom of Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett, who holds a UN mandate but is independent of the UN (including not receiving a UN salary).
Overall, the alleged intervention by the Secretary-General is an irritant to the campaign. However, it can also be seen as confirmation of one of its driving ideas, that the language of apartheid itself has power in the real world.
How do you make a new international crime?
There would be two main pathways towards codifying gender apartheid. One is to amend the definition of racial apartheid under article 7(2)(h) of the Rome Statute, for which there are periodic opportunities for signatories. The other is to include gender apartheid in a new treaty that is due to be negotiated in the coming years on Crimes Against Humanity (CAH). The latter is the most promising route since the campaign to codify gender apartheid has emerged at a time when the process of creating a new treaty – that includes the crime of racial apartheid – is already underway. The hope for campaigners is that the definition of apartheid already contained in the draft treaty can be extended, or duplicated in large part, to include gender apartheid. Crimes against humanity are already codified under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the ICC to include murder, extermination, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, and the crime of apartheid, when they take place within the context of a large-scale attack on civilians. Adoption of the CAH treaty would bring crimes against humanity in line with existing stand-alone treaties for other crimes – genocide, war crimes, torture and enforced disappearances.[13]
On 22 November 2024, the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly, which is responsible for legal issues, approved by consensus a proposal for a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity (UN press release here). It set out a timebound process involving preparatory sessions in 2026 and 2027, with negotiations in 2028 and 2029 (see AP report). That may seem like a distant horizon, but we are already several years into the process (discussions about the treaty began well before 2019, when the UN’s International Law Commission first completed draft articles).
So far, the focus has been on the treaty as a whole rather than substantive discussions about individual articles, such as gender apartheid, but campaigners have been able to put down a marker for the negotiations. With the help of comments and written submissions from supportive states, gender apartheid, which was not in the original draft articles from the Law Commission, is now included in the summaries of discussions and written commentary that will, alongside the original draft articles, be part of the negotiations. So far, campaigners say, so good.
During the treaty discussions, Afghanistan, represented by a former Republic official, advocated for the codification of gender apartheid, as did Australia, Chile, Malta and Mexico, while Austria, Brazil, Iceland, the Philippines and the United States expressed a willingness to engage in future discussions about the concept (the discussions can be watched here). Only one state – Cameroon – argued that gender persecution was sufficient.
Conclusion
The debate about codification may feel like it happens in a separate realm from the reality of life in Afghanistan. For the Emirate, it may just be a note in the chorus of condemnation from around the world, dismissed as yet more international interference or hypocrisy.
Campaigners have a long road ahead to win broad enough state support to make codification a reality. Realistically, it could be many years before a new Crimes Against Humanity Treaty comes into force, with more years before prosecutors might try to test it. In the meantime, however, HRW’s Heather Barr thinks the campaign itself has played a mobilizing role:
While we are on the path, Afghan women have seen enormous benefits from the gender apartheid campaign. It has galvanised and united Afghan women’s rights defenders in a way that almost nothing else has. I keep hearing women’s rights defenders say they all agree on this.
Mehran agrees:
It’s really the one thing that all women I speak to agree on. There is so much tension on so many issues, but regardless of differences between generations, or language differences or where you come from or where you live, we all agree on the need for a gender apartheid to be recognised. … In fact, there’s frustration from some women protestors I’ve talked to as to why it is not codified already.
The reported actions of the Secretary-General suggest the term gender apartheid itself has power. There is a growing list of states, senior UN mandate holders and officials, jurists and rights advocates that now frequently use the term in relation to Afghanistan. This suggests that, however long codification might take, the term resonates so widely that it is already entering the human rights lexicon.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
The End Gender Apartheid campaign website includes a list of Afghan, Iranian and international signatories.
The term ‘gender apartheid’ was first coined, albeit not as a proposed legal term of art, in the 1990s to describe the first Emirate’s policy towards women and girls, used, for example in a reportby the UN Special Rapporteur on civil and political rights in 1999, and in a Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid by a feminist coalition led by the US-based Feminist Majority Foundation.
↑4
The law, officially called The Protection of the Family through Promoting the Culture of Hijab and Chastity law was passed by Iran’s parliament on September 20, 2023 and ratified by the legal body that has final approval of laws, the Guardian Council, in September 2024 (see the text in Persian).
↑5
See also Vakil, Sanam. “Women and politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Action and reaction”, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013 and Justice for Iran’s “Thirty Five Years of Force Hijab: The widespread and systematic violation of women’s rights in Iran.”
↑6
Education, especially of girls, has a century-long history of politicisation – promoting equal access to schooling, including non-madrassa schooling, to ‘modernise’ or ‘nation-build’, or opposing it as ‘unIslamic’ and ‘unAfghan’, previously explored for AAN by Reza Kazemi and Kate Clark. The current hardline position of the Emirate, however, has also drawn condemnation from global Sunni religious scholars, including the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, Ahmed El-Tayyeb, who made a statement after women were banned from universities, in December 2022, describing is as “a fabrication” of Islam and calling for the ban to be reconsidered.
↑7
Crimes against humanity require that they happen within the context of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population.
↑8
It is hard to find legal scholars who question the case made for codification. Ahmad Ali Shariati, an Afghan PhD student writing for the European Journal of International Law blog, is one of the few. He questions the claim that gender apartheid would better match the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan, since the proposed crime of gender apartheid would also be a crime against humanity and therefore be ‘on a par’ with gender persecution. Both would have to meet the high bar of demonstrating the requisite systematic or widespread nature of crimes against humanity.
↑9
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other.
↑10
More background on this debate, as well a case for the deliberate non-definition of gender in international criminal law—the approach taken in preparing the draft CAH treaty—is made in Just Security here.
↑11
On 19 July 2024, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion finding multiple and serious international law violations by Israel towards Palestinians in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, that included finding Israeli policies violate the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.
↑12
The Conversation website describes itself as “an independent source of news analysis and informed comment written by academic experts, working with professional journalists.”
↑13
The Rome Statute would impose additional obligations on states to act against perpetrators of crimes against humanity. The absence of a treaty is also seen as devaluing the seriousness of crimes against humanity. See Human Rights Watch’s 9 October 2024 ‘Towards a Crimes against Humanity Treaty’.
Could the Islamic Emirate be the Inspiration for a New Crime Against Humanity? Prospects for the gender apartheid campaign
The 29th UN Climate Change Conference, or COP29, which was hosted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, concluded on 24 November 2024 in Baku, with a delegation from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in attendance. This was the first time the Emirate had participated in a UN-organised conference on climate, but only as an observer. The invitation was extended to the Emirate by the host country and not by the United Nations. The Emirate’s delegation was led by the National Environment Programme of Afghanistan’s new Director-General, Mati ul-Haq Khales. The UN, for its part, invited two Afghan NGOs and a civil society representative to participate in COP29 side events. AAN’s former co-director Thomas Ruttig delves into what prompted this invitation, as well as examining Afghanistan’s climate-related challenges and the Emirate’s words and actions on climate change.
The politics of an invitation
For the first time since it took power in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has taken part in a major conference organised by the United Nations,[1] the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or simply the COP29, which was held in the Republic of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku 11-24 November 2024. (The conference was scheduled to close on 22 November, but it overran for 33 hours because of bitter negotiations that came within inches of collapse, BBC reported).[2]
Notably, the Emirate was invited as an observer to the conference by the host country, Azerbaijan, rather than the United Nations itself, which is the COP29 organiser. Although Afghanistan is party to the 2015 Paris Agreement,[3] participation as an observer allows the IEA to take part in discussions without having the full voting rights or decision-making powers that a member state does.
For the IEA, attending the COP29 is a significant moment in its quest to end its international isolation and gain legitimacy and recognition on the world stage.
The UN cannot officially invite the IEA because the Emirate does not hold Afghanistan’s seat at the world body and — as of now — no UN member state has officially recognised the Emirate. This is despite the fact that several countries, particularly those in Afghanistan’s neighbourhood, namely Turkey, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, most Central Asian republics and, less prominently, India – maintain more than just informal diplomatic relations (see a breakdown from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and more on India from The Diplomat). By now, many have exchanged ambassadors with Kabul.
Despite this, these countries along with all other UN member states continue to unanimously deny the Emirate a seat in the UN, which has long been a demand of the IEA. This year, the absence of an invitation to the 79th UN General Assembly session was notable, as it marked the fourth consecutive year that the Emirate had not received an invitation. In response, the Emirate protested and expressed its dissatisfaction with its continued exclusion (see ToloNews).[4]
This situation raises the question of whether a delegation from the Emirate should take part in UN conferences. It is, therefore, not only a climate policy issue but, indeed, also one of general foreign policy.
Similar to the UN’s controversial move to secure the participation of the IEA by excluding all other Afghan parties or relegating them to side events, including women and civil society actors, which led to widespread condemnations and a call from women’s rights activists to boycott Doha III (see USIP’s analysis here, MEMRI here and this DROPS video on X), the question whether to invite IEA representatives to Baku or not, regardless in what capacity, was also highly controversial. Leading civil society activists, mainly in the diaspora, and UN independent experts have decried every instance of the UN’s engagement with the Emirate, for example in this statement from 14 August 2024, signed by more than 20 Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and Working Groups. They argue:
There should be no move to normalise the de facto authorities, unless and until there are demonstrated, measurable, and independently verified improvements against human rights benchmarks, particularly for women and girls.
Before Doha III, other women NGO activists from inside the country stated that they found the UN’s approach understandable. In a recent online meeting the author attended, one of them said that “somehow a dialogue [with the Taleban] has to start.” However, she hoped that the UN would later bring women back into the Doha talks. She and others pointed out that their organisations, some of them still women-led, were already conducting an extremely difficult, discreet, topic-centred dialogue with the Taleban authorities. The Afghan woman quoted above said when, in advance to Doha III, UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Rosa Otunbayeva, held consultations, “the room was full” and she regretted that voices from within the country were less present in the public.[5] Even more so, those who argue for engagement were often denounced as ‘Taleban proxies’ or ‘appeasers’ by parts of the diaspora.
An invitation to observe
Mati ul-Haq Khales, who is the Director-General of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) and heads up the Emirate’s three-member all-male delegation, confirmed that the invitation came from Azerbaijan’s Environment Minister Mukhtar Babayev, who is also President of the COP29 conference (see AFP). Khales, son of a prominent former Mujahideen leader, the late Mawlawi Yunus Khales,[6] said the Emirate “really appreciated” Babayev’s invitation and the facilitation of the visas by the government of Azerbaijan, according to AFP who spoke to him after he arrived in Baku.
Being an observer means the men representing the IEA at COP29 are not allowed to take part in the actual conference, have no voting rights and remain blocked from access to international funds under the UN which have already been created — or are meant to be created in Baku — intended to alleviate the effects of climate change. It can also not officially submit Afghanistan’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) — the national plan to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change — to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN entity responsible for convening the COP conferences. Notably, the UNFCCC’s Bureau of the COP “has deferred consideration of Afghanistan’s participation since 2021, in effect freezing the country out of the talks,” as reported by Reuters.
This, however, is not the first time the Emirate has been invited to environmental meetings, at least according to NEPA’s Director for Climate Change, Ruhollah Amin, who is also a member of Afghanistan’s COP29 delegation, who said that NEPA had been “invited to other [unspecified] environmental summits in the past but did not receive visas,” adding that “the agency has received an invitation and is working on securing visas to attend the U.N. summit on desertification in Saudi Arabia,” (as reported by Hurriyet Daily News quoting an earlier interview with AFP).[7]
Regardless of their status at COP29, Azerbaijan’s invitation put the IEA delegation in a position to “potentially participate in periphery discussions and potentially hold bilateral meetings,” as a “diplomatic source familiar with the matter” described to Reuters.
AAN has learned, from a source in Kabul who asked not to be identified, that the UN political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, which according to its most recent mandate, is tasked with “deepening engagement” with the Taleban may have supported or even initiated the invitation. According to a Security Council mandated report by the Special Coordinator, Feridun Sinirlioğlu, released on 8 November 2023, progress in a range of areas including women’s rights and political inclusion “would be necessary for any forward progress on normalization and recognition.” Despite UN engagement, the Emirate’s lack of progress on human rights clearly stands in the way of diplomatic recognition, as highlighted in various UN Security Council resolutions since August 2021 – not least because Afghanistan, as a UN member state, is bound by the relevant international conventions that it is signatory to.
The fact that UNAMA continues its work in Afghanistan, despite the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice announcing in September 2024 that it would cease all cooperation with the UN mission in Afghanistan as a result of “their repeated propaganda against the implementation of Sharia law,” (see Agencia EFE report quoting the ministry’s spokesman, Mawlawi Sabawoon) and that the IEA has not given any indications that it intends to cease its engagement with the UN, provides at least a theoretical basis for further talks.
There has also been speculation that the next meeting of the Special Envoys for Afghanistan and IEA representatives (Doha IV) would focus on climate-related issues, one of the three issues discussed during the previous meeting – the first of such meetings with IEA participation – on 30 June to 1 July 2024.[8] As of this writing, the future of the Doha format meetings remains uncertain and a date for the next round of talks has not yet been decided.
Afghan NGOs participate in COP29 side events
The IEA delegation was not the only Afghan participant at COP29. The UN invited two Afghan non-governmental organisations and an individual civil society representative active in the environmental sector, which are not part of the official Emirate delegation, to participate in side events in Baku (see the list of NGOs accredited to participate in COP29 here). In addition, some individuals obtained permission to attend online sessions and there were also a few Afghan nationals who attended the meeting in Baku, but as representatives of organisations based outside Afghanistan, according to Afghan water resource management specialist (and frequent AAN contributor), Muhammad Assem Mayar, who works at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research in Müncheberg near Berlin (see his post on X).
The two Afghanistan-based organisations officially invited by the UN were the Environmental Protection Training and Development Organisation (EPTDO) and The Liaison Office (TLO); the latter does not specialise in the environment but does run community-based environmental projects. Both organisations are based in Kabul. The third Afghan civil society participant, Marwa Alam Safa, represented Afghan youth at the COP29 side event, the UN Youth Conference. She works in the environmental sector at the Agha Khan Foundation in Afghanistan, is the country director of the international NGO EcoClimate Vision (according to her LinkedIn profile) and is part of the core team of the Climate and Environment Youth Initiative (CEYI) in Afghanistan (see One Million Leaders Asia for more information about her).[9]
In a post on the social media platform LinkedIn on 14 November, Safa wrote that she took part in Baku “with a simple but vital mission: to amplify the voices of Afghan youth, showing that we want to be part of the global climate solution and to fight for climate justice.”
Afghanistan’s climate issues
The UN and NGOs focusing on climate-related issues in Afghanistan as a way of engaging with the Emirate may seem tactical, which it certainly is, but it is also much more than that. Afghanistan is literarily feeling the heat of the climate crisis. With its estimated population of over 40 million, Afghanistan is one of the ten countries most affected by “extreme weather and severe disasters driven by climate change,” according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). It is also the sixth most vulnerable country to climate change and fourth in overall disaster risk (see the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative Stephen Rodriques’ interview on Tolonews, German NGO Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index and this Radio Azadi report quoting the European Commission’s Inform Risk Index). At the same time, it “is one of the lowest producers of planet-heating fossil fuel emissions, accounting for less than 1% of the global total (more accurately 0.6 per cent, according to UNDP). In other words, Afghanistan’s emissions are 25 times less per capita than, for example, Germany and account for only 6.5 per cent of the global average (see Statstica).
Behind the numbers and statistics are the Afghan people who bear the brunt of the seemingly relentless climate-related calamities that strike Afghanistan (see this dossier of AAN’s extensive reporting on the environment and climate change here) – from devastating multiyear droughts (see AAN report), to destructive floods that rumble through communities, sweeping away everything in their paths, including people, homes, harvests and arable soil, most recently in April, May, August and October 2024 (see AAN reporting here and here),[10] soil erosion and declining agricultural productivity, according to the UNDP representative in Afghanistan, Stephen Rodriques (see Arab News here). Drought precipitated by climate change, according to Mayar, reduces agricultural yields by around 30 per cent, which in turn leads to a ten per cent decline in the country’s entire economy (see his post on X here).
The international aid organisation Save the Children, citing data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), reported in August 2024 that Afghanistan had recorded “the highest number of children [747,094] made homeless by climate disasters of any country” at the end of 2023 (see here). The report went on to say that 25 of the country’s 34 provinces are “facing severe or catastrophic drought conditions, affecting more than half of the country’s population.”
Despite the Emirate’s (albeit decreasing) international isolation and exclusion from various UN fora, the invitation to Baku may provide room to discuss ways to revive climate-related development cooperation. Some argue that Afghanistan’s population should not be punished for the impasse between the international community and its current government and certainly not for a crisis not of Afghan’s own doing.[11]
Occasions for dialogue, said Mayar, will allow the Emirate to present Afghanistan’s NDC in bilateral meetings on the margins of the conference and unofficially submit their plans to UNFCCC. However, the hope is that this will at least pave the way for negotiations. He also pointed out that money for climate projects in Afghanistan must solve “national infrastructure problems” and not be spent on small-scale projects such as livelihoods projects – which, he said, “are important but may not have the desired impact” (see his post on X here). He stressed that, over the last three years, climate impact adaptation projects for Afghanistan worth 826 million USD have been suspended as a result of the cancellation of western development cooperation. He, therefore, advocates for the “decentralisation” of climate impact financing, especially in countries affected by conflict or the consequences of conflict, such as Afghanistan (see his post on X here).
The Emirate’s position on climate change
Pointing to Afghanistan’s climate crisis-related vulnerabilities, the IEA presents itself as a serious actor on climate issues. Its delegation in Baku struck a conciliatory and factual tone in Baku, chiming in with many COP29 participants to “deliver the message … to the world community that climate change is a global issue and it does not know transboundary issues,” the NEPA Director-General, Khales told AFP.
He also made clear the IEA positions and demands. The participants at COP29 should take vulnerable countries such as Afghanistan, which are most affected by the effects of climate change, into account “in their decisions,” he told AFP. Khales, who was a member of the Taleban negotiating team during the Doha talks between the US and the Taleban, which culminated in the 2020 Doha agreement, spoke of “climate justice” and described access to funds as his country’s “main expectation” from COP29: “Our people in Afghanistan should [be able to] access” climate-related funds, he said. Like other countries in the global south, the Taleban believe that wealthier countries, which are the greatest contributors of harmful greenhouse gas emissions, should compensate them for climate-related damages. In an apparent indirect reference to the Emirate’s contentious policies on women’s rights, Khales said that implementing climate protection projects would also be a “boost” for women.
Mayar told AAN he believed that the Emirate appointed Khales, who had been leading the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS), to head NEPA “because he had already successfully raised funds and conducted negotiations there.”
In the lead-up to the Baku conference, NEPA’s Deputy Director-General, Zainulabedin Abed, called on the international community not to “relate climate change matters with politics” – a reference to the issues of contention between the Emirate and the world community. “Climate change is a humanitarian subject,” he said (see Hurriyet Daily News quoting AFP here). This can be interpreted as a willingness to negotiate, but also as a refusal to make concessions on other issues.
The IEA has not joined the ranks of so-called ‘climate change deniers’ nor has it indicated it intends to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which the previous government ratified. In fact, the Emirate organised an event billed as Afghanistan’s “international climate change conference” in Jalalabad (Nangrahar province) earlier this year, where it was affirmed that “climate change is real, that it’s destroying God’s work and that those in the world who reject the truth of climate change need to get on board” and asked imams in all Afghanistan’s mosques “to emphasize during Friday prayers the need for environmental protection” (see the Washington Post). A Kabul imam, Farisullah Azhari interviewed by the Washington Post at the event said: “Carbon footprints will weigh heavily on judgment day … ‘God will ask: How did you make your money? And then he will ask: How much suffering did you cause in the process?’”
Similarly, NEPA’s account on X has recently been overflowing with photos and short reports on IEA climate change events and the activities of its environmental protection programmes across many provinces, some of which reference stewardship of the environment as a religious obligation.
Afghanistan’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), a five-year plan that each country ought to prepare and submit to UNFCCC — which the IEA delegation took to Baku – has a budget of more than 17 billion USD for the period 2025-2030. Although NDCs have to be updated every five years, Afghanistan had not substantively updated its plan since it was drafted by the previous government in September 2015 (see here). The 2015 plan also required 17 billion USD , but for an entire decade from 2021 to 2030. Last year, according to NEPA, the Emirate decided to update Afghanistan’s NDC regardless of whether the UNFCCC Secretariat accepted it at COP29. In this update, the amount of funding sought in the previous plan remained the same, but the funding period halved. This, however, has no practical impact as long as the IEA is “frozen” by UNFCCC and thus lacks the ability to access global climate change funds.
On the UN side, UNDP was initially supposed to support NEPA in revising the NDC, but it backed out when it became obvious it would have to contribute to a document that would contradict the UN’s gender criteria, a source with knowledge of these discussions who asked not to be identified told AAN. Later, according to the same source, UNDP sought to fund a revision of NDC through the Afghan NGO REHA (Resilience, Environment and Humanitarian Aid; ‘Reha’ or ‘Raha’ means ‘rescue’ in Dari). This would have allowed UNDP to support the revision without being referenced in the document. NEPA, however, refused the proposal and said it would prefer to undertake the revision on its own.
A Kabul event to coincide with COP29
On the first day of COP29 in Baku, the Afghan NGO REHA held an event in Kabul titled ‘From Exclusion to Inclusion’, which according to the organisation sought to “make the voices of Afghan children, youth, women, the private sector, the ulama, local communities and experts heard” (see Mayar’s post on X here, REHA’s posts on LinkedIn and a position paper prepared by the organisation titled ‘From Exclusion to Inclusion Afghanistan’s urgent call for climate action at COP29”). In total, “over 160 representatives and officials from national authorities, UN agencies, NGOs, media, donor organisations, embassies and activists” took part in this event, according to REHA.
Among them was the Emirate’s acting Deputy Foreign Minister and former chief negotiator in Doha, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, who blamed “NATO, America, Russia and all industrial countries” as the “general reason for the environmental problems we have in our country,” in his speech. “And today again they don’t want to cooperate with Afghanistan in order to solve the problems created by them,” he added (see his post on X here).
In conclusion, according to REHA, the participants, which were representatives from “diverse Afghan groups—academics, stakeholders, farmers, youth, & children from across the country – urged the @UNFCCC & @COP29_AZ to re-integrate [Afghanistan] into climate finance, [and] to not ignore the severe consequences of the climate crisis in the country”(see REHA’s post on X here).
A call the Emirate is likely in agreement with.
What’s next?
Whether COP29 and the IEA’s participation in side events and bilateral meetings in Baku leads to progress for Afghanistan and helps the Emirate succeed in persuading UN member-states to reintegrate the country into the climate financing initiatives remains to be seen.
The meetings – at least those that have been made public– have not been too impressive, though, so far. NEPA published on its X account that the delegation met with the head of the South Asian Environmental Cooperation Program (SACEP); officials of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Ozone Secretariat; senior UNDP officials; the deputy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Dragana Kojic; the Russian President’s Special Representative for Climate Change, Ruslan Edelgeriev and the Norwegian Special Representative for Afghanistan. It also participated in a meeting of “high officials” from Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Mongolia and Azerbaijan on how to deal with climate change in mountainous areas (see NEPA’s post on X here). Apart from Norway, no representative from Afghanistan’s former major donor countries met the Emirate delegation, at least not on the record.
Apart from this, they met with members of the management boards of various UNFCCC-related multilateral funds in order to explore possibilities for access, an Afghan participant in Baku working for a third-country NGO told AAN. He was unable to say whether there was any progress. But apparently the IEA delegation said that it would support direct financing to Afghan environmental NGOs, should climate funds opt to support them.
Reuters quoted two UN officials as saying that that UN agencies were “trying to unlock” climate financing for Afghanistan. According to this report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and UNDP were “currently drawing together proposals they hope to submit next year to shore up nearly $19 million in financing from the U.N’s Global Environment Facility (GEF), part of the financial mechanism of the 2015 U.N. Paris Agreement on climate change.”[12]
“We’re in conversations with the GEF, the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund – all these major climate financing bodies – to reopen the pipeline and get resources into the country, again, bypassing the de facto authorities,” UNDP’s Rodriques reportedly said. A Taleban spokesperson did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. “If successful, this would be the first time new international climate finance would flow into the arid, mountainous nation in three years”, the agency concluded. It remains to be seen whether Afghanistan’s former major donor countries would agree to these moves.
For its part, the IEA was firmly looking to the future: “We are very interested to be as a party in the COP30 in Brazil,” said NEPA Director-General Khales (see Arab News here).
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Jelena Bjelica
References
References
↑1
In the past two years, senior IEA officials have taken part in various forums in Russia, China and Central Asia, and the Emirate took part in the third UN-organised meeting on Afghanistan in Doha (Doha III), which was held on 30 June- 1 July 2024. They also made an appearance at the 2nd World Local Production Forum, as reported by Voice of America (VoA), organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Hague in November 2023. Before COP29, the Emirate had tried to establish relations with the BRICS countries, including Brazil which is slated to host COP30 in November 2025. It lobbied unsuccessfully for an invitation to the BRICS summit in Russia in October this year, according to Amu TV.
↑2
Azerbaijan opened its first-ever embassy in Kabul in February 2024 and sent an ambassador who had already been appointed in 2021, but resided elsewhere (see Radio Azadi). Foreign ministry spokesperson, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, announced on X that the Emirate would also be expanding its presence in Baku. However, this does not appear to have happened and the Emirate is still represented in Azerbaijan by a chargé d’affaires, according to the IEA embassy in Baku’s website.
↑3
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016.
↑4
The 79th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA79) opened on 10 September 2024. The Credentials Committee, appointed at the beginning of UNGA sessions, is expected to address the issue of who holds Afghanistan’s seat at the UN at a designated session later this year – usually in December. That decision was deferred last year, on 6 December 2023, for the third time since the Emirate’s re-establishment. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig wrote in December 2023 about the deferrals in a report which also scrutinised UN procedures, intra-Republic rivalry as to who should represent Afghanistan at the UN and the impasse facing the IEA in its search for recognition.
↑5
She wished to remain anonymous because of the topics sensitivity.
↑6
See this the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point 2013 report on the life of Yunus Khalid published on Jstor here.
↑7
The sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is scheduled to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 2-13 December 2024.
↑8
The other two topics were counternarcotics and the private sector.
↑9
CEYI’s vice president, Naman Sajad, is also an Ozone specialist at NEPA, indicating that the initiative cooperates with the agency. See also CEYI’s report ‘Impacts of Climate Change on Afghan Women, Youth, and Children’, which also contains general information on the environmental situation in Afghanistan.
↑10
Afghanistan, up to the first half of the 1980s, used to have two predictable ‘rainy seasons’ per year, one of about two weeks in spring and one of about one weak in November.
↑11
See for example this opinion piece co-authored by Afghan and non-Afghan experts and published recently by Al-Jazeera: “Afghanistan: Caught between climate change and global indifference”, or this op-ed by leading Afghan media entrepreneur Saad Mohseni.
↑12
FAO “hopes to get support for a project costing $10 million that would improve rangeland, forest and watershed management across up to four provinces in Afghanistan, while avoiding giving money directly to Taliban authorities.” UNDP, meanwhile, “hopes to secure $8.9 million to improve the resilience of rural communities where livelihoods are threatened by increasingly erratic weather patterns, the agency told Reuters. If that goes ahead, it plans to seek another $20 million project.”
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
Illustration: Payne, W. H. Letts’s bird’s eye view of the approaches to India. [London: Letts, Son & Co. 19–?], 1900, Map. Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/2006636637/You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.
Acting Deputy Prime Minister, Abdul Ghani Baradar, and Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, meet Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on the sidelines of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, 23 May 2024
A view of Kabul city centre, with unplanned houses perched on the mountain slope of Koh-e Asmai/Asamai (aka TV Hill), comprising the western side of the Deh Afghanan neighbourhood, and upscale projects in the background. Photo: Fabrizio Foschini, 2012
