As global attention centered on Gaza and the compounding upheavals and traumas triggered by Israel’s war on Hamas, another population is in crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees are being forced to leave Pakistan as the country implements an order from its interim government to remove undocumented people from within its borders. Of the roughly 4 million Afghans living in Pakistan, about 1.7 million people are thought to be in the crosshairs of this “repatriation” plan.
The Pakistani government set a Nov. 1 deadline for when people without legal documents — primarily Afghans, but also potentially asylum seekers from persecuted groups such as China’s Uyghurs and Myanmar’s Rohingya — to remain in the country must leave, or otherwise face arrest and deportation. A network of “holding centers” for detained migrants has been set up in Pakistan’s provinces, and locals report a surge in police harassment and abuse of Afghans living in the country. Close to 200,000 Afghan refugees have already returned to a homeland some do not even know, with the numbers rising.
Sarfraz Bugti, Pakistan’s caretaker interior minister, has framed the decision as one shaped by security imperatives, claiming that 14 out of 24 major terrorist attacks carried out this year within Pakistan have been by Afghan nationals. Pakistan is struggling to rein in the Pakistani Taliban outfits operating within the country; these factions have loose connections to the Taliban government next door in Afghanistan, which has denounced Pakistan’s planned expulsion of its nationals.
Many of the Afghans who have joined this exodus were born in Pakistan or fled to the country decades ago as children. “I was born in Pakistan, I’ve lived here for 42 years, I went to school in Pakistan,” a man identified as Nasim, who had traveled to the Torkham border crossing from the northern city Peshawar, told CNN. “I’ve never been to Afghanistan.”Post)
Now, their lives are subsumed in uncertainty and fear. More than 50 years of chaos and strife in Afghanistan have sent waves of refugees to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. The latest flow came after the Taliban’s 2021 takeover in Kabul, but many Afghans have resided in Pakistan since the days of the Soviet invasion. Reporters at border crossings detail tragic stories of Afghan families fleeing police extortion, vigilante violence and losing their businesses and property.
“Pakistan’s announced deadline for Afghans to return has led to detentions, beatings, and extortion, leaving thousands of Afghans in fear over their future,” Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement last week. “The situation in Afghanistan remains dangerous for many who fled, and deportation will expose them to significant security risks, including threats to their lives and well-being.”
According to the United Nations, 1.3 million Afghans are registered refugees in Pakistan and 880,000 more have legal status to remain. But a huge population of undocumented Afghans live in the country and are now being collectively punished for the actions of a handful of militants. “The large majority of such people are vulnerable Afghan refugees and stateless persons for whom Pakistan has been home for several generations,” wrote the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan last month in the wake of the government’s order.
“It is unacceptable to hold them to account for the wrongs of a select few,” it added. “They have a moral right to seek refuge in this country and to be treated with dignity and empathy.”
Western governments and international agencies also expressed alarm, warning of a new humanitarian crisis in a country like Afghanistan that is already crippled by a collapsed economy and the pariah status of its political leadership. Some returning refugees face persecution at the hands of the Taliban authorities. Others lament the inability to enroll their girls in schools, given the draconian edicts of the extremists in charge in Kabul. Many fear homelessness and destitution.
“I lived in Pakistan for more than a decade,” a man identified as Mohmand told Al Jazeera at a border crossing. “I have three children and a large, extended family, who are being pushed back after the government did not fulfill its promise of providing us proper documentation. I have no money, no roof. Where do I go back to?”
Unmoved, Pakistan’s caretaker government, guided by the country’s domineering military, is pressing ahead as it also prepares for elections scheduled Feb. 8. “The military, which exerts heavy influence over the caretaker regime, is likely driving the policy. (The army chief publicly endorsed the move and attended the meeting finalizing the plan.),” noted Michael Kugelman, South Asia director at the Wilson Center. “But it’s letting the caretaker regime — which need not worry about political blowback — take any public flak.”
Kugelman, writing in Foreign Policy, added that Pakistan may be trying to use the situation in its wrangling with Kabul: “Islamabad may be using the expulsion policy in part to compel the Taliban — which have condemned the move — to help more on counterterrorism. Sadly, vulnerable Afghans — from young new arrivals to older and established residents who embrace Pakistan as their only home — are becoming casualties of broader geopolitical machinations.”
Pakistan has a long, fraught history with the Taliban. The Islamist extremist organization received direct support and succor from Pakistan’s military establishment, and various wings of its leadership were allowed sanctuary in Pakistani cities. For years, the U.S.-backed government in Kabul blamed Pakistan for helping incubate the Taliban and enabling its militancy.
The tables have somewhat turned now, with Pakistani authorities frustrated with the inability of the Taliban in Kabul to check the infiltration and plots of the Pakistani Taliban. Those include separate attacks over the weekend on a police convoy and at an air force base. “The attacks have occurred as Pakistan carries out its repatriation plan for Afghans, which has been met with anger in Kabul,” noted a Sunday editorial in Pakistani daily Dawn. “Our security apparatus will need to remain extra vigilant and flush out not just the militants but also their facilitators.”
In a video statement, the Taliban’s acting prime minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund said that “if the current military and civilian rulers of Pakistan, or specifically the generals, have any problems with the Afghan government, they should solve them through negotiations. Come and talk face to face with us; don’t mistreat refugees for that.”
Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, the Taliban regime’s defense minister, called on Pakistani officials not to treat Afghan refugees with “cruelty” and to protect their property and possessions. He issued an ominous warning to Islamabad: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
The deportation campaign by Islamabad is cruel. Other countries have let down these refugees too
Human Rights Watch reports that refugees are now facing detentions, beatings and extortion by police. Others have been evicted by landlords or fired from jobs. The result is that Afghans believe they have no choice but to return to a country where they face a serious risk of harm. Iran, too, has repeated its threat to expel hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans. The UN high commissioner for refugees has repeatedly called for a bar on the forced return of Afghan nationals. It warns that minorities, journalists and women are at particular risk. “Due precautions,” says Pakistan’s foreign ministry, will be taken to ensure that those under greatest threat are not forced to return. But few have confidence given the abuses already taking place.
With a caretaker government in Islamabad, there is little political accountability for a decision thought to be driven largely by the country’s real rulers, the military. Afghans have become a scapegoat for Pakistan’s unquestionable economic woes. But the deterioration in bilateral relations is thought to be the primary cause of these expulsions. Islamabad wants to pressure the Taliban to act on surging cross-border terror attacks, and has also alleged that Afghan nationals in Pakistan have been involved in some of these attacks.
The acting interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, is wrong to seek to justify this cruel policy, which saw the Taliban regime’s defence minister chide Pakistan with a proverb in Pashto: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Mr Bugti has observed that the west should have done more to relocate Afghans if it is concerned about them. This might be a self-serving argument, but it is true. According to humanitarian groups, the $613m regional refugee response plan to support 7.3 million Afghans hosted in neighbouring countries is only 15% funded.
The failure of western countries to live up to their promises and their responsibilities is shameful. For hundreds of thousands of Afghans desperate to escape their country in 2021, nearby Pakistan was the only option. Yet EU states resettled just 271 Afghan refugees in 2022. Afghans had to move to a third country to apply for resettlement, but have been left vulnerable because their visas have expired during the lengthy process.
Astonishingly, around 3,000 Afghans who have been approved for refuge in Britain are stranded in UK-funded hotels in Islamabad, which Pakistani police have raided. Another 25,000 may reportedly be eligible for resettlement in the US. Other countries must press Pakistan to halt these removals; they have leverage since it needs international support to prop up its failing economy. But the rest of the world must make good on its promise to aid vulnerable Afghans.
The Guardian view on Pakistan’s expulsion of Afghans: don’t send them back to the Taliban
Islamabad’s policy of deporting all undocumented foreigners will have widespread repercussions.
On Wednesday, Pakistan began the process of expelling all undocumented foreigners, including 1.7 million Afghans—one of the country’s largest immigrant communities. Officials say the policy, which was first announced last month, will be implemented in phases, with migrants and refugees temporarily placed in holding centers before deportation.
Afghans in Pakistan have faced forced repatriations in the past but never on this scale. Islamabad claims the mass expulsion will protect public welfare and make Pakistan safer. But it’s likely that domestic politics and worsening relations with Taliban-led Afghanistan drove the government’s decision.
In recent weeks, Islamabad called on undocumented foreigners to leave voluntarily by Nov. 1. The government said on Monday that around 200,000 Afghan nationals had left over the past two months. Recent days have featured harrowing scenes of Afghan students hugging their Pakistani classmates goodbye and trucks lining up at the border piled high with Afghans’ belongings.
The potential repercussions of Pakistan’s draconian decision are devastating. Taliban-led Afghanistan is not prepared to accommodate masses of returnees, who will be greeted by a vast humanitarian crisis—15 million Afghans are acutely food insecure—exacerbated by drought, floods, and earthquakes. Afghanistan also faces severe global aid cuts and fewer international relief groups operating in its borders due to Taliban policies. Most returning girls and women won’t be able to attend school or work.
For decades, Pakistan has been a top destination for Afghans fleeing conflict, with several million entering the country since the 1970s, including at least 600,000 after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Pakistan prides itself on its ability to house so many Afghan refugees despite its constraints as a poor country. But human rights groups have documented Afghans facing years of discrimination at work, school, and at the hands of landlords and law enforcement. Some Pakistanis, including government officials, have accused Afghans of stealing jobs, dealing drugs, and participating in terrorism. Pakistani officials have previously ordered thousands of them to leave.
Likely for these reasons, many Afghans started to avoid Pakistan nearly a decade ago and instead fled to Europe via the Mediterranean. But for hundreds of thousands of Afghans desperate to escape their country in 2021, nearby Pakistan was the easiest option. They’re all vulnerable now—especially those who previously worked for the U.S. military and await approval to enter the United States on special immigration visas.
Islamabad insists its decision falls within applicable international norms—likely a reference to the many countries, including in the West, that deport undocumented immigrants. It emphasizes that the policy targets all undocumented foreigners, not just Afghans, and that legal immigrants aren’t affected (though reports emerged this week of some documented Afghans being deported, too). It is not clear whom, exactly, the policy will affect, but data in recent years suggests deportations may also impact migrants and refugees from Iran, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.
Indeed, it’s clear that Afghans have become scapegoats as Pakistan weathers both one of its worst economic crises in years and a major resurgence of terrorism by the Afghanistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Last month, interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti accused Afghans of being involved in organized crime and terrorism and indirectly accused them of hampering Pakistan’s economic recovery.
Some Pakistanis condemn the move and have staged protests against it in recent days, though there is no recent data suggesting how many might oppose it. At any rate, public opinion is unlikely to sway Islamabad. Pakistan is led by an apolitical caretaker government preparing the country for elections in January. The military, which exerts heavy influence over the caretaker regime, is likely driving the policy. (The army chief publicly endorsed the move and attended the meeting finalizing the plan.) But it’s letting the caretaker regime—which need not worry about political blowback—take any public flak.
Additionally, Pakistan’s relations with the Taliban have worsened because Islamabad thinks the group has not done enough to curb the presence of TTP fighters and bases in Afghanistan. Islamabad may be using the expulsion policy in part to compel the Taliban—which have condemned the move—to help more on counterterrorism. Sadly, vulnerable Afghans—from young new arrivals to older and established residents who embrace Pakistan as their only home—are becoming casualties of broader geopolitical machinations.
Michael Kugelman, the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief and the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.
Andar district in Ghazni province was a battleground for most of the years of the Islamic Republic, from 2003 up until its fall in 2021. The conflict caused not only loss of life, but also severe damage and disruption to business. Andar’s economy is once again fully functional and, for the time being, it is bucking the national trend; it is flourishing. Guest author Sabawoon Samim* has delved deeply into how the final years of the insurgency affected local businesses and how, since the establishment of the Islamic Emirate, the restoration of security and the community’s past loyalty to the Taleban have shaped economic affairs within the district.
Introduction
For most of the last two decades, Andar district in Ghazni province was the site of intense battles. Its strategic location, lying on Highway One between Kabul and Kandahar and one of the ‘gateways’ to Ghazni city, as well as the fact that many Taleban fighters and leaders hail from Andar, made it a hotbed of the insurgency from its earliest days. AAN has studied this district comprehensively for many years, with reports on the conflict, economy, politics and culture. In 2015, it published, ‘Finding Business Opportunity in Conflict: Shopkeepers, Taleban and the political economy of Andar district’ which discovered how shopkeepers were trying not only to survive the conflict, but also manipulate frontlines and road closures to their benefit and their rivals’ disadvantage. This paper is a follow-up to the 2015 report and also comes up to date looking at how the district has fared since 2021.
It begins by briefly introducing the traditional economic structure of Andar as well as how it was transformed with the invasion of the United States and the installation of a new Republic government which received unprecedented amount of aid and military spending after 2001. It then details how the last years of the insurgency affected the local economy, a time when the conflict intensified and control of territory shifted in the Taleban’s favour. The final section explores the current economic state of affairs in Andar, at what has happened to the bazaars that were forced by conflict to close or move location, and at how in Andar, at least, the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has brought security and economic and political dividends.
Andar district in Ghazni province. Map by Roger Helms, 2023
Background
Historically, Andar had a largely subsistence economy, centred around agriculture and livestock, and to a far lesser extent, remittances from economic migrants. The main crops cultivated in the district have been wheat, beans, potatoes and grapes. People exchanged what they grew within local communities in order to meet their most basic needs. Only a small portion of the harvest was sold abroad, enabling the purchase of goods that were not locally available, such as fuel, clothing, and machinery, like water pumps, generators and radios. Livestock, as the second major economic pillar, provided other essential needs. Cows and sheep supplied food and wool, and their dried dung was used as a fuel, for cooking and warming homes during winter, and as a fertiliser. Donkeys and horses were the main means of transport. Economic migration to neighbouring countries, chiefly Pakistan and Iran, was a third, important economic strategy. Many families had someone working abroad who could send money back home so that the family could purchase necessary goods from the bazaar. For one community elder, life was then far more straightforward:
In the past, all we ate and used came from the community. Life was simple and we didn’t need most of the things that have now became a necessity in life. We didn’t go to Ghazni [city] for months. Even if we had important things we needed to buy, one man from the entire village would go and buy everything for everyone in the village. We didn’t know what oranges, okra or vegetables were. All we ate were potatoes, shkana [onion and potato soup] and natar [a dish of buttermilk and broken-up pieces of bread]. People also didn’t have the kinds of clothes people have nowadays. Unlike nowadays, people didn’t need to go to the doctor for treatment. We had our own, homemade treatments. There were no cars or motorcycles, and so we didn’t need to take them to the mechanic or fill them with fuel. Life wasn’t as complex as it is today.
This equilibrium really began to change in 2001 when Afghanistan drew global attention following the 9/11 attacks, the United States overthrew the Islamic Emirate and the Islamic Republic was established and an unprecedented amount of aid flowed into the country. The exceptionally high levels of development aid and military spending raised living standards and drove economic growth – although always with concerns that the growth was not sustainable. Roads, hospitals, schools and telecommunication services were established, connecting previously isolated and inaccessible rural areas to Afghanistan’s relatively modern and often culturally distinct urban centres, and the world beyond. Andar was no exception to these national trends.
The consumption of imported consumer goods soon became a well-entrenched norm. Local bazaars were the primary benefactors of this phenomenon, with merchants bringing in outside goods from major bazaars in cities such as Ghazni. These local bazaars grew in size and number and the imported goods they sold became more varied. This growing trade meant the bazaar business became a major source of income for people in the district. Hundreds of shops were newly established in the old bazaars and new bazaars were set up in different localities. Most villages saw one or two new shops.
The main beneficiaries of this new trade in Andar were the established bazaars of Mirai, Nanai and Chardiwal. Mirai bazaar is host to Andar’s district centre and government administration, while Nanai is located on Highway One that passes from Kabul through Andar to Kandahar and Chardiwal bazaar lies on the road between Gardez in Paktia and Ghazni highway.
Mirai Bazaar in Andar district, Ghazni, in 2013 when it was still partly functional. From 2017 onwards when the conflict intensified, almost all traders moved their shops to Kamalkhil or Nazarwall. Photo: Fazal Muzhary, March 2013
Business in these bazaars flourished until the Taleban insurgency gained momentum in the area. The first blow to the bazaars of this growing insecurity was in 2009, when insurgents closed Mirai bazaar to prevent people from voting in the presidential elections. While the bazaar later reopened, it did not function properly after its first closure in 2009 during all the years of the insurgency (for more details see the 2015 AAN report).
With the conflict intensifying in the district, other bazaars also fell victim to it. Nanai was the site of vicious battles between the Taleban and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) as well as the US-led foreign forces when they were actively engaged in combat in the period up till 2014. The bazaar, though not formally closed until the end of the insurgency, was a frequent site for Taleban attacks, to the point where people did not dare visit it and it was de facto closed.
Chardiwal, while not host to any government administration, witnessed frequent attacks on passing ANSF convoys travelling to the Bandi Sardi military base and onto Paktika province. It also became too perilous for shopkeepers to do business and customers to visit.
One such businessman in Chardiwal was Anwar, who rented two large shops, selling chickens, vegetables, fresh fruit and beverages. He told the author that his shop was always crowded with customers as his prices were lower than the rest of the bazaar and he always made sure he had fresh fruit and vegetables in stock. Business was booming. Then in 2016, the Taleban planted a landmine in front of his shop in the middle of the night, which the next morning detonated beneath a passing Afghan National Army (ANA) convoy, killing and injuring one soldier and several civilians. Though Anwar survived, he was beaten in the aftermath of the attack by soldiers who blamed him for facilitating the attack.
A few months later, he said he received a phone call from a local Taleban commander who asked him to come to a mosque in a nearby village. When he went there, he was again beaten and imprisoned for a week, this time accused of helping the ANA. Anwar did not go into greater detail, but his story illustrates how vulnerable local businesses could be to the suspicions and allegations made by all of the warring parties.
The more the insurgency intensified, the more the bazaars suffered. However, around 2017, two of the three major bazaars, Mirai and Chardiwal, each received a severe blow. In October of that year, the Taleban besieged Mirai, Andar’s district centre, destroying dozens of shops that were hit by rockets and heavy machine gun fire, and causing the complete closure of the bazaar. Meanwhile, the Taleban also chose to destroy and seal the road connecting Ghazni to Paktika where Chardiwal bazaar is located. This led to Chardiwal’s complete closure as traders quickly vacated the bazaar and businesses collapsed. The ANA conducted several military operations to reopen the road, and also the bazaar, but faced intensive Taleban attack. Almost all operations failed. The entire bazaar was abandoned in the following year, leaving empty shops covered with bullet and rocket holes.
Anwar was one of those traders forced to abandon their shops. He left his thriving businesses and moved all the goods from his shops to his home. “When I calculated the loses [of abandoning the shops], it was over 200,000 kaldar [Pakistani rupees – roughly USD 1,800 at that time]. Most of the goods were wasted; others expired,” he told AAN.
By 2018, no major bazaar was fully functioning in Andar. Nanai remained technically open, although the clashes between the Taleban and Republic’s security forces meant a virtual shutdown. While business people had lost their trading centres they, along with the local population, did not give up, but found new ways to do business.
The bazaars of Andar district, Ghazni: the old ones, now re-established, are shown with larger circles, the ‘conflict bazaars’ where shopkeepers and customers fled are shown with smaller circles. Also shown are military bases. Basemap by Open Street Map. Graphics by Roger Helms for AAN, 2023.
War also creates bazaars
Andar was not a district where the conflict triggered major displacements. Aside from periods when there were major clashes between the Taleban and short-lived ‘uprising’ or local resistance forces, or sieges of the district centre, the vast majority of people, particularly in areas controlled by the Taleban continued to live in their homes (see an AAN report on the uprisings in Andar here).
When Mirai and Chardiwal bazaars closed, the local population could no longer meet their needs inside the district, so their only option was to travel to nearby Ghazni City. However, that journey was both costly and risky, as one shopkeeper described:
When the bazaars closed, people would go to Ghazni for their needs. They’d need more time and money to go there. Those who had cars were spending an extra 500 afghanis to fuel their cars. Those who didn’t were spending 200 afghanis on the bus fare. Importantly, it took an extra half-hour to get to Ghazni and then another half-hour to return. So, it was far away and difficult to get to. Clashes were routine on the road [to Ghazni] and passengers were often stuck in firefights.
Another interviewee also recounted the importance of local bazaars and the impact of their closure:
In the past, when we needed to repair a water pump or a car, we’d bring it to the mechanics in Chardiwal. Reaching there was easy and took less time than going to Ghazni. But when they closed, we’d travel to Ghazni just to purchase something or repair a machine or a car. [Traveling to Ghazni] was an additional burden on us.
Shopkeepers with businesses in the closed bazaars had to find ways to re-open them. It was their sole source of income and they wanted to respond to the needs of local people. They were also under pressure from the Taleban movement, which pushed shopkeepers to re-establish or move their businesses into the areas it controlled. This was in the Taleban’s interest for a number of reasons: it helped them win people over from the Islamic Republic, painting a good picture of their own then shadow government, as well as meeting their practical needs. The Taleban needed to purchase fuel, use mechanical services for their cars and motorcycles, have private clinics open for their wounded fighters and obtain raw materials for making IEDs and suicide bombs. These bazaars also served as hubs for the movement to gather, plan, drum up support and recruit.
As a result, a number of new bazaars were established in Taleban-controlled areas. In fact, the new bazaars were effectively the same old Chardiwal, Nanai and Mirai bazaars, only relocated to safe areas and splintered into pieces.
Mirai bazaar was steadily moved, from 2017 onwards, to a nearby village named Kamalkhil where a small bazaar had already existed. Another portion of it was established in Nazarwal, another nearby village. Almost everything that was available in Mirai moved to Kamalkhil or Nazarwall – from mechanics, doctors, and tailors, to photocopiers, clothes and mobiles.
The Chardiwal bazaar, for its part, had a similar fate. Initially, it was divided into two major and several minor parts. A substantial portion of it moved to Ibrahimzi, already a small bazaar and known for being the Taleban’s shadow district centre. At the same time, the Taleban re-routed the Ghazni-Paktika highway, away from the paved road and switching to a small, dirt track that passed through Taleban-controlled villages near Ibrahimzi. This, along with competition and the lack of space in Ibrahimzi led some shopkeepers to create a new bazaar, just three kilometres away from Ibrahimzi, along the now Ghazni-Paktika highway dirt track. The new bazaar was called Dilbar.
Anwar said his friends, after several months’ effort, managed to convince him to restart his business in Ibrahimzi. “I didn’t want to re-establish my shop because Ibrahimzi is so far from Chardiwal that I didn’t think I’d get enough customers there,” he said. Though the cost of relocation to a new place was heavy, he said his decision soon paid off and his shop again attracted enough customers in Ibrahimzi.
A short while after that, shopkeepers from the eastern parts of Andar also decided to set up a new bazaar, to meet the needs of the large population in those areas that did not have a replacement for the abandoned Chardiwal bazaar. The new bazaar was located in Shast village, only two kilometres from the paved road, and from Chardiwal. This was created after the Taleban cleared the remaining ANA and Afghan Local Police (ALP) bases from the road, leaving the area almost totally under their control. Shast bazaar quickly became well-known, attracting customers with its newly built shops and ample space, as well as its proximity to Chardiwal. Most of those shopkeepers from Chardiwal who had abandoned their businesses re-established them in Shast bazaar. It also attracted new businesses.
This was not an easy period for shopkeepers or customers and the disruption was sorely felt. Mirai bazaar in the district centre had enjoyed an easily accessible location, with a paved road, mobile networks and government administrations delivering official services. This was in sharp contrast with the new substitutes, KamalKhil and Nazarwall, which had none of these advantages. People living in the northern corner of the district, with its unpaved roads and long distances felt no longer served by anyone. Competition added further complications. The newly established Dilbar bazaar, for instance, became an alternative to the slightly less recently established Ibrahimzi bazaar, and attracted customers from the southern villages of Andar, who had previously had to travel to Chardiwal or Ibrahimzi. As a result, shopkeepers from Ibrahimzi tried to make trouble for the new Dilbar bazaar. According to one resident, they even complained to the Taleban about why the movement had given permission to establish a new bazaar.
By the end of 2018, most parts of Andar, including the district centre, had come under Taleban control. Andar district centre fell to the Taleban in October 2018 which resulted in the reopening of Mirai bazaar. As the fear of conflict abated, Mirai eventually grew back to what it had been, shopkeepers returned and new businesses opened. The situation in Nanai, however, did not improve. The attacks on the highway persisted; the bazaar suffered. The fate of Chardiwal, due to the proximity of two besieged ANA bases, also remained the same.
The new bazaars such as those in Kamalkhil, Ibrahimzi, Dilbar, Kalakhil, and Shast were flourishing, thanks in large part to the relative stability of Taleban control. As the conflict became restricted to only a handful of bases and checkposts, and the bazaars located far from government’s reach in the heart of Taleban areas, security was unprecedented for customers and the shopkeepers who had resettled from Chardiwal, Mirai and Nanai. The bazaars remained open till midnight. For customers, living in uncontested areas, life was relatively peaceful, so long as they did not wish to travel too far.
The end of the war and the economy of Andar today
The Taleban victory in 2021 brought deep relief to the residents of Andar. The burdens the war had placed on them and their economy had been severe throughout the insurgency, but particularly so after 2009. Although Andar like the rest of Afghanistan had seen general economic growth and development because of foreign funds coming into the country, still, local businesses in the district had suffered from the violence and upheavals, the atmosphere of suspicion and resulting harassment from both the Taleban and Republic’s forces. Many shopkeepers were forced to relocate, the cost of which was inevitably passed on to their customers. Others had their shops hit and burned during the violence.
Violence in Andar ended in July 2021, almost a month before the Taleban completed their grip over Afghanistan on 15 August, after the last two military bases in Andar surrendered to the Taleban. The Ghazni-Paktika highway and the road to Mirai were immediately reopened.
When the Emirate was re-established, international aid to Afghanistan immediately dried up, leaving the aid-dependent country’s economy in disarray. After a while, donors again started channelling humanitarian aid to Afghanistan to tackle the dire economic situation. The new authorities, for their part, also took some steps to stabilise the country’s economy (see thisAAN dossier on Afghanistan’s economy). The dramatic economic decline after August 2021 has bottomed out, but the economy remains fragile, with service, agricultural and industrial sectors continuing to contract and many families in dire poverty (see here for the World Bank’s annual development update, published this month, and its latest welfare monitoring survey).
However, the contraction of the economy since August 2021 has not affected Afghanistan’s different regions with equal magnitude. Some areas, such as Andar, which were badly affected by the war, have run contrary to the wider economic decline. The re-establishment of the Emirate and the end to conflict, fragmentation and instability in this district appears to have brought growth and new opportunities. While there are no official statistics to prove this, there are still ways to gauge the economic progress in Andar, or at least stability. One is to look at what has happened to the bazaars. They show an economy where people want to invest, where rents have increased and there are customers, indicating a possible increase in disposable income.
With the war over, roads across Andar reopened and the old bazaars came back to life. Mirai bazaar fully re-opened, having been only partly functioning since 2019 because of the broader insecurity and the closure of the paved road. Chardiwal also steadily started to reopen. The highway shifted back to the paved road that passed directly through Chardiwal. Local residents and shopkeepers more assuredly started to re-establish the damaged shops in Chardiwal as the prospects for the ANA and of the fight returning faded. Nanai bazaar also became secure as the Republic’s military base and passing convoys were no longer targets.
The three major bazaars in Andar once again grew larger in size. Businessmen and residents endeavoured to reap the benefits of the new business opportunities and moved their shops back to their original locations. The insurgency-era bazaars have all been abandoned, with the exception of Ibrahimzi and Kamalkhil, which still function, but are greatly reduced. Shop rents mirror the changing demand: in Chardiwalrent for a shop was roughly 50,000 Pakistani kaldar before August 2021, but almost tripled afterwards. For many, such as this shopkeeper in Chardiwal bazaar, they had first to invest before they could reopen:
The door of my shop was hit by an RPG during a clash. It was completely destroyed, along with many of the goods inside. I don’t exactly know whom, but one of the warring sides had entered my shop and looted whatever they could get themselves. The shops of my neighbours were completely burned when hit by mortarsor airstrikes. Shopkeepers suffered a lot of financial losses in these battles. When the war ended, I rebuilt my shop and bought a new door. The repairs cost me 150,000 kaldar [roughly 600 USD at that time].
In both Chardiwal and Mirai, there was also a demand for big new shops. The land surrounding the bazaar in both places belongs to the government and the new IEA administration decided to rent it to people who wanted to establish shops, markets and other businesses. They started giving official permission to rent out plots of land based on a fixed annual rate. This, in turn, created large-scale competition between businessmen. “Everyone was trying to get more land,” said a shopkeeper from Chardiwal. “People were using their personal connections with district [officials]. Some even sold their permission on to others.” The owner of a newly built market in Mirai, explained how he had decided to invest:
Anwar, the shopkeeper who relocated his business from Chardiwal to Ibrahimzi has also moved back. His old shops had been destroyed in the conflict and he had to rent new shops and build his business up again from scratch. Although rents are now twice as high as he paid earlier, he was not complaining: “I am grateful to Allah that now, no one beats me, no one imprisons me and the clashes are gone.”
Chardiwal bazaar in Andar, Ghazni, in satellite images from 15 August 2021 and 23 September 2023, new construction highlighted. Image from 2021 from Maxar Technologies. Image from 2023 from the European Space Agency’s Pleiades satellites. Graphics by Roger Helms for AAN, 2023.
The single major contributor to the growth of bazaars in Andar has been the end of the war. One resident of the district described how improved security had changed the dynamics of visiting Mirai bazaar in the district centre:
When I was going to the bazaar during the war, I’d try to do my shopping as quickly as possible. At specific times, known to be the patrol times of the ANA, the shops closed and people evacuated the bazaar just to avoid getting stuck in firefights. In particular, we’d go home before darkness, as the police checkposts were harassing people or they, themselves, were attacked. Now, in contrast, I come here whenever I want. Last week, we had a health emergency and I had to bring the patient to the doctor at midnight; so I went to Mirai. There were three doctors on duty. They checked her, gave her medicines and we returned at two in the morning. This would have been impossible two years ago.
Another resident recounts how different a visit to Nanai bazaar now is:
During the war, when we were going to Nanai, we weren’t sure whether we’d come back alive or not. On the one hand, there was a [government] checkpost near the bazaar, and the Taleban used to attack it, without care for the bazaar. On the other hand, checkpost soldiers were making problems for us, checking our mobiles, accusing peoples from our areas of being Taleban and Taleban supporters. They detained whomever they wanted on charges of being a Taleb or a Taleban tarasudchi [spy]. Now, you can go day and night and purchase whatever you want. No one asks you where you come from or where you’re going.
For shopkeepers, the new security environment means they can do business without fear, as one described below:
During the war, we had many problems. The Taleban were beating shopkeepers for selling things to army soldiers. Government forces were detaining shopkeepers for helping the Taleban plant landmines or passing on information about coming tanks, not to mention the arbaki [ALP] who were freely taking whatever shopkeepers had in their shops. Now, praise be to Allah, all this has ended. No one bothers you. No one labels and harasses you for being a Taleb or an arbaki.
Moreover, businessmen who brought goods from Ghazni City to the local bazaars, as one interviewee recalled, were compelled “to pay bribes to several police check posts” along the highway, which also ended with the end of conflict. He explained it below:
The bribes were too high and irregular. If there was a problem with the checkpost, they’d demand a big sum and if you didn’t pay it, you’d have been beaten and even shot. It led many tijaran [merchants] to stop importing goods because the harassment and its effects on businesses were unbearable.
Furthermore, with the cessation of hostilities, people from every sector of society now dare to freely travel to bazaars. During the insurgency, a large portion of people simply avoided traveling to certain areas and bazaars: those who lived under the Taleban were at risk of being labelled as pro-Taleban and harassed by the government side, which controlled the district’s main bazaars until as late as 2017. Then, after 2018, when control of most bazaars in the district fell to the Taleban, those seen as affiliated with the government found their freedom of movement was curtailed. These restrictions fragmented and harmed the district’s economy. Now, the bazaars are bustling, as one interviewee in Mirai described:
Look how many people are here. They are perhaps in the hundreds. Consider me, I’m not rich but come [to Mirai] thrice a week and every time I come, I buy something. Everyone does so. People eat [potato] chips and ice cream, their cars consume fuel. Some come here for the internet, and use credit cards. They buy bindai [okra] and vegetables. You see few people who don’t spend money while visiting bazaars. In fact, those who don’t have money don’t come. Yet, the bazaar is still overcrowded. I think in the next two years it will be difficult to handle the traffic without traffic police.
The economic basis for Andar’s recovery
At the start of this report, we looked at the three traditional pillars of Andar’s economy – crops, livestock and remittances. In Andar, as elsewhere, in certain areas, land could not be cultivated due to the risk of firefights. Several interviewees indicated their harvests had been burned, despite local Taleban ceasefires during harvest, because of clashes between the warring sides. These losses, of crops, homes and lives, are no longer happening.
When I saw people desperately searching for shops, I thought, well, now the war is over, people in Andar are rich, and rents have already soared, so why not invest here more than anywhere else? It doesn’t require much money, and when one sees the rush of people, it seems that things might work out well. I went to the district municipality, and asked permission to build a two-storey market. I started last summer [early 2022] and the work is half done. My estimation was correct: even before my market was completed, many people have asked to have one, two or three shops rented to them.
The persistent problem of drought has harmed the sector, but not so badly as it has in other provinces, including neighbouring ones. Whereas traditionalwatering systems (mainly karizes, or underground tunnels)[1] vanished long ago, most farmers now rely on solar-powered irrigation pumps, which also offer some protection from inflated fuel prices. The running costs are minimal. However, groundwater is declining, so along with the need to dig ever deeper wells and buy an additional solar panel each year to continue to reach the groundwater, there is the looming threat that it may run out or become too deep to access in the future.
However, one of the main reasons that Andar’s economy is functioning well is the other economic ‘pillar’ – remittances. These have probably replaced agriculture as the main sources of household income in the district. There has been a growth in economic migration to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran and the majority of families, according to the estimates of several community elders, have at least one member working abroad who sends money back home. This has kept the economy running, sheltering it from the worst impact of economic travails inside Afghanistan.
For Andar, there has been another new source of income, post-2021. It was long a base of Taleban support and has been rewarded by the new order. As well as supplying ordinary fighters and commanders, scores of fighters from the district were recruited to the Taleban’s Red Units (special units) and deployed during the insurgency against the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Nangrahar. Andar has another advantage. It hosts a grand madrasa, Nur al-Madaris, which is among the most highly respected and oldest religious institutions in Afghanistan, and is famous nationwide among Taleban.
Since the re-establishment of the Emirate, a significant number of residents from Andar have been appointed to senior government jobs. They include the Minister of Urban Development and Housing Hamdullah Nomani, the commander of the Khalid bin Walid Army corps (one of the eight corps) Abu Dujana, the former minister of education Shiekh Nurullah Munir, the Director-General of Dawat wa Irshad[2] Mawlawi Hashim Shahidwror and the Deputy Minister of Education Mawlawi Abdul Khaliq, as well as more than a dozen other mid-ranking officials.
The estimate from multiple Taleban officials and former commanders and fighters in conversation with the author is that thousands of men from the district, who were fighting or working with the movement, or who indirectly supported the insurgency, now hold government jobs. One interviewee, in his 60s, said that, as long as he could remember, “this is the first time so many people [from Andar] hold jobs in government.” Similarly, Andar residents whom the Taleban had previously prohibited from taking up jobs in the NGO sector, with the exception of the health and education fields where they were allowed to work, are now not only allowed, but actively favoured by the Emirate for these positions. The author has come across several incidents where Taleban introduced Andar residents for positions in NGOs operating in Ghazni province, thanks to their past loyalty to the Taleban.
International aid, which was difficult to deliver during the insurgency because of the violence, has also contributed a significant amount to the new economic stability in Andar. Humanitarian aid is delivered to the most underprivileged segment of society that lacks alternative sources of income, lifting the burden of those in direst need, as community leader in his 40s explained:
In Andar, those who have a musafir [someone who has migrated], or land or a job in government or an NGO have a good economic position. But what is good is that those who have none of these, now benefit from aid [mrasty]. The Taleban are bringing NGOs here and helping the poor regularly. They’ve got cards [proving their eligibility for suppor], and get food and cash from various NGOs.
Finally, there are also the costs associated with war and the old regime that no longer apply. Feeding and funding the Taleban used to be a daily burden for Andar residents. Locals were also bound to allocate a certain portion of their crops to the Taleban (ushr) and, in recent years, a tax on some of their assets (zakat). At the same time, they faced demands for bribes from the Republic’s security forces, often at each police and ALP checkpoint along the highway, and from officials in government offices.
The Taleban still collect taxes, but this time as the government, the majority of interviewees agree it is at a lower rate and is less of an annoyance than the illegal bribes they had to pay to the Republic’s security forces and officials. One interviewee recounted: “In the past, we paid taxes three times: first the official tax to the government, second, huge bribes to the police, and lastly, to the Taleban at checkpoints in their areas. Now, only the Taleban take a specific amount of money as tax.”
Before and after the fall: satellite images of Mirai bazaar on 15 August 2021 (from Maxar Technologies) and 23 September 2023 (from the European Space Agency’s Pleiades satellites), with new construction highlighted. Graphics by Roger Helms for AAN, 2023.
The end of the war – what has changed?
The cessation of violence had brought the people of Andar deep relief. Farming and trading can go on undisturbed, businesses have been re-established and the district’s affiliation with the Taleban has brought hundreds of jobs. Alongside all that, remittances have continued to flow. Overall, the economy in Andar is relatively stable, with some signs even that it is flourishing. One interviewee, for example, gave an unusual illustration of Andar’s relative wealth:
Since last winter, the number of beggars sitting on the Ghazni-Andar road has been increasing day by day. I’ve talked to many of them and most aren’t from Andar, but come from Ghazni city. Their numbers are growing because they collect a good amount of money – the people of Andar are wealthy and help the poor to a large extent. These beggars do a good business; otherwise, if they weren’t collecting good money, you wouldn’t have seen even one in that area.
Andar’s economy has countered the overall economic decline, at least in comparison with other areas in Afghanistan. So long as remittances keep coming in and there are funds to pay those working in governments and NGOs, the district should be fine – excepting the threat hanging over Afghanistan as a whole, of the climate crisis with its protracted and ever more frequent droughts and the fear that eventually, the solar-powered pumps will not be able to reach water. For now however, the battering this frontline district took for so long is over. Andar has weathered the political and economic turmoil of almost twenty years of war and its residents, whether shopkeepers, farmers or newly-appointed government employees, are enjoying the calm.
* Sabawoon Samim is a Kabul-based researcher whose work focuses on the Islamic Emirate, local governance and rural society.
Edited by Rachel Reid and Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
Karezes are gently sloping underground channels or tunnels built to lead groundwater from the interior of a hill to a village below for people to irrigate their crops. However, the groundwater level in Andar has fallen and the karezes dried up decades ago.
Certain parts of the district were also provided with water from the Band-e Sardi Dam. However, the ongoing drought has also resulted in the depletion of water in the dam.
↑2
This is a large directorate with a ministry-equivalent taskhkil (authorised personnel) and budget, which is tasked with ensuring the implementation of sharia within government institutions.
Finding Business Opportunity after Conflict: Shopkeepers, civil servants and farmers in Andar district
For the United States, greater engagement with Afghanistan’s de facto authorities is the least bad policy option.Since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the United States has found itself in a vexing dilemma — wanting to condemn and hold accountable the Taliban regime for persecutingwomen and girls, harboring terrorists and failing to govern inclusively, but also wanting Afghanistan to avoid famine and civil war, and achieve some economic and political stability. U.S. policymakers have thus tried to balance principle and pragmatism. To exert pressure on the Taliban, the United States has withheld diplomatic recognition and traditional development aid, frozen Afghan Central Bank assets and maintained sanctions on Taliban leaders. Yet it has also been the largest donor of humanitarian assistance, has not supported armed opposition to the Taliban and has effectively loosened sanctions to enable aid delivery and encourage economic activity.This U.S. policy approach holds internal contradictions. Humanitarian aid is saving lives, while punitive policies simultaneously hamstring the Afghan economy and perpetuate poverty. Such inconsistencies in policy are unsurprising for a superpower with complex interests, and have featured in U.S. foreign policyfor decades. But as the Taliban’s consolidation of power — and the limits of international leverage — become painfully clear, the United States and its partners appear to be moving toward a policy of more engagement with the regime.A shift toward more engagement is the least bad policy option; it affords more opportunities for progress over time, especially on the economy and livelihoods, than does disengagement or isolation. The international community can seek cooperation from the Taliban on issues of mutual interest, while keeping up pressure and withholding recognition until key demands on rights, governance and security are met.Outside actors should remain clear-eyed that expanded engagement — just like isolation — might not succeed in changing the Taliban’s reprehensible social policies. There are no easy or right answers here. Nevertheless, a coherent, longer-term strategy for engagement with the de facto Taliban authorities can help mitigate harm to the Afghan people and enable the United States to better address its security, humanitarian and rights interests in Afghanistan.
What Does ‘Engagement’ Mean, and What Is Driving Calls for More?
The word “engagement” is used frequently and loosely in discussions on Afghanistan, muddying the debate around policy choices. It can be defined as not only official meetings and communication, but also the concrete forms of collaboration that such dialogue facilitates, for instance on humanitarian and development aid, macroeconomic management, security, rights and governance, and regional and climate issues. To this author and as others have stressed, engagement does not mean diplomatic recognition of or fully normalized relations with the Taliban regime, but it does connote a relationship that maintains a two-way channel for communication and negotiation.
Despite the Taliban’s worsening record on human rights, especially those of women and girls, several factors are pushing the United States and its allies toward more engagement with the Taliban: 1) the depth of ongoing humanitarian need and Afghans’ depletion of safety nets; 2) the 2023 fundinggap for humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, and growing interest in resuming development assistance; 3) the Taliban’s steady consolidation of political power; 4) the international community’s failure thus far to pressure the Taliban to reverse its policies of gender persecution; 5) regional states’ increasingly activediplomacy with the Taliban; and 6) the Taliban’s continued willingness to engage with the West, alongside some evidence that they have cooperated on certain issues.
As of August, the 2023 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan had received only 26.8 percent of the overall $3.2 billion required (an amount that was itself revised down in June from the initial request of $4.6 billion). For the past year, amid other global needs, donors’ generosity has been giving way to an urgency to not create dependency on humanitarian aid, to improve efficiency and to focus more on livelihoods and the underlying economic crisis. Thus far, the Taliban’s human rights violations have been the main obstacle to such a move. Donor capitals have very limited, if any, political space to provide traditional development aid to a pariah regime.
But two years in, there is an increasing sense that Taliban rule is the reality that international actors must deal with — like it or not. Punitive tools, such as sanctions and suspending dialogue in response to egregious policies being announced, have not worked to moderate or reverse restrictions against women and girls. Further, regional states are intensifying their engagement with the Taliban, even signaling that they might break the consensus on nonrecognition that has held thus far. This puts pressure on the West to remain engaged in order to preserve what degree of influence it has. A more dire Afghan economic collapse could intensify existing cross-border threats — a concern deeply felt by the region. But Russia and China are not willing or able to commit the level of resources that the West can bring to bear. Without access to Western financial markets and resources, Afghanistan will likely remain mired in deep poverty, buffeted by climate-related crises and a source of insecurity.
Finally, not lost on policymakers is the perhaps surprising fact that the Taliban are a willing interlocutor. The Taliban are reportedly wary of falling prey to China’s model of foreign investment, and want a relationship with the West. That very desire, even if it exists unevenly among Taliban leadership, suggests that the United States and its allies do have leverage. This leverage is only exercised, however, through engagement. Further, the Taliban are not a monolith; internal differences have been on public display. While Kabul-based officials are not driving decision-making in Kandahar, they and others in the provinces influence policy implementation. Last spring, senior Taliban officials who publicly criticized the emirate’s policies and are known to support girls’ education chose loyalty to the emir over resignation from their posts. But these intra-Taliban debates suggest that at some point moderation of policies might be possible. On security issues, in periodic meetings between U.S. and Taliban officials, by all appearances the two sides are discussing counterterrorism and detainee issues.
This window of opportunity for engagement may not be open forever. Policymakers should seek to avoid going down a path that mirrors North Korea, Iran or Cuba. Decades of punitive policies and withheld engagement have failed to incentivize those regimes to change their behavior, and meanwhile have unintentionally perpetuated the poverty and suffering of these populations.
Arguments for and Against Engagement
All this adds up to an argument for more consistent engagement with the Taliban. The logic is that by pursuing regular dialogue and confidence-building measures on multiple tracks, the United States and its partners can better help the Afghan people and protect their own security interests. This logic holds that some form of relationship with the Taliban might achieve incremental wins on mutual interests, while conversely, isolation (or the status quo of limited, drifting engagement) is unlikely to change Taliban behavior. Moreover, isolation may well strengthen Taliban hardliners — as it appeared to do in the late 1990s — and weaken those who are open to cooperation with the West. It bears acknowledgment that some Afghans inside the country have called for more, not less, U.S. and Western engagement with the Taliban.
There are compelling concerns about the risks of engagement as well. Some voices urge less engagement and more stringent conditions on the Taliban before using any lever of Western influence. They argue that more engagement lends legitimacy to the regime. Political scientist Dipali Mukhopadhyay points out that “[f]oreign aid and engagement often end up insulating the regimes that receive them from the hard domestic work of accommodating political rivals, bargaining over power and resources, and offering rights and concessions to citizens.” Questions around engaging the Taliban have created a rift among civil society and rights activists.
Indeed, a critical question is where human rights fit in a framework that favors greater engagement. More engagement would mean delivering consistent messaging on human rights at various levels of government, keeping rights on the agenda and enabling the United States to track developments more closely. A more distant goal of engagement would be to influence Taliban leaders toward reversal or moderation of policies violating Afghans’ human rights, especially those of women and girls; or to work with those within the movement who already support moderating such policies. It would require months or years to assess the outcomes of this approach.
A recent Foreign Affairs poll asked more than 50 prominent U.S., Afghan and international experts on Afghanistan, “Should the United States normalize relations with the Taliban?” Responses overwhelmingly advised against normalization, but embedded in the answers was the more nuanced debate about ill-defined “engagement.” Many of the experts arguing strenuously against normalization wrote that some level of engagement — in the form of humanitarian aid, targeted development efforts and counterterrorism cooperation — is needed.
Most observers seem to agree on two key principles: 1) that the human and financial costs of supporting armed opposition against the Taliban would be too great and 2) that total isolation is not acceptable, as it risks an even deeper humanitarian crisis and precludes discussions on terrorist threats. There is, in fact, marked consensus on the need for outcome-oriented engagement that includes some degree of conditionality.
The core debate, then, is not whether to engage, but rather how and when. What are the optics of engagement, what policy tools should be used and should engagement be sustained despite the Taliban’s grave violations of human rights?
What Should More Engagement Look Like?
A longer-term strategy for actions to address Afghanistan’s enduring problems is sorely needed. This is why the United Nations (U.N.) secretary-general appointed Special Coordinator Feridun Sinirlioğlu of Turkey to lead an independent assessment that will provide “recommendations for an integrated and coherent approach” vis-à-vis Afghanistan by the international community.
We can expect that the assessment, due out in November, will make the case for greater engagement with the Taliban. U.S. policymakers should be looking for recommendations along these lines:
A multifaceted, international structure or process for regular engagement with the Taliban de facto authorities — one that can build confidence and trust among all sides, and enable measurable progress on certain tracks, while still applying pressure on the Taliban.
Greater clarity around what steps the Taliban need to take in order to fulfill Afghanistan’s international obligations and to obtain what the Taliban want, such as lifting of U.N. sanctions and a seat at the U.N.
In parallel, the United States needs to work out an approach to U.S. bilateral engagement with the Taliban. An effective framework would help the parties move past the policy incoherence that has caused confusion on the Taliban side in terms of what they think the United States wants. It would also enable modest wins in areas of mutual interest, while keeping up pressure on the Taliban on rights and counterterrorism. Elements of such a framework could include:
Numerous tracks for technical-level meetings on a range of issues, such as: macroeconomic management and the international financial system; the humanitarian response; agriculture, water and climate-related impacts; counternarcotics and drug treatment efforts; health and nutrition; border security and counterterrorism.
Raising human rights and governance issues consistently, at national and subnational levels of the Taliban de facto government. This could help U.S. officials identify where openings for progress exist across different sectors — whether on treatment and release of political prisoners, support for women in the private sector, girls’ education or media freedom — or where conditions are deteriorating.
More clarity on what the Taliban must do before the United States is willing to consider recognition, lifting of sanctions or other major steps toward normalization of relations. This kind of dialogue may be months or years away, but U.S. policymakers must think through the details of these steps in advance.
Talking to the Taliban does not preclude broader U.S. work on human rights and political freedoms. The United States should maintain support in whatever forms possible — advocacy, psychosocial support, online learning, documentation and investigation of human rights violations and in international courts — for individuals and organizations working on these issues in Afghanistan, like U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett. The biggest challenge for the United States and like-minded countries will continue to be helping the Afghan people achieve what most Afghans want for their country, while holding accountable the Taliban government for its repressive behavior.
Ordinary Afghans are not responsible for the perceived faults of a government they did not elect.
On October 3, Pakistan’s interim government announced it was giving “illegal immigrants” 28 days to leave the country. Those who do not do so would be forcefully deported starting on November 1.
This unprecedented measure is directed specifically at the 1.73 million Afghans who have fled to Pakistan and who have not been able to attain formal refugee status.
The announcement was made after the Pakistani government alleged that 14 out of 24 suicide bombings this year had been carried out by individuals holding Afghan citizenship. It has not put forward any evidence to support this claim yet.
The threat of deportation has been condemned by multiple international organisations and governments.
I, and many other Afghans, would attest to the warm hospitality Pakistan has shown Afghan people through the years. Afghans have had significantly better opportunities to study, live and work in Pakistan compared with other countries in the region.
This long history of friendship should not be poisoned by short-sighted and reactionary decisions. The treatment of Afghan refugees has already deteriorated significantly in Pakistan in recent years as they have been persistently blamed for security failures within the country.
Over the past few years, the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has ramped up its attacks on security personnel and civilians. The Pakistani security apparatus and army have struggled to contain its terrorist activities, and government officials have repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban of harbouring the group.
It is important to put these developments in context. Pakistan played a key role in creating and bringing to power the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s. During the 20-year US occupation of Afghanistan, the Pakistani establishment gave refuge to the group. The TTP is a byproduct of this relationship. The leaders of the TTP all trained and developed bonds with the leaders of the Taliban during their time in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
But the TTP was formed in Pakistan and has operated for most of its existence from within the country. Even if one were to accept the claim that today the Afghan Taliban allows the TTP’s leadership to operate from eastern Afghanistan, let us remember that the Afghan people did not choose the Taliban to rule them and they should not be punished for its decisions.
Let us also recall that the elected Pakistani government was among the first to congratulate the Taliban on taking over Kabul and then-Prime Minister Imran Khan even called it “breaking the chains of slavery”.
It is important to note that the Afghan Taliban has made concrete progress in fighting terrorist groups, which has been acknowledged by the United States, China, Russia and countries in Afghanistan’s immediate neighbourhood. It has systematically attacked cells of the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, which claimed a deadly suicide bombing in July in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Its government in Kabul has also made an effort to address Pakistan’s security concerns regarding the TTP. In 2022, the Taliban hosted negotiations between Pakistan and the TTP that resulted in a ceasefire lasting five months. When the Pakistani military carried out air raids in April last year on Afghan territory, violating Afghanistan’s sovereignty and killing civilians, the Taliban government had a rather mellow reaction, issuing a statement condemning the attacks as “cruelty”, a response that was quite unpopular among Afghans.
Then in August, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued a decree forbidding cross-border attacks. In late September, Taliban government forces detained about 200 TTP fighters on Afghan territory.
Against the backdrop of all these events, it is unfortunate that the Pakistani government decided to ignore the potential for meaningful security cooperation and take a populist and inhumane decision to expel Afghans.
Pakistan is a nation born during the biggest migration of people in modern history. Its people know what seeking safe haven means. They also know the trauma of collective punishment.
Today as Pakistanis are standing up to denounce Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians, they should not close their eyes and stay silent about the decision to expel an Afghan population almost as large as that of Gaza.
I call upon our friends in Pakistan to appeal to their government and demand that they respect the Afghan refugees’ basic rights to dignity and safety.
African American poet Maya Angelou once said: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” Pakistanis should not let those who need kindness the most become the victims of ill-conceived foreign policies. If carried out, this cruel act of deportation would negatively affect relations between both countries for years to come.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Obaidullah Baheer is a lecturer of Transitional Justice at the American University in Afghanistan. He holds a postgraduate degree in International Relations from the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research was titled “A Study of the Ideational and Structural Factors Hindering Negotiations with the Taliban”.
Pakistan must not collectively punish Afghan refugees
How to support your family when you have just lost your job during hard economic times? That was the question one journalist asked himself after his newspaper laid him off during the calamitous contraction of the economy in 2021 when the amount of international money coming into Afghanistan suddenly diminished. The journalist’s response surprised even himself – he started a business in an area he knew nothing about – clothing. He has used modern technology to help create a business that supports himself and dozens of others. AAN’s Sayed Asadullah Sadat has spoken to the former journalist about how he came to set up his online business selling beautiful traditional Afghan clothes via Facebook.
Some of the beaded work and embroidery on sale by the business. Photo: Ismail Sadeqi/Facebook, 2023.I used to work as a reporter for a local newspaper covering social and economic stories, but after the Republic fell, the paper I worked for downsized because there was not enough money coming in from advertisers, and I lost my job. I had a bit of savings and we thought that if we tightened our belts and economised, the savings would tide us over until I found another job. But everyone was in the same boat as me; hundreds of journalists on the unemployment line were competing for the same jobs, which were few and far between.As I watched my savings dwindle, the weeks turned to months, and I finally had to admit that I wasn’t going to get another job in my profession. I had to find a way to support my family, pay for the household, my children’s schooling and my parent’s medical bills. I started looking round for other jobs until one day, a little over a year ago, my wife told me that one of our relatives, who was a seamstress, was looking around for someone to help her market her products.
The next day, I called our relative and we went to her house to discuss the idea with her. She told us she was getting a lot of orders for traditional handmade clothes and thought this was a growing market and worth exploring. She told me that traditional clothes had fallen out of favour during the Republic because affordable imported clothes were readily available, but now they were making a comeback.
Keeping Afghanistan’s cultural heritage alive
The idea of reviving traditional Afghan clothes appealed to me. The idealist in me thought about how the business would keep a part of our cultural heritage from disappearing. I thought about the times when I covered handicraft markets as a journalist. These used to be regularly organised by the government or NGOs who had projects supporting widows or female heads of household. I had interviewed artisans from all over the country about the particulars of the clothes from their region. Back then, they would tell me about how long it took to create each piece, how difficult it was to sell their work at a profit and how, when the projects ended, they would be left with their unsold stock, struggling to find customers. So we agreed to focus on traditional Afghan clothes, such as gand-e Afghani (traditional Afghan wedding dress), and other handmade Afghan accessories we could make in my business partner’s small home-based workshop.
Traditional Afghan wedding dress. Photo: Ismail Sadeqi/Facebook, 2023.
We spent a couple of weeks talking about how we should proceed. We didn’t have enough money to open a shop. From my work as a journalist, I knew that young Afghans are heavy social media users and that e-commerce is a growing sector in the economy, and setting up a Facebook page was free. So, we decided to focus on online sales.
This is how I came to open an online shop selling traditional Afghan clothes.
Growing an online business in Afghanistan
It was hard going at first. We didn’t have much money to invest in a business and I knew nothing about clothes – sewing or selling. But I was desperate to find a way to support my family and my business partner, the tailor, had a good reputation for making top-quality clothes. We used some of my savings, about 50,000 Afs (USD 550), to make some samples and I started exhibiting our work through photos that I posted and promoted on Facebook.
The orders came in slowly – only a few from people who knew my business partner’s work, and there were times when I almost gave up on the whole thing. But my wife kept urging me to stay the course and I’m so happy I listened to her. Our reputation for quality workmanship grew and more orders started coming in. Nowadays, customers from all over Afghanistan place orders with us using our Facebook page. We’ve even had a few orders from overseas, but sending things abroad from Afghanistan is difficult. It’s a market we’d like to grow, but with all the banking restrictions, doing trade outside Afghanistan seems like an impossible dream.
It’s hard to believe that the business is only over a year old. In this short time, we have grown a solid customer base and have had to hire more people to keep up with incoming orders. We’ve gone from our humble start to employing 23 people, including 16 women who work from home as seamstresses and artisans who do the beadwork and leatherwork. Our product line has grown to include a variety of Afghan clothes and accessories, which are both machine-made and handmade and feature traditional embroidery techniques such as gulbatun (silk thread), zartar (golden thread) and the chirmadozi (double-knotted). We’ve also expanded into leather works such as sandals and purses. Our most popular items include Kuchi-style clothes, Afghan shawls and hand-beaded purses.
We even have a designer who works with our customers to design bespoke pieces for them. We don’t have enough working capital to have a stock of raw materials on hand, so after the customer agrees to the design, we buy the fabric and other materials from the market and deliver them to the home of one of the seamstresses/artisans who will then create the pieces. Once the item is finished, we deliver it to the customer by courier and they pay us cash on delivery.
But as successful as online sales are, people still have a hard time trusting a business that is not bricks and mortar. So eight months ago, after we got our business licence from the Emirate, we rented a small storefront and opened a showroom. Having an address has helped give us more legitimacy and has increased customer confidence. Thank God we are making good money. There is even a bit of a profit, about 20,000 Afs (USD 230) a month, after expenses. I’m putting the money away for a rainy day, or maybe we could use it to expand the business. But the most gratifying thing is that in addition to my own and my partner’s families, our business supports the families of the 23 people who work for us. They each provide for eight or ten family members.
Creating jobs for women
Handicraft work in Afghanistan is mostly done by women, who often have expertise in sewing, weaving, beadwork, embroidery and other traditional crafts, which means it can be an important source of income for them, especially in these hard economic times. I’m happy that I’ve been able to provide women with jobs. These days, many women are staying at home and struggling to find jobs. Now, some of them are working. I’ve bought sewing machines for them with my own money so that they can work at home. They can do housework and they can also sew. This way, they can support their families financially. These days, many women are training as seamstresses and artisans, hoping to make a living. Word has gotten around that I hire women who sew well and I get tons of calls every day from women looking for work.
Planning for the future
But as the economy continues to struggle, I fear that a time will come when my business will also struggle. As people have less and less disposable income, paying for the necessities of life, like food and rent, will take priority over luxuries like clothes. I’m hoping the government will lend a helping hand to domestic producers and keep cheap imported products from flooding the market. The Emirate could subsidise the textile industry so that the fabric and other things we use could be produced in Afghanistan. Not only would this make the raw material we need cheaper, but it would also create jobs and bring money into the economy.
If women could work outside the home and if the government supported me with subsidies, I could open a big factory so that all the women could work under the same roof. We could invest in professional industrial machines and hire more people, including women. These things would make our work easier, faster and more profitable. We wouldn’t have to pay couriers to go to and from people’s homes all day to deliver raw materials and pick up finished products, which is time-consuming and expensive. It slows down our work and makes collaboration and coordination difficult.
Online sales have tremendous potential. They do away with geographic limits and make it possible for businesses to trade worldwide, like the fashion websites they have in China. I know that a business in Afghanistan can’t trade globally right now, but I hope that Afghanistan can someday rejoin the world economy. When that day comes, I plan to be the first Afghan online clothing store that sells clothes from Afghanistan to customers all over the world.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
The Daily Hustle: Selling traditional Afghan clothes on Facebook
The 20-year presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan ended on August 31, 2021, with the withdrawal of the last US soldier in Afghanistan.
22 years ago, an international coalition led by Washington on October 7, 2001, attacked Afghanistan.
America stated that the aim of the attack was to fight and overthrow the organizers of the 9/11 attacks on their country.
On September 11, 2001, nearly a month before the United States invasion of Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda network crashed hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing around 3,000 people and bringing the United States into Afghanistan.
“America’s aggression against Afghanistan was against all international law, they waged an unjust war on the Afghan nation and a long war was inconclusive,” said Najibullah Jame, a political analyst.
“Their ultimate goal was to be able to contain global regional competitors in the region, particularly Russia and China, to a great extent,” said Jawid Momand, a political analyst.
“The United States invaded Afghanistan without any justified reason, without listening to the people of Afghanistan and the government, and unfortunately the invasion lasted for 20 years,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.
Some political analysts said that the US presence in Afghanistan was one of the mistakes that the former Soviet Union had made and that the two countries caused significant losses to the Afghan people for political gain.
“NATO and Russia both made the same mistake and it was not a mistake but a persecution for the people of Afghanistan who during 45 years of negative competition have done so,” said Said Qaribullah Sadat, political analyst.
Finally, the 20-year presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan ended on August 31, 2021, with the withdrawal of the last US soldier in Afghanistan.
The battle cost the US $2 trillion, and 2,460 US troops were killed and more than 21,000 others were wounded.
22 Years On, Remembering US-Led Coalition Attack on Afghanistan
Over the course of 20 years, the United States made strategic mistakes in its war with the Taliban that helped fuel the insurgency and likely precluded an earlier end to the war. The U.S. government became fixated on a purely military solution, to the neglect of a political solution. This overwhelming focus on dealing the Taliban a decisive defeat was reinforced by the perceived political risks of negotiating a peace agreement with an organization that was seen solely through the lens of the war on terror. The United States should learn from its experience in Afghanistan and the opportunities it missed to reach a better and faster outcome to the war. Policymakers should apply these lessons to other conflicts — starting with the war in Ukraine.
Lesson 1: Seek opportunities for peace when military leverage is greatest.
The United States’ moment of greatest leverage with the Taliban was in late 2001, when the regime was militarily defeated and ousted from power. From 2001 through 2004, dozens of senior Taliban offered various forms of surrender and reconciliation in exchange for amnesty. The United States rejected these, excluded the Taliban from the new political order, and barred Afghan interim leader and later President Hamid Karzai from talking with the Taliban. We will never know whether greater openness to such offers might have averted two decades of war.
Later, as the Taliban insurgency emerged and grew, the United States increased its military presence, which peaked in 2011 with roughly 100,000 U.S. and 30,000 NATO troops in the country. Despite Taliban willingness to talk, U.S. leaders were highly skeptical about the prospects for a negotiated settlement. Military commanders sought to capitalize on the troop surge to strengthen the U.S. position in advance of any talks, and overestimated President Obama’s willingness to maintain the larger military presence. Some officials also feared that negotiations would undermine the war effort by forcing the military to enter into a cease-fire or reduce violence against the Taliban.
The Taliban made steady gains as the foreign troop presence declined over the next decade. By the time the United States came to the negotiating table in 2018, in desperation to end the “forever war,” it did so from a position of weakness. The tragedy is that, in the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement, the United States acquiesced to Taliban demands that it never would have considered earlier in the war but might have been able to resist or counter when it was stronger. The deal secured for the United States only the safe withdrawal of its troops, which in turn fatally undermined the Afghan Republic government in its negotiations with the Taliban — and later precipitated the collapse of Afghan security forces and the government that the United States had supported for 20 years.
Lesson 2: Be careful not to neglect peace efforts, particularly when overconfidence in the war effort might dampen support for negotiations.
The United States never seriously invested in a peace process to end the war in Afghanistan until it was too late. Up until 2018, the United States consistently sought to achieve a complete victory against the Taliban on the battlefield, either through its own military operations or those of Afghan forces. The overwhelming U.S. focus on winning militarily — rather than exploring a political settlement — illustrates retired Army colonel and scholar Christopher Kolenda’s argument that the U.S. government “has no organized way of thinking about war termination other than seeking decisive military victory.”
Despite years of warning signs that the Afghan government was losing the battle for legitimacy and that its security forces would not be able to sustain the fight against the Taliban without significant ongoing support, U.S. leaders continued to pursue a strategy that hinged on those trends reversing themselves. They believed — wrongly — that time was on their side. Defense Department reports to Congress overestimated Afghan forces’ strength and legitimacy relative to the Taliban’s. Part of the problem was that defense officials were using bad data and changing metrics for Afghan army and police capabilities that overestimated their actual strength and cohesion. In turn, overconfidence in the war effort limited policymakers’ appetite for pursuing peace. Why prepare for and invest in a political track to end the war if U.S. and Afghan forces were expected to turn the corner in the next six to 12 months?
Lesson 3: Pursuing peace can entail greater political and bureaucratic risks than continuing war.
Even as the United States doubled down on counterinsurgency efforts at the start of Obama’s presidency in 2009, a handful of senior officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon quietly agreed that the United States needed a Plan B. In an interview, a former senior White House official told me that in early 2010, these officials created a small “Conflict Resolution Cell.” The cell helped pave the way for secret U.S.-Taliban talks, which began later that year. Those talks proceeded episodically over the next several years, but largely remained “talks about talks” and focused on prisoner releases. They were stymied by diplomatic snafus, the eroding U.S. relationship with President Karzai, and the Taliban’s refusal to include the Afghan government in talks (a U.S. demand).
But backchannel talks were also hamstrung by serious political and bureaucratic obstacles within the U.S. government. A former senior State Department official told me that “there was never a willingness to take political risks that would have been necessary to advance the peace process.” For example, prisoner releases faced an array of barriers: disagreements between the State Department and Defense Department, congressional certification required for releases from Guantanamo prison, and cabinet-level secretaries’ aversion to associate themselves with a politically risky prisoner exchange or with the talks themselves.
So, at the peak of the United States’ military leverage, the Obama administration never resourced peace efforts in a significant way (e.g., as in the Balkans in the 1990s), nor aligned both Defense and State Department efforts behind a peace process. There was no single U.S. official on the ground in Afghanistan who was responsible for coordinating military and political tracks, much less one who was empowered to do so.
Lesson 4: Do not demonize the enemy. When opportunities for peace negotiations arise, it will be harder to garner political and public support for talks.
For most of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, talking with the Taliban was taboo. U.S. presidents saw negotiations — and the prospect of any concessions to the Taliban — as politically toxic, even as many policymakers acknowledged that there was no military solution to the war. The taboo was rooted in the maxim that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists, the Taliban’s brutal treatment of women, and post-9/11 rhetoric that made littledistinction between the Taliban and al-Qaida despite the two organizations’ different origins and goals and the fact that no Afghans were part of the 9/11 attacks.
The problem with a black-and-white, dehumanized portrait of the Taliban was that it sharply constrained U.S. policy options and blunted inclinations to better understand the movement. As early as 2001, simplistic perceptions of the Taliban — combined with the trauma of 9/11 and political pressures for vengeance — cut off pathways for negotiations. These factors led the Bush administration to rebuff Taliban attempts at reconciliation. A decade later, the same factors undercut the Obama administration’s backchannel talks and made even modest confidence-building measures a political lightning rod with Congress and the public.
Lessons for Other Conflicts
The U.S. experience in Afghanistan suggests that the pursuit of military leverage should be paired (perhaps quietly) with diplomatic and other tools of national power. And it shows how the failure to do so can prolong a conflict in ways that do not serve the interests of the United States and its partners, and may lead to a less-favorable negotiated settlement down the road. It also demonstrates that accurate intelligence about battlefield trends and military capabilities, and political will to admit that U.S. leverage is declining, are crucial for weighing when to pursue a peace process. Further, without White House attention and resources, U.S. efforts on peace negotiations may well founder and fail.
As the topic of negotiations becomes ever more taboo in the Ukraine war, there are echoes of Afghanistan. U.S. policymakers should seek to maintain space for discussion — including within U.S. agencies — of various scenarios, outcomes and the potential for a political process. The work of thinking through the conditions that would be conducive to negotiations, redlinesto hold and what outcomes could prevent a relapse in hostilities can be done now. Critics might say such efforts signal weakness and risk emboldening Russia. But if the United States fails to identify or shape potential opportunities for a just peace in Ukraine, U.S. leaders may not be prepared to seize those chances when they arise.
In the current period, Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), finds himself residing in France. During his stay, he has engaged with numerous leaders from French political parties and the Afghan community living in the country. He also took part in the unveiling ceremony of a book published under his name. Massoud stands out as one of the rare opposition figures against the Taliban, advocating for armed resistance, emphasizing that the Taliban comprehend only the language of weapons. Additionally, he participated in an interview with France Inter radio, addressing several queries posed by the radio station. To thoroughly assess the content of this interview, it is essential to delve into the following points.
At the commencement of the interview, Ahmad Massoud declared, “We, the opposition against the Taliban, stand alone, and I am here to amplify the voice of the Afghan people to the world.” He further stated, “When Kabul fell, the French Embassy suggested I relocate to France, yet I declined, choosing instead to stand alongside the people, refusing to abandon them.” Massoud’s statement underscores his solidarity with the populace, his relocation to Panjshir post the fall of Kabul, and his initiation of resistance against the Taliban. Nevertheless, his portrayal of standing with the people while donning battle attire and leading the Panjshir war against the Taliban requires scrutiny.
Despite fervently denouncing the Taliban from Panjshir, Massoud fled the battleground before the Taliban seized the province, leaving the vulnerable citizens, who had placed their hopes solely on him, to grapple with innumerable challenges. His passionate anti-Taliban rhetoric and claims of resisting until his last breath earned him considerable acclaim, transforming him into a legend when others fled. Regrettably, this approach only exacerbated the suffering of the defenseless and innocent people, subjecting them to torture and persecution instead of offering assistance. Over the past two years, the leadership of the front committed the same error repeatedly, organizing armed demonstrations that left numerous young people in Panjshir Province and the Andarab district as victims.
When questioned about the situation in Panjshir Province, Massoud asserted, “Our forces occupy certain mountains and valleys. The Taliban aspire to control our strongholds but are unable to do so. They are confined to the large valleys, while we operate in other areas.” However, these statements do not align with the actual circumstances. Following the demise of Commander Malek and Commander Khanjar, alongside dozens of their companions in the heights of Dara district in September 2022, the NRF lost its presence in Panjshir, both on the roads and in the heights. Over the past year, the Taliban dedicated substantial efforts to establish dominance at Panjshir’s highest points, hindering the armed opposition’s activities. They constructed roads to various elevated locations in the valley. The leaders and commanders of the resistance front, present in Panjshir until 2022, fled to neighboring countries, ceasing to pose any threat to the Taliban. Consequently, no military action against the Taliban has occurred in Panjshir over the past year. It raises the question: are the military officials of the Resistance Front misleading Massoud, or is he deliberately asserting the opposite?
Massoud emphasized, “I did not seek foreign forces’ intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, nor do I advocate for it now. At that time, I opposed the establishment of foreign military bases as well.” Readers must contemplate the following: given Massoud’s current age of 34, he was merely 12 years old in 2001. How could a 12-year-old child decide whether American troops should enter Afghanistan, especially considering his father’s leadership in the anti-Taliban resistance? At that juncture, what role did he play in the anti-Taliban front, granting him the authority to permit or prohibit foreign involvement? Ahmad Massoud’s narrative of the past remains perplexing and subjective, leaving room for deeper examination and analysis.
Ahmad Massoud fervently calls upon the global community to impose sanctions on the Taliban, extend political support to their opponents, and seek a reasonable resolution to the crisis in Afghanistan. He also urges regional nations to increase their involvement in crafting a political solution. Both Western nations and neighboring countries perceive their interests as intertwined with engaging the Taliban. In the realm of realpolitik, ethical considerations often take a backseat. Human rights and women’s rights issues within a country are overlooked in favor of safeguarding governments’ interests. Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, explicitly stated that women’s and human rights issues are internal matters for Afghanistan, not concerns of the international community.
It is naive to assume that the Taliban solely attained power through sheer military might. Various pieces of evidence suggest that this group is part of a plan devised by some Western countries to extricate themselves from the Afghan quagmire. Diplomatic visits, even by security officials, from certain Western nations to Kabul have likely revealed crucial insights to analysts studying the situation.
The eminent British philosopher Bertrand Russell posited that great world leaders emerge at pivotal moments in history. He stressed that the success of political or military leaders, besides their individual talent and efforts, is contingent upon the prevailing circumstances and contexts. Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former Afghan guerrilla commander, gained prominence due to global and regional dynamics supporting him, in addition to his exceptional personal abilities. Aspiring to replicate Massoud’s achievements in vastly different circumstances is unrealistic and disregards essential facts. Ignoring the surrounding situations and global dynamics only leads to wasted efforts. A wise leader navigates within the realm of possibilities.
Furthermore, if the Taliban opposition lacks strength and control over specific territories, it becomes challenging for the world to heed their requests. Countries are reluctant to antagonize the heavily armed Taliban, who dominate Afghanistan entirely, boast hundreds of thousands of seasoned fighters, and pose unnecessary threats in the volatile region. Moreover, these nations believe that engaging with the Taliban can safeguard their regional interests. If anti-Taliban forces managed to secure a portion of Afghanistan’s geography, the world might be more receptive to their concerns. Superficial meetings with parliamentarians or party leaders yield negligible results.
The Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan constitutes a full-scale catastrophe, necessitating collective efforts to bring it to an end. However, indulging in wishful thinking and illusions won’t resolve this dire situation. Mere slogans and bravado do not cure our woes. Over the years, we have witnessed leaders who, at the first sign of adversity, abandoned their slogans and chose flight. A leader’s empty rhetoric confuses followers, preventing them from perceiving reality. A genuine leader refrains from misleading their people, presenting a clear and pragmatic perspective to guide them through challenging times.
Ahmad Massoud and the Arduous Path of Fighting Against the Taliban
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
