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International assistance to Afghanistan needs to adapt to the ‘new normal’

June 7, 2024

Alexander Matheou

Al Jazeera

Published On 7 Jun 2024

Trucks painted bright blue, yellow, and purple dot the arid emptiness of Spin Boldak in southern Afghanistan. Their roofs are laden with the entire possessions of families who have returned from Pakistan after decades of displacement. Hundreds of thousands have preceded them in recent months following a ruling that undocumented migrants must leave or face deportation. Most have never been to Afghanistan before. They must build new lives from scratch.

Many are so poor that they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. They certainly don’t have the capital needed to start a livelihood. When they arrive in Spin Boldak, they receive medical care, some food, and a little cash from humanitarian agencies. They are grateful, but when I ask them what they want, they all underline the same thing – jobs, start-up capital – a chance to survive economically.

Very few will get such help. Not because humanitarian agencies don’t want to support them but because international aid in Afghanistan is still largely geared towards survival, not resilience. This is true for returnees from Pakistan and for responses to floods and earthquakes. As a result, there is a growing divergence between donor strategies and the expressed needs of Afghans facing climate and poverty-related exclusion and displacement risks.

That there is divergence is not surprising. Many of the major donors of international aid are from Europe and the United States. Memories of conflict are still fresh. On top of that, clashes in values with Taliban authorities, particularly regarding access to work and education for women and girls, make tension inevitable and necessary.

What is disappointing though is that the framing of much international assistance remains essentially negative, the emphasis being on not helping the Taliban. Whereas, what is needed is a people-first, positive framing that asks what institutions, structures, skills, and attitudes are most likely to contribute to sustained wellbeing and peace in Afghanistan, given the specificity of the context.

Some will protest that such a framing is impossible while half the population is excluded from education and the workforce. There are two main flaws to this argument.

The first is that it is not entirely true. While restrictions on women are unacceptable and severe, there are exceptions and workarounds that can support women, and these are opportunities to help.

The second is that restricting aid hurts everybody, including women and girls, who, as well as aspiring for themselves, also want their fathers, brothers, and husbands to have an income and an education. In other words, everybody loses from non-engagement, including those the nonengagement is intended to support.

What would a more positive framing consist of in practice?

For a start, it would consider the institutional capacity in Afghanistan to provide social protection and opportunities for its citizens rather than focusing on parallel, international structures. For the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, this means supporting the country’s leading national, humanitarian institution – the Afghan Red Crescent. But there are plenty of other institutions critical to the well-functioning of the country that would benefit from support too.

Second, it would think long-term. Instead of endlessly emphasising an urgent need for food, it would design support aimed at livelihood recovery and job creation, for men and women. This is not an assertion that relief aid is never needed, only that it should be supplementary to a strategy of promoting household economic independence. This is far from where we are now.

Third, it would invest in the country’s capacity to cope with the endless climate risks. Heavy rains and flooding have killed dozens of people in both southern and northern provinces of Afghanistan over recent weeks. Cattle, agricultural land, trees, and bridges have been destroyed, pushing thousands of some of the world’s poorest people into destitution.

Relief aid is needed, but so are check dams and early warning systems. Yet such development support that may provide sustainable protection remains unacceptable to many donors who see it as somehow aiding the de facto authorities. Such policies are helping no one.

Fourth, it would focus on all possible learning opportunities. There is rightly indignation at the lack of secondary education for girls, but we should not give up on learning altogether. Every feasible opportunity for alternative education, vocational education, skills development, and learning should be supported for both men and women. Of all the crises Afghanistan is experiencing, the least visible and most severe may well be a mental health crisis rooted in trauma from the past and a lack of hope in the future. Relief aid is a weak strategy to address that. Supporting self-development is a strong one.

Finally, even a new framing must distinguish between engagement and endorsement. There are many good reasons why endorsement is problematic, but engagement to enable the right sort of investment that works in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan is critical.

After August 2021, many donor countries didn’t know how to respond to the shock of the change in leadership in Afghanistan. To their credit, some continued to respond to humanitarian imperatives even if they did hold back any development financing and engagement.

As we approach the third anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power, and begin to witness a relatively stable “new normal” under the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan leadership, it is time for more donors to move from a reactive strategy to a proactive one. One that aims, as much as possible and despite daunting challenges, to lay foundations not just for bare survival, but for wellbeing and hope.

Alexander Matheou is the Asia Pacific Reginal Director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

International assistance to Afghanistan needs to adapt to the ‘new normal’
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Kabul: Final Call by Laurie Bristow; The Afghans by Åsne Seierstad reviews – how the west abandoned Afghanistan… and what happened next

June 3, 2024

In August 2021, Britain’s last ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, climbed on to a table holding a kitchen knife. He and a member of his security team had a small but important task. They unscrewed a portrait of the queen from the wall. Around them was “incessant gunfire”. Some of it came from heavy calibre weapons. A large TV screen nearby relayed the news on a loop. It was grim. The Taliban were at the gates of Kabul.

From time to time, Bristow recalls, there were great crashes from the roof as soldiers destroyed sensitive equipment. The UK was shutting its embassy and relocating to a military facility inside Kabul airport. Soon, soldiers and diplomats would depart. The US-led campaign in Afghanistan – a 20-year saga of wishful thinking and blunders – was ending in ignominy and farce. And, as Bristow describes in his compelling memoir Kabul: Final Call, with betrayal and human disaster.

The previous week, the Taliban had overrun a series of provincial capitals. Afghanistan’s foreign-backed republic was falling apart. That might have been predicted. In February 2020, Donald Trump announced the US was pulling its forces out. The Biden administration stuck to this decision and gave a deadline of September 2021 for the exit of Nato troops. Afghanistan’s government, many thought, might stagger on until Christmas.

Bristow arrived in Kabul in June 2021, as Afghanistan’s future looked precarious. He understood it might fall to him to shutter the embassy and evacuate staff, as well as Afghans who worked with British forces. What nobody had anticipated was the speed with which the situation unravelled. The Taliban – chased out in 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11 – controlled rural areas and key roads. In nine giddy days they reconquered the entire country.

What went wrong? As Bristow tells it, the west failed because of bad strategy and a loss of will. After the attacks on the twin towers, a military response from the US and its allies was inevitable. Its goal: to exterminate al-Qaeda. As a young reporter, I watched the Taliban’s northern army surrender outside Mazar-i-Sharif. The five-year-old emirate ended in “a wilderness of shimmering desert and telegraph poles”, I wrote in 2001. It was “vanishing into history”.

This prediction turned out to be wrong. After a period in Pakistan’s tribal regions, the Taliban returned. They waged a brutal and increasingly effective insurgency against international and Afghanistan government troops. The conflict cost billions. Meanwhile, George Bush’s administration invaded Iraq. A surge by the next US president, Barack Obama, didn’t bring results. By 2021, the public had lost interest in Afghanistan, seeing it as a for ever war with few benefits.

Washington and London’s mistake, in Bristow’s view, was to seek a military solution to what was a political problem. The international coalition also failed to address the “egregious” behaviour of its Afghan allies. Bristow portrays Afghanistan’s then president, Ashraf Ghani, as an aloof academic, surrounded by toadies. As the Taliban closed in, he gave speeches from his fortified Arg palace about digital governance. Afghanistan’s then defence minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, was more clear-eyed; the Taliban tried to murder him. Overall, Afghanistan’s ministers were a corrupt and predatory bunch, beset by factional squabbles.

As the situation got worse, Bristow received media requests for interviews. He relayed these to special advisers working for then foreign secretary Dominic Raab. There was no reply. When Kabul fell, Raab was on holiday to Crete. Other senior mandarins were missing. Bristow doesn’t say much about the infamous campaign allegedly involving former prime minister Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, to rescue Afghan cats and dogs. But he notes that “the priority of some in London” was to spare senior figures from “embarrassment”.

Kabul: Final Call is full of glorious details. Bristow was previously ambassador to Moscow. He swapped a 19th-century mansion overlooking the Kremlin for a Barratt Homes-like residence in Kabul. It had a shiny grand piano and a garden with a small lawn and mynah birds. Before flying out, Bristow picked up a flak jacket and helmet. During security alerts, he took cover in a sweaty armoured “wardrobe” and leafed through a back number of the Economist.

In the run-up to Kabul’s fall, there were numerous ominous signs. Rockets thudded into the green zone. The French ambassador sent home his chef. After relocating to the airport, Bristow found himself in a “real-life” version of Apocalypse Now, as desperate Afghans tried to board a plane. Thousands besieged the perimeter. The Baron hotel – used by the UK as an evacuation handling centre – became a chaotic refugee camp. He spoke to Downing Street from a laptop propped up on the bar.

In contrast to his masters in Westminster, Bristow comes across as decent, serious, analytical and quietly heroic: a brave public servant doing a tough job. He pays tribute to the young British soldiers sent to guard the airport’s gates. And to his staff, who had to inform Afghan families they did not qualify for evacuation. “You are told in return that you are condemning them to death,” he recalls. It was a harrowing experience, he writes, that haunted those involved.

Some hoped the Taliban who seized Kabul in 2021 might be more moderate than their hardline predecessors. This, it turned out, was a delusion. The Afghans, by the Norwegian writer and journalist Åsne Seierstad, tells the story of what happened next, after the last flights carrying Bristow and his US counterparts took off. She traces the lives of three Afghans: a Taliban commander, a young female law student and a prominent women’s rights activist.

Despite earlier assurances, the Taliban closed down girls’ secondary schools, banned women from the workplace and ordered them to cover up. They were forbidden from travelling farther than 45 miles (72kms) without a male guardian.

Seierstad, the bestselling author of The Bookseller of Kabul, gives a heartbreaking account of the first day of school. Senior girls wearing regulation black dresses and white headscarves arrived, keen to learn. They had “expectant faces”. The same morning, the Taliban’s education ministry ordered female secondary schools to remain closed. In some provinces, Taliban fighters stormed classrooms, beating girls with rods and berating them. In 2022, women were banned from university.

It is Afghan women and girls who are paying a terrible price for our missteps. Since the Taliban took power poverty, hunger and infant mortality have soared. Bristow argues we need a “proper reckoning” of why the campaign in Afghanistan ended the way it did. A lack of resolve contributed to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, he thinks. The only “glimmer of light” he sees comes from courageous Afghans who defended their right to live freely and in peace.

Luke Harding’s Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, is published by Guardian Faber (£10.99)

 Kabul: Final Call: The Inside Story of the Withdrawal from Afghanistan August 2021 by Laurie Bristow is published by Whittles Publishing (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. 

 The Afghans: Three Lives Through War, Love and Revolt by Åsne Seierstad is published by Little, Brown (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com

Kabul: Final Call by Laurie Bristow; The Afghans by Åsne Seierstad reviews – how the west abandoned Afghanistan… and what happened next
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The Daily Hustle: Why one Afghan girl decided to open her own madrasa

June 3, 2024

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon • Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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After the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan closed girls’ high schools, thousands of older Afghan girls were left behind from education. With not much to do except help with the household chores, many families decided to enrol their girls in a madrasa so that they could pursue their religious education. Many older girls, who had already had extensive religious education in their high schools, found the quality of madrasa instruction fell short of the mark. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon has spoken to one girl who decided to take matters into her own hands and, with her father’s support, establish a madrasa.  
 

My last day in school

I was a student in grade 11 when the Taleban took over Afghanistan. My school was one of the few co-educational government schools in Kabul, where both boys and girls attended but not in the same classrooms. Sadly, there were far fewer girls than boys studying at my school, but we were all hardworking and serious about our studies.

As district after district fell under Taleban control, my classmates and I were busy with our midterm exams, oblivious to the fact that in a few days, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan would collapse and the Taleban would enter Kabul, and our lives would change forever.

On that last day in school, we took two exams, mathematics and physics. Our teacher told us there were rumours that the Taleban might enter Kabul, and that, if that happened, there was a high chance there’d be fighting in the city streets. This would mean we wouldn’t be able to get to school to take our last exam. It was best, she said, for us to take both exams while we were at school that day.

Little did I know that this would be the last day I’d put on my black school uniform with its white headscarf. I didn’t imagine that never again would I see the inside of a classroom.

When I got home from school that day, my mother told my brothers to stay inside. She said it was not a good idea for them to play with their friends on the street outside our house as they usually did after school. She put my sisters and me to work preparing dinner for the family while she kept one eye on the TV and the other on the front door, waiting for my father to get home from work. She was anxious and distracted.

The Taleban entered Kabul that night. We watched on TV as they took over the Arg (the Presidential Palace), their fighters sitting behind desks where, hours earlier, officials of the Republic had been working.

A month later, the new government shut all the girls’ high schools. After that, girls could only go to school until they’d finished grade six.

Going to madrasa is better than not going to school at all

It was supposed to be temporary. The Emirate announced on the news that girls would be able to go back to high school as soon as the new government made the necessary arrangements. But the days turned into weeks and then into months and the high schools stayed closed.

We are three sisters and three brothers. I am the eldest. My brothers are all in school – in grades 11, 7 and 3 – and my youngest sister is eight years old and also in school. But my 12-year-old sister, who should have been in grade 7 by now, is no longer in school. She’s very upset. In the mornings, we help our siblings get ready. We make breakfast and make sure they have everything they need in their school bags and then we watch with envy as they leave the house to go to school. In the afternoons, I help our younger siblings with their homework. The rest of the time, we help my mother with chores around the house and read books.

Finally, after months of waiting to go back to school, my sister and I decided we should start going to a madrasa. We talked it over with our father. We told him we needed something more than chores to occupy our time. We wanted to learn more about our religion, Islam. He thought it was an excellent idea and enrolled us in a madrasa in our neighbourhood that same week. But after only a few days we realised that our knowledge was too advanced for what they were teaching us. So, we talked to our father and asked him to find another madrasa for us.

Over the months, we tried several madrasas, but the curriculum and the quality of teaching were the same in all of them – rudimentary and desperately poor. They taught us the Arabic alphabet and then how to connect the letters to make words, but we already knew how to read and write. They also taught the Holy Quran, a few hadiths and some doa’a [prayers], but only in Arabic, without translating them into Pashto. My sister kept complaining that she didn’t want to merely memorise these verses. She wanted to know what they meant. So, in the evenings, my father and I sat with her and read the Quran with her in Arabic as well as the translation in Pashto.

I’d already studied these texts in school in Arabic and Pashto. In our religious studies classes, we’d learned tafsir (exegesis), the hadith, the history of Islam and other subjects related to our religion. I went to each madrasa for a few days, but I soon got bored and lost interest. I thought these classes were a waste of time. Yes, they were useful for younger learners, but older girls who’d already had extensive instruction in their high school classes needed a more rigorous curriculum.

Attempts to improve the instruction

Every day, over dinner, l’d complain to my family about the latest madrasa I was enrolled in. At first, my father would find me another madrasa to attend. But it soon became obvious they were all the same. Finally, my father decided to speak to the people in charge of the madrasa about improving the curriculum, perhaps including fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), tafsir and other more in-depth Islamic studies.

But all his efforts were in vain. Although they were very polite and sympathetic, they always gave a reason for not being able to improve the quality of instructions for the girls. In one madrasa, they told him they operated on a shoestring budget and didn’t have the money to hire more professional female teachers. In another, they said they couldn’t find qualified female teachers, and in yet another, they said there were qualified female teachers, but they lived too far from the madrasa and their families weren’t willing to send them to teach so far from their homes. He tried and tried, but the answer was always the same: This is the best we can do for the girls studying at our madrasa. Whatever reasons they gave, in my mind, they were just excuses. I could not accept there was no way to improve the curriculum for girls.

Finally, I decided to ask my father to help me establish our own madrasa on our street.

Let’s open a madrasa

Several reasons prompted this decision. First, my sister, who finished grade 6 last year and is now at home, is growing more despondent by the day. She’s sinking into a deep depression and everyone in the family is very concerned about her. We could all see how happy she was to be going to her classes at the madrasa, even if the quality of teaching was poor. My mother said that some of the other women in the neighbourhood told her they also had daughters in the same predicament and felt they would benefit from going back to a learning environment. But this wasn’t the only reason. We have a beautiful religion and it’s important for every girl to understand Islam and what it means to be a Muslim.

But many people don’t take the trouble to make sure they have a deep understanding of Islam and its tenets. They stray from the path of faith by believing in superstitions and inventions that have, over time, gained currency and are touted as truths. It’s important for all Muslims to understand the faith, its rules and obligations to God and our fellow human beings. I feel strongly that people in my community, especially women, have the opportunity to learn about Islam from credible teachers and, hopefully, stop believing in myths and superstitions.

I presented my idea of opening our own madrasa to my parents over dinner one night. I was nervous and had been preparing my arguments for days. I told him that we could open a madrasa in our neighbourhood if he’d commit some funds to rent a place near our home and pay a couple of well-qualified female teachers. I thought this might give my sister some hope and a sense of purpose and help her overcome her sadness. It would be good for the community because the madrasa would be free for all girls in the neighbourhood and a place for them to learn not only about our religion but also another language – Arabic.

Starting a madrasa, easier said than done

Both my parents thought it was a good idea. My father has a good position in an international NGO and is also a partner in a small business that he runs with one of his friends. He said he’d contribute some of his earnings to opening a madrasa in our neighbourhood. This kind of thing, he said, is an obligation for all Muslims who have the means to support the community.

He looked into how he’d ask permission to register a madrasa and found it was pretty straightforward and could be easily done when the time came. We’ve also identified two very good female teachers of the Quran and the hadith that we could hire when we open the madrasa. We haven’t discussed this with them, or anyone else in detail yet because we don’t want to raise hopes until we’ve rented a place for the school and secured all the necessary permits from the government.

Finding a place to rent has proven to be easier said than done. My father’s been looking for weeks and there are no vacant houses to be had in our neighbourhood. He put the word out that he’d be interested in renting a house as soon as one becomes available. For now, my sister and I spend our days making plans for the time when we can open the madrasa. We’ve enlisted everyone in the extended family to help us find all the things we need – furniture, whiteboards, exercise books and most importantly, textbooks.

While we wait, we still keep hoping that one day soon, the Emirate will find a way to get girls back into education, so that all Afghan girls can finish high school and even go to university, if they want to.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

 

The Daily Hustle: Why one Afghan girl decided to open her own madrasa
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What It’s Like Backpacking in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan as an American

May 29, 2024
Life & Trends Reporter
Newsweek
May 25, 2024

Dreaming of quitting your job to go traveling around the globe? Well, one American did just that on a quest to visit every country in the world and ended up at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“There was an eerie silence and stillness in that moment, and those simple three words will forever be engraved in my mind,” Eli Snyder, a 25-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, told Newsweek, recalling the moment a Taliban official at the border looked him the eye and said “Welcome to Afghanistan” during his visit back in January.

Americans are advised against traveling to Afghanistan. The U.S. Department of State warns that “travel to all areas of Afghanistan is unsafe.” Its current travel advisory for Afghanistan is “Level 4: Do Not Travel, due to armed conflict, civil unrest, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping.”

Eli Snyder in Afghanistan.
Eli Snyder is pictured in Afghanistan in January. “I live for visiting places as dissimilar as possible from how I’ve grown up in suburban America,” he told Newsweek. ELI SNYDER

On May 17, three Spanish tourists were killed and four other foreigners were wounded in Bamiyan, a city just outside the Afghan capital of Kabul, after gunmen opened fire as the group walked through a market. The attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, is believed to be the first assault against foreign tourists since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.

“In general I felt safe in Afghanistan…safer than big cities in the U.S. and Western Europe after dark, that’s for sure,” he said. “I live for visiting places as dissimilar as possible from how I’ve grown up in suburban America outside of Kansas City. Sometimes this means visiting a dangerous place. But it remains true, as I’d much rather visit Pyongyang [the North Korean capital] than Winnipeg.”

He has been sharing his travel adventures on his social media accounts (@snydtheexplorer on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube) and recently shared snapshots from his trip to Afghanistan in a viral TikTok video posted on May 15, which has garnered 1.8 million views.

His latest viral post comes as travel is set to reach “record highs” in 2024, with global tourism spending expected to reach $2 trillion, according to a December 2023 survey by market research firm Euromonitor International.

Jet-setters say they’ll cut down on other areas of personal spending to prioritize leisure travel this year, according to a global survey of over 10,000 travelers across nine countries, conducted by Ipsos and the Hilton hotel group.

‘Absolutely Out of Body Experience’

Snyder, who is currently spending a month in Buenos Aires, was inspired to visit Afghanistan after seeing the country named among the favorite places of travelers who have visited every country and hearing “the best things about the hospitality, nature and food.”

He spent 10 days in Afghanistan, visiting Kabul, Bamiyan and the Band-e-Amir national park in the Bamiyan province in central Afghanistan, as well as the city of Mazar-e-Sharif and the town of Balkh in the Balkh province in northern Afghanistan.

Snyder was accompanied by Valentin Oeckl, a 22-year-old who’s traveling from Germany to Australia without flying. The pair met in Islamabad, Pakistan where Oeckl was staying in order to get a visa for entry into Afghanistan.

Snyder warned: “Only the most experienced traveler should consider traveling to Afghanistan without a guide, and even then, it will be a daunting experience.”

However, he and Oeckl could not afford to pay for a guide, so they navigated the country without one, which was “the most challenging thing.”

Eli Snyder in Afghanistan.
Left, Eli Snyder, on the left, with Valentin Oeckl. Right, Snyder walking in a street in Afghanistan. ELI SNYDER

He noted: “Afghanistan isn’t a country you visit for tourist attractions per se, but a country where you can walk out of your doorstep and be immediately stimulated by the ongoing ebb and flow of daily life.”

There are too many memorable moments from the trip to recount, Snyder said, but the most poignant one was when he crossed the border into Afghanistan from the town of Torkham in Pakistan.

Snyder recalled: “We had walked through the long corridor of barbed wire fences, and found ourselves alone in the Afghanistan immigration office. We handed over our passports to the Taliban official, who stamped us into the country, looked at us in the eyes and said ‘Welcome to Afghanistan.’

“From then forward, everything was an absolutely out of body experience. But perhaps the craziest part was the end of the trip, when we would wake up and go walk around the markets, chatting with locals and the Taliban as if it were just another day,” he added.

The “only hairy moment” during his trip was on the morning of his first day in Kabul. He and Oeckl didn’t have their permits yet and were walking to the office of the country’s Ministry of Information and Culture.

“We were apprehended and they were stern with us for not having our permits, but mostly they were just curious to see two tourists walking around Kabul without a guide,” the traveler said.

Eli Snyder in Afghanistan.
Eli Snyder picture with locals in Afghanistan. “I’d much rather visit Pyongyang [the North Korean capital] than Winnipeg,” he told Newsweek. ELI SNYDER

Staying Safe While Exploring Afghanistan

Snyder’s “top tip” for keeping safe on a trip to Afghanistan is to explore the country with a guide. He noted: “Of the micro niche tourist scene that exists for visiting Afghanistan, a gross majority have a private guide to assist with daily activities and Taliban interactions. The issue is that guides cost thousands of dollars due to the demand and the fact that people will pay anything for safety.”

Snyder also said he was able to navigate the country without a guide with the help of tips from a blog by Diána (@theglobetrottingdetective on Instagram), a Hungarian solo female traveler who traveled around Afghanistan for four weeks.

“Without her trip reports, I wouldn’t have had the confidence, information, resources, contacts etc…to successfully and safely execute my trip,” he noted.

“When you smile at someone and look them in the eye, displaying a warm and sincere and non-threatening demeanor, it is the most effective method to diffuse any instigation that I’ve ever known. Just smile, be kind, and you’ll be alright wherever you are,” he noted.

What It’s Like Backpacking in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan as an American
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Departing Afghanistan

May 29, 2024

By William H. McRaven

The Atlantic magazine
A poem for Memorial Day

The Atlantic has often channeled the resources of poetry—its charged and immediate patterns of language—to mourn and memorialize the war dead. The earliest years of the magazine spanned the Civil War, during which the editors published dirges, elegies, and ballads that told stories to console, to heal, to hearten. An elegy for Rupert Brooke took the sonnet into a new, modern vernacular at the time of the First World War. In October 1944, the magazine put together a portfolio of Soldier Verse; in 1960, The Atlantic published Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead,” a poem that reflects on the uses of monuments and memorials.

“Departing Afghanistan” continues and deepens this legacy. William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral and the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote “Departing Afghanistan” in June 2021, prior to the evacuation in August.

The poem emerges from a period of deep reflection and personal soul-searching: Had all the losses, over 20 years, been worth the fight? In its emphasis on the experience of service members, and in its haunting refrain, “Departing Afghanistan” provides neither a defense nor an explanation. After all, the decision to go to Afghanistan and to leave Afghanistan was never the decision of the service members.

Instead, for this Memorial Day, Admiral McRaven offers a probing inquiry and a sustaining melody—and a message to the service members that, as McRaven put it to me: “for twenty years they fought with courage and convictions, they kept Americans safe and they should have no regrets as we depart Afghanistan.”

— Walt Hunter
The Hindu Kush will be quiet now,
silence will come to the ancient lands.
The roar of the planes
will fade in the night
as we depart Afghanistan.
The scholars will chide us
and the pundits will pan,
why did we stay so long
when we should have been gone—
gone from Afghanistan.
But the fight was a good one,
noble and right,
no matter how long it took.
Not a soul has been lost on American soil,
not a single building shook.
For 20 years our people were safe,
living their lives in peace,
raising their families across the land,
because our soldiers fought—
fought in Afghanistan.
It was a tragic waste, some will say,
the loss of so many men.
The rows and rows of headstones
on the graves at Arlington.
But a noble life is never a loss,
no matter where they may fall.
To the soldier who did their duty,
they’re a hero forever, for all.
Make no mistake about it,
we came for a righteous cause.
We fought with courage and conviction.
We fought for the betterment of all.
And for those who cheer our final days,
be careful about what you wish.
For the fate of the Afghan people
is unlikely to be filled with bliss.
The children will weep as their future fades
and old women will cry to their men.
“They weren’t so bad,”
the elders will say,
as we depart Afghanistan.
We pray for the people of Afghanistan,
they are warm and kindly souls.
We pray that their future
will be filled with success
as the days and years unfold.
I hope those we saved will remember us,
and the innocents we harmed will forgive.
But to those who bore arms against us,
may you regret each day that you live.
The winds will howl through the vacant FOBs,
through the plywood and houses of tin.
The tarmacs will rot
in the noonday sun
as we depart Afghanistan.
Some will say it was right.
Some will say it was wrong.
Let the history books decide.
But every soldier did their best,
of that, no one can deny.
We ache for those warriors we lost
and the loved ones who bear the pain.
If only we could have saved them all,
and brought them home again.
The Hindu Kush will be quiet now
and silence will come to the ancient lands.
For those who served
let there be no regrets
as we depart Afghanistan.
William H. McRaven is a retired naval officer.
Departing Afghanistan
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A Hidden History

May 29, 2024

The New York Times

May 22, 2024

A Times investigation uncovered a brutal campaign enacted by U.S.-backed forces during the war in Afghanistan.

I covered the war in Afghanistan and went back after the Taliban took over.

General Abdul Raziq was one of America’s fiercest allies in the fight against the Taliban. He was young and charismatic — a courageous warrior who commanded the loyalty and respect of his men. He helped beat back the Taliban in the crucial battlefield of Kandahar, even as the insurgents advanced across Afghanistan.

But his success, until his 2018 assassination, was built on torture, extrajudicial killing and abduction. In the name of security, he transformed the Kandahar police into a combat force without constraints. His officers, who were trained, armed and paid by the United States, took no note of human rights or due process, according to a New York Times investigation into thousands of cases that published this morning. Most of his victims were never seen again.

Washington’s strategy in Afghanistan aimed to beat the Taliban by winning the hearts and minds of the people it was supposedly fighting for. But Raziq embodied a flaw in that plan. The Americans empowered warlords, corrupt politicians and outright criminals in the name of military expediency. It picked proxies for whom the ends often justified the means.

I’ll explain in today’s newsletter how using men like Raziq drove many Afghans toward the Taliban. And it persuaded others, including those who might have been sympathetic to U.S. goals, that the U.S.-backed central government could not be trusted to fix Afghanistan. If there was ever any chance that the United States could uproot the Taliban, the war strategy made it much harder.

My colleague Matthieu Aikins and I have covered Afghanistan for years. After America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, we were suddenly able to visit people and places that were off-limits during the fighting. We traveled there, hoping to learn what really happened during America’s longest war.

Alongside a team of Afghan researchers, we combed through more than 50,000 handwritten complaints kept in ledgers by the former U.S.-backed government of Kandahar. In them, we found the details of almost 2,200 cases of suspected disappearances. From there, we went to hundreds of homes across Kandahar.

We tracked down nearly 1,000 people who said their loved ones had been taken or killed by government security forces. We corroborated nearly 400 cases, often with eyewitnesses to the abductions. We also substantiated their claims with Afghan police reports, affidavits and other government records they had filed. In each of the forced disappearances, the person is still missing.

Even at the time, U.S. officials grasped Raziq’s malevolence. “Sometimes we asked Raziq about incidents of alleged human rights abuses, and when we got answers we would be like, ‘Whoa, I hope we didn’t implicate ourselves in a war crime just by hearing about it,’” recalled Henry Ensher, a State Department official who held multiple posts on Afghanistan. “We knew what we were doing, but we didn’t think we had a choice,” Ensher said.

It would be too simple to say that Raziq’s tactics were entirely in vain. They worked in some respects, reasserting government control in Kandahar and pushing insurgents into the hinterlands. Raziq earned the admiration of many who opposed the Taliban. More than a dozen U.S. officials said that without him the Taliban would have advanced much faster.

But Raziq’s methods took a toll. They stirred such enmity among his victims that the Taliban turned his cruelty into a recruiting tool. Taliban officials posted videos about him on WhatsApp to attract new fighters.

Many Afghans came to revile the U.S.-backed government and everything it represented. “None of us supported the Taliban, at least not at first,” said Fazul Rahman, whose brother was abducted in front of witnesses during Raziq’s reign. “But when the government collapsed, I ran through the streets, rejoicing.”

Even some who cheered Raziq’s ruthlessness lamented the corruption and criminality he engendered — a key part of why the Afghan government collapsed in 2021. After Raziq’s death, his commanders went further. They extorted ordinary people and stole from their own men’s wages and supplies.

“What they brought under the name of democracy was a system in the hands of a few mafia groups,” said one resident of Kandahar who initially supported the government. “The people came to hate democracy.”

Historians and scholars will spend years arguing whether the United States could have ever succeeded. The world’s wealthiest nation had invaded one of its poorest and attempted to remake it by installing a new government. Such efforts elsewhere have failed.

But U.S. mistakes — empowering ruthless killers, turning allies into enemies, enabling rampant corruption — made the loss of its longest war at least partly self-inflicted. This is a story Matthieu and I will spend the coming months telling, from across Afghanistan.

A Hidden History
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Investigating a Monster: What We Found and How We Did It

May 29, 2024
By Azam Ahmed

The New York Times.

The only thing faster than the American withdrawal from Afghanistan might be how quickly the world moved on.

The Biden Administration largely stopped talking about it. Most news organizations were already scaling back in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over.

But a question remained, at once basic and vast.

How did it come to this? How did the group that the United States invaded Afghanistan to eviscerate wind up back in charge?

With the war’s end, The New York Times could finally reach people and places that had been off limits during the fighting — to figure out what really happened.

We found that one of America’s most important partners in the war against the Taliban — a celebrated general named Abdul Raziq — had carried out a systematic campaign of forced disappearances that killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

General Raziq’s story was not just a familiar one of tragedy and loss in a faraway war. Across Afghanistan, the United States elevated and empowered warlords, corrupt politicians and outright criminals to prosecute a war of military expediency in which the ends often justified the means.

It helps explain why the United States lost.

General Raziq was the police chief responsible for security across Kandahar. The U.S. military lionized him for years as a fierce combatant and a loyal partner. American generals made pilgrimages to see him.

But his battlefield prowess was built on years of torture, extrajudicial killings and the largest-known campaign of forced disappearances during America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, The Times found.

We obtained hundreds of pages of ledgers belonging to the former U.S.-backed government. In them, we identified almost 2,200 cases of suspected disappearances in Kandahar Province alone, with families reporting missing relatives.

That is almost surely a gross undercount. The Times only logged cases that were corroborated by at least two people. Many of the families who had reported missing loved ones were impossible to locate, and many others never filed complaints.

A mechanic and a rickshaw driver. Tailors and taxi drivers. The human tally helps explain why many Afghans so quickly embraced the Taliban after the American withdrawal.

“None of us supported the Taliban, at least not at first,” said Fazul Rahman, whose brother was abducted. “But when the government collapsed, I ran through the streets, rejoicing.”

When the Taliban took over the country, they inherited nearly everything that had belonged to the U.S.-backed government. The computers, rickety office chairs, even tea glasses.

They also inherited documents, at least those that hadn’t been destroyed.

The Times obtained and combed through a decade’s worth of handwritten ledgers, made available to us by the Taliban, stretching from 2011 until the American-backed Republic of Afghanistan collapsed in 2021.

Using the ledgers as tips, local Times researchers searched for the families of the disappeared. Each was asked to fill out a form with the details of the disappearance and provide records to substantiate the claim: police reports, affidavits, medical files, government documents, whatever they had.

We spoke with nearly 1,000 families and narrowed that list to hundreds of verified cases of forced disappearance.

In each case, the person is still missing.

General Raziq was one of the United States’ most important allies in Afghanistan. When he took charge of units in Kandahar, he managed to beat the Taliban there.

He was always dogged by accusations of human rights abuses. But the Americans stood by him until the last.

When he was gunned down by an undercover Taliban assassin in 2018, he was standing next to the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, who celebrated him as a “great friend” and “patriot.”

He was seen as the only partner capable of beating the Taliban in the heartland of the insurgency.

“We knew what we were doing, but we didn’t think we had a choice,” said Henry Ensher, a former State Department official.

But many Afghans say General Raziq used his position, and his American support, to pursue personal vendettas and decades-long tribal rivalries. To many everyday citizens, General Raziq was the cruel hand of the American government. Even the Taliban seemed preferable.

Like so much about the war in Afghanistan, this is something that former top American officials say they never truly understood.

Azam Ahmed is international investigative correspondent for The Times. He has reported on Wall Street scandals, the War in Afghanistan and violence and corruption in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Investigating a Monster: What We Found and How We Did It
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Where Are My Rights? Afghan retirees appeal for their pensions

May 22, 2024

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon • Jelena Bjelica

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Afghanistan’s retired public sector employees have not received their pensions since the toppling of the Republic and the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in August 2021. In the almost three years since then, their pleas to the government to start paying what is their due have fallen on deaf ears. In April this year, they were handed a further crushing blow when the Islamic Emirate abruptly announced it was abolishing the pension system and that it had stopped deducting pension contributions from the salaries of current civilian and military staff. That decision diminished the future prospects of existing pensioners ever getting paid. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon and Jelena Bjelica (with input from Roxanna Shapour) have been hearing from retirees about their day-to-day struggle to survive and have also been looking into why it is so hard to pay Afghanistan’s pensioners. 

Afghanistan’s public sector retirees have been on the streets, protesting outside government offices, demanding that the government make good on their pensions, which have not been paid for almost three years. Posted on Facebook by Muhammad Sami’i Naderi on 19 May 2024.
 
For more than two years, public sector retirees have been on the streets, protesting outside government offices – see media reports from June 2022, November 2022, January 2023, August 2023, February 2024, April 2024. In rallies that have shown little sign of engendering a positive response, the pensioners have demanded their ‘rights’. The word for rights, huquq, is also used in Afghanistan to mean wages, or in this case, pension payments. The pensioners have not received any of their ‘rights’ since August 2021 when the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) came to power.[1] The end of the payments coincided with the collapse of the Afghan economy and that double blow has pushed many pensioners into poverty.[2] As head of the Afghanistan Retirees Association in Kabul, Afandi Sangar, explained:

We gathered several times to ask the Emirate to pay our pensions. We aren’t protesting, but we’re objecting. We worked for this country. This is money that was taken out of our salaries and it’s our right [to get a pension]. It’s a debt the government owes us. We aren’t asking for charity. We’re asking for our rights. If we don’t get our rights, the only thing we can do is raise our voices.

They have felt that the government had just been keeping them in limbo: “Every time we visit the pension department to get our rights,” one retiree told Pajhwok in August 2023, “they say it will be paid today, or tomorrow,” adding, “We don’t want charity, we… want our rights from the government.”

While the number of current public sector retirees is unknown, the Afghanistan Retirees Association did give a precise number in 2021 – 148,881, made up of 92,254 former civil servants and 56,627 former military (as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL/). A news report from BBC Pashto in March 2024 put the current number of pensioners as far higher: 159,000, including 10,000 women, who include widows entitled to their late husband’s pension.[3] Afandi Sangar summed their situation up with bitter words: “What should the retirees eat? They are not young enough to work. How long should we wait with empty stomachs?”

How are retirees coping? 

We wanted to get an idea of how retirees and their families have been surviving since they last received their pensions. We interviewed three women and three men, who are all in their late sixties or early seventies. They told us about their everyday struggles, their search for employment and their reliance on charity. They told us that they feel betrayed and angry, forsaken and stripped of what is rightfully theirs – the small percentage of their salaries that had been deducted year after year, which they expected would fund their old age.

One woman, a widow of 22 years who had been living on her husband’s pension, described how it stopped suddenly in August 2021, leaving her family dependent on the help of neighbours:

If it wasn’t for the community, my four children and I would have died of hunger…. In Ramadan, people helped us – some people brought cooking oil, some brought flour, and some helped us with other food items.

Her experience was not unusual. All our respondents told us in poignant detail about how they have had to rely on the charity of others to – just about – keep afloat. A former public librarian from Kabul, who has six children and retired in 2018, told us how he and his family go hungry most days:

I have nothing to feed my children. I haven’t received my pension since the arrival of the Taleban. I have nothing to eat now. Thanks to the people who gave me some zakat [alms] in the month of Ramadan and at Eid, I have enough [money] for about two months. I don’t know what to do. I’m lost. Sometimes, I think I should kill myself, but two things stop me: one, suicide is forbidden in Islam, and second, how would my death benefit my children?

A former teacher with four children from Kabul province who has been retired since 2015 described how she had tried to make ends meet.

Over the last three years, I’ve sold most of my belongings. We have almost nothing left, [only] what we need, and actually, we didn’t make much money from selling [our possessions].… I am going mad. Sometimes, I go to a private school where one of my former students is the principal. She’s sympathetic to my situation and sometimes, when a teacher is absent, she calls me to cover. Actually, I don’t teach. She asks me to keep the students busy when there’s no teacher in the classroom…. Then she pays me some money. But that money is never enough for my family.

Another retiree, who used to be a mid-level manager (modir) in Kunduz province and who has been retired since 2017, has a long-term health problem and can no longer afford to pay his medical bills:

I’m sick. I have four children and all of them are underage. I have a problem with my lungs and I can’t afford to have an X-ray. Sometimes, people help me buy flour or something else, food or non-food items. When people in the community can’t help, my brother steps in and buys some food for us. Actually, I’m a burden to him because he himself is a poor man. He and his son work in a factory in Kabul. Sometimes, I borrow some money from him to buy medicine.

A former colonel, a pensioner since 2013 in Laghman province, was also worried about health bills, but for his wife: “She has a chronic illness. When I was receiving my pension, I could afford her medication, but now I can’t.” He had taken to selling vegetables to support his family, but says that, in the current economic situation, the money he earns is simply not enough.

The vegetable stall used to support my financial needs in the past, but now all the vegetables in my cart are only worth 2,000 afghanis (USD 30). Suppose I sell all the vegetables, how much [profit] will I make? How will I feed my family and how can I buy medicine for my wife?

Our last interviewee, a woman with three children who worked for the military in Kabul and retired when Karzai was president (she does not remember the exact year), said her family had had no income since her husband fell ill, and the government stopped paying her pension: “My husband used to work as a painter and decorator until about two years ago when he fell ill,” she said. “My pension and his earnings used to be enough to feed our family and cover our other expenses. Now, we have neither my pension nor his earnings.” She said she received a little help during Ramadan from the Association of Retirees, which had received a donation of flour and other food items.

As these interviews show, the impact of the Emirate’s decision not to pay pensions has gone far deeper and wider than just on the pensioners themselves. While public sector retirees account for only about 18 per cent of the 835,900 Afghans of retirement age,[4] that translates into providing support to 150,000 families, or almost one million individuals.[5] For many of those families, the government pension has been a significant source of income. For some, it was their only source. In August 2021, Afghanistan’s pensioners and their families found themselves suddenly immiserated. In reality, though, the non-payment of pensions was the culmination of a crisis which had been brewing for years, masked only by the huge amounts of money paid by foreign donors into the Republic’s budget. When those funds disappeared overnight, it brought the crisis to a head, as detailed below.

Afghanistan’s mounting pension bill

Under the Islamic Republic’s 2008 Labour Law, retirement was set at 65 years of age or after 40 years of service (see the Pashto/Dari version of the law here and the English version here). The Republic’s formal social protection system consisted largely, according to the World Bank, of “a pension scheme for public sector employees and uniformed servicemen [sic] of the military and police, and social safety nets encompassing a number of government and donor schemes that transfer cash and in-kind benefits to various population groups.” Their salaries would have had contributions deducted at source, to which the government also added.[6] The widows, underage children and unmarried adult daughters are also eligible to receive a late husband/father’s pension and are referred to as ‘survivors’ in the laws and documents. Those who have not been in regular employment or who work in the private sector do not receive any social benefits from the state when they reach retirement age.

The country’s pension system has long been in crisis and in 2008, the World Bank launched a programme to support a government-led reform of it (see ‘Afghanistan Public Sector Pension Scheme: From Crisis Management to Comprehensive Reform Strategy’). The Bank put the total of ‘active pensioners’ (either they themselves or their close heirs were registered, alive and receiving a pension)[7] in 2007 at just over sixty thousand people (see Table A4-3 in Annex 4, p55, of the above-cited document).

Unlike pension funds in many other countries that make investments to generate income and so ‘future-proof’ their pension obligations, Afghanistan’s system relied on contributions from current employees and large appropriations from government coffers to pay its former public sector workers. This is because sharia law places constraints on investments that would yield interest or might be deemed as speculative. However, the system was not financially sustainable and was increasingly putting pressure on Afghanistan’s fragile and heavily aid-dependent public finances.

In 2018, a full ten years after the reforms process began, the system was still in crisis. With “pension liabilities – set to swallow the equivalent of a third of the current USD 5 billion budget within 15 years,” the Republic’s then Deputy Finance Minister Khalid Payenda spoke publicly about the urgent need for action. “Previously,” he told Reuters, “they kicked the can down the road and it’s snowballing right now and needs to be fixed.” As part of the finance ministry’s agenda to reform the public sector, it was exploring sharia-compliant investments, such as sukuk instruments (sharia-compliant government-issued bonds) and other measures to try to make sure it could meet its mounting pension bill, which had reached 26.3 billion afghanis (USD 368 million) in 2019 (see the Ministry of Finance’s 2021 Fiscal Strategy Paper).

It was no surprise to many observers, therefore, that retirees stopped getting their benefits after the Republic fell in August 2021. The foreign assistance that had been propping up Afghanistan’s bloated national budget and footing the lion’s share of the pension bill had disappeared overnight and there was simply not enough domestic revenue coming in for the government to both run the country and meet its obligation to retirees.

Pensions and the Emirate 

Since taking power, the IEA did not only stop paying retirees, it also reportedly began deliberating what to do with the pension system it had inherited from its predecessors. Currently, there are about 150,000 pensioners. However, that figure was set to rise significantly, given the size of the public sector workforce, both now and under the Republic, as workers reach retirement age.[8]

In summer 2022, about a year after the takeover, the Emirate announced it would look into the sharia basis for pensions. Later, in October 2022, a pension plan ratified by the cabinet was sent to Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada for his approval (as reported by BBC Persian, see also AAN’s readout of this Kabul Now report), with the Ministry of Finance proposing to allocate four billion afghanis (around USD 46 million) to pay for public sector pensions. That was hardly enough to cover the government’s annual pension bill, which, according to recent BBC Persian estimates, stands at 12.5 billion afghanis (USD 175 million). This would also not have included the arrears owed to pensioners for 2021 and 2022. The Republic had budgeted 46.2 billion afghanis (approximately USD 530 million) for these two years – 22.4 billion (USD 257 million) for 2021 and 23.8 billion (USD 273 million) for 2022.However, as the weeks turned into months with no approval from the Supreme Leader, retirees continued to gather outside government offices to demand their long-awaited pensions. In February 2024, IEA Spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, told ToloNews that “their appeal has been considered” and that he hoped “their problem will be solved soon.”

Finally, on 3 April 2024, the Ministry of Finance announced that the country’s pension system had been abolished. Under the mandate of a new decree, the government had stopped deducting pension contributions from both civilian and military salaries from the start of fiscal year 1403 (2024/25), with the first contribution-free month being Hamal (21 March to 21 April 2024). The decree had instructed the Ministry of Finance to provide details about the length of service and the funds deducted against pensions for each civil servant or military staff member who was currentlyworking for the government (see a photo of the decree in this BBC Persian report and these Amu TV and Ariana Newsreports), ie not the pension pots accumulated by current pensioners when they were working. This was apparently not mentioned.

Although the IEA has not explicitly explained the reasons behind its decision to abolish the pension system, it was reported that it might hold that it was in breach of sharia. “A number of Islamic scholars do not consider the payment of pension insurance to be in accordance with sharia…. They [the Taleban] had several meetings, including in Syria, on this issue but could not reach a consensus,” professor of economics Muhammad Amir Nuri told BBC Persian. Nuri attributed this to differences of opinion among Islamic scholars about the imprecise nature of pension schemes. “It is not clear that you will receive as much money as you have in your account. Because one often gets more or less than the amount of money in their account…. [If] a person lives longer than the average life expectancy, he will receive more money than the balance in his account, but a person who dies early, if he does not have an eligible heir, [will get] less than the amount of money in his account,” he said.

Meanwhile, the announcement touched off a new round of protests in Kabul by retirees who say that, without state assistance, they and their families simply cannot survive (see, for example, this RFE/RL report).

Human dignity hanging by a thread

Afghanistan’s economic woes have pushed many of its citizens to the edge of endurance – some 24 million are in need of assistance this year alone according to UNOCHA. While 835,900 Afghans are currently of retirement age (65 or older), only 150,000 – those who worked in state institutions – had expected a state pension. Older Afghans, in general, do not seem to figure on the government’s agenda and rarely find themselves on a donor’s priority list. Many are poor and struggling, but the former public sector workers had planned their final years on the assumption that the state would honour their ‘rights’. Instead, they are facing a future with no choice but to rely on charity and the kindness of relatives, neighbours and communities, their human dignity hanging by a thread. What then should they do now?

The woman who, along with her four children, had lived on her late husband’s pension for 22 years, said she felt helpless and powerless:

We ask the leader of the Emirate to give us our rights. Where should we go? Where could we get food, if he doesn’t give us our rights? I am a woman; I can do nothing. What can I do and who will listen to me?

One of the other female interviewees, the former teacher, felt betrayed and angry. She saw no other option but to take to the streets in protest:

In the last days of our lives, we’d rather be respected than punished. Not paying pensions is equal to a punishment. I’m very disheartened. I never thought we’d face such a destiny. We want the government to be kind to us. We’re elderly and cannot support our families. If the government doesn’t support us, we’ll have to take to the streets and raise our voices.

Others worried that protest itself might be dangerous. The retired colonel said he would not be demonstrating, but remained hopeful that the government would eventually start honouring its obligation to pensioners:

Believe me, I can’t protest. I’m afraid that if I protest, I’ll be arrested or injured. If you get injured at this age, then it’s very difficult to recover. I never thought of protesting. What is meant to happen, will happen.[9] But we hope that the Emirate will pay our pensions. We’ve worked for this country. We are not Americans. We are Afghans.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1  Retirees reported only patchy payment of pensions in the last months of the Ashraf Ghani government. Working civil servants were also not paid their salaries at this time, as Ghani prioritised spending on the war.
↑2 The ‘World Bank’s ‘Afghanistan Development Update, Navigating Challenges: Confronting Economic Recession and Deflation’, published on 17 April 2024 reported that GDP had shrunk by 26 per cent since the takeover, this on top of several years of worsening poverty rates.
↑3  The particulars of pension arrangements for private sector workers as well as those who are not in formal employment are not entirely known and are beyond the scope of this report.
↑4  This calculation is based on World Bank reporting in 2022 that 2.39 per cent of Afghanistan’s population was over the age of 65 in 2022 (see here) and an estimate in ‘Quarterly Statistical Indicators Fourth Quarter 2023’ from the Afghanistan National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) that the country’s population was 34,971,517 (see here).
↑5 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ‘Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023’ calculated that the average Afghan household comprises 6.6 members.
↑6  For the civil service, an amount equal to 8 per cent of the salary was deducted at source, with the government contributing an equal amount. For the security forces, the salary deduction was 5 per cent, with the government contributing 11 per cent. See Pension Policy Reform document.
↑7 This table provides an overview of the number of retirees logged in the Pension Department’s system in 2007. “Registered pensioners” represent the official Pension Department figures which were cited at the time for budgeting purposes. This figure included the cumulative number of all individuals “dead and alive, active and passive, retirees and their survivors who had ever applied for a pension since inception of the system.” Those classed as “active pensioners” are retirees or their survivors (wives, minor children and/or unmarried daughter) who were alive at the time of the assessment and eligible to receive a pension. See Afghanistan Public Sector Pension Scheme: From Crisis Management to Comprehensive Reform Strategy.
↑8  In its ‘Quarterly Statistical Indicators Fourth Quarter 2023’, the Afghanistan National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) put the number working in the public sector at 443,243 (see NSIA’s website here). At least 350,000 more people are employed in the security sector. In accountability sessions over summer 1402/2023, the Ministry of Defence reported that it employed 170,000 personnel, with a planned rise to 180,000 in 1403/2024 and the Ministry of Interior 161,000. The General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) did not appear in the sessions. For more details, see AAN’s November 2023 report, Survival and Stagnation: The State of the Afghan economy. AAN knows of no publicly available breakdown by age of the workforce.
↑9 The Persian expression harch-e bada bad roughly translates as ‘que sera, sera’, or ‘whatever will be will be’.

 

Where Are My Rights? Afghan retirees appeal for their pensions
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The Taliban’s Attacks on Diversity Undermine Afghanistan’s Stability

May 19, 2024
BY: Joyana Richer; Belquis Ahmadi
United States Institute of Peace
Thursday, May 16, 2024
 KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Afghans of all backgrounds want more than the end of violence. They want true peace built on coexistence and reconciliation.
  • Instead, the Taliban are imposing their views on Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic, cultural and religious groups.
  • The international and regional community is notably united on pushing for a more inclusive government in Afghanistan.

Each year, the U.N. International Day of Living Together in Peace reminds us that true, sustainable peace is achieved not simply by eliminating war, but rather by building tolerance, inclusion, understanding and solidarity among and between communities.

In Afghanistan, this day holds immense potential. For more than four decades, the country’s resilient yet diverse population has endured cycles of political turmoil, violent conflict and civil war. After so much suffering, Afghans yearn to transcend the mere cessation of violence — to establish true peace built on coexistence and reconciliation. However, while Afghanistan is no longer in an official state of war, the Taliban’s grip on power has made the prospects of seeing real, positive peace appear faint.

The End of War Does Not Ensure the Promise of Peace

Many in the international community were quick to praise the Taliban for ostensibly ending the war. And while security has improved throughout much of the country, this view overlooks critical context: The Taliban were the primary instigators in the first place, and they routinely employed tactics like insurgency and suicide bombings to instill fear and weaken opposition.

Moreover, their failure to reach a peace agreement with the Afghan government further underscores their responsibility for the prolonged conflict. It’s important to acknowledge these factors to grasp the complete picture and avoid inadvertently legitimizing actions that have caused immense suffering.

It’s true that the war is officially over. But that does not mean Afghanistan is at peace. And as the country’s now-de facto authorities, the Taliban are responsible for cultivating an environment that allows the Afghan people to reconcile their differences and begin the process of healing the deep wounds inflicted upon them.

Instead, the Taliban continue to brutally suppress dissent — resorting to harsh punishments, detention and torture for those who oppose their ideology. In December 2023, the Taliban’s Ministry of Economy issued a letter calling on local and international organizations to refrain from implementing projects focused on peace, conflict resolution, advocacy and public awareness. According to the Taliban, these projects are not considered a need. But the ban hinders efforts to address past grievances and envision a better future for the country.

Afghans should not be forced to choose between their fundamental rights and safety from violence. They deserve a chance to live with dignity, to have their rights respected and guaranteed, to rebuild their lives, and to have influence over their own future or that of their government.

Inclusion is a Foundation for Lasting Peace

When a government strives to include all voices of society, it creates a more sustainable foundation for peace. Take, for example, Colombia’s 2016 peace accord. In an extremely diverse country, all members had a stake in the peacebuilding process — whether it was a former guerilla group, women or Indigenous populations. The peace accord ended 50 years of violence, where one of the roots of the problem had been political exclusion.

Afghanistan is also home to a diverse and vibrant population. The country is home to a vast number of ethnic and cultural identities — such as Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkman, Baluch, Pachaie, Nuristani, Aymaq, Arab, Qirghiz, Qizilbash, Gujur, Brahwui and other tribes — and many religious groups such as Sunni and Shia Muslims, Sikhs, Baha’is, Hindus and a small population of Christians. Afghanistan’s future cannot and should not be dictated by any singular group. That means all Afghans should be included in decision-making processes at every level, be it local, national or international level.

In February 2024, however, the Taliban made it clear they did not want other non-Taliban representatives of the Afghanistan to attend the U.N.-convened meeting on Afghanistan in Doha. They even made it a precondition for their own attendance — terms the U.N. secretary-general deemed unacceptable.

But the Taliban’s rejection of inclusive governance and decision-making is at odds with much of the international community. Notably, the United States, the U.N. and many European countries have all made recognition of the Taliban conditional based on the need for an inclusive government, among other things.

Inclusion is also one of the few consensus positions among Afghanistan’s contentious neighbors, many of whom do not always see eye to eye. Foreign ministers from Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran have all called on the Taliban to have a more inclusive government and a national reconciliation process.

Meanwhile, the Kazan Declaration, which was released at the culmination of the 5th Moscow Format last year, claimed that there had been no progress toward a more inclusive government in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the declaration — which was put forward by representatives from China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — pushed for a more constructive dialogue with different ethnic groups within the country in order for there to be a more “inclusive, accountable, and responsible government.”

Despite this consensus both internationally and regionally, the Taliban have rejected the need for inclusion and responded to the Kazan Declaration by stating they already had “religious and national legitimacy.”

The Taliban are Undermining Social Cohesion

Some parts of the international community claimed that the Taliban have become more moderate since their first rule — but the opposite has proven to be true. In addition to eschewing calls for inclusion, the Taliban have also made every effort to erase what glued Afghanistan’s diverse population together.

The Afghan constitution that recognized equal rights for all citizens has been suspended, robbing the population of their rights and the government’s responsibility to protect those rights.

The Taliban also replaced the country’s centuries-old solar calendar with the lunar calendar and cancelled the widely celebrated Nowroz public holiday in March 2022. A year later, in March 2023, they declared Nowruz as an act against sharia. What once was an opportunity for communities to come together to celebrate the beginning of spring has now been trampled into an eerie silence.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have made it mandatory that people speak Pashto in government offices, one of many languages spoken in Afghanistan, depriving people from engaging the government in their own native language freely. This imposition includes renaming government and educational signs and titles.

Finally, in January of this year, the Taliban started confiscating books, starting with 20,000 books in Kabul related to Afghanistan’s ethnic history, Tajik history, Shia sects, religious enlightenment, identity and other topics. They also ordered that universities exchange all books about the Republic era and replace them with the Siraat (the biography of the Prophet Muhammad). Such actions not only erode the fabric of Afghan society, but also represent a grave threat to the nation’s cultural heritage and collective identity.

Learning From Past Mistakes

While other global issues undoubtedly command attention, history shows us that it’s important to sustain focus on Afghanistan and craft policies that prioritize the well-being of its millions of citizens.

Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, international attention drifted elsewhere, and the Afghan people lacked the support needed to rebuild their nation. This inadvertently fueled further conflict, as it left Afghanistan fragile and vulnerable to the rise of extremist groups. The consequences were dire: Afghanistan became a breeding ground for terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. To ensure the Afghan people are not alone in the aftermath of yet another major geopolitical shift, the international community should sustain its commitment and support for Afghanistan’s stability and development.

And while the Doha agreement marked the conclusion of direct U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, our responsibility to our strategic allies persists. The sacrifices made by the Afghan people — of their lives, their liberty, and their future — warrant our continued support.

U.S. engagement with the Taliban regime should prioritize principled, outcome-driven approaches. In doing so, our guiding principle should be to avoid causing harm to women and men who are exercising their right to find true peace and live free from persecution and oppression from the Taliban. Upholding this principle of “do no harm” is crucial in navigating engagements with the Taliban, ensuring that our actions prioritize the protection of vulnerable populations and promote inclusive, equitable outcomes.

Furthermore, Afghanistan’s pivotal geopolitical position makes it susceptible to exploitation by violent extremist and terrorist groups. History has taught us that instability in Afghanistan reverberates far beyond its borders. Our continued support for Afghanistan is not merely a moral imperative but also a strategic necessity in ensuring regional stability and averting potential threats to international security.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s). 

The Taliban’s Attacks on Diversity Undermine Afghanistan’s Stability
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Pope’s appeal for Afghanistan helps a ‘forgotten’ people

May 17, 2024

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

Vatican News

17 May 2024

Pope Francis on Wednesday made an appeal for the international community to provide necessary aid and support to the most vulnerable in Afghanistan where at least 300 people have been killed in flooding in 18 districts across at least three of the country’s northern provinces in the past few days.

Following the Pope’s words, Fr. Giovanni Scalese, the last superior of the Mission sui iuris in Afghanistan, who was the only Catholic priest present in the country, granted an interview to Vatican News, about the Pope’s appeal, and discussing the consequences that the recent floods will have on a people who face a daily scarcity of essential goods for survival.

According to the United Nations World Food Programme, hundreds more have been injured in the recent floods, and it is believed that many people remain buried in the mud. Most of the casualties were reported in Baghlan province, where heavy rains destroyed an estimated 3,000 houses, flooded farmland, washed away livestock, closed schools and damaged health centres.

Father Scalese, at his General Audience, Pope Francis made an important appeal for Afghanistan which has been struck by devastating floods. What news do you have regarding this disaster? How do you receive this appeal from the Pope?

Unfortunately, I have very little news. I learned of this tragedy in recent days from a confrere of mine, Father Moretti, who was my predecessor in Kabul, because otherwise no one in the media is talking about it. Instead, other less important events dominate the media, and they are talked about every day for weeks. When it comes to Afghanistan, no one talks about it. So, I think it is certainly important that the Holy Father made this appeal yesterday morning. Indeed, we are really very grateful to him for breaking down this wall of silence. We hope that at least now, having spoken about it, some media outlet will report the news because otherwise, no one will know anything.

Afghanistan is already a very poor country. What effect could these floods have on the daily lives of the people?

Yes, exactly, Afghanistan is a very poor country, and Afghans have very little to lose, so unfortunately, they are used to these disastrous events and are used to facing them as best they can. Clearly, the victims, those who lose their lives, can do nothing. The others will try to move forward as best they can, as they have always done throughout Afghanistan’s history, gritting their teeth and starting over each time. Certainly, there is still hope for intervention by those who could intervene. The Pope himself yesterday morning appealed to the international community, to non-governmental organizations, to international bodies. So, we hope there will be interventions to help these populations.

As you mentioned, the Pope specifically called for help from the international community, and you also highlighted that there is a kind of wall of silence, that after the Taliban took power in Kabul, hardly anyone speaks about this country anymore. But what can be done to give Afghanistan a voice in the midst of this silence?

I don’t know. I don’t know because this is unfortunately exactly what happened after August 15, 2021. No one talks about Afghanistan anymore. Because it’s not interesting! It’s not interesting, unfortunately! The world of information is not objective, it does not report all the news, it is very selective. It only chooses certain news, those that may interest the general public or news that may be important for some ideological or political reason. And so, in this case, Afghanistan has been completely forgotten. I hope, however, that little by little people will realize that, regardless of who is in government, in power in a country, especially international organizations and non-governmental organizations should make an effort so that populations in need can receive help, regardless of the political regime in power in a particular country.

And from the years you served there as a missionary, what remain your most vivid memories? You were the only priest present there and so you are the only person who could tell such an experience…

But unfortunately, I don’t have good memories of Afghanistan. I was there for seven years from 2015 to 2021. They were very difficult years. I did not have the opportunity to visit the country; it was too risky, even just being in Kabul, inside the Italian embassy, where the Catholic mission was based, one could not even move around the city because it was dangerous. Every day, I would say, there were attacks. So, it was a country in a state of war, so I don’t have any good experiences to tell. If there is one good memory, let’s say, it is that of October 13, 2017, when at the end of the centenary of the apparitions of Fatima, we consecrated Afghanistan to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and this gives me so much hope. Because Afghanistan, even if it is ignored, forgotten, abandoned by everyone, certainly cannot be abandoned by God and by Mary. And Afghanistan is also in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who will certainly protect this country and protect its people and will not allow this people to perish, despite all the trials it is subjected to. Thanks to the Holy Father who remembered Afghanistan, hoping that these interventions can have some effect in favor of the Afghan people.

Pope’s appeal for Afghanistan helps a ‘forgotten’ people
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