In the immediate aftermath of Kabul’s shocking and rapid fall to the Taliban in August 2021, women across the Afghan capital began a painful process of textual self-erasure in anticipation of the house-to-house searches that would inevitably follow. Precious books that had helped them become themselves were set alight, proof of qualifications earned through years of hard study was destroyed in an instant, journal pages were rinsed of ink, bowls of lapis-hued water all that remained of the bold hopes and dreams confided within them.
For the 21 members of a women’s creative writing group, a single lifeline to the outside world would be preserved: the WhatsApp group chat set up by Untold Narratives, a UK-based development programme for marginalised writers that had been helping them compile an anthology of their stories.
In the months that followed, their words – downloaded several times a week by an Untold staffer in London so that they could be deleted from their own devices for safety – accreted to form a collective diary. By the time the anniversary of the Taliban takeover came around, they had between them written 200,000 words. Of these, 70,000 have now been meticulously extracted and translated from Dari and Pashto into English. The result is My Dear Kabul: A Year in the Life of An Afghan Women’s Writing Group, an intimate chronicle of history as it unfolds, beginning amid the chaos of the day the Taliban entered the city and closing the following summer.
As gunshots and explosions subside, fear continues to taint every aspect of life, exacerbated by inflation and power cuts, by bureaucratic impasses and by the humiliation the women face at the hands of emboldened men in shops and on the streets. Freedoms are snatched from them, and with schools, offices and eventually public parks forbidden, the claustrophobia is palpable. As a cultural activist named Naeema writes: “Three years ago, I was involved in publishing 10 books for children. Today, my biggest achievement is that I took a taxi alone.”
Crucially, this is a book that honours the individuality of its contributors and their voices, and in so doing amplifies their collective power. Known only by their first names, the writers range from single women in their 20s, such as Sadah, a schoolteacher, and Marie, who established a counselling service run by women, to Najla, a grandmother nearing her 60s with a degree in language and literature. They’re of different ethnic backgrounds, too, gesturing to the complexity of a country all too often perceived as homogenous by outsiders. As a consequence of its tragic and tumultuous recent history, several authors were born in exile, and some – Freshta, for instance, who reported on women’s affairs for a radio station that was threatened by the Taliban – were forced to flee abroad even before the takeover.
The women’s approach here is as distinct as their perspectives. There are entries that resemble poems and others that read like reportage. Some strive for analytical insights, others give a more impressionistic record. Images shimmer with indelible vitality: Nilofar, a literature student, dreams she’s bicycling to a picnic, an Afghan flag in her hand. Maryam, 25, who uses a wheelchair, tracks the seasons by describing the quince tree outside her Kabul bedroom. “Little feathers are falling around my head,” she notes in spring, asking: “Are these butterflies or quince blossoms leaving the tree?” Najla, meanwhile, describes how her nephew wears a different disguise each day to avoid being followed by the Taliban as he leaves for his English course, smiling behind his grandfather’s sunglasses.
Sometimes nothing more than raw feeling is forthcoming: anger and terror, despair and confusion. As aid worker Atifa writes from Herat, in the western part of the country: “It is meaningless to hope or wish, forbidden in fact.” The women’s need to appear strong for their families becomes a recurring theme but in this virtual safe house, there is room for every emotion.
Is there bravery here? Yes, in abundance. It takes the form of lipstick as well as spray-painted graffiti, of going to the office knowing there are checkpoints ahead, as well as night-time escapes across rooftops and borders, sometimes legally, sometimes with people smugglers. And of course the very act of adding to the group chat, of bearing witness and refusing to be silenced, is courageous in the context of these women’s lived realities.
By the book’s close, many are facing new challenges, contending with the anguish of exile and the varying levels of frustration and prejudice that come with living as a refugee in countries from Iran and Tajikistan to Germany and Sweden. It’s in Stockholm that Masoma, an engineer who was born a refugee, finds herself starting over once again, alone, on her 48th birthday. It’s in this same city that she makes a decision. “Today I bought myself flowers and thought to myself that I must live,” she writes.
The resilience that she and the rest of the group demonstrate is extraordinary. But it’s also, in its way, shaming because while they don’t dwell on it, the question hovers: where were the global protests on behalf of Afghanistan’s women and girls when the Taliban entered Kabul? Where are they today, three long years later?
My Dear Kabul review – inspirational resilience in an Afghan women’s writing group
Germany “strategically failed” in Afghanistan. This is the main finding of a scathing interim report commissioned by the country’s parliament to scrutinise Germany’s entire military and civilian mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. Germany has always prided itself on having been the second largest bilateral donor and troop contributor to Afghanistan, but the report shows that this focus on quantity overshadowed the question of the quality of Germany’s activities. Although partly cushioned in positive language, it also starkly reveals how, for two decades, governments carried on painting an unrealistically rosy picture of the situation in Afghanistan, all the while resisting an independent public review. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, who spent much of the last two decades, and many years before that, on the ground in Afghanistan, summarises this devastating 330-page interim report. He brings out its main findings and highlights its Inconsistencies – a few rather surprising – and blind spots.
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or thedownload button below.
The interim report of the Parliamentary Enquete-Kommission (Study Commission) tasked with examining the country’s military and civilian activities in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 is a far-reaching attempt to overcome two decades of German government window-dressing which belied the real situation in Afghanistan and which led to ultimate failure. The report is a critical probe into the strategic and political framework of Germany’s Afghanistan policy and the activities of its institutions involved there. It points to gaping holes in German institutions responsible for dealing with international crises, including, overall, successive governments’ failures to formulate (and implement) a coherent Afghanistan strategy. The authors of the report fault: (a) core ministries as unwilling to play ball with each other, (b) nearly the entire governing class for throwing sand in the eyes of parliament and the electorate on the mission’s (lack of) progress and (c) for detrimental shortfalls in mobilising sufficient resources, particularly during early, key periods, and for crucial parts of Germany’s mission (such as policing, democratisation and support to Afghan civil society).
While some of its general conclusions are stark, they are hardly surprising. Much had long been voiced by critics – and dismissed by the same political circles who, over almost two decades, had successfully blocked a full, independent and public investigation into Germany’s increasingly failing performance with regard to Afghanistan.
At the same time, the report’s authors do try to avoid a fully damning verdict, save Germany’s face, at least partially, and keep options open for future missions abroad. They state:
Even if, in retrospect, the operation in Afghanistan was not a success as a whole, there were partial successes that contributed to an improvement in living conditions until the Taleban came back to power in the summer of 2021 … German efforts to build the economy and development cooperation were only partially able to create structures that sustainably improved the lives of the population [for example] in the areas of basic services for the population (access to water, basic education, health services), especially in the north [of Afghanistan] and in Kabul.
That Afghans had 20 years of better livelihoods, more freedoms and the hope that Afghanistan might finally become peaceful and stable after four decades of war is factually correct. At least for this author, however, the emphasis on short-term successes sounds cynical given the circumstances under which a large portion of the Afghan population is currently forced to live following the Taleban’s return to power: their livelihoods collapsed without even the theoretical chance to have a say in how their country is shaping and they were left behind by the largest coalition – military or otherwise – since World War II.
Thus, the Study Commission’s report tries to follow a path between being critical of Germany and saving some German face. It indicates that Germany continues to grapple with establishing a fully realistic picture of its Afghanistan ‘mission’ and that the German political class is not ready yet to fully admit to the total failure of its engagement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021.
The Commission’s final report, which is slated to be finished and put to a vote in the Bundestag (parliament)before the next general elections are held in late summer or autumn 2025, will show whether there will be progress on this front. It will not help anyone in or out of government, not to mention Afghanistan, if the desire to protect Germany’s image and the German political class means misconceptions and mistakes continue to be covered up or minimised.
Edited by Jelena Bjelica, Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or thedownload button below.
An accusation levelled against a teen-age girl changes the course of her life, in Salar Pashtoonyar’s documentary about life after the Soviet-Afghan War.
Salar Pashtoonyar’s documentary short begins by discussing how the Soviet invasion of 1979 fundamentally altered life in Afghanistan. Over footage of people going about their day in a busy mountainous city, an unnamed narrator, voiced by Fereshta Afshar, describes the devastation. In the course of the Soviet-Afghan War, a million Afghan civilians were killed, and the nation’s food supply was decimated. The insecurity brought about by the war exacerbated the issue of child marriage. Families, Afshar says, sometimes wedded their daughters off as a way to avoid starvation.
Then Afshar tells a tale of migration, scandal, and an unnamed woman’s early marriage—an event that, Afshar says, felt like a funeral. As Afshar unspools the woman’s intimate story, some of the details of which have been changed for her protection, the footage continues to show daily life in Afghanistan, highlighting the connection between geopolitics and personal life.
A Girl’s Forced Marriage in Post-Invasion Afghanistan, in “Hills and Mountains”
The Afghanistan War Commission’s probe is getting very real.
If you played a role in Afghanistan policy over the past few decades, be prepared for a call.
In their first joint interview since the launch of the Afghanistan War Commission, co-chairs and veteran Afghan policy thinkers Shamila Chaudhary and Colin Jackson discussed their move into an active new phase, including interviewing the diplomats, generals and politicians who shaped the war.
Their goal? To determine just what went wrong in the 20-year conflict.
“No one will look like an unblemished hero, and nobody will look like a complete scapegoat,” Jackson said. “But the key is to be unflinching.”
The commission was established with bipartisan congressional support after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, but it’s obvious the seeds of failure were planted long before that. Chaudhary and Jackson are now tasked with developing a major, multipart report on how such mistakes can be avoided in the future.
Jackson is an academic, a military veteran and a former Defense Department official. Chaudhary is a former White House and State Department official. Both worked on Afghanistan policy during their years in the federal government, adding to their strong desire to understand why things fell apart.
In the interview, they discussed everything from talking to the Taliban to whether November’s presidential election could upend their work. And while they told POLITICO Magazine that they weren’t focused on ascribing blame, they acknowledged there’s plenty to spread around.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Your commission launched its work roughly a year ago. Where are you at now?
Jackson: We’re at the end of the building the team, sort of midway into the genuine research part of the project. The nature of commissions is it takes some time to assemble the right team. We’re going to end up having a team of close to 50 people on the professional staff.
Chaudhary: The research and analysis stage allows us to do all the important pickaxe work that commissions do, which is put out requests for information and documents to the different executive branch agencies, to develop our extensive timeline of the war, and the decisions and the inflection points that we want to analyze in the course of our project. And then to also build our extensive list of people that worked on the war that we want to interview.
How granular is the timeline going to be? Am I going to be able to climb up and down it?
Chaudhary: So there’s the early part of the war, which was heavily focused on counterterrorism. During the Obama administration, we saw a surge, both military and civilian, and that needs to be documented. Then the latter part of the war which involved these intense discussions about negotiations. All of these themes were present throughout, but they got more complex over time, and we all have our own little sliver of it.
What’s really important about this project is that we’re able to put them all together into one overarching narrative that no one has ever seen before. What’s so critical about getting this right is producing quite a historic project and report for not just policymakers but for the American public and a global audience.
Your three key goals are to write an official history of the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan; lay out lessons learned from the experience; and make recommendations that could include changes in government process and structures. How will you ensure that people in power listen to you and follow through on your ideas?
Jackson: The imperative behind the entire project is learning. The experience of Afghanistan over 20 years is in the rearview mirror. The question is what can we make of it to improve the performance of a future generation in some unknown, future U.S. involvement abroad? We can’t guarantee the reaction of the U.S. government to this, but we can control the quality, depth, seriousness, rigorousness of the study that we produce.
Chaudhary: We believe just by virtue of existing, this project has impact. This has never been done before in relation to any other previous conflict or war. No other commission has been given this much time, this large of a scope, and this much independence and authority to do the work on such an intense issue in our foreign policy — and in recent memory. People are still kind of processing these issues. So I think that impact will be there, and it will speak for itself.
I know you’re trying to avoid making your report about laying blame. But let’s talk about blame.
I find it highly amusing when the Defense Department tries to blame the withdrawal chaos on the State Department, as if the Pentagon played no role in the Afghan army’s failures, or when members of Congress act like they had nothing to do with making it so hard to get visas for Afghan interpreters. Or when the CIA pretends it’s invisible in all this.
If you don’t assign blame here, there, maybe everywhere, then how will anyone be held responsible? And shouldn’t people and institutions be held responsible?
Jackson: My guess is that we will see flattering and unflattering portrayals of different institutions and agencies over this 20-year span. No one will look like an unblemished hero, and nobody will look like a complete scapegoat. But the key is to be unflinching, to pursue the truth as best we can understand it and lay it out to an informed general audience so that they can come to the conclusions that are appropriate.
Chaudhary: I think that we can draw a throughline throughout the conflict, in that there was a very limited approach at one point of the war, which then evolved into a whole of government approach. The dissonance amongst the agencies — that’s important for our work. We need to understand where the different U.S. stakeholders are coming from.
How does your work compare to the 9/11 Commission?
Jackson: We’ve been in active discussions with the 9/11 Commission, with the folks who were involved in that team on the professional side. And we’re doing our best to sort of extract what they learned from that process. They were the first to point out that the scope we had been given was considerably more challenging in many ways than looking at a single episode and looking to the left and right of it, which is what the 9/11 Commission did.
Chaudhary: The accessibility of the 9/11 Commission report is something that we want to reflect in our outputs, not just in the final report, but also how we engage with stakeholders throughout the process. A lot of people have read the 9/11 Commission report; it’s studied in high schools and colleges and universities.
It almost won the National Book Award.
Chaudhary: That’s right. The other critical aspect of the 9/11 Commission’s work that applies to us is how they objectively represent the perspectives of foreigners in their work. They do an excellent job of outlining interests and motivations of people and states and governments that a lot of Americans don’t know anything about.
What about Afghans? How can and will they play a role in your work? Because there’s no direct Afghan representation on the commission itself from what I can tell.
Chaudhary: Representation of multiple perspectives is really important for our work, in particular the Afghan perspectives and the Afghan experiences of the war. We’ve done several things to meet this need. We’ve hired a senior adviser for Afghan outreach. We are planning several outreach events and private engagement opportunities that will help educate us on the Afghan experience.
Several of our commissioners have lived and worked in Afghanistan for long periods of time, have published on these issues and are world-renowned experts. As we continue to do these engagements, we will meet more people and individuals who will inform our work.
Are you going to talk to the Taliban?
Chaudhary: That is under consideration, at the right time. Obviously, we want to talk about everyone that is part of the story of the war.
They were kind of a big part of the story of the war.
Jackson: The question of sort of timing on that is a relevant one, but we’re certainly open in principle as we are talking to all sorts of actors in the story.
The Pakistanis?
Jackson: Absolutely.
Chaudhary: Congress has asked us to look at the Pakistanis. They’ve asked us to look at the foreign interlocutors, other governments. We are willing to talk to everyone who is involved in the U.S. decision-making and the impact of that, and so whoever is involved in that we will have to consider that.
Jackson: We would be telling half the story, one hand clapping, if all we did was look at U.S. government plans in isolation.
On a technical level, some of these groups involved are designated terrorist organizations in one fashion or another. Can you nonetheless engage with them?
Jackson: Any engagement with groups like the Taliban is complicated. We see this in the story of the Afghan War, the United States government came up with ways of interacting with challenging groups and audiences. My guess is that something similar is at least in the realm of the feasible for the commission.
American politics are far more polarized than the post-9/11 years. How are you going to ensure that your work is not distorted by partisanship or that partisans won’t try to weaponize your work, including along the way?
Jackson: The payoff of this project, if done the right way, will not occur in the here and now, it won’t occur in this political season. It will be a future generation of professionals in the U.S. government who are applying insights that hopefully derive in this 20-year experience. So I think to become too narrowly focused on what will be inevitably polarizing sorts of attitudes in this year would be to miss the larger point here. If learning is the imperative, the political tensions of the present are decidedly secondary in our view.
Chaudhary: Our commissioners were appointed in a bipartisan manner from all the relevant committees, but as actors and agents of the commission, we are nonpartisan and we’ve built a nonpartisan professional staff and we’ve established bylaws to guide our work and to protect minority views and to protect that nonpartisan nature of our work. The history of this commission when it gets written, it will show that it came into existence because of bipartisan support.
A lot of folks ask us, “What happens if Trump wins the election? What happens to your work?” Our work is going to stay the same. We are persistent in our mandate. We are going to keep pursuing our goal of looking for answers and explanations of the war.
If I’m a government employee who played a role in Afghan policy in the past three decades, how could I be affected by your ongoing work? Will I get called in for an interview? Can I say no?
Jackson: We’ve been engaged in discussions with past and current decision makers in all branches of government, and I think those conversations will likely continue in various ways. There’s no way for us to fully understand the conflict — the decisions that were made, the alternatives that were considered — without canvassing the people who were involved.
So the bottom line for government employees is, “Yes, I could get called in.”
Chaudhary: The legislation is worded that we are to analyze U.S. decision-making, the individuals and the institutions that were involved in that. We will begin to delineate a process by which we identify who we want to talk to. It would be hard to interview everyone at every level that was involved. And so, depending on how we define decision-making, and which decisions we actually look at, that will determine who we speak with.
How do you expect and want U.S. military veterans to play a role in your work?
Jackson: There is no audience more interested in our work at some level than the veteran community — they’re intensely interested, and there is a hunger for accountability, understanding and the like. I think the way we ultimately get at that is by laying out for them the logic of the war in these key decisions.
I’m a veteran of the Afghanistan war. I served in uniform there in 2011. I have a son who’s an infantry officer now. I have a deep personal, visceral interest both in understanding the conflict in its totality and better arming my son and his comrades with a level of understanding that will ideally make them better.
Chaudhary: We’ve hired several professional staff who are also veterans of the war in Afghanistan and are guiding our extensive outreach. One of the reasons I took this project on was that I felt like I didn’t actually get exposed enough to the perspectives of veterans and Afghans as I was doing the important work of diplomacy from Washington.
What’s been the hardest part so far?
Jackson: Probably the hardest part and the greatest opportunity is the scope. It will be illuminating to take a look at how these parts fit together.
Chaudhary: I see the high level of expectations for our work from the different communities that participated in the war as one of the biggest challenges, but it’s also an opportunity for us to do good work together in a collaborative way that we weren’t able to do during war time.
The other challenge which is also an opportunity is the deep emotion and visceral response that looking at the war in Afghanistan elicits from people. That I see as something very organic and not to be ignored. And how we address emotion and empathy and moral injury through a policy project is a very challenging situation, but I see it as something that we should boldly take on because our country deserves this. Americans deserve it.
Jackson: If we do our work well, it will be foundational.
What’s a question you wish I had asked?
Jackson: You talk about key decisions — what key decisions?
I think the hardest part of the project will probably be narrowing even that set of key decisions to a manageable number. Clearly, there are ones that stand out in the popular understanding of the word, but there may also be ones that we discover in the process of inquiry where we say, “This was a critical inflection point in which there were opportunities to act differently. Why did we choose as we did? If we had chosen differently, what would that have done?”
And a key decision might be something like the decision to surge troops or go into peace talks or decisions about how to build the Afghan army.
Jackson: Or the organization of the Afghan government at the Bonn conference. We’re going to identify a series of sort of critical decisions or critical program decisions that were made.
We’re also going to say, okay, across all these strands of government, which were the large things and look to both the left and right of those decisions. What alternatives were considered? Why did we choose as we did? We’ll look at implementation of those decisions, and then a reaction of actors in Afghanistan and around Afghanistan.
Do you ever wake up and think, “Oh boy, what did I get myself into?”
Chaudhary: This is an incredible project to work on. I feel like all of the work that we all did, inside and outside government, deserves this chapter in the story now, because if we didn’t have this opportunity, it would remain unfinished.
Jackson: The best problem in the world is a job that’s sufficiently challenging that keeps you engaged all the time. And no matter how challenging the day-to-day stuff is, you’ve got this sort of North Star in that the American public deserves a full understanding and accounting of this intervention.
Nahal Toosi is POLITICO’s senior foreign affairs correspondent. She has reported on war, genocide and political chaos in a career that has taken her around the world. Her reported column, Compass, delves into the decision-making of the global national security and foreign policy establishment — and the fallout that comes from it.
‘Never Been Done Before’: A True Investigation of a Failed American War
Last week the bipartisan Afghanistan War Commission held its first public hearing since it was established in 2021, with members of the foreign policy great-and-good offering testimony on the origins of the conflict and why re-examining it is important. It is a solemn and noble exercise, founded on George Santayana’s famous aphorism that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we review the West’s 20-year deployment in Afghanistan, the logic goes, we will understand what we did wrong and we will not make the same mistakes in the future.
The commission was created by Congress with two purposes: first, to examine, in detail, with the calming distance of time, exactly what happened; secondly, more importantly, “to develop a series of lessons learned and recommendations for the way forward that will inform future decisions by Congress and policymakers throughout the United States Government.” It comprises 16 commissioners, eight appointed by the Democratic Party and eight by Republicans, and its co-chairs are Shamila N. Chaudary, a foreign policy academic who worked in the State Department and the National Security Council under President Barack Obama; and Colin Jackson, a Department of Defense official under President Donald Trump who served in Afghanistan.
This process of historical analysis and learning is scheduled to take four years. To put that in perspective, a newly commissioned infantry officer who was deployed to Afghanistan at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 could be a general by the time the commission publishes its conclusions. NATO combat operations ended with the transfer of responsibility to the Afghan national security forces a decade ago, at the end of 2014, and it is already nearly three years since U.S. combat forces left the country.
The obvious model for this is the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, the so-called 9/11 Commission, which was created to establish “a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.” But that body moved at a wholly different pace, being set up only 13 months after the events it examined, and reporting in July 2004, less than three years after 9/11.
Its 585-page report was weighty and detailed, but manageable, and was addressing a dramatis personae many of whom—President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the secretary of State, secretary of Defense, national security advisor, director of the FBI—were still in post. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, had only stepped down weeks before.
A more helpful comparison might be found in our experience in the United Kingdom. Although Lord Butler of Brockwell, former head of the civil service, had conducted a short review of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the first half of 2004, a year after the coalition invasion, it was regarded by many as an establishment whitewash. In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set up a full public inquiry into every aspect of the UK’s involvement in Iraq between 2001 and 2009. It was chaired by Sir John Chilcot, a former civil servant with long experience of intelligence and security derived from seven years as official head of the Northern Ireland Office.
The Iraq Inquiry conducted hearings for 18 months, and eventually published its conclusions in 2016, seven years after it was first established. They were undeniably exhaustive: the report consisted of 12 volumes and an executive summary, a total of 2.6 million words, and it was extensively and harshly critical of the conduct of British foreign policy. “The government failed to achieve its stated objectives,” it decided, “the consequences of the invasion were underestimated” and the “planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.”
These findings were extensively reported at the time and the prime minister, David Cameron, made a statement to the House of Commons on the report’s publication. In truth, though, the repercussions were muted. Sir Tony Blair had stepped down as prime minister nine years before; his first foreign secretary, Robin Cook, was dead, while his second, Jack Straw, was no longer in Parliament; Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, had disappeared into the private sector; and the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, was a largely forgotten footnote. Politics, bluntly, had moved on.
If a lesson was learned by the institutions of government, it was that major land commitments in the Middle East were financially and reputationally ruinous. British combat troops had left Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2015. A hope nurtured by some that there would be a reckoning for “guilty men” is only sustained if you think Sir Tony Blair is now in public disgrace and penury; and Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, Blair’s pugilistic director of communications, are not respected consultants and broadcasters.
It may well be that the Afghanistan War Commission produces an impeccable, insightful and indispensable analysis of the United States’s deployment in the region when it reports towards the end of the 2020s. There may be some lessons which foreign policy experts absorb and implement. But, given the experience in Britain with the Iraq Inquiry, I can only advise management of expectations if anyone thinks Washington’s global stance will alter radically or that individuals will be held to account. It is simply too long ago.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the UK House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Don’t expect too much from the Afghanistan War Commission
The order by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), Hibatullah Akhundzada, to cut the salaries of women on the public payroll to just 5,000 afghanis (70 US dollars) a month was a bombshell. The Amir’s order was short and ambiguously worded, driving anxiety and speculation: did it apply to all women working in the public sector – bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, policewomen, prosecutors – who go to the office every day? Or only those the Emirate has barred from coming to work, but who, up until now, have been paid in full? Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour (with input from the AAN Team) have been hearing from women who are or were working in the public sector about the Amir’s order and how it has affected their lives and family finances. They told AAN about the difficulties they already had making ends meet and their concerns about how they would weather the financial pressure if their salaries were cut.
News of the pay cap emerged in the last days of May 2024 after the acting Director of the Prime Minister’s Office of Administrative Affairs (OAA), Sheikh Nur ul-Haq Anwar, issued a circular instructing all government departments to set the salaries of all female staff at 5,000 afghanis. The circular had been prompted by an order signed by the Islamic Emirate’s Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, which said:[1]
The salaries of all female workers who were employed by the previous government and are currently receiving a salary from the Islamic Emirate should be set at 5,000 afghanis in all budgetary and non-budgetary units,[2] regardless of their previous wages (their salaries should all be the same).
This sentence appears to have been the order in its entirety. It alone was quoted by many media outlets, on social media and in official letters, which were widely distributed (see, for example, BBC Pashto on 6 June and a letter from the Ministry of Economy below).
The news sparked confusion, concern, indeed fear, among Afghan women working in the public sector, which in Afghanistan is referred to as the civil service (see, for example, this report on teachers from ToloNews).[3] Women employed in the health sector in Herat and Kabul held protests, calling on the government not to reduce what they said were their already meagre wages (see, for example, Amu TV here). There was also condemnation from international human rights bodies; the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Volker Türk, called on the IEA to rescind the measure, saying “[t]his latest discriminatory and profoundly arbitrary decision further deepens the erosion of human rights in Afghanistan,” (the full statement, issued on 13 June 2024, can be read here).
The vagueness and lack of specificity in the Amir’s one-sentence order sparked questions by employees, the media, social media users and apparently even some state institutions, which urgently sought clarification. For example, the Ministry of Education’s internal correspondence, which was widely shared on social media (see the picture below), asked “whether the decree of His Excellency, the Supreme Leader, applies to all female employees or only those who are not reporting for duty.” The letter also explained that it would take time for the ministry to amend its automated salary payment system to accommodate the change. In response, the acting Minister of Education ordered that “the salaries of all female employees should be suspended until further notice,” presumably until the Amir’s office provided further guidance (see this post on X from 30 June and an English translation below).
Internal Ministry of Education correspondence seeking clarification. Translation by AAN
The confusion was only cleared up a month later, and then just partially, when on 7 July, ToloNews tweeted some “breaking news”:
[T]he Ministry of Finance confirms to Tolonews that female employees who come to work every day are currently receiving their salaries just like male employees.
The spokesperson of the Ministry of Finance adds that the monthly salaries of female employees who do not show up for their duties have been set at five thousand afghanis.
The following day, Pajhwok quoted the spokesperson of the Ministry of Finance, Ahmad Wali Haqmal: “Only those women who have been compelled to stay at home will be paid 5,000 afghanis … all [other] female government employees, including teachers and doctors, who report to their duties, will receive their salaries as before.”
However, as of this writing, no official written statement or new order clarifying the particulars of the Amir’s instructions has been issued.
The situation is still confused, because it is not clear how the order will be implemented. As the interviews below show, a month after the order, most female employees still did not know how much they would be paid.
What women say
To understand how the order is affecting female civil servants and their families, we interviewed 18 women. Our sample was based on accessibility, that is, we interviewed women in places where we had contacts and/or our network had access. Our interviewees included women who were currently working, those who had been told to stay at home, but were still receiving a salary, and two women who have lost their jobs since the Emirate takeover. We ensured geographic diversity by talking to women in the provinces – Daikundi, Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni, Balkh, Bamiyan, Panjshir, Sar-e Pul, Farah and Paktia— both in rural and urban areas – and in the capital. The interviewees included a mix of professions – midwife, teacher, prosecutor, administrator, health professional, school principal, etc. The interviews were conducted between 2 and 11 July 2024 and comprised the following questions:
How many people are contributing financially to your household?
How much was your salary under the Republic?
How much is your salary under the Emirate?
Are you working from the office? Are you being paid, but not going to work?
When did you last receive your salary?
Was it 5,000 afghanis or was it the same amount you had been receiving under the Emirate?
Do you normally get a salary top-up in addition to your base salary (for length of service, rank, qualifications, etc)?
Have you been officially informed that your salary will be reduced?
If there was a reduction in your salary, how will it affect the economy of your household and your life?
The table below highlights answers to some of these questions. We have intentionally omitted the occupation and location of interviewees from the table below to protect their privacy. Quotes later in this report do indicate the interviewee’s profession and province while providing no other identifying information.
Going to work
Only breadwinner
Family size
Salary IRA (afghani)*
Salary IEA (afghani)*
Last salary received
Officially informed
1
Yes
Yes
8
13,000
13,000
March-April (Hamal)
No
2
Yes
Yes
5
15,000
12,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
3
Yes
No
14
14,000
6,500
May-June (Jawza)
No
4
Yes
Yes
5
8,000
8,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
5
Yes
No
7
12,000
15,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
6
Yes
No
15
14,600
14,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
7
Yes
Yes
4
11,000
9,000
May-June (Jawza)
Yes
8
Yes
Yes
6
N/A
8,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
9
Yes
Yes
5
26,000
19,000
April-May (Saur)
No
10
Yes
No
7
18,000
13,000
May-June (Jawza)
Yes
11
Yes
No
12
35,000
14,000
April-May (Saur)
No
12
N/A
N/A
5
13,000
13,000
April-May 2022 (Saur)
N/A
13
N/A
N/A
5
11,700
11,700
Dec ‘23-Jan ‘24 (Jaddi)
N/A
14
No
No
6
11,000
10,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
15
No
Yes
6
9,000
9,000
May-June (Jawza)
No
16
No
No
6
23,000
11,000
April-May (Saur)
No
17
No
No
7
10,000
8,500
Feb-March (Hut)
Yes
18
No
No
6
9,300
8,000
Feb–March (Hut)
No
*USD 1 = 70 afghani
As can be seen, 16 of our 18 interviewees were still on the public payroll. Of the remaining two, one had been fired in May 2022 and the other said she had not heard from her employer since January 2024. However, of the 16 employed women, only 11 were going to work; five had been sent home after the IEA came to power but continued going to the office to sign their attendance sheets as instructed by the Emirate. Of the 11 that were going to work, one had been hired after August 2021 and another who was told to stay home in August 2021, had, in the meantime, been called back into the office because of an increased workload.
The average number of members in a family in our sample was 7.2. Half of the interviewees – nine – were the sole breadwinners for their families.
Most of the women in our sample had already seen cuts in take-home pay in line with the Ministry of Finance’s December 2021 salary reductions, which applied to all workers, men and women. The cuts varied according to grade, but the average was a 9.8 per cent cut.[4]
Three women said they were still receiving the same salaries as under the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRA). Three others had seen their salaries significantly reduced after August 2021 – one after being demoted from grade 2 to grade 3.
One interviewee said the Emirate had increased her salary, and later her pay was effectively increased again by an additional 1,000 afghani (USD 14) a month after the Emirate stopped deducting pension contributions in April 2024.[5]
None of our interviewees had received the reduced salary of 5,000 Afghani at the time of the interview, nor had they received their salary for the month of Saratan (22 June – 21 July). 10 out of the 16 had received their Jawza (22 May – 21 June) wages. Three had last been paid in Saur (22 April – 21 May), one in Hamal (21 March – 21 April) and two not since the final month of the last financial year, in Hut (22 February – 20 March). Such delays in the payment of salaries are not unusual.
How did the women find out about the cut?
Only three interviewees said their superiors had officially told them that their salaries would be reduced. A teacher in Farah province said they had been informed about the cut at an official meeting at the Department of Education and told to prepare themselves. She said the payment of salaries for the month of Saratan (21 June – 20 July) had been deliberately delayed because of the new order.
All other interviewees had heard about the planned reduction from their co-workers, group chats, the news or social media. Every interviewee described how anxious and fearful it had made them. For example, one woman working for the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Sar-e Pul had heard about the news on a group chat:
An official letter [maktub] saying that the salaries of women who aren’t working will decrease to 5,000 afghanis was posted in a [WhatsApp] group. I don’t know much about it because I haven’t been officially informed, but the letter was posted in a WhatsApp group that was created to deal with the central government’s budgetary issues. There are employees from different government offices in the group.
An employee of the National Statistic and Information Authority (NSIA) in Daikundi said she heard about the planned reduction on the news and social media. She was at a loss to explain why women civil servants who did the same job as their male colleagues would have their salaries reduced:
We haven’t received any official letters … but I’ve heard on the news and also on social media that a decree has been issued to reduce the salaries of female staff. It’s really upsetting for us because we work as hard as [our] male [colleagues], so why do they want to reduce our salaries? This is discrimination against women. Today, the finance manager said a letter had come saying women’s salaries will be 5,000 afghanis from the month of Jawza [22 May-21 June]. I hope it’s not true. Instead of [giving us] an increase, they [plan to] reduce our salaries! They shouldn’t do it. Delays in paying our salaries are normal, but the work pressure is the same as it was in the past…. This news will cause women psychological difficulties.
A prosecutor in Kabul who goes to work every day said she had heard about the salary cut from the media and despite her colleagues’ reassurances that the order would not affect her, the threat of a reduction in her wages had left her acutely anxious:
I first heard the news through the media. Later, an order came to our office. But officials in the department said it can’t be implemented [because] the decree doesn’t have a wareda and sadera[date of receipt or execution]. Until the issue is clarified, [they said]: Don’t worry. But it did really worry me. A few days later, an official letter did come from the Ministry of Finance and made it clear that the salaries of those who stay at home would be 5,000 afghanis and those who come to work every day would have the same salary as before – there would be no changes in their salaries.
A midwife in Ghazni told a very similar story.
We haven’t been informed officially, but I heard from different sources and saw on social media that the government has decided to reduce the salaries of female employees. They’d already done it once [the December 2021 cuts to all employees’ wages] when they came to power and that’s already had its [ill] effects. People’s financial circumstances aren’t good. They can hardly manage to cover their daily expenses as it is. So, they shouldn’t reduce [our salaries] again.
If our interviews are any indication, the vagueness of the order’s wording caused a great deal of distress to female employees and their families, even those who might eventually discover they were not targeted for a wage cut. The fact that the order was not transmitted directly or officially to female employees, but was rather widely reported and discussed on media and social media, only exacerbated the confusion and concern.
Women in the public sector
The public sector in Afghanistan has been the biggest employer of women in the last 20 years. Under the last government, the number of women working in both the public and private sectors had been rising, precipitated in part by the Republic’s plans and policies designed to facilitate their access to jobs and other economic opportunities.[6] In those years, 18.5 per cent of Afghan women participated in the country’s labour force, but only 13 per cent of those women were in salaried positions, mainly in the public sector.[7]
The proportion of women working in the public sector, Afghanistan’s biggest source of paid work for both men and women, has fluctuated over the last 20 years between 18 and 26 per cent. In 2005 and 2020, for example, women accounted for 26 per cent of public sector workers, but in every year between 2014 and 2018, as well as in 2021, they accounted for 22 per cent.[8] A year after the fall of the Republic, the proportion was still 21 per cent (this was measured for the Afghan year, then 1401, equivalent to March 2022 to March 2023).[9]
Data taken from NSIA Afghanistan Statistical Yearbooks 2019 to 2022/23. Graph by AAN
Far fewer women were ever employed in higher grade positions; see the 2020 data in the graph below as an example. Furthermore, women’s participation varied significantly between ministries, with women underrepresented in all ministries except the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) and the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled. The IEA abolished Women’s Affairs in 2021 and transferred most of its female staff in the provinces to the provincial Directorates of Vocational Training, which itself has recently been merged with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
Data taken from NSIA Afghanistan Statistical Yearbooks 2020. Graph by AAN
The total number of women working in the public sector under the Islamic Emirate remains elusive, with far higher figures than NSIA’s being reported by some government officials. For example, in its 23 July 2023 accountability session, the Ministry of Economy (MoE) said that “92,000 women work in the education sector and 14,000 in the health sector, they work in airports, banks, but as already mentioned, efforts are ongoing to prepare a suitable environment for women.” This would mean that some 106,000 women work in the education and health sectors alone, not taking into account women employed in other sectors. The figures are drawn from the AAN 2024 report ‘How The Emirate Wants to be Perceived: A closer look at the Accountability Programme’ (p 57). The same AAN report quotes the Ministry of Interior (MoI) saying that around 1,955 policewomen were serving in different fields and receiving salaries and the Ministry of Public Health reporting that women accounted for 22 per cent of its personnel (p 60).[10] It is not known, therefore, the potential number of women hit by the Amir’s order, but it is clear it is substantial.
Anxieties about an uncertain future
The abrupt nature of the Amir’s order put a spotlight on the precariousness of many Afghan women’s lives, in this instance, those working in the public sector. Their lives were already difficult, but they would have counted themselves among the lucky few who still had a regular income. Trying their best to keep their heads above water and provide for their families, this latest incursion on their right to a livelihood threatens to remove a safety net because, as one said: What can you do with 5,000 afghanis?
The quotes below reflect answers to the last question from our questionnaire: If there was a reduction in your salary, how would it affect the economy of your household, and your life? All interviewees said a salary cut would affect their lives dramatically. Many said they would have to leave their jobs because they could not survive on the reduced income. The midwife from Ghazni, for example, was concerned about how the anxiety was affecting their quality of work.
If someone is worried about their own life and expenses, how could they think about doing their job properly? People are already anxious about the news and, if it really happens, they’ll be hit hard. I’m the only person working in my family. No one else works because unemployment has increased. The cost of everything is very high – there’s the house rent, the electricity bill and other expenses. How can we manage if they reduce our salaries? They should have a thought for the people and if they don’t help or increase their salaries, at least, they should not reduce them.
Another midwife, from Kandahar, who sometimes gets paid by an NGO,[11] said she would leave her job if her salary was cut:
We hope the reduction won’t take place. We’re barely keeping on top of the necessities now. If the salaries are reduced, this’ll definitely harm the economy of our household badly. I’ll leave my job. So far, the salary [I get] from the NGO has supported our household. But if the NGO stops paying my salary and the government reduces my wages, I won’t go to the hospital even though leaving the job and losing even this 5,000 afghanis will badly affect my family’s finances, but it’s also very difficult to work full-time and do night shifts.
A policewoman from Kabul, who had already taken her son out of school so that he could work and help support the family, told us that if the Islamic Emirate really does reduce salaries, it will be extremely hard for women, especially widows like her who have no adult man to support them and are not qualified for any work other than their current occupation:
My son sells plastic bags because I can’t cover all the family’s expenses with my income. He has to work even though it’s not his time to work – he should be in school. He only makes 50 afghanis (USD 71) a day, with a lot of difficulty, and sometimes he can’t sell any bags. It’s been a month since he fell ill and we’re wondering what to do. The cost of living is very high and our income is low. 5,000 afghanis would only be enough for the rent and electricity. The taxi for me to go to and from work is expensive. Sometimes, I get sick and have no money to go to a doctor. 5,000 afghanis can’t cover all our expenses. I hope this is only a rumour or a lie and they won’t reduce my salary.
I ask the Islamic Emirate not to reduce the salary of any employee who’s working, whether she’s a policewoman, a doctor or a teacher. We’ve been serving our country. We carried on with the wages we got and lived with many problems. If they don’t increase the salaries, at least I hope they don’t reduce them.
The NSIA employee in Daikundi said that reducing the salaries of female civil servants amounted to an injustice:
If they really reduce the salaries of female employees, it will be a great disservice to women. It’s an injustice that’s done to them. Instead of reducing salaries, they should increase them because everything is expensive and we manage our lives with the wages they pay us. For example, from my salary, I pay 1,500 [USD 21] a month for the car fare to and from work. I also pay 1,500 afghanis a month for lunches. All our colleagues pay this much for lunches because the government doesn’t provide us with lunch and doesn’t pay for it either. My family is big and we have a lot of expenses. The price of goods has reached its peak. I spend 5,000 afghanis a month to buy flour, rice and oil. If the government pays us 5,000, we can’t do anything with it. It is really upsetting and so discouraging.
She appealed to the government:
We ask the government, if it has made such a decision, they should change it. Let us work in our country alongside men. Women work like men, so why should their income be reduced?
A teacher in Paktia said that all female teachers in her province were working because there was a teacher shortage:
The salaries that I and other teachers receive are very low and not enough for our families. We have teachers who are their families’ breadwinners. What can they do with a salary of 5,000 afghanis? They cannot meet their needs…. What should they do with their children’s school expenses, illnesses, food and clothes? These decisions cause problems for everyone.
She went on to talk about the plight of female public sector workers who have been forced to stay home since the re-establishment of the Emirate:
In general, all women [civil servants], whether they go to work or [have to stay] at home, should return to their duties because women have [only] stayed at home according to the decision of the Emirate. I have friends who are suffering immensely because they’re at home. They want to return to their duties. We need women in every department and they should pay the salaries of all women.
She went on to expand on the overall economic situation and compared the current circumstances for public sector workers to life and work under the Republic:
In general, the people’s economy has been badly damaged. People have become unemployed…. government offices are closed to women. Most of those who worked in the previous government are now unemployed. They’ve not been asked to come to their duties again. People’s purchasing power is weakened. Security is good, but security alone cannot change people’s lives…. Poverty and hunger can also kill people. Unemployment is a big problem that all people struggle with … but especially women. This recent decree regarding the reduction of women’s salaries will make their lives worse…. Under the previous governments, if the salaries were low, they provided other facilities for their employees. For example, they gave them coupons. The rents were lower, the price of goods was not so high and people could manage their lives with lower wages.
The prosecutor in Kabul talked about the entreaties of her female colleagues who are still forced to stay at home and came to the office only to sign their attendance sheets:
Many of them developed psychological problems when they heard their salaries were going to be reduced. Most are the only breadwinners of their families – they’re widows, or they don’t have anyone else [in the household] who can work, or they can’t find work. Every day, our colleagues call and ask what changes have been made regarding salaries. Just last week, our colleagues who had come in to sign [their attendance sheets] were crying and begging the head of our department to convey their message to the authorities not to reduce their salaries. You can’t do anything with 5,000 afghanis. They asked the head of our office to ask the authorities how women who are breadwinners can live with 5,000 afghanis.
The teacher in Farah said news of the salary cut had been a blow coming on top of the cost of transport to faraway locations where teachers had been transferred to:
Recently, there have been forced transfers. The IEA has forced some of us to go to teach in the districts and villages. They say: You should go and teach in remote areas; that is your jihad and if you don’t have a mahram, you should leave your job. A lot of women did leave their jobs because the locations were far away and they didn’t have a mahram. For women who teach far away [from their home] areas, 5,000 afghanis can’t cover even the car fare. What about their other expenses? Most women like me are the only breadwinners of their families because their husbands are unemployed now. It’s also natural that we get sick sometimes and we need to pay for doctors and medicine. How can we cover all these expenses?
A high school teacher from Mazar-e Sharif who, like everybody else, had already seen her salary reduced since the Emirate took power, was particularly bleak about the future:
My salary has already been cut and that has had an ill effect. My purchasing power has already weakened. It’s not my fault. They’ve forced us to stay home and not teach. Now, they’re going to reduce [the salary] again. They want us to die gradually, and that is all it is.
From being told to stay home to cuts in pay
Two days after it took power, spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said that men and women would be working “shoulder to shoulder” in the Islamic Emirate.
The issue of women is very important. The Islamic Emirate is committed to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia. Our sisters, our men have the same rights; they will be able to benefit from their rights. They can have activities in different sectors and different areas on the basis of our rules and regulations: educational, health and other areas. They are going to be working with us, shoulder to shoulder with us. The international community, if they have concerns, we would like to assure them that there’s not going to be any discrimination against women, but of course within the frameworks that we have (see full transcript on Al Jazeera).
The pledge had been echoed earlier in the day by a member of the Taleban’s Cultural Commission, Enamullah Samangani, when he announced not only the IEA’s general amnesty for those who had worked for the Republic, but also that they were ready to “provide women with [the] environment to work and study, and the presence of women in different (government) structures according to Islamic law and in accordance with our cultural values” (see France 24).
A week later, the IEA appeared to change its stance: Mujahid said women should stay at home, the BBC reported on 24 August 2021: “Our security forces are not trained (in) how to deal with women – how to speak to women (for) some of them,” Mr Mujahid said. “Until we have full security in place … we ask women to stay home.” He called it a “temporary procedure.” Reports soon started emerging in the media that women working in government were being denied access to their places of work (see, for example, The Guardian on 19 September 2021).
In televised debates, in news and on social media, women raised concerns about their future under IEA rule and predicted that the qualifier “according to Islamic law and in accordance with our cultural values” would be used to deny them their rights as would the IEA refrain that they merely wanted to create an appropriate environment for women to be active in the workforce (see for example this 27 August 2021 Afghanistan International debate between the Republic’s last Deputy Minister of Education, Victoria Ghauri and a member of the Emirate’s Cultural Commission, Anamullah Samangani and this 10 September 2021 ToloNews Farakhabar programme with women’s rights activist, Tafsir Siaposh and Islamic scholar Abdul Haq Emad debating the right of women civil servants to return to work).
Finally, on 20 September 2021, the Emirate ordered women working for the government to stay home until further notice.[12] What emerged was a situation where most jobs previously filled by women were handed over to men and only those women whose jobs could not be carried out by a man, such as primary school teachers and health workers, were allowed to continue working.
The situation continued much the same until the recent order, although with greater pressure on women workers created by the Amir’s ban on women working for NGOs, international organisations and embassies issued in December 2022, the closure of universities to girls in the same month and the firming up of the ban on girls’ education beyond primary school. In the Accountability Sessions in summer 2023, there was even boasting about continuing to pay women who were at home, for example, by Director of the Secretariat of the Supreme Court Mufti Abdul Rashid Saeed:[13]
Despite these limits [imposed by foreigners, presumably a reference to sanctions], the Islamic Emirate continues to pay the salaries of all the employees who serve in the government. Women are at home, but the Islamic Emirate is dedicated to upholding their rights and according them the privileges they once enjoyed. Women continue to occupy the majority of office positions. In accordance with sharia, we grant women full rights.
Statements from various officials indicate that the plan to reduce salaries will affect only those women who have been forced to stay at home. The government’s motivation must be cutting costs. Pressure on the budget, which was only approved two months into the financial year, indicating a wrangling over the public finances, has been reported elsewhere, for example by the World Bank, which said in May that increased planned spending for 1402/March 2023-24 had left a budget deficit of 18.4 billion afghanis (USD 2.6 m). In earlier years since the Emirate took power, it said, quoting “anecdotal information,” the deficit had been covered by “treasury cash reserves left over from the republic era.” However, especially given the Emirate lacks borrowing options to finance its deficit, “the only viable strategies are to increase domestic revenues or cut unnecessary spending.”[14]
Cutting the wages of women compelled to stay at home may make budgetary sense and it is a relatively easy way, politically, to cut costs, given they are a group with little political clout or public voice. However, for the women themselves, the loss of income will be a heavy blow, especially as they have been forced to be economically inactive through no fault of their own. They feel they are left out in the cold. Moreover, it should be stressed that, nearly two months after news broke that the IEA planned the salary cap, there is still no official word about how it is to implement its plan and who, exactly, it applies to. Even if women fortunate still to be working in the public sector continue to be paid their salaries in full, the vaguely worded order and lack of clarity ever since has left them and their families needlessly racked with anxiety about the future.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
All English language translations are by AAN.
↑2
A budgetary unit is a state entity, such as a ministry, that by law can have allocations in the national budget, whereas non-budgetary units do not have explicit allocations in the national budget (budget codes) and are often, by not always, established for a specific time period and purpose.
↑3
The government of Afghanistan defines all government employees except military personnel as civil servants.
The Amir’s order followed another made in April 2024 that had abruptly abolished the government’s pension system. Since the fall of the Islamic Republic, retired public sector workers have not been paid their pensions. However, the Amir’s April 2024 order, which meant that pension contributions were no longer deducted from current workers’ salaries, signalled the unlikelihood that the state would start paying retirees their pensions ever again. See AAN reporting on the difficulties faced by Afghanistan’s public sector pensioners here.
↑6
These included the 2007-2017 National Action Plan for Women (NAPWA), the 2015 National Action Plan on Women Peace, and Security, and the 2017-2021 Women Economic Empowerment National Priority Programme.
↑7
The World Bank defines the labour force as comprising: “people ages 15 and older who supply labor for the production of goods and services during a specified period. It includes people who are currently employed and people who are unemployed but seeking work as well as first-time job-seekers. Not everyone who works is included, however. Unpaid workers, family workers, and students are often omitted, and some countries do not count members of the armed forces.”
The figures quoted in the text are from the Bank’s 2018 Afghanistan Issues Note: Managing the Civilian Wage Bill, which cited the 2013-14 Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey (ALCS) that indicated that only 18.5 per cent of women were then participating in the labour force. “Within this small, employed population,” it said, “only 13 per cent of female labour is in salaried positions, suggesting that female participation in the civil service is an important anchor for female participation in formal sector salaried employment.”
See the NSIA Statistical Yearbook 2022/23, published on 5 February 2024.
↑10
In its 2023 accountability session, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) said it had provided 7,263 business licences in the previous year, 1,000 of which were to women.
↑11
In Afghanistan, sometimes an NGO pays teachers or health workers. When that happens, the government does not pay their salaries for the months they get paid by the NGO. Then, when the NGO stops paying, they go back onto the government payroll.
Going on a picnic and spending time with your family, enjoying Afghanistan’s natural beauty, is a favourite pastime for Afghan families, especially in springtime. However, since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has imposed many restrictions on women and older girls, public parks in the country have largely become no-go areas for them. AAN has been hearing from one girl about the hoops she had to jump through to get permission from her father to go on a family picnic and how the simple pleasures of life, like spending the day with your family in northern Afghanistan’s lush green hills, are not so simple anymore.
We used to go on outings several times a year, especially during Nawruz,[1] but that was before. In those days, women in our family would go to parks by themselves, but nowadays people are uneasy about being stopped and questioned by the Taleban. So, we stopped going. But this year, for the first time in two years, we did go on a picnic.
I’m 18 years old and I’d just finished grade 11 when the Emirate stopped girls going to high school. I used to study English at a private institute, but those courses are also no longer open to girls. Before the Emirate came to power, I was taking a public speaking course at an institute near my house, but the Emirate closed the institute down. So, I enrolled in another one, but after a few months that institute closed too.
I come from a big family – three brothers and five sisters. I live with my parents, three brothers and my younger sister in Mazar-e Sharif. My brother’s wife and my niece also live with us. When my father lost his job, he set up a food stall outside our house. My eldest brother is a motorcycle mechanic and is the only person in my family who has a job, but he doesn’t live with us.
I recently joined a carpet-weaving course, but I don’t think I’ll keep going. There are too many girls working in the same room, so it’s very stuffy. It’s hard to breathe with all the wool dust floating around in that poorly ventilated space. Plus, the heat is just overwhelming and I worry it’s not good for my health.
That’s why I was really excited about heading outdoors for an outing this year. It had been ages since my family enjoyed a picnic and I’d been craving a change of pace and some fresh air.
Longing for a day out
We’ve managed just two outings since the Taleban came to power. The last time was a picnic in Tang-e Marmul, which is a lush green valley just an hour’s drive south of Mazar-e Sharif. We went with three other families, each with at least three men. But we couldn’t walk around because there were groups of men there who were picnicking, grilling kebabs and playing cards. The armed Talebs who were patrolling the area didn’t say anything to them, even though playing cards is not allowed. We chose a place well away from them to eat our food and then quickly left the area.
All last winter, I’d been dropping hints to my father about going on a picnic for Sizda be Dar, when most families in Mazar-e Sharif go picnicking in the green areas. But we couldn’t go because it was during Ramadan and we also had family staying with us. Later, in spring, my amma (paternal aunt) announced that she and her family planned to go on a day’s outing to spend some time in nature now that everything had turned green and the weather was good. I asked my father if he’d allow us to join them. But my father didn’t think the situation was good and said he didn’t want to risk us having any trouble while we were out.
Getting permission to go on a family outing
This is how things are not just in my family but in most families. People don’t want any trouble and are reluctant to go on outings. I don’t know how other families decide to go, but in my family, it’s my father who makes the final call. He said we couldn’t go because he was busy with renovations to our house and couldn’t join us, but this was just an excuse. My father’s never been very keen on picnics. In fact, I don’t remember a single time when he joined us on one.
It took the extended family around three weeks to get everything sorted for their visit to Dasht-e Shadian in Tang-e Owlia. It’s a delightful picnic spot just an hour from Mazar-e Sharif and easily accessible with a good road. My aunt and other family members kept calling my father, hoping to change his mind, but he was firm in his decision, with an unwavering resolve.
I was very upset. I cried every time someone mentioned the outing and took to locking myself in my room. Finally, he relented and said we could go.
The morning of the outing, I woke up early to help prepare things for our day out. I offered my namaz (prayers) and took a quick nap afterwards before going to help my sister-in-law cook for the picnic. But when I got to the kitchen, she looked crestfallen. She told me my father had changed his mind and we wouldn’t be allowed to go after all.
I called my aunt, my older sister and two of my cousins to let them know that my father had decided that we couldn’t go after all. Then my aunt called my brother and asked him to intercede with my father, but my father was firm in his decision. Since my father is the elder in our family, no one can oppose his decision, but they told me they would do their best to persuade him to relent. All morning, there were phone calls to my father and hushed conversations between him and my older brother. Finally, around 11 o’ clock, my sister-in-law told me to start getting ready to leave for the picnic. He wasn’t happy about it, but my father had finally agreed to let us go.
It was too late to cook anything to take with us, so we told my aunt we’d pay for half of the food and beverages she’d bought. We also bought four big bottles of pomegranate juice and some bread.
There are many reasons why families don’t go on outings. Some, like many of our neighbours, can’t afford to. Other families, like mine, are conservative and have strict fathers. Then, there are the lucky, open-minded families who go on outings regularly. I don’t know why my father was so against letting us go this time; he’d allowed us to go with extended family in large groups before. Maybe it was because he was preoccupied with the house renovations, or concerned about the costs, or worried about potential dangers related to the Taleban.
We are going on a picnic
We went in one of the two motar-e barbari-e kalan (large lorries) that my cousin owns because our group was large and some of our relatives don’t have a car. This way we could travel together in the same vehicle and share the cost of the petrol. We laid a carpet down on the back and sat together in the open air, enjoying the fresh breeze and the luxuriantly green scenery.
Some of the relatives had gone ahead of us in another lorry and our little group – my sister-in-law and me, as well as my little brother, who’d come along in case we were asked about a mahram – joined my aunt and her three sons, their wives and children in the second lorry. My mother was in Kabul and couldn’t join us. My aunt’s son-in-law and some of his relatives also came along. Altogether, we were about 40 to 50 people.
As we expected, we passed many checkpoints. There was even one at the entrance to Dasht-e Shadian and Taleban foot patrols everywhere. But they mostly searched vehicles with lots of male passengers and weren’t very inquisitive about vehicles with many female passengers. So, they didn’t stop us or ask any questions.
When we left the city behind, we’d started clapping with excitement. It was a joyful ride. There was no music, but there was the sound of our clapping and the wind in our hair as it gently loosened our headscarves. Whenever we neared a checkpoint, our cousins would remind us to fix our hijabs and we’d stop clapping and tighten our headscarves. But we’d resume our cheerful clapping again as soon as we cleared it. Originally, we’d planned to bring something to play music on, set on a low volume, but the male family members vetoed the idea, worried about attracting the Taleban’s attention. Women like to play music, clap and enjoy themselves, but men don’t allow them to do it. So, we satisfied ourselves with clapping and lively chatter.
Making the best of a day out in nature
It was gone one o’ clock in the afternoon by the time we reached Dashte-e Shadian. The picnic area was teaming with people. There were many single men and some families as well. There were boys selling dayras (a type of tambourine). They were making a racket pounding on the dayras to attract customers, but without much luck. I only saw one boy buying a dayra. Most people looked on but didn’t buy. They were probably too afraid of getting into trouble with the Taleban because music is not allowed.
We found a quiet spot away from the bustling crowd to set up our blankets and start a fire for my sister-in-law to cook, even though it was getting late. Some of the girls who weren’t busy with preparing lunch decided to take a walk around a nearby field, where we saw kids flying kites, playing football and selling energy drinks and toys. A man was offering horses for rent and we noticed a few boys who’d fallen and were injured. There were women dressed in lovely outfits and wearing makeup. They’d briefly remove their headscarves to take a photo and then quickly put them back on. For myself, I had a shorter dress on beneath my abaya (long overcoat).
Every family brought food they’d prepared in advance for the picnic – manto (dumplings), qabuli palaw (rice with carrots and raisins), qurma (meat stew), vegetables, fruit and beverages. After we finished eating lunch, the main part of our outing started. We took pictures and went for walks in nature chaperoned by some of the men in our group.
The last time we went on an outing, we’d gone to a beautiful spot covered with vibrant red flowers. This time, we decided to visit Dasht-e-Shadian, as it’s closer to the city and has better security. But to our surprise, the ground was full of holes spaced just a few meters apart. Also, there were only a few trees and the greenery was sparse except on the top of the hill. There were gardens and houses, but they were privately owned and off-limits to visitors. Unfortunately, the area was littered with cans, tablecloths, and bottles – remnants of previous picnics where people had failed to clean up after themselves.
A disappointing outing is better than no outing
Going on the outing refreshed my mind. It was great to catch up with relatives and fascinating to people-watch and see how other people interacted with each other in public. I admired what some of the other girls were wearing and made a mental note to sew similar dresses for myself.
But I didn’t enjoy this outing as much as the ones we’d had in previous years.
In the past, my sister, who works in Kabul, would join us, along with my mother and all of my siblings. Those were truly family affairs and were always so much fun. Time used to fly by without us even realising it. This time, it was just me and three of my close family members, so the experience wasn’t as great. It was scorching hot and the picnic area wasn’t so pleasant. Some of our female relatives fell ill with heatstroke because we couldn’t wear the kind of light clothing that’s appropriate for that kind of weather. We had to wear long black abayas and our headscarves tight on our heads.
The women didn’t walk around much. If we wanted to go anywhere, we had to ask one of the men in our group to chaperone us. Some of the men wandered around and explored the hills, played football and cricket and flew kites. But they, too, felt uneasy because the morality police were walking around and surveying the crowd. We heard some gunfire – we couldn’t tell where it was coming from – but the sound scared people.
In the past, when we went on outings, all the boys and girls in the family could play football and take part in other pastimes. The girls were allowed to fly kites if they wanted to, or just sit around and talk, or take pictures or just walk around in nature. It was disheartening to watch all the boys in the family running around and having fun and not be able to join their games. I asked the girls in our group to play football with me but they refused. They said they didn’t want to risk the men in the family getting into trouble with the Taleban because of our behaviour.
In the past, women were free to go out without a mahram, but nowadays, even the city parks have rules about when and how we can visit. We can only go on specific days of the week and must be accompanied by a mahram who waits outside. We can’t visit the Roza-e Sharif (Mazar-e Sharif shrine) at all anymore. Back then, my family didn’t pay much mind to what my sisters and I wore, or if we put on makeup or if some of our hair was showing, but now they admonish us, telling us to wear our scarves neatly, avoid makeup and put on the abaya. It’s all about safeguarding our namus(dignity and honour), they say.
That day, whiling the time away with my family, I was happy to be out in nature, exploring the countryside. There is a famous hill called Tepa Allah there that I was very keen to climb. We girls didn’t eat well because we couldn’t wait to go up Tepa Allah and after lunch, four girls and four men from our family went for a look. It was difficult to climb to the top and we didn’t stay there long because there were lots of men around. The male members of our family insisted we leave since there were so few women there. It was starting to get dark, they told us, and we should head back to the city.
As we piled into the lorry to make our way back to Mazar-e Sharif, I thought about all the trouble everyone had gone through just to make this day possible. It didn’t turn out to be the great adventure I’d imagined it was going to be. Still, a disappointing outing is better than no outing at all.
Edited by Kate Clark
References
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Nawruz marks the start of the Afghan year and coincides with the vernal equinox on 21 March, the first day of spring. The holiday is celebrated for 13 days, and families traditionally go on picnics on Sizda be Dar, the 13th day of the new year, to deflect the bad omen associated with the number 13 and celebrate the arrival of spring.
The Daily Hustle: Going on a picnic with your family, if you’re a girl
The risks required to make “Hollywoodgate” also highlight its limitations.Credit…Fourth Act Film
Nash’at, an Egyptian journalist based in Berlin, traveled to Afghanistan in 2021 shortly after American troops had left. He negotiated a tenuous arrangement with Mawlawi Mansour, the new commander of the country’s air force, to film him and a lieutenant named M.J. Mukhtar.
In a voice-over at the outset, Nash’at explains the terms. He has been forbidden to film anyone who is not Taliban, he says, and he is under constant surveillance. In return for access, he adds, “I must show the world the image of the Taliban that they want me to see.” But he hopes simply to show what he saw.
Nash’at, who handled his own camera and sound, is, to his credit, transparent about some gaps. When going to inspect a group of aircraft, Mansour doesn’t want the filmmaker to show them. (Nash’at nevertheless zooms in toward a few planes across the tarmac.) During a nighttime operation in which Mukhtar apparently hopes to root out people hostile to the Taliban, Nash’at is instructed, “The cameraman stays here.”
What remains are Mansour and Mukhtar presenting themselves with varying degrees of self-consciousness (it is amusing when Mansour, after trying out a treadmill at a former American gym, asks that one be sent to his home so he can lose belly fat), and the Taliban’s public pageantry. Nash’at notes at the end that he was kept from filming the daily suffering of regular Afghans. The frustration of “Hollywoodgate” is that it could only ever feel incomplete.
Hollywoodgate
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters.
Taliban attendance and Afghan civil society’s exclusion at Doha 3 meeting was heavily criticized.
Western states want Taliban to uphold human rights, but regional powers are more focused on Afghanistan stabilizing.
Still, Doha 3 made progress toward more coordinated international engagement.
At the end of June, envoys and representatives from more than 25 countries and international organizations gathered in Doha, Qatar, along with representatives from the Taliban under an U.N.-facilitated framework. This meeting was the third of its kind, widely referred to as “Doha 3,” and part of a process to establish a more coordinated and coherent global approach to Afghanistan’s challenges and the Taliban’s rule.It did not produce decisive outcomes, other than the commitment of all countries to continue such meetings — still a significant agreement in the current geopolitical climate. Meanwhile, Western donor states and human rights defenders strongly criticized the latest gathering for the U.N.’s inclusion of the Taliban, and perceived concessions to the group.The first meeting took place in May 2023, and the second was held this February. The first two meetings were chaired by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who delegated this third meeting to Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo. These meetings were oriented around the U.N. Security Council’s call for an independent assessment of international engagement with Afghanistan, mandated last spring and delivered to the Council last November. The Security Council accepted the assessment’s recommendations in late December, though with Russia and China abstaining — and the Taliban protesting strongly against a few key provisions.
Western donor states and human rights defenders strongly criticized the latest gathering for the U.N.’s inclusion of the Taliban.
The Taliban were not invited to the first meeting, where Guterres worked to identify global common ground on how to engage the Taliban. In February, the Taliban rejected the U.N.’s invitation to attend the second meeting, objecting to the appointment of a U.N. special envoy, protesting the U.N.’s invitations for Afghan civil society to attend, and complaining of matters of protocol. In short, the Taliban demanded to be treated, at least de facto, as the government of Afghanistan.In preparations for the third gathering, the U.N. took pains to persuade the Taliban that attending was in their best interests. DiCarlo visited Kabul and met with Taliban leaders beforehand, as did a number of Western and regional diplomats. In these consultations, the Taliban made demands that largely reiterated their position on Doha 2.Notably, the U.N. offered an agenda that seemed tailored to the Taliban’s interest — as well as the key interests of neighboring states and regional powers like China and Russia. The U.N. proposed three topics, two of which were ultimately selected: (1) economic issues, especially the question of support to the Afghan private sector, and (2) counternarcotics.
Significant Criticism
The focus on securing the Taliban’s attendance for Doha 3 prompted a groundswell of criticism from Afghan civil society and human rights defenders. In the weeks leading up to Doha 3, officials from a number of donor states expressed frustration, and several even pondered the possibility of downgrading or cancelling their attendance.
The criticism was leveled on two different planes. Publicly, much of the backlash against the U.N.’s planning focused on the lack of civil society representation at the main event, highlighting the absence of Afghan women. The lack of women’s rights on the public version of the meeting’s agenda was seen as a further, unnecessary concession to the Taliban.
It is worth noting that states discussed women’s rights extensively with the Taliban at Doha 3, and the U.N. always planned on this.
It is worth noting that states discussed women’s rights extensively with the Taliban at Doha 3, and the U.N. always planned on this — keeping the topic off the public agenda was an attempt at compromise. Moreover, at the previous two meetings, Afghan civil society did not participate in the main events (at Doha 2 in February, a voluntary side meeting took place with six Afghans involved in activism, journalism and development). But faced with the prospect of the Taliban sitting down with the international community under the U.N.’s banner, many insisted that Afghan women must also have a seat at the table. A campaign of advocacy and journalistic coverage swamped Doha 3 preparations with negative publicity, and complicated the positions of participating Western states.Some nations disagreed with details of the U.N.’s approach but were willing to give the U.N. room to maneuver, at least in principle. Their complaint was structural: Frustration with a lack of U.N. coordination or even communication of goals and strategy. In weeks leading up to the meeting, more than one donor state official privately expressed doubt as to whether U.N. leadership had a strategic direction for this meeting format and the process it was meant to support.
Reactions and Reasoning
Less than two weeks before Doha 3, a group of major donors, including the United States, drafted a collective communique to the U.N. The letter, not made public but leaked widely, was a sternly worded rebuke on both the substance and planning process for the impending meeting.
The signatories emphasized the importance of not marginalizing Afghan civil society and noted domestic political demands to hold the Taliban accountable on human rights. One Western official described the signatories’ perception that regional countries’ interests seemed to carry more weight in the U.N.’s decision making than those of the largest donors supporting aid and development in Afghanistan.
This letter implicitly threatened that donor states (including signatories such as Canada, the U.K. and France) might scale down their participation in the gathering. In particular, the signatories insisted on engagement with civil society in some form. The U.N. accommodated this demand — some U.N. officials privately noted that it had always been their intent to involve civil society, at the same level as they had been during Doha 2, and it was simply a matter of careful negotiation with the Taliban to ensure they would not pull out. But the U.N. also preserved the originally proposed agenda, and largely stuck to its approach.
Some donors went further: Canada published a reprimand of the U.N.’s approach to the conference — though they also ultimately attended.
In the end, on the second day of Doha 3, a side event was held with five Afghan women and two men, most of them residing inside Afghanistan — similar in scope to the inclusion of civil society at Doha 2.
Speaking to the press from Doha, DiCarlo hinted at the logic underlying U.N.’s approach, saying the brief was to bring the Taliban together with the world’s envoys in these meetings. This was an intriguing, almost misleading representation of the Security Council’s resolution in December 2023. Yes, the U.N. was encouraged to continue facilitating the envoy meeting format, but with very little detail specified. Where did this brief, which seemed to privilege the Taliban, come from?
The U.N. was compelled to find a balance between the agendas of Western states, many of which demand to see the Taliban adhere to international standards on human rights before proceeding any further with development assistance or economic normalization, and those of regional powers, eager to see nearby Afghanistan stabilize. Sources suggest that key regional states — including permanent Security Council members Russia and China — saw little reason to continue engaging in a U.N. process that did not include the Taliban. In other words, while Western frustrations over the U.N.’s direction spilled into public view, regional states may have been even closer to abandoning the meeting format.
There was a basic theory of change underpinning Doha 3 preparations: the U.N. assessment, and all of its recommendations, were intended to break free from the deadlock that had overtaken international relations with the Taliban. To move past this deadlock, U.N. officials have said the most difficult demands should be set aside until later in this engagement process. For now, they assert, discussion should focus on overlapping interests. Only after much more trust has been built between the suspicious Taliban and a host of doubtful states, do these officials feel it makes sense to bring the most contentious issues to the table.
The counterargument is that such sequencing awards the Taliban legitimacy and emboldens their repressive policy agenda. The rebuttal to this view, however, is that waiting for the Taliban to meet demands before expanding assistance, knowing the Taliban are unlikely to budge, is a decision to cut off 40 million Afghans from the rest of the world. These arguments on how to approach engaging with such a difficult regime are not new — they remain much the same as before the U.N. assessment proposed a roadmap to move past them.
Now What?
Undersecretary-general DiCarlo and other U.N. leaders have stressed that Doha 3 is but one meeting in a long-term process. But privately, officials have made clear that DiCarlo and other U.N. leaders do not have the bandwidth to continue managing the Doha meeting format, much less any broader process it might spur. The negative reactions and public controversy around Doha 3 have only lessened the U.N.’s enthusiasm to occupy center stage as host and facilitator.
The most efficient solution is one that has been mired in Security Council politics from the beginning. Last year’s assessment recommended appointing a U.N. official for Afghanistan, an envoy or coordinator in addition to Special Representative Roza Atunbayeva who manages U.N. presence in the country, to carry out the obviously full-time job of organizing an international engagement process. However, the Taliban’s objections to such an appointment, along with the lack of Russian and Chinese enthusiasm, may prove to be insurmountable.
In spite of the controversy beforehand and the difficult path ahead, Doha 3 did make concrete progress toward more coordinated international engagement. Attending nations tentatively agreed to establish technical-level working groups on the chief agenda items: private-sector economic issues and counternarcotics. More work remains before the concept can be finalized, and so this outcome was not formally announced from Doha. But such working groups will open new channels of dialogue between donors, regional states and technocrats from Taliban-run ministries — with the aim of streamlining and improving assistance to the Afghan people.
The Taliban have thus far kept mum about the conference, other than claiming that the world heard and accepted their messaging. Their chief spokesman, who led the delegation to Doha, declined to commit to participation in future meetings, saying that each time, Taliban leadership would determine if the engagement would be beneficial.
The controversy surrounding Doha 3 revealed that, while most countries (and the Taliban) are willing to entertain discussion about a difficult roadmap forward, many are also still insistent: the other side must give something first. Neither Western donor states nor the Taliban’s leadership are likely to bend when it comes to the group’s draconian domestic policies, at least not in the foreseeable future.
These high levels of mistrust require a delicately managed process, in which all sides cautiously inch forward, testing each other, assured that all sides will benefit if they continue to move forward together. Doha 3 illustrated how badly such a process requires an empowered, dedicated individual or office to keep all sides incentivized to do so.
The U.N. is uniquely positioned to provide this sort of leadership; with a growing gap between the approach of donors and regional states, there is no alternative. But is the U.N. itself, as a vulnerable institution increasingly underfunded and under siege, sufficiently incentivized to try and provide that sort of leadership, while under constant criticism?
U.S. national interests are best served through careful, principled engagement with the Taliban.
For its part, Washington should encourage the U.N. to not let the Doha meeting format wither on the vine. In spite of flaws in planning and execution, and the controversy these have drawn, the international coordination these meetings seek to build remains vital. U.S. national interests are best served through careful, principled engagement with the Taliban: the counterterrorism threat in the region remains critical and cannot be wished away, and the Afghan people’s dire economic conditions and food insecurity threaten regional stability (even Europe, through transnational migration).Doha 3 made clear that the current meeting format, and how it is facilitated, requires some structural change. Change would ideally come in the form of the U.N. appointing a dedicated official to manage this complex process, but as noted above, the Taliban are fiercely opposed to the idea, deeming it a downgrading measure meant for conflict-riddled countries. If such an appointment proves impossible, creative solutions — such as empowering the U.N. mission based in Afghanistan to facilitate some of this process, and more robust coordination between donors seeking to transition from emergency aid to sustainable development — should be pursued.
What’s Next for the U.N.’s Doha Process on Afghanistan?
Afghanistan’s Community Development Councils (CDCs), which were established under the Islamic Republic by the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) and its successor Citizen’s Charter, have been abolished by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). Government bodies have been told to coordinate economic projects with ulema councils instead. Afghanistan, however, has a longstanding tradition of grassroots, collective, decision-making and problem-solving bodies called shuras or village councils that long predate the CDCs. These shuras have played a crucial role in village life, praised, for example, by the late anthropologist Louis Dupree, for carrying “the country safely over its post-1933 internal power crises.” AAN’s Jelena Bjelica and the AAN team interviewed villagers across Afghanistan between November 2022 and June 2024 to learn how their shuras had fared under IEA rule. Many interviewees reported that even before the ban, their shuras had become non or barely functional, ignored by a government which prefers to work with village heads, often ones it has handpicked.
A Community Development Council (CDC) meeting in Herat province. Source: National Solidarity Programme/Flickr, 15 November 2010
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The picture that emerged from our research was of the slow demise of village councils/CDCs (interviewees tended to use the terms interchangeably) since the Islamic Emirate returned to power. It has preferred to work with individuals or groups, either head men (maleks or arbabs) or ulema councils, which, in general, it had appointed or at least approved.
Even before Amir Hibatullah Akhundzada’s May 2024 abolishment of the CDCs, the Emirate’s intentions had been discernible in the way it had diminished and marginalised the councils, in many cases, rendering them inactive. In addition, very few shuras had managed to keep their female members -–both the NSP and Citizens Charter programmes had mandated the equal participation of women in the CDCs. However, more than half of our interviewees rued this loss, if only for practical reasons, such as the shura’s inability to ascertain and address issues concerning women in the community.
The letter abolishing CDCs also indicated that future delivery of aid would have to be coordinated with ulema councils. NGOs, the World Bank and United Nations agencies, which have premised their work on working with CDCs, may now face problems. The relationship between the Emirate and the aid industry was already fraught. Navigating this latest blow to what many aid actors had considered a mechanism for ensuring equitable, local aid distribution will take some careful footwork.
Over the past century, shuras have undergone many changes, but one thing has remained a constant– they have always been a bridge between the community and external players – shielding, negotiating and trying to get resources. The Emirate’s move to abolish the shuras in favour of state-appointed or approved head men or ulema councils points to a redrawing of local-level power dynamics.
Whether this is a final nail in the coffin of Afghanistan’s village councils does, however, seem unlikely. In rural Afghanistan, shuras have survived the test of time because of their centrality to village life. They did not begin with the Soviet occupation or the Islamic Republic and it is highly questionable whether they will cease to exist with the IEA’s order to abolish them.
Whatever the future brings, if history is any indication, shuras will re-emerge as an integral part of Afghanistan’s social fabric as key local self-organised and self-governing structures. Once the initial jolt of the Amir’s ban has faded, we may see village shuras, as before, reinventing themselves under a new banner and perhaps with redefined horizons.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
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Afghanistan Peace Campaign
