This content, showing calm streets, active markets, friendly interactions with locals and sometimes even with Taliban members, attempts to present a different image of post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Many groups have participated in the trend, from travel vloggers seeking “unusual” experiences to influencers who attract audiences by going against dominant narratives. For example, an American pornographic Afghanistan at a time when women in Afghanistan are deprived of even their most basic rights is not just a marginal incident, but a clear example of how such images are produced and circulated.

At first glance, these videos may appear to be personal experiences. But that interpretation is dangerously simplistic. What this content presents as “Afghanistan” is not reality, but a constructed version of it, shaped through selection, omission and control. This ultimately contributes to softening the coercive image of the regime and rendering repression more socially acceptable. The issue is not simply truth versus falsehood; it is what is allowed to be seen and what is systematically left out. These portrayals do not merely misrepresent Afghanistan; they circulate what I call “performative safety,” a selective image of “safety” that obscures the exclusion of women, normalizes authoritarian rule and may carry real political consequences.

The Taliban does not govern only through force; it also reshapes how it is seen. Every “peaceful” image, every “calm” video and every “against-the-media” narrative helps reduce the symbolic costs of this system. In this process, influencers, even when they see themselves as neutral, become informal participants in a broader project: turning a repressive system into something that appears livable.

Unequal experiences: safety for whom?

The experience of safety under Taliban rule is deeply unequal. What influencers experience and present as “safety” is structurally out of reach for a large part of the population, especially women in Afghanistan.

While in Afghanistan are detained for minor reasons and subjected to humiliation and violence, women from outside the country can move freely in the same spaces, go to restaurants and even interact casually with Taliban members. This reveals a deep gap in power and in who has the right to be present.

Cases like the visit of an American pornographic actress make this gap painfully visible. At a time when women in Afghanistan are denied education, excluded from most forms of work and restricted in their movement, presenting those same spaces as “safe” or “interesting” is misleading and politically problematic.

What influencers present as “safety” is, in fact, a privilege that is available only to certain bodies under specific conditions within a discriminatory system. It is not a general condition; it is selective. Presenting it as a shared reality distorts the truth.

Within what can be described as a system of gender apartheid, these representations take on a deeper meaning. When foreign women appear alongside Taliban members, joke with them or take photos with their weapons, these images, regardless of intent, contribute to normalizing a system that has pushed women in Afghanistan out of public life. This is not neutrality. It is participation in the production of a political image.

Safety as performance

A key concept for understanding this phenomenon is “performative safety.” In many of these videos, influencers walk through markets, talk to people and describe the environment as calm. But this calm is the result of selective spaces and controlled interactions.

Influencers usually film in places where “normality” can be easily shown, while other elements, such as structural restrictions, social control and especially the absence of women in public spaces, are systematically left out.

In other words, safety is not simply observed; it is staged. It is a scene built through highlighting certain realities and hiding others. This performance shapes not only what is seen but also how audiences understand it. When the dominant image of Afghanistan on social media is calm and tension-free, it becomes harder to recognize deeper inequalities and forms of structural violence. What influencers present as “safety” is therefore not a shared social condition, but a limited and highly political experience.

Normalizing authoritarianism

These representations, whether intentional or not, contribute to the normalization of authoritarian rule. When Taliban members are shown as “ordinary,” “friendly” or even “humorous,” the broader system of restrictions and violence they represent is pushed out of view.

This process makes violence invisible. As a result, authoritarianism begins to appear as part of everyday life rather than something to question. Viewers gradually accept the system as normal rather than critically examining it. Representation becomes a tool of power.

Attention economy and content production

To understand why these representations persist, we need to look at the “attention economy,” a system in which attention is limited and the value of content depends on its ability to attract and hold audiences, not on its accuracy.

In this environment, Afghanistan becomes an ideal subject. Since it is widely associated with war and danger, any content that challenges this expectation, such as by showing “safety,” immediately attracts attention. The contrast between expectation and presentation drives visibility and engagement. like Business Insider’s show that such content performs well precisely because of this contrast.

Digital platforms reinforce this dynamic. Their algorithms promote surprising, contradictory or emotionally engaging content. As a result, creators are pushed toward narratives that generate reactions, even if this means simplifying or distorting reality.

In this context, “safety” becomes a kind of media product, valued not for how accurately it reflects reality, but for how well it can be consumed and shared. The more it contradicts common assumptions about Afghanistan, the more attention it gains. At the same time, complex realities, especially the situation of women in Afghanistan and deeper structural inequalities, are pushed aside because they do not fit easily into short, fast-paced content.

Indirect complicity and ethical implications

Influencers who create these videos cannot be seen as neutral. Presenting a positive image of a system that systematically violates the rights of women is not just a personal choice; it is a political act with ethical consequences. Producing and sharing such content contributes, in practice, to legitimizing a system built on exclusion and control.

This complicity is not necessarily intentional. Many influencers may see themselves as simply sharing personal experiences. But from a sociological perspective, the issue is not intention, but outcome. When influencers remove suffering and inequality from the frame, what remains is an image that makes the existing system appear normal and acceptable.

The key question is not only what is shown, but what is allowed to remain unseen. When repression is removed from view, it is also removed from judgment. Representation, in this sense, becomes an ethical act: it can either expose inequality or hide it. In many of these cases, it clearly does the latter.

When images turn into risk

Presenting Afghanistan as a “safe” and “accessible” place is not just a matter of perception; it can have real-world consequences. In the attention economy, content that challenges expectations spreads quickly and becomes convincing. As a result, some viewers, especially adventure travelers, may take these narratives as a basis for real decisions.

In this way, the distance between image and action collapses. What begins as digital consumption can lead to physical travel into a complex and unpredictable political environment. Yet such decisions are made in a context with no reliable legal protections, no transparency and no meaningful accountability.

Under such conditions, ordinary individuals without strong institutional or diplomatic support may find themselves in vulnerable, risky situations. Evidence from other authoritarian contexts, including Iran, shows that governments have at times detained and used foreign nationals as tools of political pressure. There are also that the Taliban has, in certain cases, used the detention of foreign nationals as leverage. In a system without accountability, this risk is not simply hypothetical.

The way influencers portray Afghanistan is not a neutral reflection of reality, but a selective reconstruction of it. Through the systematic removal of violence, especially the exclusion of women in Afghanistan, influencers produce an image of a system that appears stable and livable. What they present as “safety” is not a shared condition, but a deeply unequal and political one.

The issue is not just distortion, but its consequences. These images shape perception, perception shapes decisions, and those decisions can lead individuals into environments where basic protections do not exist. In such a setting, even ordinary people can become exposed to serious risks.

Ultimately, the question is not whether these images are “true” or “false.” The question is how they reshape reality itself, what they show, what they hide and whose absence makes the image possible. Representation moves beyond storytelling and becomes part of power, shaping what repression can hide and what the world is allowed to ignore.

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After the Taliban retook power in 2021 with a shockingly rapid advance on the capital, Kabul, Ghani fled the country. His sudden departure damaged his reputation and exacerbated the country’s already precarious situation. Afghans regarded the move as self-centered decision-making and callous, given what became of the country after Ghani left.

Since the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s economy, as per the World Bank, is and heavily reliant on external support. The economy has shrunk by 25% over the last two years. The Taliban’s restrictive policies on women’s education and work are expected to further hinder Afghanistan’s recovery prospects. Additionally, according to the latest Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Index, Afghanistan ranks as the among 177 countries in terms of the status of women. Many Afghans blame Ghani for their misery.

Ghani claims his escape was necessitated by factors outside of his control. It is true that the Taliban’s advance meant Ghani’s safety was at stake. His close circle urged him to flee the country. Despite facing criticism for his actions, Ghani vigorously asserts that he is still Afghanistan’s president.

Ghani is as stubborn a pretender as he was a president

Even as his regime was collapsing, Ghan was high-handed and brooked no compromise. In his mind, the Afghan constitution empowered him to complete his term, so he would complete it. Influential figures like Zalmay Khalilzad, the senior US negotiator with the Taliban, sharply criticized Ghani. In his testimony before the House Foreign iRelations Committee, Khalilzad a last-minute success in persuading the Taliban to avoid entering Kabul and instead engage in discussions with the government to establish a transitional administration. Both sides agreed, but Ghani’s surprising departure led to the swift collapse of the now leaderless Afghan military and police. Apparently, he would rather claim his rights abroad than lay them down during negotiations in Afghanistan.

Ghani found refuge in Abu Dhabi. From this base, he has continued to leveraged any possible platforms, from diplomatic meetings to , to push his agenda. Ghani believes that Afghanistan can function as an economic bridge between West, Central, South and East Asia, and for some reason he seems to think that he has a role to play in developing that. In his podcasts, Ghani actively seeks support from both the Taliban and the broader region.

In on podcast , at the 18-minute mark, Ghani seamlessly transitions from technical discourse to outlining Afghanistan’s political path. He critiques militant groups opposing the Taliban and acknowledges ethnic diversity challenges within his administration. Ghani advocates for establishing a Loya Jirga (a great council of tribal leaders) to focus on the internal dimension of political legitimacy for the Taliban regime and emphasizes the importance of reforms. He aims for measures that could secure minimum acceptance from the people without necessitating unanimous national approval. Ghani promotes the idea that such minimum acceptance from the Afghan populace may pave the way for legitimizing the Taliban by the international community.

So desperate is Ghani to have a role to play in Afghan politics that he, who once fled the country rather than recognize the Taliban, now appears willing to sell his country out to the militants.

Ghani and allies play the influence game abroad

Meanwhile, former Afghan army officials appointed by Ghani are overseas offices, positioning themselves as representatives of the former Afghan National Defense Forces prepared to confront the Taliban. This initiative explores potential avenues and strategically engages with the new US administration, as President Donald Trump’s by floating the a possible US return to Afghanistan while speaking to a crowd in Fort Dodge, Iowa. If Afghanistan garners the attention of the new US administration, significant opportunities for such maneuvers could emerge as a bargaining chip.

With the potential for regional security cooperation on the rise, Ghani highlights Afghanistan’s regional significance and signals readiness to engage with the recently established for cooperation with Kabul. Nonetheless, Iran’s sway over specific Taliban factions presents a challenge to Ghani’s endeavors to initiate dialogue with the group. The region is marked by a lack of trust and duplicity, leading countries to cultivate relationships with all parties both within and outside Afghanistan as bargaining tools to advance their agendas. The regional contact group will encompass all Afghan groups, including Ghani, in the pursuit of inclusive solutions.

The collapse of the government unsettled Afghan elites, leading to their disengagement. However, two years later, these communities are regrouping and actively seeking a leader capable of articulating their concerns. Ghani positions himself as a leader within a specific faction of the Taliban opposition, advocating for reform and actively seeking a role in shaping Afghanistan’s future.

Despite the Taliban’s capture of power in Afghanistan, Ghani still maintains his Twitter profile as of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. All administrative signs, flags, passports and other symbols of authority still belong to the exiled government. Afghan embassies, representatives in other countries and the UN continue to operate and represent the previous government.

Yet this is not the sort of government in exile that dreams of recapturing its homeland from the enemy like Charles de Gaulle did France in World War II. Instead, if Ghani can garner enough attention and support, he may consider playing his last card by joining with the Taliban, a preferable option to fading into obscurity. Such a move could benefit the Taliban by showcasing their tolerance and promoting legitimacy.

Although Ghani faces formidable challenges, the historical transformations in Afghanistan hint at potential advantages for both Ghani and the Taliban should his inclination to cooperate with them come to fruition. While a return to Afghanistan may not align with Ghani’s preferences, it offers a more favorable prospect compared to fading into obscurity in Abu Dhabi. Through astute positioning in negotiations, particularly by considering regional interests, Ghani may move closer to achieving his aspirations.

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However, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban recaptured the capital Kabul, forcing President Ashraf Ghani to flee. After two years in power, they continue their rule through brutal force and blatant human rights violations, shrouded in a false pretense of maintaining law and order.

Despite fervent attempts to secure international recognition, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan remains largely on the global stage. This lack of recognition severely restricts their legal and diplomatic capabilities, impedes their access to vital international organizations and isolates them from potential economic partnerships and security collaborations.

The prospect of an Afghanistan government-in-exile gains increasing traction in light of the Taliban’s repressive policies and limited international recognition. Such a government could offer a legitimate alternative to the current regime, thereby ensuring the continued representation of the people of Afghanistan at the international level.

Taliban-led Afghanistan is a country on the brink

Since their swift return to power, the Taliban’s resurgence has plunged Afghanistan into a crisis that threatens the very fabric of its society and jeopardizes the well-being of Afghanistan’s citizens.

The initial hopes for moderation from the Taliban have dissipated, by a stark reality of repression and regression. Women and girls, once again, bear the brunt of their oppressive policies. Restrictive measures dictate their attire, limit their movement and confine them to the private sphere, stripping them of basic freedoms and fundamental rights.

Under Taliban rule, dissenters an era of heightened fear and persecution. Journalists, activists and former security personnel endure arbitrary arrests, torture and even extrajudicial execution. This systematic and discriminatory targeting constitutes a blatant violation of international law and raises serious concerns about the Taliban’s disregard for human dignity and equality.

The economic situation in Afghanistan under Taliban rule is equally alarming. Their isolationist policies and strict restrictions have severely economic growth. International sanctions, coupled with the withdrawal of foreign aid, have exacerbated the situation, leading to a severe shortage of essential goods and services. The private sector, already fragile, struggles to survive amidst limited trade opportunities and widespread corruption within the public sector.

The Taliban’s self-proclaimed war on corruption appears hollow, as of nepotism, extortion and misappropriation of public funds continue to surface.This, coupled with the opaque nature of their practices has resulted in the deterioration of vital infrastructure, hindering economic development and further marginalizing vulnerable populations.

Perhaps most concerning is the Taliban’s apparent , if not tacit support, for international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. Despite initial assurances of cracking down on such organizations, they have to suppress their activities within Afghanistan’s territory. This inaction, coupled with the reported presence of high-profile jihadists, fuels fears that Afghanistan could once again become a haven for extremism. The recent of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by a US airstrike in Kabul serves as a stark reminder of this alarming reality.

An authority in exile: an answer to the deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan

The concept of an occupies a well-defined niche in both international law and political practice. This phenomenon typically arises from political upheaval or conflict, situations where a legitimate government is forcibly displaced from its home territory. Despite their displacement, these individuals or groups maintain their claim to authority and legitimacy, often seeking international recognition and support for their cause. Operating from abroad, they act on behalf of the existing state or a potential future state to be created. Their primary objectives are to uphold their rights and represent the interests of their people until a resolution or transition of power occurs.

It is crucial to distinguish an authority-in-exile from other related entities. Unlike a , which retains control over a portion of its territory, or a , which seeks to establish a new independent state, an authority-in-exile claims to represent the entire existing state and its people. Furthermore, it differs from a simple opposition group, which lacks the claim to represent the whole state and its population.

The establishment of exile authorities has a long and storied history, often employed by states when their territory falls under the effective control of a belligerent occupier or when a new authority comes to power through revolution or coup d’état. Notable past examples include the in Exile, the Provisional Government of and the Interim Government.

In the specific context of Afghanistan, an authority-in-exile would be a body with legal status, empowered to protect its nationals and act on behalf of the people of Afghanistan in the international arena. This authority may not necessarily function as a “government” in the strict sense of international law. Instead, it may serve as a means to protect and advance democratic values within Afghanistan.

However, the success of such an entity hinges on its careful composition and structure. Key considerations include:��

— Inclusive Representation and Diverse Perspectives: Comprised of prominent intellectuals of Afghanistan, activists and diverse ethnic and religious group representatives united by a vision for a democratic Afghanistan, the authority ensures comprehensive representation. This empowers it to effectively address the needs and aspirations of all citizens of Afghanistan within and outside the country.

— Efficient Governance through Specialized Committees: Establishing specialized committees dedicated to critical areas like diplomacy, trade, security and cultural exchange enhances the authority’s efficiency in managing responsibilities and engaging with international partners.

— Phased Transition: Parliament-in-Exile to Government-in-Exile: An initial phase as an inclusive and pluralistic parliament-in-exile, later transitioning to a full-fledged government-in-exile, is crucial for maintaining the authority’s legitimacy and relevance internationally.

— Active Engagement with the International Community: Active engagement with international partners is essential for the authority to establish itself as a credible and influential entity capable of contributing to global governance and diplomacy.

— Drafting a New Constitution: Involving experienced individuals in governance and diplomacy in drafting the new constitution is vital. Their expertise ensures it reflects the diverse needs and aspirations of the people of Afghanistan, laying the foundation for a stable and inclusive future government.

— Smooth Transition of Power: The authority-in-exile should provide a framework for a smooth transition of power, mitigating potential conflicts and disruptions in the future.

— Location and Legitimacy: While establishing the authority in a friendly nation with international influence can offer protection, the ultimate success in replacing the relies heavily on international recognition of the exiled entity as the legitimate representatives of a democratic Afghanistan. This recognition strengthens their position in negotiations for a peaceful resolution.

— Quality and Representation: The authority-in-exile’s quality and representativeness are crucial, as it should act for the people and against the current regime. Its primary aim is to prevent further repression and establish a democratic Afghanistan, free from coups, revolutions and undemocratic power grabs.

Though aspirations for an Afghanistan government-in-exile endure, no recognized entity currently exists. Former Vice President Saleh’s self-proclaimed on August 17, 2021, lacks international recognition. Notably, self-declared leadership does not constitute a legitimate government-in-exile, which requires structure, functionality and global legitimacy — presently absent in this context. Until these elements are fulfilled, the idea of a functioning Afghanistan government-in-exile remains unfulfilled.

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A US-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power in 2001. Despite their removal, they continued to wage a guerrilla war against the Afghan government and foreign forces. Fast-forward to 2021. The world witnessed a seismic shift in Afghanistan’s geopolitical landscape when the Taliban launched a massive offensive and seized control of the country. This resurgence followed the US announcement of its withdrawal, marking the end of a 20-year war. The Taliban declared they would re-establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, a statement that would reverberate globally and complex questions about the legitimacy of their rule.

The Taliban assert their legitimacy as Afghanistan’s rightful rulers although they have the support of neither the Afghan populace nor the global community. The organization’s claim to legitimacy is rooted in its ideology, relying on three pillars: its supposed connection to the Afghanistan’s historical emirate, its Pashtun ethnic identity and its adherence to the Deobandi school of Islam.

Rekindling the emirate

The Taliban’s right to rule starts with their self-proclaimed position as heirs to Afghanistan’s historical monarchy, officially called the Emirate of Afghanistan. in 1826 by Emir Dōst Moḥammad Khān, the emirate symbolized unification under Pashtun leadership and staunch resistance against foreign incursions, particularly from the British and Persians. It marked the country’s first independent state, solidifying its borders and identity.

While facing internal and external challenges like the and , the emirate witnessed significant advancements. Constitutions, flags, anthems, a currency, postal systems and even a nascent railway network all marked notable strides during this period. In 1926, the emirate came to an end when Emir Amanullah Khan declared Afghanistan a “kingdom” with himself as king. The name change marked a shift to a more modernizing, Western-influenced style of governance.

The Taliban strongly both a kingdom and a republic as incompatible with their Islamic ideology. They view an emirate as the sole licit, authentic political system for Afghanistan. This stance is further bolstered by their adoption of the original emirate’s name, flag and symbols. They see themselves as its rightful successors, inheriting its legacy and its responsibility to safeguard Afghanistan’s sovereignty against foreign influence.

In their narrative, the British, Soviets and Americans as historical invaders and enemies, while their own resistance is a sacred — a struggle for moral correctness. The internationally recognized government and its security forces were illegitimate collaborators in their eyes, puppets of foreign powers. The Taliban strive to establish a pure Islamic state governed by their understanding of Sharia law, with the emirate’s revival serving as a cornerstone of their legitimacy claim.

The horrific obsession of the Deobandi school

Building upon their historical connection to the emirate, the Taliban further bolster their legitimacy with their strict adherence to the Deobandi school of Islam. Born in 19th-century India, emerged as a reformist movement that emphasized strict adherence to the Quran and Sunnah, traditional Islamic practices, and social reform. While not entirely rejecting the four conventional Sunni schools of jurisprudence, Deobandis prioritize the direct interpretation of religious texts. They advocate for a literal, conservative understanding of Islam.

This ideology fertile ground in Afghanistan, particularly among rural Pashtun communities. Deobandi madrasas — colleges dedicated to Islamic study — flourished, educating generations of scholars and religious leaders, including many future Taliban members. The Taliban embraced Deobandi principles as their official creed, shaping their vision for an Islamic state governed by an unwavering understanding of Sharia law.

The Taliban’s specific interpretation of Deobandi principles led them to impose an austere version of Islam in Afghanistan. They music, art, entertainment and for women, viewing these things as incompatible with their morality. Religious minorities, deemed heretical or infidel, faced persecution. While these actions are justified by the Taliban as upholding Deobandi doctrine and defending Islam, they are broadly by Deobandis and the international community.

Crucially, this Deobandi foundation imbues the Taliban’s claim to legitimacy with a unique character. Their fight is cast as a divinely ordained crusade, drawing authority directly from God. This renders modern concepts like democracy and nation-states obsolete in their eyes. They see themselves as instruments of God’s will, liberated from the need for earthly validation through elections or global recognition. This divine mandate, they argue, justifies their actions and grants them unyielding support from their devout followers.

Assimilation, xenophobia and Pashtun identity

The Taliban also draw their legitimacy from their ethnic identity. They are predominantly , members of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Primarily located in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, Pashtuns approximately 42% of the population. For centuries, Pashtuns have not simply inhabited Afghanistan, but have played a role in shaping its destiny, leaving a legacy that the Taliban now weaponize as their birthright to leadership.

Prior to the ascendancy of the Pashtuns, Mongol and Turkic dynasties ruled Afghanistan. The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the rise of Pashtun like Hotak, Durrani and Bārakzai. Their empires stand as testaments to Pashtun political prowess and influence. The Hotakis challenged the Mughal Empire’s dominance by capturing Kandahār Province from them. The Durranis established an empire stretching from Mashhad in Persia to Kashmir and Delhi in India. The Bārakzais shaped the of modern Afghanistan and founded the emirate.

This legacy forms the bedrock of the Taliban’s narrative. The Pashtun identity they claim suggests an inherent right to rule stemming from ancestral ties and past achievements. They argue that Pashtuns are not merely Afghanistan’s largest minority but the core of its national identity. For the Taliban, the term “Afghan” itself as an synonym of “Pashtun.” (The name, “Afghanistan,” meaning, “Land of Afghans,” first appeared in the 1879 following the .)

Beyond their historical narrative, the Taliban draw heavily on , a deeply ingrained ethical and social code that governs Pashtun life. This intricate tapestry of values, encompassing ������������ٲ���́ (hospitality), ��ə�Բ�����́�ٱ� (asylum), nang (justice), ������á�� (revenge) and ��ú���� (bravery), serves as a cornerstone of their legitimacy claim. They portray themselves as not only rulers, but caretakers of this moral code.

The Taliban that Pashtunwali forms the bedrock of Afghan identity. They propose that other ethnic groups in Afghanistan either share Pashtun ancestry, having assimilated into their cultural sphere over centuries, or have embraced Pashtunwali as their own moral compass. This assertion of cultural hegemony is another vital argument in their narrative, suggesting that their leadership is not merely a political choice, but an imperative for maintaining moral and cultural unity. The Taliban’s ideology is a hybrid and synthesis of the Pashtunwali and Deobandi schools of thought, which complement and reinforce each other.

The Taliban’s emphasis on Pashtun identity breeds xenophobia. Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks face suspicion, and even demonization. The Taliban ignore their legal and cultural systems in favor of a rigid of Pashtunwali and Sharia law. The Pashtuns’ language, Pashto, flourishes in education and government while other languages wither. Representation in these spheres is deeply imbalanced, stoking resentment among excluded groups. The most brutal manifestation of this xenophobia is the Taliban’s use of violence and intimidation, creating a climate of fear that silences dissent. This exclusionary approach sows deep societal fissures, jeopardizing Afghanistan’s fragile unity.

The Taliban’s rule remains at odds with the desires of the Afghan people and the principles of the international community. As long as this fundamental dissonance persists, the question of legitimacy will continue to cast a long shadow over Afghanistan’s future, with profound consequences for its stability and prosperity.

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Boys struggle in Afghanistan’s new educational environment

The Taliban have received international criticism for preventing women and girls from attending secondary schools and universities. Still, their severe on boys’ education in Afghanistan have received less attention. Due to the Taliban’s harsh educational , which have resulted in the exodus of qualified teachers and regressive curriculum modifications, boys are too. There is a greater fear of going to school, a decline in attendance and a loss of optimism for the future. Consequently, the Taliban run the risk of producing a lost generation.

Since assuming power, the Taliban’s impact on boys’ education in Afghanistan is detailed in the Human Rights Watch entitled “Schools are Failing Boys Too.” The report highlights regressive curriculum changes, an uptick in corporal punishment, and the dismissal of female teachers, posing a threat to Afghan boys’ education. While global attention has focused on the Taliban’s bans on girls’ and women’s secondary and higher education, the substantial harm inflicted on the male education system has garnered less notice. The report’s author contends that the Taliban’s actions seriously undermine both boys’ and girls’ education in Afghanistan, potentially leaving behind a lost generation without a quality education and the nation’s educational foundation.

Between June and August 2022 and March and April 2023, Human Rights Watch remotely five parents and 22 boys in grades 8 through 12 across the provinces of Kabul, Balkh, Herat, Farah, Parwan, Bamiyan, Nangarhar and Daikundi. The Taliban, in a sweeping move, dismissed all female teachers from boys’ schools. This action left many boys with instructors or no professors at all. Boys now a surge in physical punishment, including public beatings for minor infractions like owning a cell phone or getting a haircut. The Taliban’s removal of subjects like athletics, English, the arts and civics has led to a decline in educational quality.

Worsening economic and humanitarian challenges in Afghanistan are forcing boys to and aid their families. In a landscape with mental health care, boys experience rising anxiety, and other mental health issues. Though the Taliban hasn’t explicitly barred boys from school beyond the 6th grade, their actions still the education of all children. Afghanistan’s of international law, specifically the right to education for all children, is evident. The Taliban’s systemic discrimination against women and girls adversely affects boys, reinforcing negative gender stereotypes and intensifying financial pressure to support their families.

Women and girls’ right to education from an Islamic perspective

The Taliban have made education worse for all children. Still, their exclusion of women and girls from post-primary education is particularly abhorrent.

In Islam, women’s education is as a fundamental and sacred right, aligned with key principles in the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted by the Islamic Council of Europe on September 19, 1981, this declaration upholds the sanctity of various rights, including life, property, religion and the intellect. Rooted in the Holy Quran and international human rights law, these cardinal rights, particularly the right to education, are essential to the deen (faith). The Quran emphasizes the significance of intellect (al-aql) as a divine endowment, allowing individuals to make moral decisions and strive for harmony (Q 17:70, 95:4, 2:30–34, 33:72). Reason serves as the basis for distinguishing right from wrong. For girls, education is not only integral to their faith but also pivotal in expanding knowledge, fostering critical thinking, and molding them into exemplary Muslims and community members. It empowers women and girls to harness the blessings bestowed upon them by Allah.

Education is a divine for both genders. The Quran and Hadith leave no doubt that women, like men, must pursue knowledge. With over 800 references to ilm (knowledge) and its derivatives, the Holy Quran underscores its value. Allah commands both men and women to seek knowledge and punishes ignorance. “Read” (iqra) is how the very first revelation to Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) begins: “Read in the name of your Lord, who formed humanity from a blood clot (Q 96:1–5) A basic of Quranic interpretation is that when a commandment is revealed, the feminine gender is likewise encompassed by it, regardless of whether the masculine version of the word is employed. Ignoring this principle undermines fundamental Islamic for women, including prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and almsgiving. The Hadith and Sunnah affirm the obligation for men and women to pursue higher education. By keeping women and girls from going to school, you are stopping them from carrying out Allah’s sacred mandate and interfering with their eternity.

The Taliban’s educational policies violate international law

The Taliban not only defy the laws of Allah, but they also violate the laws of man by denying education to their citizens. The Taliban regime must not overlook its international obligations under international human rights law and customary international law. Afghanistan became a party to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 2003. According to this convention, countries must eradicate stereotypes about gender roles from all levels of education and society.

Corporal punishment in schools also children’s rights, causing dehumanization, needless suffering and detriment to their growth, academic performance, and mental health. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child every child’s right to an education in a violence-free environment, and international law prohibits all forms of corporal punishment. Afghanistan, having adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1994, is committed to ensuring children’s rights to safety, education, and protection from violence.

There are relatively few policy options to deal with the Taliban’s stringent restrictions or prompt behavioral change. The group has shown resistance to international pressure. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Muslim-majority countries have the Taliban to lift their bans, but no tangible changes have occurred, and the likelihood of increased OIC involvement remains uncertain.

International sanctions, thus far, have yielded no apparent results. Afghanistan’s dire situation struggles to garner attention amidst the international focus on issues in Ukraine and Gaza. It’s crucial for the global community to persist in highlighting the Taliban’s mistreatment of oppressed Afghan women and girls.

If the international community is not more forceful, options for Afghanistani children are indeed slim. For example, while offers a secure option for studying at home, millions of Afghan women and girls in remote areas lack internet access.

Governments concerned about the matter must exert pressure on the Taliban to lift their discriminatory ban on women’s and girls’ education and cease depriving boys of a safe and high-quality learning environment. The Taliban cannot flout Quranic directives on the right to education while adhering to an un-Islamic and regressive interpretation. Concrete steps, such as rehiring all female teachers, aligning the curriculum with international human rights law standards, and prohibiting corporal punishment, are indispensable.

The repercussions of the Taliban’s assault on the educational system are palpable now and will cast a long shadow over Afghanistan’s future. The urgent need for an international response to Afghanistan’s education crisis demands both swiftness and effectiveness.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Afghanistan’s Children Need a Change to the Taliban’s Educational Policies appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Taliban’s ban on women’s access to work and education is just the latest example of their inability to reform or moderate. If the international community once held any realistic hope that the Taliban might soften their extreme policies, that hope has now evaporated.

The cowardly escape of President Ashraf Ghani along with The Doha signed on February 29, 2020, paved the way for the final collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021. The country was plunged back into an age of repression.

Afghanistan now faces an escalating political and humanitarian crisis. NATO member states, the UN, and other humanitarian organizations have been sending aid in an attempt to mitigate the Taliban-created disaster. Since 2022, Afghanistan has received approximately in aid.

The international community continues to push the Taliban to form an inclusive government, respect human rights, and prevent the spread of terrorism. Yet, engaging with the Taliban in hopes of moderation is futile—because moderation itself contradicts their core ideological principles.

The Taliban’s Ideological Foundations

The Taliban are not merely a military movement; they are a radical Islamist and Pashtun dominated tribal group whose ideology is �� around three core pillars: their ends, ways, and means.

End Goals: The Islamic Emirate and Absolute Obedience

The Taliban pursue two overarching goals: one in this life and one in the afterlife. Their vision for the afterlife is simple—to enter heaven. In this world, their primary objective is to enforce their own interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law) by establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). Under this system, an Emir or supreme leader rules absolutely, and all citizens are expected to obey without question.

The Taliban construct their legal framework through a selective and self-serving application of Islamic jurisprudence, using sources such as traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, juridical consensus, reasoning by analogy and benevolence.

Mullah Haibatullah, the Taliban’s supreme leader, has been explicit about his commitment to absolute Sharia rule. Addressing the United States, he :

“You have used the mother of all bombs, and you are welcome to use even the atomic bomb against us, because nothing can scare us into taking any step that is against Islam or Sharia.”

The Taliban also �� their dominance through ethnic oppression, particularly targeting non-Pashtun groups like the Hazaras. Their leaders enforce , a tribal code emphasizing patriarchal control, revenge, and honor, which further entrenches social division and gender subjugation.

Understanding these ideological end goals is key to deciphering the Taliban’s policy decisions and long-term ambitions.

How the Taliban Maintain Control: Suppression, Exclusion, and Fear

The Taliban enforce their ideology through elimination, exclusion, and submission. Their mandates eradicating any resistance against the IEA—by force if necessary. Maulawi Mujeeb Rahman Ansari, a Taliban ally, openly :

��“Anyone who opposes the current government should be beheaded.”

Following these directives, the Taliban have hundreds of extrajudicial killings since 2021. In Daikundi province, Taliban fighters�� eight Hazara civilians, including children as young as six. In Panjshir, Hasht-e Subh Daily�� that the Taliban executed 27 people accused of having ties to the National Resistance Front. The IEA consistently favors annihilation over dialogue.

Beyond outright violence, the Taliban have established a system of exclusion and repression. Their ruling consists of 33 men—30 of whom are Pashtun, with only token representation for Tajiks (two members) and Uzbeks (one member). This structure excludes Afghanistan’s , reinforcing Pashtun dominance.

Citizens are treated as�� . The Taliban �� dress codes, personal grooming, and religious practices, enforcing their version of Islam on every aspect of life. Those who fail to comply face brutal consequences.

Women, in particular, have been reduced to second-class citizens. Under the Taliban’s , women belong in the home—to cook, bear children, and serve men. As a result, the Taliban have:

• Banned�� women from education and employment.
• Imposed mandatory full-body coverings (burqas).
• Prohibited women from traveling without male chaperones.

When women protest, the Taliban respond with gunfire. Civil society organizations and political groups have been systematically . The IEA tolerates no opposition.

The Taliban also reject modern institutions such as democracy, elections, and human rights. Mullah Haibatullah has these concepts as “anti-Sharia.” Instead, the Taliban prioritize religious education, converting secular schools into madrasas. Their goal is clear: to �� Afghanistan’s liberal institutions and replace them with an extremist Islamic order.

Resources and Financial Backing: How the Taliban Sustain Themselves

The Taliban are well-funded and have a steady supply of recruits, largely from impoverished, uneducated Pashtun communities. Before toppling the Afghan government in 2021, they �� an estimated 60,000 core fighters and 140,000 auxiliary members.

Financially, the Taliban rely on two primary income sources: domestic taxation and foreign support. Between August and November 2021 alone, they collected million in taxes. Other revenue streams :

• Illegal opium cultivation and drug trafficking
• Illicit mining and resource extraction
• Extortion and unlawful taxation

��In 2020, NATO estimated that the Taliban $1.6 billion from illicit activities.

During their insurgency, the Taliban received extensive foreign funding. A Combating Terrorism Center report in 2021 that they benefited from financial, logistical, and technical aid from neighboring and Gulf countries, private donors, extremist groups, and al-Qaeda. The Taliban are among the wealthiest extremist organizations in the world.

The Taliban will not change��

Many in the international community hoped that the Taliban, having learned from their past mistakes, would moderate their governance after reclaiming power in 2021. This belief was naive.

During their first reign (1996–2001), the Taliban’s refusal to surrender Osama bin Laden after 9/11 led to their downfall. After their defeat, they to have softened their fundamentalist stance. This was a deception—designed to mislead both the Afghan people and the world.

The Taliban are a product of a rigid, absolutist ideology. Democratic governance, human rights, and scientific progress threaten their existence. Their leaders understand that survival depends on adhering to radicalism, not moderation.

What the International Community Must Do

The world now faces a choice:

1. Continue engaging with the Taliban, thereby legitimizing and strengthening their regime.
2. Support democratic opposition groups, including political activists, ethnic representatives, women leaders, and the younger generation.

To counter the Taliban effectively, the international community must:

• Attach strict conditions to any aid.
• Ban free travel for Taliban officials.
• Limit direct engagement with the IEA.

Over time, these measures will weaken the Taliban’s grip while increasing the international community’s leverage.

The world must stop waiting for the Taliban to change. They won’t.

[ and edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Here Is Why the Taliban Cannot Change appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The G7 did indeed dedicate a to Afghanistan, and the parties agreed in condemning the Taliban’s suppression of fundamental rights. However, it could not be more of an understatement to say that the G7’s response to the Afghan crisis could have been more assertive. Alongside their critique of the Taliban’s conduct, the G7 also underscored a need to maintain continuous and direct dialogue with them, balancing its condemnation with engagement. This was an attempt to reflect the complexity of the international response required in this volatile situation, but it raises questions about the commitment of the international community to the well-being of the Afghan people.

Condemnations without action

The G7’s first perspective reflects the G7’s commitment to uphold the international order based on the rule of law. This commitment is paramount in resisting unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force, as exemplified by Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons. It should also be crucial in countering other forms of lawlessness that can destabilize the international order, such as those currently unfolding in Afghanistan.

Through addressing the issue of Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the G7 had a prime opportunity to manifest its resolute determination to repudiate such actions and uphold the rule of law. Afghanistan must transition from a Taliban regime imposed at the point of a sword to a representative, lawfully installed government, encompassing all echelons of Afghan society. Regrettably, the dialogue on strategic measures to aid this transition was bleak.

Does the Future Belong to the Taliban?

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the country has been plunged into a state of lawlessness that directly violates the principles upon which the international order stands. Reports of women being denied basic rights, minority groups facing persecution, and a lack of inclusivity in government structures are not only troubling but represent a blatant disregard for the rule of law. It was the responsibility of the G7 to stand united and address this crisis. Failure to act would not only compromise the credibility of the international order but also perpetuate the suffering of millions.

One of the most distressing consequences of the Taliban’s rule is the blatant violation of. For nearly two years, women and girls in Afghanistan have been denied access to education and basic freedoms. The implementation of a gender apartheid which confines women to their homes is a gross violation of human rights and a setback for gender equality worldwide. The Taliban’s actions demonstrate a clear and present danger to the international order, because lawlessness within a member of the international community can indeed become a new normal if left unchallenged.

The issued by the G7’s foreign ministers did voice a robust opposition against such repressive practices. However, it is insufficient for a multitude of reasons. While their vocal opposition to oppressive practices marks a positive first step, it is crucial that these words be underpinned by tangible actions and strategic policy initiatives that can catalyze substantial, meaningful change.

Furthermore, the G7’s primary focus on diplomatic endeavors and economic sanctions falls short of addressing the multifaceted challenges that Afghan women routinely face. In order to formulate a genuinely impactful response, it is imperative to incorporate an element of inclusivity, ensuring that the unique voices and perspectives of Afghan women are taken into account.

One Of The Taliban’s Monumental Ruins: Gender-Apartheid Policies

Only with a sustained, long-term commitment, bolstered by active collaboration with international organizations and a comprehensive strategy emphasizing the primacy of women’s rights and gender equality, can the G7 make significant strides in effectuating the deeply needed change in Afghanistan. This necessitates expanding the scope of their efforts beyond conventional diplomacy and sanctions, thereby unlocking the potential for transformative progress in this critical area.

The absence of an inclusive government in Afghanistan poses a significant challenge to stability and progress. A sustainable peace and future for the country can only be achieved through a government that represents the interests and aspirations of all Afghan citizens. The G7, as a collective voice of influential nations, could have exerted pressure on the Taliban to foster inclusivity and ensure that minority rights are respected and protected. Unfortunately, the issued statement from the G7 does not live up to this vital mandate. The international community would do well to take a more assertive stance in advocating for a truly inclusive governance structure in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan issues placed on the sidelines

The second perspective emphasized the G7’s mission to strengthen outreach to the Global South. The group sought to demonstrate its contributions to the issues that concern these nations.

Afghanistan, as part of the Global South, is a test case for this commitment. The G7 had a moral responsibility to ensure that the plight of Afghans, especially the most vulnerable, is not ignored. However, the shift of attention towards the “Global South” was mainly aimed at the influence of Russian and China. Thus, only a limited number of nations within the Global South were invited, and unfortunately, this meant that the issue of Afghanistan received scant attention.

Addressing Afghanistan’s issues would not have been just about resolving a single country’s crisis, but about reaffirming the values that the G7 represents and that the world needs. It should have been about demonstrating that the international order, based on the rule of law, isn’t just a concept but a practice that can, and should, be upheld even in the most challenging situations.

As the host of the G7, Japan held a unique position to drive the agenda and focus attention on pressing global issues like the Afghanistan crisis, which impacts global security, precipitates a humanitarian crisis, and affects regional stability. Given its strategic location in Asia, Japan’s security interests could be influenced by instability in Afghanistan. Additionally, Japan’s historic role in fostering international cooperation could have been leveraged to unite G7 nations in advocating for an inclusive government in Afghanistan, ensuring the rights of all citizens are respected. Unfortunately, the latest G7 meeting overlooked this opportunity.

The G7, therefore, should have taken a more robust stance on the situation in Afghanistan. It was incumbent on the G7 to leverage its combined influence to push for the restoration of women’s rights, the establishment of a legitimate government, and the protection of minority rights. The G7’s statement seemed strong towards ensuring that girls and women are once again allowed to attend schools and colleges, but a statement alone is not much unless it is followed by action.

In summary, as we navigate these tumultuous times and upon the conclusion of the summit, it is imperative for the G7 to prove that the international order it upholds extends beyond the boundaries of its member states. It must demonstrate that its commitment to the rule of law and its outreach to the Global South are not just theoretical constructs, but actual policies that have meaningful, practical impacts. In doing so the powers will affirm their role as a beacon of hope and a pillar of stability in a world that desperately needs both.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Potential for Mediation in Afghanistan 

Afghanistan was once the venue for the . The British Empire and the Soviet Union jostled for influence here. Today, external articles are involved too. Pakistan, the US, India, Iran, Russia, Turkey, China and the EU are involved in one way or another in Afghanistan. There are many organizations, regions and ethnic groups jostling for power as well.

With so many actors in the conflict, Afghanistan needs a neutral mediator. In the past, the likes of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran have tried to mediate but failed because they were unable to remain neutral. Qatar, however, is a neutral player in Afghanistan and its efforts deserve a closer look. 

Complicated Past but Profitable Future

Earlier mediation efforts by Qatar did not prevent the Taliban’s dramatic takeover in Afghanistan but Qatar’s leverage is considerable. Economic factors, neutrality, security, branding, and friendly connections with conservative Islamists make Qatar uniquely positioned to be a successful mediator. 

In the last two decades, Qatar sought to make an impact on the international stage by playing mediation roles since it lacks political clout and military power. Accordingly, Qatar authorities have demonstrated an ability to perform third-party dispute settlements and have also proved themselves to be successful local and worldwide investors. Qatar’s economic success has made them a major player on the global energy scene, heightening their importance in the eyes of public and private sectors  around the world.

Qatar’s foreign policy aim is to position itself as the champion of Arab diplomacy in the Arab and Islamic world, particularly the Middle East. Doha, Qatar’s Capital, sees itself as a beneficent mediator in all disputes. In addition, Qatar is not a member of any group in the Afghanistan conflict. This implies that Doha has no commercial ties to the Afghanistan war, which has earned Qatar the trust of other prominent actors in the conflict. 

Qatar has been heavily engaged in Afghanistan in recent years, using its advantage of historical experience to position itself as a key participant in several mediation procedures. They also established a modality for dispute resolution, which is called the Qatari Model of Conflict Resolution (QMCR). It is through this model that Doha has engaged in different conflict resolution processes in Middle Eastern and North African nations—as well as in the failed Afghanistan peace process.

Even though Qatar’s goal of ending the Afghanistan conflict has not yet been achieved, there is still potential that Doha can be successful in mediation efforts to resolve the newest phase of the crisis in Afghanistan.

A Breakthrough Plan for Qatar

The following seven steps can help Doha achieve success in ending the half-century conflict in Afghanistan. 

Step 1: The most important reason for Doha’s advantage in the Afghanistan peace process is Qatar hosting the Taliban. Many of the group’s leaders have lived in Qatar over the last 20 years and the group’s political office has long operated out of the country.

However, this could raise concerns about partiality and Qatar’s role in the conflict since the Taliban is an extremist and terrorist group. Therefore, Qatar should work to assure the people of Afghanistan and anti-Taliban groups of its intention to support a secure Afghanistan and to adopt an inclusive citizen-oriented democratic set-up. Qatar should open offices of the Taliban’s oppositions abroad, particularly an office for the National Resistance Front in Doha. This would lay the groundwork for building trust and direct talks between the conflicting factions.

Step 2: The nature of hostilities varies by location. Afghanistan’s history, culture, identity, and narratives are distinctly different from those of the Arab world, like Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Sudan. The lack of a clear definition of the relationships among ethnic groups and an effective government structure has caused the crisis to be extended. Therefore, mediation to define a social contract and build trust among the leaders, elites and intellectuals of Afghanistan will help solve the ongoing crisis. 

Step 3:  Doha has often used a checkbook approach, or financial leverage, during mediations. However, this is a potential challenge in the Afghanistan context. Doha’s financial assistance to the Taliban and the republic government often resulted in a short-term or shaky peace, like the temporary in 2020. However, Qatar’s leadership can use its clout to join the US and NATO as a hard leveraging factor through likely military means, alongside checkbooks. To mediate, a combination of financial and military leverage is required in Afghanistan given the Taliban’s ideological and rejectionist nature. 

Step 4: Since , US representatives have visited the Taliban in their Qatar headquarters, but the Qatari government has attempted to keep these visits private to the public. Doha thought it could break the ice between the Taliban and the USA by not publicly revealing the agenda or the significance of the meetings. However, Qatar’s covert approach to talking to the Taliban resulted in a lack of trust in Doha in parts of Afghanistan and anti-Taliban organizations. Therefore, Qatar should begin open negotiations instead.

Step 5: Since Doha’s aim is to bring all stakeholders to the table, the Qatari government should also use the QMCR approach both in and outside Afghanistan. For example, Doha even attempted to bring Iran and US officials to the table to talk about Iran’s nuclear .

Step 6: The QMCR model also faces challenges because of criticisms of Qatar’s approach to Afghanistan society. Many feel that Qatar has closer ties to Pashtunwali and the Taliban than the Persianized Tajiks because of Qatar’s allegiance to Salafi and Deobandi Orthodoxy. Some in Afghanistan also believe that Doha’s foreign policy strengthened the Taliban. To distinguish Qatar as a neutral player, it must gain the trust of its critics.  To do this, Qatar must be sensitive to the complexities of the socio-political fabric of Afghanistan. This is vital for ending the Afghanistan conflict.

Step 7: Qatar can also forestall future conflict in the new Taliban-led Afghanistan. This entails building trust between conflicted parties, which Doha must understand cannot be done overnight. QMCR’s major priority should be to reduce conflict between the National Resistance Forces, other anti-Taliban fighters, and the Taliban in various districts of Afghanistan.

The Best Way Forward 

Considering the half-century conflict in Afghanistan has domestic and international dimensions, Qatar has the opportunity to play an effective role as a powerful mediator. This can bring major achievements for Afghanistan, but also for Qatar’s foreign policy interests.

Qatar has projected its mediation capacities as part of its foreign policy brand, but its mediation efforts in international diplomacy have largely been unsuccessful. Establishing lasting peace is not only  important to end this  long-term crisis in Afghanistan, but Qatar can regain its reputation as a successful mediator.

Ultimately, the Qatar conflict resolution model must make adjustments while retaining its core principles. If the government of Qatar adopts this new approach to this complex crisis, it stands a strong chance of success.

[edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Between Success and Failure in Afghanistan: Advice for Qatar appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but its 120,000 inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians. They broke away from Baku in the early 1990s and Yerevan supported their fellow Armenians. This led to a war in which Armenia emerged on top. By 1993, Armenia not only gained control of Nagorno-Karabakh but also of Azerbaijan.

In 2020, war broke out again. Thanks to Turkish drones and large-scale military operations, Azerbaijan regained much of the territory it lost in the early 1990s. Now, its blockade of the Lachin Corridor is inflaming passions yet again.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken got Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev to meet in Munich. The post-Davos Munich Security Conference was a convenient excuse for the leaders to get together. Both sides claimed that they had made progress towards a peace deal. Yet a war of words broke out. Aliyev “accused Armenia of occupying Azerbaijan’s lands for almost 30 years.” Pashinyan claimed that “Azerbaijan has adopted a revenge policy” and was using the meeting for “enflaming intolerance, hate, aggressive rhetoric.”

A Tortured Past: Christianity, Islam and Communism

Both Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia tell us that Armenia became the first country to establish Christianity as its state religion. Apparently, in 300 CE as per the former and 301 AD as per the latter, Saint Gregory the Illuminator convinced King Tiridates III to convert to Christianity. The Armenian Apostolic Church is an independent Oriental Orthodox Christian church and has many similarities to the Russian Orthodox Church.

If Armenia is Christian, Azerbaijan is Muslim. In the early 16th century, Ismail I, the founder of the Safavid Dynasty conquered Azerbaijan. Ismail I proclaimed the Twelver denomination of Shia Islam as the official religion of the Persian Empire. While Iran is almost entirely Shia and Sunnis are , Azerbaijan follows a more syncretic version of Islam. The US State Department’s 2021 on International Religious Freedom tells us that Azerbaijan’s “constitution stipulates the separation of religion and state and the equality of all religions before the law.” It also tells us that of the 96% Muslim population, 65% are Shia and 35% Sunni. There is little internecine Muslim conflict, though non-Muslims still have a hard time in the country.

In the 19th century, Russia started gobbling up Azerbaijan as the Persian Empire weakened under the Qajar dynasty. Sunnis fled from Russian-controlled territory to Azerbaijan. As Russia took over, a modern Azeri nationalism arose. It emphasized a common Turkic heritage. Ties with Ottoman Turkey deepened while those with Qajar Persia weakened. To this day, Azerbaijan remains closer to Turkey than to Iran.

Azerbaijan also retains close ties with Moscow. It has spent much of the last two centuries under Moscow’s thumb. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Azerbaijan declared independence in 1918. This did not last long. Under Moscow’s rather heavy hand, the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was formed.

Armenia too is closely intertwined with Moscow. Until World War I, Armenia was part of the Ottoman Empire. Yet war inflamed suspicions about the loyalty of Amenians to Istanbul. Some Armenian volunteers were serving in the Imperial Russian Army. The  infamous 1915 Tehcir Law ordered the of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population to the Ottoman provinces of Syria and Iraq. Death marches into the desert and massacres led to the deaths of 800,000 to 1.5 million people. Forced Islamization of women and children sought to erase Armenian cultural identity and make them loyal subjects of the Ottoman sultan who was then the caliph of the entire Islamic world. This mass murder and cultural destruction has come to be known as the Armenian genocide.

World War I went badly for both Ottoman Turkey and Tsarist Russia. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres “provided for an independent Armenia, for an autonomous Kurdistan, and for a Greek presence in eastern Thrace and on the Anatolian west coast, as well as Greek control over the Aegean islands commanding the Dardanelles.” The Turks rejected this unfair treaty and fought back. Peace only came with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that established the boundaries of modern Turkey. A year earlier, the Soviet Red Army had annexed Armenia along with Azerbaijan and Georgia. Universalist communism snuffed out nationalism in this part of the world.

Communism Collapses, Nationalism Rises

In 1923, the Soviet Union established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Azerbaijan. About 95% of its population was Armenian. For the next 60 years, the region was peaceful thanks to the heavy-handed Soviet rule. During the disastrous 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghanistan War, Moscow’s authority weakened significantly. In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional legislature passed a resolution to join Armenia. Tensions rose, but the Soviets kept things under control.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, all hell broke loose. Armenia and Azerbaijan achieved independent statehood, and went to war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians in this region declared a breakaway state of Artsakh. This was unacceptable to Azerbaijan. Like the collapse of Yugoslavia, the results were tragic. The war caused over 30,000 casualties and created hundreds of thousands of refugees. As stated earlier, Armenia held the upper hand. 

By 1993, Armenia had gained control of Nagorno-Karabakh and occupied 20% of Azerbaijan’s geographic area. Peace only came in 1994 when Russia brokered a ceasefire that has come to be known as the . This left Nagorno-Karabakh with de facto independence with a self-proclaimed government in Stepanakert. However, this enclave was still heavily reliant on close economic, political and military ties with Armenia.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan were economic backwaters under Soviet rule. In 2011, Azerbaijan struck gold in the form of gas. Baku launched what has come to be known as the Southern Gas Corridor. Azerbaijan wrangled a deal with the European Commission to supply gas as far away as Italy. The country used gas proceeds to buy arms from both Turkey and Russia as well as modernize its military.

In early 2016, a broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh. Most analysts say that Azerbaijan triggered this conflict with the tacit, if not overt, acquiescence of Moscow. For many years, Baku had “been promising to liberate the territories occupied by the Armenians.” Neither were the Azerbaijani troops able to break through Armenian defenses in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor were the Armenians able to launch a counteroffensive. The truce reestablished the status quo.

In 2018, #MerzhirSerzhin—anti-government protests that have come to be known as the Velvet Revolution—broke out in Armenia and swept the old elites out of power. Serzh Sargsyan reluctantly stepped down as prime minister and Pashinyan took over. The new government to loosen ties with Russia without antagonizing Moscow, strengthen relations with Europe, and improve relations with neighboring countries, including Iran and Georgia.

Democracy in Armenia did not lead to peace in the region. As stated earlier, conflict broke out again in 2020. Azerbaijani forces crossed not only into the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh of Nagorno-Karabakh, but also into Armenia. Azerbaijani artillery strikes hit cities and villages deep within Armenian territory. More than 7,000 people died and hundreds, if not thousands, were wounded. Azerbaijan recaptured most of the territory it had lost in the 1990s. Three ceasefires brokered by Russia, France and the US failed. 

Eventually, Russia pushed through a ceasefire and sent 2,000 of its troops as peacekeepers. Armenia had to guarantee “the security of transport links” between the western regions of Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhichevan that lies within Armenia.

A Strange String Quartet: Russia, Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan

Since 1991, Russia had been Armenia’s main security and energy provider. The shared Orthodox Christian tradition has long made Yerevan Moscow’s most reliable in the region. Armenia is “the sole Russian ally in the region, the only host of a Russian military base, and “the only South Caucasus country to belong to the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation.”

Yet it seems that street protests for democracy sent alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin. Russian giant Gazprom hiked gas prices in 2019, forcing Armenia to make overtures to its southern neighbor Iran. Worse, Russia turned into a primary weapons supplier to Azerbaijan. This led to “a rather surprising crisis in Armenian-Russian relations.” Intelligence sources speak about a deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to back Azerbaijan because the former wanted to teach Armenia a lesson. Putin did not want Armenia to follow the Ukraine example and form the so-called wave of democracy that would sweep him out of office.

Turkey the 2020 ceasefire deal to be a “sacred success” for its ally Azerbaijan. In his characteristically colorful language, Erdoğan described Ankara’s support for Azerbaijan as part of Turkey’s quest for its “deserved place in the world order.” In a nutshell, Armenia-Azerbaijan has become a theater where big powers are yet again playing another version of the great game. Once, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire and the Russian Empire met here in the Caucasus, and jostled for dominance. Another jostling has now begun with Turkey, Iran and Russia—successors to the three empires—playing key roles.

Others have got involved. Unsurprisingly, one of them is the US. On September 11, 2022, Mikael Zolyan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explained how the West had Russia in mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In reality, the EU is playing a distant second fiddle. As the post-Davos Blinken-led negotiations in Munich have just demonstrated, the US is calling the shots, at least as of now. Naturally, Russia is not too pleased.

Other actors are involved too. Azerbaijan is allowing Ukraine’s military to fuel from its gas stations at no cost. Furthermore, Ukraine has always supported “the integrity of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict” despite having the fifth largest Armenian in the world. Georgia is in Ukraine’s camp and is pursuing both EU and NATO membership. Armenia is home to a major Russian that has ground forces, tanks, air defense, missiles, helicopters and Mig-29 multi-role fighters. These are Armenia’s insurance against total Turkish-Azerbaijani domination. Despite heartburn over Russia’s betrayal in 2020, Armenian public opinion still favors Russia over Ukraine in the current ongoing conflict. The waters in the Caucasus are becoming very muddy.

A Truly International Fight Club

Involvement of distant powers is muddying the waters further. Over the last few years, Pakistan has been self-consciously looking up to Turkey to craft its Islamic identity. The northern part of the Indian subcontinent was conquered by mamluk (i.e. manumitted slave) Turks in 1192. In recent years, Pakistan has been turning to these distant Turkish roots and Erdoğan is even more than the Turkish soap operas that are enthralling Pakistan. The Turkish leader is seen as a true representative of the Muslim world just as historical television drama is viewed as glorifying “the Muslim value system and the Ottoman Empire.” 

It is important to remember that Muslims in British India, modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, launched the 1919 Khilafat movement to restore the caliph to his throne in Turkey. They considered the Ottoman sultan to be their spiritual leader. Erdoğan has emerged as a new caliph for Pakistanis, many of whom are willing to fight and die for him.

The 51�Թ� Intelligence (FOI) Threat Monitor concluded that Turkey and Pakistan were institutionalizing strategic relations and developing the characteristics of a military alliance. With the continuing deterioration of Pakistan’s economic and political situation, the supply and willingness of young men to volunteer for jihadi causes is increasing too.

Sadly for Armenia, Pakistan has the capability to support Turkey and Azerbaijan with large numbers of well-trained regular or irregular troops in any future conflict. Pakistani regular military personnel already supplement local forces in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. The Pakistani state has rich experience of training jihadi volunteers in unconventional warfare and then sending them to fight in support of Islamic causes around the world. These irregular forces have appeared in Afghanistan, India, and Yemen, sometimes working with Pakistani special forces. With appropriate incentives, these fighters could be deployed against Armenia to support Azerbaijani and Turkish objectives, possibly in combination with elements of the Pakistani Army.

Luckily for Armenia, India has decided to support this beleaguered Christian nation. In September 2022, the two countries a $245 million worth of Indian artillery systems, anti-tank rockets and ammunition to the Armenian military. Two months later, Armenia a $155 million order for 155-millimeter artillery gun systems. Aliyev, who succeeded his father to become the strongman president of Azerbaijan in 2003, declared India’s supply of weapons to Armenia as an “unfriendly move.” India made this move only after years of provocation by Erdoğan who has sided with Pakistan on Kashmir. According to Glenn Carle, FOI senior partner and retired CIA officer, India’s sale to Armenia makes strategic sense and is a play for great power status.

In a nutshell, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has ramifications far beyond the region. The US wants Armenia to emulate Georgia and Ukraine, and join the ranks of free democracies. The EU wants peace in the Caucasus and cheap Azerbaijani gas to replace disrupted Russian supplies. Russia wants the Pashinyan government, which is increasingly unpopular after defeat in 2020, to fall. Yet it cannot and will not allow Armenia, an Orthodox Christian nation, to be completely subjugated by its Muslim neighbors.

Thanks to religion and ethnicity, Turkey and Azerbaijan see Armenia as a historic enemy. Both want to teach Yerevan a lesson. So does Ukraine and perhaps even Georgia. Curiously, mullah-run Iran wants to counter the growing influence of fellow Muslims—largely Sunni Turkey and majority Shia Azerbaijan—in the region. It fears that a powerful Azerbaijan could strive for the integration of Nakhchivan, the Azeri enclave in Armenia, and Azeri-majority areas in Iran. Therefore, Tehran is selling gas to energy-hungry Armenia. Thanks to Pavlovian cultural deference to Turkey, Pakistan sees the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict as jihad and its madrassa-trained young men might provide cannon fodder for this conflict. Meanwhile, India is responding to the pan-Islamism threat of Turkey and Pakistan by supporting a potentially valuable ally. 

The die is cast for a riveting saga, which promises to have more twists and turns than Dirilis Ertugrul.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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A 2021 by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) tells us that the US is the leader in research and development. Thanks to its top-class universities, fantastic talent pool, vast capital, innovative culture and extraordinary ecosystem, the US dominates “electronic design automation (EDA), core intellectual property (IP), chip design, and advanced manufacturing equipment.”

When it comes to manufacturing, which is referred to as fabrication in the industry, East Asia is top dog. Gone are the days of Fairchild when a group of eight brilliant engineers could walk off to launch the modern semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley. Now, manufacturing semiconductors needs massive capital investments. New foundries can “cost between and can take three to five years to build.”

Why Semiconductors Are a Really Big Deal

To run such a capital-intensive industry, government backing helps. So does robust infrastructure and a skilled workforce. BCG rightly tells us that East Asia has all these ingredients to make its semiconductor industry thrive. China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have followed strong industrial policies, backing the semiconductor industry as a national priority. The US, where this industry began, now makes a mere 12% of the world’s semiconductors.

Taiwan’s Extraordinary Success in Semiconductors

In assembly, packaging and testing, China leads because of its cost advantage. Its neighbors make more advanced stuff. As per BCG, “all of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity—in nodes below 10 nanometers—is currently located in South Korea (8%) and Taiwan (92%).” According to some, Taiwan is the Mecca of the semiconductor industry.

The biggest success story in the country is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). It is the largest contract chipmaker in the world. In 2021, Kathrin Hille of The Financial Times about a TSMC plant that would make 3 nanometer semiconductor chips, which would be 70% faster and more power efficient than the most advanced in production at the time. TSMC has a history of making big investments that take a while to generate returns. In 2021, it budgeted $25-28 billion for capital investment. Competitors in the US have struggled to keep up because Wall Street forces them to focus on quarterly earnings and, until the 2022 CHIPS Act, the government offered few goodies.

TSMC has also invested wisely. It has plowed money into developing cutting-edge technology. The company has constructed giant fabrication plants, known as “fabs.” Hille’s 2021 reportage described a fab that measured 160,000 square meters, the equivalent of 22 football (soccer) fields. TSMC has not only on economy of scale but also efficiency of operations. The company achieves 95% yield in its factories. This means that 19 out of the 20 chips it makes are perfect. 

The success of TSMC and other Taiwanese semiconductor companies owes a great deal to the national culture. Taiwan’s rigorous education system churns out high-quality electrical engineers and excellent technicians. The proverbial East Asian work ethic also helps. Employees work extraordinarily hard to maintain high production standards. 

So far, location has helped too. Since Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 economic reforms, China has grown spectacularly. After joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, the Middle Kingdom has become the factory of the world. It is the largest manufacturer of electronics. As China’s next door neighbor, Taiwan’s location made the country an ideal location for semiconductor manufacturing and a strategic hub for the industry.

Geopolitical Typhoons Threaten Taiwan

Taiwan’s location and success are both a blessing and a curse. As mentioned above, location played a part in Taiwanese success. It has played a part in making the country integral to the semiconductor global supply chain. This global reliance on Taiwan might compel the US to support this breakaway island more robustly against China. Yet this threat comes precisely because Taiwan is next door to China and the legacy of a civil war that began in the 1930s divides the two. 

In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) triumphant. Its rival, the Kuomintang (KMT), fled Mainland China and took refuge in Taiwan, which they named as the Republic of China (ROC). The CCP-led People’s Republic of China (PRC) believes in the One-China principle and seeks eventual “unification” with ROC. In Beijing’s eyes, Taiwan is a renegade province that must return to the fold just as Hong Kong.

As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster

Increasingly, the Taiwanese do not find reunification a palatable idea. The that kept tempers under control is now fraying. This agreement allowed the CCP and KMT to kick into the long grass the tricky question of which of their two governments was the legitimate, exclusive representative of “China.” Instead, both of them focused on more immediate practical matters.

Unlike China, Taiwan is a rambunctious democracy of 23 million people. In 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen, led her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to victory. She has refused to endorse the 1992 Consensus. This has caused great offense to President Xi Jinping who has brought back a Mao-style personality cult to China. Under him, China has become ultranationalist and hyper-aggressive. In recent years, Beijing’s “” diplomacy has unleashed a torrent of online abuse, misinformation and disinformation. The temperature in the Taiwan Strait has been rising.

Top analysts in the US have been worrying about the superpower’s reliance on Taiwan. They argue this semiconductor superpower is a single point of failure. Therefore, the US must develop its semiconductor industry again. President Joe Biden and the Congress have taken note. As referred to earlier, the CHIPS Act was enacted last year. In the words of the , this legislation will “lower costs, create jobs, strengthen supply chains, and counter China.” 

It is not only the US that is spending tens of billions of dollars on semiconductor production. The EU is also getting into the act. Japan and South Korea are investing as well. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is China. Beijing is putting in hundreds of billions of dollars to move up the semiconductor industry value chain—make complex high-value chips, not just simpler low-value ones. Such massive investments by competitor nations could threaten Taiwan’s current top dog status in the semiconductor industry.

There is another wrinkle for Taiwanese industry. The US has instituted a series of measures to China’s access to cutting-edge semiconductor chips, technology and manufacturing equipment. Historians have drawn parallels between this measure to the US 1939-41 sanctions on Japan. As per , these “sanctions so boxed in the imperial government that in the end there seemed no better option than to gamble on surprise attack.” Cutting off China from semiconductor capability “is a lot like cutting Japan off from oil in 1941.” Beijing’s incentives to attack its island neighbor for its semiconductor fab plants have just increased and so have Taiwan’s headaches.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In March 2021, the Kamal Khan Dam finally after years of setback on the lower Helmand. Naturally, it was met with animus in Iran. In 1973, the two signed the . The agreement guaranteed Iran with a monthly allocation of water from the river. But Tehran insists that its neighbor has consistently failed to hold its end of the deal.

According to Kabul, the dam was built to solve many of the region’s vast infrastructural and agricultural challenges, such as providing in the Nimruz Province with a steady supply of water and electricity. However, Tehran has attempted to halt its construction for years, maintaining that it would interrupt the water supply that feeds the Hamoun wetlands. 

The Destiny of Pakistan’s Totalitarian Proxy Regime in Afghanistan

At the inauguration, former President Ashraf Gani , “Afghanistan would no longer give free water to anyone, so Iran should provide fuel to Afghans in exchange for water.” Not long after, the country came under the control of the Taliban. 

In late , Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned his counterpart, Afghanistan’s Amir Khan Muttaqi, that prohibiting Tehran from its rightful access to the Helmand River will only cause further strain to an already splintered relationship. President Ebrahim Raisi, too, urged serious action. 

This article will attempt to address the following question: Is Afghanistan legally permitted to divert the natural course of the Helmand River? Before we begin, let’s underscore the key elements of this bilateral accord.

An Overview of the Helmand River Treaty

According to the Helmand River Treaty of 1973, Afghanistan must deliver water from the Helmand River to Iran at a rate of 22 cubic meters per second per annum (normal water year) with an additional four cubic meters per second for “goodwill and brotherly relations.” This would supply Iran with an annual average of 556,000 acre-feet or 820 million cubic meters under normal conditions. 

But although the treaty guarantees Iran’s access to the Helmand River, Article V gives Afghanistan full rights to the remaining water supply. Article V begins by stipulating Iran’s rightful allocation as specified in the previous articles. However, it continues by stating that Afghanistan, “shall retain all rights to the balance of the water of the Helmand River and may make such use or disposition of the water as it chooses.” 

Afghanistan Is Losing Faith in the Taliban

The final paragraph of the article emphasizes that Iran is only entitled to the specified amount of water agreed upon, irrespective if  “additional amounts of water may be available” and “be put to beneficial use.” 

Thus, Afghanistan unequivocally has unilateral rights over the remaining water supply of the Helmand River. This means that it has the power to implement agricultural, hydroelectric, and reservoir projects as it sees fit. 

Afghanistan’s sole responsibility is not to pollute the water or take any action that will deprive Iran of its water right entirely or partially. Article V must be read along with Article II (Iran water rights), III (monthly distribution), and IV (i.e., climate change). An argument based on the first paragraph of Article V without considering the context of the treaty and its other provisions will end in unreasonable conclusions.

No Harm, No Foul

That the Helmand River Treaty permits Afghanistan the right to pursue developmental projects over the remaining waters is incontrovertible. However, the question remains whether the development of dams or canals is permissible under customary international law. 

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s Madrassas Increase and Harbor Terrorists

The Helmand River is considered to be an international or transboundary watercourse. The two neighbors are therefore legally obligated to share the river’s waters. The principle of equitable and reasonable utilization and the no-harm rule is regarded as the cornerstones of international water law and were included in the UN Watercourse Convention in . 

According to the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization, all states are obligated to “use an international watercourse in a manner that is equitable and reasonable vis-a-vis other states sharing the watercourse.” The no-harm requires states not to cause significant harm to other states. More precisely, “ countries should not use their territorial waters in ways that cause damage and undesirable impact to downstream co-riparian countries.”

Indeed, states have an equal right to an equitable share of a shared river. But the term “equitable” must not be confused with “equal.” Every state has the right to use water equitably but is not entitled to an equal share of the water. Therefore, under customary international law, it is permissible for Afghanistan to develop projects on the Helmand River, so long as they do not cause significant environmental damage to its neighbor. 

It should be stated that without clearly understanding the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization, any activity will be deemed a violation. Such astrict is neither supported by state practice nor by case law.

Appeal to the UN to Protect Hazaras in Afghanistan

To conclude, neither the Helmand River Treaty nor customary international law denies Afghanistan the right to construct Kamal Khan Dam. It is not a violation of the two aforementioned components of international law. Instead, the Helmand river treaty gives Afghanistan an absolute right to use the remaining water of the Helmand River as it chooses.

What Needs to be Done?

Clearly, the passage of the Helmand River Treaty in 1973, has not led to any peaceful resolution between Iran and Afghanistan. The terms of the agreement have repeatedly been violated, according to Tehran. But Kabul has always insisted that these claims are baseless. 

Iran has complained before that the proper allocation of water was not delivered to them. But these complaints were made at a time when the Helmand River Basin was under drought which severely reduced the river’s water flow. Nonetheless, this must be addressed.

Before, the construction of Kamal Khan Dam, Iran wasn’t ready at all to build these three joint hydrometric stations. It was only agreed upon in the 21st meeting of commissioners (October 2019) when Afghanistan was about to inaugurate Kamal Khan Dam. Kamal Khan Dam is a regulatory dam that diverts/regulate the water of the Helmand river. Before the construction of the Kamal Khan Dam, the water of the Helmand river was flowing to Iran uninterrupted.

To solve this impasse, Afghanistan and Iran must: jointly determine places of delivery and construct joint hydrometric stations as defined under Article III of the treaty. Joint hydrometric stations will settle the issue of the amount of water that is required to be delivered to Iran. Each issue has been addressed by the Helmand River Commissioners who’ve convened at least twenty-five times in the past 20 years.��

Iran has always been against the building of joint hydrometric stations. The reason is that Iran had been receiving more water during normal and above-normal water years. The construction of joint hydrometric stations would regulate their water share more strictly.

An agreement was reached to build joint hydrometric stations in the 21st meeting of the Joint Committee of Commissioners of Helmand River. However, it remains only on paper. Similarly, in August 2022, Afghanistan and Iran again agreed to a timeline for the construction of joint hydrometric stations. But experience shows that it will take years to complete.

In the meantime, Iran should stop digging wells and installing heavy-duty water pumps along the river. Iran has expanded its irrigation and installed pumps through which it diverts 26 million cubic water annually to Zahedan. Such projects will only increase Iran’s water demand. Furthermore, Afghanistan should register the Gowd-e-Zera lake as an international wetland as it is considered to be a part of the Hamouns. [Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The term hegemony of masculinity, which was first used by , describes the social hierarchy that tends to validate the superiority of masculinity over feminine, and is founded on historical precedent or adheres to societal norms. It defines a male-dominated social structure that denies females with feminine traits the right to participate in public life. Tragically, this hegemony leads to a heteronormative social structure and the predominance of heterosexism in Islamic doctrines.

The Destiny of Pakistan’s Totalitarian Proxy Regime in Afghanistan

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The political discriminatory ideologies of apartheid have been widely employed in several fields of social science ever since first articulated it. is the systematic discrimination of individuals based on whether they were born a man or a woman. Gender-apartheid and the term sexism are connected through historical and cultural roots, which are still tangible in the modern world. 

With six sections and 30 articles, the UN General Assembly approved the on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1979. This treaty emphasizes and puts into practice the rights of women and girls around the world. It protects them in areas like discrimination, policy measures, the defense of fundamental freedoms and rights, sex-role stereotyping and prejudice, prostitution, political and public life, representation, nationality, education, employment, health, economic and social benefits, law, marriage, and family life. It has since been ratified and adopted by one hundred eighty nine states. However, despite having the pact in 1980, gender discrimination still exists in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s rule.

The Taliban runs a de facto government that is not officially recognized. They are centered on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, and have close ties to the terrorist group . On August 15, 2021, the Taliban took back , and since then they have ruled Afghanistan with an Islamic system based on the Deobandi school. The Taliban progressively began to implement their ideologically-based teachings throughout the nation; among them, the Taliban are passing anti-feminine legislation and marketing them as Islamic teachings through their media apparatus. Their curriculum is dominated by masculinity and violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The Taliban’s Motivation

In the 1948 , the UN lists the right to an education as one of the most important human rights. This is a cosmic and global right, not one that is exclusive to a place or location. Everyone is entitled to a high-quality education, regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, country, or gender. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes the value of education, which includes tolerance, community, and mutual understanding among all people, as well as the right to be educated.

Afghanistan Is Losing Faith in the Taliban

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In opposition to international values, the Taliban regime has denied Afghan girls and women the chance to enroll in schools and institutions. The Taliban government may be utilizing the education of Afghan women as a tool to pressure Western democracies to embrace them. However, It is evident that nothing has changed to date, despite the fact that sanctions against the Taliban’s administration have gotten tougher.

Under the Taliban government, women no longer play an active part in society. At the cabinet, provincial, or municipal levels, no women have been appointed by the Taliban. In actuality, the Taliban rule has usurped the social lives of women and, by relegating them to the private sphere, has diminished their stature. The Taliban regime’s workforce is patriarchal and sexist in this sense. It might be argued that patriarchy has a significant impact on the Taliban’s administrative structure.

The Taliban bureaucratic system’s gender-centricity cannot be boiled down to a call for recognition. In fact, one of the tenets of the Deobandi school, which forms the Taliban ideology, values that the public sphere should be gender-centric. As a phenomenon, work is considered to be man-centered. The that permits women to work in a setting where there is no chance for conversation with males is the only area where the Deobandi school has shown flexibility so far on women’s right to employment. According to this, the Taliban’s manifesto has a clause that is said to support the barring of women from bureaucratic roles.

Consequences of Gender Apartheid Policies

The Taliban’s anti-women policies diminish the idea of women as fully human beings. Women are denied citizenship rights and are not regarded as social contract signatories under this system. Due to the Taliban regime’s treatment of women, Afghan society has regressed both politically and economically. A political setback is the absence of women in the public sphere, the centralization of Afghan bureaucracy, and its concentration on the position of the man as well as the political exclusion of women from these positions.

Women have less economic influence under the Taliban government. The Taliban system makes women into workers with very low human capital, little incomes, and limited opportunities for growth in the workplace by denying them the access to study. Women who work as men’s employees won’t advance because they lack the capacity to handle affairs. On the one hand, this economic paralysis of women contributes to the inefficiency of half the people of the society, and on the other, it causes the economic paralysis of the entire nation.The Taliban administration imposed gender segregation and patriarchal control on Afghan society by defining women in the private sphere. Afghanistan’s radicalization eventually will only lead to disaster and the emergence of a radical generation. [ edited this article]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Taliban is largely considered a pariah by the international community. No country has officially recognized the Islamic Emirate as the legitimate Afghan government or normalized diplomatic relations with it. As the Taliban seek solutions to its severe credibility problem, the group is largely out of touch with the basic needs of the Afghans. The country is still riddled with major problems: half of its population are on the brink of and terrorist attacks targeting as well as minorities are a regular occurrence.

Balancing past and present

Since the capture of Kabul, the Taliban to win some credibility on the international stage by presenting itself as the only force capable of stabilizing and uniting Afghanistan after twenty years of civil conflict. This is an old narrative that the radical group promoted when they first rose to power in 1996.

The Destiny of Pakistan’s Totalitarian Proxy Regime in Afghanistan

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However, since a mere dusting operation of the old playbook is unlikely to work in the current circumstances, the Taliban has signaled an interest in doing things differently this time. Its foreign policy outlook seems to fall somewhere between abiding by and shaping.

The Taliban still sticks to the idea of isolating  Afghanistan at a global level. The leadership believes the country’s detachment is a viable tool to preserve the regime’s stability and longevity. 

In its previous ruling experience, the Taliban had limited, rudimental knowledge of international politics and showed minimal interest in establishing basic diplomatic relations with external actors. Their victory over the Afghan regular forces and the experience of dealing on an equal footing with the US in the Doha talks have further emboldened the regime.

However, although the Taliban aims to continue its isolationism, the trauma of the regime’s fall in 2001 and the two-decade-long foreign occupation afterwards have prompted them to evaluate alternative strategies for its agenda. 

Afghanistan Is Losing Faith in the Taliban

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For over twenty years, the Taliban has sought a comeback, and now that the Islamic Emirate is in place again the radical group is determined to prevent a second overthrow. Recent events demonstrate a more mature, pragmatic foreign policy and one that makes greater use of diplomacy.

Back to the drawing board

Since Kabul’s takeover, the Islamic Emirate has sought to cultivate with several state and non-state actors. High-ranking figures in the Taliban hierarchy – the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Maulvi Amir Khan Muttaqi and the acting Deputy Foreign Ministry Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai – are a few examples. 

Aside from meetings with foreign state officials, the Taliban has also been in dialogue with prominent humanitarian agencies. Most recently, the Taliban held talks with the Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, and the Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Afghanistan Eloi Fillion.

There is a two-pronged goal for these engagements: cleansing the Taliban’s tarnished image while building diplomatic credibility. 

First, the radical group seeks to draw a wedge between itself and the widespread perception of the Taliban as a movement driven by an uncompromising, strict Islamic morale. Second, the Taliban aims to secure diplomatic capital and gain political legitimacy in the global arena. 

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s Madrassas Increase and Harbor Terrorists

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The Taliban aims to reshape its former image as a violent and extremist regime.By publicly displaying its willingness to play by the rules, the Taliban attempts to cast itself as a trustworthy partner in the eyes of the international community.

While it remains to be seen whether these efforts stem from a genuine spirit of cooperation or a pragmatic calculus, it is undeniable that the Taliban’s diplomatic campaign has improved their international standing..  If successful, the group could be endowed with a number of high-priced gains. Gaining control over the overseas frozen Afghan assets and securing full travel mobility for senior Taliban figures are among the most sought-after rewards.

Until September 2022, the bulk of the reserves of Afghanistan’s Central Bank –$7 billion – were detained by the US-based financial institutions. Then, Washington half of the frozen Afghan assets to a joint Swiss-Afghan trust fund, known as the Afghan Fund 

The fund was designed to support Afghanistan’s Central Bank and is inaccessible to the Taliban . However, chances to funnel funds into Afghanistan while eluding the Taliban’s oversight look grim. As Graeme Smith, a Senior Consultant at the International Crisis Group, “the Taliban have proven they will block efforts to circumvent their government, and aid experts warn that parallel structures cannot substitute for Afghan state institutions.”

Appeal to the UN to Protect Hazaras in Afghanistan

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The freezing of funds, the weapons embargos, and the UN travel ban on dozens of Taliban officials are among the longest-running measures to keep a lid on the group. Travelwaivers were occasionally  approved to allow the participation of high-profile Taliban representatives in third-country forums

Thelack of on the terms for extending the travel ban exemption for 13 Taliban officials led to its suspension. Whether the UN will  use thetravel to coax the regime into making  meaningful concessions remains an open question. Although the Taliban has e shown strong resilience against pressures to compromise, their ambition to continue  its diplomatic machine maybe a cause for change.

The moment of truth on the horizon

While the Taliban has made some impressive gains, the Afghan political landscape still remains in flux. The Taliban neither exercise capillary control across all the rural districts nor do they have a monopoly of power over the different non-Pashtun ethnic groups. 

Pockets of resistance scattered across the country continueto the Taliban’s rule. Ejections of local leaders who bandwagoned with the Taliban in their rise to power are becoming more frequent. The result is a gradual weakening of the radical group’s clout and a thinning of its ranks. However, although some cracks are opening from within, they still the most powerful actor on the ground.

The Taliban-Occupied Afghanistan Threatens Global Security

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Nations around the world still look at the Taliban with skepticism, but the pragmatic needs to prevent Afghanistan from becoming once again a sanctuary for international terrorism, to keep a lid on the drugs trade, and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people have turned the Taliban into a near-indispensable actor. The radical group banks on the fact that no matter its status within  the international community, regional and global powers will continue to seek its cooperation to tackle these pressing security concerns.

However, two main problems remain. First, the Taliban have taken few steps in managing the country’s serious security concerns. Its verbal assurance still rings hollow and the same pathologies that tainted its past rule – such as targeted killings of Tajiks and Hazara, enforced disappearing, and extortion practices – seem to be present today. As the UN recently, the Afghan humanitarian condition looks grim and the Taliban struggles to meet basic international standards for human rights and respect for minority groups. 

Second, the Taliban’s endgame is quite elusive. While it seeks to legitimize its leadership by adopting state-resembling rhetoric and posture, the regime’s long-term ambitions and foreign policy trajectories remain hard to predict.

Although it is debatable if the latest developments reflect agenuine or , the Taliban is determined to do whatever it takes to prevent its brand-new regime from experiencing a second failure. The old playbook based on neutrality and balancing posture remains the bedrock of the Taliban’s foreign policy compass, especially when it comes to fending off the pressure of external forces. 

However, acknowledging the vast costs of diplomatic isolationism has prompted the radical group to do things differently this time and to seek minimal approval from foreign observers. While it is too early to tell if the Taliban’s recalibration will help the regime’s credibility, it is clear that it is capable of adjusting its foreign policy outlook to serve its evolving strategic interests better.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Taliban is the product of Pakistan’s proxy wars driven by ideology. Thousands of religious madrassas that have taught millions promote extremism and violence. Their was developed in the 1980s for the mujahideen to unleash violence on Soviet troops. As is well known, the US and Saudi Arabia supported the mujahideen during the Cold War. In fact, hardline Saudi Wahhabi ideology deeply influenced the madrassas, the mujahideen and the Taliban.

When the US decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, the government collapsed and the Pashtun-led Taliban took over. Much of the world was stunned by this speedy takeover. Pakistan was the only major actor prepared for this development. Note that the Taliban  took over on August 15, 2021 and, as early as September 4, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),was in . Hameed helped settle the Taliban’s internal disputes and paved the path for a caretaker government.

The same thing but different context

In many ways, the Taliban’s victory is a repetition of Afghanistan’s history. The 2020 US-Taliban deal was consistent with the 1988 Afghanistan-Pakistan Geneva Accords. That deal paved the way for the Soviet withdrawal and, subsequently, the collapse of the Afghan government.  For many Afghanistan experts, the US “peace” negotiation with the Taliban was a “” process.

Afghanistan’s government was excluded from the 2020 deal. The US made a deal with a misogynistic, ethnonationalist, fundamentalist terrorist organization and abandoned the democratically elected government. This led to its speedy collapse.

Once the Taliban took over Kabul, they captured all the institutions of the state that had been built over 20 years since 2001. The previous Taliban regime fell because the US intervened after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Now, the Taliban are back and they have captured billions of dollars worth of US military equipment, which they are using to consolidate their power.

Although there is uncertainty in the region concerning the Taliban’s future, regional players, such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and China, have adopted a strategy of .  The Taliban also control all sources of the country’s income, which sustains their forces and protects their regime.

Contrary to the rhetoric and promises of the so-called Taliban 2.0, they have been pursuing the same brutal policies that characterized their reign in the 1990s. Extrajudicial killings, ethnic cleansing, discrimination against women and other oppressive measures are back. They have trampled civil society and lack political legitimacy.

The Talibanization of Afghanistan’s society is proceeding swiftly. They are building thousands of madrassas to promote their radical ideology. They have banned schools for girls, changed the education curriculum and impose their radical interpretations of Islam upon an ethnically diverse nation.

The Taliban have also maintained their relationship with terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. The killing of Aiman al-Zawahiri by the US on July 31, 2022 in Kabul demonstrates that the Taliban is still harboring top leaders of al-Qaeda and is a haven for terrorists.

Brutal repression, little legitimacy

The Taliban have imposed a primitive totalitarian regime on a diverse country. They have failed to create a formal political process or a vision for the country. Instead, the Taliban have used violence, rural Pashtun tribalism and hardline Islamic Sharia law on ethnic groups with very different cultures. They are marginalizing and often killing non-Pashtuns, particularly the Shia Hazaras.

Pashtuns are now in-charge of areas. Naturally, the Hazaras feel their homeland has been occupied. The Taliban have also changed signs in universities from Farsi to Pashto even in Persian-speaking areas such as Balkh in the north. Signs outside ministries are also in . Naturally, non-Pashtuns are not pleased.

The Taliban’s policy toward women is extremely harsh. They have re-instituted their “,” decimating existing women’s rights, such as their right to travel, work, education, and participate in public life. Torture and extra-judicial killings are now common practice.

The Taliban’s highly centralized model of governance does not, cannot and will not function well. Once, Afghanistan’s kings had the mandate to control the country on behalf of a colonial power through a highly centralized system. This history created a highly centralized model of governance and fostered a psychology of ethnic domination within the Pashtun elites. The Taliban are deeply committed to this model.  

This centralized model has taken a hit. Both during the Soviet occupation and the 20-year democratic experiment, concentration of power abated. Unsurprisingly, the anti-Taliban fronts are calling for a decentralized political setup. Centralization is associated with brutality, dysfunction, and a crisis of legitimacy. The current centralization is no different. It is brutal, violent and oppressive.

The Taliban rejects elections and rules the countrywithout any formally-defined or system of checks and balances. There are no political processes that establish legitimacy. Most of the Taliban leaders and commanders are not familiar with Afghan society, and they cannot speak Persian, the lingua franca of the country.

The Taliban has also failed to behave like a normal state at the international level. No country has recognized them even when they are compelled to interact with the Taliban. Even did not recognize them unilaterally. Their links with terrorist groups have been an added concern.

It seems unlikely that the Taliban should succeed in the long term. Their Pashtun ethnonationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, violent oppression and extreme centralization does not work in multiethnic Afghanistan. As proxies of Pakistan, the Taliban do not even command legitimacy among all Pashtuns.

More war and the danger of mass atrocities

The situation in Afghanistan is moving towards another round of conflict. The people are finally rising up against the brutal regime. In recent months, an insurrection is in the north. The Taliban is crushing this with its customary savagery. The international community has largely overlooked in the north but resistance is strengthening.

In the online sphere, the “#StopHazaraGenocide” has been tweeted more than 17 million times and sparked protests in cities around the world, which shows that the Taliban failed to provide security. As continue, so do protests. Women are protesting too.  Hundreds of them have taken to the streets in the provinces of Kabul, Balkh, Bamiyan, Herat and Ghazni since the return of the Taliban to power but were repressed by the Taliban.

Given rising protests, the Taliban are likely to find it difficult to rule. To support the people, the international community must systematically monitor and document violence in Afghanistan. The Security Council and the Human Rights Council at the UN have a critical role to play. Overlooking the Taliban’s violence and building relationships with them is a bad idea. It sends a signal that they can continue their repressive rule. The international community must put pressure on the Taliban to to stop human rights violations, recommence girls education, and conduct political dialogue with other ethnicities, groups and stakeholders. If the international community fails to act, there will be even more death and suffering in Afghanistan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Recent developments seem undesirable for the Pakistani establishment, which had high hopes for a negotiated settlement between Islamabad and the TTP. After two rounds of official negotiations, Pakistan seems to be opting for a military solution. In April 2022, the Pakistani military carried out a against TTP hideouts in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. As per the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative, these killed 20 children and 47 civilians. Tweets by the UNICEF representative caused in western capitals because sleeping children died.

It seems that what appeared a victory last year is turning out to be a strategic blunder. Pakistan has empowered the Afghan Taliban and, in the process, the TTP as well. Now, how can Islamabad protect its security interests threatened by the TTP? Can Pakistan counter the strategic insecurity emanating from its western client state led by its protégé, the Taliban?

Peace Talks Do Not Promise Long Term Peace

As per Atul Singh and Tabish Forugh, “the Taliban provide inspiration, ideology, organization, support, and expertise to Islamic fundamentalists from around the world and especially in South Asia.” The TTP is a more extreme version of the Taliban. Inspired by their cousins in Afghanistan, the TTP wants to establish a similar fundamentalist Islamist form of governance in the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan. Recently, it has unleashed attacks on Pakistani cities and towns.

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This was to be expected. The TTP has the support of the Taliban. The two organizations share the same extremist ideology and have similar long term goals. The TTP has become very active this year. On April 2, it kicked off , an offensive that will include “martyrdom attacks, ambushes, bombings, counter-attacks, targeted attacks, laser and sniper attacks.”

Pakistan has responded both militarily and diplomatically. On May 9, a Pakistani arrived in Kabul to have talks with the TTP leadership. It was the third attempt by Pakistan’s leadership to negotiate with the TTP. The Pakistani side was led by Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed who spoke directly with Noor Wali Mehsood, the TTP chief. These talks were mediated by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s Acting Interior Minister and the leader of the Haqqani Network. Haqqani has long been a close Pakistani ally.

The talks were a protracted affair. The parties took a break and reconvened. On May 18, they announced a ceasefire. The TTP promised to halt its attacks on Pakistani soil while Islamabad released 30 high-level TTP from its prisons. 

For all these tangible results, most analysts take the view that these talks are unlikely to lead to long term peace. Both sides have such contradictory long term goals that it is just a matter of time before dissolve into conflict.

Implications for the US and India

The US is now focused on Ukraine. It has abandoned Afghanistan and taken its eye off the security situation in South Asia. The Taliban is now supporting terror groups with similar extremist Islamist ideology. One of them is its old ally, . As per the UN Sanction Monitoring Team Report, al-Qaeda operatives have already found safe havens and have started bases in Afghanistan.

The US must recalibrate its Afghanistan policy given the increased terror activity in the region. The TTP and al-Qaeda represent the tip of the iceberg. The Taliban is likely to export terror first to Central and South Asia, and then to Europe and the US itself. 

As a non-Muslim nation, India ranks high as a target for Islamists. A nation of kafirs is always a good target for jihad. For centuries, Pashtun tribesmen swept down from their mountain strongholds to raid the plains for gold and women in wave after wave of jihad. Therefore, India has to form a more robust policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Already, there have been in Kabul but India needs to have clarity about its long term strategic goals.

Pakistan now has a client regime in Afghanistan. However, it faces a TTP problem. Also, the Taliban itself is divided. Islamabad does not have it all its own way. Furthermore, the Hazaras face violent persecution, if not ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Tajiks are also being hunted down. Both the US and India can play a major role in supporting persecuted groups and containing the Taliban as well as its extremist jihadi allies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In March 2022, the two leaders met for the first time in Kandahar, the traditional hub for the Taliban. Today, the Haqqanis and Kandaharis are jostling for pole position. Unknown to most outside Afghanistan, these two factions have irreconcilable political agendas rooted in two mutually exclusive interpretations of Islamic governance. Both timeworn interpretations have their fanatical adherents, which makes not only compromise but also dialogue difficult.

The Haqqanis see their leader as a caliph. Hence they have given him the title of khalifa. The Kandaharis refer to their boss as the leader of the faithful. Hence, he goes by the title amir al-mu’minin. This seemingly minor difference in their titles is a big deal. The Haqqanis are universalists who see their big boss as a potential, if not real, leader of all Muslims. The Kandaharis are satisfied with creating a pure Islamic emirate in their region and do not have pretensions to world domination.

What Is the Significance of the Haqqani-Kandahari Meeting?

The meeting in Kandahar revealed that the Taliban’s factional politics had reached the point of no return. Unable to agree upon sharing power, a civil war between the Taliban factions is inevitable. Both camps are powerful enough to challenge the other’s ambition of dominating the national scene completely.

Interestingly, as the group continues to disappoint its regional backers, the chances of a foreign mediator settling the Taliban’s internal division are slim. Last September, Pakistan’s chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency traveled to Kabul to force Haqqanis and the Kandaharis to come to a power-sharing caretaker administration. Notably, the mediation of the ISI chief produced more division than harmony.

For now, it seems that the Taliban lacks political maturity and capacity to avert prolonged internal division. Given the structural and political differences of the caliphate and the emirate,  the future of Taliban governance depends on how the fight between the Kandahari and Haqqanis plays out.

What is an Emirate, What is a Caliphate and Why is it a Big Deal?

In Islamic political litreature amir al-mu’minin is a nominal title given to persons in command of particular aspects of Muslim affairs.  The caliph, however, is the title given to the Prophet’s successors. This leader is in control of the Islamic ummah’s political structure.

The amir al-mu’minin was first used to refer to the second Islamic caliph, Omar ibn al-Khattab. Prophet Mohammad’s successor and first caliph, Abu Bakr As-Siddiq, was not called amir al-mu’minin. The term caliph, khalifa in Arabic, is used to describe someone who is authorized by the majority of the Muslims as the successor of the Prophet and the four rightly guided caliphs: Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali. Many Muslims believe that the administratiive and governance model in Medina under the first four successors of Prophet Mohammad, known as the Rashidun caliphs, put  Islam on the path to greatness and purity.

Historically, restoring the caliphate gained momentum among various Islamic movements in the early 20^th century following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In retrospect,  the nostalgia for reestablishing the caliphate emerged in response to political decay and civilizational degeneration in the Islamic world. Like any other Islamic religious concept, the difference between the amir and the caliph dates back to early periods of Islam.

Since the collapse of the Durrani Empire and the emergence of the modern state of Afghanistan in the late 19^th century, Pashtun tribal leaders and the monarchs have titled themselves as amirs. Amir Dost Mohammad Khan (1826–63), Amir Shir Ali Khan (1863 to 1879) and Amir Abdul Rahman Khan (1880–1901) are three famous examples.

Since the caliphate has a universal political and ideological implication, none of the rulers of Afghanistan dared to call themselves khalifa because the title would have implied being in charge of Muslim affairs across the Islamic world.When the Ottomans were around, this claim would have been challenged because the sultans in Istanbul were regarded as the rightful caliphs. In recent years, Saudi Arabia saw itself as the rightful leader of the Sunni Muslim world and Afghanistan’s leaders shied away from taking their patrons on.

What Lies Ahead for the Taliban?

According to Islamic historical references, the caliphate is a dynastic governing entity. The Haqqanis are aware of the historical connotations and political implications of calling their leader the khalifa or the caliph. In the Emirate of the Kandahari Taliban, power and leadership can be passed from one individual to another who satisfies their specifications. The Haqqanis do not meet them.

Given the history of rivalry between southern and eastern tribes of Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, the Haqqanis would never become amir al-mu’minins. The Kandahari Taliban rightly consider themselves as the founders of the emirate, leaving the Haqqanis with no option but to go rogue, declare a caliphate and claim the leadership of Islamic ummah.

As the Haqqanis consolidate power in Kabul, the structural and organizational distinctions between emirate and caliphate are useful to understand how the two factions of the Taliban will conduct themselves in Afghanistan, the region, and the world. They also help anticipate the different threats the world faces from various factions of the Taliban. 

The Kandahari-led Taliban are orthodox Hanafi Muslims with a tribal mentality whose ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan, dominated and governed by Pashtuns. The Haqqani group, on the other hand, follow a  transnational jihadist ideology. Its ultimate aim is to unify all Islamic movements under a single Islamic caliphate, a goal previously pursued by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Haqqanis’ aspiration of establishing a caliphate is based on the resources and network they built during the anti-Soviet jihad project. Their base lies in the largely ungoverned territories on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. While the Haqqanis maintained symbiotic relations with the Kandahari Taliban throughout the so-called “Global War on Terror,” they used this time to build and deepen relationships with other Islamic militant groups in South Asia. Since the Haqqanis are in a position of power, the support they command in the region provides them with a comparative advantage vis-à-vis the Kandahari-led Taliban.

The pace at which Haqqanis are consolidating their power in Afghanistan makes it a matter of time before they become the dominant faction within the Taliban. Once that mission is accomplished, the Haqqanis will establish the Islamic Caliphate by Afghanistan as the capital and become the patron of all terrorist organizations worldwide. If history can tell us anything, any form of a Taliban-led and dominated government in Afghanistan threatens regional and global peace, and a caliphate led by the Haqqanis even more so.

(This article was edited by Contributing Editor Tabish Forugh.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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To: H.E. António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

CC:H.E. Ambassador Barbara Woodward, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the UN and President of United Nations Security Council

H.E. Ambassador Federico Villegas, Permanent Representative of Argentina and President of United Nations Human Rights Council

Excellencies,

We are writing this letter to express our grave concern about the escalation of violence targeting the Hazara Shia communities in Afghanistan. We are writing to demand your immediate action to address these targeted attacks, which can amount to crime against humanity, and when taken together, constitute an act of genocide. We believe the persistent and deliberate campaign of violence against the Shia Hazara community in Afghanistan requires an urgent and coordinated response by the United Nations and the international community.

On April 19, 2022, a high school and an education center in a Hazara neighborhood in West of Kabul, Afghanistan were bombed, killing and maiming scores of school children. The next day, an attack on a Shia Hazara mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif was bombed, killing thirty one  and injuring eighty seven worshipers attending prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. Local reports, however, indicate a much higher level of casualties. Another mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif was also attacked on the same day and in the same manner, killing and injuring dozens. On April 28, two explosions targeting civilian mini-buses in Mazar-i-Sharif killed at least eleven and wounded at least eighteen Hazaras. On the same day, five Hazara miners traveling in a civilian passenger car were stopped and shot dead in Samangan province.

While terrorist attacks such as the last week’s horrific attacks on Sufi Mosques in Kunduz and Kabul provinces continue to affect civilians throughout Afghanistan, the attacks on Hazaras represent a pattern in recent years that target Hazara-Shia mosques, schools, education centers, public gatherings, sports clubs, public transports, and even maternity hospitals. In the first six months of 2021 UNAMA recorded 20 deliberate attacks against the Hazara ethnic group, resulting in around 500 civilian casualties. The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), an affiliate group of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), claimed responsibility for most attacks, including recent incidents in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, although perpetrators have not claimed responsibility for some attacks.

Residents, observers of Afghanistan, and international human rights groups have raised constant concern about such a growing trend of targeted violence against Hazaras. In October 2021, after a series of attacks on Shia Hazara mosques in Kunduz and Kandahar, that killed and wounded hundreds, Human Rights Watch characterized the attacks as “designed to spread terror and inflict maximum suffering, particularly on Afghanistan’s Hazara community.” The statement highlighted that “[t]he numerous attacks targeting Hazaras amount to crimes against humanity, and those responsible should be brought to justice.” 

In May 2021, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) called on the Afghan government and the international community to consider the Hazaras as a “population at risk of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide”. In July 2021, Genocide Watch issued an emergency warning for Afghanistan, stating, “The Hazara religious minority is a portent of an approaching genocide.” In August 2021, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a similar statement underlining the risk of genocide against Hazaras in Afghanistan.

Hazaras have a long history of persecution in Afghanistan at the hands of state and non-state actors such as the Taliban and other extremist groups. This history and recent events align with the warning factors of mass atrocity crimes that the United Nations identified in the 2014 Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes.

The return of the Taliban to power has made the Hazaras more vulnerable and subject to increased violence. On August 19, 2021, Amnesty International released a report documenting the Taliban’s targeted attacks against Hazaras and called the group responsible for the “brutal massacre of Hazara men” in Ghazni and Daykundi provinces. Since coming to power in August 2021, the Taliban forcibly removed hundreds of Hazara families from their homes and villages in Helmand, Uruzgan, Daykundi, and Balkh provinces. This is compounded by the Taliban history of brutality against the community, including massacring thousands of Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif (1998), Bamyan (2001), and Zabul (between 1996 and 2001).

In January 2022, following its report on Afghanistan, the UK Parliament’s House of Lords Select Committee on International Relations and Defence established a bi-cameral and cross-party inquiry team on the situation of Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The report stated that “The Hazaras have a long history of suffering state persecution on both ethnic and sectarian grounds.”

Following these most recent attacks targeting Hazaras in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, human rights groups and officials in the international community, including The UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett, expressed concerns about these “targeted attacks on  Hazaras”, and called for “immediate investigation and accountability” to “end such human rights violations.” Similar statements of condemnation and calls for action have been made by special representatives and Ministers of Foreign Affairs in the EU, Sweden, Norway, and Canada. Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions to the UN and in many countries in Europe, North America, and South Asia also expressed concerns and demanded immediate international attention to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructures in Afghanistan, particularly in Hazaras and Shia communities.

However, more must be done to protect the Hazaras in Afghanistan, especially by the United Nations. Thus, we, the undersigned group of intellectuals, academics, human rights, media, and civil society activists from Afghanistan and around the world, urge the United Nations to take immediate actions addressing human rights situation of the Hazaras in Afghanistan, and adopt appropriate measures to protect the community against risks of genocide and crimes against humanity. We urge you to:

• Call a special session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss, as matter of urgency, the situation of the Hazaras and adopt a resolution ensuring that the community will be protected against such heinous targeted attacks;
  
  
• Call for a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to discuss and address the ongoing genocidal attacks on Hazaras, and work to prevent such atrocities and bring the perpetrators to justice;
  
  
• Launch an immediate investigation into the targeted killing of the Hazara and Shias in Afghanistan, and use instruments under the international law to address and put an end to the perpetual killings of Hazaras;
  
  
• Request the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan to collect and publicize substantiated information relating to grave violations of international human rights law, including breaches of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide committed against the Hazaras;
  
  
• Request UNAMA and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan to submit a special report on the situation of Hazaras identifying urgent and practical measures to protect the community against targeted attacks and mass atrocities.

Sincerely,

1. Dr. , Former Chairperson of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
2. , Former Chairperson of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
3. Dr., Ambassador, Afghanistan Mission, Geneva,
4. , Charge d’Affaires, Afghanistan Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York
5. Dr. Abbas Farasoo, University of Melbourne, Australia
6. Dr. , University of Pennsylvania, USA
7. Dr. , Sheffield University, UK
8. Dr. Dawood Rezai, Legal Scholar, Canada
9. Dr., University of Coimbra, Portugal
10. Dr. , Monash University, Australia
11. Dr. , Texas Christian University, USA
12. Dr. , Carleton University, Canada
13. Dr. Humaira May Rizayee, Hazara rights activist, UK
14. Dr., University College London, UK
15. Dr. , Lecturer & Fellow, Stanford University, USA
16. Dr. , Zayed University, UAE.
17. Dr. , La Trobe University, Australia
18. Dr. , University of Pittsburgh, USA
19. Dr. , American University of Afghanistan/University of Minnesota, USA
20. Dr. , Kanazawa University, Japan
21. Dr. , SOAS University of London, UK
22. Dr. , University of Ottawa, Canada
23. Dr. , Associate Fellow, London School of Economics, UK
24. , Journalist, UK
25. , PhD Candidate, Ryerson University, Canada
26. , Former Diplomat, USA
27. , University Lecturer, Canada
28. , Fellow, New York University, USA
29. , Attorney, USA
30. , Fellow, Yale University, USA
31. , PhD Candidate, Oxford University, UK
32. , PhD Candidate, Fiji National University, Fiji
33. , Chairman of Gilgamesh Foundation, Brussels
34. , Non-resident Fellow, New York University
35. , former diplomat, Canada
36. , Publisher and Founder, Hasht-e-Subh  Daily, Afghanistan
37. , Reagan-Fascell Fellow, National Endowment for Democracy, USA
38. , American University of Afghanistan/The New School, New York
39. Tabish Forugh, Democracy Activist and Contributing Editor at 51�Թ�, USA
40. , Human Rights Activist, Canada
41. , Publisher and Founder, Daily Etilaat-e- Roz, Afghanistan
42. , Former Diplomat of Afghanistan to the UN, USA.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Foreign observers the events of August 15^th as “a bloodless coup.” However, for millions in Afghanistan, particularly Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, the takeover by the Taliban has meant a to “the darkest days.”

A Bloody and Brutal Regime

The Taliban is dominated by Pashtuns. This ethnic group is also referred to as Afghans and Pathans. The Taliban are an ethno-nationalist and Islamo-fascist group who mix tribal and religious beliefs. In the 1990s, they ruled Afghanistan with brutality and barbarity. 

For all their protestations in the media, the Taliban have not changed one bit. They continue to commit atrocities against women, vulnerable social groups and non-Pashtun ethnic groups. Numerous reports have documented their many . The Taliban still impose cruel punishments  such as lashing, amputation, stoning, beheading and other forms of summary executions.

Videos and reports of savagely violent killings, particularly of Tajiks have come to the fore. The Taliban has been engaging in indiscriminate killing in northern Afghanistan, especially in Panjshir and Baghlan provinces.

On March 11, a graphic video was on social media showing the dreadful killing of the 27-year-old Bilal Ahmad, a secondary school teacher in Hesarak district of Panjshir province,  In the 66 seconds of video footage, the Taliban fighters appear to briefly interrogate Bilal, a Persian-speaking Tajik, in Pashto — a language not spoken in Panjshir — and then shoot him. Mohammad Rashed, Bilal’s younger brother, confirmed that the man in the video footage was his brother.

In another 32-second video which went viral on March 13, a Taliban fighter seems to be interrogating a male civilian before shooting him at close range. The was identified as Khairuddin. Observers noted that he was likely killed in Taala wa Barfak district of Baghlan province. Both Bilal and Khairuddin were the breadwinners of their families. Both have left behind their widows and young children.

Numerous other reports of brutal killings have emerged. The Tajiks are finding themselves at the sharp end of a knife or the smoking barrel of a gun.

Why do the Taliban Target the Tajiks?

Since the establishment of the client state of Afghanistan by Abdul Rahman Khan who ruled from 1880 to 1901, the Pashtun ruling class has not reconciled with the  ethnic heterogeneity of Afghanistan.  This class willfully considers Afghanistan’s ethnic diversity a threat to their exclusive rule. They assume that equal participation of non-Pashtuns in national and local political processes  would defuse their grip on power. This underlying fear of fragmentation has been the raison d’etre for creating a highly centralized  governance system that remains dominated by the Pashtuns.

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Before Abdul Rahman Khan’s reign, Pashtun history was steeped in tribal feuds and intra-ethnic conflicts. While Khan fought against fellow Shinwar  Pashtun tribes  in the east, he was able to unite Pashtuns to some degree and channel their aggression against Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north and Hazaras in central Afghanistan.  Despite the repression, Persian-speaking communities have consistently resisted unilateral Pashtun rule. They have always favored  a more decentralized governance system in Afghanistan.

After Khan’s death, the Pashtun ruling class continued its policy of repression. In 1929, Habibullah Kalakani, a Persian Tajik dissident leader – who was given the nickname “Bacha-e-Saqaw [Son of Water Carrier]” by Pashtuns to cast him to an inferior social standing at the time – briefly broke the chain of Pashtun domination by ousting Amanullah Khan, the grandson of Abdul Rahman Khan. In 1992, Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik military genius led his forces into Kabul. Massoud broke another cycle of Pashtun hegemonic domination by defeating the Soviet-backed Afghan communist government. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik, became president of Afghanistan. This regime was ousted by the Pashtun-led Taliban who later conspired with Al-Qaeda to assassinate Massoud two days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A number of Pashtuns are euphoric on the return of the Taliban. They belong to many ideological persuasions and political camps. Howerer, ethnic nationalism trumps other sentiments and has plunged Afghanistan into yet another cycle of violence.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy

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A Tale of Tragic Suffering

The Taliban are ruling the country with an iron fist. They have attempted to cut off Afghanistan from the rest of the world by imposing restrictions on local and media. As they rule behind an iron curtain, the Taliban has been arresting and even their opponents, especially those who served in the Afghanistan National Security and Defense Forces.

The Taliban’s behavior does not sit well with the international community. They have cut aid, frozen Afghanistan’s foreign assets and been wary of providing financial assistance to the country. Recently, the international community pledged in humanitarian aid, far less than the $4.4 billion requested by the UN. The World Bank has also four projects worth $600 million.

Because of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, hunger and malnutrition now ravage the land. So, do tragic premature deaths. In the first quarter of 2022, an estimated 13,000 newborn babies have already of malnutrition. In January, the UN estimated that half a million people lost their in the first six months of the Taliban’s rule. The UN has that a staggering 97% of Afghans could plunge into poverty by the middle of this year. The Taliban is unconcerned about saving babies, preserving jobs or alleviating poverty. Instead, it is obsessed only with concentrating power and implementing their fanatical Islamic agenda.

Cultural Genocide and Gender Apartheid

The Taliban has consistently sought to erase longstanding ancient Persian and other native cultures in Afghanistan by deeming them unIslamic. The regime has banned music in public, several musicians, banned soap operas and prohibited celebrations of Nowruz, the Persian new year. For over three millennia, Nowruz has been celebrated in the Persianate world of which modern day Afghanistan has always been a part. The Taliban is severing that umbilical cultural cord between Afghanistan and its Persian roots in the name of Islam.

When it comes to women, the Taliban has unleashed a policy of gender apartheid. They have been in the news for banning girls from returning to secondary and imposing numerous restrictions on women. Under the Taliban, women cannot travel alone, they have to wear what the Taliban prescribe, they cannot work, they are deprived of education and they live in constant fear of the regime’s religious police. More than anyone else, women lead lives of indignity and humiliation.

The Taliban have turned Afghanistan into a de facto open-air prison. estimates that a record-high 53% of Afghans want to leave their country. It is clear that Afghanistan is in crisis but most powerful states in the international community do not see Afghanistan as vital to their strategic interests. Besides, their focus has shifted to Russia’s occupation of Ukraine and they have no bandwidth to deal with Afghanistan. As a result, Afghans suffer under a fanatical and repressive regime with millions trying to jailbreak to freedom and safety.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Under this agreement, the Taliban are obligated to take measures to prevent terrorist groups from threatening the security of the US and its allies and to engage in a comprehensive intra-Afghan dialogue that would produce a political settlement. The hasty US troop withdrawal in August 2021 emboldened the Taliban to disregard their obligations under the deal and encouraged them to prioritize political takeover instead of a sustainable peace mechanism for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Public Intellectuals Fail to Denounce the Taliban

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The Doha Agreement and its contents undermined the sovereign government of Afghanistan at the time and provided an upper hand to the Taliban in both war and peace. Certain assurances in the deal enabled the Taliban to become stronger in both battlefield action and narrative propagation.

These the agreement’s references to a “new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government”; clauses on the release of Taliban combatants referred to as “political prisoners”; indirect legitimization of the Taliban shadow government by virtue of stipulations such as “the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents”; and a complete lack of any mention of human rights protections in Afghanistan.

Another Case of Failed Peacemaking

The agreement is not the only pact that was expected to bring a peaceful end to the conflict in the country. In 1988, the  concluded under the auspices of the UN between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the US and the Soviet Union serving as state guarantors, provided an overall framework for the settlement of the Afghan conflict and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Likewise, the  in 2001 — irrespective of whether it is categorized as a peace deal —established a process to manage the political transition in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. It briefly outlined steps from the formation of an interim administration to the development of a new constitution and holding elections.

However, neither the Geneva Accords nor the Bonn Agreement were successful and ultimately failed to foster conditions necessary for enabling a comprehensive settlement to Afghanistan’s complicated problem. More recently, the Taliban’s abject disregard for their commitments under the Doha Agreement, combined with the United States’ rushed exit, sped up the Taliban’s reemergence, once again closing an already narrow window of opportunity for achieving a durable political solution to the protracted conflict in Afghanistan.

There is indeed a qualitative difference between the Geneva Accords, the Bonn Agreement and the Doha Agreement. However, one of the key reasons for their failure, among other factors, is that they are silent on the main cause of the conflict in Afghanistan — i.e., ethnic conflict.

Afghanistan is a multiethnic country where the various ethnic groups are also geographically fragmented. Historically, divisions over who should lead the country and how have been among the core contentious issues in Afghanistan. Disagreements on this matter have manifested in violent ways in the 1990s and non-violent ways in the outcome of four presidential elections held based on the 2004 constitution. Overlooking of the main cause of the conflict and an absence of a viable mechanism for power redistribution among ethnic groups is a common thread that connects each of the three agreements that failed and continued to fuel instability.

The Current Situation

Less than two years since the Doha Agreement was signed, in August 2021, Kabul, the Afghan capital, fell to the Taliban. In the aftermath of this development, residences of several former government officials, particularly those from the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), were raided and these personnel members were either killed or imprisoned. A  found that over 100 personnel from the Afghan security forces and others associated with the former Afghan government have been killed in the country, despite the Taliban announcing a general amnesty. 

Moreover, despite the demands from the international community for the formation of an inclusive government, respect for human rights and counterterrorism assurances, the Taliban have refused to make any concessions. They have brazenly continued suppressing all dissenting voices, severely limiting women’s rights and persecuting civil society members and journalists.

Peace in Afghanistan?

It was apparent from day one that the prospects of the post-July 2018 efforts for a political settlement in Afghanistan were uncertain at best. The Doha Agreement simply laid out a possible schedule for the US withdrawal instead of guarantee or measures enabling a durable political settlement or peace process. The Taliban too negotiated the deal with the US with the aim of winning the war rather than seeking a peace deal or political settlement with their opponents.

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The chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the mayhem at Kabul airport — which was reminiscent of the US pullout from Vietnam — has not only damaged the image of a powerful country like the US around the world, but has also established its reputation as an unreliable ally in times of difficulty. Given historical patterns and the Taliban’s track record, in the absence of any qualitative change of circumstances on the ground, the international community’s positive overtures to the Taliban might be yet another folly.

As it stands, the prospects for peace in Afghanistan will remain distant for as long as the Taliban own the entire political apparatus rather than participate as a party in an inclusive and representative government and respect dissenting voices. In the meantime, the international community should use sanctions mechanisms and official recognition as the few remaining tools of leverage to hold the Taliban accountable to their commitments and to international legal standards.

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Currently, political fragmentation and polarization under the Taliban have become an existential conflict over culture and ethnicity. The Taliban are a terrorist group, having successfully synthesized both Islamic extremism and Pashtun/Afghan ethnic chauvinism as their ideology. Ironically, they rule over one of the most diverse countries in the world.

What the Taliban’s Constitution Means for Afghanistan

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The Taliban use two vague criteria to dismiss all progress made in the past two decades or, for that matter, any undesirable but transformational changes that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s: Afghan and Islamic values. The first category denies internal social diversity while the second rejects Islamic pluralism. After usurpation of power by force, the group proudly boasted of committing over a thousand . Now, it is officially a suicide bombers brigade within its security agencies. 

Organic Intellectuals

The exponents of Afghan ethnonationalism desperately aim to present a benign image of the Taliban. Having fundamental, political and social ties with the Taliban, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, they form the Taliban’s “organic intellectuals.” Unlike the traditional intellectuals, Gramsci argues, organic intellectuals are linked with a social class. Contrary to Gramsci, I use it as a negative term as they represent the extreme right. Their genuine undeclared mandate is to articulate and represent the interests and perceptions of the Taliban and to downplay the risks of the group’s rule.

In other words, these organic intellectuals are systematically engaged in PR for the Taliban. The irony is that the same people are recognized as the voices of Afghanistan rather than of the Taliban in Western academic and think-tank circles. Afghan ethnonationalism and its exponents are only challenged by the Persian-speaking Tajik and Hazara intellectuals, whose voices have been relegated to the margins due to acceptance of the Taliban order as the new normal.

The organic intellectuals have the nature of a chameleon, speaking in two different languages to address different audiences and constituencies. On the one hand, they praise and welcome the establishment of the so-called “order,” albeit Taliban-centric, but, with a liberal audience, they speak the language of peaceful coexistence, “cultural particularism,” relativism and political pragmatism. To incorporate such a self-contradictory stance, they adopt a fence-sitting position.

The justifications of the Taliban made by these organic intellectuals contradict both the realist and moralist approaches in political philosophy. First, let us address the five justifications before returning to the philosophical questions.

The Taliban Order

To begin with, treating the Taliban-centric order as default and ignoring the ideological dimension of the Taliban, it argues that the group is adaptable to political and policy reforms. Thus, it tries to undermine the possibility of a thorough transformation of the current scenario through any means.

The telos of political reform is expanding the horizons of rights and liberties. In a totalitarian regime, the goal of reform is not to improve the condition of individuals and communities but to consolidate the regime’s power. To suggest political reform essentially means to work with the existing political framework, not its transformation. This entails admitting the terms and conditions of the totalitarian regime.

Compared to reforms in an authoritarian regime, the prospect of successful political reform and change toward emancipation in the totalitarian regime is limited because, in the latter, the state is based on a rigid doctrinal ideology. An ideological state does not accommodate change and reform unless there is an alteration in the constituent ideology. The longer a totalitarian regime stays in power, the less likely the possibility for political transformation. Thus, change in a totalitarian regime is easier to achieve in the early stages, when its power is not consolidated. 

The Taliban government currently installed in Afghanistan is not simply another dictatorship. By all standards, it is a totalitarian regime. A totalitarian regime, according to British philosopher John Gray, is not the one that negates liberal democracy — it is one that brutally suppresses civil society. The Taliban have created a monstrosity equivalent to that of other totalitarian states. 

Political Pragmatism

The second justification of Taliban apologists is political pragmatism — the Taliban is a reality that could not be done away with and thus it shall be acknowledged. As part of my on the Afghanistan peace process, I conducted an opinion poll in 2018 that showed the Taliban’s popularity as below 10% across the country. Thus, this so-called pragmatism is constituted upon a false assumption. But the Taliban are a reality, like racism, Islamic fundamentalism, bigotry and slavery. Also, they are a reality fostered by sponsors: the Pakistani establishment.

Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that bigotry, racism and fundamentalism could not be eradicated through endorsements by the intellectuals and those who have a moral commitment to fight them. Irrespective of the logic of morality, one cannot buy the argument to accept bigotry or extremism just because they were a reality. Endorsing the Taliban is equivalent to recognizing their wicked acts. 

Third, it is proposed that if we accept the Taliban as a reality, the costs of establishing political order would be reduced. For example, it can prevent another civil war. This argument is built based on a false assumption regarding the nature of the Taliban. Historically, the group has been extremely violent by nature: War, jihad and suicide bombings are an of its ideology. What country in the world prides itself on having suicide squads?

In the seven months of their rule, the Taliban have killed, tortured and humiliated numerous civilians, former security officers and women’s rights activists, primarily ethnic groups like the Tajik and Hazara. Moreover, they maintain strong ties with an international community of jihadists, including al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Turkistan Islamic Party, among others. 

There is an inherent contradiction in the nationalist stance advocating for so-called reconciliation. The nationalists argue that war is costly and hence we should accept working with the Taliban. However, countless civilians being slaughtered or abused by the Taliban on a daily basis is ignored as the human cost of Taliban rule. A doctrinal state imposes its ideology on every single individual even if it is at the cost of the individuals’ lives. 

Naïve Intellectualism

Fourth, the naive social-media public intellectuals suppose that they can hold the Taliban accountable by citing some verses of the Quran or some articles of the law of Afghanistan. It is not that ideological totalitarian regimes do not understand what law is; rather the Taliban misuses the law to further limit the sphere of civil society and expand the regime’s control. Hannah Arendt argued that totalitarianism is primarily a denial of law, the emergence of a state in the absence of law. By this standard, the Taliban are simply a totalitarian entity.

The assumption that the Taliban would be held accountable through a Twitter post is naïve. The issue is not negligence in the application of the law by the Taliban; rather, the fundamental issue is the group’s illegitimate rule. The Taliban have suspended a functioning state apparatus by military takeover of the state that led to the collapse of the republic, purging many technocrats from bureaucracy and creating an environment of terror, intentionally undermining the Doha peace talks.

Lastly, cultural particularism suggests that the Taliban represent a specific culture and shall be given time to adapt and develop according to its own history and context. Taking a relativist stance, it is said that there is no ultimate truth and no one is a final arbiter. Thus, relativist logic fails to recognize evil in its totality. The truth about the evil nature of the Taliban could not simply be dismissed by reducing the issue to a matter of a difference of opinion.

Unlike relativists, cultural pluralists are not naïve enough to engage with evil. According to their line of thinking, although ultimate values are diverse, they are knowable; any order which negates and denies peaceful coexistence is outlawed. The Taliban eschews all forms of coexistence. They treat the Persian-speaking Tajiks, Hazaras and other nationalities as second or third-class subjects. They campaign against Persian cultural heritage such as Nawroz celebrations, the Persian language and much of the country’s pre-Islamic heritage.  

The Realist/Moralist Challenge

Exponents of the Taliban have to respond to both a moralist and a realist question in politics. From a moralist standpoint, by neglecting or dismissing any moral standard, they adopt a peace activist cover. They aim to humanize the Taliban in order to make the group pleasantly acceptable. 

The question here is, what is a morally correct stance against a terrorist group that has a track record of deliberately inciting ethnic hatred, racism, ethnic supremacy, oppression, mass atrocities and terror? The answer is clear: Any act that demonizes humans and perpetuates violence for the sake of subjugation of others is condemned. The perpetrator would thus be fully responsible.

On the contrary, any single word that misrepresents the Taliban and presents a false benign image of the group is a betrayal of the moral principle of justice, liberty and claims of intellectualism. Any responsible citizen and public intellectual has a moral obligation to not just renounce them publicly but to denounce totalitarian regimes and any act of terror.

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Denunciation not only entails a public condemnation of evil in its totality but also an avoidance of any word or deed that contributes to the consolidation of the regime. By any standard, a terrorist group does not have a right to rule. Anyone who advises or applauds terrorist statements or policies is morally bankrupt. When faced with a totalitarian regime, one can only be either for or against it.

Lastly, the realist question is what British philosopher Bernard Williams calls the Basic Legitimation Demand (BLD): “the idea of meeting the BLD implies a sense in which the state has to offer a justification of its power to each subject.” This is the very first question in politics.

Before any other virtues, a state has to present an acceptable answer to those that it rules. Otherwise, the people who consider themselves alien to the rulers and have a basic fear of subjugation, humiliation and persecution, as well as those who are radically disadvantaged, have every right to disobey. As Williams says, “there is nothing to be said to this group to explain why they shouldn’t revolt.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Over the past six months, Afghan women have continued to protest against the Taliban policies, provoking a brutal response. One of the detainees  AFINT: “Unfortunately, there is sexual harassment by the Taliban. The Taliban think that a woman who protests for her rights or has worked before they came to power is a prostitute. So, they consider these women as sex slaves.” While it may be impossible to change the Taliban’s mindset, international and regional pressure is key to helping Afghan women and holding the current regime accountable. 

The Taliban Use Violence Against Women as a Bargaining Chip

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To deal with the international pressures, the Taliban turned the women’s rights issues into a bargaining chip against the international community to gain recognition and force engagement. The US, in particular, consistently calls on the Taliban to respect women’s rights. But does the US have enough leverage over the Taliban to force them to revise their treatment of women?

Power Is Everything 

Since the overthrow of the Afghan government last August, the US remained engaged with the Taliban, although Washington does not recognize the regime as legitimate. Although the Taliban views the US as the loser in this conflict, many within the group’s leadership believe that they have to interact with Washington to gain recognition. 

The Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai  in December: “If the US embassy reopens in Kabul, all European countries will be here in half an hour. We are working hard in this regard, and since I have been a member of the negotiating team with them (the Americans), I am sure from their morals and behavior that, God willing, they will be back soon.” 

From the Taliban’s perspective, power is everything. As far as they can control the country, the US has to respect them and will have to recognize them. This assumption leads the group to not compromise on women’s rights. Instead of revising their policies, they detained women activists and then released some of them following pressure to do so during the  in January.

The US has profound concerns about the Taliban’s relations with other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, but human rights, women’s rights and an inclusive government are all part of the US agenda in its interaction with the country’s new leadership. In his talk at the United States Institute of Peace, Thomas West, the US special representative for Afghanistan,  these values as crucial for the US-Taliban relationship. 

However, it is imperative to keep in mind that any compromise from the international community on women’s rights that suggests to the Taliban that their harsh policies may be accommodated will only exacerbate the situation for women in Afghanistan. 

International Commitment

For more than 20 years, the US and international community repeated their strong commitment to  in Afghanistan, creating the expectation that it should continue doing so after the Taliban takeover. However, many Afghan women saw the US agreement with the Taliban as a .

International pressure is the critical factor for holding the Taliban accountable. When the women activists disappeared without explanation, the Taliban denied its involvement for months. The United Nations and US diplomats repeatedly called on the Taliban to find the missing women.

In the end, the Taliban released several well-known women activists despite denying involvement in detaining them. The group also published videos of  by the activists. Totalitarian regimes use this tactic against human rights activities for propaganda and to mislead the public; exposing the Taliban’s double game will not be easy and will require international commitment and cooperation. 

There are several measures that can be helpful in holding the Taliban accountable, and the US can play a central role. First, the diplomatic contacts with the Taliban should not be interpreted as hope for recognition; rather, diplomacy should be used only for contact and assessing responsibilities.

Second, international consensus on women’s rights and supporting the idea of an inclusive and legitimate government in Afghanistan is key. This is significant for women’s rights and negotiation for building a broad-based government to reflect Afghan society, which is instrumental for avoiding another round of conflict. 

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Third, increasing the activities of international organizations in Afghanistan to support women and monitor their situation under the Taliban is necessary. Currently, there is no access to different corners of the country where crimes against women may be committed. Fourth, financial support to organizations championing women’s education and activities will be vital for women’s voices and Afghan social society to resist the Taliban’s fascist approach.

The US can exert pressure on behalf of Afghan women to demand that their rights to work and education are honored. Any degree of leniency toward the Taliban will make the situation worse for women. If the US shows a faltering resolve or sends a misleading message, the international consensus on human rights will disappear.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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FO° Live: Women Under the Taliban

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In response, the Taliban have deployed various oppressive measures. In September, they the Women’s Affairs Ministry with morality police, which enforces the armed group’s on the country. At the same time, while trying to confine women to their homes by forbidding them to work or study, the Taliban are using the threat of violence against women as a bargaining chip against the Western powers.

Violent Tactics

In September last year, the Taliban attacked the media to prevent them from covering the women’s protests in Kabul. Two journalists were . Etilaatroz is one of the leading Afghan newspapers and a critical voice mainly focused on investigative journalism. An attack on the newspaper was a clear signal for everyone covering the protests against the Taliban.

Since the armed group took control of the country, at least 318 media outlets in 33 of 34 provinces and, according to the International Federation of Journalists, 72% of those who are women.

But the Taliban quickly changed their tactics to tackle women’s protests through more intimidating methods, including nighttime house searches to locate those who dared raise their voice. Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, a member of the movement demanding rights to work and education, is just one of the women from their homes in Kabul in the middle of the night; her whereabouts . Some families report being contacted by detainees from Taliban prisons in undisclosed locations.

The Taliban deny capturing, detaining or killing women and other opponents. This tactic aims to mislead public opinion, the media and policymakers in Western countries. The situation may be even more critical in the provinces, beyond the eyes of the media. In September last year, the Taliban a former police officer with the ousted Afghan government in front of her family in Gor province; she was pregnant at the time of her murder.

There is no way to assess the true number of disappeared women across the country. Some of them are known by the media, such Mursal Ayar, Parwana Ibrahimkhel, Tamana Paryani, Zahra Mohammadi and Alia Azizi. Most of them belong to the protest movement against the Taliban’s policies. Azizi worked as a senior female prison official in Herat and went missing when the Taliban took control of the city. Amnesty International the Taliban to investigate the case and release her “immediately and unconditionally” if she is in their custody.

Last week, the UN repeated its and asked the Taliban to release the disappeared women activists and their relatives. The German Embassy, currently operating from Qatar, has called for an into the missing women. It is entirely possible that the Taliban will eventually release some of the captives, claiming that they were rescued from the clutches of the kidnappers, in order to portray themselves as a responsible government.

Gang rape is another tactic that the Taliban deploy against women in detention. The Independent that last September, bodies of eight detainees arrested during a protest in Mazar-e Sharif were discovered. According to reports, the girls were repeatedly gang-raped and tortured by the Taliban. Sexual assault is a many-sided weapon against women in a society based on strict honor codes. Some of those who survived the rapes were by their families.

In January, The Times that the staff in the government-run Mazar-e Sharif Regional Hospital claim that they receive around 15 bodies from Taliban fighters each month — mostly women with gunshot wounds to the head or chest.

Bargaining Chip

Violence has been the Taliban’s primary tool both in war and during negotiations with Western powers. Over the course of two decades of conflict, the Taliban used violence as a means to win recognition as a political force. During their talks with the US and the Afghan government, the Taliban escalated violence to enhance their position at the negotiating table. Now, they are pursuing the same strategy by trading repression for recognition.

Since the Taliban took control of the country, women’s rights are a constant subject of ongoing diplomatic discussions that have so far brought no result. The international community has failed to press the Taliban to form an inclusive government and respect women’s rights.

But the armed group wants the international community to recognize their government. In January, a Taliban delegation was invited to Oslo to talk with Western powers and representatives of Afghan women for the first time. At the meeting, Hoda Khamosh, a civil society activist, the Taliban delegation: “why are the Taliban imprisoning us in Kabul and now sitting here at the negotiating table with us in Oslo? What is the international community doing in the face of all this torture and repression?”

Since then, nothing has changed. The reality is that the Taliban used the talks in Oslo as an opportunity to make an international appearance to advertise their government. They are deploying precepts like women’s rights to force more international engagement. While Norway was for inviting the Taliban and offering them exposure, Switzerland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that it invited the Taliban to talk about “the protection of humanitarian actors and respect for human rights.”

The Taliban is an ideological, zealot religious movement, and years of experience suggest that they are unlikely to revise their position on women’s rights and other fundamental issues, including human rights and political pluralism. Talking about women’s rights in Western capitals is just an opportunity for them to normalize their regime and travel abroad. Human rights violations, particularly violence against women, not only serve the Taliban’s ideological purposes but have turned into a convenient bargaining chip against the international community.

It is critical that Western powers support fundamental human rights in the country without providing the Taliban with opportunities for blackmail, implementig realistic measures to press the group to release activists and to respect women’s rights. First, it is important to maintain or escalate the current sanctions regime against the Taliban leadership. Second, making sure that there is no rush to recognize the Taliban regime mong foreign governments is another key leverage point.

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Third, there is a need to appoint a special rapporteur to monitor the human rights situation and document violations to hold the Taliban accountable. Fourth, it is important to extend and support the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan to help monitor the human rights situation in the country.

Finally, the international community can continue its humanitarian support through UN agencies and other organizations without recognizing the Taliban. Recognition of the group will not only increase human rights abuses but will send the wrong signal to other extremists in the region. All these measures will reduce the Taliban’s ability to use violence as a bargaining chip against the international community.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In August 2021, the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan through unconstitutional means. They initially did not establish a new government or issue a decree suspending or repealing the constitution. However, when prompted by the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, the minister of justice noted that the Taliban plan to the 1964 constitution, excluding parts that contradict the principles of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the formal name of the country under the new government. Thus far, the Taliban have not released a formal document or policy statement that would indicate how they plan to govern.

Can the Taliban Govern Responsibly?

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When the administration was introduced last September, the government was modeled on a different system than the one intended in the 2004 constitution, but it shared similarities with the 1964 version. The 2004 model provides for presidential rule, and a direct vote elects a president as the head of state to serve a five-year term.

So far, it is clear that the 2004 constitution is no longer in force in Afghanistan and that the Taliban have, more or less, restored their that was drafted in 1998. Under that version, the Taliban’s caretaker administration is a theocratic monarchial system with a supreme leader, known as the amir al-Mu’minin (leader of the faithful), as its king.

The Taliban’s Constitution

Under its rule between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban never introduced a written constitution for Afghanistan nor validated any previous version. But they made some efforts to draft a constitution. This process began in 1998 when the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar — formally known as amir al-Mu’minin — issued a under which a so-called constituent assembly — or ulema committee (a religious body of scholars) — was established, led by Maulvi Noor Mohammad Saqib, the former chief justice of Afghanistan.

The decree placed the power to review laws with the committee, under the supervision of the supreme court of Afghanistan. The committee’s task was to look at existing laws, including under past constitutions, and to remove articles that did not conform to sharia. The committee began working on the constitution in July 1998 and decided that the review of the previous constitution should be in accordance with the Hanafi madhab (school of jurisprudence) of Sunni Islam. Articles inconsistent with sharia would be amended or repealed and, if necessary, a new article would be added.

The constitution was drafted after a round of sessions, but it was not approved before the Taliban were toppled by US-led forces in 2001. The preamble of the constitution notes that it was adopted in 2005 by the supreme council of the Taliban, with 10 chapters and 110 articles. The constitution’s travaux préparatoires (preparatory works) are not publicly available to show which constitution of Afghanistan was chosen as the basis for the Taliban’s version. Yet based on preliminary examination of both versions, it appears that the 1964 constitution, which was adopted under King Mohammad Zahir Shah, has been chosen as a foundation for the Taliban’s model. The Taliban’s constituent assembly has reviewed the 1964 constitution and removed, amended or added articles to the constitution that it believes contradict Islamic law.

Despite the considerable differences between the two constitutions, many articles of the Taliban’s version are verbatim to those of the 1964 model. While not explicitly mentioned, the Taliban’s constitution provides for a theocratic ruler under the title of amir al-Mu’minin, who would be similar to a king under the 1964 constitution in terms of political power.

The Taliban’s constitution is focused on the religious dynamics of the country, without considering the social and economic implications, and it forms the basis of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The constitution recognizes Islam as the national religion and adheres to the Hanafi madhab of Sunni Islam. Due to its similarity with the 1964 model, in principle, the constitution commits to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the charter of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Non-Aligned Movement, and other relevant laws and regulations within the limits of Islamic law and national interests. Power is divided between the amir al-Mu’minin, the prime minister or executive, the Islamic shura (parliament) and the supreme court. Ultimately, however, the amir al-Mu’minin has unlimited power to execute his will in all aspects of the government.

To make sense of the Taliban’s constitution, it is important to examine the responsibilities of the head of state, the shura, the executive and the judiciary and the role of foreign policy.

The De Facto King

Under the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the amir al-Mu’minin is the head of state. He executes his authority in the executive, legislative, and judiciary fields according to the provisions of the constitution and other laws. Under the Taliban, the amir would be an Afghan national, born to Afghan Muslim parents and a follower of the Hanafi madhab. The amir al-Mu’minin has similar immensurable powers as the king had under the 1964 constitution. For example, under that version, the king was able, inter alia, to appoint and remove prime ministers and other government ministers, issue a state of emergency, approve the national budget, ratify laws, select and dismiss judges, promote and retire high-ranking officials and declare war. The Taliban’s constitution gives the same powers to the amir.

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Unlike the 1964 and 2004 constitutions, the procedure for appointing the head of the state is not clearly laid out in the Taliban’s constitution. Yet one of the tasks of the shura, together with the supreme court and the prime minister, is to decide on what happens in the event of the amir al-Mu’minin stepping down. The amir would inform the speaker of the shura, chief justice of the supreme court and the prime minister about his resignation. After this, a meeting between the shura, the chief justice and the prime minister takes place. However, if the amir al-Mu’minin dies and does not choose a successor, then the chief justice takes over as acting leader. 

The constitution does not explicitly state who appoints the amir al-Mu’minin. But it does imply that the authority to appoint him rests with the shura, the chief justice and the prime minister. The one significant difference between the amir and the king under the 1998 and 1964 constitutions, respectively, is that leader of the faithful is accountable and equal before the law like any other citizen. Under the 1964 constitution, the king was not accountable and was to be respected by all.  

Islamic Shura

Chapter three of the Taliban’s constitution deals with the nature of the shura, the appointment of its members and its powers. Under the constitution, Afghanistan would have a unicameral shura that has, inter alia, legislative power and the interpretation of the constitution. Members of the shura are appointed by the amir al-Mu’minin for an indefinite duration. The amir would appoint three members from the first grade I provinces, a maximum of two from the grade II provinces and one from grade III provinces. (Based on criteria determined by the Afghan government, all provinces are given different grades and, according to these grades, they receive particular privileges and allocation of the national budget.)

The members of the shura would also have met the conditions set by the ahl al-hall wa’l ‘aqd, which refers to those qualified to elect or depose a caliph on behalf of the Muslim community under Sunni Islam. The constitution does not specify a method for the appointment of this group of people. Hence, this process remains open to arbitrariness and biased selection of pro-establishment individuals of dubious credibility and competence.

The amir al-Mu’minin also appoints the speaker of the shura from amongst existing members, but the constitution does not address the appointment of the deputy and secretary of the shura. The shura has the power to ratify, modify or abrogate laws. However, the procedure of enacting laws and abrogation of laws and how the shura will engage with stakeholders is not specified. The shura also has the power, inter alia, to oversee the actions of the government, make decisions on contentious issues, approve the state budget, ratify international treaties and agreements (together with the supreme court and the council of ministers), approve loans and grants, adopt government policies, and elucidate and question the government.

The Taliban’s constitution does not give immunity to members of the shura in case they commit a crime. Article 51 states that if a member of the shura is accused of an offense, the official responsible shall communicate the matter to the speaker. The legal proceedings against the accused would be initiated only when the speaker allows it. In the case of a witnessed crime, the official responsible can start legal proceedings and arrest a member without seeking permission from the speaker.

Executive

The prime minister and other ministers who lead the government are the highest executive and administrative authority under the Taliban’s constitution. Appointees to the position of prime minister must meet specific criteria. This includes being a Muslim, a follower of the Hanafi madhab and born to Muslim parents. The prime minister represents the government (executive) and he chairs the council of ministers. The prime minister can delegate his powers to other ministers, sign contracts and agreements at the government level, organize and oversee the affairs of ministries, and appoint, promote, retire and dismiss government officials.

The government under the Taliban’s model is in charge of the country’s domestic and foreign policies, regulates the performance of ministries and independent authorities, takes necessary measures in executive and administrative matters, drafts government-related laws and regulations, drafts and amends the annual budget, supervises banking affairs, ensures public security in the country and approves external expertise recruitment. The prime minister can also propose removing ministers to the amir al-Mu’minin, but they can only be removed if the head of state gives his approval.  

Judiciary

Articles 70 to 82 of the Taliban’s constitution contain detailed provisions on the courts and the status and independence of the judiciary. The constitution establishes the judiciary as an independent organ of the state. The only court established under the constitution is the supreme court, while the number of other courts and their jurisdiction is determined by law. The jurisdiction of the courts to hear cases brought before them is exclusive and, as per the constitution, “under no circumstances shall a law exclude from the jurisdiction of the judiciary, as defined in this title, a case or sphere, and assign it other authorities.”

The amir al-Mu’minin appoints judges on the recommendation of the chief justice. The number and qualifications of the supreme court judges are not determined. But for the appointment of the chief justice, an ambiguous criterion of “full competence,” or Ahliat-e-Kamil, has been laid down. The deputies and justices of the Supreme Court are also appointed by the amir al-Mu’minin on the recommendation of the chief justice of the supreme court, taking into account the criteria of religion, piety, sufficient knowledge of jurisprudence, the judicial and legal system of the country.

Under the 1964 constitution, the king could appoint judges and review their position after 10 years, but he was not permitted to remove officials from their office through other means. The Taliban’s constitution, on the other hand, does not state the terms of tenure of supreme court judges, and the amir al-Mu’minin can remove judges from their offices.

The power of the amir to remove judges and the appointment of judges for an undetermined period brings the judiciary’s independence into question. The supreme court under the Taliban’s constitution no longer has the power to interpret the constitution under judicial review. That power has been assigned to shura. Thus, the constitution does not recognize the separation of power and enforce checks and balances.

Foreign Policy

According to the Taliban’s constitution, the foreign policy of the Islamic Emirate is based on the teaching of Islam, human values, securing the public interest and political independence, territorial integrity, playing an effective and constructive role in international peace, and cooperating with the international community.

In principle, the constitution supports the UN Charter, the charter of the OIC, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other internationally accepted principles and regulations, as long as they do not conflict with Islamic principles and national interests. The constitution condemns the use of force against any country and calls for dispute settlement through peaceful means. It also supports the program of disarmament and the elimination of the weapon of mass destruction.

The Rights of Afghans

So, with all this in mind, what does the constitution mean for the people of Afghanistan?

First, it is clear that under the Taliban’s constitution, the public has no say in the decision-making process — neither in the form of voting, nor with holding government bodies to account. The constitution denies the people their right to elect members to the shura, choose a prime minister, pick members of provincial assemblies or select governors, mayors and members of district assemblies since, according to the Taliban, elections are considered un-Islamic.

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Second, the selection of members of the shura by the amir al-Mu’minin opens the door for picking individuals who are close to the inner circle of the Taliban, particularly Taliban members themselves. By introducing the strict and ambiguous conditions of Ahl al-hall wa’l ‘aqd for shura appointees and a constitutional clause for the amir and prime minister to be followers of the Hanafi madhab of Sunni Islam, women and religious minorities such as Shia Muslims are excluded from positions of power and the decision-making process. Such provisions also contradict other clauses of the Taliban’s constitution, including the one that provides for equality before the law and prohibits all forms of discrimination.

Third, the Taliban’s constitution guarantees certain fundamental rights with limitations. This, in principle, includes freedom of speech, the right to a free and fair trial, liberty, human dignity, right to property, right to assemble unarmed and inviolability of person’s residence. It also provides for certain social rights, including the chance to receive free education. Most importantly, however, it leaves the regulation of women’s education to a specific law, which limits their right to education.

Prime Minister Mulla Hasan Akhund also confirmed such limitations in his first speech, where he indicated that only sharia education is compulsory and that women could seek knowledge in other fields if necessary. Thus, it can be inferred from his speech and the constitutional clause that the government will determine and specify faculties where women can take enroll and which the Taliban think are necessary for women. This provision itself contradicts other clauses of the constitution.

Finally, regarding the rights of children, women and minorities, the Taliban’s constitution does not specifically guarantee their protection. However, all Afghan citizens are provided with general protection, which includes children, women and minorities.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What the Taliban’s Constitution Means for Afghanistan appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is Afghanistan Going to Break Apart?

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As is well chronicled, Afghanistan emerged as a buffer state between the Russian and British empires. Dominated by the Pashtuns, this state remained an inchoate entity of competing ethnic groups, feuding clans and autonomous villages. As Tabish Forugh and one of the authors noted in an earlier article on 51�Թ�, this Pashtun-dominated order crumbled when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Taliban brought back this order in the 1990s and are establishing Pashtun primacy yet again.

New Life to Old Identities

Modernity has not been kind to Afghanistan. Until the 1970s, this country was a land where hippies showed up to smoke pot and have a good time. Older Pakistani friends reminisce about driving from Peshawar to Kabul to buy videotapes of Bollywood movies and bask in the relatively liberal milieu of Afghanistan. When the Soviets intervened in 1979, this idyllic version of the country disintegrated. For all the efforts of Soviet troops, engineers and administrators, communism failed.

By February 1989, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Later that year, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union itself imploded in 1991. The loosely allied mujahideen turned their guns on each other and a bloody civil war followed. The Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Pashtuns were at each other’s throats. Eventually, the Pakistani-trained, Islamabad-backed, Pashtun-led Taliban triumphed in 1996. Their rule was cut short by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which brought American intervention and began a 20-year experiment with democracy.

Sadly, the democratic experiment has failed too. In June 2021, Forugh and one of the authors wrote that President Ashraf Ghani occupied “his fancy palace in Kabul thanks to the barrels of American guns,” and, once the Americans left, he would be toast. Americans established a presidential system based on their own model that was destined to fail in a famously diverse and fractious society. Note that the US leaders after World War II chose parliamentary democracy for Germany and Japan, two industrial societies with a far higher degree of homogeneity. If Washington blundered at the beginning, its decisions were catastrophic at the end. Today, democracy is dead and buried, the fanatical Taliban rule the roost and ethnic identity is replacing fragile multiethnic Afghan nationalism.

The Rise of Ethnic Nationalism

As stated earlier, Afghanistan is where two expanding empires met. The British had digested modern-day Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, then British India. The Russians had taken over an odd assortment of clans and khanates in Central Asia, many of whom were descendants of Genghis Khan and Timur. Just like the boundaries drawn by the British or the French, the Russian ones were arbitrary too. As ethnic nationalism rises in Afghanistan, it will spill over into Central Asia.

As late as February 2020, the US State Department  that “a secure and stable Afghanistan [was] a top priority for the Central Asian governments.” It encouraged these governments to boost economic and trade ties with their Kabul counterparts. American hopes for “stable governance of multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority countries” now lie in tatters. Kazakhstan demonstrates that Russian realpolitik of supporting strongmen has triumphed.

Yet even the Kremlin cannot hold back the tide of ethnic nationalism that is unfolding in Afghanistan and spreading to Central Asia. The Tajiks led by Amrullah Saleh and  have the tacit, if not explicit, support of the Tajikistan government. The Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum  to Uzbekistan when the Taliban took over. As the Pashtuns leave not even scraps at the table for others, it is only natural that minority ethnicities are looking across the border for a better future. Just as in former Yugoslavia, ethnic nationalism is now on the rise in Central Asia.

Pakistan’s Frankenstein Monster’s Problem: Radical Islam

To a large degree, Pakistan has fostered, if not created, the ethnic nationalism now rising in Afghanistan and spilling over into Central Asia. It is an open secret that Pakistan’s military elite created the Taliban. As Ishtiaq Ahmed , “the Garrison State” has always been paranoid about its lack of strategic depth. The loss of East Pakistan that won independence as Bangladesh in 1971 has scarred the Pakistani psyche and made the country’s political elites double down on political Islam. In the 1980s, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq moved Pakistan along a fundamentalist arc. Jihad became the order of the day not only against the Soviets in Afghanistan but also against , which he sought to “bleed through a thousand cuts.”

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Zia was not an exception to Pakistani hostility to India. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the man Zia ousted through a military coup and hung on the gallows,  to wage a “thousand year war against India.” In 1974, Pakistani mobs massacred thousands of Ahmadis and, instead of delivering them protection or justice, Bhutto brought in a constitutional amendment declaring the Ahmadis non-Muslims. The same year, he declared Pakistan would go , claiming “We shall eat grass but have our bomb.” Islamic fundamentalism and Pavlovian anti-India ethos drive Pakistani state policy regardless of whether the country is under civil or military rule. 

Backed by the US and Saudi Arabia, the Pakistan-backed mujahideen brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Against India, Pakistan has followed an asymmetric strategy of championing irregulars, insurgent and terrorists from its very inception. In the first of a three-part series analyzing the fallout of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Rakesh Kaul points out how Pakistan supported a Pashtun jihad in Kashmir as early as 1947. The marauding tribesmen killed Kaul’s great-grandfather, “tied his dead body to a horse and dragged it through the streets to terrorize the local population into submission.”

Starting from the 1980s, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) unleashed terror as an instrument of state policy against India. First, the ISI backed the violent Sikh insurgency for an independent state of , a strategy that it continues with till today. Second, the ISI supported the insurgency in  that blew up in 1989 and persists till today. Third, the ISI created and supported militant jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to overwhelm India through multiple terrorist attacks. With a crisis-ridden economy and much smaller military, Pakistan has bet on asymmetric terror tactics and nuclear deterrence to tie India down.

However, Pakistan is discovering that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. Like Victor Frankenstein, the Garrison State has created a monster: . Since the 1980s, Pakistan has become intolerant, sectarian and violent. Minorities have faced persecution and suffered ethnic cleansing. The case of the animistic  people in Chitral is a case in point. Many  have recorded how they have faced persistent persecution and forced conversion. As a result, a mere 3,500 Kalash are left and they may not survive for too long.

Radical Islam was meant to be a tool the Pakistani state used against its neighbors. Now, it has spread like cancer throughout all aspects of the country’s life. Instead of Pakistan’s corrupt and inefficient government,  now provide education for refugees and lower-class Pakistanis. Many of them are hardline and churn out jihadis by the thousands. For instance, most of the Afghani Taliban leadership graduated from the madrasa Dur-ul-Uloom Haqqania.

Religious figures can now bring the country over a standstill in an instant. Violent protests repeatedly erupted after French President Emmanuel Macron said that Islam was in crisis. Terror attacks within Pakistan have shot up. Roohafza, a sugary syrupy drink, has replaced whiskey in officer messes. Many officers now sport flowing beards and offer prayer five times a day. In the words of Javed Jabbar, Pakistan has experienced “a steady retreat into showy religiosity and visible piety in the public domain and in most media.” A new law makes it compulsory for every child to learn .

Pakistan finds itself in a bind. It has to direct the thousands of jihadis graduating from madrasas against external enemies to avoid internecine strife. In fact, it is only a question of time before radical Islamists will infiltrate all organs of the Pakistani state. The Taliban’s victory has convinced them that Allah is on their side. The risks of a general like Zia or a cleric like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini taking over and unleashing nuclear terror or nuclear war are getting higher by the day.

Radical Islam and Pashtun Pride Make an Explosive Cocktail

If radical Islam is dangerous, radical Islam combined with ethnic nationalism is terrifying. After 20 years, the Pashtun-led Taliban is back in power. They are surging with confidence after humbling the world’s superpower. This time, they are battle-hardened, better trained and savvier than their predecessors from the 1990s. The Taliban also have a strong sense of history and look back to the expansionist 18^th-century Ahmed Shah Durrani as a model to follow. 

Durrani was a historic figure who sent troops to Central Asia, defeated the Marathas in the historic 1761 Third Battle of Panipat with assistance of local Muslim rulers and created the modern nation of Afghanistan. Durrani’s young nation soon fell victim to the Great Game and lost much territory to the British. Led by , the British delineated the modern-day border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Till date, many Pashtuns have not accepted this border.

The Taliban are expansionists. In the north, the Tajiks and the Uzbeks will fight a guerilla war, ensuring their eventual retreat. To the west lie Turkmenistan and Iran, two ethnically distinct entities where the Taliban cannot expand. To the south and east lies Pakistan where the Taliban trained and where their Pashtun kin reside. Furthermore, the Pashtuns have a deep memory of raiding and ruling the plains of Indus and the Ganges. When Babur swept down from modern-day Uzbekistan to modern-day Pakistan and India through the Khyber Pass, he defeated a Pashtun sultan who was ruling Delhi.

When Pakistan won independence, Pashtun opinion was divided. Some like  wanted a homeland for Muslim Indians in the shape of Pakistan. Others like , a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, fought for a unified India and then for an autonomous Pashtunistan. Still others wanted reunification with Afghanistan. Worryingly for Pakistan, Pashtun refugees have streamed into the country from Afghanistan since 1979. Encyclopedia  tells us that there were “about 11 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and 25 million in Pakistan in the early 21st century.” Multiple estimates indicate  to be over 15% of Pakistan’s population. In Afghanistan, they comprise about 42% of the population. Once all-out ethnic conflict erupts in Afghanistan, Pashtun identity is only likely to strengthen.

So far, the Punjabi elite running Pakistan has co-opted the Pashtun elite by giving it plum positions in the state apparatus, especially the military. The ruling elite has also used Pashtuns to fight wars and proxy wars in Kashmir since 1947 when both India and Pakistan emerged as two independent entities after the partition of British India. During the 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan, cross-border incursions into and violent incidents in Kashmir declined because Pashtuns were too busy fighting a jihad at home. Now, these jihadis will turn their attention to Kashmir.

Not all jihadis are fixated with Kashmir. Some of them are sworn enemies of the Pakistani state such as the . With the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan may have achieved its long-cherished strategic depth against India, but it now has the tail of the Pashtun tiger in its hands. Pakistan’s ISI has no option but to deploy Pashtun jihadis against India in Kashmir. Failure on the Kashmir front could trigger Pashtun dissatisfaction against Punjabi leadership.

A tiny wrinkle many forget is that Pashtuns see themselves as a warrior people and the natural leaders of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. They have successfully beaten back the British, the Soviets and the Americans. Pashtuns see the Punjabis as soft, loud and showy. Like the Balochs, the Sindhis, the Muhajirs and others, Pashtuns resent the Punjabi domination of Pakistan. Furthermore, many Pashtuns regard the banks of the Indus, not the Durand Line, as their natural border.

Blood Borders

Pakistan’s Pashtun problem is a particular example of a more widespread phenomenon. Most of the current borders in Africa, the Middle East and Asia are colonial legacies that do not make sense. In 2006, Ralph Peters published a controversial article in Armed Forces Journal titled “” where he argued for redrawing “arbitrary and distorted borders.” Peters took the view that “significant ‘cheated’ population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia” deserved their own states. He blamed “awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries,” not Islam, for much of the violence in the Middle East and South Asia.

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Since 2006, many analysts have slammed Peters. The US has resolutely upheld the stability of the borders in former British and French colonies even as it has championed the independence of nations once under the Soviet yoke. That policy might be nearing the end of its shelf life. In its moment of triumph in Afghanistan, Pakistan might have set wheels into motion that will lead to its own disintegration.

Today, Pakistan is held together by an anti-India Islamic identity. The different linguistic ethnic groups that comprise Pakistan have long been pulling in different directions. Therefore, Pakistan has fostered a siege mentality among its people and created an identity that looks to Arab, Turkish and Pashtun conquerors of India for inspiration. Pashtun identity is far more cohesive, time-tested and real. After humbling the US, Pashtuns are unlikely to play second fiddle to the Punjabis for much longer. Inevitably, they are bound to take charge of their own destiny as they have done many times in the past.

To add fuel to the fire, Pakistan’s economy is in dire straits. Last year, the International Monetary Fund instituted yet another  and released $6 billion to Islamabad in November. Over the last three years, the Pakistani rupee has  by 30.5% against the US dollar.  and  are running high. In such circumstances, anti-India rhetoric is useful, desirable and essential to keep the country together. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has repeatedly condemned India’s “” and claimed that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s parent organization, of being Nazi-inspired entities. This puts pressure on Khan’s government and his military backers to act against such a toxic neighbor and evil enemy. The trouble for Khan and his delusional friends in Islamabad is that state coffers have little money to fund conflict with a far more prosperous and numerous India. Khan and co are riling up a mob that they are bound to disappoint. The last-ditch effort to keep Pakistan together would be war with India and, if Islamic radicals were to seize power in Islamabad, the risk of nuclear war would only turn too real.

Whether conflict with India is conventional or nuclear will be determined by circumstances in the future. It is clear that the Taliban have unleashed ethnic nationalism not only in Afghanistan but also in neighboring Central Asian states. Inevitably, the Pashtuns in Pakistan will be infected by that sentiment as well, especially as Islamabad leads the country to economic and military disaster. The scenario Peters conjured of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes reuniting with their Afghan brethren and creating Pashtunistan would then come true. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan would no longer be the same again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Pashtun-led Taliban Could Break Apart Both Afghanistan and Pakistan appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A Chequered Past

For more than a century, different power centers in Afghanistan have had some sort of representation in the central government, even if they often got leftovers from the dominant Pashtun ruling class. This class was repressive and often bloody. Abdur Rahman Khan, the Iron Amir, conducted  against the Hazaras in the 1890s, erased a substantial part of the cultural heritage of Nuristanis by forcing them to convert to Islam, and confiscated fertile lands of Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north only to redistribute them to Pashtun tribes. Even a modernist king like Amanulla pursued the Iron Amir’s policies. Yet, at the helm of power, there was generally a servant’s seat at the table for other ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and even the Hazaras. This seat at the table along with the backing of superpowers, first the British and then the Soviets, kept the state and the political order intact.

Afghanistan Is On the Verge of Disaster

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When the Soviets invaded in 1979, the Pashtun-dominated order of Afghanistan gradually crumbled. Ideology trumped ethnicity, and groups like the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Hazaras rose in prominence. Much credit for this goes to , the president of Afghanistan from December 1979 to November 1986. When the Soviets withdrew in February 1989, this order collapsed. The battle-hardened mujahideen groups fought a brutal civil war in which Tajik leaders Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the Jamiat Party, and , known as the “Lion of Panjshir,” held the upper hand.

The Pashtuns struck back through the Taliban and took over Kabul in . They exercised power over most of the country while Massoud was leading the resistance to the Taliban government from the Panjshir Valley. He was  in Afghanistan two days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001 by an al-Qaeda suicide squad masquerading as journalists on the pretext of filming an interview. Even after his death, the resistance to the Taliban continued and Massoud’s fighters contributed heavily to the ground fighting that drove out the Taliban from much of the country, including Kabul.

In the five years of Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, the Pashtuns returned as the dominant military and political group. They ran an autocratic regime, marginalizing other ethnic groups and suppressing opponents. Hence, resistance to the Taliban was persistent and ferocious in many parts of the country.

The Post 9/11 Experience

The 9/11 attacks led to the American intervention and the creation of a new democratic state. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens and other marginalized communities became active participants in the political process. Despite its fragility and flaws, the post-2001 political order and its democratic components offered a unique opportunity for Afghanistan to transform into a functioning polity and society.

The governing Pashtun ethnonationalist elites, their non-Pashtun partners, including conservative warlords, and the reemergence of a Pashtun-led insurgency squandered the resources and opportunities that otherwise might have consolidated a civil and democratic political order.  

The Taliban’s forceful return to Kabul last August ended the post-2001 American-backed constitutional order. Today, chaos prevails and a fanatical Pashtun clergy has a vice-like grip on every aspect of Afghanistan’s social, political and economic life. Furthermore, the Taliban are fanatical Muslims with ethnofascist tendencies and a profound apathy for Afghanistan’s ethnic, cultural and political diversity.

In recent months, many analysts have been very charitable to the Taliban. In an interview with 51�Թ�, political analyst Anas Altikriti said, “The reality is the Taliban have won and in today’s world, they have the right, the absolute right to govern.” If the right to govern comes from conquest, then Altikriti is right. Lest we forget, the Taliban have yet to win an election or demonstrate that they are actually capable of governing. Moreover, they are rigid, dictatorial and revanchist. An inclusive political formula that represents Afghanistan’s mosaic-like diversity is impossible so long as the Taliban remain exclusively in charge.

The legitimate aspirations of non-Pashtun ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Hazaras, the Turkmens and others are now dissolving in the acid of Sunni fundamentalism. The Taliban have marginalized them completely. These groups have no seat at the table, no representation in the decision-making process and have to live under the barrel of the Taliban gun.

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In 2022, this situation is untenable. Non-Pashtun ethnic groups are fed up and want control over their destiny. Many Pashtun technocrats, including the former president, Hamid Karzai, have switched sides and are part of the ruling dispensation. They claim the Taliban are the source of stability and have formed the only organization capable of ruling the country. However, they forget an important point. Marginalized groups in Afghanistan are chafing under Pashtun hegemony. If the Taliban-led Pashtuns cling to their unilateral rule and convert Afghanistan into a centralized state, the country will indubitably and inevitably break apart.

Federalism Is the Way Forward

To avoid a bloody partition along ethnic lines or a 1990s style civil war, Afghanistan needs a federal political system. Afghanistan is not France or the United Kingdom. It cannot be run out of a grand capital no matter how powerful the ruling class is. Like Switzerland and the United States, Afghanistan is an extremely diverse country with a history of local autonomy and a glorious tradition of bloody rebellion as the British, the Soviets and the Americans discovered at their cost.

Therefore, the balance of power in any political system that can work must lie with local, not national government. Such a system could turn Afghanistan’s disparate ethnic groups into building blocks of a new federal state and avoid the looming bloodbath due to the Taliban’s autocratic rule.

With China and Russia taking center stage, Afghanistan is increasingly forgotten. That is as risky as it is unfortunate. Conflict in Afghanistan could spill over into South and Central Asia, threatening global peace and security. Afghanistan needs dialogue between different groups ready to hammer out a territorial, judicial, and administrative settlement that leads to a functional union. Only then can we expect the fragile state of Afghanistan to survive.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is Afghanistan Going to Break Apart? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Financial Sector Needs to Address Whistleblower Retaliation

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An issue that is causing immediate concern amid the increasingly dictatorial reign of the Taliban is the country’s profound financial crisis. Cut off from international financial institutions and with nearly worth of assets frozen, Afghans can’t rely on humanitarian assistance as aid organizations try to navigate their way around the newly-imposed sanctions regime.

The local currency, the afghani, is in ; down nearly 20% since mid-2021, there doesn’t seem to be a stabilization point in the foreseeable future. Jobs have disappeared, and those lucky enough to be employed frequently are months behind in receiving their salaries. The United Nations fears that the Afghan banking system is on the .

Currency Alternatives

With limited funds remaining in the country, lengthy lines form at the banks and ATMs as Afghans seek access to what little is left — many being left with nothing. In addition to having severely constrained access to cash, purchasing power for the average Afghan is falling quickly, placing them in ever more dire straits. 

This perfect financial storm has led many Afghans to look to decentralized finance as an alternative, and has rapidly moved in to fill the void, just as it has done in other countries facing currency crises. Although crypto is still often highly volatile, Afghans see it as a legitimate source for much-needed cash flow and liquidity. They also increasingly view digital wallets as far more stable than their bank accounts.

Even if cryptocurrencies are not truly decentralized, it is possible that Afghans see cryptocurrency as an escape route from at least one aspect of life under an authoritarian regime. Further adding to crypto’s popularity is its ability to promote financial inclusion for people who often have difficulty gaining access to traditional financial services, like women, most of whom weren’t allowed or able to open a bank account in Afghanistan. 

Greater ease of opening accounts, lower documentation requirements and more affordable fee structures make cryptocurrency a viable and attractive alternative to brick-and-mortar banks and hard currency. Given that crypto financial services are intentionally mobile-friendly, they are much more accessible to the average Afghan than the failing internal banking system.

Connecting Scattered Families

According to the UN, as of last year, nearly 5.9 million Afghans , mostly in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. The number has been on the increase since the Taliban takeover as of new refugees seek asylum in countries across the globe. Migration often leaves families separated and in dire need of resources.

Well before the Taliban administration took power, it was common for Afghans living abroad to help support family members back home. According to the World Bank, in 2020, nearly $800 million, or roughly , streamed into the country in the form of remittances. 

As Afghan banks shut down or limited operations and international payment providers like Western Union suspended operations in Afghanistan due to international sanctions, intra-family transfers became increasingly difficult. Moreover, even those banks that remained open typically did not make simple payment systems like Venmo or Zelle available to their customers.

With cryptocurrency-based payment systems, family members have a solution for bypassing the internal financial problems in the country. The result is an acceleration of crypto use, placing Afghanistan among the in the world for adoption rate.

Links Between Crypto and Terrorism

Unfortunately, crypto’s ability to remain outside mainstream financial and regulatory structures has also made it attractive to terrorist organizations. A recent report from the US attorney general’s Cyber Digital Task Force between cryptocurrency and terrorist organizations: “While public data on terrorist use of cryptocurrency is limited, it is clear that terrorist networks have conducted fundraising operations through Internet-based crowdsource platforms in an attempt to evade stopgaps built into the international banking system.” 

Well-known terrorist organizations from Hamas to the Islamic State use cryptocurrency to create funding networks and purchase supplies for their operations. It is remarkably simple for these groups to leverage extensive social media networks to back their fundraising drives.

Ongoing efforts to disrupt such activity have seen some limited success. For example, US anti-terrorism efforts in 2020 led to civil forfeiture cases and the seizure of more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts containing several million dollars.

Can Crypto Help the Taliban Circumvent Sanctions?

As crypto adoption rates skyrocket, concerns are building in the international community that the Taliban itself will turn to cryptocurrency to sidestep sanctions and cloud financial transparency. All of this raises the question of whether crypto adoption in Afghanistan poses a significant security threat for the rest of the world.   

The Taliban continues to seek international recognition and has stated that failure to do so will have significant consequences for the world. However, it does not appear that recognition is forthcoming. Indeed, the US is unlikely to ever officially recognize the Taliban government, with the group still on its list of .

Without formal recognition, the Taliban regime will continue to struggle to access its international accounts or generate international funding to help alleviate its economic woes. While cryptocurrency might seem like a reasonably effective option for the Taliban government, the complexity of the economic situation in the country precludes a single solution. With governments across the world beginning to introduce stricter regulations on cryptocurrency markets and actively working to prevent access by terrorist organizations, things may not be quite so simple for Afghanistan’s new leaders. 

At least one government has explicitly attempted to counteract US sanctions through cryptocurrency in the past. The embattled regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela had teamed with Russian banks to back Evrofinance Mosnarbank, the primary supporter of Venezuela’s proposed national cryptocurrency, the . Maduro claimed that the petro would help Venezuela obtain alternative sources of international financing, despite heavy US sanctions. However, the scheme has not been successful, a sign that similar attempts by the Taliban may be of limited use.

The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan represents an ongoing security threat far beyond its borders. Stability, both political and financial, is certainly in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan and everyone else, including cryptocurrency markets.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Afghans Turn to Crypto Amid Crisis appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Legacy of America’s Failed War on Terror

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In August, President Joe Biden gave a self-serving blaming everyone except the US for the current situation in Afghanistan. His speech does not withstand close scrutiny, though. If anyone is to blame for the Taliban’s dramatic comeback, it is Uncle Sam. Washington demonstrated breathtaking ignorance, arrogance and stupidity in handing Afghanistan from day one.

Failure to Learn From the Past

To handle Afghanistan better, the United States could have done well to dust off some history books and learn from the playbook of the British Empire. At one point, a mere 6,000 British officials 250 million Indians. The key to British success was not military firepower, but an extraordinary understanding of the subcontinent. They wrote gazettes, drafted reports and charted maps that covered every nook and cranny of the landmass. When retired CIA officer Glenn Carle was struggling to find a Pashtun village more than two decades ago, he had to turn to a colleague to pore over imperial maps in London.

In 1800, Lord Wellesley, the elder brother of the Duke of Wellington and then-governor general of India, Fort William College, the first modern institution of learning in the subcontinent. This institution taught British officials Indian languages and prepared them to rule a landmass that the armies of the British East India Company were conquering rapidly. To this day, the best of British diplomatic and intelligence officials strive to learn local languages. The thoughtful who possibly knows Afghanistan like the back of his hand is a direct heir to none other than Lawrence of Arabia. The US has never had a figure like Lawrence or Rory for good reason.

America has long been the promised land for immigrants. However, these immigrants leave their ancestral lands behind. Two oceans separate the US from the rest of the world. This “maintains nearly 800 military bases in over 90 countries,” but it does not have officers who go “native” unlike their British counterparts. In Afghanistan, American troops and administrators almost invariably relied on interpreters. A staggering interpreters have worked for the American military since 2001.

This overreliance on interpreters has proved toxic. Barely 6% of Afghanistan’s population speaks . By relying on this tiny section of Afghan society, the US was cutting itself off from the vast majority of the country, much of which still lives in the remote and rugged countryside. Over time, much of this English-speaking Afghan elite proved to be self-serving and corrupt.

The classic example of this phenomenon is Ashraf Ghani. The high and mighty in Washington backed Ghani in a murky marred by fraud and misconduct. He spoke flawless English, had worked for the World Bank and had taken up American citizenship. Sadly for the Americans, they bet on the wrong horse. When the Taliban rolled into town, President Ghani failed to put up a fight, fleeing with “$169 million from the state coffers.”

Ignorance of Wider World Is a Systemic Weakness

Afghanistan represents a longstanding American weakness. In 1953, the US conducted a coup in Iran for British interests. They had no idea of the lay of the land and this coup spectacularly backfired in 1978-79, The Iranian Revolution haunts the US to this day. The US failure to understand Vietnam has been examined through books, documentaries and countless commentaries. In Afghanistan, the Americans relied on treacherous Pakistan and used interpreters instead of putting in the hard work to truly understand the people and their culture.

At its core, the Taliban was a peasant-supported movement. They shared this similarity with the Vietcong. The Pew Research Center that 99% of Afghans support making sharia the official law. Frighteningly, 67% of Afghans believe “there is only one possible way to understand sharia.” As Stewart observes in his meticulous on Afghanistan, Afghans have always believed in jihad against non-Muslims. Historically, Pashtuns came down the Khyber Pass to raid the plains of Punjab. The more enterprising ones got as far as the Gangetic plains of India. Babur conquered North India in 1526 from the Pashtun Lodi Dynasty. In 1947, Pakistan unleashed Pashtun irregulars against India and, as I pointed out in the previous article, my grandfather paid the price with his life.

Now that the Taliban are in charge of Kabul, Kashmir is its next target. Both the Taliban and Pakistan have persecuted minorities relentlessly. In September 2002, Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik published a damning on Pakistan for Minority Rights Group International. Nearly 20 years ago, he observed how non-Muslims and even many Muslim groups are treated as second-class citizens and pressured to convert to Islam. The Taliban–Pakistan narrative constantly paints India as a land of “Hindu kafirs” that oppresses fellow Muslims in Kashmir.

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Already, the Taliban–Pakistan move against India is in full swing. In November, nine Indian soldiers lost their lives to “” terror groups. Anas Haqqani, the youngest son of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani and the brother of Taliban’s deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, has visited the of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi. Haqqani called Ghaznavi “a renowned Muslim warrior & Mujahid of the 10th century.” Ghaznavi raided India 17 times, smashing temples, looting gold and taking back hundreds of thousands of male and female slaves with him.

Haqqani’s tweet celebrated this bloodthirsty medieval sultan as the warrior king “who established a strong Muslim rule in the region from Ghazni & smashed the idol of Somnath.” His brother is the interior minister of Afghanistan and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation offers a reward of $10 million for his arrest. The is responsible for some of the deadliest terror attacks in Afghanistan. From their declarations and actions, it is clear that their next target is jihad in Kashmir.

The Americans have long allowed Pakistan to play Pied Piper not only in Afghanistan, but also in Kashmir. Before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the US constantly lectured India on human rights, often at the behest of Pakistan. Washington failed to realize that much of the violence in Kashmir was being perpetrated by Pakistanis and Afghan irregulars. In 1995, the Sufi shrine of was razed to the ground by a Pashtun named Mast Gul who remains scot-free in Pakistan.

Once the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, they sent jihadi fighters to Kashmir. Retired CIA officers remark that Muzaffarabad, the largest city in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, became the watering hole for the most hardened Islamists on their way to fight jihad against India. To the west of Muzaffarabad lies Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pashtun-dominated Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan. To its east lie the Kupwara and Baramulla districts of Indian Kashmir.

Because of Kashmir, Indian troops had extensive experience in counterinsurgency against militant jihadists from Afghanistan, which analysts in the US government were as early as 2004. Yet the US neither sought nor heeded Indian advice on Afghanistan. Now that the Taliban are back in power, they will inevitably do what they did in the late 1990s: fight jihad in Kashmir.

Opium Fuels Jihad

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s economy has suffered a meltdown. The UN has warned that millions of Afghans might face this winter. Even when American troops were in Afghanistan, there was a in opium poppy production. Now, this production will grow exponentially because the Taliban have no other way to fund the national economy and they cannot afford to alienate local farmers. Europe will not only have to deal with increasing numbers of Afghan refugees, but also skyrocketing heroin imports. The US has absolutely no idea as to how to deal with the Frankenstein’s monster it has unleashed on the world.

For the first time, the world will have to deal with a state whose economy is based on narcotic exports. Globally, 85% of opium is sourced from Afghanistan and the are now running the country. Therefore, it is in the economic interest of the state and its leadership to boost opium production. Pakistan will be a willing ally in the distribution of opium to keep the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan and avoid more refugees spilling over across the border.

Earlier this year, Zulfikar Majid reported how Kashmir’s drug was worsening. Imports from Afghanistan have been rising so dramatically that even 10-year-olds are falling prey to heroin abuse. Kashmir is now firmly in the crosshairs and the map of Asia might soon be in question. The world has just become a more dangerous place and the US, notwithstanding its retreat from Afghanistan, is no exception.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Reports indicate that the problems facing Afghanistan, particularly economic, have multiplied with the rise of the Taliban. At the same time, no nation in the world has yet recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers. The Taliban are known by many Afghans as a group that seized power by military force. It is almost impossible for the people to recognize a group that has committed the worst crimes in recent years, including using car  on civilians. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they denied girls the right to seek an education. Since returning to power in August this year, they have doing so.

The Legacy of America’s Failed War on Terror

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Despite they would, the Taliban have not formed an inclusive government. What they mean by inclusiveness is a  made up of only men, the clergy and, most importantly, members of the Pashtun community. Notably, the latter are mostly affiliated with the , a militant group that has close ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Taliban cannot even a government that includes all of their members due to the lack of consensus among themselves.

The Taliban will face challenges in gaining political legitimacy, resolving the economic crisis and maintaining public order. In short, they cannot govern. Taliban militants have been trained to carry out suicide attacks and irregular guerrilla warfare. They are not trained to maintain public order and manage government affairs. For this reason, the future of Afghanistan looks bleak.

Mass Hunger

An increase in poverty is inevitable in Afghanistan. The UN Development Programme reports that  of civilians could plunge below the poverty line by mid-2022. According to a of the World Food Program (WFP), 60% of those living in the northern provinces of Afghanistan are currently suffering from hunger and this figure will likely increase in the months ahead. Aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have of an “impending humanitarian crisis.”

There is currently a severe economic crisis in the country. Many civilians, including former employees of NGOs and the previous Afghan government, are either unemployed or have no hope of earning a living. The Taliban have not allowed female staff to return to work, which means that these women, many of whom were the sole breadwinners, have no way to make money for their families. The unskilled and manual labor workforce has now minimal or no income at all. Alarmingly, farmers have suffered due to drought, winter is fast approaching and medical supplies are running in the country’s remote provinces. These incidents take place when the price of raw materials has risen . Millions of children are likely to be malnourished as a result of the growing economic crisis.

The all-male Taliban government is not capable of coping with such problems. It expects the international community to resume financial and humanitarian assistance following a freeze on in August amidst the Taliban takeover. The plight of the people and the impending famine seem to be a winning card that the Taliban are using to  with the international community. Given that it is not in their interest to do so, the Taliban are unlikely to address poverty and unemployment themselves. For this reason, with the arrival of winter, a humanitarian catastrophe will occur.

Yet the Afghan crisis is not only about those suffering from hunger. Aside from mass poverty, a new wave of conflict is likely to come.

Sectarian Violence in Afghanistan

With the rise of the Taliban, violence in Afghanistan has not only increased but has also become more complex. The biggest threat to the country is the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (ISKP), which is at odds with the Taliban. ISKP is affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group that swept through Syria and Iraq in 2014, and it has launched deadly attacks on the Hazara and Shia minorities in Afghanistan.

On October 8, an ISKP suicide bomber attacked worshipers at a mosque attended by Hazaras in the northern city of Kunduz, killing at least 100  and injuring more than 150. A week later during Friday prayers, ISKP launched another deadly attack on Shia Afghans, this time in the southern Kandahar province. At least  were killed.

According to , the Russian president, militants “from Iraq, Syria with experience in military operations” are entering Afghanistan. Although militias operating under the aegis of the Taliban do not make the group’s fighters much different from Islamic State jihadists — both groups use similar — the influx of foreign terrorists from the Middle East into Afghanistan heralds a much darker future for the country.

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Jihadists entering Afghanistan have more practical and strategic warfare experience in places like Syria and Iraq. In these countries, IS and al-Qaeda leaders recruited people by igniting sectarian tensions. This strategy has previously been used by , a Jordanian militant who led al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2005, he declared an  against Iraqi Shias, which brought death and destruction to the country. The violent turmoil of the past decade in the Middle East owes much to this strategy.

It can now be said that there is no real government in Afghanistan to stop foreign jihadists from attacking civilians. With this in mind, the gathering of fighters from across the world and the continued attacks on Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara community will eventually turn the country into a field of sectarian strife. Not only is ISKP threatening Afghan Shias, but the Taliban will also not be safe. Reports indicate that Taliban members have occasionally fallen victim to as well.

A Terrifying Future

Civilians in Afghanistan are now facing one of the worst challenges of their lives. The most devastating threat to them is not even mass poverty. Rather, it is the beginning of a much more violent conflict in a country that is on the verge of a new civil war. Indeed, Afghans have become more economically vulnerable, but not all of their problems are reduced to poverty.

We are currently seeing an Afghanistan where neither the media can operate freely, nor can human rights observers monitor impartially. Most of Afghanistan’s skilled workforce has left the country. With journalists and human rights defenders no longer living there and few job opportunities for those who remain, a terrifying future awaits.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 2001, a US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda and search for its leader, Osama bin Laden, who were harbored by the Taliban government. The presence of foreign troops sent al-Qaeda militants into hiding and the Taliban were overthrown.

How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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In declaring his war, Bush gave the international community an unequivocal : to either be “with us or against us in the fight against terror.” In 2003, he took this a step further. He leveraged his power and convinced US allies that Iraq was a state sponsor of terror and its president, Saddam Hussein, had developed weapons of mass destruction, which posed an imminent threat. It wasn’t long before the world found out that this narrative was constructed by the White House as the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq. The results were devastating: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi , the of over 9 million civilians and the political mayhem that continues to this day.

It has been argued that Islam has been conflated with terrorism not only in the media, but also in much of the political discourse. As a direct result of the war on terror, show that an attack by a Muslim perpetrator receives 375% more attention than if the culprit was a non-Muslim.

As these patterns grew with time, countries started to employ their deterrence capacity under the guise of the “war on terror,” only to undermine those who were resisting regimes or seeking self-determination. This was seen in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Even Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in 2001, quickly persuaded Western leaders that his country faced similar threats from Islamists and was dealt a carte blanche to crack down with brute force on insurgents and civilians alike.

The foreign occupation of Afghanistan ended in August 2021. After 20 grueling and miserable years, the US pulled out from Afghanistan amidst a Taliban takeover, setting a range of events into motion. Chaos filled Kabul Airport as scores of people were desperate to leave the country. The IMF Afghanistan’s access to hundreds of millions in emergency funds due to a “lack of clarity within the international community” over recognizing a Taliban government.  

The war led to irreparable damages and hundreds of thousands of Afghans paid with their lives. The US spent over on the conflict and had of its soldiers returned in body bags. Today, starving families in Afghanistan are their babies for money to feed their children and the world only looks on.

To understand how we got here, I spoke to Anas Altikriti, a political analyst, hostage negotiator and the CEO of , an organization aimed at bridging the gap of understanding between the Muslim world and the West. In this interview, we discuss America’s handling of the occupation and examine Afghanistan’s next steps now that the Taliban has assumed authority in the country.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kholoud Khalifa: Joe Biden has received a certain amount of backlash from both sides of the aisle for withdrawing abruptly from Afghanistan. What do you make of his decision?

Anas Altikriti: Looking from an American perspective, I believe Biden had no choice. We tend to forget that the president who actually signed the agreement to leave Afghanistan was Donald Trump and his deadline was May of this year. Technically, you can state that Biden was carrying out a decision made by his predecessor. However, in reality — and I think that this is what’s important — any American president would have found it extremely difficult and utterly senseless to carry on a failed venture. Afghanistan and Iraq were utterly horrendous mistakes. If not at the point of conception and theory, the implementation was horrid.

However, from a purely analytical political point of view, Biden had absolutely no choice. The fact that he was going to come in for so much criticism, and particularly from the American right, is no surprise whatsoever. I would like to assume that Biden’s administration had the capacity to foresee that and to prepare for that, not only in terms of media, but also in terms of trying to argue the political perspective. Although in America today, I don’t think that is really useful.

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So, generally speaking, I’m not surprised by the fact that he got attacked, because ultimately speaking, on paper, this was a defeat to the Americans. It was a defeat to the Americans on the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, the day in which the idea started to crystallize in terms of those who wanted to see American basis spread far and wide, and the whole intermittent 20 years has been nothing but an utter and an abject failure. Thousands of American troops have been killed, but on the other side, probably more than a million of Afghan lives have been absolutely decimated — either killed or having to flee their homes and live as refugees elsewhere. The cost has been absolutely incredible, and for that, I think the Americans can contend with themselves, as history will judge this to be a failed attempt from start to finish.

Khalifa: What are your thoughts on the Taliban as a political actor in today’s geopolitical landscape?

Altikriti: Well, we’ll wait and see. There is no question that from the military point of view, the Taliban won. They achieved the victory, and they managed to expel the Americans and to defeat them not only on the ground, but also at negotiating. For almost the past 12 years, there had been negotiations between the Taliban and the Americans either directly or indirectly, whilst at the same time, the Taliban had been fighting against the American presence in Afghanistan and never conceding for a moment on their objective that they wanted a full and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. That, itself, is something to be taught at political science departments across the world, and it has definitely affected my own curriculum that I teach to students.

Negotiations, as well as being backed by real power, are things that have proven to be extremely beneficial and quite successful in this particular time. Now, that might be easy in comparison to catering to a nation of 40 million that have been devastated for almost three generations — from oppressive regimes to conflicts, to wars, to civil war, to occupation, to absolute and utter devastation to the rise of violence, ideological militancy, to all sorts of issues that have ravaged that nation.

Governing Afghanistan is going to be a totally different kettle of fish. It’s not the same as fighting. You can say that actually fighting a war from mountain tops and caves is relatively easy in comparison with the task ahead. Whether they’re going to be successful or not is something that we wait to see, and I hope for the betterment of the Afghan people that they will be.

The reality is the Taliban have won and in today’s world, they have the right the absolute right to govern. Hopefully, within the foreseeable future, the Afghan people will have the choice to either hold them to account and lay the blame for whatever economic failures, for instance, or otherwise.

This struggle between nations and their regimes is a continuous one. Thankfully, where we live, in the West, that struggle is mostly done on a political plane. So, we fight politically and we hold our politicians accountable through the ballot boxes. That is not present in many, many developing countries. Afghanistan is definitely a country that needs to find its own model as to how to govern and how to create that kind of balance between people and regime. I think it is utterly hypocritical from the West to prejudge them and hold them to ransom via mistakes that happened in the past. Every administration commits mistakes of varying sorts. Our own government in the UK is now being investigated by an independent inquiry staff as to how it dealt with COVID and whether some of its decisions led to the death of thousands of people. So, mistakes can happen.

The West needs to contend with why they left Afghanistan after 20 years of absolute misery and suffering no better than when they came to it in 2001. That’s a question that the West, including the UK, need to ask themselves before passing judgment on to the Taliban.

Khalifa: You mentioned something very interesting. You said we’re waiting to see and we cannot judge them right now. Do we see any hints of change? Has today’s Taliban changed from the Taliban of the pre-US occupation? For example, the Taliban issued a public pardon on Afghan military forces that had tried to eradicate them.

Altikriti: Well, the hints are plenty and the hints are positive. The fact that the Taliban, as you put it, issued that decree that there won’t be any military trials or court marshals being held. The fact that from the very first hours, they said that anyone who wants to leave could leave and they won’t stop them, but that they hope everyone will stay to rebuild Afghanistan. I think from a political and PR point of view, that was a very, very shrewd way to lay out the preface of their coming agenda.

The fact that Taliban leaders spoke openly, and I’ll be honest, in quite impressive narratives and discourses to foreign media — to the BBC, to Sky — and, in fact, took the initiative to actually phoning up the BBC and intervening and carrying out long and extensive interviews. This has never happened before. We could never have imagined that they sit with female correspondents and presenters and spoke freely and openly. Also, the fact that they met with the Shia communities in Afghanistan at the time when they were celebrating Muharram and assured them that everything was going to be fine.

I think a big part of whether Afghanistan succeeds or not lies in the hands of the West. For instance, in the first 24 hours of the Americans leaving in such a chaotic manner, which exemplified the chaos of the Taliban as we know it, the IMF said that funds to Afghanistan would be withheld. Therein begins that kind of Western hegemony, Western colonization that I believe is at the very heart of many problems in what we termed the Third World or the developing world.

The fact that sometimes nations aren’t allowed to progress, they aren’t allowed to rise from the ashes, they aren’t allowed to recover, they aren’t allowed to rebuild, not because of any innate deficiency on their part, but because of the international order that we have today in the world. We have so many restraining legal organizations — from the UN downwards, including the IMF and the World Bank — that hold nations to ransom. Either you behave in a particular way or we’re going to withhold what is essentially yours. It’s an absolute travesty, but unfortunately, this goes across all our radars. There is very little response in terms of saying, hang on, that is neither just nor fair nor democratic.

If you really, really want the betterment of Afghanistan and Afghan people, countries should be piling in, in order to afford help, to afford aid and to make absolutely sure that the Afghan people have everything they need in order to rebuild for the future.

But, unfortunately, the opposite is happening. We’re tying the nation’s hands behind its back and saying, we’re just going to watch and see how you do in that boxing ring, and if you don’t fare well, that will be justification for us to maybe reintervene in one way or another sometime down the line.

Khalifa: After seizing the country, the Taliban promised an inclusive government, with the exception of women. Yet the current government only comprises Taliban members. What are the chances that they deliver on forming an inclusive government?

Altikriti: I’m sort of straddling the line between being an academic and an activist, and I have a foot in both, so it’s sometimes a little bit difficult. However, I would suggest that when the Conservative Party in Britain wins an election, it’s never assumed that they include people from the Labour Party or Liberal Democrats in their next government. The same goes in America: When the Republicans win an election, you can’t reasonably ask or expect of them to include those with incredible minds and capacities from the Democratic Party — you simply don’t.

So, the hope for inclusivity in Afghanistan needs to take that into consideration. The Taliban are the winning party — whether by force or by political negotiations — and therefore, they have the right to absolutely build the kind of government they see fit. For them to then reach out to others would be an incredible gesture.

But I think it’s problematic and hypocritical if the West doesn’t allow the winning party to govern. If after some time it doesn’t manage to, then maybe you’d expect it to reach out to others from outside its own party or from outside its own borders and invite them to come and help out. But that’s not what you expect from day one.

The fact that they haven’t done what many people expected, and I personally have to say I feared would happen, and it hasn’t. So, until we find that media stations closed down, radio stations barricaded and people rounded up — and I hope none of that will happen, but if it does, we hold them to account.

Khalifa: Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, says the international community must engage with the Taliban, avoid isolating Afghanistan and refrain from imposing sanctions. He says the “Taliban are the best bet to get rid of ISIS.” What’s your view on that?

Altikriti: If we’re looking back at their track record, they were the ones who managed to put an end to the civil war that broke out after the liberation from the Soviet Union. I mean, for about five to six years, Afghanistan was ravaged with a civil war, warlords were running the place amok. I remember an American journalist said the only safe haven in Afghanistan was something like a 20-square-meter room in a hotel in the center of Kabul. The Taliban came in and created a sense of normality, once again in terms of putting an end to the civil war. There remained only one or two factions that were still in resistance, but otherwise, the Taliban managed to actually bring Afghanistan to order.

It was only after 9/11 and the US intervention that returned the country back into a state of chaos. So, if we’re going to take their track record into consideration, then it’s only fair to say that they do have the experience, the expertise and the track record that shows that they can bring some semblance of normality and peace.

Now, obviously, we understand that Afghanistan is not disconnected from its regional map and from the regional politics that are at play, including the Pakistani-Indian conflict. It’s no secret that the Taliban were looked after and maintained by the Pakistani intelligence. I understand from the negotiations that were taking place since 2010 that there was almost always a member of the Pakistani intelligence present at the table. So, it’s not a secret that Pakistan saw that in order to quell the so-called factions that represented the mujahideen, the Taliban were its safest bet.

In that sense and from that standpoint, you would suggest that the Taliban are best equipped. Much of what was going on in Afghanistan was based on cultures, traditions and norms that Americans were never ready to embrace, understand or accept. That’s why they fell foul so many times of incidents, which could have been easily appeased with only a little bit of an understanding and of an appreciation of fine cultural or traditional intricacies and nuances. The Taliban wouldn’t have that issue.

So, you would suggest that what Imran Khan said has some ground to stand on. It’s a viable theory. But everything that we’re talking about will be judged by what see is going to happen. But before we do that, we need to allow the Taliban the time, so that when we come to say, listen, they fail, we have grounds and evidence to issue such a judgment.

Khalifa: I want to shift to the US. So we know that there was a US-led coalition, and its presence for over 20 years in Afghanistan and in the Middle East led to very little change in the region. You already alluded to that at the very beginning. The US spent trillions of dollars and incurred the highest death toll out of the coalition members. What has the US learned from this experience?

Altikriti: I think that’s the question we should be focused on. I fear that it has learned virtually nothing and that’s very worrying. Just like we were passing pre-judgments on the Taliban, we need to do the same everywhere. If that’s the kind of ruler that we’re using to judge a straight line, it’s the same ruler we need to judge every straight line.

We heard the statements that emerged from Washington, and to be perfectly honest, very, very few were of any substance. Ninety-nine percent, and this is my own impression, were about America looking back and how they let down the translators and the workers in the alliance government and left them at their own fate. The tears were shed, both in the British Parliament as well as the American Congress, which actually shows that these people didn’t get it. They didn’t get it and that is what worries me the most.

If something as huge as Afghanistan and what happened — this wasn’t a car crash that happened in a split second. This was something that was led over the course of the last 17 years and definitely since President Trump signed the agreement with the Taliban in 2020. This should have been a time for politicians and analysts to actually read the situation and read the map properly. But it seems that they never did and they never bothered to see if there was any need or inclination to take lessons from it.  

I’m yet to come across a decision-maker, a lawmaker, a politician, a senior adviser to come out and say there were horrendous mistakes carried out by the occupation and by the other alliance governments that led to this, and as a result, we need to learn what to do and not do in future. But there is this arrogance and pride that forbids us from doing so, and as such, they’re inclined to make the same mistake time and time and time again.

Khalifa: Given that the so-called war on terror, and more specifically the occupation in Iraq, was an utter failure, what is the probability in your opinion that America will engage in another foreign intervention?

Altikriti: From a purely political view, I find this extremely far-fetched in the foreseeable future. The reasons being that Americans had to endure bruising at every single level and because of the crippling economic crisis. So, it’s extremely difficult to launch an intervention or military intervention in the way that we saw in Iraq, Afghanistan or Panama in the next two to three years. But the thing is, often, American politics is driven by corporate America.

I mean, we talk about the trillions spent, but like someone said in an article I read in The Washington Post, that those trillions were more than made up by American corporations, by American oil, by getting their hands on certain minerals in Afghanistan. Even the drug trade itself, which Britain and America thought they would quell, it was actually the Taliban who brought it under control, who actually went around and burnt the poppy seed farms. The West reinvigorated that tradeline and stabilized it. Therefore, as a friend of a friend tells me, he says many of those who were scrambling for airplanes in Kabul Airport were poppy seed farmers because they knew that they had absolutely no future under the Taliban.

So, once we count the trillions incurred by the taxpayer, we forget that there is another side that you and I probably don’t even know that is gaining riches at the expense of the Afghans.

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The beast now is to try out new weapons. Lockheed Martin and others will always have a vested interest in trying out the new technology, and what’s better than to try it out in real-life situations? If I was to speak to any modern, contemporary, 30-something-year-old military analysts, they’d laugh me off because I’m speaking about a bygone age. We’re talking now about wars where we don’t involve human beings. I mean, in terms of the assailants, they’re flying drones, and there’s an intelligence level to it that I can’t fathom nor understand.

Another aspect that no one is talking about almost is the privatization of militaries. We’re coming now to find brigades, thousands of troops that are mercenaries, people who fight for a wage. Now, this is the new way to fight wars: Why would Britain employ some of its brightest and youngest when it could pay £100 a day to have someone else fight wars on its behalf? And this is now becoming a multibillion-dollar industry. It first started out as a reality in Iraq, when we had the likes of Blackwater who were guarding the airports, presidential palaces and government officials. You’d try to speak to them only to realize they were from Georgia or Mozambique or elsewhere, and they don’t fall under the premise of local law. Therefore, if they kill someone by mistake, you can’t take them to court and that’s the contract you sign. That is where I think the danger lies.

Khalifa: In 2010, you appeared on Al Jazeera’s “Inside Iraq” alongside the late Robert Fisk and Jack Burkman, a Republican strategist. Burkman described Arabs and Muslims as a “bunch of barbarians in the desert” and the Bush administration as the savior bringing change. With its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, has the US perceptions of Arabs and Muslims changed, and if so, how?

Altikriti: I’d love to have a chat with Jack right now to see what he thinks 11 years on. To answer your question, it saddens me to say that yes, it’s changed, but only because America and American society are so polarized and so divided. It only took Donald Trump to become president or 50% of Americans to defy everything that Trump said. Being anti-Trump meant standing up for Muslims when he issued the Muslim ban for flights. So, people from their standpoint of being anti-Trump said, no, Muslims are welcome. It’s absolutely the wrong way to go on about it. That’s not how we recognize, for instance, that racism is wrong or evil.

However, the fact is that in the past, anti-Muslim sentiments were everywhere and the feelings that Jack Burkman expressed so horribly in that interview were widespread. I personally believe they still remain because 9/11 has become an industry and that industry has many facets to it. Part of it is ideological, part is media, part is educational and obviously part transpires into something that is military or security-based.

We still have Guantanamo. Why is it that the American people aren’t talking about Guantanamo to the extent that they should be? This is something that is on the conscience of every single American citizen — it is paid from their own taxes. Why no one talks about it is simply because no one dares touch the holy grail — the industry of 9/11. It’s a huge, huge problem.

I still believe that those sentiments expressed by Jack back then are still prevalent, but like I said, they were mitigated by the advent of Trump and by his declaration against Arabs and Muslims. This, as well as the highlighting of certain issues by the left in America, such as the gross crimes committed by the Saudi regime and that’s helped in two ways. Firstly, you expose the crimes committed by Saudis, but it’s also cemented that view that Arabs are barbarians.

Khalifa: Afghanistan wasn’t the only country that suffered. Iraq suffered more dire and devastating consequences from the so-called war on terror. What does a future look like for Iraq now that the US has withdrawn?

Altikriti: Oh, very grim, very, very grim. The Americans haven’t withdrawn — they’re less visible. There are current negotiations regarding the next Iraqi government in the aftermath of the elections that we’ve just had, which shows that the Americans are heavily involved.

Iraq is the playground of Iran. So, therefore, any policy of America or Britain or Europe that involves Iran has to have Iraq in the middle.

There are still about three or four American military bases, and from time to time, we hear the news that certain militias targeted this base or that base where Americans lie. Now, the personnel who are there within the bases might carry ID cards as construction workers, advisers, legal experts, bankers or whatever. But ultimately, they’re all there to represent the best interests of the United States. So, America is still there.

However, Iraq is in dire straits. I think the indices that go around every year that show us levels of corruption, levels of transparency, levels of democracy, levels of happiness of people and satisfaction — Iraq is regarded as one of the 10 worst countries on every single level. I think that shows what’s been done to Iraq and what’s been done to the Iraqi people.

The fact is that we have at least 30% of the Iraqi people living as refugees, either within Iraq or outside of Iraq. The fact that in an election only 20% of the people choose to take part.

You have to ask serious questions. You have to say, OK, so when the Americans accused Iran — and I’m a believer that Iran is the worst of all players in Iraq. But you have to ask: So you occupied the country, why did you allow it to happen? So, you can’t just brush it off and say, well, the Iranian militias and its people and its proxy agents in the sun. Well, what were you doing there? So, I think that, again, what has been done to Iraq and to all Iraqis — regardless of their faith, regardless of their sect, regardless of their ethnicity — all of what has happened is a stain. A huge, huge one on the consciousness of everyone in Britain, America, Spain and all the countries that signed up for this and took part in this, everyone has a responsibility to answer.

I mean, obviously, when we spoke about Afghanistan, we didn’t speak about the crimes, the actual crimes that were committed. The one that we come to recognize and know about is the crimes committed by the Australians, where they actually trained the young cadets to shoot at people and kill them to be acknowledged as soldiers. We didn’t talk about that because there are so many of those that were committed. To speak not of Arab and Muslim barbarity, but of Western barbarity — that’s something I think should be discussed.

Khalifa: In Egypt, it was a military coup in 2013 that overthrew a democratically elected government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. In Tunisia, a constitutional change led to the fall of Ennahda, an Islamist party. In Morocco, it was the people who voted out the Justice and Development Party, which ruled the country for 10 years and suffered a massive defeat in September; they went from having 125 seats to only 12. To juxtapose this, in Afghanistan, the Taliban conquered the country overnight from the US, the most powerful country in the world. What message does this send to Islamist parties in the Muslim world?

Altikriti: Only yesterday, I was discussing this with a group of colleagues, and someone repeated a statement that was sent to me by a fellow of Chatham House. He said to me something quite interesting. He said: “Don’t you see that many around the world, particularly young Muslims, will be looking to Afghanistan — and three months ago in Palestine and what happened there — and think to themselves that the way forward is to carry guns.” I said: “Listen, my friend, you’re saying it. I’m not.”

But in reality, it’s unfortunate that many of my own students are saying, “It’s been proven.” I mean, they say, “you academics, you always talk about empirical evidence. Well, here it is: Politics doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work. The ballot box does not work. What does work? There you go, you have Taliban, you have the militias. So go figure.” Unfortunately, that is the kind of discussion that I think will dominate the Muslim scene, particularly the political Muslim scene.

For the next few years, I believe, whilst we analyze political Islam and Islamic parties, whether in Egypt, Morocco or Tunisia, that will be the question. Is it a viable argument to say that these parties will have absolutely no chance, either immediately in the short run or in the long run? In Tunisia, they were allowed to run for about 10 years. In Morocco, they were in government for about 10 years. Before that, they were in opposition and they were thriving. But in Egypt, they weren’t allowed to stay for more than a year. So, ultimately, the end is inevitable. So, is it the need to shift and change tactics? It’s going to be quite an interesting and, at times, problematic discussion, but it’s a discussion you need to have.

And last, by the way, on this particular point, the West did not allow democracy, particularly in Egypt and in Tunisia, to exist. We spoke of democracy, we spoke of human rights, we spoke of freedoms, but when they all came to be crushed, the West did absolutely nothing, which told the others well, you know what? They don’t care, there are no consequences, and that is why it is that many, many Muslim youth today will say, well, there’s only one way to go there.

Khalifa: And lastly, what do you believe are the core causes for Islamic extremist groups, i.e., Daesh or al-Qaeda, to still have a foothold in the region, and in your opinion, what is the best way to combat these groups?

Altikriti: Their biggest arguments, and which works well for them, is the fact that democracy failed and that they got nothing from buying into Western values of how to run their societies.

Their biggest argument now will be the Taliban and how they won. So, those are the main standpoints [for] these extremist groups; they lie on people’s frustrations and their feelings that there is no other way out. That’s essentially the argument. I’ve seen it in groups where someone is trying to recruit for that idea. Their bottom line is it doesn’t work. There is no other way — that’s their only argument.

It’s not theological, by the way. People think they are basing it on these Quranic verses or on hadiths [sayings of Prophet Muhammad], but they absolutely do not, because on that particular front, they lose, they have no ground to stand on. [For them,] it’s the fact that, in reality, it doesn’t work — democracy doesn’t work. Human rights doesn’t work. Because ultimately, your human rights mean nothing to those in power. So, killing us is as easy as killing a chicken. It’s nothing. That is their argument.

So, it’s going to be a struggle, it’s going to be a big, big, big struggle for people who want to advocate democracy, want to advocate civil society and diversity. It’s a struggle we can’t afford not to have, we can’t afford not to be in there, because the outcome, the costs will be so hefty on every single part and no one will be excluded.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 2013, he wrote a tour de force about in his country. Pakistanis, especially in Punjab and Sindh, might have a love for the bottle, but they have to pay obeisance to hardline clerics who have now defined the state. Instead of Scotch, army messes now serve Rooh Afza, a sugary syrup popular across the Indian subcontinent.

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More importantly, the Pakistani army has created a Frankenstein’s monster that is increasingly out of control. In 2013, the identified the growing Islamization of the army as a security threat for the United States. Starting with the first Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-48, Pakistan used militant Islamists to mobilize Pashtun tribesmen against Kashmir.

This began the patron-client relationship between the Pakistani army and militant Islamists that has become deeper with time. The journal correctly predicted that the army “would again support a Taliban takeover of Kabul,” the Afghan capital. Once Kabul fell, the journal took the view that “Afghanistan and Pakistan [would] again become places that jihadis [could] freely roam.”

The Bloody Past of Jihad

My family has vivid memories of the first Pakistan-supported Pashtun jihad in 1947 in Kashmir. My great-grandfather was the first Kashmiri Pandit killed in the town of Varahamula, now known as Baramulla. The Pashtuns tied his dead body to a horse and dragged it through the streets to terrorize the local population into submission.

It was not only Pandits who suffered at the hands of the tribesmen. Fellow Muslim Kashmiris and even Europeans were subjected to murder, robbery and rape. In a haunting account, noted British journalist has documented the massacre at St. Joseph’s Mission in Baramulla during that invasion. 

After 1948, members of my community suffered from growing Islamization in Kashmir aided and abetted by Pakistan and eventually became victims of jihadi ethnic cleansing in . The indigenous Kashmiri Pandits had to flee their homeland to the plains of India after millennia of continuous habitation in the beautiful Himalayan valley. They have now become refugees in their own country and have yet to get justice, reparation or rehabilitation.

Like Kashmiri Pandits, Afghans have also had to flee their ancestral lands. This trend kicked off when the Soviets moved into Afghanistan in 1979. In June 1985, National Geographic published the photograph of , a 12-year-old-refugee from Afghanistan. Her haunting green eyes aroused the compassion of the world. Once described as the Third World’s Mona Lisa, Gula did not go on to have an easy life. In 2016, she was arrested “for using a forged Pakistani identity card—a common practice among the 1 million Afghan refugees who live in the country without legal status.” 

If Gula provided the striking image for Afghanistan during the endgame of the Cold War, the of Taliban fighters standing in front of the iconic painting of Ahmad Khan Abdali with their weapons in full view defines the new era unveiling before our eyes. In that painting, a Sufi saint anoints Abdali as the shah of Afghanistan by touching his forehead with a chaff of wheat. Culturally, the authority and legitimacy of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of the Durrani dynasty, the last of the Afghan empires, came from a Sufi saint.

Today, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has seized power through the barrel of the gun. The Sufi chaff of wheat be damned. With the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, death and devastation will stalk the land, leaving little alternative for the likes of Gula to flee for their lives despite grim prospects across the border.

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In contrast to the divinely ordained shah, an is “a military commander, governor of a province, or a high military official.” The fact that the Taliban have proclaimed Afghanistan to be an emirate demonstrates their nakedly militaristic worldview. Their authority and legitimacy derive from unabated conquest. The Taliban is running a fundamentally anachronistic anti-democratic regime with little regard to the rights of women or minorities, whether ethnic or religious.

The Dangerous Role of Pakistan

The victory of the Taliban is a great boost for Pakistan, a state that has used terror as an instrument of state policy for decades on both its eastern and western fronts. In the early 1990s, some members of the Afghan mujahideen who had fought the Soviets and younger Pashtun tribesmen who studied in Pakistani madrassas came together to the Taliban. From the early days, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in their spectacular success.

In November 1994, the Taliban captured Kandahar and, in September 1996, its fighters seized Kabul. Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Tajik president at the time, fled for his life. Later in 1996, the Taliban declared Afghanistan an Islamic emirate. This time around, they are better trained and better equipped than in the past. They have that executions and amputations will be back. The Taliban have hung bodies in public squares of the historic city of , a little over 120 kilometers from Iran. The Taliban are unleashing a reign of terror in Afghanistan thanks both to the ruthlessness of their fighters and the backing of Pakistan. Intelligence officials from many countries have said that Pakistan has deployed ISI agents, special forces and Chinese-built drones in Panjshir Valley.

Pakistan’s current reputation as the world’s global for jihad is a result of disastrous decisions by both populist and fanatical leaders. In 1974, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto brought in a constitutional amendment that declared the Ahmadiyya community to be non-Muslim. In another 2013 piece, identified this act “as the starting point of what began to mutate into a sectarian and religious monstrosity in the next three decades.”

General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq ousted Bhutto through a military coup and had him hanged on the gallows. The general’s first move as the army chief was to change Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s original army from “Unity, Faith, and Discipline” to “Faith, Piety, and Jihad for the sake of Allah,” a change that has come to define the army today. With more religious lower-middle-class young men joining the officer class, there is not even a hairline separation between elements of the Taliban and the Pakistani army. The Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will not just be Pakistan’s strategic depth but instead its sword arm. 

The Taliban inspire not only Pakistanis but also many Indian Muslims. They are , a Sunni Islamic revivalist movement that was founded in 1866, eight years after the bloody 1857-58 Indian rebellion that shook the British Empire to its core. In 1858, the indirect rule of the British East India Company ended. The Mughal Empire was formally dissolved and the Crown took over. Many Muslims regarded the end of Mughal rule as a catastrophe and some charismatic preachers began the Darul Uloom Islamic seminary in Deoband, a town in the northwestern region of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh close to Delhi.

In a recent feature article, American journalist of the National Public Radio covers the roots of the Taliban. She notes that Maulana Arshad Madani, the 80-year-old head of Deoband’s Darul Uloom, expressed admiration for the Taliban kicking out the Americans from Afghanistan. She quotes the cleric as saying, “I’m weak and old, but if given the chance, I would go to Afghanistan.” More worryingly, Madani has supported the Taliban policy to completely men and women in educational institutions. He thinks women should wear hijab and not participate in sports. has also warned of another partition if the Hindu right tampers with Indian secularism.

Like Madani, many Pakistanis are by the victory of the Taliban and some see it as a divine sign of God’s will. Religious extremists are already demanding greater Islamization and the imposition of sharia. Already, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has to the mullahs, abandoning the domestic violence and forced conversion bills. Hardline clerics argue that these bills contradict Islamic teachings. Given such a zeitgeist, it is little surprise that many analysts predict that terrorist attacks will increase. 

India fears increased infiltration by Pakistan of Taliban Pashtuns into Kashmir and yet another cycle of violence. What is emboldening the Pakistanis is support from Turkey. , writing for The National Interest, argues that there is already a tacit working relationship between these two countries to establish a borderless Islamic imperium. Khan has championed the superhit Turkish action-adventure series called “” about “Muslim Oghuz Turks fighting invading Mongols, Christian Byzantines and the fanatic Knights Templar Crusaders in Anatolia (now modern-day Turkey) of the 12^th century.” After turning to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan is now turning to Turkey for its cultural identity.

It is also important to note that the current Pakistani government is led by a Pashtun and is far more pro-Taliban than its predecessors. This increasing of Pakistan is making intelligence officials worry about Pakistan as a potential source for nuclear proliferation. Marvin Kalb, a nonresident senior fellow at , has just written about “the agonizing problem of Pakistan’s nukes.” The specter of “jihadis taking control of a nuclear weapons arsenal” of about 200 warheads is a very real one. There is also the scenario of mid-level officers conspiring to release or sell warheads to militant groups. 

For the World

The international community has been worrying about the security of nuclear facilities for over a decade. In 2008, Mohamed El Baradei, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that “nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of an extremist group in Pakistan or in Afghanistan.” Later that year, , a senior analyst of the EastWest Institute, observed that an increasingly overstretched military and rising Islamic extremism was increasing the risk of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands.

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Over the last 75 years, the steady spread of Islamic extremism in Pakistan and then Afghanistan has left the international community confused at best and paralyzed at worst. Leaders in world capitals have ignored long-term trend lines that began with the use of Pashtun tribesmen to invade Kashmir in 1947. Now, the 20-year war on terror has ended in an ignominious American retreat even more dangerous than Vietnam, giving a shot in the arm to the likes of Madani in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. 

In the light of the debacle in Afghanistan, US senators are seeking an assessment of Pakistan’s in Afghanistan. Some are proposing sanctions. This has caused stock market prices to fall and the Pakistani rupee to drop to a record low. Pakistan’s economic woes are expected to boost radicalization further. Vikram Sood, the former chief of India’s intelligence agency R&AW, has repeatedly warned about Pakistan becoming a center of a new global . He is not alone. US General Mark Milley is worried about rising regional instability along with “the security of Pakistan and its ��������Բ�����.”&�Բ�����;

Many senior American military and intelligence officials estimate that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has not only to the region but also to the US. Europeans are worrying about terror threats and yet another flood of refugees. The world faces a clear, present and unprecedented danger that will only grow with time. A rogue nuclear strike would make the 9/11 attacks of 2001 look like insignificant firecrackers.

Washington’s decades-long fixation with Iran and North Korea has obscured the reality that the Taliban and Pakistan present the greatest global security threat. Therefore, the major powers and the international community must come together to contain both the Taliban and their patron Pakistan before millions of innocents lose their lives.

*[This article is the first of a three-part series analyzing the fallout of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This security complex is the reason for the increasingly authoritarian tactics employed by the CCP, including the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang intended to suppress Uighur separatism, and the creation of the in the world to function alongside an Orwellian to control citizens at microlevel.

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The idea is simple: If the CCP controls everything and everyone, then security can always be guaranteed. Within China, this is mostly true. To the best of our knowledge, there have not been any major terrorist attacks within China in recent years, the economy has slowed but not halted, and there are no major social movements or actors who can contest the CCP’s authority. Brutal and authoritarian, the Chinese system of social fascism seems to have achieved its goals.

Security Means Control, Control Means Security

However, problems arise when China attempts to apply this absolute control to foreign policy. When eight Chinese nationals were by Zambia’s police force in 2017 as part-time officers, the strategy of exporting China’s authoritarian domestic policy seemed apparent. Zambia is home to major Chinese investment and a sizeable diaspora, prompting Beijing to attempt to exert control over it to ensure security following the same logic used on the mainland.

Zambians reacted with outrage, drawing parallels to European colonization. Ultimately, the officers were forced to , prompting Beijing to get more creative about how it imposes power so as not to cause backlash again.

Without a physical police presence on the ground, artificial intelligence provided the answer to Beijing’s needs. By 2019, according to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, high-tech surveillance systems have been exported to over — more than half of which had signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)— deploying traffic cameras and facial-recognition technology. In Zambia, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Huawei technicians allegedly helped the government to on and track down opposition figures.

It was a win for the Zambian leadership, which hoped to its position further with Chinese support. But even if it did care to protest against China’s schemes to gain greater leverage over the nation, the authorities in Lusaka have little recourse as they are currently $6.6 billion in to China.

Of course, China promised Zambia it would be able to pay back this debt with unrealistically explosive growth through infrastructure expansion. But Zambia has struggled to come up with the money and finds itself stuck in what some have characterized as “debt-trap diplomacy,” a strategy of controlling a nation by first overpromising and straddling it with debt, then failing to deliver, refusing to participate in collective restructuring and finally .

Some that China is simply an exploratory investor testing and prodding the markets, but the strategy has played out across dozens of countries to date, and a study of Chinese landing contracts by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary, reveals that the debt trap is both . Chinese contracts include extensive non-disclosure agreements for the borrowing side and are “shrouded in secrecy.”

The authors state that “China is a muscular and commercially-savvy lender to developing countries” which doesn’t allow borrowers to participate in collective restructuring with Paris Club countries, concluding that “Default triggers of the sort we have identified in Chinese debt contracts potentially amplify China’s economic and political influence over a sovereign borrower.”

The strategy playing out in Zambia has resulted in toward China, increased , and more concessions to China in order to pay back that debt. Not only this, but China’s policy in Zambia has only created a hostile environment for Chinese nationals as well. The fixation with controlling foreign nations through surveillance or debt has not led to an increase in security but instead fostered new forms of insecurity in host nations.

Fueling Insecurity

Pakistan is another example of this security dilemma. Even though China has flagged Pakistan as its key partner in the BRI, it is still being crushed under the weight of its in debt. Again, Islamabad has downplayed this, stating that there will be eventually if Pakistan keeps following the CCP’s lead, even if it means allowing China to lease the nation’s southern port in Gwadar for the next 40 years to be able to make payments on its loans.

In a bus traveling to a construction site in northern Pakistan was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing nine Chinese nationals. In , Chinese engineers were targeted in a bombing that left two children dead in the port of Gwadar. Previously, in , gunmen attacked a stock exchange in Karachi, citing China’s exploitative investments in Baluchistan province as motivation for the attack.

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The violence stems again from the unfairness of the Chinese contracts, demanding concessions that don’t benefit the local population but China’s bottom line. In Baluchistan, this means that China is mining resources like copper and gold while the impoverished themselves see no dividends from the minerals they live atop of. They see themselves as being stripped of the bounty of their land and having to share their already meager .

All the while, regarding China’s investments in Pakistan have continued, with local communities facing food shortages because of China’s exploitation of resources like fishing.

More Chinese investment, more concessions, more discontent, more insecurity: The more Beijing attempts to straddle its international partners with debt and use this debt to exert control over their assets, making decisions regarding economic development and forcing them further into China’s orbit, the more insecurity is created for both the host nations and the Chinese nationals there.

Making the Same Mistakes

However, China has not learned its lesson and is now poised to double down on its mistakes again in Afghanistan. Just a few weeks before the Taliban seized control of the country in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with the head of the Taliban’s political commission, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The meeting solidified China’s stance on the Taliban: They are the of the Afghan people, even if few of the people agree.

The truth is that the CCP is far from considering what the will of the people is, be it in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Zambia. What they care much more about is that the Taliban are the ones in charge and that the group desperately needs aid and international recognition, both of which China can provide. If China delivers on those important factors then, perhaps, Beijing can exert control, secure investments, combat terrorism and possibly extend its domestic crackdown to living in Afghanistan.

The process has already begun. A group of landed in Kabul in early September. While Afghanistan remains on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, China seems to be looking into the future, to a day when Afghanistan is ready for its first surveillance cameras and debt. So far, Beijing has been among the first to start delivering to Afghanistan.

It seems to be a match made in heaven, with Afghanistan’s geostrategic position serving as a great asset for the Belt and Road Initiative. Likewise, the nation has sizeable mineral wealth and could provide Chinese manufacturers with a steady source of much-needed materials for manufacturing. Deals have yet to be made between the Taliban and China, but the future looks bright from Beijing’s vantage point.

However, this scenario is only likely to materialize if the Taliban can be trusted and controlled. If history is any indicator at all, they cannot. Instead, the Taliban’s promises to the CCP will follow a long track record of saying what is most convenient to get what the Talibs want, then reneging on their promises as soon as it is safe to do so.

The Taliban did this in their negotiations with the former Afghan government, agreeing to talks, promising that they are looking for a diplomatic solution while waiting for an opportune moment to take Kabul by force. Again, they promised that when they come to power, they would respect women and minority rights but have already the rights of women and have begun the Hazara from their homes.

Likewise, the Taliban had promised amnesty for all who collaborated with foreign militaries or the former Afghan government but have stated the commitment to return to their pre-2001 use of while running door-to-door .

The problem is a lack of understanding — or a desire to understand — on the part of the CCP just who the Taliban are. Just as in Zambia, without considering the nation’s legacy of colonialization, China attempted to impose a police presence. In Pakistan, China’s indiscriminate exploitation of resources causes upheaval. Now in Afghanistan, Beijing makes deals with those who have committed countless barbaric acts of terrorism based on the belief that the Taliban will kowtow if given what they want: recognition, aid and money.

What the CCP fails to understand about its dealings in Afghanistan is that the Taliban are extremists. They believe that those who do not follow their interpretation of Islam are kufr — unbelievers. To them, unbelievers are fair game: They can be lied to, cheated, poisoned, killed; it doesn’t matter, for the unbelievers are going to hell regardless. This is why the Taliban will take what China has to offer, then turn around and open the door for al-Qaeda to train Uighur separatists in Afghanistan.

There are already signs that the Taliban are double-crossing the Chinese. The group’s new chief of army staff, , holds close ties to the Uighur separatist Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). The new minister of the interior and current leader of the Haqqani Network, , also maintains close ties to al-Qaeda, which continues to .

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Whether or not these fighters or other Islamists have or will become active in Xinjiang is unknown, especially given China’s extreme censorship around . But it is likely that they will pose a security risk to Chinese projects and nationals in Afghanistan just as insurgent groups do in Pakistan.

The reality of China’s alignment with the Taliban is that the Chinese Communist Party is purchasing a false sense of security. Beijing knows the Taliban are in control and believes it can hold them on a leash. What it doesn’t understand is that the Taliban are not pets, and that both China and the world at large are more insecure with terrorists in charge.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The one issue on which both may have agreed is the growing need for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. The UN and various international NGOs have alerted the international community to the imminent faced by the Afghan people, especially inadequate health care and food shortages. Many of the 12 million at-risk Afghans are children.

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To complicate matters, with only 2.2 million Afghans prior to the Taliban takeover, COVID-19 infections are on the rise. Starved of resources, hospitals and clinics lack basic medicines, and staff is forced to work without pay. Then there is the country’s fast-approaching, notoriously harsh winter when food and fuel come at a premium.

Aware of the pending crisis, the earlier this week at an emergency meeting called for and hosted by Italy agreed to respond, though no specific pledges were made. Attendees, while aware of the need to coordinate any assistance effort with the Taliban, also expressed concerns over the Taliban’s commitment to fighting terrorism, specifically mentioning the Islamic State’s (IS) Khorasan faction inside Afghanistan, known as ISK.

Where’s Our Money?

Part of the humanitarian problem stems from the inability of the Taliban to access Afghanistan’s international accounts, frozen by most of the Western governments in whose banks the funds had been deposited. The asset freeze was imposed almost immediately after the Taliban took control. Of the estimated $9 billion in frozen accounts, $7-$8 billion are believed held in US banks, and the Taliban want it. They assert that they can’t care for their citizens properly without it.

As reflected in the G20 discussions, the US and other governments don’t necessarily dispute the claim but also know full well that the Taliban may, and likely will use any unfrozen funds for other purposes, some not at all to the liking of those governments, such as weapons, aid to terrorist groups, support for their drug trade, etc.

The US and other governments are also well aware of the Taliban’s egregious mismanagement of the Afghan economy when they previously ran the country from 1996 to 2001. Their gross ineffectiveness brought the economy to its knees and their strong affiliation with al-Qaida put the country off-limits to outside aid.

Today, it is fair to ask whether the Taliban have learned anything about economic management since they were toppled by the US in 2001. Unless they are willing to accept genuine experts from the previous regime without prejudice, it’s difficult to believe that 20 years of fighting their way back into political power has taught them much about finance, monetary policy, macroeconomic planning, budgeting, banking or any of the other responsibilities that are needed of competent governments to responsibly manage an economy for 40 million people.

Show Us the Goods

With winter on the way, the Americans are acutely aware of the need to start humanitarian assistance now. But they have their own list of wants. These include fighting terrorism, adhering to basic human rights norms and respecting the rights of women and girls, including to equal education, health care and employment opportunities.

Additionally, the US has a number of citizens who could not be repatriated in the rushed evacuation effort that followed the Taliban’s capture of Kabul and the fall of the previous government. Thousands of Afghans who had worked for the US during its 20-year presence in Afghanistan were also left behind. The US wants immediate and unhindered departure of these individuals and their families, if they freely elect to leave.

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Following the meeting, a Taliban spokesman announced that the Americans had agreed to provide humanitarian assistance. But there was no official confirmation from the US side, and there likely won’t be until it receives some affirmative responses to its demands from the Taliban.

That holds particularly true for the frozen Afghan assets. Without airtight commitments from the Taliban followed by genuine action, the Americans will continue to withhold the Afghan funds. It’s leverage, and right now, it’s the only means the US has of assuring some of its basic requirements for the Taliban government are met. Needless to say, trust on either side likely hovers around zero. Therefore, it’s all about, “What are you going to do for me?” The fact that the Afghan people may bear the brunt of the suffering for this position is unquestionably tragic.

Stepping Up to Responsibilities

The US demands, as well as those of the rest of the international community, are reasonable, basic and expected of a responsible and competent governing authority in any country. So, the Taliban face their first test of governance. Having prevailed in their two-decade struggle, they now need to demonstrate they can govern. That the fate of millions of innocent Afghans hangs in the balance is an unfortunate consequence. But consider it a yardstick of Taliban goodwill to their own people.

Nevertheless, neither the US nor the rest of the international community will be able to ignore for long the increasing need — soon to be desperation — of the Afghan people. Soon, some interim solution will be necessary whereby international NGOs and UN humanitarian organizations can enter and operate in the country to provide and distribute goods and services to meet basic human needs, starting with essential food items, medicines and health care. The G20, working with the UN, may be the best approach for that.

But such an emergency effort will do little to get the Afghan economy on its feet. Much more is necessary, starting with the release of the frozen assets. That will mean the Taliban stepping up to its responsibilities and likely not before.

The Biden administration — already under some pressure at home over an ambitious domestic economic agenda stalled in Congress and the humiliating manner in which the Afghanistan withdrawal unfolded — isn’t about to complicate matters by releasing those funds without real Taliban action. Joe Biden is no doubt familiar with the opprobrium heaped on President Barak Obama when he released about $30 billion in frozen Iranian assets in 2015 after the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. To quote from many classic American crime shows, it’s “Show me the goods before I show you the money.”

Perhaps the only good that may be claimed after this first meeting is that the two sides have opened a dialog. But considerable territory will need to be covered before any assertion of “a relationship” may be said to exist.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Most opted for the convenient and electable option of telling voters what they wanted to hear. In doing so, many made use of a new in-vogue and almost bipartisan that Germany must not see a repeat of what happened in 2015, invoking fear of uncontrolled immigration and a split society that supposedly followed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to grant entry to nearly six years ago.

But this framing oversimplifies, decontextualizes and exaggerates the events of that year. Most of all, it denies a shared responsibility for Afghanistan’s current predicament and the human stories behind the German-Afghan migration history that spans four decades.

A History of Afghan Migration

According to the UN Refugee Agency,  Afghan refugees lived in Germany in 2020, trailing only Pakistan and Iran as the largest receiving countries. At the same time, 1,592 live in the US and 9,351 in the UK. Afghan  to Germany dates back to the first half of the 20^th century, yet until the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, only 2,000 Afghans lived in Germany.

Historically, immigration to Germany varied vastly relative to the conflict phases in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet invasion in 1979, approximately 3,000 Afghans arrived in Germany each year from 1980 to 1982. The second phase of immigration followed from 1985 onward, when predominantly Afghan communists sought refuge in Germany.

The largest movement of Afghan refugees began with the end of Soviet occupation in 1989 and the start of the Afghan Civil War in 1992. Restrictions and expulsions imposed by the riparian states of Iran and Pakistan forced many Afghans to choose Germany as an alternative migration destination.

With the mujahedeen victory and the  of the Taliban, migration to Germany increased drastically until the mid-1990s before numbers declined steadily. Since 2010, with the resurgence of the Taliban, the number of Afghan refugees heading toward Germany has rebounded continuously. While 9,115 Afghans initially applied for asylum in 2014, this figure almost  to 127,012 in 2016.

Since then, the number of Afghan refugees significantly, from 16,423 in 2017 to 9,901 in 2020. The causes for this decrease can be found both on the European and national level, in policies enacted in response to the 2015 refugee crisis. In March 2016, as part of the , European Union member states provided financial support for Turkey to take back irregular migrants, mostly from Greece. In the same year, the EU concluded the Joint Way Forward with Afghanistan to ease “the return and readmission of irregular Afghan migrants from the EU to Afghanistan.”

On a national level, German information attempted to dissipate alleged rumors about lavish living conditions in Germany. Other measures, such as restrictions to family reunifications, might have also had an impact.

A New Phase of Immigration

After the fall of the government of Ashraf Ghani, a new phase of Afghan immigration is likely. Its extent will be subject to political will. Initially, Germany responded quickly to the Taliban takeover by adapting its asylum policies by halting deportations to Afghanistan. That represented a significant shift. Before, in a controversial attempt to appease the German population after support had waned for Merkel’s refugee policy, more Afghans were forced back to their home country as some areas were declared safe. 

But Germany has been timid in its response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. As of now, fewer than 3,000 Afghans have been to Germany. It seems that six years later, Merkel’s so-called “open door” approach still casts an overwhelming shadow over German politics and is a strong impetus for the tentative approach toward aiding Afghan refugees today.

The issue of migration has become a hot potato that German politicians were keen to avoid during the election campaign. If addressed, candidates were likely to try to outdo each other in using restrictive immigration rhetoric in an attempt not to alienate voters.

During the election campaign, the chairman of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and candidate for the chancellorship, Armin Laschet, tried to capitalize on an immigration-weary German society by that 2015 “must not be repeated.” While this phrase failed to inspire a successful campaign, as the election results show, it aptly reflects the public mood: According to a  published in June, 60% of Germans reject accepting more refugees.

This collective backtracking by Germany’s political class casts an unwarranted bad light on the decisions made in 2015. Essentially, it capitulates to the far right — particularly the Alternative for Germany — in its interpretation of that period. According to journalist Anna Thewalt in Der Tagesspiegel, “with a truncated reference to the year, the events of that time are decontextualized and exposed to myth-making.”

Margarete Stokowski, a correspondent for Der Spiegel, the cynicism and the lack of empathy in the shifting political climate against refugees: “2015 was the year in which civil society accomplished much of what politics could not or did not want to. … What must not be repeated is politicians treating fleeing people like nuclear waste they don’t know what to do with.”

To the relief of many German and European politicians, a scenario similar to 2015 is unlikely to materialize. Many Afghans already face barriers and restrictions in Pakistan and Iran, stymieing a journey to Europe. According to , a sociologist at Kiel University of Applied Sciences, 2015 “will not be repeated in Europe. Afghan refugees simply don’t make it to Europe because the borders are sealed. The border regime that was established during the so-called refugee crisis is working. Afghan refugees are a minority on all main routes to Europe.”

Migration as Misfortune

In light of the human tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, the rhetoric in German politics that dismisses migration as  is not only lacking empathy, but avoids the responsibility for the country’s 21-year military involvement in a failed Afghanistan mission. German armed forces were part of the 2001 multinational International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mandate and initially helped to secure Kabul after the defeat of the Taliban.

From 2003 onward, German soldiers were largely deployed to the northern region of Kunduz to establish a secure environment and improve infrastructure. This mission came under severe criticism due to a military exercise on September 4, 2009, when a German commander ordered the bombing of two tankers, feared to be stolen by Taliban fighters, resulting in 142 casualties, most of them civilians.

Despite increasing public scrutiny and doubts about the purpose of Germany’s involvement, its armed forces remained in Afghanistan until 2021, participating in Operation Resolute Support to advise and train local armed forces after the ISAF mandate ended in 2014.

Not only does the anti-immigration rhetoric shut its eyes to the military involvement with loss of civilian life, but it also ignores the history of Afghan migration and the human stories behind it. The of 2015 demonizes refugees “who came to Germany … started a new life here under difficult circumstances and are now part of society. What are they supposed to think now when they hear this?” asks Anna Thewalt.

Particularly Afghan women, for whom fleeing to Germany was the path to freedom and self-determination, are struggling to reenact the rising anti-migration sentiment. One of them is Adela Yamini, who had fled from Kabul to Germany in 1994 to escape the mujahedeen. She now lives in the state of Hesse, in the Rhine-Main region near Frankfurt, to a large proportion of Afghans. During her 27 years in Germany, she has thrived and excelled as a teacher in a vocational school and a local party chairwoman for the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The recent developments in her homeland filled her with great concern and horror, as escape routes that were open to her many years ago are now closed to Afghan women. “I am overjoyed that as a woman I could flee Afghanistan and study and work in Germany. … It is terrible just to think that as a woman you have no way out and are locked up forever and ever. … When I see the pictures and hear from my relatives what they are going through, I am at a loss for words and I can’t find the language to comfort them, to reassure them,” she wrote in an email.

Yamini believes that the German government needs to face up to responsibility in light of its military involvement by supporting Afghan people “who are currently in acute danger to leave the country.” For that, “bureaucratic hurdles must be overcome and people without passports or visas should be taken out of the country.”

As of now, she sees the current German government as avoiding its duty to those who supported its mission in Afghanistan. According to Yamini, by trying not to “scare off voters,” this responsibility is foisted off to a “future government” due to the events of 2015 which were “not discussed appropriately.”

Since 2001, Germany has taken in more refugees from Afghanistan than many other countries that were capable or had a moral obligation to do so. Instead of building on that legacy, Germany is caving into false doom-and-gloom narratives around the events of 2015 that do not correspond with the realities on the ground today. According to , of the German Institute for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), “Germany would be much better prepared today to receive refugees — both at the level of civil society and in terms of improved accommodation capacities as well as integration measures.”

One pretext against further immigration is that Afghans find integration particularly hard. This is not reflected in reality as high employment of Afghan refugees in Germany exemplify. That is even more remarkable in light of government measures that had an inhibiting effect on the integration of Afghan refugees. According to , also of DeZIM, “German integration policy … has disadvantaged Afghan refugees for years in their access to integration-promoting measures because as a group they have not had so-called ‘good prospects of staying’ in recent years.”

As soon as the obstacles are lifted, Afghans prove their willingness to integrate into German society. When refugees were allowed to complete shortened apprenticeships in understaffed professions in , it was mostly Afghans who seized the opportunity. Already in 2016, from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees showed that Afghans in particular, who are often young and low-skilled, are seeking to complete school education and vocational training.

New Government, Same Inhibition

Following the results of the recent election, the end of the Merkel era is imminent. That era will not only be associated with the courageous decisions of 2015 but also the hasty, scowling renunciation of those policies. There won’t be another policy shift in the foreseeable future, even with the upcoming change of government.

That was indicated by Olaf Scholz, of the SPD, who is likely to take over the chancellorship by forming a coalition with the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats. During an election campaign appearance, he for Afghan refugees — as long as this takes place as far away from Germany’s front door as possible: “This time we will have to make sure that those who are also seeking protection in neighboring countries are not left alone, as was often the case in the past. Instead, we have to do everything in our power to ensure that there are prospects for integration, that they can stay there, that they can have a secure future there.”

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With this statement, Scholz conceded that an affirmative discourse on migration to Germany is a hornet’s nest. For the time being, Germany is preoccupied with its own problems. By describing the events of 2015 as catastrophic for the country, portraying migration as bad fortune and disparaging successful integration, Germany’s political class has succumbed to the narratives of the far right. As a result, this retoric has fed and reinforced the public’s negative attitudes toward migration. Meanwhile, the suffering in Afghanistan, particularly among its women, slips from public view.

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However, a non-trivial proportion of Afghan women might not be bothered enough by the Taliban’s rule in order to protest. Some might even support the group’s fundamentalist policies. Days after the Taliban took over the Afghan capital on August 15, of women took to the streets to welcome the group’s return to power. Millions of Afghan women took no public stance over the fundamentalist movement.

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Given the Taliban’s long history of misogyny and extremism, it might be puzzling that some women might express their public support or indifference to the loss of their rights.   

Why Some Women Support Extremist Groups

Whether globally or in the Muslim world, it is not an anomaly that some women might support misogynistic leaders or political organizations. In the Middle East, women played a role in different political Islam movements with varying degrees of conservatism. At its peak, recruiters for the Islamic State (IS) group managed to attract female supporters and convince them to migrate to their territories in Syria and Iraq at a time when harrowing stories were emerging about the organization’s treatment of women. So, even if such extremist movements are enemies of women, not all women view them in these black and white terms.

In a research published in the World Politics journal, Lisa Blaydes and Drew Linzer investigate why women might support Muslim fundamentalists. Their answer focuses on the availability of economic opportunities for women. When women lack enough opportunities to achieve their economic and social independence, they might choose to increase their attractiveness in the marriage market of a patriarchal society by becoming more conservative. Thus, limited economic possibilities can push women to trade some of their rights in exchange for financial security.

Afghan women have made significant gains over the last two decades. For example, according to the International Labor Organization’s estimates, female participation in the labor force grew from 15.5% to 22.74% of the female working-age population between 2001 and 2019. This means that more women are looking for inclusion in the labor market.

Yet when it comes to unemployment rates among Afghan women, there is barely any change over the same period. The unemployment rate among women in the labor force moved from 14.75% in 2001 to 13.81% in 2019. Hence, the opportunities available to the increasing numbers of women who choose to work have not significantly increased.

Other Reasons

This economic explanation is only one side of the story. Indoctrination through various processes of socialization can also contribute to women’s conservative attitudes. Households, schools, religious institutions and online spaces are all realms where such attitudes are cultivated and reinforced.

Fundamentalist groups understand the importance of women’s indoctrination. Contemporary extremists such as IS and the Taliban rely on female recruiters to attract female members and build ideological support for their movements among women. In the early days of political Islam movements, Egypt’s Muslim Sisterhood was the female side of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sisterhood was concerned with educating women about their roles in an ideal Islamic society.

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But a more cynical explanation is that the lives of the vast majority of Afghan women are less affected by the rule of the Taliban. As anthropologists Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood out, the decry against the Taliban’s rule is merely an urban phenomenon. Most Afghan women — —live in rural communities, where conservative social norms are enforced independently of who is in charge of the capital city. For example, in 2017, the of rural women aged 20 to 24 who got married before 15 and 18 were 5% and 31.9%, respectively. This is compared to 2.1% and 18.4% among their urban counterparts.

Being away from the capital in a country plagued with underdevelopment, rural women also suffered disproportionally due to their higher economic vulnerability and exposure to the two-decade violent conflict between the Taliban and the government. Putting an end to the civil conflict may provide hope to some that their situation might improve.  

We do not know precisely how prominent female support is for the Taliban. Yet the picture is more complicated than a simple fight between women-hating extremists and freedom-loving feminists. With successive Afghan governments failing to address the root causes of gender inequalities, seeing women protesting in the streets with Taliban flags becomes a less surprising anecdote.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In the speech, there was, of course, the now-customary blame spread between the Afghan government and former President Donald Trump, but Biden did say that he “takes responsibility for the decision” to evacuate 100,000 Afghans, thereby implicitly distancing himself from the messy withdrawal itself.

Apparently deciding to withdraw all US troops is one thing, the consequences of that decision, another. Americans were assured that ties with our international partners were strengthening. Biden even spoke of the United Nations Security Council passing a resolution carrying a “clear message” that laid out international expectations for the Taliban.

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But by the time he did so, the president had already relinquished any leverage the US might employ to make those prospects real. No doubt the Taliban sat upright when they heard a threat as empty as those Washington had made to the in Yemen, who have paid them .

Appearing a little defensive, President Biden underlined: “Let me be clear: Leaving August the 31^st is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives.” This implies that the original withdrawal date of September 11 was decidedly non-arbitrary—  before the withdrawal descended into bedlam.

Biden, who campaigned on his foreign policy experience and the global relationships he had cultivated over his long career, now finds himself saddled with a fiasco that has been compared to the US withdrawal from Vietnam and will be remembered for bodies in , eerily reminiscent of 9/11.

While President Biden and his supporters say this was inevitable and the decision to withdraw forces was made out of necessity, the broader view suggests that misjudgment, mishandling and a lack of foresight were the culprits of the botched evacuation.

A Series of Missteps

When the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was announced by then-President Trump, NATO partners felt blindsided. At the time of Biden’s withdrawal announcement, 35 other NATO member states, led by Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, collectively had approximately 7,000 personnel in Afghanistan, according to . They were understandably angry at not being consulted.

After Biden became president, a review by his administration reaffirmed the withdrawal, also without consulting with allies. While assurances of regional US support force were proffered, few doubted assets outside Afghanistan would be substantially less effective than America’s in-country posture. Where could the naysayers have developed such an idea? Perhaps they were listening to what our own military was saying at the time.

On April 20, Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. addressed the difficulties of an “over-the-horizon” approach when he said at a before the House Armed Services Committee that “It’s difficult to [strike a target] at range — but it’s not impossible to do that at range.” General McKenzie also said of post-withdrawal peacekeeping and power-projection capabilities: “I don’t want to make light of it. I don’t want to put on rose-colored glasses and say it’s going to be easy to do.”

Leading up to the hearing, on April 9, the director of National Intelligence released a that contained “the collective insights of the Intelligence Community,” stating that “prospects for a peace deal will remain low during the next year” because “the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.” In bold lettering, the report made clear that “the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.”

Two months later, in mid-June, an assessment prepared at the request of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Kabul could fall after the US military left.

Almost from the moment the withdrawal encountered problems, the president alluded to inaccurate intelligence estimates, but weaknesses in the withdrawal plans became evident early on. Indeed,  in classified assessments sent over the summer that things were not going well.

The most damning of these was a State Department , signed by 23 embassy officials and sent on July 13, that described the Taliban’s movement and the impending collapse of the Afghan government. Although the cable was immediately reviewed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it was largely ignored. 

In addressing the dissent cable, President Biden this assessment was outside the broader consensus, but even the rosiest estimates maintained the Afghan government would fall in 18 to 24 months — just long enough for a September 11 commemoration and the mid-term elections.

The most optimistic estimate tacitly acknowledged that the Taliban would capture remaining US weapons and supplies, and that forfeiture of materiel to the enemy was inevitable. In effect, the decision to pull out consciously contemplated the inadvertent arming of the Taliban within no more than two years.

Between Nation Building and Giving Up

Oft stated, though, it is that the speed of Taliban advance was unanticipated, that intelligence agencies were equally caught off guard by the on July 12 of the top US commander, General Scott Miller. Perhaps most shocking to the intelligence community and US allies was the withdrawal from the Bagram Air Base on July 2, in the and without notifying its new Afghan commander.

This had enormously destabilizing consequences, especially on Afghan military capabilities and morale. Intelligence agencies were put in the position of having to guess not only what the Taliban and the Afghan government would do, but also what decisions President Biden would make.

Abandoning Bagram, which had as opposed to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport’s one, was shocking to many. To reduce the number of US soldiers required to defend the embassy and the airlift, operations were limited to the HKIA. This consolidation was later seen as an error, but the military preference for keeping Bagram with its larger, more defensible perimeter became infeasible because of placed by Washington.

Blindly optimistic despite signs of looming problems, Biden on July 8 that “The Taliban is not … the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy … of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Biden’s statement was buttressed by a false choice: either walk away from Afghanistan or stay in a situation that would, as the president described it, add casualties and put “American men and women back in the middle of a civil war,” meaning that the US “would have run the risk of having to send more troops back into Afghanistan to defend our remaining troops.”

As Congressman  pointed out, “There are a lot of foreign policy options between nation building and giving up. We found the proper balance in recent years — maintaining a small force that propped up the Afghan government while also giving us the capability to strike at Taliban and other terrorist networks as needed.”

Vulnerabilities grew as withdrew, removing air support that had been the lifeblood of the Afghan military. With the Afghan army unable to resupply and pay forces, particularly those at the edge of the Taliban’s advances, morale imploded. On August 13, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, stated that the Afghan military still held against the Taliban, notably, “a capable air force.”

But by early July, reports had already come in that Taliban fighters were pilots, and the Pentagon still had not formulated a plan to keep Afghan aviators flying after US withdrawal. Recognizing the air-power advantage was all for naught once the planes stopped flying, a mere three weeks before he fled Kabul, then-President Ashraf Ghani pled with Biden for air support — to no avail.

Dwindling food and munitions, a lack of reserve support and tardy soldier pay all contributed to reduced capabilities and a weakened willingness to fight. In some cases, the Taliban would offer government fighters safe passage and the equivalent of a month’s salary to lay down their arms. Whatever plan was in place, it is now clear that the was not one of “a perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan … that things aren’t going well,” as Biden suggested to Ghani. Once the Afghan military lost air support, it was lights out.

Political Choices

Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed he had no choice but to comply with Trump’s deal signed with the Taliban in Doha last year, but it wasn’t at all obvious he was committed to that course of action when he ordered a of the withdrawal. His own secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, visited Afghanistan in mid-March, he was there “to listen and learn,” promising that “It’ll inform my participation in the review that we’re undergoing with the president.”

Biden has reversed Trump’s policies in many other areas, making changes that have led to a of immigration at the southern border, setting a two-decade . He has rejoined the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement, and is seeking to negotiate a deal with Iran similar to the discarded Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

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If, as this administration maintains, the US left Afghanistan because the Taliban have been weakened over decades of war and it was a time to seek an exit, why is Washington negotiating with Iranians who chant “death to America” at every turn and are more capable than ever?

Prior to the August 26 explosion at Kabul’s airport that killed over 170 civilians and 13 American service members, there had been no US combat fatalities in Afghanistan since February 2, 2020. That, alongside the choice of an emotionally significant withdrawal date of September 11, suggests that the decision was a largely symbolic political statement and the plans for how to execute this mission were engineered backward with devastating consequences.

A US force amounting to &�Բ�����;—&�Բ�����;�ǰ�&�Բ�����;, as per European and Afghan officials — was a small footprint, yet it held valuable assets such as the Bagram airfield, strategically located between eastern Iran and western Pakistan. Giving up those assets, in conjunction with the collapse of the Afghan government, led to a substantial in US intelligence capabilities by early July, a trend that has only to the point that the US has now lost 90% of its intelligence collection capabilities.

In a mountainous, disparate place like Afghanistan, where the tribal loyalties are fierce, the human component is everything. Over-the-horizon strikes seldom work, particularly if you don’t know who the target is — or should be.

The likelihood of creating a terrorist safe haven seems to grow by the day. Weighted against damage to US credibility and prestige, not to mention the threat to the homeland, it is hard to imagine how a nominal support force could not be justified, considering the much greater deployment of US troops in places like Germany and South Korea.

If the objective is to withdraw from “forever wars,” then why pull so few soldiers from an unstable part of the world where the Taliban and al-Qaeda (who the US Department of Defense say keep a cozy ) plot against the West only to leave tens of thousands of troops stationed residually from World War II and the Korean War? If the objective is to maintain stability, as it appears to be in South Korea, then why abandon the progress made in Afghanistan?

Inconsistent Principles

Some have praised President Biden for the consistency — others would say obstinacy — of his decision, but the principle of withdrawal and the manner in which it was conducted has been inconsistently applied. In the primary in October 2020, then-candidate Biden had this to say about the Trump administration’s decision to pull out troops from Syria that undermined the position of America’s Kurdish allies:

“I would not have withdrawn the troops and I would not have withdrawn the additional thousand troops who are in Iraq…

It has been the most shameful thing that any president has done in modern history — excuse me, in terms of foreign policy. And the fact of the matter is, I’ve never seen a time — and I’ve spent thousands of hours in the Situation Room, I’ve spent many hours on the ground in those very places, in Syria and in Iraq, and guess what? Our commanders across the board, former and present, are ashamed of what’s happening here.“

In a  in Iowa the same month, Biden blasted Trump for creating a humanitarian crisis and undermining national security. “The events of this past week … have had devastating clarity on just how dangerous he is to our national security, to our leadership around the world and to the lives of the brave women and men serving in uniform.” Trump, he said, “sold out” the Kurds and gave the Islamic State (IS) “a new lease on life.”

“Donald Trump, I believe — it’s not comfortable to say this about a president — but he is a complete failure as a commander in chief,” Biden said. “He’s the most reckless and incompetent commander in chief we’ve ever had.”

The White House appears to be reeling from the uniformly negative coverage, but more than a few must be thinking, “Et tu, Biden?” While the president rejects criticism of his Afghanistan departure and shows no signs of altering his position, America’s weakened posture in the world is being exploited by its enemies.

Already the Chinese, the Russians and the Iranians are asking countries to question US reliability. Moscow has to setting up US military bases outside Afghanistan that might have effected a less chaotic withdrawal. Meanwhile, China, no doubt giddy at seeing US forces vacate Bagram just across their border and likely eager to control it themselves, seized a propitious moment to  Taiwan, suggesting resistance to reunification is futile.

If the withdrawal from Afghanistan is to “focus on shoring up America’s core strengths to meet the strategic competition with China and other nations,” then the US should seize upon the opportunity to reassure Taiwan and reiterate our constancy. Thus far, we have only heard posturing as Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, seeks nods for his cause against China’s intractable “two lists and three bottom lines” that would have Washington abandon its allies in democratic Taiwan.

All We Left Behind

When met with concerns about partners questioning America’s credibility on the world stage, Biden deflected by : “The fact of the matter is I have not seen that. Matter of fact, the exact opposite … we’re acting with dispatch … committing to what we said we would do.” The president appears not to be watching much TV or reading the news. According to numerous reports, America’s NATO allies are furious, and  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson isn’t winning him any more  in the “mother of parliaments.”

Meanwhile, Europe, Pakistan, India and others are worried about terrorists entering the regional vacuum, not to mention fleeing Afghan refugees looking for a haven at a time when the absorption of Syrian refugees has strained government resources. Many of these countries are anticipating another massive influx of refugees. As for those the US has evacuated, conditions were reportedly  and, according to an email from supervisory special agent Colin Sullivan, “are of our own doing.”

Although conventional thought by the administration held a swift withdrawal would prevent greater destabilization to the government of Afghanistan, it was fanciful to maintain we could get everyone out in such haste. A now-common complaint by president Biden’s defenders is that the US didn’t start evacuating Afghan allies when Trump ordered the withdrawal. Yet that is wholly inconsistent with what Biden did.

While Biden announced the withdrawal on April 14, the did not begin until July 30, and the withdrawal deadline was moved from September 11 to a more politically palatable but hastier August 31. Since then, cable news and any number of articles have focused on those the US left behind, including an Afghan who served as an interpreter and Biden when his helicopter was stranded during a snowstorm in 2008.

The administration prefers to focus on the hundreds of US citizens who still remain in Afghanistan, but how many special immigrant visa (SIV) holders or those who “earned them” through their bravery and assistance have been left behind? By some estimates, a quarter of a million Afghans the US during the war, and rumors now circulate that the Russians are collecting the data of all calls going to the US that is being handed over to the Taliban.

The Taliban is not known for paying friendly courtesy calls. Secretary Blinken recently that we have “now learned from hard experience that the SIV process was not designed to be done in an evacuation emergency.” But how to square that with repeated complaints from the administration about the SIV backlog and the 14 steps required to gain one or the delay between announcing withdrawal and airlifting people out? All of this seems to make US departure appear at once precipitous and callous.

A Common Excuse

A common excuse made by the Biden administration is that many people do not want to leave. This was echoed time and again, but it conflicts with the thousands of people who have assisted with private efforts to extract America’s friends. Whatever the for the poorly executed withdrawal, for those who did make it out, thanks may be given not necessarily to the US government but to the informal band of wealthy donors, veterans and CIA analysts who groups such as the Commercial Task Force in the Peacock Lounge of the Willard Hotel.

In that one instance, about 5,000 people were evacuated. Other groups have sprung up to guide refugees to safety or give them to write on posters that would help them gain entry to the airport. Biden acknowledged the “network of volunteers,” and although many do not like hearing it, these groups have in many ways been more effective with fewer resources than the federal efforts.

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For all of the president’s attempts to claim that “we planned for every contingency” and that “the buck stops with me,” the private efforts were no less necessary in the face of a self-reinforcing view that an ill-conceived, poorly-executed plan during the fighting season is proof of its necessity. When Biden on August 16 that “the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” it was a justification as inversely logical as the withdrawal.

While there were no helicopters on the roof of our embassy, officials there were nevertheless evacuated in situ. Originally, the Pentagon that the embassy evacuation was “a very narrowly focused, temporary mission to facilitate the safe and orderly departure of additional civilian personnel from the State Department. … Once this mission is over … we anticipate having less than 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground to support the diplomatic presence in Kabul, which we all agree we still want to be able to have.”

We now know the embassy, one of America’s largest, is , with Taliban scrawled on it, and policy is run out of Qatar. While Biden is unlikely to have any “mission accomplished” signs up, US efforts have been reduced to “” that will apparently work in concert with the Taliban.

As it stands now, the Taliban head the government in Kabul, Islamic State Khorasan is making moves, US “collaborators” are being hunted down and the Haqqani Network is ascendent. It is striking to hear the same people who cite the $2-trillion cost of the war in Afghanistan are also those who push for the abandonment of US labors, willfully or otherwise ignoring the promise of a renewed terrorist safe haven.

It does not take much imagination to picture the Biden administration in the same position that President Barack Obama found himself in when he pulled out of Iraq. As former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz : “Mr. Biden should have known to expect this because something similar happened 10 years ago when we withdrew our forces from Iraq. Lacking U.S. air support and advisory capabilities on which the Iraqi army had grown to depend, it collapsed under an assault by Islamic State. Three years after the withdrawal, President Obama had to rush 1,500 troops back to Iraq to assist in the fight to drive out ISIS. By 2016 that number had grown to 5,000.”

A Question of Competence

Criticism assails President Biden from all quarters, with a few observing that he had planned a 10-day vacation to Camp David as the withdrawal was reaching a crescendo. Top Obama adviser, David Axelrod, has : “you cannot defend the execution here. This has been a disaster. … It is heartbreaking, it is depressing, and it’s a failure. And he needs to own that failure.”

Nor is Biden finding many friends among former US ambassador to Afghanistan, , and Princeton’s , both of whom have some unflattering opinions that echo that of , who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Secretary Gates wrote that Biden is someone who has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Trust in America and in Joe Biden’s judgment is at a low ebb, and it is difficult to understand how the president developed a reputation for competence. On July 8, he that “The mission was accomplished in that we … got Osama bin Laden, and terrorism is not emanating from that part of the world.” This elides the fact that it was Biden who dissented in planning the operation that would kill bin Laden.

While Biden was not right about bin Laden, bin Laden might have been correct about Biden. When deciding not to target Biden when he was vice president, bin Laden him as “totally unprepared for that post [of president], which will lead the US into a crisis.” Contrary to the president’s belief, it also seems that terrorism may soon be “emanating from that part of the world” again.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of blame to go around. A commander in the Afghan army, , has kind words for neither Biden nor Trump, nor did former National Security Adviser  pull any punches when he said in mid-August that “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”

Indeed, President Trump’s former defense secretary, Mark Esper, the Doha agreement with the Taliban “conditions-based” and said Trump “undermined” his own plan when the drawdown continued despite a lack of progress by the Taliban on the agreement’s provisions. The Biden administration would have been well within its right to renegotiate the drawdown in light of the Taliban’s unwillingness to its end of the bargain.

What Biden had hoped would be an orderly, triumphant return of the US military — a hope still by the Department of Defense as late as July 6 — turned into the posturing fecklessness of a nakedly political stunt.

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Biden has repeatedly telegraphed his punch with, however awkwardly denied, that were tethered to very little outside of political opportunism. This was never more obvious than when September 11 was set as the withdrawal deadline. In choosing that date, his hand was tipped, and a plan to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan was revealed as a political stunt, an unnecessary capitulation masquerading as destiny, vainglory turned tragedy.

An Ignominious Retreat

The Economist of the US withdrawal: “If the propagandists of the Taliban had scripted the collapse of America’s 20-year mission to reshape Afghanistan, they could not have come up with more harrowing images” — a withdrawal where “Mr. Biden failed to show even a modicum of care for the welfare of ordinary Afghans.” In the wake of this irresponsible and costly withdrawal, there is a now burning conviction by America’s enemies that if God wills it, their adversaries will be vanquished.

That is a devastatingly effective emotional tool and recruiting argument that all but assures we will see this enemy again in closer quarters. When President Biden paid his respects on September 11, it was against a backdrop of triumphant marches elsewhere for the jihadist cause.

While some may sigh with resignation at the “inevitable” calamity unfolding, they ignore a great number of facts and forget the indiscriminate brutality the US attempted to excise when it entered Afghanistan. They shrug at the lost lives of brave US and Afghan soldiers ( respectively) who fought for that cause. To claim all of this was preordained is to foreclose a possible, if uneasy, calm and greet with resignation — a decidedly un-American trait — the reversion to greater violence and the tribalism that all but precluded loyalty to a central government in Kabul.

To declare the withdrawal just with rhetorical genuflections toward those who died is to forget the sacrifices of the dead, which in many cases were made for causes beyond themselves or even their country. It invites feuding terrorist groups to reconstitute and gain strength.

Accusing the Afghan government of not defending the gains of the past 20 years is at once to blame the victim and to banish the memory of what was there before the US entered and what will surely reappear in its absence. It is to debase women’s lives by accepting as banal the butchery Bibi Aisha survived, whose June 2010 shocked the world and hung above my desk for years as a reminder of the inhumanity we were fighting.

It is to indict exiled President Ashraf Ghani in the face of impossible odds for remembering history and the fate of another ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah — the last Afghan leader to see the Taliban roll into Kabul in 1996. Najibullah was captured by the Taliban, castrated and, according to Robert Parry, had his severed genitals stuffed in his mouth before being strung up from a lamppost. 

Although it may be said by the current administration that withdrawal was necessary and an earlier, better coordinated drawdown would have destabilized the Afghan government and the country, we have to ask what is more destabilizing: rolling up the carpet or yanking the rug from underneath a mission that brought stability so costly in blood and treasure?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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I hesitate to note the vulnerabilities here to avoid facilitating adversarial advances, but I hope that this will lead to further action by the US government to evacuate SIV/P1/P2/P3 applicants in order to avoid this. Failure to do so will lead to torture, interrogation and manipulation of our former allies in an attempt to extract full biographical data and identities of their former co-workers, including sensitive site exploitation as well as digital and document extraction.

This alone will provide a fiesta of data that is the gift that keeps on giving. Each lead will lend itself to another lead, and another, and another.

How America Won the War in Afghanistan

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Once all elements of the network are completed, the adversarial extraction of information will multiply. The ability to process and analyze this data to make it applicable is unlimited. In short order, the United States’ greatest adversaries will be able to compile details on all US personnel that has ever been stationed in Afghanistan.

This includes all passport and visa information of all US staff — soldiers, diplomats, spooks, etc., who are now at the mercy of the Taliban and whomever they opt to share the data with or sell it to. The Taliban now own all Afghan border information. They have my iris scans, fingerprints and passport data.

They also have all biographical data and personal information of every US staff member connected with Afghan local staff. Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, phone numbers, emails, professional histories, full names, etc. Keep in mind that we are friends with these people and have signed off with personal signatures and contact information on all their paperwork.

The TTPs (tactics, techniques and protocols) for US military bases and the US Embassy access are now also exposed. The people we left behind know the word-by-word polygraph procedures for gaining entry to our military, diplomatic and intelligence facilities. They know our security protocols, applications details and database methods.

This information is not only now available to the Taliban but is up for sale to the highest bidders such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran — not to mention affiliate terrorist groups such as the Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS).

Information does not stagnate in these circles. It sells, spreads and grows. In short order, it will be in the hands of China. Beijing already has full data on all US individuals with since the early 2000s that it can now cross-reference. Couple this with hacked data available on the open market for a fraction of the cost, including Experian, Marriott and airline data leaks.

There is nothing to stop a letter showing up at my mother’s door threatening her if I do not cease and desist my work. There is nothing to stop me from being pulled into a secondary screening in any number of countries that will soon have access to this data.

There is nothing to stop my closest Afghan allies from being interrogated until they give up my biographical data, personal email, physical description and professional title. This will limit my ability to travel anywhere outside Western Europe, for example.

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Additionally, every single military, diplomatic and intelligence post around the world is now compromised, with the key details now available on how to gain employment while surpassing vetting and investigative procedures.

None of this speaks to the fact that the Taliban reportedly have access to our biometric databases that identify our Afghan partners. To be clear, many of our Afghan partners were embedded within the core of our diplomatic, intelligence and military units. Leaving these people behind is akin to leaving Americans with security clearances being at the mercy of Taliban interrogators.

Afghanistan is not some far-off place with no relevance. Afghanistan is here, in America — at home. It is closer to you than your television. Abandoning our Afghan allies is a grave national security violation that will haunt us for decades to come.

*[This article originally appeared on the author’s page.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As if to lend greater somber, the commemoration took place as the US and the world watched America and its allies’ tragic and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. No fiction writer could have written a sadder, more unreal denouement to America’s 20-year saga to right the wrongs and assuage the grief of 9/11.

360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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Many commentators have written that 9/11 was for the millennial generation what the assassination of John F. Kennedy was for the boomers. While identifying with the latter group, I found the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, far more consequential. One can grasp how one deranged madman could target an American president. After all, it wasn’t the first time in US history. But a band of madmen belonging to an extreme, anti-civilizational group of hate-driven madmen attacking in explosively spectacular fashion office buildings filled with innocent human beings, killing nearly 3,000 and forever upending the lives of tens of thousands of other innocents?

Transformative Moment

As a US diplomat assigned to the State Department on that day, I stood in speechless astonishment on the north bank of the Potomac River barely an hour after the attack on the Pentagon on the other bank. My department had been evacuated just moments before, authorities believing that other terrorist-controlled airliners were still headed toward Washington. A surreal chaos whirled about us in America’s capital city. Colleagues and I kept telling ourselves that surely the fire raging across the river with its great billowing clouds of black smoke would soon be extinguished. (It would take days.) But we could never have imagined the impact it would have on our lives and more importantly on the course of a nation.

Countless writers, journalists, experts, pundits and social media junkies have offered up their assessments of how America went from a nation united in confronting that day’s tragedy to one divided at home and defeated abroad. It’s especially noteworthy because on the day the terrorists struck, America stood at the pinnacle of global supremacy, the hyper-power with a dynamic and ever-growing economy and armed forces unparalleled in history. But it wasn’t what the terrorists did that day that brought the country to this point. Americans — and specifically American leaders — did it to themselves.

Consider America’s actions after the attacks that day. Rightly and commendably the country earned the support of virtually every country in the world in going after al-Qaeda. Eliminating it, however, was never a realistic option. As it’s often said, an idea can’t be killed, and the extremist ideology that drove al-Qaeda then persists today within that organization and the many offshoots it has spawned. But diminishing its capabilities in order to severely constrain its ability to threaten the US or other nations was a realistic goal. And it can be said that it has largely been achieved.

Terrorism is a tactic, not a movement. Whether by the Mafia, Irish Republican Army, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (aka FARC), Lenin and Stalin, Mao’s Red Army, or Julius Ceasar and his legions rampaging through Gaul, it has been employed often throughout history and often very successfully. It will likely continue. It can be controlled. But as a tactic, like an idea, it is a permanent element of human conflict.

“Unnatural and Unhealthy”

But it wasn’t what America did to fight and contain terrorism that necessarily diminished its global power and stature, though missteps were made. It was the two misadventures on which it embarked shortly after 9/11, first in Afghanistan and then in 2003 in Iraq. “It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people.” Had America’s leaders bothered to heed that wisdom of former US Senator J. William Fulbright or to consult the volumes of books, articles and reports of the country’s history in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, the lessons would have been starkly clear. Taking on projects to quell or settle internal insurrection or launch nation-building in countries still struggling for a national identity is a fool’s errand.

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The lessons of Vietnam were manifestly obvious in Afghanistan. It was and remains a country historically riven by tribal, ethnic and religious strife. No nation has ever succeeded in bringing it under control, certainly not for very long. Outsiders have constantly interfered there because of the disunity. Warlords moved in and out of power in various parts of the country.

It is easy to say with today’s 20/20 hindsight that 90 days after expelling both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the US should have withdrawn from Afghanistan and asked the UN Security Council to take charge of organizing a government. As a superpower outsider, the US was exactly the wrong nation to undertake that task. But, as in Vietnam, impelled by ambition, hubris, arrogance, grand visions and considerable self-deception, America plunged ahead.

Despite its rushed and ignominious departure, America and its allies can take credit for some of their successes (really) in Afghanistan. Education levels, especially among girls, are up considerably. Women have many more opportunities and greater freedom today than in 2001. Afghan infrastructure is much improved. Even the standard of living improved for many Afghans.

Unfortunately, because of the abject failure of the political project, it is unclear whether any of that is sustainable. The history of previous Taliban rule would suggest otherwise. On the other hand, we cannot yet know the impact of America’s 20-year Afghanistan enterprise on individual Afghans and their perceptions of themselves and their future, especially women.

Lessons and Lamentations

While Afghanistan may have been seen as a war of necessity at its start, it sadly evolved into one of unachievable expectations. Donald Trump saw it much that way — though with little understanding of its complexities, other than it was far away from America and had little economic value to the US. It was left to Joe Biden to make the painful but inevitable and necessary decision that it was time to leave.

As was done following our Vietnam exit, volumes will now be written about this tragic episode in US history, including by institutions within America’s own government. They will be authored by credible and competent scholars and political and military experts. They will be exhaustively researched. They will give blow-by-blow accounts of decisions made, policies adopted, actions taken, and statements, declarations and promises issued. Charts, graphs, maps and statistics will be presented. They will point out the many errors, lies, self-deception and willful blindness. They will also relate the sacrifices of thousands of Americans, most of whose stories will never be known. They will also cite the pains and loss of so many Afghans. And they will all end up with much the same conclusion. America and its allies withdrew after finally confronting one ineluctable reality.

Those studies will offer invaluable insights to Americans and their leaders. But will they learn? Will Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan finally prove convincingly instructive to prevent the country from undertaking such adventures in the future, however nobly perceived?

To listen to and read the never-ending stream of observations on this pregnant moment in the nation’s history has become a modern-day version of the Book of Lamentations. Indeed, the country’s challenges, internal and external, are manifold and daunting. Heretofore, its democracy held the capacity to absorb, learn, adapt and rebound from its setbacks.

But the question bears repeating if the nation is to move beyond this point in its history. Will it learn?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post America’s Post-9/11 Lessons and Lamentations appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Every US government seeks to create the impression that the nation’s foreign policy reflects a reasoned mission. In the past, this has served to motivate the population to reflexively applaud actions — war, invasion, sanctions — that are often directly detrimental to the well-being of Americans themselves.

For 20 Years in Afghanistan, Ignorance Was Bliss

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The shock of the US retreat from Afghanistan needs some new vocabulary to make sense of it. Four New York Times journalists have come together as a creative team to make a to providing the kind of vocabulary that should reassure Americans confused by the mixed signals the Biden administration has been sending after the Afghanistan debacle.

The journalists sum up the entire topic in a single sentence: “The Biden Doctrine sees China as America’s existential competitor, Russia as a disrupter, Iran and North Korea as nuclear proliferators, cyber threats as ever-evolving and terrorism as spreading far beyond Afghanistan.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Existential competitor:

A fantasy specific to the minds of paranoiacs, who believe that their own survival depends on the elimination or neutralization of a specific rival or rivals

Contextual Note

The first question an impartial observer of contemporary history might want to ask is this: Why are journalists so obsessed with attributing a “doctrine” to every president? Is it a form of nostalgia for that heroic period of US history in which James Monroe imposed an idea that stood as a threat to the rest of the civilized world, claiming Latin America as Washington’s backyard?

The idea of a presidential doctrine appears as the answer to the question of how the current president will deploy the country’s incomparable and ever-expanding military might? The George W. Bush doctrine, though supposedly focused on terrorism, boiled down to the simplistic (and dangerous) idea that if we think any nation is failing to promote US interests, we reserve the right to call it terrorism and then preemptively attack it. In the face of terror, terrorize the entire world with your threats.

The Times team sees China not just as the new focus of the Biden doctrine, but as an “existential” threat. What can that really mean outside of the ravings of a paranoiac? When in the late 1950s Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev uttered the , “We will bury capitalism,” US media allowed the quote to morph into “we will bury you,” which the public naturally interpreted as an existential threat.

The same media, urged on by the CIA, was already busy deploying everything in its toolbox, including Hollywood movies, to make sure Americans felt permanently threatened by the prospect of nuclear war. The end result was to establish the notion that America’s Cold War adversary was itching to nuke every American. After four years spent supporting the wildest Russiagate fantasies simply to discredit President Donald Trump, The New York Times is at least consistent with itself in launching this new appeal to Cold War tropes to enlighten its readers on the Biden doctrine.

Interestingly, with Trump gone, The Times has now demoted Russia to the status of “disruptor,” though it is unclear what Putin might be seeking to disrupt outside of social media and corporate software. The article does signal Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning concerning China and Russia that they were “making the argument in public and in private that the United States is in decline — so it’s better to cast your lot with their authoritarian visions for the world than with our democratic one.” Is that disruption or simply historical commentary?

After disruption, the authors identify the characteristics of other adversaries requiring a response under the Biden doctrine. They single out nuclear proliferation, cyber threats and terrorism, suggesting that the field is wide open to oppose, with diplomacy or force, any nation on the earth that plays any of those games. An obvious exception is Israel, which, like the US, uses proliferation, cyberthreats and state terrorism for what General Milley might call “righteous” purposes.

The Times has once again fulfilled one of its fundamental missions: to use its authority to shape the thought processes of its readers on foreign policy. The methodology consists of proposing the kind of vague generalization about another regime that encapsulates its adversarial relationship with the US and is easy to remember.

The entire process, pursued over time, is designed to provoke standardized emotions that serve to justify the combined interests of the White House, the Pentagon and the industrial-financial complex that The Times editorial board so consistently supports despite occasional .

“Existential” is not the only term The Times fails to define. In any article on foreign policy, readers will find two complementary terms that remain the bedrock of all discussions of foreign policy: national interest and national security. “The president’s withdrawal from Afghanistan,” the authors explain, “makes clear that he saw risking more American lives there as no longer in America’s national interest.” Why should something that remained “interesting” for 20 years suddenly no longer be of interest?

The article quotes former undersecretary of defense, Michele Flournoy, who insists on distinguishing “between [Biden’s] appetite for nation-building, which is essentially nil, versus his appetite for using force if it’s necessary to defend U.S. national security, which I believe remains quite strong.” The Times clearly agrees with Flournoy and expects its readers to adhere to the modern principle that a concern for national security automatically justifies “using force.”

Flournoy notes that “the president has indicated that he is comfortable with the idea of backing American diplomacy with a muscular military posture.” All this is meant to demonstrate that the retreat from Afghanistan does not mean abandoning a foreign policy designed for the needs of the military-industrial complex.

Historical Note

At a moment of historic change, the public requires guidance. The New York Times team is not alone in seeking to hammer out the vocabulary that will help Americans navigate the headlines recounting US actions abroad. In far less evocative terms, Democrat activist and sometime Congressional candidate Dave Anderson the Biden doctrine as “a third way that … carves out an ambitious new center in foreign affairs.” He says it is about the willingness to “affirm our own democratic ideals and collaborate with other established or budding democracies, but we do not want to police the world or engage in nation-building.”

The Bangkok Post frames it in : “The Biden doctrine is now focusing on strengthening the home base and friends in the Western world which share the same values.” Daniel Johnson, writing for The Article, makes an : “The defence of the West or the free world plays no part in this doctrine, except insofar as these concepts serve the geographically and temporally limited interests of the United States.” The key word isn’t democracy, competition, disruption or terrorism but, rather, “interests.”

The intellectual notion of the national interest appeared with the emergence of European nation-states beginning in the 15^th century and only came to the fore in the age of mercantilism, when the idea of “interest” revealed its strong connection to banking and underwent a major transformation. In feudal times, political relationships were defined in terms of power, territory, the well-being of populations and, of course, personal honor.

With the rise of the nation-state during a period of religious conflict and colonial conquest, national interest became confused with both ideology (the cause justifying conflict) and economic hegemony (rather than simply the traditional spoils of war).

Ever since at least the 17^th century, the undefinable notion of national interest has become the basis of nations’ foreign policy. The language of nationalism remains a magma of undefined terms, programmed emotions and carefully crafted misinformation that not just The New York Times, but all media use to bolster the illusion of their authority.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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One day after Biden’s inauguration, QAnon sympathizer and representative for Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene,  to impeach the new president on the Trumped-up charge of bribery. As the US withdrawal from Afghanistan proceeded at its telescoped and chaotic pace, impeachment calls came with greater regularity from the Republican Party, with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham  the president’s ouster for the high crime and misdemeanor of “ignoring sound advice.”

It’s a curious turn of events when the Republicans lambaste the current president for implementing the policy of their own party’s standard-bearer and doing so in a dysfunctional manner that was a hallmark of Trump’s tenure. And why exactly are Republicans complaining? They’ve already effectively handcuffed the current president —without the bother of actually trying to send him to jail — by forcing him to deal with the consequences of the actions taken by Donald Trump during his four years in office.

Understanding and Misunderstanding the Biden Doctrine

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Sure, Biden has emphasized the few global issues on which he has boldly departed from Trump’s agenda. The new administration dramatically reentered the Paris agreement on climate change. It committed the United States to fight COVID-19 worldwide with a somewhat more generous policy on vaccine distribution. It rescinded the “global gag rule” prohibiting foreign aid for family planning overseas. It signaled the end to US support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

But in many other foreign policy areas, Biden has had to operate within the parameters established by his predecessor. On Afghanistan, Iran, immigration, trade and many other issues, Trump implemented radioactive policies that have long half-lives. The Biden administration has been stuck with the job of cleaning up the toxic waste. Worse, in some cases, the president has, for political reasons, decided to live with the mess.

Poisonous Gifts

Afghanistan has been perhaps the most significant foreign policy legacy of the Trump team. In February 2020, the administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban in Doha to end the two-decade war. At the time, about 13,000 US troops provided training, muscle and firepower to a seriously underperforming Afghan army. According to the deal, the last US soldiers would depart Afghanistan in May 2021. By the time Biden took office in January 2021, US forces were officially down to 2,500, although in reality there were about  American soldiers in the country.

Biden could have the Doha deal, just as Trump threw out so many of the agreements that the Obama administration signed. He could have once again expanded the US military footprint inside Afghanistan, as some of his advisers recommended. But there was virtually no popular support for another surge, and Biden had never been a fan of more boots on the ground. He’d promised during the presidential campaign to end the US war in Afghanistan, so the 2020 agreement served as a useful rationale.

What the new administration was not happy with, however, were some of the consequences of the peace deal, including the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners without a quid pro quo and the ultimate undermining of the authority of the government in Kabul. The radioactive gift from the Trump administration was to rob the Biden team of any real leverage in its implementation of the deal. The most Biden could do was to delay the withdrawal of troops by a couple of months and hope for some kind of power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban and the government in Kabul.

Instead, an emboldened Taliban clearly capitalized on the feelings of abandonment among provincial officials in the wake of the 2020 deal to negotiate the handover of one city after another. Sure, Biden could have begun withdrawing American personnel and Afghan colleagues before the Taliban reached Kabul. But the president would have been blamed for jumping the gun and contributing to the demoralization that hastened the Taliban’s ultimate victory.

Trump’s ill-planned deal — and his  to pull out all troops by January 15, 2021, regardless of the “sound advice” of his national security team — set up nothing but bad choices for Biden around what was ultimately a necessary military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Another poisonous gift from Trump has been his Iran policy. Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and tried, with additional sanctions and pressures, to ensure that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would never be resuscitated.

The Biden administration has promised to find a way back to the nuclear agreement. But it has yet to come up with a formula in its negotiations with Iranian counterparts on eliminating Trump-era sanctions and providing compensation for their impact while at the same time walking back Iran’s moves to expand its nuclear program. In one good sign, Iran  an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency that preserves previously agreed-upon monitoring.

But there’s no guarantee that the JCPOA can be revived. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is hedging its bets. “We’re putting diplomacy first and see where that takes us. But if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options,” Biden . If diplomacy fails, Biden will certainly deserve some of the blame, but Trump did what he could to make success as unlikely as possible.

Trade Policy

Iran is not the only country still suffering under the burden of Trump-era sanctions. China was hit with a variety of tariffs and economic sanctions during the Trump years, and it retaliated with trade penalties of its own against the United States.

To get the tariffs reduced, China signed the “phase one” trade agreement in which it promised to purchase $200 billion more US products in 2020-21. Last year, China of its targeted purchases by 40%. Of course, the global outbreak of COVID-19 didn’t help, as global trade in general plummeted. The numbers for 2021, on the other hand, have been better, with Chinese purchases of agricultural products in particular .

Significantly, that “phase one” agreement didn’t lift any of the tariffs on Chinese goods, just reduced some of the rates. Tariffs on 66% of Chinese products , amounting to about $350 billion. That cost the United States around , not to mention the $28 billion in subsidies Trump sent to farmers to offset the initial drop in Chinese purchases of soybeans and other foodstuffs.

The Biden administration shows no sign of reducing or eliminating those tariffs. Indeed, it has  more economic sanctions against China over its policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. It expanded a Trump-era prohibition on US investments into Chinese companies connected to defense or surveillance technology. Meetings between Chinese and American officials have failed to establish common ground on trade or any other issue for that matter.

The bottom line is that Trump helped move the needle in Washington against China, so that anti-Chinese policies now have strong bipartisan support. Biden would have difficulty lifting tariffs and sanctions even if that’s what he wanted to do.

But even where such animus doesn’t exist, like Europe, Biden hasn’t pushed hard to lift penalties. Although this summer the administration finally ended a 17-year trade war with Europe over subsidizing the aerospace sector, Biden has not lifted the tariffs Trump imposed on European steel and aluminum. When asked after the G7 summit in June about these measures, a clearly exasperated president : “A hundred and twenty days. Give me a break. Need time.”

His response is disingenuous. He could have lifted those sanctions on day one. In fact, protectionism strikes a chord in certain sectors of the Democratic Party, and Biden doesn’t want to lose blue-collar voters. Trump made protectionism great again. Biden is loath to push against this tide.

Immigration

Trump’s protectionism also extended to border policy. He spent much of his four years in office doing whatever he could to cut the numbers of people entering the country and, where possible, deporting people who were already here.

Biden pledged to  the ugliest of Trump’s policies. He stopped the construction of the infamous wall on the southern border. He ended travel bans for people coming from majority Muslim countries. He recommitted to protecting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which covers undocumented young people who came to the United States at a young age.

But Trumpism lives on throughout the US court system. In July, a federal judge in Texas  that the Biden administration must stop accepting new DACA applications. In August, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to  Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while awaiting a decision on their status. In putting asylum-seekers at risk, the program  international law.

It gets worse. The Biden administration is not happy with the above rulings and is seeking to challenge them. Yet in other immigration matters, the Justice Department continues to prosecute Trump-era cases.

“Over the past six months, the U.S. government has backed the expiration of certain visas, pushed for tougher requirements for investors seeking green cards, and supported the denial of permanent residency for thousands of immigrants living legally in the U.S.,” Anita Kumar  in Politico. “Former administration officials and immigration lawyers say Biden’s hands may be tied in certain cases—that the government may not necessarily agree with the specific policy but that the Justice Department may have to defend Trump-era policy because of requirements in law and the time needed to review all the cases.”

Trump didn’t just tie his successor’s hands. He handcuffed them to the throttle of a runaway train.

Not a Rule-Breaker

Trump made some changes that Biden has accepted without reservation. The previous president created a new focus in Asian policy that he called “Indo-Pacific,” which brought together the United States with Japan, India and Australia to form the Quad (not to be confused with the Squad). Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell has  India in the new administration’s containment of China, which had been a major Trump focus (to the extent that he could focus on anything).

The Biden administration has also  Trump’s Abraham Accords that secured new diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel (but at the expense of Palestine). Meanwhile, Biden shows no sign of attempting to reverse such Trump innovations as establishing the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

Of course, Biden is in a policy space whose parameters were established long before Trump came along with his sledgehammer. Biden is not exactly a rule-breaker when it comes to international affairs. The new administration has increased Pentagon spending and reaffirmed military commitments to NATO and allies in the Pacific. Biden has resurrected the old approach of “strategic patience” with North Korea.

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Aside from some proposed increases in foreign aid, he has largely ignored the global south. It turns out that the new president is comfortable working within the constraints of the status quo ante.

Trump was a true rule-breaker who did manage to do quite a lot in the international arena, where he had far greater leeway to make changes beyond congressional control. Much of that activity was destructive because Trump proved quite adept at smashing things.

Indeed, Trump smashed things — the Iran nuclear deal, détente with Cuba — not just because of a peevish desire to destroy his predecessor’s legacy but as part of a  to FUBAR the federal government for generations to come. As a result, Biden will spend much of his term picking up the pieces — and that’s a whole lot harder when you’re in handcuffs.

*[This was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Handcuffing of Joe Biden appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As the autopsy of an entire epoch is being conducted by the experts, the official postmortem of a 20-year episode of global history will not be complete until its immediate consequences have played out. Who will rule Afghanistan and under what conditions? Will the victors — the Taliban — take the spoils or see them taken away by a clever enemy or ally? Will the end of a war signify peace or simply a different kind of war? In the midst of competing global crises — a pandemic, climate catastrophe, geopolitical upheaval and the decline of an empire — what new equilibrium, if any, might emerge? How will Asia now be redefined?

General Petraeus and the Question of Torture

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One of the key points almost all US commentators — from the White House to Republican opposition and the progressive left — have unanimously underlined is the fact that the Afghan government put in place two decades ago by the victorious NATO forces was too corrupt ever to survive. Last week, Business Insider ran a with the title, “Alleged rape, torture, murder and corruption by Afghan leaders that the US ignored was a ‘big factor’ in the country’s fall, human rights expert says.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Ignore:

Choose consciously to believe that you have not noticed what you yourself have created

Contextual Note

The verb “ignore” came into the English language from the French, ignorer. Until the Industrial Revolution, it bore the same meaning as it still has in French: “not to know” or “be unaware of.” In the 19^th century, it took on its modern in English: “pass over without notice, pay no attention to.” This represents a radical shift in meaning. Formerly it signified that the subject had no knowledge of the object in question. The meaning then shifted to the idea that the subject is aware of the object but judges it unimportant. Linguists and sociologists can only wonder about what happened in English-speaking societies to provoke that shift. It could tell us something about the nature of the transformed culture that emerged during the industrial revolution and created the modern world.

Everyone now seems to agree that for 20 years, the US “ignored” a system that was manifestly defined from top to bottom by corruption. Reuters on the phenomenon of “ghost money” back in 2013. From the beginning, in early 2002, the US put in place a system fueled by money funneled in by the boatload. Every “reform” and military initiative was driven by access to piles of cash.

In such cases, even the post-industrial meaning of ignore is no longer credible. And yet, today’s media commentators as well as government and military officials expect the public to believe that the corruption wasn’t all that noticeable. They should be forgiven for being too focused on their essential work to notice. But when asked to explain why the entire Afghan government and security apparatus collapsed more quickly than the Building 7 of the World Trade Center on 9/11, they suddenly realized what their observers on the ground and intelligence services had chosen not to detect for two decades.

There is a simple but frightening explanation of this disconnect between perception and understanding: hyperreality. Some institutions have been designed to ignore reality because their very existence is predicated on substituting an invented and increasingly elaborate system of representation of the world for reality itself.

Hyperreality takes the form of a set of seemingly reasonable assumptions and beliefs about human society and human behavior that fit together in a pseudo-logical pattern to comfort abstract ideals taught in schools, repeated by the media and confirmed in cocktail party conversations. Those assumptions, beliefs and ideals are shared actively or passively by all the members of a society because they have been patiently built into the language itself.

Once they are in place, it becomes a requirement to critique or ignore anything that calls those values into question. If you are part of the system or aspire to join its ranks, you learn the art of ignoring. That becomes even more imperative when the mission takes the form of a military operation.

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The rare members of society who dare to question any or all of those assumptions, beliefs and ideals resist the force of hyperreality without necessarily recognizing its true nature. They consciously seek to maintain some link, however tenuous, with the real environment that makes social life and human survival possible. They often suffer from their inability to fit in with the dominant modes of thought. But they sense that reality is still lurking in the background and their insights today may eventually help future historians account for what is ignored by anyone sucked into the vortex of today’s hyperreality.

Historical Note

The symbolism at the core of the historical moment we are now living through has the merit of drawing our attention to the hyperreality that has framed it for the past 20 years. Hyperreality works to the benefit of its creators so long as the public willingly mistakes it for reality. The manifestly illusory quality of what is now taking place in our hyperreal world may provoke the kind of jolt that leads to a new state of awareness.

When US President Joe Biden promised to exit Afghanistan on September 11, 2021, exactly 20 years after the event that provoked the American presence, his plan called attention to an elaborate hyperreal construction originally co-created by al-Qaeda and the Bush administration in the first year of the millennium. The two parties had no need to collude directly. Osama bin Laden’s fanatical followers and George W. Bush’s neocon war council shared the same interest in a wildly adversarial version of geopolitical confrontation.

The manufacturing of hyperreality became possible once the original meaning of “ignore” shifted from the idea of not knowing to not being interested in knowing. The great advances in technology over the past century have focused on weaponry and tools to create illusion, from film to social media and cyber-manipulation. The latter have put hyperreality at the core of social and political organization.

The history of the Afghanistan War illustrates the workings of political hyperreality. Wars never end on pre-ordained dates. Real history reflects the tectonic dynamics of populations and a diversity of environmental pressures. It unfolds according to a dynamic built around the stability associated with continuity and inertia and the unexpected effect of catastrophes and environmental disturbances.

Hyperreal history, in contrast, writes a scenario, casts people into roles and attempts to create a spectacle. It also seeks ways of keeping the audience in its seats, preventing them from wandering backstage to explore the props and machines that might reveal how the illusion is created.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump had one thing in common. They inspired their respective electorates by drawing their attention to the accelerating demise of US manufacturing. In their famous 1988 book, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky focused on the perversion of democracy, pointing out that the political class had changed their focus from manufacturing goods and to . Ultimately, the nation’s cultural system became dedicated to manufacturing hyperreality. Herman and Chomsky traced the rise of the art and science of state propaganda. That brought them, in the era of Marshall McLuhan, to the frontier of hyperreality. Propaganda tends to be serious, solemn and moralizing in tone. Hyperreality — think of Disneyland or Las Vegas — tends to be celebratory or just plain fun.  

In September 2001, Karlheinz Stockhausen was virtually excommunicated from polite society for that 9/11 was “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.” He later protested that he was misunderstood. That is probably true. The avant-garde composer could not ignore that a murderous act of destruction, conducted as a direct assault on symbols of global power, offered a rare glimpse of the carefully hidden seam between reality and hyperreality. It was certainly not a work of art, but it produced a revelation that few artists are capable of creating.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post For 20 Years in Afghanistan, Ignorance Was Bliss appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This is a myth of epic proportions. Conflict is not war, though wars are a part of conflict. Although wars are typically made up of many battles, a battle is not a war, and a war is not a conflict. Conflicts go on for decades and centuries and evolve, devolve, merges, morph, fizzle out, flares up, expand and shrink geographically, go from hot to warm to cold, and develop into hybrid forms.

360˚ Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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The most famous US war that is said to be lost, Vietnam, was actually won. It just took  Vietnam is a free-market country for all intents and purposes, a US ally with an extensive population exchange. All the wars that we claimed as victories were never won in the sense of this black-and-white model that we derive from World War II. Not even World War II was won in the sense of its own model.

It was not a clean cut. There were small pockets of resistance afterward. There are still neo-Nazis in Germany, where the US still has troops. Germany still battles the US on various fronts — political, economical and social. Yet no one says that the United States lost the war against Germany.

Conflict has a four-dimensional, never-ending spectrum that is partnered in a dance with peace. It consists of two bipolar points that are constantly in a fluid twirl together like one of those geospatial screen savers on your Compaq computer in 1998.

The Korean War was never won. The Cold War was . The First Gulf War was only won in the sense that Iraqi troops were pushed out of Kuwait. But the First Gulf War was only a battle within a larger conflict. The Second Gulf War — the Iraq War — consists of about four or more wars that all fall under the same umbrella of conflict.

When you speak to Iraqis, they make a distinction between the Invasion in 2003, the sectarian war and the fight against the Islamic State (IS). The fact that Americans insist on viewing the war in Iraq as a singular monolithic war is sadly due to their lack of attention, detail and the narrow-mindedness of the World War II syndrome.

Those that argue that the Afghan War was lost fail to understand the concept of conflict. The war in Afghanistan was never lost because it never began. It has continued in some fashion for centuries. The actors rotated through, changing names and ambitions. The Taliban may currently lay claim to political power and maintain some level of a monopoly of violence, but that is not universal. They maintain this status because we let them.

Make no mistake about it: There was never a moment in time that the US could not have removed the Taliban from the world map. However, moral obligations hindered this, given the massive number of civilian casualties it would have cost. So no, the Taliban and their cohorts at no point “beat” the US military and its NATO allies.

It may be argued that we failed to train the Afghan army. The same could be said of the  faced with IS, but today. Moreover, we did not fail at training the Afghan people. What the Taliban are confronted with, assuming they maintain power, is the same challenge every government or occupier in Afghanistan has always faced. The difference is that this isn’t the same Afghanistan of two decades ago.

For 20 years, we have vaccinated the Afghan population with concepts of freedom, education, work, opportunities, the English language and liberal thought. All the while, the Taliban showed their true colors by killing innocent people as a matter of policy and without remorse. The Afghans know the Taliban. They do not like them. They may not all be the greatest fans of having US or NATO troops in their country, but  definitively prefer a nation not run by the Taliban.

In the end, the US won the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, making it impossible for the Taliban to operate without making extreme concessions, at the very minimum. This is not to say there will be , but good luck to the Taliban ever surpassing the reach of the Afghan government achieved with the backing of the entire world. The Taliban may have the watches, but .

The Taliban, as we knew them pre-August 31, 2021, will never succeed. Like in Vietnam, the will of the people to have access to equality, justice, information, quality of life, connectivity, travel, education and business opportunities is and always will be greater than the violence-forced power of extremists. America always wins its wars because America is not a country — it is an , and you cannot kill an idea.

*[This article originally appeared on the author’s page.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How America Won the War in Afghanistan appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After Afghanistan, How Probable Is Peace?

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According to the newspaper, the interpreter, along with his wife and four children, are among the countless other Afghans who were left in the following the Taliban’s rapid reconquest of Afghanistan in August. By all accounts, the translator provided meritorious service to US troops during the Afghanistan War, but his visa application got snarled in bureaucracy and his family was turned back by US soldiers at the Kabul airport gates as they attempted to board an evacuation flight.

The interpreter has now appealed to Biden, the US president, for assistance and the White House promises to get him out. But given present circumstances, he faces at best an uncertain . His plight the numerous missteps and miscalculations the Biden administration made before and during the chaotic US withdrawal from Kabul.

President Biden has highlighted the 2008 incident as part of his foreign policy resume. But both he and The Journal’s account omit important context that casts doubt on Biden’s credentials.

What Happened?

As recounted in Steve Coll’s recent , “Directorate S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Biden and his colleagues were on a helicopter tour of eastern Afghanistan, escorted by Major General David Rodriguez.

As they were returning to Bagram air base outside of Kabul, Rodriguez pointed to the distant peaks of Tora Bora, where al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden eluded during the opening stages of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Coll writes that Hagel, a twice-wounded Vietnam veteran, warned against taking a further look.

“Christ, we’ve got blizzards coming up. We’re running low on fuel,” he argued. But Biden, the senior senator in the group, ignored the advice and decided they should divert for a closer inspection.

The snowstorm soon engulfed their helicopters, forcing the group to make an emergency landing in a rugged territory where Taliban forces were active. According to Coll, the group, which was not dressed for the cold, “ended up stranded for hours, watching unknown armed men watching them from a nearby ridge.” F-16 aircraft flew overhead to provide air cover while a rescue team (including the interpreter) was scrambled from Bagram, finally reaching the group in the predawn darkness.

Although Biden points to the incident with pride, the full record shows he made a near-disastrous decision, one that brought about the perilous circumstances from which he and his colleagues needed saving.

Later that same day, the group had dinner with Hamid Karzai, then-president of Afghanistan, who spent the session complaining of America’s lack of commitment to his government. Perhaps due to the dangers he had just experienced, Biden lost control of his temper. 

“Biden slammed his hand down on the table so hard that every plate jumped and rattled,” Coll notes. “Then he jolted back in his chair and declared, ‘This conversation, this dinner is over.’ He stormed out of the dining room.”

It was left to Kerry to smooth things over with Karzai, but in that moment, Biden set the pattern for what would become the Obama administration’s dysfunctional with the Afghan leader, one in which the future vice president would a central role.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Explosive Reporting From The New York Times

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Business Insider the Taliban about what to expect as it recounts the drama experienced by Iran for more than 35 years: “The frozen money was a thorn in the side of the US-Iran relationship for decades until it was returned to Iran in 2016 under the Obama Administration in a dead-of-the-night transportation from Geneva.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Frozen money:

A form of legal theft that is the privilege of a powerful nation whose money has become the de facto reserve currency and who uses its control of the global banking system to punish any nations that don’t declare allegiance to its economic and political ideology

Contextual Note

Business Insider quotes Cornell University legal scholar Robert Hockett, who explained last week that the process for the Taliban “could also go on for decades, if the Taliban itself goes on for decades.” His insight reveals what the game is really about and how it is played. For the US, the endgame is to make sure the Taliban cannot exist for decades. Starving a nation will alienate its people, encourage opposing forces and provoke regime change.

That was the strategy with Iran, but it ultimately failed. The regime the US sought to overthrow is still in place. The net result of freezing the nation’s assets and applying crippling sanctions has been to strengthen the grip of its leadership that must appear forceful in the face of the oppressor.

Hockett explains why one nation can unilaterally refuse to honor the core principle of America’s capitalist ideology: the inalienability of property. “The United States has the legal authority to freeze assets that were held by a government when that government is replaced by a nongovernment,” he says. The key then is simply to refuse to recognize a new government, which thus redefines even a fully functioning new government as a non-government. Admitting that the US has the “legal authority” under the vague set of principles called “the rule of law,” many may be wondering whether it has the moral authority.

The contention on both sides concerning Iran’s assets might appear as a classic short-term negotiating situation. But the case of Iran demonstrates that the haggling can last for decades or even longer. From the Associated Press, we that “Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that any legitimacy or international support for the Taliban ‘will have to be earned.’” That constitutes a reasonable warning that if the Taliban wishes to have formal recognition, they will have to take into account the international community’s expectations about minimum standards of policy on questions such as modes of government and human rights.

This raises two problems: defining those minimum standards and agreeing on a reasonable time frame. In normal circumstances, contending nations seek to define minimum thresholds and then work to reach some kind of compromise. Things may be a bit different when negotiating with the US. According to Hockett, the “only way that the Taliban could see the billions of dollars in reserves is ‘if it ceases to be the Taliban.’” That is a fair description of US negotiating tactics. Translated into the American popular language, it reads: My way or the highway.

As for time frames, the Iranians waited more than three decades for the opportunity to deal with a president whose middle name was Hussein. Over all that time, the Iranian people suffered. To this day, the Americans believe that with a bit more suffering, regime change will occur. Instead, over time, the Iranian government became increasingly rigid. The perceived sadism of the US had the effect of reinforcing the national pride even of Iranians who had little sympathy for the hardline regime. Americans have a hard time understanding that the prospect of succumbing to a dominating imperial power can be off-putting, especially for populations with a rich cultural heritage.

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Today’s dramatic showdown demonstrates two basic features of human cultures that American politicians apparently have a hard time taking on board, even those educated at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton. Americans raised in the consumer society are taught to believe that all humans seek fulfillment in the great principle the US offered to the world: conspicuous consumption. Faced with the choice of material deprivation or consumer nirvana, people will always choose the latter. 

The second concerns time. In the US, time is money. In a negotiation situation where losses may accumulate, people lose patience and tend to capitulate when they see no visible end date. Other cultures, especially in Asia and the Middle East, experience time on a much broader scale. They cannot so easily be made to hurry into an agreement that offends their sensibilities just because it will appear to ease their material suffering.

Historical Note

The failure of US political culture to appreciate these cultural variables has led to immense suffering for multiple populations across the globe for the better part of the past century. The US neo-imperial system provides an interesting contrast to other systems of domination, such as the British Empire.

People who accept to live in a colonized nation tend to see their own history as pointing in two possible directions. One group passively accepts the colonial system as a new model destined to replace the old system. Many of these passive participants spontaneously adhere to the implicit values of the new colonial regime. They may not see it as a form of progress, but they tend to accept it as a fatality of their history that need not be celebrated but cannot and should not be resisted.

A second group of passive participants simply decides to yield to the force of current events. But because they share a vision not limited to the short term, they view the colonial regime as ephemeral. They expect that time will eventually banish the invader and restore the culture they perceive as their own.

Then there are the activists, who will always represent a minority. They see the new order as a repression of something fundamental to their culture and more permanent in time. They may lurk in the background or emerge as the revolutionaries or transformers, looking for the first sign of weakness on the part of the colonial power. Some are patient and play the long game. Others seek to precipitate the action at the first opportunity. Both groups may be disappointed, either because the long game appears to last forever or because precipitation provokes an effective repression. But their spirit endures.

The history of India and many other of what were once “possessions” of the British Empire illustrate all these tendencies, which admit of various other subtle variations. Even without a precise knowledge of history, everyone understands that empires ultimately fail. The British Empire was remarkably durable but couldn’t rival the Roman Empire, which lasted for at least four or five complete centuries. The key to keeping any empire in place as long as possible lies in building a wide base of passive participants and creating the illusion that the new colonial order is a natural extension of the nation’s history.

Thomas Babington Macaulay abysmally failed to understand the reality of India, but he very successfully grasped the strategies that could create the cultural illusion that would make British India stable over time. His work, undertaken in the first half of the 19^th century, was largely responsible for keeping the illusion going for a full century.

Americans in the 21^st century on the other hand may have the money and the military might, but they simply don’t have the time to spend on such ventures. Their ideas tend to be as frozen as the Taliban’s assets.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Economic War That Truly Is Forever appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The War on Terror Was Never Turkey’s Fight

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The largely mono-dimensional US-Turkey relationship revolves around geopolitics and security, which is also where the main crises are located. In Syria, for instance, each views the other’s local partners through the lens of terrorism. When Turkey acquired the Russian-made S-400 air defense system, Washington imposed CAATSA sanctions (under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act). Such developments have generated debate — both in the West and in Turkey — over Turkey’s place and future in Western institutions and specifically NATO.

After taking office in January, US President Joe Biden and his team initially gave Turkey the cold shoulder. Turkey responded with a charm offensive, sending a stream of positive messages. For instance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered an impassioned defense of the NATO alliance at its summit in June.

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Just as geopolitical decoupling drove them apart, Ankara appears to believe that a convergence and cooperation responding to a major geopolitical crisis can bring Turkey and the United States closer together again, at least to some extent. In other words, an instrumental geopolitical crisis has the potential to improve the atmosphere between the Turkish and the Americans.

Point of Interest: Kabul Airport

This explains why Turkey was so eager to stay in Afghanistan when all its NATO allies were preparing to leave. Ankara is seeking closer relations with the Taliban and still aspires to a role in running Kabul airport, which is critical for the Western diplomatic presence and Afghanistan’s connectivity with the rest of the world. Turkey, Qatar and the Taliban are in talks over this matter.

Ankara hopes that the Taliban will permit Turkey to operate the airport, very likely in  with Qatar. Ankara would like its role to include a security dimension too, but the Taliban are very wary and would want to minimize the security aspect — assuming it agrees at all.

Ankara is currently exhibiting flexibility in its endeavors to secure a role in Afghanistan. President Erdogan has that Turkey might find a bilateral deal with Afghanistan similar to those it signed in 2019 with the Libyan government of national accord on security cooperation and maritime boundaries.

Dual Identity and the Price of Recognition

The most obvious challenge is that the Taliban will tie any Turkish role at the airport to recognition of its government, while Ankara would not want to be among the first to do so. Instead, Turkey will prefer to cooperate without official recognition, operating in a gray zone. It will want to avoid antagonizing Washington and will be paying close attention to the stances adopted by the Americans and other international players. In Afghanistan, Turkey will continue to capitalize on its dual Muslim/NATO identity: the Muslim identity geared toward Afghanistan, the NATO identity Western-facing.

Erdogan’s gambit appears to be paying off. The tone of exchanges between Ankara and Washington is warming and the frequency of discussions is increasing. During his Senate Foreign Relations Committee  hearing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken  Turkey as a “so-called strategic partner.” Now, he and other US officials call Turkey “” and “”. Whether this change in tone represents a real thaw in relations remains to be seen. Afghanistan certainly has the potential to break the ice, even it is unlikely to usher in any deep transformation.

Domestic Pushback

President Erdogan’s push for the vital role of airport security provider faces domestic political hostility. As growing numbers of Afghan refugees enter Turkey through Iran, virulent anti-refugee sentiment places increasing pressures on the government and erodes public support for Ankara’s plans in Afghanistan. The opposition also flags the risks to Turkish military personnel.

Ankara might instrumentalize solidarity with the Turkic people of Afghanistan and Central Asia — Uzbeks, Turkmens and other Turkic populations — to cultivate domestic political support and situate Afghanistan within the wider geopolitics of Central Asia and the Turkic world. Such nationalist language may backfire.

As a predominantly Pashtun organization, the Taliban will dislike that narrative — as will China and Russia. In fact, until very recently Turkey was supporting the Northern Alliance and figures like Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum in Afghanistan. Such a policy of ethnic solidarity would be hard to reconcile with overtures to the Taliban.

*[This  was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post An Afghan Thaw in the Turkey-US Relationship? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It was in that the Taliban took over Kabul the last time around. Following a version of extreme Islam, it unleashed a reign of terror in Afghanistan. It also exported terror to India. It sent jihadi fighters in the form of the mujahideen to liberate Kashmir.

Will the Taliban End Up Under the Influence?

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There is one event that is etched in the memory of the region and must surely be indelible in the Indian consciousness. On December 24, 1999, five terrorists a plane from India and forced the pilot to fly it to Kandahar. The Taliban fighters surrounded the plane to prevent Indian military operations to rescue the hostages.

India capitulated to the demands of the Taliban. It released Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Azhar went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammed, a deadly terrorist group in Pakistan that is infamous for striking the Indian parliament and conducting the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Sheikh was arrested for abducting and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl. Zargar has been sending jihadis to Kashmir.

India’s capitulation in 1999 is still a black mark on its reputation. The Taliban sees India as a soft target. It sees India as a land of kafirs who worship idols that need to be smashed. It is important to remember that the Taliban blew up the historic statues of the Buddha at in 2001 despite requests from Buddhist communities all over the world. In the eyes of the Taliban, India is a land of Hindus that oppresses Muslims and must be defeated, if not converted, to Islam.

As in the 1990s, the Taliban is a clear and present danger to India. In August, India the special session of the UN Security Council on Afghanistan. Yet India failed to take a position on the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. No independent statement was forthcoming. 

Can India Afford to Lose Afghanistan to the Taliban and Pakistan? 

It is an open secret that the Taliban have been nurtured by Pakistan. Ever since its birth in 1947, Pakistan has sought strategic depth against India. The great Mughal city of Lahore is merely 24 kilometers from the Indian border. India’s population, economy and manufacturing capabilities dwarf Pakistan’s. Therefore, Islamabad has always sought strategic depth by controlling Afghanistan. In the past, the Taliban have acted as auxiliaries to the Pakistani army and carried out numerous operations against India. The actions of the Taliban and other jihadi fighters have given Islamabad plausible deniability in its war of terror against India.

The victory of the Taliban is a double-edged sword for Pakistan. On the one hand, Islamabad has achieved its objective of strategic depth. This time, the Taliban have even taken over the Panjshir Valley. On the other hand, this victory will fan Pashtun nationalism. Lest we forget, of Pakistan’s population is Pashtun. This community was arbitrarily divided by the Durand Line into Afghanistan and British India in . Pashtun nationalists consider it a humiliating colonial legacy and have never accepted it. As Pashtun power rises, so does the threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity.

Pakistan’s solution to its Pashtun problem is to use an increasingly extreme version of Islam to tie the country together. In this version of Islam, India is the bogeyman. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has constantly called the Bharatiya Janata Party a Hindu party. He has damned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for leading a genocidal regime that kills innocent Muslims. This narrative seeks to unify the Pashtuns, the Balochs, the Sindhis, the Punjabis and other Muslim communities of Pakistan against India. The Pashtuns are lionized as the greatest fighters of the region and encouraged to fight a jihad against India for the liberation of fellow Muslims in Kashmir.

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Ajit Doval is India’s national security adviser. In 1999, he negotiated with the Taliban for the release of hostages. He is well aware of their designs. Yet India has adopted a wait-and-see approach to Afghanistan. Presumably, India wants to focus on its China border. Yet it is inevitable that the Taliban and Pakistan will menace India on the west.

India must take a bolder stand against the Taliban now and not wait until the danger is at its door. New Delhi has failed to speak up for a democratically elected legitimate government in Kabul. Instead, it has accepted the takeover by the Taliban as a fait accompli. Like India, Afghanistan is a country with tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity. India is a good model for a future Afghan democracy.

India Can and Must Act

In realpolitik terms, the Taliban is now dominant across Afghanistan. Indian policymakers might think that they can do little to intervene. They do not have the supply lines, military or intelligence wherewithal and political capital to operate in landlocked Afghanistan. So, dealing with the devil now in charge might seem to be the only realistic option.

Yet many Indians forget that their country commands much soft power in Afghanistan. Afghans who do not support the Taliban have always looked up to India, not Pakistan, as a model for their country. So, support for Afghanistan’s democratically elected government would strengthen India’s appeal among millions of Afghans. 

India could also consider supporting Afghanistan’s (NRF) led by Ahmad Massoud. Historically, India has been more comfortable backing Amrullah Saleh, the former vice president who has declared himself as acting president of Afghanistan. However, Saleh is tainted by his association with Ashraf Ghani, the former Afghan president. Ghani has little credibility left after his flight from Kabul. He handed over the capital and the country to the Taliban on a platter without even the pretense of a fight. Ghani’s reputation for corruption, arrogance and incompetence has made him a persona non grata in Afghanistan. The anti-Taliban Afghans have not forgiven Saleh for going along with Ghani, and he has thin support in the country now.

In a clan-based traditional society, Massoud has emerged as the tallest anti-Taliban leader. He is helped by the fact that he is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud. . trained at the prestigious British military academy Sandhurst. He entered Kabul the day Ghani fled the country. Since then, he has put up a fight against the Taliban and is now leading a guerrilla force in Panjshir Valley. Massoud Jr. has called for a national uprising against the Taliban and is emerging as Afghanistan’s best hope to take on the Taliban.

It is in India’s strategic interest to back Massoud Jr.’s NRF. The Taliban have won many battles so far, but they have yet to win the war for Afghanistan. Ethnic groups like the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Hazaras and others are bound to rally against their harsh, intolerant regime. Many Pashtuns will join them. Massoud Jr. needs backing from powers like India, Britain and the US to carry on the fight against the Taliban. Otherwise, this hardline regime will inevitably export terror to the rest of the world again.

Of all the world powers, India will suffer the most from the Taliban’s terror exports. Islamabad will direct the Taliban against India to preserve Pakistan and to avenge New Delhi’s liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. Even China has entered the fray in Afghanistan. has already hosted leaders of the Taliban and is willing to work with them. Russia is staying very quiet and there are rumors that it has made its own deal with the Taliban. 

With the US pulling out dramatically and chaotically, Afghans who opposed the Taliban for decades need support. Just as India once backed Bangladeshis, they must now assist Afghans fighting the Taliban.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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360˚ Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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The grave mistakes that the post-9/11 Washington administrations made in Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to the rupture of American society, ultimately culminating in the cataclysmic events of January 6. It permanently stained America’s global image as the promoter and defender of democracy. One wonders if the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks may have actually succeeded in their mission to undermine America’s democratic ethos.

War on Terror

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration  from Congress the Authorization of Use of Military Force against a wide array of people or groups that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks or harbored such organizations or persons.” Within weeks, the US assembled a global coalition of more than 50 nation-states, initiating Operation Enduring Freedom, which quickly ended the Taliban’s five-year reign.

Then came Colin Powell’s  at the United Nations, in which the Bush administration desperately tried to justify an invasion of Iraq. Having been unable to garner support, Washington initiated its March 2003 campaign unilaterally.

While the initially stated objectives of both invasions were reached — the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq — the vaguely defined global war on terror required the US to maintain a gargantuan military footprint in the wider Middle East region. In 2011, President Barack Obama  the total number of military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq to a massive 100,000.

The relentless US military war machine across the region inadvertently created a ripple effect the implications of which have been felt far and away, in Europe and across the Atlantic: refugees.

In Afghanistan, an estimated  were killed as a direct result of the 20-year war,  of them in US airstrikes. Furthermore,  Afghan paramilitary forces are known to have committed egregious abuses against the local population in the name of the fight against the Taliban. The extreme corruption of the US-backed governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani further  and oppressed the Afghan people.   

In Iraq, the US deposing of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent de-Baathification — the removal and exclusion of any military or civilian associated with his regime — initiated fierce sectarian violence where the Shia Arabs, once oppressed by Hussein, began their retribution. Hussein’s generals, in turn, mounted a insurgency, which ultimately morphed into the Islamic State (IS, or Daesh).

In 2015, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who helped Bush invade Iraq,  that “Without the Iraq War, there would be no ISIS.” Daesh made its biggest gains by steamrolling into Syria in 2014. At its peak, the terrorist group  almost a third of Syria and much of central Iraq. Daesh’s push across Iraq and Syria created more refugees.

The US-led coalition then embarked on an extremely destructive military operation in late 2016 to retake Mosul and Raqqa from Daesh. It is estimated that the indiscriminate bombing of those two cities caused the death of more than . Furthermore, the US-backed proxies, particularly the Democratic Union Party, were by Amnesty International of committing ethnic cleansing in Syria.

Anti-Immigrant Tide

All things considered, the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria has directly or indirectly created refugees and migrants numbering in the , whose last stop is generally the European Union. The world watched in shock as migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean in ; those who were successful found themselves  barbed-wire fences in countries whose borders otherwise allow unhindered travel.

The migrant crisis became particularly severe in 2015. According to the UN, an estimated 800,000 migrants and refugees, fleeing conflict and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq  on European shores that year.

The growing refugee crisis began to shape the European political scene, giving rise to right-wing and populist politicians, threatening the EU’s liberal and democratic foundations. In Poland, the anti-migrant, xenophobic, Euroskeptic Law and Justice party won the 2015 parliamentary elections by a .

Hungary witnessed the consolidation of power by right-wing Prime Minister Victor Orban around the rhetoric of a . Citing the need to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, parliament granted extraordinary powers to Orban, turning him into a de-facto autocrat who, as many experts believe, has Hungarian democracy.

Most notably, the proponents of Brexit exploited the migrant crisis to scare voters into supporting the bid to leave the European Union. , the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party and an ardent advocate of Brexit, produced a poster showing thousands of refugees crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015. The words “BREAKING POINT” were emblazoned across the picture, above a line that read: “We must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.”

Around 75% of the pro-Brexit voters cited as the most important issue the UK faced. In October 2015, the anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party won Switzerland’s parliamentary elections by a landslide, swinging the country to the right. Many other across Europe considerably increased their votes as well.

It appeared that the 2015 rapidly booming refugee influx constituted a major turning point for much of European politics in terms of the right-wing upsurge. The anti-immigrant tide didn’t spare the United States either. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump often pointed to the migrant crisis in Europe to make a case for tough immigration policies along the US-Mexico border and for the need to build a wall.

On April 28, 2016, he : “Look at what’s happening all over Europe. It’s a mess and we don’t need it. … When you look at that migration, you see so many young, strong men. Does anyone notice that? Am I the only one? Young, strong men. And you’re almost like, ‘Why aren’t they fighting?’ You don’t see that many women and children.” According to Pew Research Center, around 65% of Trump supporters immigration as a “very big problem” for the United States.

America threw a boomerang at the greater Middle East at the turn of the century. It struck Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, , causing death and devastation. A decade later, it moved on to Europe, leading to the gradual revival of the “menace” the Europeans have tried to bury for so long, that of right-wing ultranationalism.

Ultimately, the returning boomerang arrived on US shores, propelling Trump to the White House. As a result, the American public has never been so divided, not since the Civil War. On January 6, the boomerang finally returned to Congress, revealing the ever-growing weakness of American democracy.

The abrupt and disastrous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August is  to produce even more refugees, creating a crisis that will hit Europe even harder than the one in 2015. This alone indicates that the policymakers in Washington have failed to learn lessons from the last two decades.

As China is fast ascending toward global hegemony, the West in general and the US in particular are facing tremendous challenges. The questions yet to be answered are whether past mistakes constitute a lesson for the future. What has America learned from the tragedy of 9/11?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For many discerning readers of news, attentive to The Times’ influence over not only the general public but especially an elite class of political and economic decision-makers, the prestigious paper can also prove to be exasperatingly unreliable. Given the importance of the topics the newspaper covers and its capacity to shape historical events, its critics are justified when they perceive this all too variable reliability as potentially dangerous. The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has repeatedly taken The Times to task for its tendency to present tendentious interpretations of crucial events as established fact or to promote the conclusions it draws from those events as infallibly logical.

9/11 and the American Collective Unconscious

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Too often, The Times’ indulgently and uncritically presents official explanations pleasing to the US defense establishment and the interests of a military-industrial complex, including Wall Street, as fact. Nevertheless, the paper encourages its reporters to demonstrate their independence and dig deeper when the opportunity arises, even when it means unearthing stories that may embarrass their habitual allies. This week provided a of such an original investigation.

In an article published last Friday, a team of four reporters led by Matthieu Aikins dared to dramatically contradict and expose as a lie the Pentagon’s official account of the August 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people, including seven children. The team produced a powerful presenting the documentary evidence it investigated. It includes a graphic reconstruction of the events on the ground that day from the point of view of the man that US intelligence identified as the suspected terrorist. They were mistaken. Zemari Ahmadi was in fact “a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group.”

On the day of the strike, The Times began an article relating to the official of the event with this sentence: “A U.S. drone strike on Sunday destroyed an explosives-laden vehicle that the Pentagon said posed an imminent threat to Afghanistan’s main airport.” To the extent that the Pentagon is cited as the source, this is honest reporting. Not only did it leave appropriate doubt in the reader’s mind, but it also opened the path for a team of Times reporters to challenge the veracity of the military’s account.

Immediately following the strike, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, explained why the military was confident they had eliminated a terrorist. “Because there were secondary explosions, there is a reasonable conclusion to be made that there was explosives in that vehicle.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Secondary explosion:

1. One of a number of the military’s creative explanations designed to establish the guilt of an innocent victim to hide its own guilt

2. The collateral effect of official lies once they are investigated and reported to the public

Contextual Note

After sifting through the evidence, the only credible case for a “secondary explosion” might be the explosive article The Times’ itself published nearly two weeks later, exposing the Pentagon’s lie. The original article asserted that “the U.S. military said it was investigating the assertions.” In fact, the military did nothing. The Times’ journalists stepped in to unveil the truth.

At a joint press on September 1, General Milley had promised to act. “As we always do with these things,” he explained, “we initiate an investigation.” He claimed to have had “very good intelligence that [Islamic State in Khorasan Province] was preparing a specific type vehicle.” As The Times team eventually revealed, the supposed terrorist had a white Toyota. So did Ahmadi, the US aid worker who lost his life. Right car, wrong victim.

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At their press briefing, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Milley on the traditional theme used to explain atrocities, that “war is hell.” The secretary even uttered the pleonasm that “missile hell is hell, period.” General Milley added, “War is hard, it’s vicious, it’s brutal, it’s unforgiving.” These clichés served to write off 20 years of unabated state-sponsored terror.

One journalist asked the two men about the “pain and anger” they felt. General Milley replied that “when we see what has unfolded over the last 20 years, and over the last 20 days, that creates pain and anger. Mine comes from 242 of my soldiers killed in action over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Recently, The Independent the figure of “363,000 civilians killed during the War on Terror.” Those civilian deaths at the hands of the US compared to a couple of hundred American military deaths evoke neither pain nor anger from the general.

Historical Note

The New York Times deserves the public’s applause for this brave and timely reporting on the death of Zemari Ahmadi and the seven children who crowded around his car to greet him when he came back home that evening. The Times can live up to its reputation of great journalism. But does this redeem its ethical failure on other occasions?

The shining — which is to say most egregious — example of The Times’ journalistic irresponsibility in recent years was the newspaper’s coverage of the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Because of the alacrity of its journalists and editors to funnel the fearmongering lies of George W. Bush’s White House into its front-page coverage of the “global war on terror” over a period of weeks and months, its critics hold The Times has accountable for betraying the interest of the public it claims to serve.

The Gray Lady values its privileged access to US government sources, particularly to those in defense and national security. The defense establishment knows that it can count on The Times to print any new message it wishes to diffuse. That relationship describes how an effective system of propaganda functions most of the time.

The Times’ stunning reporting on the final act of aggression perpetrated by the US military in Afghanistan contains a bitter irony. A campaign that in 2001 began with lies, leading to wanton destruction, ended with an act of wanton destruction followed by a lie. It may well have been a “mistake” or a judgment error of intelligence to track and then kill Ahmadi. But asserting that “there were secondary explosions” with absolutely no evidence to support it was nothing more than a lie compounded by the surreal assertion that imaginary explosions could lead to “a reasonable conclusion,” when General Mark A. Milley claimed that there were “explosives in that vehicle.”

A highly unreasonable war thus terminated with false affirmations of reaching a “reasonable conclusion” based on an outright lie. The war in Afghanistan began by treating a patent criminal act conducted by a shadowy group of terrorists as an act of war by another nation. That was the first unreasonable conclusion based on a lie. It led to an undeclared but brutally conducted war against a nation and a people who were indeed governed by a truly fanatical regime. But that very regime assumed power in 1996 only as a result of a series of previous actions by Western powers seeking, since 1978, to overthrow a progressive government with a strong human rights agenda.

Even in 2001, the Taliban posed no direct threat to the United States or the West. It played no role in provoking the events of 9/11. The planning and plotting of those events took place in Germany and in the US, not in Kabul, even though Osama bin Laden had a training camp inside Afghanistan.

A year and a half later, a new lie amplified by The New York Times led to the invasion of Iraq. Twenty years after 9/11, the world is left wondering what the next lie will be.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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That was the story that grabbed headlines at the beginning of August. Hardly a week later, everything had changed. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban and soon the 20-year war would be declared over.

360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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Though few paid attention to the phenomenon, this also meant that the significance of a commemoration of the attacks, would be radically different. For 19 years, the commemoration served to reinforce the will and resolution of the nation to overcome the humiliation of the fallen twin towers and a damaged wing of the Pentagon.

Redefining the Meaning of the Historical Trauma

In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, politicians quickly learned to exploit the date as a painful reminder of a tragedy that had unified an otherwise chaotically disputatious nation in shared horror and mourning. Ever since that fatal day, politicians have invoked it to reinforce the belief in American exceptionalism.

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The nation is so exceptional in generously providing its people with what President George W. Bush “our freedoms” — and which he identified as the target of the terrorists — that it was logical to suppose that evil people who didn’t possess those freedoms or were prevented from emigrating to the land of the free would do everything in their power to destroy those freedoms. To the degree that Americans are deeply thankful for possessing such an exceptional status, other ill-intentioned people will take exception to that exceptionality and in their unjustified jealousy will threaten to destroy it.

On a less philosophical and far more pragmatic note, the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks has conveniently and consistently served to justify an ever-expanding military budget that no patriotic American, interested in preserving through the force of arms the nation’s exceptional status, should ever oppose. It went without saying, through the three previous presidencies, that the annual commemoration provided an obvious explanation of why the forever war in Afghanistan was lasting forever.

The fall of Kabul on August 15, followed by the panicked retreat of all remaining Americans, caught everyone by surprise. It unexpectedly brought an official end to the war whose unforgettable beginning is traced back to that bright September day in 2001. Though no one has yet had the time to put it all in perspective, the debate in the media has shifted away from glossing the issues surrounding an ongoing war on terror to assessing the blame for its ignominious end. Some may have privately begun to wonder whether the theme being commemorated on this September 11 now concerns the martyrdom of its victims or the humiliation of the most powerful nation in the history of the world. The pace of events since mid-August has meant that the media have been largely silent on this quandary.

So, What About Saudi Arabia?

With the American retreat, the controversy around Biden’s unkept campaign promise concerning Saudi Arabia’s implication in 9/11 provisionally took a backseat to a much more consequent quarrel, one that will have an impact on next year’s midterm elections. Nearly every commentator has been eager to join the fray focusing on the assessment of the wisdom or folly of both Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and his seemingly improvised management of the final chaotic phase.

The human tragedy visible in the nightly news as throngs of people at Kabul airport desperately sought to flee the country easily eclipsed the genteel but politically significant showdown between a group of American citizens demanding the truth and a government committed to protecting the reputations of friends and allies, especially ones from oil-rich nations.

The official excuse turns around the criterion that has become a magic formula: national security. But the relatives of victims are justified in wondering which nation’s security is being prioritized. They have a sneaking suspicion that some people in Washington have confused their own nation’s security with Saudi Arabia’s. Just as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt not long ago that plenty of people within the Beltway continue to confuse US foreign policy with Israel’s, the families may be justified in suspecting that Saudi Arabia’s interest in hiding the truth trumps American citizens’ right to know the truth.

To appease the families of 9/11 victims and permit his unimpeded participation in the commemorations, Biden offered to release some of the documents. It was a clever move, since the new, less-redacted version will only become available well after the commemoration. This gesture seems to have accomplished its goal of preventing an embarrassing showdown at the commemoration ceremonies. But it certainly will not be enough to satisfy the demands of the families, who apparently remain focused on obtaining that staple of the US criminal justice system: “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, may have shown the way concerning the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Like MBS, the White House prefers finding a way to release some of the truth rather than the whole truth — just the amount that doesn’t violate national security or tarnish the reputations of any key people. Those two goals have increasingly become synonymous. If the people knew what actual political personalities were doing, the nation’s security might be endangered, as the people might begin to lose faith in a government that insists on retaining the essential power of deciding how the truth should be told.

Here is how the White House the legal principle behind its commitment to unveiling a little more truth than is currently available. “Although the indiscriminate release of classified information could jeopardize the national security — including the United States Government’s efforts to protect against future acts of terrorism — information should not remain classified when the public interest in disclosure outweighs any damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure.”

The White House has thus formulated an innovative legal principle brilliantly designed to justify concealing enough of the naked truth to avoid offending public morals by revealing its stark nakedness. Legal scholars of the future may refer to it as the “indiscriminate release” principle. Its logical content is worth exploring. It plays on the auxiliary verbs “could” and “should.” “Could” is invoked in such a way as to suggest that, though it is possible, no reasonable person would take the risk of an “indiscriminate release of classified information.” Later in the same sentence, the auxiliary verb “should” serves to speculatively establish the moral character of the principle. It tells us what “should” be the case — that is, what is morally ideal — even if inevitably the final result will be quite different. This allows the White House to display its good intentions while preparing for an outcome that will surely disappoint.

To justify its merely partial exposure of the truth, the White House offers another original moral concept when it promises the maximization of transparency. The full sentence reads: “It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency.”

There is of course an easy way to maximize transparency if that is truly the government’s intention. It can be done simply by revealing everything and hiding nothing within the limits of its physical capability. No one doubts that the government is physically capable of removing all the redactions. But the public should know by now that the value cited as overriding all others — national security — implicitly requires hiding a determined amount of the truth. In other words, it is framed as a trade-off between maximum transparency and minimum concealment. Biden has consistently compared himself to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perhaps that trade-off between transparency and concealment is what historians will call Biden’s New Deal.

But the White House’s reasoning is not yet complete. The document offers yet another guiding principle to explain why not everything will become visible. “Thus, information collected and generated in the United States Government’s investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should now be disclosed,” it affirms, “except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.” Those reasons, the document tells us, will be defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its “declassification reviews.” This invocation of the “strongest possible reasons” appears to empower the FBI to define or at least apply not only what is “strongest,” but also what is “possible.” That constitutes a pretty broad power.

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The document states very clearly what the government sees as the ultimate criterion for declassification: “Information may remain classified only if it still requires protection in the interest of the national security and disclosure of the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security. Information shall not remain classified if there is significant doubt about the need to maintain its classified status.” The families of the victims can simply hope that there will not be too much “significant doubt.” They might be forgiven for doubting that that will be the case.

One September Morning vs. 20 Years of Subsequent Mornings

Twenty years ago, a spectacular crime occurred on the East Coast of the United States that set off two decades of crimes, blunders and judgment errors that, now compounded by COVID-19 and aggravated climate change, have brought the world to a crisis point unique in human history.

The Bush administration, in office for less than eight months at the time of the event, with no certain knowledge of who the perpetrator might have been, chose to classify the attack not as a crime, but as an act of war. When the facts eventually did become clearer after a moment of hesitation in which the administration attempted even to implicate Iraq, the crime became unambiguously attributable, not to a nation but to a politically motivated criminal organization: Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda that back then was operating out of Afghanistan, which was ruled by the Taliban.

The administration’s choice of treating the attack as an act of war not only stands as a crime in itself, but, as history has shown, as the trigger for a series of even more shameless and far more destructive — if not quite as spectacular — crimes that would roll out for the next two decades and even gain momentum over time. Had the 9/11 attacks been treated as crimes rather than acts of war, the question of national security would have had less importance in the investigation. By going to war with Afghanistan, the Bush administration made it more difficult to investigate all the possible complicities. Could this partially explain its precipitation to start a war?

Bin Laden, a Saudi, did not act alone. But he did not act in the name of a state either, which is the fundamental criterion for identifying an act of war. He acted within a state, in the territory of Afghanistan. Though his motive was political and the chosen targets were evocatively symbolic of political power, the act itself was in no way political. No more so, in any case, than the January 6 insurrection this year on Capitol Hill.

Though the facts are still being obscured and the text describing them remains redacted in the report of the 9/11 Commission, reading between the redacted lines reveals that bin Laden did have significant support from powerful personalities in Saudi Arabia, many of them with a direct connection to the government. This foreknowledge would seem to indicate at some level of the state.

On this 20^th anniversary of a moment of horror, the families of the victims quite logically continue to suspect that if a state was involved that might eventually justify a declaration of war by Congress (as required by the US Constitution), the name of that state should not have been Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia. It is equally clear that the Afghan government at the time was in no way directly complicit.

When the new version of the 9/11 Commission’s report appears with its “maximum transparency,” meaning a bare minimum of redaction, the objections of the victims’ families will no longer be news, and the truth about the deeper complicities around 9/11 will most probably remain obscured. Other dramas, concerning the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasingly obvious consequences of climate change and an upcoming midterm election will probably mean that next year’s 21^st commemoration will be low-keyed and possibly considered unworthy of significant mention in the news.

In 2021, the world has become a decidedly different place than it has been over the past two decades. The end of a forever war simply promises a host of new forever problems to emerge for increasingly unstable democracies to deal with.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Ties over the following decades remained close. This was not so much because of Saudi geopolitical interests in Afghanistan, but rather how the country affected Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran and Pakistan, a major rival and an important ally of the kingdom respectively.

How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 marked the summit of Saudi influence. In coordination with Pakistan and the United States, the Saudis famously supported the mujahideen and also assisted many Afghan refugees. Throughout the 1980s, the kingdom exercised direct interference over various Islamist groups in Afghanistan and many Saudis traveled there to fight the Soviets.

After the Soviet Union departed in 1989 and throughout the subsequent civil war in Afghanistan, the Saudis continued their role of manipulating Afghan politicians and factions, using their petrodollars and religious influence on behalf of the US, with mixed results. In 1993, all of the Afghan mujahideen factions signed a peace in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, but that failed to stop the conflict.

Saudi Ties With the Taliban

Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, some commentators have encouraged the Saudis to try to play the religious card again. In June, Muslim scholars from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia  a “declaration of peace” in Mecca, which Arab News as a “historic, landmark event on the path toward reconciliation between warring factions.” But the Taliban  the move — which, in any event, had no impact on peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government — as a theatrical attempt to steal the diplomatic limelight from Qatar using Islamic mercenaries.

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Saudi influence over the Taliban began with funding hardline religious schools, or madrassas, in Pakistan where the movement started. It effectively ended in 1996 when the Taliban first took over Afghanistan. At the end of the 1990s, Saudi citizens were officially barred from giving money to any charity that was not state-approved, which meant Saudi public funding for the Taliban was largely cut off, except for a few  acting without the explicit knowledge of the government. A 2013 research  by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs stated that Saudi “fundraisers for the Taliban … are believed to extensively exploit networks and use old mechanisms dating back to the times of Saudi cooperation with mujahedeen and Taliban functionaries.”

When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries to officially recognize their government; Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates were the other two. This was not because the Saudis supported the Taliban regime, but rather because they were looking for a way to grease the wheels for an approach by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, to persuade the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda.

The Saudis calculated that by recognizing the Taliban government, they could win influence as they had done in the past with other factions and warlords. But in 1998, when Prince Turki  to Afghanistan with a delegation of Muslim figures, the former Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, turned him down.

The Saudi View of the Taliban

The House of Saud now faces a disconcerting moment over Afghanistan, not least because like the former Afghan government, the royal family depends on the US for protection against external enemies and internal threats.

In a report by about the implications of the Taliban takeover on Saudi Arabia, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, comments: “Questions are likely to be mounting in Riyadh about the sincerity and the reliability of US security guarantees which themselves have been a matter of considerable uncertainty since the September 2019 attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure.” He adds that the “sudden abandonment of Afghan partners, spelled out clinically and coldly in [Joe] Biden’s televised address, may resonate strongly among US regional partners for whom President [Barack] Obama’s perceived abandonment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 set in motion a questioning of US motivations that then continued into the Trump era.”

Neil Quilliam, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House, continues in the same Wikistrat report: “The Taliban leadership will likely begin a campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the Al Saud and appeal directly to the Saudi population to challenge the ruling family’s authority.” He adds that the “nature of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a cause for concern in Saudi Arabia. President Biden’s speech about the withdrawal, wherein he noted that remaining in Afghanistan no longer constitutes a vital interest, has also sent shockwaves through the Saudi ���𲹻������󾱱�.”

The Taliban may turn on Saudi Arabia in the media war. Transnational jihadist groups like al-Qaeda could also threaten the Saudis from Afghanistan again. But as Sami Hamdi explained in the Arab Digest podcast, there are reasons why Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman might benefit from the situation in Afghanistan in terms of finding a renewed utility toward the US. A foreign diplomat in Riyadh, quoted by , predicted that the kingdom will take a pragmatic approach. “The Saudis have a historical relationship with Afghanistan and will eventually have to accept the Taliban [again] … They have no other option,” he said.

In 2019, Jalaluddin Shinwari, the former Taliban deputy minister of justice, the New York Times: “What [we] are saying to Americans is this: You have accepted Saudi Arabia, and we won’t do more than their basic code — retribution for murder, chop off the hand for robbing. If you have accepted Saudi, what’s wrong with us being another? The rest will be your priorities: aid, friendship, economic relations.”

The US Would Never Pull Out of Saudi Arabia

The Taliban can dream of a relationship with the US akin to that which the Saudis enjoy. Yet that relationship is completely different from whatever ties the US has with Afghanistan. The United States would never pull out of Saudi Arabia the way it did from Afghanistan, not only because of hydrocarbons — although with the Middle East still providing around 31% of world oil  and 16% of global natural gas supply, this remains an important factor. Nor is American support just about Israel’s security — although the US and its Western allies certainly wish to ensure this, and they are ready to work with any Arab regime, particularly Saudi Arabia, that is ready to officially recognize Israel on US terms.

The main reason the US can never pull out of Saudi Arabia is because of the unthinkable consequences of losing Saudi control of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina to al-Qaeda or another jihadist movement. That is why US support for the Saudis remains solid despite misgivings on both sides.

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