Dismantling Afghan civil society

Fatima Khalil was born in Quetta to a family of Afghan refugees. Known as Natasha to family and friends, she was a brilliant student, a scholarship winner everywhere she went, and spoke six languages fluently. She chose to move to Afghanistan to serve her country at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. On June 27, she was assassinated. She was 24 years old. 

On December 21, Rahmatullah Nikzad, a photojournalist who worked for the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, was killed. In November and December alone, Nikzad was at least the fifth journalist that was killed in Afghanistan joining Yama Siawash of Tolo News, Elyas Daee of Radio Azad, Malala Maiwand of Enekas TV, Fardin Amini of Ariana News among those slain. 

On December 23, Yousuf Rashid the head of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA) was assassinated. Yousuf spent almost his entire life working on the ideals of representation, voice and fairness. 

The news of members of Afghanistan’s civil society being gunned down is no longer a trickle. Speaking for the rights of all Afghans has never been a safe occupation in Afghanistan, but there is an insidiousness and frequency to the latest series of assassinations that point to a much more sinister potential future for Afghanistan that must worry all those that care for that country—not just Afghans themselves. 

For months now, one of the ways in which every new terrorist attack or atrocity and now even journalist or civil society assassination is talked about, is from the perspective of the two broad poles around which the country is seen to be divided: Taliban versus non-Taliban. But this binary framing is deeply problematic because it smothers something much more profound about the importance of independent and fearless voices of dissent in any society. 

Afghanistan needed these voices before war and conflict engulfed it, it needed them during war and conflict, and it will need them to heal the nation after the war. 

Independent and critical voices, be they of the kind that report for newspapers, or conduct news television talk shows, or the kind that hold the state to account for its various actions and behaviours, help calibrate and define the spectrum of conversation.

In many countries, and by many political parties and interest groups all over the world, a free media and NGOs are seen as tools to manipulate the conversation in the direction that they want it to go.

Many Taliban sympathisers in Afghanistan will see the killings of journalists, from the vantage point of conflict. Conversely, most supporters of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan feel strongly that these killings are a precursor to the ultimate aims of the Taliban: a total reset of Afghan society and state to align with the same extremist, reductive and violent view of Muslim jurisprudence that drove the Taliban’s behaviour between 1996 and 2001. 

The statements and behaviour of the Taliban in Doha has been very different from this interpretation. The ultimate picture of the reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan that emerges from Doha is one in which the Taliban are committed to a conclusive end to violence. But it is important to question these images and impressions in light of the spate of civil society and human rights workers’ assassinations in Afghanistan. 

Of course, the ultimate responsibility for protecting Afghan citizens, including journalists and NGO workers in Kabul, falls to the Afghan government: the “Islamic Republic” led by President Ashraf Ghani. 

The assassinations continue to underline the extremely thin capacity of the Afghan state as it exists. There are constant accusations being levelled at members of the Afghan state of being in cahoots with the perpetrators of this sickening violence, as part of their efforts to convince the US to revisit the Trump administration’s decision to end the US war there. 

The truth is that it matters less who is behind these assassinations, than the fact that they are taking place at all. These journalists and civil society leaders are sons, daughters, fathers and wives. They happen to form the human infrastructure that is vital to all societies in their quest to be kinder, more humane, more truthful and more just. 

If the Taliban and the Afghan government led by President Ghani are indeed sincere to the cause of a lasting peace in Afghanistan, both must be asked by the US and regional powers to create special buffers of security for the Afghan media and civil society.

Ultimately, the Taliban will need to reconcile to the Afghan character of aspects of Afghan society that they have been divorced from for the last two decades, as the US invasion and NATO/ISAF mission there rebuilt both state and society.

This is not a price that should be acceptable to sincere supporters of peace and reconciliation anywhere. It should not be acceptable for the Afghan government to abdicate responsibility for these killings. And it should not be acceptable for the Taliban to continue to pretend that it is powerless to prevent them.

Mosharraf Zaidi 

The Taliban can continue to claim that they seek a dismantling of what they call “the occupation”, but this dismantling does not, and morally, ethically and religiously, should not, include a destruction of the lives of Afghan leaders that were born into conflicts and contexts that neither they, nor their parents, nor their grandparents chose for them. 

The international community stood and watched as Afghans were brutalised by the Soviet Union, by the Americans, and by Afghan elites, including the Taliban themselves. 

It stood and watched as games between regional powers, including India, Iran and Pakistan, were played out on Afghan soil. It is now at risk of standing and watching as a flawed peace process allows for the dismantling of Afghan civil society. 

This is not a price that should be acceptable to sincere supporters of peace and reconciliation anywhere. It should not be acceptable for the Afghan government to abdicate responsibility for these killings. And it should not be acceptable for the Taliban to continue to pretend that it is powerless to prevent them. The world and Afghanistan both owe much more, and much better to the future of Afghanistan.

- Mosharraf Zaidi is a columnist and policy analyst. He works for the policy think tank, Tabadlab.
Twitter: @mosharrafzaidi​