In Taliban’s Afghanistan, traditional security has improved despite worsening human aspects
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Though Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last August, the group announced its caretaker government on September 8. Hence, March 8 marked six months of the Taliban’s interim rule in Afghanistan. During this period, Afghanistan has gone through a lot. In the first six months, the Taliban’s balance sheet is a mixed bag that provides reasons for cautious optimism but also invokes a sense of alarmism.
As the crossroads of the South and Central Asian regions, a meeting point of three major civilizations and a melting pot of different ethnicities, Afghanistan has been the agent of change in South Asia. All the great conquerors from Alexander to the Mongols and the Mughals who invaded the Indian subcontinent passed through Afghanistan. In contemporary history, the Russia-Afghan war in the 1980’s and the war on terror in the 2000’s had a profound impact on South Asia. So, what happens in Afghanistan doesn’t stay in Afghanistan.
Given its geostrategic location, internal ethnic makeup and great power interventions, Afghanistan never evolved as a nation-state in the strict Westphalia sense. Against this backdrop, irrespective of who ruled Afghanistan in the last four decades, the country has remained in a constant state of conflict and flux. Though the US withdrawal has changed that dynamic, Afghanistan is still reeling from the aftereffects of great power interventions and their byproducts.
The first six months of the Taliban’s interim-rule constitutes the most peaceful period of the last four decades in Afghanistan. According to UN reports, the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has not turned into a hub of transnational terrorism witnessing the return of foreign militants. Similarly, security incidents in Afghanistan have decreased by 90 percent from 600 to less than 100 and armed clashes by 98 percent, from 7,430 to 148 incidents. Though the Taliban deserve credit for pacifying Afghanistan, the end of war and the US withdrawal have equally contributed to the cessation of violence. A cursory look at the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan’s data reveals that the Taliban were responsible for the bulk of violence in Afghanistan. Hence, their return to power automatically resulted in a dramatic reduction in violence as well.
Though traditional security has improved in Afghanistan, the economic, social and human aspects of the security have worsened. Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy is teetering on the brink. However, it will be unfair to squarely blame the Taliban regime for this abysmal state of the Afghan economy. The Biden administration’s executive order to freeze $7 billion of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets parked in New York and disburse $3.5 billion of that amount as compensation money to 9/11 victim families and earmark the remaining $3.5 billion for Afghan humanitarian relief has had a debilitating impact on the Afghan economy.
Presently, half of Afghanistan’s 39 million people are facing starvation. A large number of Afghans have fled the country to escape Taliban reprisals. Since the Taliban reopened passport offices, there have been long queues of Afghans applying for passports to flee the country for better lives and economic opportunities. Similarly, despite announcing amnesties, the Taliban have carried out revenge killings forcing people to go into hiding. The Taliban’s curbs on individual liberties and intolerance of dissent have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Still, social groups, particularly women, have come out in large numbers on the streets of Kabul to protest the Taliban’s ban on their right to work and education. Despite promises, the Taliban’s recent decision not to reopen girls’ secondary schools at the start of Afghan new year drew them international condemnation.
Though traditional security has improved in Afghanistan, the economic, social and human aspects of the security have worsened.
Abdul Basit Khan
Governance in Afghanistan has been a victim of the Taliban’s internal divisions, lack of expertise and reluctance to evolve out of their combative insurgent mode. The exodus of educated Afghans soon after the Taliban’s takeover also incapacitated governance. Though some Ghani regime officials who fled Afghanistan have returned, their number is too small. At any rate, the major stumbling block to governance in Afghanistan has been the Taliban’s inflexibility to engage in meaningful reform. The group’s ideological rigidity emanates from the internal fissures between the hardliners such as the Haqqani Network and moderates like the deputy prime minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. These intra-Taliban cleavages have generated confusions in policy making, adversely impacting governance. For instance, the moderate Taliban elements supported reopening girls’ secondary schools but the hardliners opposed it. To avoid internal differences, the Taliban chose to keep the schools closed. The same confusions also persist between top leaders and Taliban fighters. The Taliban leadership has failed at preparing its fighters for post-insurgency life.
The anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, barring Daesh-Khorasan, is weak, but it has not totally vanished. The summer season (the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan) will be critical in assessing if Ahmad Massoud’s, son of the Afghan commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, National Resistance Front (NRF) can mount any resistance to the Taliban or not. Recently, a new anti-Taliban group, the National Islamic Movement for the Liberation of Afghanistan, has emerged under the former Afghan National Army general Abdul Mateen Sulaimankhel. This is the first anti-Taliban group in Afghanistan's Pashtun heartland comprising Pashtuns.
Since assuming power, the Taliban have withdrawn their fighters from Afghanistan’s rural areas and deployed them in the cities, including the northern parts where traditionally the group was not very strong. This has stretched the Taliban ranks thin, leaving the countryside less vulnerable and an ideal place for regermination of anti-Taliban groups.
Six months of the Taliban’s interim rule makes it obvious that cooperation works better with their interim regime than coercion. At the same time, the Taliban will have to realize that the clock is ticking fast and the international community’s patience is not unlimited. Already the Western attention span has shifted to the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the concomitant refugee flow towards Europe. If the Taliban do not restore girls’ secondary education and take steps towards the formation of an inclusive government, they might risk sanctions and abandonment.
- The author is a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Twitter: @basitresearcher
