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Taliban fighters hold Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan flags on the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul.
Jihadists, liberators, or administrators of Afghanistan? The Taliban respond.
The Taliban celebrated the anniversary of their return to power in Afghanistan last week.
They assembled at Bagram airbase, the last military outpost of the 20-year American occupation. Flags were hoisted, leftover US military equipment was displayed, and Taliban soldiers wore uniforms shed by fleeing forces loyal to the former government. Speeches were made, and the Quran was recited.
But not much was said about the continued suppression of women, the escalating violence, or the near-universal poverty Afghans find themselves in today.
So, where does the regime stand, and why should the international community trust the Taliban despite this dismal record? We interviewed Suhail Shaheen, the group's international spokesperson and head of its political office in Qatar. (He’s technically also the UN ambassador, but the world body doesn't recognize the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government.)
Our conversation — edited for clarity and length — was published on the day that ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul that killed at least six people, including a top diplomat, the first such attack on a diplomatic mission since the Taliban swept back to power.
Khan: One year after taking over, what are the Taliban’s greatest achievements and biggest failures so far?
Shaheen: Our achievements in the past one year are restoring peace and security; ending corruption in government departments; presenting a budget based on internal revenues with [the] allocation of a portion of it for development; initiating big agricultural projects [...] that’ll irrigate millions of acres of land; converting deserts into farmlands and gardens of fruit-bearing trees; and launching a consortium of Afghan businessmen to invest in key economic projects.
As far as our failures are concerned, we can say we have not been able to totally eliminate poverty and create job opportunities for qualified Afghans. The reason is we have inherited an empty treasury.
It’s true that Afghanistan’s war-dependent economy was essentially broke when the Taliban took over. In response, the group started pushing for getting access to the over $7 billion of Afghan government funds frozen by the US. That didn’t go anywhere — though the UN did appeal to finance the humanitarian crisis triggered by drought and displacement during the last winter.
Khan: Afghanistan’s funds remain frozen and the country remains cut off from the international finance system because it is run by a government nobody recognizes. What does this mean to the Taliban?
Shaheen: These are more political decisions in nature rather than legal ones. Legally, we have all the requirements needed for recognition of a country like having control over the country, being able to defend borders, and having the support of the people. It is a fact that some tools are used against us as pressure; this also includes the matter of not recognizing the current government. However, the present government in Afghanistan is an objective reality, and should be treated as such.
Khan: Claiming the support of the people is a stretch. In August, women marching for their rights in Kabul were dispersed by automatic gunfire. This followed a rollback of the announced policy of allowing girls to attend schools, which was vetoed by Mullah Haibatullah, the Taliban’s supreme leader. Doesn’t this reveal divides within the Taliban regime?
Shaheen: We all agree that access to education is the basic right of the Afghan people, but how to implement this in the light of the Islamic rules and norms of the Afghan society is a matter of deliberation. Now, the issue of opening secondary schools for girls is pending until a new order from the supreme leader.
Khan: But it’s not just about women, some of whom are allowed to work in essential services and humanitarian relief. The Taliban are also criticized for not being inclusive of Afghanistan’s complex ethnic makeup. In the north, the pro-democracy National Resistance Front continues to put up a fight. The problem is that countries won’t work with the Taliban because the Taliban won’t work with all Afghans.
Shaheen: We have representatives of all Afghan ethnicities in the government. For us, it is an inclusive government. However, their definition of inclusive government is different. This is the crux of the matter. They want some high-profile officials of the past government installed in the current one, while we have a different view.
Khan: The Taliban promised peace, but the security situation is still worrisome. Even top Taliban clerics have been killed in a spate of attacks across the country. The International Crisis Group says that the Taliban now face not just one front, but two, ISIS-K in the east and the NRF in the north.
Shaheen: Security is prevalent all over the country. Our opponent's forces do not have a physical presence in any area of the country. Our opponents are in hiding mode. Similarly, they are not able to launch massive attacks against our security forces.
However, they launch individual attacks here and there on soft targets like mosques or schools. This further marginalizes them in the society and reveals their brutal nature to people. Also, security in Afghanistan is in the interest of the international community, while lack of it harms us all.
Khan: But if the Taliban really were concerned about the safety of the international community, why would they allow terror outfits like the Pakistani Taliban to still operate from Afghanistan, as alleged by Pakistan, the US, and even the UN? And what about the presence of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul residence linked to the Haqqanis, the clan of the Taliban’s interior minister?
Shaheen: The Pakistani Taliban do not operate in Afghanistan, but Pakistani authorities requested us to host talks between the two sides, which we did because we want peace and stability in the region. Each time they would come to Kabul from across the border, take part in negotiations, and return back to their places. This we did in order to play a positive role for the cause of peace.
[Al-Zawahiri] is a US claim. We have launched a comprehensive investigation to find out the veracity of the claim. However, one thing is clear: our leadership was unaware of his presence.
Khan: From having reneged on their agreement to upkeep citizens’ rights to the al-Zawahiri killing, do the Taliban have a message for a skeptical international community that doubts the regime’s intentions because of growing evidence that the Taliban cannot divorce themselves from their jihadist roots?
Shaheen: My message to the international community is that the current government is a reality. The Afghan people have suffered a lot during the past four decades. The current sanctions add more suffering. These should come to an end. The approach of marginalization and confrontation is a vicious circle, we should come out of it. Instead, we should have engagement which, I think, will hopefully resolve outstanding issues.
The Graphic Truth: What Afghan women lost
For years, Afghanistan has ranked as one of the world’s worst places to be a woman. But over the past two decades — with the Taliban out of power and a US-backed government calling the shots — things had started to improve. Literacy rates for girls went up, and women were allowed to pursue higher education and more career opportunities — including serving in parliament. In many parts of the country, they also had greater autonomy to travel independently. But that’s all changed since the Taliban returned to power one year ago amid the US’ chaotic withdrawal. Afghan women and girls, many of whom weren’t alive when the Taliban last ruled, are now watching their hard-fought freedoms disappear.
A fighter is seen at the Taliban flag-raising ceremony in Kabul.
The Taliban’s one-year report card in Afghanistan
A year ago, the Taliban won their war in Afghanistan. On Aug. 15, 2021, as they entered Kabul in a lightning advance that shocked the world, images of a botched US exit permanently scarred America’s legacy in its longest war — a mission US commanders now admit they lost track of years ago.
But where does Afghanistan stand a year after the Taliban took over?
That’s reflected in how the Taliban are doing. Contrary to the hopes of optimists, no “Taliban 2.0” has emerged. The regime hasn’t really reformed, and is as hardline as it was when it ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.
There is no constitution. Religious policing is back with a vengeance. The media is muzzled. And the recent US killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul enclave that houses senior members of the Haqqani Network — whose boss is the current interior minister — has confirmed the skeptics who thought the Taliban could or would never disassociate from international terrorism.
Financially, things are as bad as they can get. The economy has essentially collapsed under the weight of international isolation, sanctions, and aid cuts. It was so hooked to the war that six months after the American withdrawal, GDP fell by a third. Now, Afghanistan is near universal poverty and starvation.
Women and girls have had it the worst. Millions of them have found themselves out of school, out of jobs, and out of public life altogether. The Taliban’s supreme leader vetoed a government edict to let them back to class in March, a political development that underscores serious schisms within the regime’s conservative and moderate — by Taliban standards — elements.
On Sunday, on the eve of the re-establishment of the “Islamic Emirate,” a few brave women marched in a rare protest in Kabul. They were beaten and scared off by automatic gunfire.
On the one hand, some stability has come. The Taliban takeover did end the war. Overall, violence has abated across Afghanistan, opening up vast swaths of the hinterland to some development and jobs. Moreover, the Taliban seem to have improved upon the taxation system of the previous regime, and even controlled corruption.
On the other, the Taliban are now fighting their own insurgencies. There’s been a recent uptick in clashes between the Taliban and ISIS-K, the even more hardcore Islamists who own the Islamic State franchise in the region. The Taliban’s other internal enemy is the ragtag but determined group of nationalists that form the National Resistance Front. The fighting continues to add to the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced or been forced to flee their homeland.
“The Taliban have managed to keep major armed challengers to their rule at bay until now, but at the same time have struggled to consolidate politically,” says Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. “There are internal political problems, tenuous ties with the international community, and a range of security threats to the region festering in the country.”
One year into their rule, Mir adds, the Taliban are drifting, “and their troubles continue to mount.”
The regime continues to disappoint not just Afghans, but even its few friends abroad. The fact that no country, not even the Taliban’s most erstwhile ally, has recognized their government underscores this skepticism.
Pakistan, which for the last two decades has burnt many bridges with Washington to protect Taliban leadership and provide safe haven to its fighters, is now being attacked regularly by insurgents associated with Kabul.
Other nations willing to talk to the group, like Uzbekistan and China, have also been left in the lurch. They were promised safer borders, but militants who threaten them and other countries continue to move, organize, arm, and recruit across Afghanistan.
“The Taliban have disappointed different people for different reasons,” says Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan finance ministry and World Bank official based in Geneva.
“They have disappointed all Afghans by preventing their teenage daughters from going to school. They have disappointed the Pakistanis because no pressure was exerted on the Pakistani Taliban. They’ve disappointed the Iranians because they have not been able to hit harder on ISIS and attacks on our Shiite community continue. They’ve disappointed the West because of their human rights record, and they’ve disappointed Islamic countries by shaming the image of Islam.”
So, is there any hope for things to get better? Not much, at least in the near term.
Though they control more of Afghanistan now than the first time they were in charge, it’s unclear whether the Taliban’s inability to deliver locally and internationally is a problem of capacity, will or both. Regardless, it’s left little space for Taliban optimists both home and abroad.
“The Taliban remain deeply wedded to their jihadi precepts, which gives a certain clerical class and the fighters within the movement immense power over decision-making,” assesses Mir. “That makes it exceedingly difficult for [them] to take steps which can help consolidate their rule, work with the international community, and prioritize state-building.”
Still, the regime continues to seek legitimacy. The Taliban’s younger leadership is making moves: putting out feelers for the West and trying to engage democratic partners, like India. Meanwhile, they’re also negotiating to gain access to the billions of dollars in former Afghan government funds that were frozen by Washington last year.
But getting that cash or international recognition will remain unlikely as long as the Taliban continue to adhere to suppress women, attack minorities, and aid terrorism. Unfortunately, it’ll be a tall order for the Taliban to make progress. After all, the group belongs to two limiting and regressive schools: tribalism and jihad.
Change isn’t rewarded, but bellicosity is.