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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.
Afghan men sell Taliban flags outside the former US embassy in Kabul.
Can a deadly quake inspire change for Afghanistan?
Struggling with a drought, economic collapse, famine, and an enemy more extreme than themselves, the Taliban now face Afghanistan’s worst natural calamity in years.
More than a thousand people were killed in last week’s earthquake, and while humanitarian organizations are eager to help, there is a gap in the international relief effort. Questions about recognizing the Taliban during this time of crisis, or working with the Islamists for the long-term development of the country, come sharply into focus.
“The world is punishing the suffering people of Afghanistan by not engaging with the current government,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told GZERO from Qatar. Indeed, some aid groups recently asked to end the Taliban’s isolation. They say humanitarian support won’t be enough to get Afghanistan out of this and other crises, as the Islamists appealed to unlock Afghan funds frozen since the US pullout last summer.
So, can global players use this moment to convince the Taliban to make their government more inclusive and tolerant? Is the Taliban willing to budge? Can cooperation in the humanitarian effort lead to functional relationships with Kabul?
There aren’t many buyers for recognizing the Taliban. Nor is there any consensus about how to engage them.
Relations with traditional ally Pakistan have soured, as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (aka the Pakistani Taliban) operate, mobilize, and recruit freely from Afghan territory, attacking Pakistan without any restraint from their cousins in Kabul.
Meanwhile, Iran has always been uneasy about the Taliban’s Sunni tilt but gets even more nervous when faced with the alternative, the ultra-Sunni ISIS-K. Tehran has tried but failed to engage the Taliban and elements of the Afghan resistance.
In the Central Asian ‘Stans, Tajik nationalists in Dushanbe are worried about the Pashtun Taliban’s inability to guard the border with Tajikistan, which has seen attacks by ISIS-K. Uzbekistan, which is as land-locked as Afghanistan, wants more regional trade but needs stability in its southern neighbor. The US notably supplies Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to improve border security while courting them for intelligence gathering, but American ambitions are limited by Russia’s influence in the former Soviet republics.
Middle Eastern powers are only nominally involved. Before the quake, the Saudis had been developing a pipeline of humanitarian funding. The Emiratis are rebuilding Afghan airports as reconstruction aid. The Qataris still play the role of the Taliban’s diplomatic front office, encouraging international contact to ease the country’s isolation. And the Turks are leading the international rescue effort after the earthquake, which is helpful but not very broad.
Major powers, meanwhile, remain on the fence. Russia has hinted it will recognize a more inclusive Taliban, but on its own terms. China, holding back on major investments, is watchful about security. US diplomats and generals are making the rounds in regional capitals and have engaged with the Taliban at various levels.
But there’s less focus on recognizing the Islamists or improving their organizational prowess to keep Afghanistan from failing. Washington is keener on regaining its lost visibility in the region, given clear counter-terrorism concerns about al-Qaida and the rise of ISIS-K.
“Major powers remain in a wait-and-watch mode on the Taliban,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace. They are “offering ideas on potential paths forward for the Taliban’s rehabilitation but not on more given concerns, ranging from Taliban governance to lack of inclusion to terrorism.”
For now, this seems unlikely to change. “They are only offering ideas, not offering real roadmaps,” Mir added.
Interestingly, the only real diplomatic breakthrough has come from one of the Taliban’s most bitter rivals: India. It has reopened its embassy in Kabul and seems keen to restart development projects and boost economic assistance.
India has engaged in high-level meetings with Taliban leadership about what it insists are humanitarian concerns, but the Indians have two major reasons to court the Taliban: their strategic rival, China, and their old foe, Pakistan. Either of those countries moving in first would be a clear disadvantage to New Delhi. The Taliban have reciprocated India’s overtures, and surprisingly offered up their “troops” to be trained in India.
It’s an unusual and important opening, but New Delhi has not officially recognized the Taliban (no country has). Also, the return to proxy rivalries is reminiscent of the pre-Taliban Afghanistan, when Pakistan bet on the Islamists, and the Indians bet on those who fought them, with hundreds of thousands dying in the process.
The Taliban say they’re ready. Just prior to the earthquake, Kabul’s chief spokesperson said the regime had fulfilled “all the requirements” for international recognition. But when asked about the rollback of women’s rights — from education to freedom of movement – Zabiullah Mujahid clarified that all Afghans were obliged to follow Shariah law.
So, the Taliban fall short of international demands for protecting women’s rights and inclusivity, which makes them a politically toxic liability for would-be friends.
“Nobody wants to have a Taliban ambassador driving around with a flag of the Taliban in their own capital,” explained Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan finance ministry official now based in Geneva. “Recognizing the Taliban will not bring anything additional for anyone, but it will bring you reputational harm.”
So, with recognition off the table, what about aid? Afghanistan watcher Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, thinks the US should offer humanitarian assistance, “even at the risk of aid ending up in Taliban hands.” In response to the quake, the White House says it’s seeking ways to offer a helping hand without engaging the Taliban, including by going through international partners.
The intentions are good, but in disaster-prone Afghanistan, a natural calamity is always just around the corner. Besides the 1,000 lives lost and the 2,000 homes destroyed, only 2% of Afghanistan’s 38 million people have enough food, according to the UN. The country is actually starving while faced with a collapsing health system, migration crisis, and a rising terror threat.
Just a year short of victory, the Taliban are sinking, not saving Afghanistan. Everyone agrees things are bad, but progress will only be determined by which side — the Taliban or the international community — blinks first.Taliban releases this photo on Tuesday Jan 11, 2022 showing its Acting Minister of National Defense Rumi Mohammad Yaghoub Mojahed (right) attends a parade of Air Force helicopters in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s never-ending crisis
Afghanistan has now become what the UN is labeling the planet’s worst humanitarian disaster. Indeed, last week the world body issued its largest-ever donor appeal for a single country to battle the worsening crisis there, caused by freezing temperatures, frozen assets, and the cold reception the Taliban have received from the international community since they took over last summer.
At immediate risk are 24 million people — more than half of the Afghan population — who need humanitarian assistance to survive. That’s an increase of 30 per cent from last year. Meanwhile, 700,000 people have been internally displaced by violence since 2021, mostly women and children. Afghans, already among the largest refugee populations in the world, are leaving in droves, but getting a cold reception in neighboring countries as well as in an uneasy Europe.
The regional stakes are getting higher.ISIS-K, an offshoot of the broader Islamic State movement that expanded to Central Asia and South Asia, remains a threat. Attacks by local Taliban in neighboring Pakistan are picking up. Iran, which houses remnants of the previous regime, is moving closer to the Taliban. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are exchanging threats with Kabul’s new rulers over military equipment or militant training camps, depending on who you ask.
This, as China sustains a secretive dialogue for mining contracts, but with a tepid interest in rescuing the Afghan economy.
But the economy needs more than rescuing. Atrophied by drought and COVID, it lies tattered by its dependency on foreign aid, which has mostly evaporated. The damage is worse than expected, for the country has suffered an immediate GDP contraction of an estimated 40 per cent since the Taliban takeover.
As the population approaches the mark of near-universal poverty, a liquidity crunch has paralyzed banking, health, and education. Public-sector employees haven’t been paid in months. Taliban soldiers, victorious in the battlefield, now protect ATM machines and food queues. The rich are selling their valuables. The poor are selling their organs. The destitute are selling their children.
Some claim that there’s a silver bullet available. If the U.S. releases the $7 billion of Afghan foreign reserves it still holds, and greenlights the Europeans to unfreeze the $2.5 billion held by them, then Afghanistan will be saved from starvation and death. But the problems ensnaring the country’s broken financial system are more complicated, and need more than just humanitarian aid.
US sanctions remain the single biggest question mark about how the world will deal with Afghanistan. For one thing, several Taliban leaders are still designated as terrorists, which means anyone who deals with them can be subject to criminal or civil penalties.
For another, the recent humanitarian exemptions granted by the US to get emergency aid to Afghanistan are not enough to address the larger problem: that Afghanistan remains cut off from the global financial system, which means that international bankers, investors, and even NGOs cannot get money into the country without violating US sanctions.
Also, the Taliban are still international pariahs. Though they have requested the unfreezing of Afghanistan’s assets, they haven't done much to gain international sympathy since they assumed power, and remain unrecognized diplomatically. They continue to deny women jobs and girls education, clamp down on journalists, and kill members of the former government.
While they’ve reneged on their promise of evacuations, the Taliban also pick fights with their neighbors and train suicide bombers.
Even if the sanctions are lifted and the funds are freed by some miracle of international consensus, the Taliban must ask themselves a tough question: do they actually have the capacity to emerge as rulers of Afghanistan and help their people?
As the journalist and author Ahmed Rashid told our own Ian Bremmer: they can rule, but they can’t govern.
Will any countries recognize the Taliban?
No country is in a big hurry to recognize the Taliban, explains journalist Ahmed Rashid, even those that likely will do so in the future: Pakistan, China, and Russia. “They understand that if they recognize the Taliban, it's going to lead to a major division in the international community,” he told Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Aligning with the broader international community on the recognition process has more pros than cons for all involved, he explained.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Taliban 2.0: Afghanistan on the Brink (US AWOL)