2021 Year in Review: Why an isolated and bankrupt Afghanistan could slide back into conflict

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Updated 28 December 2021
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2021 Year in Review: Why an isolated and bankrupt Afghanistan could slide back into conflict

  • The Taliban faces the gargantuan task of reviving the economy while addressing a worsening food crisis 
  • The US, World Bank and International Monetary Fund have severed Kabul’s access to $9.5bn in funds 

WATERLOO, Canada: As the last US troops departed Kabul on Aug. 31, drawing 20 years of war in Afghanistan to a dispiriting end, Taliban commanders were quick to declare victory. Little did they know, amid their jubilation, that a new and much more complex battle was about to begin.

It is often said it is easier to acquire power than it is to hold on to it. After conquering the capital, Kabul, during a lightning-fast summer offensive, the victorious Taliban now faces the gargantuan task of reviving the economy while addressing a worsening food crisis, fighting a Daesh insurgency and healing a rift within its own ranks.

Addressing these simultaneous challenges will be no easy feat. The US, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have severed Kabul’s access to more than $9.5 billion in loans, funding and assets, hobbling the new regime.

At the same time, and despite its best efforts to the contrary, the Taliban has also failed miserably in its attempt to gain international recognition as the official government of Afghanistan, leaving the country precariously isolated.

“The real risk for the Taliban is to remain unrecognized by the international community, just like the last time they were in power, from 1996 to 2001,” Torek Farhadi, who was an adviser to Afghanistan’s former president, Hamid Karzai, told Arab News. “This would not be good for the Taliban and it would not be good for the millions of Afghans.”

 

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Indeed, without international recognition and access to capital, the Taliban cannot fulfill its promises of development.

“It would put a stop to the region’s hopes for economic collaboration,” Farhadi said. “Both Central Asia and Pakistan’s plans for economic integration will remain in jeopardy, as the necessary financing from international institutions to upgrade and invest in Afghan infrastructure will remain on hold.”




Taliban fighters stand guard at a police station gate in Ghasabha area in Qala-e-Now, Badghis province on October 14, 2021. (AFP/File Photo)

Against this backdrop, Muslim nations pledged on Sunday to set up a fund to help Afghanistan avert an imminent economic collapse they say would have a “horrendous” global impact.

At a special meeting in Pakistan of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), delegates also resolved to work with the United Nations to try to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Afghan assets.

The promised fund will provide humanitarian aid through the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), which would provide a cover for countries to donate without dealing directly with the country’s Taliban rulers. 

For ordinary Afghans, the return of the Taliban has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand it eliminated the corrupt warlords who had long treated whole tracts of the country as their own private fiefdoms. It has also made the country more secure overall.

On the other hand it has turned back the clock 20 years on personal freedoms and civil liberties.

As a result, tens of thousands of Afghans are now trying to leave the country, following in the footsteps of more than 123,000 civilians who were evacuated from Kabul airport by US forces and their coalition partners in August.

In mid-November, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that about 300,000 Afghans have fled to neighboring Iran since August and up to 5,000 continue to illegally cross the border every day.




Defiant Afghan women held a rare protest on Sept. 2 saying they were willing to accept the burqa if their daughters could still go to school under Taliban rule. (AFP/File Photo)

One of the primary reasons for this mass exodus, and the Taliban’s ongoing isolation, is the group’s ultraconservative views on women, ethnic minorities and freedom of expression.

“The Taliban have defeated their rivals militarily, but on the political, social, economic and academic fronts, they have failed Afghanistan tremendously,” Ahmad Samin, a former World Bank adviser based in the US, told Arab News.

“They have not earned the support of Afghans and the international community. They have established the government of the Taliban, by the Taliban, for the Taliban. They want recognition with minimum commitments but I do not think the international community will compromise in this regard.”




Taliban fighters patrol on vehicles along a street in Kabul on September 2, 2021. (AFP)

As a result of its isolation, Afghanistan finds itself on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. With foreign exchange reserves depleted, granaries empty, hospitals running out of drugs, and international aid reduced to barely a trickle, ordinary Afghans face a winter of hunger and misery.

What is more, without foreign capital to pay for electricity from neighboring countries, Kabul and other major cities are likely to face rolling blackouts.

INNUMBERS

* 3,750 civilian casualties since May 2021.

* 9.5 million people with food insecurity.

In a report from the city of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan last month, headlined Afghans facing “hell on earth” as winter looms, John Simpson of BBC News wrote: “Before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August, there was confidence that the government of President Ashraf Ghani would be able to cope with the threat of a bad winter, given the help of the international community. That help evaporated when Mr. Ghani’s government collapsed.

“Western countries have cut off their aid to the country, since they don’t want to be seen to help a regime which bars girls from education and is in favor of reintroducing the full range of Sharia punishments.”

Speaking to Arab News, Taliban spokesman Ahmadullah Wasiq conceded that Afghanistan faces dire economic and health challenges, but blamed the crisis on the loss of aid and the freezing of the country’s assets.

On Nov. 17, the Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, wrote an open letter to the US Congress warning that there would be a mass exodus of refugees from Afghanistan unless Washington releases the country’s assets and lifts sanctions.




Head of the Taliban delegation Abdul Salam Hanafi (R), accompanied by Taliban officials (2R to L) Amir Khan Muttaqi, Shahabuddin Delawar and Abdul Latif Mansour, walks down a hotel lobby during the talks in Qatar's capital Doha in August 2021. (AFP/File Photo)

“Currently the fundamental challenge of our people is financial security and the roots of this concern lead back to the freezing of assets of our people by the American government,” he wrote.

But with no sign that the Taliban is ready to change its ideological course, UN officials said Afghanistan is hurtling toward disaster.

“The Afghan people now feel abandoned, forgotten and, indeed, punished by circumstances that are not their fault,” Deborah Lyons, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan, told delegates in New York last month.

“To abandon the Afghan people now would be a historic mistake — a mistake that has been made before, with tragic consequences.”

David Beasly, executive director of the World Food Program, said about 23 million Afghans are on the brink of starvation, a challenge the aid community is ill-equipped to address.




Thousands of Afghans trying to escape the misery at home have flocked to their country's southern border with Pakistan, but their attempts to get across have been stopped by the Taliban. (AFP)

“WFP does not have the money we need to feed them. We have to choose who eats and who doesn’t,” he said in a video message posted on Twitter last month. “How many children must starve until the world wakes up? None of these children should die.”

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said the situation in Afghanistan is becoming critical and warned that the country could slide back into civil war unless the Taliban and the international community reach an agreement.

“The situation unfolding today in Afghanistan is unprecedented both in military-political and socioeconomic terms,” Patrushev said last month.

“If the new authorities in Kabul fail to normalize the situation, and the international community fails to provide effective support to the Afghan people, the scenario could become catastrophic, involving a new civil war, the general impoverishment of the population, and famine.”




Afghan children warm themselves with a blanket inside a mud house at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Laghman. (AFP/File Photo)

Kamran Bokhari, the director of the US think tank Analytical Development, agrees that the Taliban faces a serious dilemma which, in the absence of a compromise, could plunge the country into a new conflict.

“The Taliban need the world to provide financial assistance, hence the feverish effort to convince the world that the Taliban are pragmatic, despite being a radical Islamist entity,” Bokhari told Arab News. “But the Taliban cannot be both at the same time. The Taliban have to change but can’t without causing internal ruptures. Therefore, we are looking at more conflict.”

Farhadi agrees that the Taliban faces the prospect of internal strife and challenges to its power unless it can urgently resolve this dilemma and remove the barriers to its economic salvation.

“These are the risks for Afghanistan; they are real,” he said. “The Taliban refuses to recognize the link between extreme poverty and political instability in Afghanistan. The risks caused by extreme poverty are real. The Taliban risks new violence in the face of instability and risks losing control.”


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In a statement on Friday, the Dutch Defense Ministry specified that 80 million euros of the package will go toward drone support through the international drone coalition.
The move on Tuesday follows a 500 million euro deal to produce 600,000 drones with the Ukrainian defense industry, Brekelmans said ahead of a NATO Summit in The Hague.
The Netherlands has pledged about 10 billion euros in military support for Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in early 2022.


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Myanmar woman arrested for Suu Kyi ‘happy birthday’ post: local media

  • The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reported on Monday that Hinn Yin Phyu was an MRTV employee who had been arrested after posting a “happy birthday” message for Suu Kyi, citing sources close to the detained woman

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Suu Kyi was the figurehead of Myanmar’s decade-long democratic thaw, becoming de facto leader as it opened up from military rule, but she has been incarcerated since February 2021 when the generals snatched back power in a coup.
She is serving a 27-year sentence on charges rights groups dismiss as fabricated and on Thursday marked her birthday behind bars while her son urged followers to publish messages declaring their support.
Myanmar’s junta said in a statement over the weekend it had arrested two Facebook users for “inciting and spreading propaganda on social media with the intention to destroy state stability.”
One of those detained — Hinn Yin Phyu — was arrested at accommodation for employees of state media station MRTV in the capital Naypyidaw on Saturday, the statement said, without providing details of her posts.
The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reported on Monday that Hinn Yin Phyu was an MRTV employee who had been arrested after posting a “happy birthday” message for Suu Kyi, citing sources close to the detained woman.
“May you live long and be free from illness, may you be free from the suffering caused by separation from your loved ones throughout your life, and may you only meet good people,” said the now-deleted post, according to DVB.
Despite being blocked in a digital crackdown accompanying the coup, Facebook remains Myanmar’s most popular social media platform.
State notices announcing arrests over social media use are commonplace but usually provide scant detail of alleged transgressions.
A spokesman for Myanmar’s junta could not be reached for comment on the arrest.
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When the generals toppled her government it sparked a protest movement that security forces swiftly crushed in the streets.
Since then the country has descended into civil war as pro-democracy activists formed guerrilla units to fight back, alongside ethnic armed organizations that have been battling the military in Myanmar’s fringes for decades.


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President and head of the military Xi Jinping will deliver a speech on the occasion, which will feature “new-type combat capabilities,” including hypersonic weapons and a range of electronic gear, said Wu Zeke, identified as a senor officer of the PLA, the ruling Communist Party’s military wing.
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Military parades are a favorite of Xi’s, held primarily to mark the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, Japan’s surrender and the anniversary of the PLA’s founding. Relentlessly drilled marching units, armored columns and aerial units all feature on such occasions.
Wu said inclusion of the latest generation weaponry demonstrates the PLA’s “strong ability to adapt to technological trends and evolving warfare, and to prevail in future wars, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Japan launched an invasion of China in 1937, seizing much of eastern China. Most of the fighting against Japan was carried out by the Nationalists, who later withdrew to the island of Taiwan after being driven out of the mainland by the Communists.
Much of China’s massive military upgrading has been aimed at conquering Taiwan, which China still considers part of its territory, as well as replacing the United States as the main military power in the Asia-Pacific.


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China’s Xi urges Singapore leader to jointly resist ‘hegemony’

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Singapore’s prime minister to join the fight against “hegemony” and protectionism in trade as they met in Beijing on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s first official visit to China lasts until Thursday.
He met Xi on Tuesday morning at Beijing’s opulent Great Hall of the People, with the Chinese leader urging their two countries to work to “stand on the right side of history and on the side of fairness and justice,” according to state broadcaster CCTV.
He told Wong that “the world cannot return to hegemony or be dragged back to the law of the jungle,” a veiled swipe at the United States, after President Donald Trump launched a barrage of tariffs this year on countries including China and Singapore.
Wong, in turn, told Xi he believed the Singapore-China relationship was “more important than before” in a time of “global turbulence and uncertainty.”
“We can work together to establish closer ties and... continue to strengthen multilateralism and the rules-based global order for the benefit of all countries,” Wong said.
Wong, who succeeded Lee Hsien Loong, the son of founding premier Lee Kuan Yew, in 2024, has warned the trade-dependent city-state could be hit hard by Trump’s tariffs.
Although Trump imposed a baseline 10 percent tariff on Singapore, the country is vulnerable to a global economic slowdown caused by the much higher levies on dozens of other countries because of its heavy reliance on international trade.
Following his meetings in Beijing, Wong will head to the northern Chinese city of Tianjin for a meeting of the World Economic Forum.