The Taliban a year on
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A year after the Taliban seized power, they have pushed Afghanistan back into a repressive past. The country is more internationally isolated today than a year ago while governance and other challenges remain unaddressed. Its economic future appears uncertain as the financial crisis continues even though domestic trade seems to have picked up. Drought has worsened the humanitarian situation with almost 60 percent of people needing humanitarian assistance.
The Taliban authorities have been able to establish and consolidate control over the country as well as improve security. But they have gone back on almost all the promises they made last year to the international community. Among these pledges was the assurance that the country would no longer serve as a base for terrorist groups. They have done little to dismantle the bases of terrorist groups or to contain them. The May report of the UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team confirmed that terrorist groups and foreign terrorist fighters still find safe haven in Afghanistan. It found “The relationship between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban remains close and is underscored by the presence, both in Afghanistan and the region, of Al-Qaeda core leadership and affiliated groups.”
Of greatest concern to Islamabad is that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has waged a 14-year war on Pakistan’s security forces, continues to find shelter in Afghanistan and launch attacks from there. The UN report says, “TTP has arguably benefitted the most of all the foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan from the Taliban takeover.” It constitutes “the largest component of foreign terrorist fighters in Afghanistan, with their number estimated to be several thousand.” Other groups include the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and of course Daesh. This is why other neighboring countries, China, Russia and the Central Asian states also remain concerned about their continued presence there.
Governance problems may be aggravated by widely reported tensions and differences between Taliban hard-liners and so-called pragmatic leaders. But it nevertheless pushes Afghanistan into the dark days of the past.
Maleeha Lodhi
Pakistan has been increasingly frustrated in negotiations it has conducted with TTP brokered by the Taliban. Months of engagement have yielded nothing. In fact, recent attacks by TTP underscore the futility of such engagement, which should never have been undertaken as it emboldened the militant group. The killing of a senior TTP leader Omar Khalid Khorasani in a bomb attack in early August showed their leaders moved around freely in the country. What came as a bigger blow to the credibility of Taliban authorities was the killing of Al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri in a house in Kabul by a US drone strike. US secretary of state Antony Blinken accused the Taliban of violating the Doha agreement by Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul. Taliban leaders for their part denied any knowledge of his whereabouts and in an uncharacteristically muted response, accused the US instead of violating international principles.
In fact, this episode further eroded the trust of the global community in the Taliban and set back its quest for international legitimacy. Their government has yet to be recognized by any country including Pakistan. As the Financial Times noted in its editorial: “The tensions sparked by Al-Zawahiri’s killing and the Taliban’s failure to meet their commitments make even limited engagement still more unlikely” by foreign countries.
On human rights, the Taliban’s record has been just as grim. The report last month from the UN Mission in Afghanistan pointed to grave human rights abuses committed by Taliban forces including enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and summary executions. According to this report the Taliban have “limited dissent by cracking down on protests and curbing media freedoms, including by arbitrarily arresting journalists, protesters and civil society activists and issuing restrictions on media outlets.”
The assault on women’s rights and freedoms has been the most egregious, contrary to promises the Taliban had made that they won’t revert to past practices on this count. Closing down girls’ secondary schools and placing restrictions on women’s participation in the workplace and other areas of public life represented a throwback to their previous stint in power in the 1990’s, when girls were barred from education and harsh curbs imposed on women’s freedoms. Despite appeals by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the international community and humanitarian agencies, the ban on girls’ schools has not been rescinded even though the Taliban know this could imperil economic and humanitarian assistance to their country. Small protest demonstrations by women demanding their rights were crushed by a heavy hand. The Taliban’s notion of governance doesn’t seem to go beyond repressive measures and issuing religious and ‘cultural’ edicts.
Governance problems may be aggravated by widely reported tensions and differences between Taliban hard-liners and so-called pragmatic leaders. But it nevertheless pushes Afghanistan into the dark days of the past. For now, the Taliban authorities show no inclination to change course from their retrograde outlook.
- Maleeha Lodhi is a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, UK & UN.
Twitter @LodhiMaleeha
