It is a pity that in the context of unprecedented enormous opportunities and major challenges in Afghanistan, we lack the existence of dynamic leadership with the essential capabilities to take advantage of opportunities and turn challenges into opportunities.
No doubt that Afghans are individually hardworking and courageous citizens, but when it comes to the collective status, our background in the last five decades is full of regrettable catastrophes and turmoil. Despite sacrificing millions of innocent lives in the struggle for freedom, they neither achieved the goals of real independence nor avoided internal confrontations, nor preserved the dignity of their values.
The most shameful act of the Taliban regime and the regrettable social setback of Afghans as a nation that certainly defamed their national honour questioned their past pride and so-called present victories, is the long-term closure of schools and universities for girls. Most importantly, despite being the most indispensable and collective demand of all Afghans, they have even failed to initiate a public protest against the ban and the immediate opening of girls’ educational institutions.
In order to put things back on track and end the current stalemate, get rid of the internal and external isolation, the Taliban need not deviate from religious values, nor should they breach the cultural boundaries. Within the framework of respect for personalities and their statuses, they severely need to urge their leaders to either revise their perceptions regarding the self-defined interpretation of Islamic principles, pay attention to the legitimate concerns of the world community, including the neighbours, or face the terrifying aftermath and destructive outcome of their policies that would certainly devastate the country.
It has been almost two years since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan. Afghans living there are in distressing and difficult situations. The economic condition is dire, the starvation rate is gradually increasing, astonishingly female education institutions are still closed, and youths are fleeing the country using illegal ways. However, the authorities chant the slogans of success, and indeed they are ignoring the ground realities. Unless the Taliban make some concrete and constructive decisions, show adequate flexibility, and initiate huge reforms in the country, the existing security and other advantages in Afghanistan would deteriorate badly.
The catastrophic economic cost of the Taliban takeover has absolutely had the most profound impact on common Afghans. Vast public unemployment, cancellation or suspension of development projects, unprecedented collapse of the housing market are only some of the tangible signs of an economic disaster that has caused the country and the people to suffer enormously.
The current strategy of interacting with the Taliban, urging them to moderate their behaviour in return for political and financial support, apparently seems not to be successful, and there are some signals that the strategy may be revised. It is therefore recommended that in the course of initiating new mechanisms and the continuation of pressure on the Taliban, a hostile attitude and combative tone must be avoided, and most of all, the Afghan population must not be punished for the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan.
As far as the rulers are concerned, they need to understand that Afghanistan’s history over the past five decades indicates that alternative fronts to go for armed struggle against the regime do not take long to emerge. It also demonstrates the willingness of external actors to support their proxies in Afghanistan.
In the course of shaping the Afghan strategy, the aftermath of falling the country back into devastating conflict should be intercepted. It should also be noted that the mistakes made by the world community in Bonn, Germany, in 2001, ignoring the ground realities and initiating a crumbling democracy comprising the warlords and the pro-western elements must not be repeated.
Using the prevailing advantages of having total control over the entire geography of Afghanistan, centralized authority, strong spiritual belief in being obedient to their leader, with no serious security threats, and most importantly, the absence of a challenging opposition with popular mass support, the Taliban, before being part of history like their predecessors, can easily lay down the foundation of a true Islamic system based on people’s will.
Unfortunately, taking into account the attitude of the Taliban during the last two years of their rule, there is no indication that their leadership is determined to utilize the existing opportunities for the establishment of a system and taking the country out of the current catastrophic circumstances.
The Taliban-dominated composition of the government creates further problems for the country and damages the public’s trust in religious scholars. It is therefore necessary to speed up efforts for reconciliation with the Afghans and the world community at large, drafting a national constitution, and endorsing it through proper channels, so that we can ensure the establishment of people’s representative and constitutionally empowered institutions in the county.
It is a pity that in the context of unprecedented enormous opportunities and major challenges in Afghanistan, we lack the existence of dynamic leadership with the essential capabilities to take advantage of opportunities and turn challenges into opportunities.
Unfortunately, due to several avoidable reasons, Afghanistan has been one of the world’s poorest countries, and the Taliban’s quick takeover has additionally affected the existing poverty. Contrary to the general assumptions mostly spread by external media and UN-sponsored agencies, the ground realities in Afghanistan indicate that the Taliban’s rule is progressively and exclusionary Taliban-centred, not ethnicity-oriented one, as presented by UNAMA in its recently presented report to the UNSC.
It is an undeniable fact that the vast majority of the current autocratic regime originated from the rural Pashtun-populated region, but neither the Taliban claims to be representatives of Pashtuns, nor will the Pashtuns acknowledge the Taliban as their representatives. If we concentrate on the huge-scale damages inflicted by the Taliban on Pashtun majority, including human and property losses during the two decades of war and the number of non-Taliban Pashtuns in the Taliban cabinet and other high-profile posts, it would be difficult to endorse the UNAMA’s latest report on Afghanistan.
The pursuit of the policy of political and economic isolation by the international community in reaction to the Taliban’s increasingly restrictive policies and monopolized structure of government has a negative contribution to increasing the level of the current economic crisis, migration, and the escalating level of the population’s reliance on humanitarian assistance.
Concentrating on the World Bank report, it might be true that the Taliban, to some extent, has stabilized the Afghan economy, firmed up the Afghan currency, reduced inflation, partially recovered imports, doubled exports and collected customs and taxes far more successfully than the previous government. But frankly speaking, this positive trend cannot be felt or witnessed in common people’s real life.
It is the era of growing geo-economic rivalry, where the importance of military hegemony is giving way to geoeconomics predominance. We should survive in an environment where world superpowers prioritize using economic tools to project power in overtaking each other, advancing their strategic and political interests, such as trade policy, investment policy, economic and financial sanctions, monetary policy, energy, commodities, and aid. Hence, in order to recover from the current critical deadlock, we ultimately need to give up adopting extreme policies and ignoring the ground realities.
The international community has so far apparently adopted a pragmatic and realistic short-term approach to dealing with the Taliban, trying to deepen trade ties and focus on economic stability to avoid the total collapse of the country. In such terrifying circumstances, if the Taliban do not respond to the requirements of all segments of their own people, including women, and do not positively engage with their neighbors and the international community, addressing their security concerns, the future would absolutely look dark, and no one would know what could come next. More fragmentation, more isolation, more poverty, and devastating internal conflict would probably occur and may lead to mass migration, creating a conducive domestic environment for terrorism that would result in greater miseries for Afghans.
