Haqqani Afghanistan: Year 2 (Part 1)
Two years have passed since the Taliban militias entered Kabul in August 2021, thus putting an end to the government of President Ashraf Ghani, winner of the 2014 presidential elections and since then President of Afghanistan until August 2021. After an initial staging by the Taliban authorities in order to convince international public opinion that they were not like their predecessors of the first Taliban regime in 1996, it became clear that after the first few months most of the freedoms and rights of Afghans approved by the previous government were going to be eliminated. The new Taliban regime made it clear from the beginning that it was not going to allow any measure that would allow the free exercise of social, political, religious and individual freedoms outside of Sharia law, especially the latter when exercised by Afghan women, plunging Afghanistan back into darkness.
INTRODUCTION
The second year of the Haqqani Afghanistan, like the first, has seen the country plunged into severe instability, making it a failed state. This first part of the article will focus on the current economic situation in the country and the persecution of Afghan women's rights, leaving the second part of the article for security.
The economic situation is as dire as it was a year ago due to the blockade and sanctions to which the regime is subjected by international organisations and powers, with the exception of humanitarian aid funds (1). The employment situation resulting from the economic situation is similar, employment is scarce and except for hotel staff, supermarkets, hospitals, transport, militias and civil servants, most of the labour force in the cities is paralysed. Agriculture, once a very important sector in the country, has been affected by the continuing drought and decades of war. Most of the skilled workers have fled the country, especially since the Taliban regime has banned women from most jobs, thus excluding half of the population from the labour market and making it difficult for the country to develop.
Women fighting for their rights in Afghanistan have always been targeted by radicals and from the first Taliban regime until now they have suffered the wrath and violence of the Taliban. During the first regime they suffered unprecedented repression in education and employment, but with the arrival of the governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani (2001-2021), although their lives were not easy either, progress was made in education, employment and in holding public office.
The Afghan Constitution adopted during the Karzai government in 2004 mentioned in Article 22 that men and women were equal before the law without discrimination of any kind. Many women were employed in skilled and unskilled jobs, mainly in the big cities as the rural-urban gap was notorious. As for the public visibility of Afghan women during this period, there were women journalists, politicians, judges and police officers who were in danger of being assassinated by the most radical elements of the Taliban or the Afghan Daesh, all of them followers of a real misogynist dictatorship against Afghan women.
There are well-known cases of women such as that of Mina Mangal (2), journalist, political advisor and defender of women's rights, who was shot dead in Kabul in May 2019, or that of the Indian activist Sushmita Banerjee, based in Sharan, capital of Patkia (Afghanistan) and author of a book in which she narrated her escape from the first Taliban regime, who was kidnapped in 2013 by several individuals and also murdered.
The leaders of the second Taliban regime during the first weeks since their entry into Kabul repeated that they were not like their predecessors of the first regime between 1996 and 2001, because "when it comes to experience, maturity and vision, of course there is a big difference between us now and twenty years ago. There is a difference in the actions we are going to take. This has been an evolutionary process"(3) Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Muhaid explained to the press a few days after the entry into Kabul.
HAQQANI AFGHANISTAN: YEAR 2
The Taliban regime, despite frantic diplomatic efforts with many countries, especially neighbouring ones, is still not internationally recognised and the minimum conditions that have to be met for the regime to be recognised have not been met and it does not seem that in the future significant steps will be taken in any area of the regime, which is made up of members who came from the insurgency and who have no political experience or experience in managing the economic resources of a country.
From their inception they generated a lot of mistrust because despite their spokesmen repeating that they had evolved, it was always thought that they could commit the same mistakes and horrors as their predecessors in the first regime, and they have made it clear over time that their radical ideology is largely the same, All this despite continuous declarations of intent by their leaders to adopt different forms from their predecessors in the first regime, extinguishing any glimmer of hope by applying Sharia law under their own strict interpretation, all the while appealing to the international community for economic support and international recognition.
ECONOMIC AND TRADE SITUATION
In the year 2020, the GDP per capita in Afghanistan was 453 euros, but with the Taliban offensive in 2021 to conquer the country, the GDP dropped to 312 euros (4), all of this led Afghanistan to rank 193rd out of 196 countries in the per capita ranking, which makes the citizen of Afghanistan one of the poorest in the world.
The situation is chaotic, with economic aid funds blocked except for humanitarian aid, and the Afghan central bank's assets abroad awaiting a minimal opening of the regime, with humanitarian aid urgently needed for a population in need of basic necessities. The situation of the Afghan population is terrible, given that while under the previous government the country had 47% of the population living in poverty, under the current government it is 97%, according to data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (5), an organisation that reconsidered in April 2023 continuing its activities in the country given the prohibition in December 2022 by the regime's highest authority of employing Afghan women in NGOs.
Despite the paralysis of international revenues, the Taliban government has managed to collect a strong internal tax revenue that, according to World Bank data, has generated 1.5 billion dollars between December 2021 and October 2022. Another important source of revenue has been customs, especially for imports (6), as the regime controls all established border crossings.
Commercially, Afghanistan is a real crossroads because of its central position in Asia, and the Taliban regime has held frequent meetings with neighbouring countries with a view to exploiting its position and mineral resources. China has sought to take advantage of its border position and has signed million-dollar contracts for the exploitation of minerals such as copper and lithium, the latter of which is abundant in Afghan territory. At the beginning of January this year, the Chinese company CAPEIC (7) signed an agreement with the Afghan authorities to extract oil from a 4,500-kilometre area in the province of Sar-e Pul, making China one of the main investors. Iran is also becoming another of the Taliban regime's commercial partners, as it is in need of capital in its country given the US economic sanctions, although the Taliban regime has had problems with this country over water from the Helmand River that flows into Lake Hamun, on the border between the two countries, whose water the two countries are demanding in order to alleviate their drought problems.
Russia has reportedly begun trade meetings with the regime, although Russia's main concern now is Ukraine, due to the economic cost of the war, and trade relations with Afghanistan are therefore in the background. Pakistan would be one of the preferred partners, importing a significant amount of Afghan mining and agricultural products.
On 21 August this year, the highest spiritual leader Hibatullah Akunzada decreed for the development of the country's trade and industry that exports should be promoted, taking into account the country's economic interests and relations with neighbouring countries (8), but Akunzada did not do the same for women's rights.
THE PERSECUTION OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The Taliban leaders knew that during the first weeks after their entry into Kabul in August 2021, the international spotlight was going to be on them, and so they were careful with form, as international recognition and economic aid from organisations such as the UN and the European Union depended to a large extent on it. Although Afghan women were initially allowed to work in certain jobs even with marked wage discrimination, as reflected in the Global Gender Gap Ranking that placed Afghanistan at the bottom of 146 countries, the regime stepped up the pressure even further and did not allow Afghan women to work in most situations, which was a direct attack on their freedom.
This contradicted the words of Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who in August 2021 said that Afghan women "will live happily, will be happy" and that "we assure the international community that there will be no discrimination against women, but of course, within our frameworks" (9), nothing could be further from the truth, from the first moment the highest spiritual leader of the regime Hibatullah Akunzada, had in mind the rigorous application of the Sharia and under rigorous Taliban interpretation.
Women's rights were entering a true "gender apartheid", as the UN rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, called it months later, and after two years of Taliban rule, Afghan women have seen how their freedoms have practically disappeared. The right to education from the age of 12 for girls no longer exists and for boys it only exists under absolute Taliban proselytism or indoctrination. Women are not allowed to travel more than 70 kilometres from home alone and must be accompanied by a mahram or adult relative. Outside jobs outside the home are few and far between, such as in hotels, airports, hospitals and the media. Their presence in politics, police, judiciary etc. has disappeared and of course they have to cover their faces in public with the nikab, they cannot go to gyms or beauty salons and since May this year they cannot walk in gardens and parks either because according to the authorities the rules of walking in which women and men were separated at different times have not been respected (10).
As mentioned above, hospitals are one of the few places where women still work. Malali Faizi has been the director of the Malalai Maternity Hospital in Kabul since January 2022, the only case in which a woman has been appointed by the Taliban government to head a public institution. Moreover, Malali's statement on the occasion of her appointment shows her full support for Afghan women: "We women are an underprivileged class of society, so I feel very fortunate and happy to serve this underprivileged class" (11).
Afghan women, as Malali said, were the most underprivileged in society and therefore groups of them were not going to follow the Taliban regime's instructions and not a few activists were in favour of publicly showing their rejection of the measures imposed to eliminate their rights, which caused the Taliban interior ministry to repress the demonstrators.
While Sirajuddin repressed the Afghan women on the one hand, on the other, he gave interviews, recalling the one given to him in May 2022 by CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour, during which he rarely looked at her and to whom he commented that "naughty women should be kept at home" (12), referring to the activists who questioned his government's measures.
On 24 December 2022, the Taliban went a step further in their totalitarian zeal against women and banned them from working for NGOs, knowing that many of them were health professionals and how this could jeopardise the treatment of thousands of people in need of humanitarian aid. For the Taliban, said Asuntha Charles, country director of the NGO World Vision in Afghanistan, women should be at home (13), taking care of their families, not in public life, and the Taliban did not believe that they could contribute to the development of this country, in short, they wanted them off the streets. This totalitarian decision was supported among other members of the interim Taliban government by the Minister for Refugees and Repatriation, Khalil Haqqani, uncle of Sirajuddin and Anas Haqqani. Khalil stated in a meeting with the head of the Norwegian refugee aid agency in early January this year that "The amount of aid will not solve our problems" (14).
EU countries, Britain and the US condemned the Taliban regime's decision and assessed the potentially devastating impact of such a move on the Afghan people. The move was also criticised by countries in a different orbit from the above, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The words of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu against the measure taken by the Taliban were eloquent enough: "it is neither Islamic nor humane" (15). (15) The foreign ministers of China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Pakistan and Iran also agreed, meeting on 13 April this year in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), calling on the Taliban to build an inclusive government, "neighbouring countries need to guide the Afghan Taliban to follow the trend of the times, learn from the mature practices of other Muslim countries, and show more inclusiveness" (16). All agreed to encourage the Taliban regime to protect the rights and interests of women.
A meeting was also reported on 12 May in Kandahar between Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Supreme Leader Akunzada to ask him, among other issues, to end Taliban bans on girls' education and women's employment. This meeting was Akunzada's first with a foreign leader (17).
Los Angeles-based Afghan activist Najia Munira Akunzada, a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) who assists, among other activities, Afghan citizens fleeing the Taliban regime in search of safety, was highly critical of the Taliban regime's removal of women's rights, "The importance of education for both men and women has been emphasised since the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Growing up, many Muslim girls were inspired by the fact that the wife of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) successfully ran her own business and that a Muslim woman in Morocco founded the world's first university" (18).
(18) All this international criticism added to the rejection of the regime. Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and Defence Minister Mohammad Yaqoob, at least publicly in favour of finding a way for the Shari'a to allow girls over the age of 12 access to education, made statements that led to rising tensions between factions within the regime. Yaqoob at an event held in February 2023 to mark the 34th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, explicitly stated that "We should never be arrogant and proud. We must always listen to the legitimate demands of the people" (19), a statement that many interpreted as a clear message to Akunzada, but it was not only Yaqoob who made such statements, Sirajuddin Haqqani in February of the same year in Khost criticised the monopolisation of the regime and that "this situation can no longer be tolerated" while calling on the security forces to be cautious in dealing with the people so that they do not hate the regime. Haqqani made it clear in his speech that the current situation was not acceptable and that there had to be reforms (20). Despite the criticisms, today they still respect the highest authority in all their decisions which are binding.
CONCLUSIONS
The exercise of individual and collective freedom has been persecuted by the regime's authorities. Freedom of expression does not exist, except for the risk of being arrested if you criticise the totalitarianism of the regime, freedom of the press has been eliminated because all information is censored, freedom of education has been stoned, especially for girls from the age of 12, with children being educated in the strict teachings of Sharia law under Taliban interpretation. Religious and political freedom has been reduced to one dogma and one party, so to speak, and minorities have no rights. All this is a sample of a battery of rights that have been reduced or eliminated by the Taliban, which makes any international recognition impossible despite calls from some countries for the regime to take inclusive measures to integrate religious minorities and women into its government.
The UN Security Council itself met in late April to condemn the Taliban regime's repressive policies against women, banning them from working in the area for the UN and NGOs in violation of human rights. In response, Sirajuddin's brother Anas Haqqani, who assisted in the Doha agreements as an advisor to the regime, said that the Council's policy of pressure had failed and that it should not continue down this path (21).
All in all, it is difficult to envisage that the Afghan people will revolt against the regime in the short term given the fear that has taken hold in Afghan civil society. It has been taken for granted in most international arenas that the Taliban regime authorities are the interim leaders of the government in the absence of international recognition, because the basic conditions are not in place for this to take place. For example, there is no inclusive government that allows access to it for people of any gender, ethnicity or belief, and there is an obsessive persecution of women's rights, all this combined with the factor of insecurity, despite the security that the regime tries to convey, which will be discussed in the second part. All of the above means that the Taliban regime cannot be recognised legally and internationally.
To conclude this article, mention is made of one of the few remaining female presenters on Afghan television, Basira Joya of the Arayan channel, who criticised the Taliban's demands in order to be able to continue her work: "Islam is a religion of goodness and never imposes anything on men or women" (22).
Luis Montero Molina is a political scientist, analyst for Sec2Crime and the OCATRY observatory.
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