By M.S.M Ayub
Taliban which captured power in Afghanistan on August 15 after 26 years of fighting from the caves and sacrificing thousands of their cadres maybe thinking what a cakewalk that was in comparison to the governance challenges it has faced in the past few weeks. They may have proven military acumen countering the Afghan government forces and braving US air raids, but they appear clueless in resolving the economic and governance issues of Afghanistan.
Taliban faces four critical issues – three of local and one of international relevance. Internally, despite fairly maintaining security within Afghanistan, the economy and governance have got out of hand threatening the very survival of its administration and the Afghan people. Externally, the uncertainty in gaining international recognition of their interim government and geo-political interests of neighbors are likely to make the lives of Taliban leaders difficult.
Even militarily the Taliban is not in full control of Afghanistan. The group with their own interpretation of Islam has proven clearly that they do not have a solution to the conflicts among around a dozen groups in the country fighting on the basis of ethnicity, religious factionalism, politics, regionalism and other social factors.
In spite of capturing power, the Taliban cannot boast of ensuring Afghanistan’s security. Armed groups in the country are acting with global, local and political agendas. Those with global agendas such as the Islamic State- Khorasan (IS-K) and the Al-Qaeda are the most serious concern for Taliban in ruling the Central Asian country as their activities has the potential to invite another Western invasion. Hence, the Taliban, like the LTTE did in Sri Lanka, has provided insincere assurances during their “peace Talks” with the US authorities and the former Afghanistan government, in Doha. The international community can somewhat rely only on one of their pledges, at least for the time-being – not allowing any armed group to use Afghan soil against the Westerns powers.
Yet, these groups are already in action. The IS-K, the Afghan version and the ideological manifestation of the Middle Eastern terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings outside the Kabul airport that killed 183 people including 13 US military personnel on August 26, 11 days after the Taliban entered the Afghan Capital. On September 20, IS-K also claimed responsibility for several other bombings in Jalalabad targeting Taliban vehicles, killing 15 people and injuring another 25. In another suicide attack during a Taliban commemoration in Eidgah Mosque in Kabul on October 3, ten people were killed. They also shamelessly claimed responsibility to savage attacks on innocent devotees at two Shiite mosques in Kunduz and Kandahar on October 8 and 15, killing 47 and 46 people respectively.
Given the immediate threat posed by the IS-K, the Taliban during one of their many jail-breaks after the capture of Kabul took the head of the Islamic State in South Asia, Abu Omar Khorasani out of Kabul’s Pul-i-Charkhi prison and executed him, but released members of many other groups including the Al Qaeda.
The United Nations recently reported that Al-Qaeda “is present in at least 15 Afghan provinces.” Despite the report compiled by a team established by the UN Security Council having said that Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent operates under Taliban protection from Kandahar, Helmand and Nimrus Provinces, the group is a thorn in the flesh of the Taliban due to its global agenda. Ties between Taliban and the Al-Qaeda are unclear.
There are other armed outfits with a considerable presence in Afghanistan. Main among them are National Resistant Front (NRF) in Panjshir Province, the remnants of the former Northern Alliance Mujahideens, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Pakistan Taliban that shot Malala Yousafzai who won the Nobel peace prize later in 2014, Uighur Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Tajik as well as Shiite organisations.
In spite of the level of enmity between each of these groups and the Taliban being vary, existence of armed groups independent of a country’s armed forces is a dangling security threat and can be a pressure point for the Taliban from the neighbouring states.
If not for the justified fear of Taliban brutality, the economic hardships would have driven thousands of Afghans to the streets. Instead, many are bringing their household items to street sales to make ends meet. Hospitals reportedly have only 5% of medicines required and according to a report on Al Jazeera newborn children die of lack of medicine and other hospital facilities.
President Ashraff Ghani who fled the country when the Taliban knocked on the gates of Kabul had said that 90 percent of Afghans had lived on aid which was a meager two dollars a day. It was the foreign donors led by the United States who provided more than 75 percent of the public expenditure until US withdrew in August. The Taliban-led interim government is facing problems in meeting basic expenses such as salaries of government employees.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said in a report released on September 9 that about 97 percent of Afghanistan’s population may sink below the poverty line unless the country’s political and economic crises are addressed. Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting recently from the capital Kabul, said 18 million out of 38 million people in the country rely on humanitarian aid on a daily basis. Ambassador Anoja Wijesekara who served in UNICEF office in Kabul during the former Taliban government said during a webinar on October 23 that 26 million people were now on the brink of starvation.
More than half a million people have already fled drought-affected areas and they are at imminent risk of starvation and freezing to death as winter approaches, the Norwegian Refugee Council said last month. The dissolution of the Afghan national security forces will impose a significant economic shock since hundreds of thousands of army and police personnel are losing their incomes affecting household income.
Nearly $10bn of Afghanistan’s central bank assets are currently frozen overseas mainly in the US following the Taliban’s take over. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has similarly frozen Afghanistan’s $450 million share from the global IMF quota increase in response to COVID 19. Along with other donors such as Germany, the World Bank has stopped all disbursements of its own resources and donor-contributions to Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund— including both direct support to the Afghan budget and high-priority development projects such as basic public health and rural development. The Asian Development Bank has also suspended its disbursements. Hence, Kabul and other Afghan cities might go dark if there is no foreign exchange to pay for continuing electricity supplies from neighboring countries.
Russia, China, Qatar and Pakistan had argued in support of the release of Afghanistan’s frozen assets. “These assets belong to Afghanistan and should be used for Afghanistan, not as leverage for threats or restraints,” China’s Deputy UN Ambassador Geng Shuang had told the UN Security Council on September 9.
The US-led west are of different stance. Senior US diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis told the Security Council “The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support. Our message is simple: any legitimacy and support will have to be earned,”
Afghans educated under the US backed government for the past 20 years including professionals in health, education, engineering, technical and many other fields are looking to leave. This brain drain would exacerbate the economy and governance where democratic institutions are dysfunctional.
Taliban is struggling to activate the banking system in which all but one out of less than a dozen banks are conventional and against their interest-free policy. Converting them to a totally interest-free system is a lengthy and costly procedure. The lack of clarity in Taliban’s policy towards women workers has cost almost all public and private institutions dearly, as majority of female staff in them is reluctant to attend to work.
The remedy for all these woes lies on the international recognition which hangs on the policies of the Taliban. A few countries such as Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran are taking a soft stance towards Taliban but only on account of their geo-political interests – especially with a view to counter the US influence in the region. They too are not in a hurry to recognize the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The Taliban claims their policies are based on Islam, which is highly controversial since no other Muslim country in the world follows their interpretation of Islam.
The ideological rivalry between the Taliban and other extremist organizations such as the IS-K and Al-Qaeda would not facilitate a tone down of their hard-line position. Similar to the moderate Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka, softening stances would be seen as a betrayal of the “cause.” For the Taliban and its future, this is a catch-22.
(The Writer is an International Affairs Columnist specialising in regional politics in the Middle East and South Asia. He is reachable via ayub938151@gmail.com)
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