An oil facility in Sarpol Province, northern Afghanistan (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum)

On the long horizon, signs of the rise of the Afghan economy appear in light of pessimistic international reports that do not reflect a deep reading of the reality and nature of the Afghan economy. These reports are based on the data presented by Western reports, which usually start from the decline in the role of women in the major Afghan cities, in light of the Taliban government’s issuance since the year 2021 More than 140 decrees, including 90 restricting women’s movement and work in government.

But these reports did not take into account that women in the Afghan countryside were not affected by these decisions, as they are the economic mainstay of the Afghan household. Through its contributions to agricultural production and its practice of many economic activities.

In addition, the restriction of the presence of women in working in cities in some professions led - according to the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industry - to the fact that there are 2,471 licensed companies and 5,400 unlicensed companies owned by women, but the closure of beauty salons owned by women in the summer of 2023, leaving 60,000 women. Without work, as well as employers’ preference for men over women; To avoid police harassment.

The era before the Taliban rule succeeded in building a workforce of women in the major cities in the fields of judiciary, law, police, and army, while government data counted about 10,000 women working as doctors and nurses, and 68,000 teachers, including 800 scientific staff in universities.

Adapt to circumstances

One of the features of a deep reading of the Afghan reality is that adaptation under the most extreme circumstances is evident. This factor has not been taken into account in many reports on the Afghan economy. Since the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, the Afghan citizen has adapted himself to live under the most extreme circumstances.

If this factor comes with the relative and increasing stability that the Taliban is now achieving day after day, it provides an opportunity that gives Afghanistan a degree of lost hope in the future. This indicates a success that may lead the Taliban to gain increasing ground inside Afghanistan.

The basic feature is that the Taliban now are not the Taliban before the American occupation in 2001. The Taliban’s trend towards pragmatism is clear, in addition to its awareness that the security of Afghanistan’s borders with its neighbors, especially China, has positive consequences on the economy, so the government of Afghanistan devoted its efforts towards that, which increased In customs collections and the flow of Afghan agricultural products, etc., abroad, the Taliban was far from everything that aroused its neighbors. The geographical environment provided Afghanistan with many promising opportunities.

Negative factors

Many negative factors are afflicting the Afghan economy. Humanitarian aid fell by half in 2023, and in 2022 it represented 3 billion dollars. The Taliban's ban on opium cultivation also reduced the incomes of families working in its cultivation, and the country's income from it exceeded one billion dollars.

In addition to Pakistan's deportation of 400,000 Afghans; Which led to more pressure on the labor market, with a temporary relative decline in Afghan exports, which coincided with the decline in the price of coal, a high-value export commodity, especially with the decline in Pakistan’s demand for it. Afghanistan’s exports from January to September 2023 amounted to one billion. And $300 million, recording a decrease of 0.5% compared to the same period of the previous year.

Coal exports recorded a decrease of 17%. On the other hand, agricultural exports, which constitute 63% of total exports, increased by 11%. Textile exports, which constitute 14% of total exports, increased by 44%. The increase in vegetable exports to India and Pakistan helped compensate for the decline. Exports.

Pakistan remains the largest market for Afghanistan's exports, accounting for 55% of total exports, followed by India at 29%, taking into account that Afghan exports to Pakistan decreased by 15% in the first nine months of 2023.

Positive factors

The potential for future growth in Afghanistan depends on the strength of human capital. Afghanistan's lack of doctors, engineers, and teachers hinders development in its comprehensive sense, so the Taliban directed its efforts toward internal security, which led to an influx of students into primary schools, unlike previous periods. For children between the ages of 13 and 18, 4.4% of them have enrolled in schools, which is a high percentage, compared to previous eras, but there remains a point that the Taliban still needs to address, which is the low percentage of girls’ enrollment in secondary education, which may cause severe damage to comprehensive development steps.

The strength of the Afghan currency caused inflation rates to decline sharply, reaching 18.3% in 2022. This led to a recovery in the value of wages, and the energy transmission line project from Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan was resumed, which will provide good returns to the economy.

The most valuable source of economic development in Afghanistan is the rich mineral mines that are widely available in the country. There are 1,400 mineral deposits of precious stones, copper, iron and gold. American experts estimated these wealth at 3 trillion dollars, but recent estimates indicate that their value exceeds this number.

The lithium deposits in Afghanistan are a huge wealth, estimated at one trillion dollars, and their value is increasing due to their importance in the manufacture of electric car batteries, the demand for which is increasing year after year. Because of this, Afghanistan has been called (the Kingdom of Lithium).

Chinese investments are the most important in Afghanistan. The Afghan Chania Company is currently pumping investments worth $350 million into a number of electricity generation, cement manufacturing and health care projects.

The Taliban government signed an agreement in 2023 with China's Shinagang Central Asia Oil and Gas Company; To extract oil from the Amu Darya Basin in northern Afghanistan with investments of $540 million in three years.

All of the above indicates that Afghanistan has opportunities and inherited problems, and their solution depends on addressing the problem of rampant poverty in the country, which for years has made it one of the highest poverty rates in the world.

Therefore, the Taliban’s trend towards education and combating corruption - in which they have succeeded greatly in the last two years - will lead in the long run to changing the face of Afghanistan, but this depends on the extent of the growth of the private sector, with a focus on addressing the country’s weak infrastructure, and many Indicators point to relative success in these two areas, and what helps Afghanistan in this is that Afghan society does not have a sharp Western-style consumerism.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.