Introduction to translation
Contrary to its pledges after taking control of Kabul last year, the Taliban prevented girls from education after primary school, imposed a specific dress for women, and narrowed the public space, which raised questions about the extent to which the Taliban will go in this regard, and the repercussions of this on the Afghan people and the extent of their support Or his revolution on the movement.
About these questions and more, Dibali Mukhubadiyi, associate professor of global politics at the University of Minnesota and a prominent expert at the United States Institute of Peace, prepared an analysis that she published in the American magazine "Foreign Affairs", we review it translated in the following lines.
translation text
When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, some observers suggested that their approach to governance might become more moderate than before.
Twenty years have passed since the movement last came to power in the country, and major transformations have taken place since, and with the end of the fight against the United States, Kabul now appears to be on tasks that are not inherently ideological, such as collecting garbage and ensuring electricity.
However, the initial measures taken by the Taliban after their return to power quickly dashed those hopes.
The movement adopted repressive rule, prevented more than a million females from going to school, and restored the work of the Ministry of "People's Right and Prevention of Vice" - one of the most powerful institutions through which the movement exercises control over society - on the ruins of the Ministry of "Women's Affairs".
Naturally, this should not come as a surprise, given the movement's previous record and the paths it took to return to power. The withdrawal of the US army, and the subsequent resignation of the Afghan government, paved the way for the Taliban to take power without significant concessions.
Afghan women chant slogans during a protest march against what protesters say are Taliban restrictions on women, in Kabul, Afghanistan (Reuters)
The Afghan people will pay a heavy price for this ruling, but foreign governments should not assume that they are immune to events on the ground. Civil war remains a possibility, and the resulting chaos may create fertile ground for further armed extremism.
It is worth noting that Afghan territory under the control of the Taliban was the place where Osama bin Laden planned the September 11 attacks.
Now, with the defeat of the most powerful country in the world, the Taliban is beginning its second term from an exceptionally symbolic position of power, and if the movement consolidates its rule, even for a short time, things may return to the way they were in the 1990s.
The return of the turbans
The rise of the Taliban dates back to 1989, when the resisting Mujahideen forces expelled the Soviets and eventually overthrew the communist regime in Kabul.
However, the resistance proved unable to form a coherent and viable government, and the country plunged into a brutal civil war.
The Taliban was born out of this chaos, and the movement's founder, Mullah Omar, is rumored to have gained fame when he and a group of students took revenge on two girls who had been kidnapped and raped in Kandahar in 1994. Two years later, the Taliban had established control over most of Afghanistan.
The Taliban emirate, as it was called, soon moved away from all previous Afghan forms of government, whether communism, republic, or monarchy.
Mullah Omar (networking sites)
The movement imposed its own social law, mixing the roles of sheikhs, rulers, and police officers together into one terrifying force, banning women from public life, and restricting them to men to barely exceed the performance of prayer and the application of punishments.
Even as the movement expanded across the country, its leaders and followers still represented a small population of uneducated rural Pashtun youth, many of whom had grown up in refugee camps and religious schools on the border with Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have proven their foreign relations to be equally limited, confined to a small web of relations with the Pakistani security establishment, the Saudi elite and al-Qaeda, and in the midst of that isolation from the world, the regime has tightened its grip on the country, a grip that was tight but tenuous.
Of course, the Taliban's role in receiving al-Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks wrote the death certificate for its regime. When the movement refused to hand over the masterminds and mujahideen fighters, the United States captured the country's major cities within weeks.
In December 2001, a transitional government led by "Hamid Karzai" was appointed, but because of the "war on terror" launched by the Bush administration and considered the entire Taliban movement - even those who sought to surrender in its ranks - an enemy of Washington, no efforts were likely to bear fruit Towards peace or reconciliation between the new government and the defeated former.
Instead, the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan continued, and over time, the Taliban gathered their diaspora on the border with Pakistani support and ended up creating a deadly insurgency that besieged the Afghan state and its foreign sponsors for years.
By 2006, the Taliban were in the midst of a sustained campaign to reclaim territory from US control, beginning with their stronghold in southern Afghanistan, and going much further than that.
Those "rebels" then expanded their rule across the country, taking a slightly different approach from other rebel movements around the world, as some of these movements, such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), had established Forms of tight bureaucracy to provide services and establish new policies in the areas they occupied.
The Taliban approach almost ignored local needs, forcing those who provided services to the local population only to obey his orders.
Once again, the Taliban focused on establishing a simplified form that violates law and order, and they succeeded in this regard with great success.
Its own courts adjudicate domestic disputes while advancing its ideological project by imposing its conception of sharia.
Meanwhile, the Taliban's fulfilling justice has been effective and attractive against the sterile Afghan law system, as well as the devastating effects of the Western-led military campaign.
To secure the movement's financing, the movement's fighters instituted several tax collection systems, including taxing the burgeoning opium trade, and controlling government revenue as much as they could.
Over the course of 15 years of fighting, and multiple rounds of succession of leaders in the movement, the Taliban have maintained an exceptional degree of internal cohesion.
It achieved this by balancing the discipline of the higher ranks with the freedom of the lower ranks to do what they saw on the ground.
This cohesion paid off, as it bolstered the Taliban's campaign for victory, not only over the Afghan government, but also over the United States and its allies.
Back to back
In the seven months since their entry into Kabul, the Taliban have repurposed their powers in the service of justified totalitarianism in the name of religion, and the fact that they seized power through a military victory, rather than through hard negotiations, has given them an excuse to act in this way.
Negotiated settlements result in international pressure for social and political openness as part of internationally supported peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction processes.
The victory of an insurgency such as the Taliban gives the victor greater freedom: In the short term, the winners can bypass the compromises that would shape post-war political life, while focusing on strengthening their regime toward authoritarian goals.
Now, the Taliban are reshaping the very social reality they first created in 30 years.
And those recent decrees that forced women to cover their bodies and faces, required them to accompany them during travel times, and drop out of secondary and university education, remind us of the way females in Afghanistan were forced out of urban spaces in the 1990s.
Reincarnating the movement's past is the regime's use of staggering forms of violence, from beheadings of mannequins in storefronts and ceremonial destruction of musical instruments, to the disappearance of activists and the hanging of bodies of alleged criminals.
The Taliban's battlefield achievements have led them to rule the country on their own terms, but the new regime faces some serious challenges.
The movement's leadership and all ranks and soldiers are still unprepared to carry out the bureaucratic work required to meet the demands of citizens in the twenty-first century.
This government lacks the technical expertise, acumen, and willingness to manage the ordinary daily issues of life, from banking transactions and infrastructure management, to severe crises hitting the country such as food scarcity and the “Covid-19” pandemic.
These shortcomings are evident because those with relevant expertise are no longer part of the human capital employed by the government, as the Taliban dismissed all female government employees, while many male civil servants preferred to emigrate from the country rather than serve the new system.
But what is new this time is that the Taliban took over the reins of government in a country where the form of citizenship has radically changed since the last time the movement took over the country.
Today's Afghan people are exceptionally young, as most Afghans have not experienced life under the Taliban (most of them are young men born after 2001).
Moreover, while the center of gravity of the movement is still very much rural, many of its post-war citizens are urban, ethnically diverse, educated, globalized and familiar with the outside world.
They benefited from the aid economy, enrollment in higher education, and the emergence of new private, governmental and social sectors that generated exceptional professional and personal opportunities.
The resistance against the Taliban's rule was fueled by the fact that the movement threatened these gains. Immediately after the fall of the republic, the anti-regime militia regrouped in Panjshir Province, which had long been a stronghold of the anti-Taliban mujahideen.
The Taliban faced some violent resistance from Ahmed Masoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front, a popular anti-Taliban movement, as well as resistance from members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces who sought to continue the fight.
Prominent intellectuals and civil society mobilized in response to the Taliban takeover.
In November, Faezullah Jalal, a professor of law and political science at Kabul University, had a debate with a member of the new government broadcast on national television in which he expressed his disapproval of those who rule the country.
Then the regime imprisoned Jalal in January, but he succumbed to pressure and released him days later.
Media outlets such as "Etla'a Rose" newspaper and "Tolo" TV channel are still documenting today's events, including the problems facing the new government.
Social media also provides a space for the expression of political opinion that threatens the Taliban's narrative.
In August 2021, as the movement approached victory, a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #SanctionPakistan went viral, undermining the movement's claims that it was made up of only indigenous people and even portraying it as a foreign occupation.
As the new regime's policies on female clothing and education unfolded, Afghans - both within the country and in the diaspora - rejoined their voices with hashtags such as #DoNotTouchMyClothes (Don't Touch My Clothes) and #LetAfghanGirlsLearn (Let Afghan Girls Learn).
Afghan women have started online campaign to protest Taliban's dress code.
They post their photos with their traditional clothes and use #DoNotTouchMyClothes , #AfghanistanCulture and #AfghanWomen tags.
pic.twitter.com/75EY5EYOMK
— sibghat Khan (@sibghat51539988) September 12, 2021
Taliban's ban on girls' secondary education: day 217
If Afghanistan wants to be taken seriously on a global level, & competitive on the world stage, then it must educate its women and girls.
🇦🇫 is the only country in the world to ban girls from education.
#LetAfghanGirlsLearn pic.twitter.com/nIfv1SOfi6
— Ziauddin Yousafzai (@ZiauddinY) April 21, 2022
Perhaps most noteworthy are the groups of activists who have maintained a sustainable presence on the streets of Kabul and other major cities for months.
Recently, when the Taliban failed to reopen girls' schools after the Nowruz holiday, women and girls took to the streets and took to social media to express their outrage at being denied an education, and such a coordinated protest is quite new.
Taliban soldiers responded to these moves with repression and arrests, but the protesters adapted and attracted the attention of the international community.
The fact that women are at the forefront of Afghan civil disobedience is in and of itself a powerful refutation of the Taliban's ideological claims.
Some of the rebel movements that would rule later invested their success on the battlefield in electoral success, as their ability to provide security in the midst of war won the support of voters in subsequent elections.
This was proven true even in cases in which these groups committed atrocities against the population, as in the cases of the Burundian Forces for the Defense of Democracy and the Sadrist movement in Iraq, where each of them won a majority in the parliamentary elections in 2005 and 2018, respectively.
However, the Taliban showed no inclination towards subordinating their political power to an electoral vote, which is paradoxical given the possibility that the movement would win an electoral victory due to its success as a fighting force.
On the contrary, the new government's appointments to the Council of Ministers, and to other prestigious positions, represented a small segment of the country's population at a time when the movement's leadership of Pashtuns showed internal fissures.
As a result, the Taliban faced some of the same challenges as the previous government.
For example, in January in the northern state of Faryab, the movement detained one of its leaders from the minority Uzbeks, and then a kind of insurgency erupted among non-Pashtun Taliban fighters in the area, a pattern that may spread to other parts of the country.
Paradoxically, President Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country after the US withdrawal, faced a similar insurgency response when he ousted an eastern Pashtun ruler in that same state in 2021. In both cases, the failure to acknowledge the ethnic and sectarian diversity of the Afghan people demonstrated how difficult it is to exercise any System in Kabul for power outside the city limits.
Also, several risks are generated due to the new government's approach to policy making, especially in the social field.
The Taliban's suspension of girls' education after primary school is a decision that threatens to undo the gains of two decades of girls' education and professional advancement.
By last fall, the system suspended this decision in some states where demands for girls' education were high.
However, the government's decision in late March to dodge its promise to reopen girls' schools reflects a stark ideological inertia in the face of domestic and international demands for moderation.
In the absence of a greater degree of flexibility on issues such as education, employment, health care, and family laws, the Taliban may see the loosening of their grip on the country.
Finally, the communist regime in the 1970s pushed through a set of policies that the people considered extremist at the time - including requiring all girls to be educated - and the government found itself facing a popular rebellion that led to its eventual collapse.
Taliban in a dark tunnel
Few Afghan governments have succeeded in staying in power for extended periods, and those who were able to achieve this did so by giving way to competing ideas and actors, and they remained linked to external countries and international organizations that were able to support their strength in the face of domestic instability.
Since the nineteenth century, the survival of the country's rulers in power has required carefully calibrated foreign relations and constant flows of foreign aid.
Insurgent movements tend to invest in international marketing, where diplomatic recognition is a much-desired gain, and while some Taliban members have made efforts to re-market the movement as a compromise player, the movement has done little to spruce up its image once the US commitment to rapid and unconditional military withdrawal becomes clear.
Today, the new order faces almost complete isolation on the international scene.
The effects of this isolation are starting to show, from ongoing sanctions to asset freezes.
Despite the influx of humanitarian aid, most experts consider it insufficient in the face of the current dire crisis.
However, the deteriorating situation on the ground has not, so far, stimulated a shift in the government's approach.
In a radio speech in November, the new Afghan prime minister, Muhammad Hassan Akhund (Akhund), denied any responsibility for the tens of millions of acutely food insecure people and even described starvation as a divine punishment.
Meanwhile, the continued closure of girls' schools has drawn constant condemnation from Western governments, donor organizations and the United Nations, but to no avail.
A Taliban fighter stands guard as people wait to receive a food parcel distributed by a humanitarian aid group (Reuters)
Perhaps the emirate's intransigence will continue to a great extent, especially if the global jihadist community provides moral and material support to the regime.
But it is certain that the Taliban's desire to meet the needs of a narrow political audience and impose unpopular policies will lead to more protests and revolution, and the rush towards international isolation may lead to the economic collapse of the country.
But if the new government chooses to ease its stagnation, it may gain interaction with the international system, giving it more room to maneuver.
However, all of this may come at the cost of losing the government's credibility among its hard-line supporters, and given its history of governance, the Taliban may well bet that they can - and should - prioritize the purity of their radical political project at the expense of everything else, even if this undermines their rule. The long-term.
For the United States and its Western allies, Afghanistan's neighbors, and Afghans themselves, neither the collapse of the Taliban nor its consolidation bode well. The failure of the Afghan state has already created a humanitarian catastrophe, and a renewed civil war may mean more hunger, disease and displacement.
Outside actors find themselves with limited space to influence the scene: humanitarian aid alone can address much, while deeper forms of diplomatic, economic, and security engagement threaten to further entrench the regime and further thwart the opposition.
And the presence of the powerful Taliban, surrounded by unparalleled glory, may make room for other extremists to flourish, just as they did in the 1990s.
In the end, whether the Taliban fail or succeed, the repercussions for the Afghan people and the international community will be enormous, and this is the situation usually accompanies the case of a revolutionary victory of the kind that occurred recently in Afghanistan.
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This article has been translated from Foreign Affairs and does not necessarily reflect the Meydan website.
Translation: Hadeer Abdel Azim.