The Flame of Hope Grows Dim as Afghan Art Faces Annihilation

By Omad Sharifi

When a nation’s artists are in shackles, its people live in chains. When art is liberated, its people are set free. Since the world abandoned Afghanistan to the terror of the Taliban two years ago, local artists have been categorically persecuted. Tragically, with little international support once again, they have been left alone as the Taliban’s brutal oppression has relentlessly sought to eradicate every last vestige of creative expression. 

The Taliban see art as dangerous, a challenge, a threat. And it is. It should be. And often must be. Art is the power of protest and resistance. It is the memory of what we as Afghans once were and the imagination of what we can become again. Art is the mirror that truly reflects the Taliban’s robes, cut from a narrow minded, misogynistic and violent theocracy, as nothing but the emperor’s new clothes — contrived, empty and naked. Art keeps the possibility of Afghanistan’s future alive. It keeps hope alive. 

Without alternative and opposing narratives, the implications are immense: a terrorist group is brainwashing millions of young Afghans right now with no counter to their violent ideology. While women have been outright banned from schools, men are simply being trained as religious students that the Taliban can use as suicide attackers or as an army that blindly carries out its will. This poses a dangerous threat, not just to the region, but to the whole world. We saw it on 9/11 and we will see it again. 

Seven years ago, I co-founded ArtLords in Kabul as an artists’ collective to create murals about social issues with the collaboration of local communities. People were so demoralized and disenchanted after the years of war and violence that they’d even given up seeking solutions. We showed them that they have a voice and encouraged them to ask questions and be critical. 

The result was like lighting a candle in the dark. Finding a new and powerful voice they quickly gained courage and embraced art as catharsis, and an avenue for protest. It clearly showed that as soon as an oppressed people have the opportunity to engage with their culture and create change to break the cycle of violence and cultural poverty, they take it. 

Together, despite our fears, we exposed government corruption and painted murals outside the houses of the very warlords responsible for the deaths of innocent people. We promoted peace, gender equality and human rights. Blast-proof walls had been built all over Kabul to protect those deemed worthy from explosions. Painting 2,200 murals, we transformed their ugly aesthetics and elitist entitlement into a common canvas of both beauty and resistance. That was a time of renaissance.  

Sadly, that time has all but vanished. Artistic expression in Afghanistan is now criminalized and the Taliban punishes our artists and is erasing our art and dismantling our cultural heritage. Women and girls have been banned from pursuing education or careers in the arts. Cultural sites have been destroyed. Museums, galleries and institutions supporting the arts are being closed down. Artists themselves risk public humiliation, arrest, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings. 

The Taliban have killed guests at a wedding where music was playing, doled out lashings, tortured and arrested musicians. Comedian Nazar Mohammad was filmed being dragged by Taliban officials and was later found dead, tied to a tree. Two prominent Afghan writers and members of PEN Afghanistan were murdered by Taliban officials. Renowned poet and historian, Abdul Atefi, was tortured and murdered in his home by Taliban officials. 

Many artists have fled the country. Those who haven’t are now in hiding, forced to destroy or hide their artworks and tools for fear of being discovered. They try to survive, frequently under the harshest of conditions, unable to practice their craft and earn a living, and constantly in fear of the Taliban. 

The Taliban are terrified of what art can accomplish. Art sparks critical thinking, unifies people and empowers them to stand up for what’s right. When people are no longer able to express or engage with art, they become more distant from their culture, disconnected from each other and from their own sense of humanity. When that happens, they will succumb more easily and more absolutely to oppressive doctrines and radicalization. The Taliban know this. That is why they are trying to scorch our culture from the earth. And that is exactly why they must be stopped. That is why art in Afghanistan must survive. 

Unlike our brothers and sisters in hiding, Afghan artists outside of the country are fortunate enough to still have a voice and be able to continue the struggle on behalf of those who no longer can. This is what drives and inspires us. Keeping the candle of creative hope burning as a light in the darkness for all of the artists and people suffering under the yoke of Taliban oppression. 

But that light is growing dim. Afghan artists in other places are struggling to continue practicing their craft due to a lack of support and resources. Institutions in the U.S. have been deafeningly silent, failing to step-up despite their government’s complicity in the destabilization of Afghanistan after its precipitous withdrawal from the country in 2021. 

Given the hostile environment for creatives at home and the lack of institutional support for the artists abroad, the rich artistic tradition of Afghanistan that stretches back millennia and is fundamental to Afghan cultural identity is facing obliteration. If arts organizations and galleries would support them, and offer sponsored work opportunities and fellowships to artists at risk under the Taliban, we could preserve and strengthen our arts as a whole and feed back into the country. This would fuel hope and light the way for a better future for us all. Please, for the sake of Afghanistan and the world, don’t let this flame of hope die out. 

Omaid Sharifi is the co-founder and president of ArtLords and Senior Manager for Protections Programmes for the Artists at Risk Connection at PEN America. Sharifi contributed to the new report, Artistic Exodus: Afghan Artists Fleeing Taliban Ruleproduced by AFI in partnership with UC Berkeley Law Pro Bono Program.

Read at The Hill

Published in News
Wednesday, 11 September 2024 13:16

Don’t Betray the Women of Afghanistan

Normalizing Relations With the Taliban Normalizes Female Suffering

 By: Lisa Curtis and Hadeia Amiry

A woman walking in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 2022

A human rights calamity is unfolding in Afghanistan. Since retaking power in mid-2021, the Taliban have implemented more extreme policies against women than any other regime in the world. Taliban leaders have issued over 90 edicts limiting women’s rights: they have banned women and girls from attending university or school beyond the sixth grade, restricted their access to health care, prohibited them from leaving home without a male guardian, and revoked many of their social and legal protections. Every new restriction on Afghan women strengthens the Taliban’s dictatorial grip on the entire Afghan population and feeds extremism in a society already occupied by dozens of terrorist groups. Although the Taliban are fighting the terrorist group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), they allow some 20 other terrorist groups to operate freely in Afghan territory.

Yet even though Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prohibits women’s education, some analysts are urging the United States to normalize ties with the Taliban, including by reopening a U.S. embassy in the country. These proponents argue that by doing so, Washington would improve its ability to monitor assistance programs and engage with Taliban leaders in the country, including to press them to moderate their policies. But taking steps to normalize relations with the Taliban before their leaders halt their systematic persecution of women would be a gross betrayal of the millions of women and girls whose lives the United States helped to transform over two decades. During the Taliban’s previous stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, they closed schools to girls, forbade women to work, and targeted women with extreme forms of punishment, including public floggings and executions.

From 2002 to 2021, however, during the U.S.-led NATO mission to stabilize Afghanistan, Afghan women served as cabinet ministers, ambassadors, parliamentarians, diplomats, and journalists, reflecting historic levels of involvement in society. It is fair to say that empowering women represents the best work the United States did in Afghanistan and its most positive legacy. In early 2021, months before the U.S. military withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover, 2.5 million Afghan girls were attending primary school, and 27 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament were held by women.

Published in News

By Meta Mehran

A black-and-white photo of two women in full-body coverings.

Ever since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 with promises that — this time — they would be more moderate, they have played a deceitful game.

The Taliban government has introduced one decree after another, incrementally stripping away the rights of women and girls to education, employment, justice, freedom of speech and movement, and it has progressively criminalized their existence outside the home. Taliban leaders reached a new low last month when they published rules that, among other restrictions, make it illegal for a woman’s voice to be heard by male strangers in public.

Each new tightening of the screw has sparked international condemnation — but no real consequences for the Taliban. The mullahs merely wait for the outrage to subside before further entrenching their misogynist rule, undeterred by criticism, the threat of repercussions for violating international laws or even the risk of losing badly needed humanitarian aid.

But a potential new international treaty covering the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity may finally provide the world with more legal and diplomatic leverage — and a new way to hold the Taliban to account for the repression they have unleashed upon millions of women in Afghanistan. This is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

In October, a U.N. General Assembly legal committee will meet to decide whether the treaty should move forward to the stage of formal negotiations. The effort to create a better tool for prosecuting crimes against humanity has gained momentum because of growing alarm over conflicts in places such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Gaza, and the treaty includes a proposal to criminalize “gender apartheid.”

Fueled by the Taliban’s actions, the notion of making persons and states that enforce gender apartheid liable for criminal prosecution has gained global traction. Last October, I joined nearly 100 prominent organizations, jurists and individuals, including the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, in signing a legal brief that defines gender apartheid as the institutionalized, systematic subjugation of one gender. The brief urges U.N. member states to codify it as a crime against humanity in the proposed treaty. Many countries have indicated support for the proposal.

There is no better way to describe what Afghanistan’s women face than gender apartheid. Over the past three years, the Taliban have issued dozens of edicts curtailing or eliminating the basic rights of women and girls, while abolishing laws and agencies that were dedicated to protecting those rights. The former Ministry of Women’s Affairs, for example, was disbanded by the Taliban and its building handed over to a reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which enforces the current government’s hard-line interpretation of Shariah law.

Today, even when a woman is accompanied outdoors by a male relative as required by law, judgments on the legality of her dress, behavior — and now even her voice — are at the total discretion of the Taliban’s ever-present morality enforcers. If one of them deems that a violation has occurred, a woman can be taken into custody, where many have reportedly been subjected to torture and rape. Afghanistan’s women now suffer from one of the world’s highest rates of gender-based violence, according to the United Nations. Women who complain about such violence have been sent to prison.

Women are now effectively confined at home and to the only roles deemed by the mullahs to be appropriate for them: caregiving and childbearing. Since men can be punished by the Taliban if their female family members break the rules, women are, in practice, under the strict control of their own male relatives. All of this is counterproductive for the nation: By banning women from working outside the home, including as aid workers, the Taliban are harming the country’s economy and compounding its severe humanitarian crisis.

 The Taliban’s new rules drag women even deeper into an abyss that seems to have no bottom. Besides muzzling women in public, the rules require women to completely conceal their faces and bodies and place new restrictions on their freedom of movement. I left Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, but my work as an activist in exile keeps me in contact with many women still there who tell me that the latest rules add to the hurdles they face in getting access to even their most basic needs. As one woman recently said to me, even speaking to a shopkeeper to buy food is fraught when her voice is now considered “awrah” — a term referring to the intimate parts of the body that must be concealed to avoid tempting and morally corrupting others.

The codification of gender apartheid in international law will of course not automatically eliminate the crime, and bringing perpetrators to account will not be easy. But it’s an important first step toward providing victims and the global community with legal pathways to hold violators responsible and to deter other governments from committing the same crimes.

Beyond the legal aspect, international recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity would have great moral power. The global condemnation of South Africa’s former apartheid regime galvanized political, legal and social resistance efforts that ultimately contributed to that system’s demise and later resulted in racial apartheid being classified as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

There is still much work to be done. If the U.N. committee agrees to move the treaty to the next phase, a range of legal and other issues will have to be worked out, including the potential inclusion of gender apartheid as a crime, and the treaty would need to be ratified internationally.

Several countries already have expressed in previous committee meetings their openness to codifying gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. For this to become a legal reality, many more nations will need to step up and join in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan, particularly those countries that claim to be leaders on women’s rights or have female heads of state.

The alternative is to continue on the current path, in which the world wrings its hands but essentially does nothing to stop the Taliban from rendering Afghanistan’s women faceless, silent and invisible.
 
Published in News

A presentation by the Spring 2024 CAMCA Fellows, focusing on the advancement of digital connectivity in Central Asia, Mongolia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan. In the interconnected landscape of the CAMCA region, digital connectivity serves as a cornerstone for both economic prosperity and social progress. This event is not merely about enhancing digital infrastructure; it's about fostering deeper connections across the region. The Fellows will delve into how overcoming challenges is crucial for unlocking economic potential, ensuring equitable access, and driving regional integrati

 
Published in Forums & Events

Register for the annual Central Asia - Mongolia - Caucasus - Afghansitan (CAMCA) Regional Forum scheduled for June 12-13 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The CAMCA Regional Forum is a non-political and non-partisan Forum established to promote region-wide discussions on means of advancing economic growth and development in the 10 countries of the region: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It promotes this goal by fostering dialogue and interaction among rising young leaders from all sectors in the 10 countries of the region, as well as with international leaders and stakeholders. The Forum organizers - the CAMCA Network, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Rumsfeld Foundation - believe that expanded communication and collaboration among talented professionals from a range of fields can significantly contribute to economic, political and social development on both a national and regional basis.

The Forum is a premier opportunity to engage with prominent influencers and leaders in the CAMCA region and to gain firsthand insights on the region’s pulse and latest developments. The Forum’s non-political and non-partisan mission facilitates an environment for open conversation aimed toward the prosperity of the region and its people. The Forum was established as one of the first and only platforms to bring together representatives of the 10 CAMCA countries, spanning from the South Caucasus to Mongolia, to discuss emerging opportunities for regional cooperation and integration. Due to the diverse and impressive pool of participants, the Forum essentially serves as a ‘one-stop shop’ for professionals of all sectors who are interested in regional cooperation and partnerships, as well as for outside nations, businesses and organizations that have an interest in engaging with the region. 

Click here for more information and to register.

Published in Forums & Events

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News

  • Protests in Georgia | Laura Linderman
    Monday, 18 November 2024 16:37

     

    In Georgia, opposition parties have accused the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party of stealing recent elections, leading to protests and calls for an investigation into electoral violations. Discrepancies between official results and exit polls have sparked demands for snap elections supervised by an international body. The European Union has called for a thorough inquiry into allegations of voter intimidation and multiple voting. The protests are also a response to fears of Georgia shifting closer to Russia, with Western support at stake. The situation could lead to EU sanctions, further complicating Georgia’s aspirations for EU and NATO membership.

    For more details, check out the video.

    RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

    https://www.silkroadstudies.org/publications/joint-center-publications/item/13520-rising-stakes-in-tbilisi-as-elections-approach.html

     

  • Greater Central Asia as a Component of U.S. Global Strategy
    Monday, 07 October 2024 13:50

    By S. Frederick Starr

    Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
    Silk Road Paper
    October 2024

    Click to Download PDF

    Introduction

    Screenshot 2024-10-07 at 9.55.36 AMWhat should be the United States’ strategy towards Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the region of Greater Central Asia (GCA) as a whole? Should it even have one? Unlike most other world regions, these lands did not figure in US policy until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Though the new Baltic states entered Washington’s field of vision in that year, in those cases the Department of State could recall and build upon America’s relations with independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the inter-war decades. For the US Government after 1991, GCA was defined less as sovereign states than as a group of “former Soviet republics” that continued to be perceived mainly through a Russian lens, if at all.  

    Over the first generation after 1991 US policy focused on developing electoral systems, market economies, anti-narcotics programs, individual and minority rights, gender equality, and civil society institutions to support them. Congress itself defined these priorities and charged the Department of State to monitor progress in each area and to issue detailed country-by-country annual reports on progress or regression. The development of programs in each area and the compilation of data for the reports effectively preempted many other areas of potential US concern. Indeed, it led to the neglect of such significant issues as intra-regional relations, the place of these countries in global geopolitics, security in all its dimensions, and, above all, their relevance to America’s core interests. On none of these issues did Congress demand annual written reports.  

    This is not to say that Washington completely neglected security issues in GCA. To its credit, it worked with the new governments to suppress the narcotics trade. However, instead of addressing other US-GCA core security issues directly, it outsourced them to NATO and its Partnership for Peace Program (PfP). During the pre-9/11 years, PfP programs in the Caucasus and Central Asia produced substantial results, including officer training at the U.S. Army’s program in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and the Centrasbat, a combined battalion drawn from four Central Asian armies. But all these declined after 9/11 as America focused its attention on Afghanistan. 

    Today this picture has dramatically changed, and the changes all arise from developments outside the former Soviet states. First came America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought important consequences. As the U.S. withdrew, new forces—above all China but also Russia and the Gulf States—moved in. Also, America’s pullout undercut the region’s champions of moderate Islam and reimposed a harsh Islamist regime in their midst. And, finally, because Central Asians have always considered Afghanistan as an essential part of their region and not just an inconvenient neighbor, they judged the abrupt U.S. pullout as a body blow to the region as a whole. Now the scene was dominated not by the U.S. but by China and Russia competing with each other. Both powers presented themselves as the new bulwarks of GCA security, and reduced the U.S. to a subordinate role. 

    While all this was going on, the expansion of China’s navy and of both Chinese and European commercial shipping called into question the overriding importance of transcontinental railroad lines and hence of GCA countries. Taken together, these developments marginalized the concerns and assumptions upon which earlier US strategy towards GCA had been based. With Afghanistan no longer a top priority, American officials refocused their attention on Beijing, Moscow, Ukraine, Israel, and Iran, in the process, increasing the psychological distance between Washington and the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.  

    It did not help that no U.S. president had ever visited Central Asia or the Caucasus. This left the initiative on most issues to the GCA leaders themselves. Thus, it was Kazakhstan and not the State Department that proposed to the U.S. government to establish the C5+1 meetings. It was also thanks to pressure from regional leaders that the White House arranged for a first-ever (but brief) meeting between Central Asian presidents and the President of the United States, which took place in September 2023 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. By comparison, over the previous year Messrs. Putin and Xi Jinping had both met with the regional presidents half a dozen times. Hoping against hope, the Central Asian leaders hailed the C5+1 meeting as a fresh start in their relations with Washington. Washington has done little to validate this 

     

    Additional Info
    • Author S. Frederick Starr
    • Publication Type Silk Road Paper
    • Published in/by CACI
    • Publishing date October 2024
  • Press-Release: The "International Kazak Language Society" Presented the Kazakh Translation of "Geniuses of their Time Ibn Sina, Biruni and Lost Enlightenment", in Washington DC
    Tuesday, 22 October 2024 13:36

     

     

    PRESS-RELEASE

    THE INTERNATIONAL “KAZAK LANGUAGE” SOCIETY PRESENTED THE KAZAKH TRANSLATION OF “GENIUSES OF THEIR TIME. IBN SINA, BIRUNI AND LOST ENLIGHTENMENT”, IN WASHINGTON D.C.

     

    Author Dr. Frederick Starr places great importance on  making his work accessible to a broad audience

    October 21, 2024, Washington D.C. | The American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) in Washington, D.C., hosted the presentation of the Kazakh translation of the book, “Geniuses of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment”, authored by the renowned American historian Dr. Frederick Starr. This translation was initiated and realized by the International Kazakh Language Society (Qazaq Tili), with the support of Freedom Holding Corp., and in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the USA.

    Dr. Starr's book, “The Genius of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment “, explores the lives and contributions of two outstanding figures of the Eastern Enlightenment, Ibn Sina and Biruni, whose intellectual legacies shaped both Eastern and Western thought. It highlights their significant contributions to science, medicine, and philosophy, and their role in the broader development of human knowledge. A major portion of the narrative details their biographies, achievements, and the lasting impact of their work on the intellectual heritage of the world.

    This is the second translation of Dr. Starr's work into Kazakh, following the successful release of his first book, “Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane” by the International Kazakh Language Society.

     

    The translation of this latest work was inspired by and aligns with the vision outlined in Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s recent article, “Renaissance of Central Asia: On the Path to Sustainable Development and Prosperity.” In support of promoting a shared vision for Central Asian prosperity, the book, which sheds light on the region’s profound intellectual legacy, was translated into Kazakh and made accessible to the public.

    The book presentation was attended by the author of the book Dr. Frederick Starr, member of the Board of Directors of Freedom Holding Corp. Kairat Kelimbetov, and Rauan Kenzhekhan, President of the International Kazakh Language Society (Qazak Tii).

    "This book is a tribute to the brilliant minds of Ibn Sina and Biruni, who made monumental contributions to science and thought long before the European Renaissance. The book also honors other scholars such as al-Farabi, al-Khwarizmi, Omar Khayyam, Abu-Mahmud Khujandi, al-Ferghani, and others whose names have entered the world's intellectual heritage. These two geniuses from Central Asia not only pioneered in various fields of knowledge but also developed research methods that are still relevant today,” said Kairat Kelimbetov, member of the Board of Directors of Freedom Holding Corp. 

     

    Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, the President of the International Kazakh Language Society, emphasized the significance of making Dr. Starr's work accessible to Kazakh readers: "The translation of this book into Kazakh is significant for us. Dr. Starr's work offers profound insights into Central Asia's historical contributions to global knowledge and underscores the region’s role as a vibrant hub of intellectual and scientific discourse during the Enlightenment. By reconnecting with the foundations of our region's 'golden age' and learning from both its successes and declines, we can pave the way for a collective future of prosperity and innovation."

    The book was translated and published by the International "Kazakh Language" (Qazak Tili) Society with the support of Freedom Holding Corp. Thanks to the support of the American Foreign Policy Council and Rumsfeld Foundation for hosting and partnering. 

    The International "Kazakh Language" Society (Qazak Tii: www.til.kz) is the largest non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the Kazakh language and cultural heritage. Through education, translation projects, and international collaborations, the organization aims to bridge cultures and empower future generations to embrace their identity while contributing to a more interconnected and culturally diverse world.

    Freedom Holding Corp. is an international investment company that provides a range of services, including brokerage, dealer, and depositary services, as well as securities management and banking services. The company was founded in 2013 by Timur Turlov, a Kazakh entrepreneur and financier.

    The book is available in the libraries of educational institutions in Kazakhstan, the digital version can be accessed for free on the Kitap.kz portal.

  • Dysfunctional centralization and growing fragility under Taliban rule
    Wednesday, 11 September 2024 14:35

    By Sayed Madadi

    One year ago, on Aug. 31, 2021, the last foreign soldier left Afghanistan. Since then, the situation in the country has only grown more fragile, marked by deteriorating living conditions, widespread human rights violations, and increasing political instability. One key contributing factor to the crisis is a dysfunctional centralized governance structure that has become more paralyzed and unresponsive under Taliban control. The group has greatly aggravated the problem with its rigid religious ideology and exclusive political agenda, but it well predates the Taliban takeover. The situation has steadily deteriorated over the past two decades as a result of a system that undermined local mechanisms of resilience, deprived people of access to basic public services, and marginalized them politically. With the Taliban at the helm, the system now only perpetuates further political exclusion, economic deprivation, and human suffering. The worsening economic conditions and political environment in the last year offer ample evidence of this.

    Ever hungrier population

    According to the most recent data from the World Bank, Afghanistan is now the poorest country in the world and the per capita income has declined to 2006 levels. The Taliban’s return to power exacerbated an already worrisome economic and humanitarian situation. Pushed to the brink by recurrent droughts, chronic cycles of violence, and poor governance, the insurgent offensive that captured Kabul last August created a shockwave that neither the economy nor the people could absorb. Before 2021, the latest poverty rate in Afghanistan was 47% and 35% of people reported that they were unable to meet their basic needs for food and other essential goods. Now, according to the World Bank and the United Nations, more than 95% of the population is poor, with more than 70% suffering from food insecurity. In an undiversified and limited economy that does not have much to offer, only a staggeringly low 2% said that they did not face limitations in spending. Rising prices caused by high inflation, the liquidity crisis, and a massive drop in international trade, coupled with sharply decreased household incomes, have reduced purchasing power for millions and increased unemployment to record levels, even as an estimated 600,000 people enter the labor force annually.

    Many of these sources of fragility, of course, existed before the Taliban came to power. For over a century, Kabul has grown in monetary wealth, human capital, and opportunities at the expense of the rest of Afghanistan. The economic wealth and metropolitan character of the capital has come with the centralization of state power and revenue collection since 1880. For decades, lack of opportunities — and later on conflict — brought the best and the brightest from around Afghanistan to the capital, thus gradually draining the provinces of intellectual capital and economic resources. Historically, the Kabul-based kings gave land titles and trade monopolies to traditional power-holders in return for revenue, while the latter extorted the local population to raise what was required to pay Kabul. The central state relied on the periphery for resources, soldiers, and legitimacy, but hardly provided anything in return.

    The 2004 constitutional architecture did little, if anything, to change that. As foreign funding flowed in at unprecedented levels, the concentration of political power and economic planning in the capital continued to draw resources and talent from the periphery, eroding the foundations of local resilience. Local and provincial power holders and economic tycoons survived only because they maintained strong ties with those who controlled financial wealth and political decision-making at the center. The immense wealth that the Karzais gained in the south or the riches that Atta Mohammad Noor was able to raise in the north were not possible without the backing of central authorities, which in both cases were highly formalized: Ahmad Wali Karzai was the head of Kandahar’s provincial council and Atta served as the governor of the lucrative Balkh Province for over a decade. Staggering levels of corruption and state capture enabled a select group to easily gain control of the country’s economic riches and move them abroad.

    The population was already struggling by the time the Taliban returned to power. Studies and analysis by the U.N., the World Bank, and independent observers had long warned about increasing poverty, unemployment, and cyclical droughts. After last August, the depletion of human resources and economic wealth and the withdrawal of the international presence in Kabul disrupted value production and business enterprise around the country. The crisis has left millions of people helpless, not only because of their reliance on the Kabul-centric legal regulatory framework, but also because most of the job market — the public sector and the NGOs — was funded by donor money from Kabul. The full international withdrawal shrank the economy by more than one-third and the implications of the political crisis disrupted the markets for much longer than the country could afford. After severe drought and conflict displaced over 700,000 people last year, hundreds of thousands have left Afghanistan since August 2021 in search of a better life.

    The Taliban's inability and unwillingness to provide public services and reinvigorate economic activity led to the further deterioration of living conditions and heightened the people’s vulnerability. The World Bank reported that more than 81% of household heads were self-employed after Aug. 15, 2021. An absolute majority of them are not business owners but job seekers turning to physical labor and street vending to avoid starvation. The Taliban authorities claim that they have increased revenue collection at border crossings, mainly by curbing corruption and expanding ports with taxable trade. However, the regime does not provide even basic public services such as education and health with that revenue. For example, nearly half of schools are closed as the Taliban still refuse to allow girls to access secondary education, resulting in a major decline in public spending. Most of the health infrastructure is supported through international humanitarian aid by the U.N. and ICRC, and the extravagant Afghan National Defense and Security Forces no longer exist. On top of that, only a fraction of public servants go to work, and after months of delays they now receive far lower salaries based on the regime’s new pay scale — labor earnings in the public sector have declined by 69%.

    Therefore, without offering social protection, public services, and economic opportunities, the centralized revenue collection continues to further deplete the provinces of resources that could otherwise help them mitigate the risks of economic and environmental shocks. The Taliban's interference in the distribution of humanitarian aid takes away from the neediest people their only means of survival in the midst of destitution, further compounding local fragility. Despite a year of trials and the infusion of more than $2 billion in aid into Afghanistan, the economic and humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Although conventional humanitarian assistance programs help people get by in the short term, they also reinforce a relationship of dependency on aid without developing opportunities for employment and private enterprise, thus reinforcing deeper vulnerability. These approaches — coupled with the Taliban’s centralized and unaccountable governance — build on ineffective modalities that disenfranchise local communities, compound economic deprivation, exacerbate environmental shocks, and intensify human suffering.

    A totalitarian regime

    The political and human rights situation has equally deteriorated under the Taliban. While the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says more than 1,500 people have been killed by the regime since last August, some independent observer groups report that around 2,000 civilians from the Hazara ethnic community alone have been killed. Protests by women have been repeatedly suppressed and participants have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The government is populated entirely by Taliban clerics, excluding all other political forces and non-Pashtun groups. The persecution of Tajiks in the name of quelling the military resistance in the north and of Hazaras justified by ethno-sectarian divisions — the latter are mostly Shi’a — continue. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prevents girls from getting an education by barring them from secondary schools. Most women cannot work, and a woman’s political agency and social status are tied to that of a man, who has to accompany her, fully veiled, anywhere she goes outside the home. According to Reporters Without Borders, 40% of all media outlets in the country have disappeared and 60% of journalists have lost their jobs. The figure for female journalists is even higher, at 76%.

    The Taliban have managed to consolidate their power within an Islamic Emirate that borrows significantly in structural design from its predecessor Islamic Republic, rather than introducing a new institutional architecture. Save for a few tweaks, the broader framework of the system has remained the same. The judiciary system, for example, and its relationship with the head of state have not changed. The Taliban have kept most political and governance institutions as they were, filling positions across the ministries and provinces with their own appointees. The major institutional change the Taliban have brought has been the removal of elections to establish popular legitimacy: The head of state is now a divinely mandated supreme leader, and there is no legislative branch. These alterations, while substantial on paper, have not changed much in practice. Given the highly centralized nature of the republic with an overly powerful president at the top, electoral processes had failed to produce either legitimacy or accountability for much of the last two decades. In many instances, elections provided opportunities for embezzlement and corruption by enabling actors with ulterior motives to buy votes and then abuse public office to enrich themselves. This was particularly true in the case of the parliament and provincial councils, institutions captured by a handful of kleptocrats who failed to keep an overly strong executive in check.

    The binary division of a republic versus an emirate was what bogged down the peace talks until they fell apart in the run-up to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. The fact that the group has consolidated its power through the very system it so vehemently rejected says a lot about the actual democratic character of the centralized political institutions. The narrowing of the public space under the Taliban, for example, indicates that the degree of openness for debate and democratic practices before 2021 was not necessarily a byproduct of a meticulous institutional design that checked the use of power and ensured accountability. Rather, it was attributable to the personal commitment to democratic values of those in control. For over a decade, Hamid Karzai, who ruled through tribal consensus and appeasement, enabled a conducive environment in which a vibrant media industry and civil society took root. Across Afghanistan, especially in Kabul and other key urban centers, demonstrations against the government were ubiquitous.

    After 2014 when Ashraf Ghani came to power, the democratic space began to shrink for a variety of reasons, chief among them the intolerance of the president and his inner circle. Crackdowns on public protests, silencing of independent media and civil society, and marginalization of political opponents and critics, including through the use of force, became increasingly common. In order to act with the utmost impunity, Ghani maintained a facade of accountability through the ministries while monopolizing state functions by creating parallel institutions at his own office. Since last August, the Taliban, undeterred by any prospects of accountability, have further centralized the structure by removing the subsidiary units of the Arg, Afghanistan’s presidential palace, and have instead directly utilized the formal government bureaucracy to consolidate their power, implement their extremist views of what an Islamic society should look like, and silence any voices of dissent. In other words, the centralized political and governance institutions of the former republic were unaccountable enough that they now comfortably accommodate the totalitarian objectives of the Taliban without giving the people any chance to resist peacefully.

    What lies ahead

    The Taliban, who claimed to represent rural Afghanistan, have further oppressed and marginalized Afghans outside Kabul as their core members continue to settle in the now dual capitals of Kabul and Kandahar. The Taliban’s thinking about governance based on a rigid interpretation of religion and ethnonationalist politics, as much as it evolves in practice over time, has further centralized political decision-making and economic resources in the hands of a few. As economic resources become more scarce, wealth will be controlled by those who hold political power at the highest levels.

    This will only deepen the drivers of fragility and conflict, including poverty, exclusion, and discrimination. With drought likely to become an annual occurrence by 2030, the financial and banking crisis set to continue for the foreseeable future, and the economy expected to keep shrinking, people across Afghanistan are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Moreover, the unsustainably large but still inadequate humanitarian aid budget, which has offered a minimal lifeline to the country, will be in danger of getting smaller in light of recent security developments that further limit the parameters of international engagement with the regime. The United States has reportedly withheld talks about the possible unfreezing of Afghanistan’s central bank assets held by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.N. Security Council has not extended travel exemptions for 13 Taliban leaders. These developments also mean that potential foreign investment, even from friendly partners of the regime, such as China, will likely take a long time to materialize. The overall impact of all of this will be to push Afghans across the country further and deeper into cycles of economic deprivation and political instability with substantial implications for health, education, and human rights, especially for women and children.

    However, as much as centralization allows the Taliban to consolidate power in the short run, it equally makes its long-term survival unlikely. The group led a highly decentralized, mobile insurgency where local commanders oversaw the war in their areas in whatever way they saw fit. That was vital to withstand the republican army and its partners, as well as recruit non-Pashtun commanders in the north, which later proved fatal to the republic. But now they are struggling to transform from a decentralized insurgency into a centralized government and what were previously strengths have become weaknesses. Commanders such as Fasihuddin, once trusted with complete authority, are expected to give up their autonomy and obey orders. The regime is also facing difficulties integrating key battlefield leaders into its new official structures in an appropriate way, as the appointment of Qayum Zaker to an arbitrary assignment managing the resistance in Panjshir illustrates. These trends stemming from the centralization of power will eventually push away those who were key to the Taliban’s success — similar to how President Ghani’s exclusionary politics alienated the republic’s natural allies. The Taliban have long prioritized their cohesion over any other political objective. Now, unable to govern and unwilling to share power with other political forces, the centralized regime’s disintegration becomes increasingly inevitable — and arguably has been expedited — as it fails to incorporate even its own senior political and military leadership into decision-making processes.

    Sayed Madadi is a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies and a Nonresident Scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies Program. You can follow him on Twitter @MadadiSaeid. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own.

     Read at Middle East Institute