Wednesday, 10 December 2014 20:49

Georgia: Another Target in Russia's 'Near Abroad'

European Affairs

`Perspectives: Georgia—Another Target in Russia’s “Near Abroad”   

Svante E. Cornell, Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program

Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, in a manner that, at least with the benefit of hindsight, appeared a trial run for this year’s invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Russia has stirred trouble in Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and as far as the Baltic States, while bankrolling right-wing extremist parties in European Union countries. It is remarkable, however, that after the 2008 war, Georgia seemed off the target list.

Does that mean Moscow had given up on Georgia? Far from it. Moscow may have adopted a more gradual and sophisticated approach, but the objective remains the same: subjugating Georgia and thereby asserting Russian hegemony over the Caucasus region, thereby blocking Western access to the Caspian basin and Central Asia.

In recent months, Russia has again turned more overt attention to Georgia.

Setting the Scene

The 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia was an opening shot in a new geopolitical battle in Eurasia. Not only did it bring to power an assertively pro-western government in Georgia; it also injected an element of ideology into regional geopolitics. Before Mikheil Saakashvili’s supporters walked into the Georgian parliament carrying roses, the domestic affairs of Eurasian countries had not been a key issue in their foreign policy alignments. Indeed, the most pro-American former Soviet state in the 1990s was arguably authoritarian Uzbekistan. But the Rose Revolution realigned matters. Suddenly, with George W. Bush’s freedom agenda, authoritarian regimes had reason to fear that the West would seek to unseat them; and Russia moved in to pose as their protector. The following year, the Ukrainian revolt brought in another government deeply suspicious of Russia, leading Vladimir Putin to conclude that democracy in Russian neighbors was not only a threat to Russian interests in the neighborhood, but also a potential threat to his own regime’s hold on power. After all, if Slavic Ukraine would become a normal European state with accountable leaders, why should Russians continue to accept the corruption of Putin’s Russia? As a result, Georgia and Ukraine became serious targets. It is no coincidence that the only two countries Russia has invaded in the past decade are those two Orthodox Christian countries.

In Georgia, this logic led to a gradual escalation, culminating in the Russian invasion of August 2008. Subsequent research has made it clear that Russia planned the war as early as 2006, and Putin has publicly admitted as much. War was launched after a sequence of events, beginning with the western recognition of Kosovo’s independence in February and the ill-fated NATO Bucharest summit in April that denied Ukraine and Georgia NATO Membership Action Plans. The war led to Russia’s occupation of the two breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where Russian-monitored cease-fires had kept an uneasy state of no war, no peace, following conflicts Moscow helped instigate in the early 1990s.

Yet that war was followed two months later by the global financial crisis, which shook Russia’s economy to the core. Moscow suddenly put on a conciliatory face to the world, particularly indicating a willingness to compromise on a variety of issues with the West. The sanctions on Russia resulting from the Georgian war were soon dropped, and the incoming Obama administration rewarded Russia with the now notorious “Reset” policy, which effectively relegated disagreements on issues like Georgia to the backburner.

As much as U.S. officials would reject that notion, Russian leaders clearly interpreted the Reset policy as a license for Russia to re-establish its “sphere of exclusive interests” in the former Soviet space. In 2010, Russia directly triggered a coup against the government in Kyrgyzstan, helping unleash ethnic violence in the country’s south that killed close to a thousand people. Sensing western weakness, Putin also put in overdrive his project of Eurasian integration, beginning with a Customs Union and leading to the Eurasian Economic Union, due to be formally created next month. Officials from a variety of countries in Eurasia from Moldova and Azerbaijan to Tajikistan began reporting to western interlocutors the contents of increasingly threatening conversations with Russian officials, involving demands to join that Union. But remarkably, Georgia was largely absent from these considerations. The Russian security services have been credibly linked to a series of terrorist attacks in Georgia in 2009-11, including one targeting the perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi. But apart from that, aside from cementing its control over the two occupied territories, Moscow kept a low profile in Georgia.

Ivanishvili Arrives

In 2011, Georgia’s politics were rocked by the entry into politics of the country’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili. Ivanishvili had made his fortune of around $6 billion in Russia from interests in metals and banking in the 1990s, but had left the country soon after Putin’s ascent to the presidency. An eccentric and reclusive person born in poverty in the mountains of western Georgia, Ivanishvili had been a supporter of Saakashvili’s, bankrolling many of the new initiatives launched after the Rose Revolution. For reasons that are not yet fully understood, Ivanishvili parted ways with Saakashvili at some point after the war, and eventually decided to confront his former ally. Saakashvili and his allies immediately branded Ivanishvili a Russian stooge; but the accusations never got traction either in Georgian society or abroad, possibly because Saakashvili had a record of overusing that accusation. Ivanishvili also made a point of recruiting as his main political allies the most pro-western politicians that had parted ways with Saakashvili at some point in the last seven years. That provided him with the necessary legitimacy to emerge as a credible challenge to Saakashvili’s party, and his coalition – dubbed Georgian Dream – won the October 2012 parliamentary election.

Ivanishvili’s victory was based on domestic concerns, including large-scale violations of property rights in Saakashvili’s last three years in power and a prison abuse scandal that undermined the government’s credibility. But he also pledged to take a different approach to Russia: Saakashvili had been too rash, and unnecessarily irritated Moscow, he argued; the new government would approach Russia without illusions, but with less emotion. Ivanishvili pledged continuity with the policy of EU and NATO integration that Saakashvili (and his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze) had followed; but claimed he could simultaneously improve relations with Russia. The Georgian people liked the sound of that, and so did many of Georgia’s western allies.

Russia decided to combine carrots and sticks. On the one hand, it removed its embargoes on Georgian wine and mineral water, and went along with Ivanishvili’s attempts to improve economic relations. On the other hand, while Moscow increasingly focused its energies on Ukraine, it began a multi-pronged effort to undermine Georgia’s pro-European stance, in what then appeared a slow, gradual policy to veer Georgia away from the West. That policy assumed that the 2008 war had created enough of a deterrent effect on the West to ensure that Georgia would not be provided with concrete opportunities to join the EU or NATO anytime soon. Besides, Georgia’s economy was not excessively linked to Europe’s, as Moldova’s was. The Georgian fruit could, for now, be allowed to ripen on the tree, while Moscow tended to other business.

Upping the Ante

But recently Moscow decided to speed up the process to bend Georgia away from the West. First, the Kremlin unleashed hundreds of operatives of various shades and types, mostly Georgians that had been on their payroll during the Shevardnadze administration, but lived in exile in Russia during the Saakashvili era. Some managed to get appointed to senior positions in the interior ministry and prosecutor general’s office; most were deployed in civil society, to create NGOs supporting “Eurasian” ideas and the like. A former Georgian cabinet minister in June 2014, told this author that he had counted at least 17 different Russian-created NGOs popping up like mushrooms across Georgia.

Second, the Kremlin poured money into pro-Russian political parties. The chief beneficiary was Nino Burjanadze, a former speaker of parliament under Saakashvili, who had twice served as interim president. After falling out with Saakashvili, Burjanadze established her own party, moving into radical opposition and overtly establishing ties to Putin’s United Russia party. Burjanadze made a half-hearted attempt at orchestrating a coup in May 2011, but was caught in a wiretap released by Georgian authorities to discuss the prospect of Russian spetsnaz forces helping her overthrow Saakashvili. Lately, her Democratic Movement party has been buoyed by what one observer aptly termed “an enormous influx of vaguely sourced money” that everyone assumes to be of Russian origin.

Against this onslaught of Russian subversion, Georgian counter-intelligence has made zero arrests. In 2006, Saakashvili’s government’s very public arrest of Russian spies generated an economic embargo by Russia, suggesting the current government may have reason to be cautious. But for over two years, it appears that the Georgian interior ministry has done very little, if anything, to counter the very visible efforts of the Russian special services to undermine the country’s sovereignty. By 2014, this had become a sore point in the government, with pro-western forces arguing for action, while Ivanishvili’s loyalists refused to act.

Not limiting itself to subversion, Moscow also began to engage in military shows of force, and to tighten the screws in the occupied territories. In March 2013, Russia conducted unannounced naval exercises off Georgia’s Black Sea coast, coinciding with U.S.-Georgian training drills conducted the same week. Beginning in 2013, the Russian Federal Security Service began building barbed wire fences on the administrative boundary lines separating Georgia from South Ossetia. In March 2014, Moscow orchestrated the overthrow of the leadership of Abkhazia, which – while having little love lost for Tbilisi – had sought to maintain a modicum of independence vis-à-vis Russia. In its place, Russia ensured the election as President in a special election of Raul Khajimba, Moscow’s closest ally in the territory for a decade. And in November, Moscow announced new bilateral “treaties” on the further integration of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia with Russia.

These developments, and especially the simultaneous Russian invasion of Ukraine, gradually exacerbated the built-in contradictions in the Georgian government’s approach to Russia. Clearly, the aim of simultaneously pursuing Euro-Atlantic integration and improved relations with Russia was no longer realistic. This deepened the rift in the Georgian government between forces leaning toward appeasement of Russia, and those insisting on further integration with NATO and the EU. The political divide was made worse by the fact that Ivanishvili had left the government in December 2013, retreating to private life and entrusting the premiership to his loyal confidant, 31-year old Interior Minister Irakli Gharibashvili. Yet it remained common knowledge that Ivanishvili would still be consulted for every political decision of some importance.

In September 2014, the NATO summit in Wales did not provide Georgia with a coveted Membership Action Plan; but it did agree on a substantial “package” for Georgia, which included the opportunity for the country to finally procure defensive weaponry from NATO countries, something the alliance had long been reluctant to do. Defense Minister Alasania seized on this opportunity, for which he and his ministry had long been preparing: among others, Alasania cultivated close ties with the French Ministry of Defense, including coming to Paris’s aid in effectively rescuing the French-led peacekeeping mission to the Central African Republic. As Le Monde reported in April this year, it was Georgia’s decision to commit 150 soldiers to the mission, which other European countries were reluctant to commit to, that made it viable.

By late October 2014, Alasania had concluded negotiations with the French defense ministry and French defense industries to purchase one of the world’s most advanced air defense systems: the Aster-30. This system, consisting of vertically launched surface-to-air missiles, is designed to counter a broad range of targets, ranging from high-flying aircraft to sea-skimming cruise missiles. Crucially for Georgia, it would be capable of defending Georgian airspace against the Russian air force – which immediately took command of Georgia’s airspace in the 2008 war – as well as against the Tochka-U (SS-21 Scarab) ballistic missiles that Russia deployed in South Ossetia after the war, within range of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi 60 miles away. The deployment of the Aster-30 system would effectively deny Russia the advantage of control over the airspace in the case of a renewed conflict, and thus make any new invasion of Georgia a much more complicated operation.

This proved too much for Moscow. While the procurement had been agreed on in the Georgian government, a glitch emerged at the last minute. Multiple sources in Georgia independently confirm that Alasania received a phone call from Tbilisi an hour before the signing of a memorandum of intent, from a subordinate of the prime minister, urging him not to sign the agreement. The sequence of events suggests that the decisive factor in this development was an external pressure rather than any domestic rivalry. Indeed, it is fairly clear that that the Kremlin managed to bring to bear its levers of pressure on Ivanishvili to rein in his pro-western defense minister, thereby potentially stopping Georgia from the a historic opportunity to provide for the defense of its territory.

When Alasania (who reportedly tried and failed to reach the prime minister personally) signed the agreement on the basis of the authority he had received, Georgian prosecutors the next day launched two separate judicial proceedings against the Defense Ministry, arresting several high civilian as well as military officials. Within days, Alasania had been fired from the Defense Ministry along with his deputies, and the leading pro-European ministers responsible for foreign affairs and European integration resigned in solidarity. Following this crisis, Georgian politics and foreign policy are in flux – the government continuing to voice its rhetorical commitment to European integration and to NATO. Credibility on that score, however, has been strongly damaged. A key indicator will be whether Georgia follows through on the air defense agreement with France.

In Russian strategic thinking, the Caucasus occupies a place second only to Ukraine, and from the Yeltsin era to the present, it is in the Caucasus that Moscow has been most assertive in its efforts to maintain its sphere of influence and to deny western presence. As the situation in Ukraine moves toward a stalemate, it is clear from the developments over the past year that the Kremlin is once again refocusing its attention on Georgia and the South Caucasus. Aside from the events in Georgia, Moscow in September 2013 succeeded in pressuring Armenia to drop its attempts at an Association Agreement in favor of joining the Eurasian Union. The same year, but with less clear results, it drastically increased its pressure on Azerbaijan to desist from a pro-Western foreign policy. Worse, in August 2014, Moscow was very likely involved in triggering the largest escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the cease-fire in 1994.

The Kremlin appears to be calculating that any successor to the Obama administration, whether Democratic or Republican, will be a tougher adversary – and it is thus plausible that Moscow will want, once and for all, to finish its unresolved business in the South Caucasus in the next two years. How exactly this will happen, and what instruments Moscow will be using, is anyone’s guess. What is certain is that Georgia will figure prominently in these plans, for Moscow still views Georgia as the weakest link in the east-west corridor connecting the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia.

Svante E. Cornell is Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Center affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy.

 

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  • 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.

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    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