Udaya Pal
In August 2021, the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and into power only a week after the final US withdrawal of troops. In the years since then, the country has plunged towards complete economic collapse and a humanitarian crisis. The international community has every right to refuse to engage with the oppressive regime, but at this crisis point, is this the right approach?
Afghanistan’s Current State of Affairs
Afghanistan under the current Taliban regime has reached a crisis point. The most pressing issue facing Afghanistan is the severe humanitarian crisis the country finds itself hurtling towards. According to UNDP, 69% of Afghans are ‘subsistence insecure’ (meaning they face a lack of basic resources). The Afghan economy has contracted by 27% since 2021, unemployment has doubled and only 40% of the population has access to electricity. Afghanistan faces a severe lack of major sources of economic activity, such as exports or public expenditure. Sectors like finance have all but collapsed, and small and medium enterprises alongside farmers have become the only ones holding up their fragile economy. The government's ban on opium poppy farming brought cultivation down by over 95%, but wiped out 450,000 jobs and cost the Afghan economy at least $1.3 billion. To make matters worse, the impact of continuous natural disasters, such as the Herat earthquake last year, has devastated large parts of the population. By OCHA estimates, approximately 23.7 million people (more than 50% of the population) need humanitarian assistance, and millions more who have received assistance will require ongoing support for basic needs (healthcare, food, shelter, access to water and education).
The Taliban’s popularity reached a peak after their 2001 fall from power, with the Asia Foundation estimating that around half of Afghans (mostly Pashtuns and rural Afghans) had sympathy for opposition groups, primarily the Taliban. However, a 2019 follow-up to the original study found that only 13.4% of Afghans had sympathy for the Taliban, indicating that their popularity had been falling since before the regime change. Their return to power has come with a return to their harsh implementation of Islamic law, despite attempting to present themselves on the world stage as more moderate than before. Arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and public executions have returned to Afghanistan, as well as a removal of any progress towards increasing women’s rights that were made while the Taliban were out of power. As well as experiencing severe limitations on working, women once again must be covered and chaperoned in public. 1.4 million girls have been excluded from education, and Amnesty International reports a drastic increase in women arrested for violating these discriminatory practices, as well as an increase in the rates of child marriage.
In terms of security, the Taliban’s rule has brought some calm to the country (relative calm considering the previous decades of war). However, they are still dealing with two serious insurgencies, with IS-KP and the NRF (the former being the Afghan branch of IS and the latter being a resistance group allied with former local government forces). They face issues in managing these security threats, as hundreds of checkpoints have had to be dismantled due to a lack of manpower, and have faced other issues in policing northern territories where they are unpopular.
On the surface, attempts have been made towards cooperation to mitigate risks posed by other dormant transnational militant groups (such as Al Qaeda). After rising to power, they reiterated their 2020 pledge to the US to prevent extremist groups from operating in areas under their control. However, the discovery of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri by the US (and subsequent airstrike) in Kabul indicates that in reality there is little desire from the regime to deal with this issue.
How has the international community approached the Taliban’s regime?
No country has yet recognised the legitimacy of the Taliban regime. There has been limited engagement with major western powers, due to their long record of human rights abuses. The main issue faced by the international community is how to balance the need to prevent a complete economic collapse and humanitarian crisis against a refusal to engage with the oppressive and violent leadership.
For many Western powers, the solution to this dilemma has been to refuse to acknowledge Afghanistan diplomatically but simultaneously provide huge amounts of crucial aid to its people. The UN currently provides millions in regular cash shipments (totalling $3.8 billion as of July 2024). This regular flow of aid goes into food assistance and the delivery of basic healthcare, as well as indirectly stabilising the Afghan currency and preventing a complete economic collapse.
The US has repeatedly pleaded for the regime to abide by the agreed upon terms of the Trump Administration’s Doha Agreement and provide more human rights protection and rights for women, as well as a more inclusive government. Harsh sanctions were initially imposed on the regime by the US, including a freezing of around $7 billion in Afghan central bank reserves, as well as an initial suspension of international aid. Afghanistan relied on foreign aid for around 75% of its public expenditure, so these sanctions triggered the collapse of their financial system and a collapse of government operations. However, since then the US seems to have found sympathy for the delicate situation which Afghanistan finds itself in; while traditional development aid and diplomatic recognition have still been withheld, they have been one of the largest humanitarian donors and have now loosened some sanctions in order to facilitate aid delivery and promote economic activity. The EU has followed the example of the US and UN, providing humanitarian aid but limiting their diplomatic engagement and formal recognition of the regime.
Shifting Regional Dynamics
At a regional level, there are encouraging signs of cooperation. While formal recognition of the Taliban’s regime is yet to happen, regional diplomatic engagement has increased somewhat. Importantly, in 2022 Russia reopened its embassy in Kabul and increased engagement with the regime, hosting Taliban officials for talks while seeking a strategic partner to provide stability by preventing the spread of extremism into Central Asia. Various regional powers such as Pakistan and Iran have opened embassies in the capital, and in December last year China welcomed the Taliban ambassador to Beijing. Despite these advancements in regional engagement, states still remain wary of the government’s agenda; Iran especially voices concerns about the Taliban’s treatment of minority Shia Afghans, as well as terror concerns which are echoed by India.
Pakistan seems to be the only major power that shows any signs of fully embracing the new government. Pakistan has historically been closely aligned with the Taliban, especially in their early days, when the Taliban received training, cash, and weapons from ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency). Pakistan still serves as Afghanistan’s primary trading partner, and is heavily reliant on them for essential goods. However, their relationship has become more complex with the rise of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban (Tehrik e Taliban), as Islamabad has expressed frustration at the Taliban’s reluctance to suppress TTP activity.
Regional economic cooperation is also slowly developing. There have been talks to revive the TAPI gas pipeline between Turkmenistan, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Despite Tajikistan’s strong criticism of the regime (due to concerns about the treatment of the sizeable Tajik population in Afghanistan), talks to resume the CASA-1000 project (an energy and trade project that runs through many Central Asian states, and Afghanistan) are underway. Small-scale trade between Afghanistan and the regional heavyweights of India and China is increasing slowly, with Afghanistan potentially being included in the Belt and Road initiative and limited trade with India resuming. However, Chinese investment still remains less than the new government would hope for, as does investment from India, which previously had been one of Afghanistan’s largest development donors. Ultimately, for the most part development projects have slowed massively or stopped altogether, and the country requires much more international collaboration to revive them.
How should the world approach the new regime?
From a security standpoint, concerns about the regime are natural given their history with terrorism, and attitudes towards extremist groups. The discovery of Al-Qaeda’s leader in the heart of Kabul will naturally bring world leaders to question the willingness of the Taliban to tackle and contain transnational extremist militants. However, outside powers should avoid a return to high levels of violence at all costs, given the current crisis the country faces. Strikes on militant targets and increased funding to anti-Taliban groups are unlikely to prove fruitful and will simply increase the civilian casualties, decreasing the likelihood of further security cooperation and increasing domestic support for the Taliban. Instead, further strategic cooperation could be a useful tool in dealing with risks posed by more extreme groups, but such a level of cooperation seems unlikely to be achieved.
Afghanistan is headed for a very serious crisis if international engagement does not increase soon. By OCHA estimates, $3.06 billion more in aid is needed for the growing humanitarian crisis. The Taliban’s restrictions on the rights of women and their numerous human rights violations are deplorable, and should in no way be endorsed. However, the international community cannot let the Afghan people sink further into a humanitarian crisis in the name of human rights. Any attempts to wait for or to install a more liberal, inclusive government are unlikely to occur anytime soon (if at all) and so for the sake of the Afghan people aid and investment must flow in spite of their leaders. Afghanistan is currently at a breaking point. Right now, it needs international cooperation more than ever.
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