“The Taliban model of governance is not suitable and sustainable for a multicultural and multinational country like Afghanistan. The more the Taliban suppress the people, the more the resistance will be empowered”, says Dr. Omar Sadr, a research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Omar Sadr is a Research Fellow at the Center for Governance and Markets (CGM) in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) at the University of Pittsburgh. Previously, he worked as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) in 2021, as a Researcher at the Afghanistan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) in 2018. His primary research interests include political theory, governance of cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism, democratic governance, as well as political history of Afghanistan. He has been an advocate of political reform, constitutionalism, and pluralism in Afghanistan.
Dr. Sadr holds a Ph.D. (2018) from South Asian University (SAU), a university established by the SAARC nations. He is the author of numerous books, chapters, book reviews, papers, and articles. His most recent book, Negotiating Cultural Diversity in Afghanistan, was published by Routledge in London and New Delhi examines the problematique of multiculturalism in Afghanistan. His work has appeared in venues such as Fair Observer, The Atlantic Council and The National Interest. He also appears regularly on BBC Persian, Afghanistan International and ToloNews (three prominent Persian TVs). He founded the Negotiating Ideas Podcast where he discusses political ideas on peace, democracy and pluralism.
CABAR.asia: How has the situation in Afghanistan changed since U.S. troops left in August 2021? What are the main challenges facing the people of Afghanistan? What are the domestic, humanitarian, energy security, and other threats?
I think in the last year Afghanistan has faced a multifaceted crisis. The most important one is of course the loss of the state. Afghanistan is a stateless country that is controlled and administered by a genocidal and suicidal terrorist group, the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in Central Asian countries – ed.). With 28 years of insurgency and war in its history, the group usurped the seats of power, abandoning an ongoing peace process with the government of Afghanistan. While this sunk Afghanistan as a country to politico-diplomatic isolation, it elevated the Taliban’s status amongst the global community of Jihadists as a successful jihadist mission in the Muslim world. Based on Jihadi comradery and solidarity, the regime hosts like-minded people and provides asylum to jihadists from across the globe. Apart from Uyghurs, Arabs, and Central Asians, Pakistani Pashtuns are the biggest group who have been settled in the north of the country.
The Taliban is suicidal as it turned suicide attacks not just as a tool but as a model of control and governance. The suicide scuads of the group are part of its core structure. It is not just used to threaten the neighbours of Afghanistan – as the group deployed the suicide scuads on the border with Tajikistan – but also to control and threaten the people of the country. Suicide attacks were systematically used to wipe out civil society, human right activist, academics, and religious minorities. At the moment, the group systematically and indiscriminately targets the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras of Afghanistan. The Persian/Tajiki is also dropped down from its official status. Human rights organization has documented the massacre of civilian, torture, confiscation of lands, forced displacements, and denial of the fundamental rights of women, confining them to the private sphere.
Afghanistan faces a regime that doesn’t have political legitimacy. The current regime does not recognize and appreciate the fact that the people of Afghanistan should have the authority to decide about their life politically. Secondly, the regime is isolated politically. This isolation was somehow mitigated with international engagement with the current regime. But the fact is that the Taliban failed to fulfill some of the promises they had given to the international community including respect for women’s rights. Moreover, the killing of Ayman Al-Zawahiri (top Al-Qaeda ideologist – ed.) in downtown Kabul last July, where he was hosted in one of the guest houses owned currently by Sirajuddin Haqqani (Taliban’s deputy leader – ed.), was another pushback.
All the socio-economic indicators have quantified how the country is worse off compared to the pre-Taliban takeover. These have been debated so much. What is important to note is that the current catastrophe is human-made, with Taliban being the prime mover of it. The group is deliberately driving the country backwards.
Apart from all these, the Taliban faces emerging resistance from the Tajiks, particularly the National Resistance Front and Afghanistan Freedom Front, who are fighting at least in the north.
How has the world community responded to the crisis in this country? What stakeholders and countries have the greatest influence in Afghanistan? Can we talk about Russia and China’s consolidated position on the situation in Afghanistan?
Well, the international community is fragmented on how to deal with the Taliban. The stance of the Great powers in the region like Russia, China, and Iran with respect to the Taliban is shaped by their geopolitical competition with the US.
The neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Central Asian republics particularly Uzbekistan follow a direct engagement with Taliban at the multiple levels. These were the countries that have kept their embassies open in Kabul. For instance, the Chinese diplomatic presence in Kabul has expanded and the frequency of meetings between Chinese diplomats and Taliban leadership has also increased in the last year. They have remained critical of the US for what they call irresponsible withdrawal from Afghanistan and freezing of Afghanistan Central Bank’s assets.
Despite it, the West has maintained some sort of practical engagement at a technical and procedural level with the Taliban. But they are conditioned by the public sentiments and democratic form of governance that they have domestically. The West has lost leverage on the Taliban, the only leverage which is left for them is humanitarian aid. It to me seems that the Taliban doesn’t care much about the humanitarian aid for their regime. What came out of the grand conferences of the clergies – the mullahs, mawlawis (Islamic scholars – ed.) and akhunds in Kabul and Kandahar clearly show the ideological consistency of the Taliban, who don’t care about the international global norms and well-being of the common people.
A recent case of divergence of policies of international community on the Taliban has been disagreement over the extension of the travel ban waiver at the UN.
Before the Taliban came to power last year, there were opinions that they have changed a lot since the 1990s. How true was this statement? How consolidated is the Taliban? What factions might represent an alternative to the Taliban regime?
The Taliban 2.0 narrative still persists and that is unfortunately pushed by the Western policy circles as well. For example, in an interview with BBC Radio 4, the former UK Chief of Defense Staff General Siro Nick Carter called Sirajuddin Haqqani, the warlord-terrorist member of the Taliban, a modernist. So, imagine how this kind of rhetoric is coming from a liberal democracy like Britain, calling a fundamentalist, who is responsible for numerous suicide attacks, targeting the people a modernist.
At the same time, policy analysts and media also played a very disastrous role by projecting and constructing a very benign image of the Taliban. Now, this narrative doesn’t hold when you compare it with the facts on the ground. Why? Because first of all, this hypothesis denies the fact that the Taliban are constituted of a rigid ideology, which is not amendable towards change. Either, for example, respecting the basic human rights, and freedoms, or accepting the international state system. Secondly, the Taliban as a movement is an exclusionary Pashtun militant. Their ideology is partially shaped by Pashtun tribalism and in certain cases is a kind of ethnic supremacy. For example, they are not willing to adhere to an accommodative the political system, while Afghanistan is a multiethnic, quite diverse country.
Disappointed by the Taliban’s failed governance, now, the “Taliban 2.0” narrative also proposes that we can play with the internal divisions of the Taliban. For example, “Haqqanis” are considered much more amendable, negotiable, and are called “modernists” vis-a-vis the others. I think that is also a false to categorize the Taliban into “moderate vs hardliner” or “bad vs good.” Why? Because certain factions of the Taliban might be moderate on one item, but at the same time, the same faction is quite conservative on certain other items. For example, concerning girls’ education, there might be certain factions within the Taliban, that might seem to support it. But at the same time, the same factions are quite extremist toward the rule of a woman in society and politics. They do not accept women’s engagement in politics and society as equal to men.
What are the alternatives? The Taliban themselves are not an alternative. The alternative to the Taliban is a vibrant civil society, which actively and consciously adopted political defiance against the Taliban in the last year in Afghanistan and currently, it has converted into a social movement resisting the Taliban in Kabul. For example, one of the groups who have been holding a firm ground against the Taliban in past one year are the women on the streets demanding their rights. They have come up with a very meaningful slogan that has turned into a manifesto of the women’s movement in Afghanistan – “Non, kar, Azadi” in Persian/Tajiki which means “Bread, work, and freedom.” The order of the manifesto indicates that economic agency and independence is a precondition of freedom for women. They want to have a right and access to livelihood and earn it. The Taliban denied all of these to women.
Apart from women, the other segments of civil society, although they are suppressed, have been able to hold themselves and have reinvented themselves through new networks, and connections, either those who are currently in exile or in Afghanistan. These are private universities and schools in villages and cities, which still provide education to women. Or Media, for example. Even though the Taliban has instructed the media to limit the presence of women or forced women to wear niqab and hijab, the media has still tried to hire as many women as possible into the workforce to compensate for what has happened to women.
Lastly, the resistance in the north of Afghanistan. It is young, but still, they are committed to an alternative narrative to the Taliban, and that is Afghanistan, which should be pluralistic, inclusive, and open to everyone with equal rights and citizenship and does not host Islamist extremists.
Does ISIS represent the real opposition to the Taliban?
Well, the conflict between the Taliban and ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in Central Asian countries – ed.) is a form of sectarian conflict between different fundamentalist branches of Islam. ISIS, particularly the Khorasan branch in South Central Asia is a Salafi movement, which gets aspirations from Arabian Salafism. On the other hand, the Taliban is a Deobandi South Asian movement, which is a branch of the Hanafi sect.
Although the ISIS of Khorasan branch was founded in 2015, the clash between Salafis and Wahabis and the Deobandi has been going on for a long time. They have not been able to tolerate each other. IS has been challenging the religious legitimacy of the Taliban within Islamist circles. Many of their ideologues have been targeted by Daesh of Khorasan. However, I don’t believe that the Taliban has capacity to contain the Daesh/Salafi extremism both ideationally and militarily. Simply because the Taliban is a sectarian movement, and they reinforce sectarian conflict.
Second, Daesh (a.k.a. ISIS, a terrorist organization banned in Central Asian countries – ed.) has changed its military tactic. Avoiding direct confrontation with the Taliban, they are engaging in a sort of low-intensity attack on soft targets such as Sufi madrasas, mosques and Shias, which of course, will make governance a problem for the Taliban. So far, the Taliban’s heavy handed response to contain the Daesh challenge has remained unsuccessful.
Judging from Tajikistan, drug production in Afghanistan has not decreased since the Taliban’s arrival. How would you characterize the current drug production situation in that country? Do the Taliban try to fight the drug trade?
Reports in late 2021 proved that the Taliban fighting drug cultivation and trafficking is a myth. More recent satellite imagery has shown the expansion of meth production fields and factories in southern Afghanistan. Like many other lies, the Taliban’s promise of fighting the drug is a deception.
Remember the Taliban is an amalgamation of vicious groups including drug dealers and warlords, who were engaged in the illicit economy of drugs. Now control of trafficking for the Taliban means that they should go against most of those Taliban commanders, who were doing this business. This will be a challenge because alienating some of these commanders who were engaged in the illicit economy would render splinters within the network, creating further fragmentation within the Taliban. Probably they will turn against the Taliban. So, the Taliban are cautious.
Secondly, the Taliban government is facing sanctions and is struggling in terms of revenue. For them, drug revenue was one source. Thirdly, they have to find an alternative livelihood for most of the farmers. As Afghanistan is facing drought, and climate change, alternative crops such as wheat fail, and the Taliban is not in a capacity to present livelihood for the people.
So, the Taliban will not be able to eradicate drug cultivation or bring it down to zero in a near future. They were also trying to follow this dual policy while the leadership – mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada gave a fatwah (a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a Islamic jurist, scholar – ed.) against drugs, but in terms of implementation the Taliban commanders, who are implementing this fatwah are following a very cautious approach, allowing it in certain areas.
What are the specifics and common features of the Central Asian countries approaches to the Taliban regime? In what way and in what aspects does the situation in Afghanistan affect the CA countries, and their foreign and domestic policies?
Central Asian countries’ engagement with the Taliban is primarily driven by two factors. Number one is the containment of an emerging Islamist threat coming from Afghanistan and particularly for Daesh or ISIS of Khorasan. But apart from IS, there are Central Asian Islamist outlets, which are hosted by the Taliban. For example, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, East Turkestan’s Islamic Movement, and the Tajik militants, Jamaat Ansarullah are also hosted by the Taliban. One of the key concerns of Central Asia is to contain these jihadists. Of the key demands of Central Asian countries was to hand over all of these militants to their own countries. Now Taliban has not delivered much on that. They considered most of these militants as refugees, not terrorists.
Concerning demands from Uzbekistan and China, they only have changed the place of the Uzbek and Uyghur militants, from the provinces neighbouring Uzbekistan and China to other provinces. At the same time, the Taliban are strategically using these militants as leverage against the Central Asian republics to negotiate and pressurize them. For example, their demand would be, of course, recognition.
The second factor, which drives the Central Asian relationship with Afghanistan is also a kind of strategic competition between each of these countries, for example, the rivalry between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. While Uzbekistan is now endorsing and supporting to stabilisation of the Taliban Islamist regime, Tajikistan is hosting the Tajik resistance against the Taliban. Of course, some analysts may also mark Uzbekistan’s approach to the Taliban by economic factors as Uzbekistan wants to connect with South Asia. Uzbekistan authorities count on the Taliban to stabilize Afghanistan in order to expand the opportunity for trade not only with Afghanistan but also with South Asia. But that, to me, is a naive understanding, because the Taliban will not be able to deliver some of the key preconditions, required for expanding trade and investment.
How long do you think the Taliban can stay in power? Are there any preconditions for a change of power?
The literature on peace studies indicates that a durable peace under an insurgent military victory is only possible if the insurgent government is able to prevent the failure of peace, at least in the very first four years of its rule. Now Taliban has failed to preserve peace in their first year because a number of resistance movements have emerged against the Taliban. The Taliban are not just opposed and challenged peacefully by social movements, but also militarily by the armed resistance. That means the Taliban are not able to consolidate their regime.
The Taliban model of governance is not suitable and sustainable for a multicultural and multinational country like Afghanistan. Instead of stability, the Taliban sow more seeds of chaos and instability. The more the Taliban suppress the people, the more the resistance will be empowered. The Taliban’s religious extremism and sectarianism have alienated common Muslims who do not follow Taliban’s brand of Islam. Their Pashtun supremacy has already alienated the Tajiks, Hazaras and other non-Pashtuns. The first year of their rule has further exposed the weaknesses and challenges of the Taliban rule. With the mass exodus of technical experts in governance, the Taliban are far more ignorant to manage governance. There is no doubt that the Taliban will end. It is just a matter of time.