TWO YEARS OF TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN

Anjan Sarma & Kakali Das

[This article has been published in the MAHABAHU English Fortnightly – Afghan Women Issue ]

A convoluted form of Sharia law is being practiced in the country with harsh laws put in place across the entire nation.

There couldn’t be a bigger contrast to that of India in comparison to the doom and gloom that is now engulfed in Afghanistan as the Taliban marked two years since it regained power. The date for both the countries’ is the same which is 15^th of August.

The Taliban which was founded after the U.S. invasion post 9/11 are back in Afghanistan in 15 August 2021. Processions, convoys, march past on a public holiday marked the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover. Flags of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name given to the country by its new rulers fluttered around the capital Kabul.

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Convoys of Taliban, some wielding guns led to a gathering at Masood Square near the abandoned U.S Embassy building. Sounds of death to the Europeans, death to westerners resounded. The last two years of Taliban rule have wiped out gains in Afghan’s living standards as witnessed in the last two decades after the U.S invasion in 2001.

Before the Taliban Re-invasion – The History

The Taliban, a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist and predominantly Pashtun movement, controlled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. In October 2001, U.S. and allied forces invaded the country and quickly ousted the Taliban regime following its refusal to hand over terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the wake of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.

Following the U.S.-led invasion, Taliban leadership relocated to southern Afghanistan and across the border to Pakistan, from where they waged an insurgency against the Western-backed government in Kabul, Afghan national security forces, and international coalition troops.

When the U.S.-led coalition formally ended its combat mission in 2014, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) was put in charge of Afghanistan’s security; however, the forces faced significant challenges in holding territory and defending population centres. The Taliban continued to attack rural districts and carry out suicide attacks in major cities, with the ANDSF suffering heavy casualties.

The war largely remained a stalemate for nearly six years, despite a small U.S. troop increase in 2017, continuing combat missions, and a shift in U.S. military strategy to target Taliban revenue sources, which involved air strikes against drug labs and opium production sites. The Taliban briefly seized the capital of Farah Province in May 2018, and, in August 2018, it captured the capital of Ghazni Province, holding the city for nearly a week before U.S. and Afghan troops regained control.

In February 2020, after more than a year of direct negotiations, the U.S. government and the Taliban signed a peace deal, the so-called Doha Agreement, that set a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Under the agreement, the United States pledged to draw down U.S. troops to approximately 8,500 within 135 days and complete a full withdrawal within fourteen months.

In return, the Taliban pledged to prevent territory under its control from being used by terrorist groups and to enter negotiations with the Afghan government. However, no official ceasefire was put in place.

After a brief reduction in violence, the Taliban quickly resumed attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians. Direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban began months after the agreed-upon start of March 2020; however, the negotiations faced multiple delays and ultimately made little progress. Violence across Afghanistan continued in 2020 and 2021 as the United States increased air strikes and raids targeting the Taliban.

The Taliban, in turn, attacked Afghan government and ANDSF targets and made significant territorial gains.

In April 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that U.S. military forces would leave Afghanistan by September 2021. The Taliban, which had continued to capture and contest territory across the country despite ongoing peace talks with the Afghan government, ramped up attacks on ANDSF bases and outposts and began to rapidly seize more territory.

In May 2021, the U.S. military accelerated the pace of its troop withdrawal. By the end of July 2021, the United States had completed nearly 95 percent of its withdrawal, leaving just 650 troops to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

In the six months before the takeover, fighting between government forces and the Taliban caused a sharp rise in civilian casualties from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), mortars, and airstrikes. The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, known as ISKP) carried out attacks on schools and mosques, many targeting minority Hazara Shia.

After the Taliban Re-invasion

In the summer of 2021, the Taliban continued its offensive, threatening government-controlled urban areas and seizing several border crossings. In early August, the Taliban began direct assaults on multiple urban areas, including Kandahar in the south and Herat in the west. On August 6, 2021, the Taliban captured the capital of southern Nimruz Province, the first provincial capital to fall.

After that, provincial capitals began to fall in rapid succession. Within days, the Taliban captured more than ten other capitals, including Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Jalalabad in the east, leaving Kabul the only major urban area under government control.

On August 15, 2021, over two weeks before the official U.S. withdrawal deadline, Taliban fighters entered the capital. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani subsequently fled the country and the Afghan government collapsed. Later that same day, the Taliban announced they had entered the presidential palace, taken control of Kabul, and were establishing checkpoints to maintain security.

The speed of the Taliban’s territorial gains and the collapse of both the ANDSF and Afghan government surprised U.S. officials and allies—as well as, reportedly, the Taliban itself—despite earlier intelligence assessments of the situation on the ground.

Following the Taliban’s take-over on August 15, 2021, the Biden administration authorized the deployment of an additional five thousand troops to assist with the evacuation of U.S. and allied personnel, as well as thousands of Afghans who worked with the United States and were attempting to flee. On August 26, 2021, two suicide bombings outside the Kabul airport killed at least 169 Afghans and thirteen U.S. troops.

ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attacks. August 26, 2021, was the deadliest day for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since 2011. On August 31, 2021, the Pentagon announced the completion of the U.S. troop withdrawal, with remaining U.S. personnel and citizens having to rely on diplomatic channels to evacuate.

Civilian casualties across Afghanistan have remained high over the past several years. The United Nations documented a then–record high of 10,993 civilian casualties in 2018. Although 2019 saw a slight decline, civilian deaths and injuries exceeded ten thousand for the sixth year in a row, bringing the total UN-documented civilian casualties from 2009 to 2020 to more than one hundred thousand.

Despite another slight decline that year, the first half of 2021 saw a record-high number of civilian casualties as the Taliban ramped up their military offensive amid the withdrawal of international troops. In addition to the Taliban’s offensive, Afghanistan faces a threat from the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K), which has also expanded its presence to several eastern provinces, increased its activity in Kabul, and targeted civilians with suicide attacks.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, more than 120,000 Afghans were airlifted and relocated around the world, with about 76,000 arriving in the United States as of August 2022. Those remaining in the country under Taliban rule have watched the regression and reversion of any gains in liberal and democratic rights and freedoms over the last twenty years.

Harsh measures have been imposed against women citing the dictates of Sharia law despite promises of sea changes after the Taliban won. The so-called Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has barred girls from secondary schools and universities – no education beyond, no social gatherings, no entry into the salons and the beauty industry, parks and amusement centres.

Women are required to have a male-relative companion when traveling significant distances and to cover their faces in public. Music has been banned and flogging, amputations, and mass executions have been reintroduced. The recent bonfire of musical instruments in Herat says a lot about how innocuous activities like kite flying and playing music have been outlawed.

Besides, the Taliban has also made it more difficult for aid agencies to operate in Afghanistan by harassing aid workers and banning women from working for the UN. From employment to economy, industry to society, every aspect has been hit and hard with women bearing the brunt of it.

“When a girl doesn’t study, she cannot become a doctor, an engineer, a reporter and a teacher. When a girl is illiterate, her future will be ruined, her country will be undeveloped,” an Afghan teacher said.

“From my point of view, if the situation continues like this, the future will be dark and uncertain. It can cause paralysis to the half of the society.”

“Women’s lives have changed completely over the last two years; bad things are continuing to happen. We’re seeing new Taliban policies that violate women’s rights, being imposed sometimes every week,” an activist said.

Besides, Afghans are also suffering from cascading and compounding humanitarian crises and are facing the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the United Nations. An October 2022, UNDP report says that the Afghan economy has shrunk some 30 per cent since the Taliban takeover, and an estimated 700,000 jobs are gone.

Close to 90 per cent of the population has been suffering from some form of food insecurity, but the crisis made worse by the opposing critical aid by some countries and international organisations. By March 2022, 95 percent of Afghan households did not have enough to eat, and more than 3.5 million children were in need of nutrition treatment support.

By August 2022, six million people were “on the brink of famine.” Climate change, which has increased the frequency and intensity of natural disasters and extreme weather, has elevated the population’s exposure to food shortages, with searing heatwaves and flash flooding destroying crops and arable land. Afghans have also seen food prices soar as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Away from the cities, rights groups also claim that the Taliban has turned a blind eye to the farmers, where most of the country’s opium is produced. A U.N report says that a ban on opium cultivation has driven up prices and worked to the gain of big farmers; the smaller vegetable growers struggle. They have cracked down on opium production, cutting production by 80 percent, which has deprived many Afghan communities of revenue needed to purchase food.

“People have a lot of economic problems and don’t buy much of our produce. In the past for example, I used to sell 7 kilos of tomatoes for 200 Afghanis or $2.5. And now I am selling it for 80 Afghanis, which is less than a dollar. The people’s purchasing power and the economy have become weak and they can’t afford to buy our products,” a poor farmer in Afghanistan said.

Together with an overhaul in the system that reportedly ostracizes scientific temper and education and props up fundamentalist mind-sets, we have witnessed a rising exodus of Afghanistan’s finest minds. All that though remains overlooked for now, because under the rule of the Afghan, the Taliban has got law and order under its thumb, and under the circumstances, they consider this boost worthy.

“In the past, there was war and fighting, but now it is completely calm. Muslims are at peace; we are at peace. In the past, when there was fighting, there were problems and people would be killed,” a Taliban said.

A 2023 Pentagon assessment found that the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) is again using Afghanistan as a base to plan and coordinate attacks across the globe. ISIS-K has also stepped up attacks in Afghanistan, such as the killing of a deputy governor and the bombing of a mosque, as the UN claims al-Qaeda and ISIS-K are gathering strength.

The Taliban has fought back and claims to be eliminating ISIS-K, but attacks continue. However, in April 2023, Taliban forces did manage to kill one of the group’s senior leaders who orchestrated the 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport. In May, the Taliban agreed to work with Pakistan on improving security along their shared border, which militants freely traverse.

Sizing up realities two years into Taliban 2.0, despite global condemnation and local disapproval, there’s no real threat to the Taliban regime in sight. A struggling economy remains afloat. Even as the international community withholds formal recognition and a crackdown on armed groups, the Islamic State means for a better domestic security situation – the reason enough for the Taliban in Afghanistan to celebrate despite things continuing downhill.

Reference

Council on Foreign Relations
Amnesty International
Center for Constitutional Rights
United Nations

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