Latest news with #TalibanRegime
News.com.au
4 days ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
Afghanistan under the Taliban: Four years on
COMMENT As the Taliban celebrate their fourth-year reign of terror in Afghanistan, the country suffers from an unprecedented episode of political, social, cultural and economic crises in its modern history. The terrorist group has set back Afghanistan by decades in the name of a self-centred brand of Islam that does not exist anywhere else in the Muslim world. The country today is at the bottom of all human development and living conditions indices. The Afghanistan tragedy is man-made and largely an outcome of betrayal by its own leaders and foreign powers As an ethno-tribal and fragile Muslim country, situated in a zone of regional and major power rivalries, the country has historically been vulnerable to internal conflicts and outside interventions. But it had never experienced what struck it during the first round of the Taliban rule from 1996 to the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States, orchestrated from Afghanistan. The United States' retaliatory intervention and toppling of the Taliban regime, with a promise not to allow Afghanistan to become a terrorism hub again, brought a sigh of relief. However, as detailed in my book How to Lose a War, the US, backed by its allies including Australia, failed miserably, just as the Soviet Union had in its occupation of the country in the 1980s. The US lacked an appropriate strategy grounded in a clear understanding of Afghanistan's complexities and those of its region, which also thwarted its efforts to secure effective and reliable Afghan governments. After two decades of a very costly intervention, the US bowed out. Its protégé government in Kabul disintegrated, with President Ashraf Ghani fleeing to the United Arab Emirates, and the Taliban re-assumed power in mid-August 2021. Taliban 2.0 was expected to be softer and gentler than that of the group's previous exercise of power. But to the contrary, it has proved to be more brutal, tribal, exclusionary, and misogynistic. Women and girls have been stripped of all their rights and virtually caged. The degree of political and social freedoms as well as social and economic development that occurred under the US aegis have now totally been reversed. According to various United Nations agencies' reports, hunger, starvation, malnutrition, child mortality, death from curable diseases, girls' and women's suicide, and summary execution of many who worked for the previous government as well as the US and allies, have become rampant across the country. More than half of the population live off foreign handouts from a few international humanitarian organisations under the strict watch of the Taliban who ensure a cut for themselves. The Taliban is led by a self-styled supremo, Hibatulla Akhunzada, who presides in the southern city of Kandahar – the birthplace of the group – and is not publicly seen. He is under an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Akhunzada and his cohort do not believe in any form of political pluralism or participatory government or any international legal and humanitarian laws. They have instituted a system of sharia (Islamic law) based on their version, which is not approved by the respected centres of Islamic studies and organisations in the Muslim domain. They have turned educational institutions into all-male jihadi madrassas to serve their ideological and political standing. Many school age children are trained as soldiers and recruited for suicide bombings. The Taliban have remained totally impervious to international criticism and demands for change. The Taliban are well armed, courtesy of the $7.8 billion worth of weapons left behind by the US and allied forces. They are the first terror group in history also to possess an air force. As reported by the UN, Afghanistan has once again become a sanctuary and breeding ground for various violent extremist groups, most importantly al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K), which have been, with the Taliban's support, responsible for many terrorist acts in the region and beyond. Yet, despite lacking national and international legitimacy, with only Russia according their government formal recognition, the Taliban keep consolidating their rule. This is so for several reasons. Chief amongst them are the regional and global geopolitical rivalries that are played out in Afghanistan. The country's neighbours have increasingly found it expedient to deal with the Taliban in pursuit of conflicting interests or to prevent the group from spreading its jihadi version of Islam into their countries. They include more prominently Pakistan, Iran and Uzbekistan. Even the Qatar-UAE competition has made a footprint in Afghanistan with both seeking to influence the Taliban, though at different levels. A similar dictum has motivated major powers in the context of US-China and US-Russia rivalry. These actors also want to benefit from trade with Afghanistan and the country's mineral deposits, including coal, iron, copper, and lithium. China has moved in a big way and made lucrative deals with the Taliban to exploit such resources as oil and copper. Russia has been very accommodating of the Taliban, and the US has closely interacted with the group. Washington has held regular meetings with the Taliban in Doha and allowed, though indirectly, $40 million from its humanitarian aid to end up in the Taliban treasury on a weekly basis. Although the financial spin off is being reviewed by Donald Trump's administration, it nonetheless indicates Washington's concerns about China's and for that matter Russia's growing involvement in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Afghan political and armed opposition groups operating from exile have been very divided, a historical curse of Afghanistan. They have been of little or no help to a couple of brave female resistance groups inside the country. As the situation stands, the future of Afghanistan appears as bleak as its prevailing darkness. With the plight of the Palestinians and the Ukraine war dominating the world's focus, the tragedy of Afghanistan has been pushed onto the backburner. Yet, this is not to claim that the Taliban are infallible. Afghanistan has seen five distinctly different political and ideological groups rule the country one after another in the last four decades. Taliban 2.0 may well go down in the same way as a result of either internal conflict or change in the internal and external circumstances of Afghanistan, as has been the case during most of its modern history, but not soon enough for the suffering people of Afghanistan.
Forbes
12-08-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
The Fall Of Kabul And The Four Years Of Taliban Regime
August 15, 2025, marks four years of the Taliban regime, after the fall of Kabul in 2021. The four years of the Taliban regime have been marked by human rights violations on a mass scale, with women and girls and religious minorities being removed from society, piece by piece, one way or another. Women and girls are subjected to what can only be described as gender apartheid, defined as 'a system of governance, based on laws and/or policies, which imposes systematic segregation of women and men and may also systematically exclude women from public spaces and spheres.' Religious minorities, on the other hand, are subjected to religious persecution, with the Hazara facing genocidal atrocities. Against this backdrop, Russia formally recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government, and others, including China, are looking to do the same. The last four years have seen a litany of decrees being adopted by the Taliban, which resulted in women and girls being banned from education, employment, positions of power, movement, and virtually any activities outside their homes. The Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice further added and affirmed these restrictions, effectively removing women and girls from society and silencing their voices. To exacerbate the situation, the enforcement of the decrees and laws has been arbitrary, with the authorities going above and beyond the restrictive provisions, thus adding to the suffering of women and girls in the country. Among others, in July 2025, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported how the de facto authorities' monitoring of women's adherence to the hijab instruction appeared to intensify in some parts of the country. UNAMA indicated that 'Provincial de facto Departments for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice are applying the mahram requirement in ways not clearly specified by the Law on Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice or other instructions issued by the de facto Ministry.' This included reports of de facto Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice inspectors instructing health clinics, shops, markets, government offices and taxi drivers to deny services to women not accompanied by a mahram. UNAMA further reported that 'dozens of UN female national staff were subjected to explicit death threats from unidentified individuals in relation to their work with UNAMA and other UN agencies, funds and programs, requiring the UN to implement interim measures to protect their safety.' An investigation by the de facto Ministry of Interior is said to be underway. The situation of women and girls in the country is expected to further deteriorate. In August 2025, the UN Women, CARE International and other partners published a gender alert amid a surge in returnees to Afghanistan. Women and girls account for a third of returnees from Iran so far this year, and about half of those coming from Pakistan. The gender alert raised the issue that, as women and girls in Afghanistan more broadly, but also the returnees in particular, face increased risks of poverty, early marriage, violence, exploitation and unprecedented restrictions on their rights, movements and freedoms. The returnees are additionally vulnerable as they arrive with little protection and support. They often would not have the 'appropriate' clothes or hijab to wear, no food to eat, no contact number and no relatives to stay with. Those traveling without a mahram – a male guardian – face particular risks. The UN also reported cases of extortion, harassment and threats of violence at border crossings. However, as the U.N. warns, the real challenge is still ahead, as millions of others are to be returned to Afghanistan, adding to some 22.9 million people – close to half the population - in need of humanitarian assistance. Four years of the Taliban in power had a devastating effect on religious minorities in the country. Some of the smallest minorities were evacuated as the Taliban was taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, with some members going underground. Larger groups, unable to be evacuated, such as the Hazara, have been subjected to years of persecution and targeted with bombings and attacks on their schools, hospitals, and Shia mosques, among others. While IS-KP claimed responsibility for most of them, the Taliban, as the de facto authorities, failed to prevent such attacks and ensure that those responsible faced justice. The serious risk faced by the community continues to be unaddressed. The four years of the Taliban regime have seen many more human rights violations affecting the Afghan society as a whole. All these violations have been reported by multiple sources, including United Nations bodies. Despite this, Russia formally recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government. In order to do so, Russia had to remove the designation of the Taliban as a terror organization. China is looking to do the same. States must be warned that recognizing the Taliban despite its sheer disregard for human rights standards, segregating and removing women from society, and accommodating the persecution of religious minorities cannot be accepted in the 21st century without making them complicit in the violations.
