Taliban Year

Afghanistan no longer hogs the limelight the way it did for months after the Taliban took over the country August 15 last year. This could probably be due to the instability that has gripped the world in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But, heart-rending scenes are being witnessed on the streets of Kabul where women and children are begging for a single loaf of bread in front of bakeries. The rest of the country is facing a similar plight as famine stares in the face. This is the only country in the world where 14 million women have been thrown out of schools, colleges and working places and virtually locked up in their homes.

Only a handful of women are being allowed to work so that health care, police and aviation security systems do not flounder. The situation demands that humanitarian aid be stepped up to prevent the country from falling into the abyss of poverty, complete lack of education for women and rule by gun-toting bigots known for their savagery.
When the Taliban returned to power last year after a gap of 20 years, none believed that they had really changed, though there was a faint glimmer of hope that they must have learnt a lesson from the brutality and mediaeval outlook for which they earned notoriety during their previous rule. The facade they maintained that they would not be as oppressive and bigoted as they had been was only because of the refusal of the international community to accord recognition to their government and the regime’s keenness to get billions of dollars frozen in banks abroad, especially in the USA.

But, barely a year later, the Taliban have proved the sceptics right. All forms of freedom of expression – a free Press and judiciary – have been muzzled. Women are banned from education and allowed to be out on the streets only when it is absolutely necessary with the condition that they can only travel with a male family escort, veiled from head to toe. For any violation of the fiat the male members of the ‘offending’ woman’s family would have to pay a heavy price. Many former employees of the overthrown regime are harassed, forced into hiding or exile.

What has shocked and shaken the international community is the treatment the Taliban regime is meting out to the womenfolk. As the UN Under-Secretary-General and Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said, it is a reflection of the character of the regime that there are “no women in the Taliban’s cabinet and no Ministry of Women’s Affairs.” This shows how women’s right to political participation has been curbed. This is having disastrous effects on the aspirations of Afghan women who have, since the fall of the first Taliban regime in 2001, become accustomed to receiving education and shaping their own destiny.
No one is in doubt that the empty promises of the new masters of Kabul were intended only to extract international recognition of their government and ensure flow of billions of dollars of the previous government’s reserves that were frozen abroad and foreign aid for building infrastructure. No country in the world, not even Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has, so far, obliged them.

The only good news from Afghanistan is, as its former President Hamid Karzai said, that the Taliban have brought an end to widespread fighting and conflict. The warlords in different regions, who during the previous regime behaved as if they were law unto themselves, are now tamed. Otherwise, for most Afghans, the first year under the Taliban’s rule has been marked by increased levels of poverty and unemployment with over one million people losing their jobs. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has warned that 97 per cent of the Afghan population could sink into poverty before the end of 2022. Incomes have dropped so much that the World Bank in April said about 37 per cent of Afghan households did not have enough money to buy food, while 33 per cent could afford food but nothing more. The global supply chain disruption and runaway food prices due to the war in Ukraine make famine in the country look like almost inevitable.

Afghanistan is fast turning out to be a failed state. This may encourage the ISIS to begin its nefarious designs there. The international community can ill afford the prospect of such an outfit taking over Afghanistan.