Even dry bread and tea – the regular diet for a large part of the population – some Afghans can no longer afford. “When I go to the bakery, I see them begging there,” said Mansour, a 32-year-old employee of an international NGO who lives in Kabul province just outside the capital, in a voice message message.
He now finds Mansour’s walk to the shopping street a sad affair: it has become much quieter in the formerly cosy, bustling eateries and cafes. “In a year, my country has changed beyond recognition, dramatically,” he says. Mansour likes to tell how it is now in Afghanistan. But for security reasons, he prefers not to do so under his full name (which is known to the editors).
Mansour’s account shows that the Taliban has great difficulty in effectively governing the country. Just like a quarter of a century ago, when the radical Muslims had also run the country for five years. “Their tasks have changed,” Martine van Bijlert, co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said by telephone. “They have to make the transition from insurgents to government and that takes a lot of energy.”
In addition, the Taliban are more divided among themselves than they appear to the outside world. The supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, referred to as emir by the Taliban, is based in Kandahar, a traditional stronghold of the Taliban. He only makes an occasional appearance. But a more pragmatic wing is mainly located in the capital Kabul, the administrative center of the country.
For example, the pragmatists would like to open secondary schools to girls again. Van Bijlert: “It is also a clear demand from society. But within a fundamentalist movement it is often difficult to openly deviate.” The hard-line supporters, apparently backed by Akhundzada, have so far been holding their ground and are impervious to pressure from abroad to reconsider this decision. “They reason: God has given us the victory, we don’t need the rest of the world,” says Van Bijlert.
The promise that girls older than twelve (year 6) could continue their education was widely reported in official statements last August. But on March 23, the day the schools were to reopen fully, girls were sent home after a few hours.
Mansour’s daughter turned two last year. He sees her future bleak: if he and his wife acquiesce to those in power, she will probably not get many opportunities, they fear.
Scattered across the country, ‘secret schools’ have sprung up for teenage girls and young women. The students, who sometimes don’t even tell family members about their attempts to continue their education, travel by detours to classrooms in secret places. They keep their school books out of sight at home, so said a girl to AFP news agency: the kitchen, the proper place for women according to strict Talibs, turned out to be the perfect hiding place for her homework.
Also check out the portraits of Afghan women made by the AFP news agency.
Obsessively separating the sexes
Over the past year, the Taliban gave free rein to their obsession with the separation of the sexes. For parks in Kabul, the re-established Ministry of Virtue Promotion has introduced men-only days and women-only days. The Fridays, when families used to go to the park together, are now purely for men. Families who played music in public for the Nowruz New Year’s Eve party last March were told that it was now banned. Women traveling must be accompanied by male relatives.
Those rules also apply to women who commute for work, says social worker Mansour from colleagues. “The new guidelines, for example, have a far-reaching effect: my employer now has to reserve money for the payment of male supervisors if women want to go into the field for our aid projects.” Even for the few international donors who still contribute, this is not an acceptable cost item. By raising barriers of this kind, it is in practice difficult for women to contribute to society, although there is no direct prohibition.
“There is control everywhere,” says Mansour. The movements of residents in Kabul are closely monitored. “It is exhausting to have to have your answer ready at every checkpoint, to account for it. Even if you’re just telling the truth.”
Shortage of specialists
The economic situation, meanwhile, has deteriorated significantly since the Taliban took power. According to United Nations estimates, some 20 million people, more than half of the Afghan population, struggle to sustain themselves.
People become ill more quickly due to a poor and one-sided diet. The health care system has largely collapsed in the past year, partly due to a lack of money. In many hospitals and clinics, after the refugee influx has started, there is a shortage of trained staff and specialized doctors. There are also insufficient medicines and several patients often have to share one bed. The number of miscarriages is increasing, partly because mothers do not get enough to eat.
Meanwhile, the suffering of the civilian population does not concern the Taliban so much. “There’s something indifferent about that,” says Van Bijlert. “Some of them say: we also suffered hunger and other hardships when we fought, while you were pretty well off at the time. Now you feel that too. Just learn to deal with it.”
The Taliban also faced an almost impossible task. About three quarters of the previous government’s budget was covered by foreign aid, which fell almost entirely after the Taliban victory (and the withdrawal of US and other Western troops) because donors refused to give money to the Taliban. . Education and health care were often paid for with aid money.
The US and other countries also frozen the approximately $9 billion in foreign assets of the Afghan Central Bank. An immoral decision, according to an international group of more than seventy economists, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. Just this week they sent US President Joe Biden a letter requesting that this money be released, now that the Afghan people are suffering so much. “As a result, the people of Afghanistan have suffered doubly for a government they had not elected,” the letter reads.
Flights also cost money
The Afghan government apparatus is not completely silent, however. For example, tax collection runs relatively smoothly. Some of the officials have stayed in Kabul and with the help of their expertise, the tax is even partially collected digitally. This is also accompanied by less corruption than under the previous government. However, due to the economic downturn, net revenues are significantly lower than before.
Despite the exodus after August 15 last year and the dismissal of officials who were considered too liberal or otherwise suspicious by the Taliban, many officials have remained in office. Even if they wanted to leave, it would be difficult for them. They lack the financial means and need a passport from the Taliban, who are not generous with it. So many continue to work, often for a rather reduced salary.
The Taliban have now partly pinned their hopes on mining, a sector that has never fully developed through decades of wars. At the moment there are really only a few coal mines, where miners (sometimes boys as young as ten years old) mine coal. But the country is also rich in minerals, including copper of excellent quality. Ten years ago, American experts estimated that there was a total of $1 billion in Afghanistan. Washington’s concern China is now in talks with the Taliban about mining contracts of this.
Another, controversial source of income is poppy cultivation, from which opium can be extracted, which in turn serves as a raw material for heroin. Afghanistan has been the world’s largest producer of this for years, and the Taliban have often turned a blind eye to it in areas they controlled in the past. This spring they formally banned poppy cultivation, but – as is often the case – no structural action has yet been taken.
How much loved the Taliban are a year after their seizure of power is hard to say. Tired of the endless insecurity caused by fighting, many Afghans welcomed the relative calm under the Taliban rule for that reason alone. Some, especially in the conservative south, also welcome the concept of a religious regime.
Van Bijlert: „New rulers are often given the benefit of the doubt. Many Afghans wanted to see how they would do it first. The previous government, with its corruption and ongoing fighting in large parts of the countryside, was not great for many people either.”
Mansour grew up in an Afghanistan where the Taliban had been ousted. He did not consciously experience their previous period of power in the 1990s. Many friends and acquaintances left shortly after the fall of Kabul last year. He is concerned about how his country will fare. “I feel lonely – not only because I miss my friends, but also because our lives here have changed so much.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 15, 2022
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