Economic sanctions were imposed on the Taliban after they took power. But efforts to punish the government are hurting ordinary Afghans instead. A comment.
- Economic sanctions against the Taliban harm the population and lead to increased poverty in Afghanistan.
- The sanctions alone are not an effective means of forcing the Taliban to negotiate.
- The lifting of existing sanctions could help promote economic stability in the country.
- This article is available in German for the first time – the magazine first published it on June 29, 2023 foreign policy.
Kabul — Last month, several Republican senators passed a bill to impose tougher sanctions on the Taliban brought in. The Taliban Sanctions Act, introduced by Senator Jim Risch, requires US President Joe Biden to punish the Taliban for their terrorist activities, drug trafficking and human rights abuses. While the bill rightly highlights the Taliban’s undeniable human rights abuses, it is grossly misguided. Economic sanctions only harm the Afghan people, not the Taliban. Instead of introducing new sanctions, the existing ones should be lifted immediately.
As a child growing up under Taliban rule, I witnessed firsthand the colossal negative impact of economic sanctions and isolation on our lives. As a 5 year old I wondered if my parents would have to make the painful decision to sell one of us so the rest of us could survive.
Sanctions usually miss the declared goals – and can backfire
Ultimately, my family joined the millions of displaced Afghans who left their homes in search of a better life. We drove, walked, and rode donkeys to cross a frontier in search of food and safety. Night after night I went to bed hungry, waiting for a miracle that would end my suffering. But that miracle never came, only the war.
Having survived and studied both war and poverty, I can think of no policy more damaging to the Afghan people than economic sanctions against the Taliban.
The premise of sanctions – that they weaken the government and make it more likely to come to the negotiating table – is simply not supported by evidence. In fact, a recent study of US sanctions shows that sanctions have only been effective 13 percent of the time since 1970. In most cases, the sanctions have not only failed to achieve their stated goals, but have backfired, damaging US interests and strengthening the sanctioned organization.
Global examples show that sanctions have devastating effects
For example, 70 years of sanctions against Cuba have had a devastating impact on the lives of innocent Cubans. While the sanctions have crippled the Cuban economy and even halted life-saving medical aid to the Cuban people (including during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic), regime change – the original goal of the US sanctions – has so far not been achieved. Meanwhile, sanctions on North Korea have prompted the country to step up trade with China rather than forcing the country to bow to Washington’s demands.
The sanctions against the Taliban are no different. When the UN Security Council first imposed sanctions on the Taliban in 1999, the sanctions and resulting isolation encouraged the Taliban to work more closely with al-Qaeda. Often, as in the case of Afghanistan, sanctions are easily circumvented and particularly ineffective for the following reasons.
Sanctions in Afghanistan particularly ineffective: Reasons for failure
First, sanctions don’t work on the Taliban because of the lack of democratic accountability in Afghanistan. The totalitarian emirate not only occupies and runs the country’s public sector, which eclipses the crippled private sector, but also vehemently opposes dissent. The Taliban’s aim was neither economic prosperity nor the provision of the people; totalitarian governments have little incentive to do so. Their primary goal has always been to rule their people by force.
Under the Taliban, policy in Afghanistan is made on the basis of what a handful of powerful Taliban leaders believe Islam dictates, however erroneous those interpretations may be. Far from accountable to the country’s people, the group thrives on autocracy – and economic sanctions offer little incentive to change that.
To the author
Wazhma Sadat is Attorney and lives in Washington. She writes about foreign policy, war and poverty. She is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project.
Second, while these sanctions only target the Taliban, in practice they have contributed to significant confusion and excessive compliance by international financial institutions, both of which have hurt private sector growth. Although not associated with the Taliban, the Afghan private sector has to go through a tedious and unnecessary process to raise funds, often relying on foreign banks or the hawala system. A year after the Taliban took power in Kabul, the cost of transferring money through the hawala system rose from about 2 percent to a whopping 13 percent, leading to cash shortages and further stalling economic activity.
Since the US withdrawal in August 2021, the Afghan economy has contracted sharply and nearly 20 million Afghans are food insecure. Previous attempts to exempt humanitarian aid from imposed sanctions have done little to deal with Afghanistan’s economic crisis – with women and girls hit hardest. According to a 2022 Human Rights Watch report, “Nearly 100 percent of female-headed households faced food shortages, and 85 percent took ‘drastic measures’ to obtain food.”
Reasons why sanctions failed: Taliban sign deals with Russia and China
Not surprisingly, the Taliban are using corruption and intimidation to divert aid and food supplies from Afghanistan’s needy population to their own members and supporters. Sanctions of this kind are incapable of putting pressure on the Taliban, either globally or at home. Economic sanctions against the Taliban actually work like economic sanctions against the people of Afghanistan.
Third, sanctions against the Taliban reduce US influence while not weakening the Taliban. The sanctions are forcing the Taliban to look to gray and black markets, which they can find in neighboring countries like China, Russia and India, which have little interest in complying with US sanctions. Just a year after taking power, the Taliban struck a deal with Russia – also heavily sanctioned by the United States – to import Russian petroleum products and wheat into Afghanistan.
Similarly, earlier this year, the Taliban signed its first major international energy deal with a Chinese company, allowing the company to explore oil in the north of the country for an initial amount of $150 million a year, growing to $540 million over three years should increase. These deals signal that the Taliban have access to alternative markets outside the West, uncertain as their potential may be.
Taliban rule: West must support Afghanistan in economic crisis
Supporters of the sanctions cite their symbolic value, claiming that lifting economic sanctions on the Taliban could give the group legitimacy and further tighten its stranglehold on the country. But while the symbolic value of sanctions is theoretical at best, the human suffering is startlingly real. Poverty, terrible winters and a draconian government leave millions of Afghans with no choice but to flee the country, often risking their lives and drowning on the way.
My own relatives who still live in Afghanistan tell me that for the last two years they have walked looking down to avoid eye contact with other friends and relatives who might be too embarrassed to be seen begging for food to become. Many of these people were employed and ran small businesses not long ago, but poverty has robbed them of the sense of security and dignity they felt before the Taliban took power.
Undoubtedly, the sanctions have contributed to the suffering of the Afghan people. Rather than prevent more harm, sanctions often embolden repressive governments, allowing them to break even more rules, collaborate with other anti-democratic regimes, and support terrorist attacks. From 9/11 to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, examples of failed sanctions are countless; and sadly many more examples of children like me who grew up feeling that chronic malnutrition and poverty made life miserable for them.
Instead of imposing sanctions, the western powers must lift them and support the Afghan people in this historic and severe economic crisis.
We are currently testing machine translation. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on June 29, 2023 in “ForeignPolicy.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
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