One would be hard pressed to find someone as diametrically opposed to the Taliban’s ideology as Mahbouba Seraj.
A distinguished human-rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Seraj, 75, resides in Afghanistan and is executive director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center and manages domestic-violence shelters for women and children. And yet she has called for dialogue with the regime as her country is mired in a humanitarian crisis.
“After 18 months of brutality, it’s time to hear their side of the story too. We really have to come up with some agreement. Talks have to start with the Taliban.”
Her call for engagement with the Taliban is not despite its odious treatment of women, but because of it. Seraj is among a growing chorus of voices that have said not engaging with the Taliban is going to make life much worse for those segments of Afghan society that are suffering the most.
Last year Deborah Lyons, then head of the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), called for the international community to work directly with the Taliban. Hinting at US sanctions that had shut Afghanistan off from the global financial system, Lyons said Afghan businesses were closing, unemployment increasing and poverty rising.
Afghanistan continues to face unprecedented humanitarian, economic and climate-related challenges. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has reported that 28.8 million people, out of the 38 million population, urgently need humanitarian assistance, 17 million face acute hunger, and 60% of the population faces difficulty accessing water.
Of an estimated US$3.2 billion required to fund humanitarian assistance in 2023, UNOCHA has received just $742.3 million.
US role
The road to mitigating the Afghan people’s suffering, however, goes through Washington.
A retired Central Intelligence Agency official recently suggested the US maintain a presence in Kabul for counterterrorism purposes against Islamic State (ISIS). As one-dimensional as this suggestion is, the Taliban might welcome it, as they consider ISIS’ Afghan franchise, ISIS-Khorasan Province (ISKP), their mortal enemy.
Such an engagement could provide an opportunity for the international community to influence the regime’s policies. As some reports have pointed out, the Taliban’s oppression of women may be born of a political choice rather than ideology, or could be due to internal power struggles.
Through strategic engagement and incentives, the international community could exploit the regime’s internal divisions to benefit ordinary Afghans.
Since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, civilian casualties have continued due to violence by non-state actors, with 1,095 killed and 2,679 wounded, the UN has said. This is, however, a decrease from 2020, when there were 8,820 civilian casualties, including 3,035 deaths. The latest UN report accuses ISKP of most attacks.
Last December, ISKP claimed responsibility for an attack on a Chinese-owned hotel in Kabul, prompting China to advise its citizens to leave Afghanistan. The group has openly threatened to assassinate the leaders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and has increased recruitment propaganda in the region’s languages.
This perhaps explains why Afghanistan’s neighbors are ready to maintain working relationships with the Taliban.
Why is the US dithering? It could be a matter of imperial hubris. Historically, the US has not reacted well to strategic defeats that hinder its global influence.
Three strategic defeats of the 20th century come to mind – Vietnam, where a guerrilla army defeated a superpower; Cuba – where a communist regime in America’s back yard defeated a CIA-backed “regime change” operation; and Iran – where a popular uprising toppled a pro-US regime that upheld Iran as one of the twin pillars of Washington’s Middle East policy.
By contrast, the US has mostly showcased the Taliban’s coming to power as a tactical defeat – poorly designed reconstruction strategies and, as US President Joe Biden put it, Afghanistan’s pre-Taliban leadership are to blame.
This cynical political packaging of the fiasco ought to insulate the Biden administration from political blowback should it decide to engage with the Taliban.
Even Russia is gradually pursuing engagement with the Taliban, despite the fact that many in the Taliban leadership fought alongside the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation, a catastrophic defeat for the USSR that catalyzed its eventual disintegration.
Despite the US withdrawal, the fate of Afghans remains tied to Washington’s decisions. The Biden administration’s Afghanistan policy remains undecided, with a preference thus far for piecemeal humanitarian interventions.
Some experts have called for the US to distinguish between the Taliban regime and the Afghan state, that is, continue targeted sanctions on Taliban leaders while funding specific functions of the Afghan state, knowing full well that a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is not going to win awards for democracy or women’s rights any time soon.
With Washington focused on Ukraine and China, one hopes that if not for humanitarian reasons, then at least the mounds of mineral resources in Afghanistan may make US policymakers consider engaging with the regime.
If this improves the lives of Afghan people, particularly women and minorities, that would be a fortunate and welcome byproduct. And true to form, future American presidents may just find it politically convenient to claim they did it all for the women of Afghanistan.
This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.