Rédaction Introduction:
Last year, on August 15th, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was fall down on the basis of an international and domestic conspiracy and the Taliban ruled the entire country, they (Taliban) had a golden chance to prove themselves that they can represent this great nation and have the knowledge and art to lead the country towards prosperity and stability, but unfortunately only the war is stopped for a short period of time, it is a temporary positive change in the security situation, but the country has gone in a negative direction in all other areas.
The previous republican government:
The result of the withdrawal of the United States and NATO from Afghanistan was heartbreaking, sad and devastating for many Afghans, although the collapse of the previous republican government led and reason to the return of the Taliban, it was corrupt in different parts, but still it was a united government of America and NATO to fight against Islamist extremist groups in Afghanistan and the region, It celebrated and nurtured democratic values and tried to guarantee these values to Afghans, (Although these values were very difficult to implement so quickly and the country should have a full-fledged liberal democracy).
Certainly, the previous system was more valuable than the current successor.
Islamic Emirate of the Taliban:
The Taliban’s one-year rule, especially their treatment of girls and women, shows that the Taliban intends to turn Afghanistan towards extremism based on a narrow view of Islam، and it seems that they will not able to help the country in economic reconstruction., which had signed at the beginning of the withdrawal of foreign forces, it could not be saved.
Ideological agreement and relations with other extremists groups:
Although the Kabul attack that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was a major achievement for the intelligence and counter-terrorism communities, the presence of al-Zawahiri in the country’s capital and within a few kilometers of the presidential-place (Arg) shows that Taliban still willing to provide hiding places to international terrorist groups, the country with a population of nearly 40 million and the West has been helping them for the past 20 years is condemned to humiliation and deprivation.
Human Rights:
On the verge of completing one year of the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan, the Human Rights Watch Foundation has published a report called « A year full of disasters of the Taliban government ».
It is stated in this report that the terrible actions of the Taliban in the field of human rights and the interaction of this group with the international community have led to their isolation.
In the report of the Human Rights Watch Foundation, it is stated (that the Taliban have violated their promises in the field of human rights since taking over Afghanistan).
According to the report of the Human Rights Watch Foundation, the Taliban have imposed severe restrictions on women and the media and have arbitrarily arrested, tortured and executed opponents.
According to this report, since the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, 90 percent of the people of this country are suffering from food insecurity and millions of children have suffered from malnutrition.
One year after the rule of the Taliban, the greatest losses have been inflicted on the women of Afghanistan, thousands of women have lost their jobs, millions of girls have been prevented from going to school, and restrictions have been imposed on their presence in society, and they have been suppressed in the political arena.
During the republic government among the 249 members of the Afghan House of Representatives (Wolosi Jirga), 69 of them were women, and among the 102 representatives in the Senate, almost half of them were women.
In the previous republic government, nearly 5,000 women worked in the ranks of the Afghan Defense Forces.
Women’s teams in various fields such as football, basketball and martial arts had impressive activities in all provinces, now these activities have come to zero and their participation in sports is prohibited under the shadow of the Taliban regime.
With the arrival of the Taliban it has been implemented, preventing women from working, closing schools to female students above the sixth grade, covering the faces of female TV presenters, and imposing other restrictions on women have severely limited the public space for women in Afghanistan.
Human Disaster:
The international aid organization (World vision) in its report which is published on August threatened that the development achievements of the people of Afghanistan, which have been achieved with many problems, are in serious danger, (World Vision) has said that the situation of children in Afghanistan is more dangerous than ever, that some call it the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
The report states that this is challenging the ability of families to survive, rapidly deteriorating the public health system and ultimately endangering the rights and protections of Afghan children.
The UN’s Humanitarian Aid Coordinator (OCHA) says that around 25 million people in Afghanistan are currently living in poverty, and the organization has reported that 900,000 jobs will be out of the labor market this year.
Freedom of speech:
The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York has published a report calling for the release of journalists imprisoned by the Taliban and violence against the media. In this report, it is said that a large number of journalists left the country due to violence and harassment, and due to the restrictions and bad economic situation, a number of newspapers, radio stations and television stations have been shut down. It is stated in this report that Afghanistan had 547 media outlets before August 15 of last year, but a year later, 219 media outlets stopped their activities and 76.19% of 11,857 journalists lost their jobs.
The Reporters Without Borders organization has published a report saying that after the rule of the Taliban, Afghanistan has lost 39.59% of its media and 59.87% of journalists, especially female journalists, and three quarters of them are now unemployed. According to this organization, all this happened amid the deep economic crisis and suppression of press freedom.
Reporters Without Borders Secretary General Christophe Delor said: « Journalism was destroyed in Afghanistan last year. »
He stated: « The media and journalists are subjected to unfair regulations that limit the freedom of the media and open the way for repression and harassment.
This organization has noted that women journalists were the most affected and in 11 provinces of Afghanistan, where there were 2,756 female journalists and media workers, now only 656 are working.
The report states that accusations of « immorality or behavior contrary to society’s values » are widely used as a pretext for harassing female journalists and sending them home.
Health system:
Johanniter International Assistance has said that Afghanistan’s health system has returned to the situation 20 years ago due to the cessation of international development aid and economic isolation.
Holger Wagner the head of Janitor’s international aid program, said that 70% of people’s primary health care expenses were financed by the international community in the past years, and if it is cut off, employees’ salaries will no longer be paid, medicine and equipment will not be provided, and it will not be possible to provide health facilities.
« This poor first aid supply is now facing an unprecedentedly dramatic humanitarian situation, especially for children – if they survive – their development will be stunted, with fatal consequences for the country’s future society, » adds Wagner.
Brain Drain:
Thousands of Afghans were forced to leave their country, The majority of these Afghans are professionals, scholars of contemporary sciences and technology, and elites of Afghanistan.
According to experts of the migration; this great wave of manpower will have extremely destructive effects on the future of Afghanistan.
Abbas Kamund, the former spokesperson of the American Embassy in Kabul said that in the past 21 years of American investments in the field of human capacity development in Afghanistan, « the investments were comprehensive, extensive and very huge, maybe there is no exact figure yet, but estimates are that in the fields of military, economic, political, state building and infrastructure, the expenditures of the United States of America, including military expenditures, reached about two trillion dollars.
However, as a result of the withdrawal of international forces led by the United States from Afghanistan on August 15, 2021 and the rise of the Taliban group, thousands of educated, professional and experienced Afghans were forced to leave Afghanistan.
Taliban Foreign Relations:
Taliban has relations with several countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and China. There are many comments about the Taliban’s relationship with the above countries, especially Pakistan, I will not go there, I will only focus on China-Taliban relation.
China is one of the biggest economic powers in the region and has the capacity to help the Taliban through investment, also the Taliban were very hopeful at the beginning to use China’s influence in their international relations.
China:
A checkpoint near Karkar mine in Baghlan province was under the attack by IS-K forces at night, it’s says; all the fighters of that checkpoint were killed in this attack, but there is a possibility that these dead fighters were Uyghur who were killed by the Taliban because of their commitment to China, the next night Taliban closed the Baghlan-Kundz highway for almost half a day, and no word of that incident was released to the media.
China is worried about Muslim Uyghurs fighters who can cause rebellion in this country through the common border with Afghanistan and Central Asia, therefore it is eager to have a relationship with the Taliban, this relation is based more to watch the Taliban, China want to be make sure that there is no dangerous for them, and they can follow up the Uyghurs fighters, but whether the Taliban have really taken the actions that China wants against the Uyghurs who oppose China, It is a question?
But; in the latest case, the English section of the Voice of America published the opinion of American analysts and said that China and the Taliban are « disappointed » with each other. American analysts have considered the reason for China’s disappointment with the Taliban to be the failure to suppress Uyghur extremist groups, which the Taliban have not implemented in the past year despite repeated promises, on the contrary, the Taliban wants economic cooperation and international legitimacy from China.
With the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, the concerns of China, a country that the Taliban had counted on, have increased.
There are many reports that the Turkestan Islamic Movement, whose founders are Uyghur extremists, are based in parts of Baghlan province and are closely cooperating with the Taliban.
The Opium
Terrorism and opium have a synergistic relationship and the main source of financing, equipping and the economic structure of violent groups in the region is this lucrative business.
The Taliban had created a large network of opium trafficking in the region, the Taliban’s opium cultivation, refining and trafficking network starts from the big farmers who are known as the local opium mafia in the regions and reaches the high-ranking military commanders and political-religious leaders of this group.
Opium is considered to be one of the economic sources of financing the war in Afghanistan, which is the main arm of the Taliban’s criminal economy and plays an essential role in political instability.
Past year, Taliban commanders and leaders of this group intensified the process of opium smuggling and production and took it from the hands of local traffickers, before the Taliban’s strategy was that the military commanders cooperated with the help of local traffickers who were not members of the Taliban group, but after the occupation of Afghanistan, the middle-ranking commanders of the Taliban also limited the hands of non-Taliban traffickers and took over the circulation of opium from cultivation to trafficking, a large part of them who were engaged in war are now engaged in the cultivation and trafficking of drugs, which is very profitable.
The New York Times has reported that Molavi Yaqoub, the Minister of Defense of Taliban during his trip to Doha asked the Americans to release Bashir Noorzai, a well-known smuggler and financial supporter of the Taliban.
IS-K
Amir Khan Motaqi, Taliban’s foreign minister, said at the Tashkent meeting earlier this month that 1,800 IS-K fighters were released from Bagram and Pulcherkhi prisons when the Taliban captured Kabul.
On Thursday, 11 August the news website of the ISIS group (Amaq) claimed responsibility for the killing of Maulvi Rahimullah Haqqani, one of the senior members of the Haqqani network, by publishing a newsletter.
In this newsletter, it is said that the suicide attacker of this group bypassed all the security fortifications, reached Rahimullah Haqqani’s school and detonated his suicide vest.
ISIS has claimed that including this senior member of the Taliban group, several others were also killed in this attack.
Rahimullah Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network, was active in Pakistan before the Taliban took over Afghanistan and ran a religious school in Peshawar, after the collapse of the Afghan government, he moved his school to Kabul.
Many members of the Taliban, including the commanders and leaders of this group, are students of Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani School, which was active in Peshawar for the past 20 years.
This shows that the Taliban has failed to control IS-K attacks that have been carried out several times in the past one year, However, control of such attacks requires a network and advanced information tools, which Taliban do not have both.
In the early days of Taliban rule over Afghanistan, IS-K carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Kabul airport during the evacuation process, in which more than 200 people, including American forces, were killed and wounded, In another IS-K attack on a mosque in Kunduz, more than 50 Shia worshipers were killed and wounded, a week after the attack on Kunduz, the bloodiest terrorist attack took place in Kandahar, as a result of which about 40 people were killed and more than 70 people were injured, after that, IS-K planned and executed other bloody attacks in Mazar-i-Sharif and west of Kabul, On the 7th and 8th of Muharram, this group killed more than 90 people in Kabul.
Conclusion:
The findings of a new survey about the situation in Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban show that 92 percent of the interviewees are completely dissatisfied with the actions of the Taliban and only 8 percent of the people asked for the continuation of the Taliban’s actions.
This survey was conducted by the Afghanistan Institute of Strategic Research and Studies in 20 provinces of the country, and the questions were answered by 2000 interviewees who were between 18 and 40 years old. 64 percent of the interviewees are men and 36 percent are women.
If the Taliban still can’t wake up from the sleep of neglect and think that they can govern by what they are thinking, then this is a very difficult task. The above shortcomings should be rationally thought about. There is still time to move together with the 20th century. And the fundamental rights of the people of Afghanistan can be restored. If they want to be recognized by the world, then it is very important that legitimacy should be taken from the nation first. International legitimacy will come automatically, even now from the world and from the opponents at home. To really open the doors of dialogue and commit to building a system that is representative of all political and ethnic currents and human rights of Afghans can be given.
Warning to the international community:
Famous American Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday, August 16 (Zamri 25) that there is a possibility of another attack from Afghanistan on America and America’s allies, the source of which would be Afghanistan.
Mr. Graham added in a statement that America has not ended any war but has started another war because President Biden made a hasty decision.
Graham explained, the conditions in Afghanistan are terrible and all the work that was done in the last 20 years has been displaced because now the training camps that were in that country before September 11th are being rebuilt.
* Availability of American weapons worth billions of dollars with the Taliban:
The American Ministry of Defense or the Pentagon has said in recent statements that weapons and ammunition worth about 7 billion dollars have been left in this country while leaving Afghanistan. The source says that these weapons and ammunition also include cars, tanks and airplanes. American officials say that more than 300,000 guns and other handguns have been left from the former government to the current government. Considering that this is a fragile situation, it is necessary to help the people of Afghanistan on the one hand through human sympathy and on the other hand to take necessary steps to prevent any danger facing the world. Forty years, nations are tired of fighting and no longer want to present the war as a solution. America and the world can convince the Taliban to guarantee the basic rights of the people of Afghanistan through the countries that support the Taliban and on the basis of soft pressure. It should be done through legitimate and democratic means.
On the basis of soft pressure, the Taliban have been convinced that the basic rights of the people of Afghanistan are guaranteed and that the coming to power is done through legitimate and democratic means.
Written by Noorwali Khpalwak 21/08/2022, Paris
