Violence and Conflict

With the current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the Afghanistan situation has flown under the mainstream media view. Prior to this, Afghanistan was at the centre of American foreign intervention for 20 years, and after the questionable withdrawal by the Biden administration, little attention has been given to the resultant situation. The Taliban, a terrorist organisation with extremist religious views, toppled the Afghan government in August 2021, and have since been imposing archaic and regressive policies on its citizens while the world has sat idly by. According to Euronews, despite the UK originally stating they will not recognise the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate as a legitimate government, it seems the anger has now plateaued, and countries are reluctantly engaging with the regime. Now, putting aside the debate that other nations have a duty to intervene, two fundamental questions arise: how did Afghanistan collapse so quickly, and what is the present situation for people remaining on this abandoned land?

An independent source for the militaristic failings comes from the February 2023 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report, titled Why the Afghan Security Forces Collapsed’. This analysed why the total $90 billion in security assistance sent to the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF) still led to complete capitulation over just 10 days in August 2021, concluding it was ultimately due to a

combination of immediate and underlying systemic factors over the 20 years. However, why was the military submission so rapid? After two U.S. Presidents ordered staged withdrawals from Afghanistan, the combined reaction of U.S goverment agencies, President administration plus the Ghani’s Taliban, was chaos. Particularly, President Trump managed to both provide ANDSF their best hope of re-capturing Taliban territory between 2017 and 2019, as well as immediately dashing this prospect by setting in motion their impending collapse in 2020.

In 2017, President Trump initiated the South Asia strategy, which saw the Department of Defence grant additional airstrike authorisations. By 2019, 7,423 airstrikes against the Taliban had occurred; the most since 2009 according to SIGAR. Unfortunately, the U.S.-Taliban agreement later signed in 2020 severely limited airstrikes, which were ANDSF’s one key advantage. What about ANDSF’s own air force? The Afghan Air Force (AAF) was estimated to be self-sufficient by 2030, but when the U.S. withdrew on-site contract maintenance in May 2021, regional airfield capabilities were curtailed severely. Furthermore, on a socio-cultural level, ANDSF were trained to mirror the U.S. military, fostering a 20-year dependency where ownership was spread within a NATO-coalition and temporary organisations were intertwined in the leadership structure (such as the Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan (CSTC-A)). Other contributory factors to the collapse include the Defence Departments oversight, masked issues of poor leadership, corruption, and sub-standard tracking of equipment and personnel, inevitably leading to the widely touted figure of $7bn of U.S. equipment being commandeered by the Taliban. In 2024, the humanitarian situation is as bleak as ever, with poverty at very high levels and the Afghan economy one of the weakest globally. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), neighbouring Pakistan has deported 400,000 Afghans who fled during the takeover. Such an influx is undoubtedly a two-pronged disaster, as migrant remittances earnt cannot be sent back and individuals struggle to find employment. Macroeconomic factors see no signs of improvement under Taliban control; a period of disinflation sets in with prices continuing to fall, leading to further unemployment and reduced income for goverment expenditure.

Additionally, the complete prohibition of cultivating opium poppy has reduced household income for thousands of citizens. The rural sector has lost an estimated $1b/year of economic activity due to halted exports, something that has pushed surviving Afghan families to the brink of starvation. It is hard to comprehend how dire the situation has become, as even before the takeover Afghanistan still ranked bottom of the Human Development Index. On a human rights level, it is widely known that women’s rights have been significantly curtailed, and this has a boomerang effect on macroeconomic factors.

Less well known is the physical security situation. From a UK viewpoint, there is no legitimacy for the Taliban government, and they know they haven’t achieved territorial control. There are ‘islands of illegitimate power’ which include attacks from the ‘Islamic State Khorasan Province,’ a branch of the ISIS terrorist group, seeking to overthrow the Taliban. Politically, governance is corrupt, inefficient, and unsustainable. However, something that is rarely touched upon by the media is the mechanics for which a policy is formulated and implemented. The Taliban have continued with the remnants of President Ghani’s govemmental structure but have dissolved several entities, including the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Parliament. Thus, the Western model of executives, legislature and judiciaries is not present, and any concept of the rule of law is based on religious morality through the Ministry of Vice and Virtue.

Overall, every element of the nation-state is in decline, and it is difficult to see at what point the rest of the world can continue to recognise Afghanistan as a functioning nation-state. It could instead be classified as a non-self-governing territory (as defined under Chapter XI of the Charter of the United Nations) due to its lack of sovereignty and territorial integrity. The fact is the Taliban administration is completely illegitimate, yet the Western world has no answer. Protecting the rights of Afghan citizens should be the main focus of non-government organisations (NGOs), and delisting the country as a nation-state should be next step for the United Nations. Only then can we save what is left of humanity in Afghanistan.