Robert Kluijver, 25 August /1 September 2021

As the dust settles after the Taliban takeover of the Afghan government, diplomats, donors and aid agencies are already wondering: how will we deal with the new government? I argue here that the West should engage the Taliban for the sake of the Afghan population.

The EU has stopped its development aid, as have USAID and other major Western donors. This aid provided more than half of the Afghan government’s budget and no Western donor wants to appear to be propping up the Taliban regime. Instead, more humanitarian aid has been promised by the EU (increasing it from 50 to 200 million Euros) which it plans to disburse through the UN, to help fleeing Afghans as well as those staying in the country. Humanitarian assistance is typically disbursed through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and is therefore seen as not supporting the government. This is highly problematic as I shall argue.

Likely security cooperation between the West and the Taliban

But first, it may be useful to point out that at one level Western and regional powers are most likely already dealing with the Taliban government: anti-terrorism. There are several good reasons to believe this. First, the CIA director made a ‘secret’ visit to Kabul in the first week of Taliban rule. It was the first and for the time being only visit by a high dignitary of the USA to the new leadership in Kabul. Second, the USA’s main national security concern with Afghanistan since 9/11 has been that the country may be used for preparing terrorist attacks, but US forces withdrew quickly over the past 18 months, seemingly no longer concerned by this threat. Third, the Taliban are good at maintaining security, law and order, one of their main selling points with the Afghan population. They have not committed terrorist attacks abroad. They have no reason to accept terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan. For a few years, the Islamic State in Khorassan Province – the local branch of ISIS – was a credible rival to the Taliban, and the insurgent groups have often clashed and waged a propaganda war to attract young recruits.

Fourth, it is known that on 29 February 2020 a secret annex was signed between the USA and the Taliban, next to the official deal about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It would make good sense if the Taliban would keep secret a deal that proves they cooperate with their archenemy against other Muslims. Finally, in March 2020, shortly after the deal, the Taliban eliminated the last pocket of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. The US reportedly assisted this operation with airstrikes. The fighting had started in February as the Taliban and the US were in the final stages of negotiation in Doha.

We also know that the Chinese government has sought assurances from the Taliban that they would not support Islamist movements among the Uighur, and Russia, ever concerned by Islamic terrorism, also seems to have cordial relations with the Taliban. The Taliban stance against terrorism most likely prompted Western intelligence agencies to accept the rapid takeover of the country; it’s not sure whether they could have stopped it, but they seem not to have even tried. We must stop assuming that only the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence supports the Taliban. The director of the CIA flew to Kabul, not Islamabad. This should put in perspective the official Western government remonstrations about how the Taliban deal with the civil rights of their population; not to be cynical, but to understand that Western refusal to work with the Taliban is not monolithic, and there may be some room for maneuver.

Women’s rights: an unsurmountable hurdle?

However, it seems highly unlikely that the West will recognize the Taliban government as legitimate and agree to officially engage it. Its first move has been to freeze all funding to the Taliban. The reserves of the Afghan Central Bank are kept abroad, mostly in the US, and are off-limits to the new Taliban regime. The IMF, World Bank and other international financial institutions have joined the Western governments in announcing a full freeze of all cooperation programs with the Afghan government. The main issue is becoming women’s rights. It’s difficult to imagine how this first hurdle (of potentially many others) will be overcome.

As a side note, we must realize that the situation of women in Afghanistan was already very poor. In this culturally conservative patriarchal society, there was little space for women (see for example this Time article). There were only a few token women in high positions in Ashraf Ghani’s and Hamid Karzai’s governments. In addition, Afghan women suffer from poverty, lack of employment and other advancement opportunities, insecurity and the impunity of people with power – especially for sexual violence. Security may improve for Afghan women under Taliban rule. Certainly, perspectives for any woman desiring to rise above her traditional condition as housewife and child-raiser, or beyond her limited role in the economy, culture and politics, are worse under the Taliban. This is however a theme in which the international community could attempt to constructively engage the Taliban.

For many years the West tolerated poor conditions for Afghan women so long as the right laws were passed; it had to look good on paper. Unlike the previous government, the Taliban do not pass laws that they don’t intend to implement, and they have made it very clear that their laws will be based on (their interpretation of) sharia. This stance makes it highly unlikely that Western governments, under considerable pressure from their parliaments and civil society advocacy groups, will ever agree that Afghan women’s rights are sufficiently upheld by the Taliban government. And this is just the first hurdle. Women’s rights are part of a wider panoply of individual rights that has become a foundation of international liberal order. Taliban observance of such rights (think of LGBTQ+ rights) and cooperation with international legal regimes such as property rights, WHO pandemic guidelines etc. is equally unlikely.

The West deals easily with regimes like Saudi Arabia and other countries that organize their society through sharia instead of liberal individual rights, but only because their ruling elites are part of the international community and play by its rules; in the case of Iran we see how difficult it is for a contender regime to be accepted, even when it follows most of those rules. It is unlikely the Taliban will soon be socializing with the global elites at Davos. On the other hand, treating the Taliban like a pariah regime might have deleterious effects on security cooperation, and we may expect security services to put pressure on their governments to normalize relations. But, like Israel-Fatah relations in Palestine, such agreements may focus only on security cooperation and ignore civilian issues.

How to assist the Afghan population

The prime victim of the freeze in Western development aid, and if the Taliban regime is not permitted to establish normal relations with the rest of the world, will be the Afghan population. They have experienced international isolation and sanctions during the previous Taliban government from 1996 to 2001. The country I travelled through in 2000 was reeling under these sanctions; it seemed frozen in time, with almost no relations to the rest of the world possible for the population. Afghan morale suffered from this severance and ostracism as much as their economy. The Taliban didn’t stop foreign agencies from coming in, and the operating environment was safe; but there was almost no development aid forthcoming because no Western government wanted to be seen as supporting the Taliban. This situation is about to repeat itself now.

Humanitarian aid is not a solution. Although it seems to be independent from government structures, it is not. Providing support to a school, a hospital or an irrigation scheme is akin to supporting local authorities, and therefore also the national authorities. In a landmark ruling of 2008, the Holy Land Foundation in the USA, which channeled charity to families in Gaza through local committees that included members of Hamas, was found guilty of financing terrorism; the organization’s founders were given prison sentences of 15 to 65 years. The reasoning of the prosecutors was that by funding charitable activities the Foundation allowed Hamas to spend more on its struggle against Israel, and thus the Foundation indirectly financed terrorism. Foreign agencies therefore generally refrain from supporting populations under political control of groups designated as terrorists, or they do so very discretely; this greatly hampers any humanitarian effort. Unless, of course, Western nations delist the Taliban as terrorist group. There may be pressure from Western intelligence agencies in that direction, but there is no reason to believe this will happen in the short term.

There are many other problems with humanitarian aid, ranging from fund diversion to an international aid industry that thrives by maintaining continuous perceptions of crisis and absorbs much of the funding. The main issue, however, is that recipients don’t want charity because it is demeaning and offers neither perspectives nor solutions.

Afghans need development. Over the past twenty years the international community has invested large amounts in Afghan development (albeit only 10-20% of what was spent on military and security budgets). It is true that much development aid was ill spent or diverted by people in power, and was used for example to buy property in Dubai, leaving the Afghan economy in tatters. But Afghan state structures and infrastructure were also built up, as well as sectors of the economy, and a new generation of better-educated Afghans entered the labor market. This part of the international investment in Afghanistan, the truly promising part, should not be left to go to ruin.

We should differentiate between the Afghan state and the Taliban government. The Afghan state will remain after the Taliban have disappeared. The ‘Taliban’ civil servants I dealt with in 2000 were often trained by Soviets; those the Taliban deal with today have been trained by Westerners. The Taliban have announced in every place they took over that they wish the civil servants to continue working, because they need a functioning state apparatus. They have also asked the independent media to continue operating and announced that women (teachers, doctors, civil servants) should continue going to their jobs.

To square the circle, and support the Afghan people without being seen to support the Taliban, Western nations can work through subsidiaries. In fact, this strategy has already been announced, as the United Nations will continue to operate in Afghanistan and the EU, for one, will channel humanitarian aid through the UN. Its agencies, in turn, mostly work with Western development partners such as international NGOs, who then employ local service providers to deliver the aid. These local providers make the necessary deals with the authorities to be able to work, paying them taxes, employing them or covering their expenses. This chain of subsidiaries allows to hide the fact that Western funds ultimately support local and national Taliban authorities.

Although this is probably what will happen to the humanitarian aid effort, I could not recommend it. It is opaque, wasteful and feeds corruption. As risk management imperatives increase, the chain of subsidiaries tends to lengthen to shield donors from negative outcomes. To hide liabilities, murky deals are cut, offering opportunities for fund diversion. Only a small percentage of the original funding reaches the beneficiaries. It does not offer a good channel for development aid, which needs long-term strategies supported by both public authorities and the population to be effective. Moreover, in the eyes of Afghans the UN has become a desperately inefficient organization, full of highly paid bureaucrats who have little understanding of the country and the people they are supposed to work for, from which they are cut off by draconic security regulations. International NGOs are often in a similar situation. For a recent overview of aid in Afghanistan (from an NGO-sympathetic but still critical perspective) see Humanitarian Outcomes 2020.

Working with the Taliban

Humanitarian and development organizations that have worked in Taliban-controlled areas these past fifteen years, generally are positive about cooperation. This ODI report of 2012 mentions that Taliban authorities keep their side of agreements and are far less corrupt than government partners. Foreign organizations are careful not to publicize such positive impressions, lest they seem to be ‘supporting terrorists’ and incur reputational damage. Besides the occasional positive sound that does penetrate these self-imposed filters, such organizations continue to work in Taliban-controlled areas (instead of withdrawing) and report few incidents. They are now willing to engage the Taliban at a larger scale, making use of their presence and relations with both Taliban and local society. They offer an alternative channel to the wasteful, inefficient UN and should be taken up.

The Taliban have announced they want to establish a national government including non-Taliban forces, and have invited former opposition figures Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah and the (much hated warlord) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join a future ruling council. As to the population, it seems a silent majority wishes an end to the long war and a critical, but constructive, engagement by the international community with the new Taliban government. Unfortunately, we now mostly hear those opposing the Taliban, who hope to be evacuated to Western countries. Moreover, there are signs that sectors in the West want to arm the opposition to the Taliban that has retreated to the Panjshir valley and surrounding areas, thus launching a new cycle of conflict.

The Taliban have no issues with the development of the Afghan administration, social services, infrastructure and economy. They do object to what they see as Western-led social and cultural transformation, so there will be development sectors that have now become off-limits. But, for the long-term of Afghanistan it would be wise to engage the Taliban there where they have made positive statements (for example on maintaining independent media and allowing women to work) and increase the support to the aid agencies which are already cooperating with local authorities. A distinction should be made between the Taliban government, the national economy, and the Afghan state. We should also realize that the ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’ discourse (as Gayatri Spivak put it in ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’) has done Afghan women little good. If Western donors want to avoid funding the government, they can direct the main development effort at improving local social services and support the growth of the Afghan economy by keeping open avenues of trade and finance.

Disinvesting from Afghanistan now would be disastrous. The West only needs to spend a fraction of what was wasted in these past two decades on military operations and on keeping afloat an unpopular and highly corrupt government, but that fraction is important. It would be shameful to abandon the Afghan people at this critical juncture.