Monday, September 6, 2021

The Taliban War Against Women and Its Consequences in Afghanistan

 Number 01-2021

André Cezar Medici[i]

 

 

August 15, 2021 will go down in history as the day the Taliban men won the war against their country’s women. The women of Afghanistan were supposed to have, as allies, men and women in many countries around the world. But after 20 years of trying to ensure democratic sustainability for the country, the United States of America (US), the nations of the West and international organizations, which value gender equality as one of the main hallmarks of 21st century democracy, were forced to abandon the construction of a nation project that still deserved much international effort to consolidate.

Before retiring from the World Bank in July 2020, I dedicated about three years of my life working in several countries in the South Asia Region, and, among them, Afghanistan. Working in a country at war, for an official of international organizations, is not an easy task. Detailed practical training in security, self-defense and response to hazardous situations (SAFE) provided by the United Nations by defense professionals experienced in high-risk countries and situations of war or guerrilla warfare is generally required in areas that simulate the conditions to be experienced in these contexts.

Even with the SAFE training I conducted in the Lake Naivasha region (Kenya), our ability to move about in Afghanistan during the missions was very limited, with armored transport, armed security from the airport to the embassy and closure in the Bank Representation (limited to a small number of people) with few trips to the places where we would have meetings with representatives of government and civil society, also covered with maximum security. This condition was necessary, since during the missions, which could not extend for more than five days, the head of security of the representation - usually a military - gave us a daily overview of what was happening in Kabul, with incidents, attacks, bombings, kidnappings and rockets launched by the Taliban and other terrorist groups in the protected areas, which on some occasions hit the Bank’s Representation compound. When leaving the compound, we had to wear helmets and bulletproof vests and often, when the alarms sounded, we went to the air-raid shelters or protected areas of the Representation bunker. The same situation was repeated in embassies and other offices of international organizations, mostly in the Green Zone, an area of Kabul protected and guarded by national and international security.

In the years I have worked in the country, I have participated in the Bank’s joint effort with various multilateral institutions and bilateral cooperation offices of countries supporting the reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan. The task of our group was to support, through studies, projects, loans and mobilization of resources and consultancy, the construction of a health system that could bring better living conditions to a population in highly precarious circumstances due to the war, poverty, lack of public resources and, above all, submission of women to the extreme rules of religious fanaticism, especially in regions and cities still controlled directly or covertly by the Taliban.

This post is long and reflects, in part, what I learned in this experience, in addition to my impressions about the difficult saga of the liberation of the women of the country, whose living conditions improved in the years following the first Taliban domination between 1996 and 2001. But there was still a long way to consolidate and bring conditions of dignity, freedom, health and education that were minimally adequate for the female population of that country. The civil war in Afghanistan has been first and foremost a war against women. Nationalism and religious extremist arguments are mere pretexts for avoiding knowledge, learning and the liberation of the consciousness of the female population through better levels of education, job opportunities and autonomy, freeing them from this cruel form of slavery.

 

Afghan Women and the Sharia Rules

 

With the victory consolidated in the week of August 15th, 2021, Taliban men will be able to reinstate in the country the medieval Islamic laws of Sharia, whereby women are inferior to men and subjected to a kind of enslavement by them, and may suffer privations, discrimination and punishment without justification[ii] .

The view of traditional Sharia, exacerbated by Taliban religious practice, states that men were chosen by God to administer women’s lives. In this sense, righteous women would be those who owe them blind obedience. Many of these principles are directly written in the verses of the Qur’an, but are also found in the so-called sayings of Muhammad (A hadith). For example, according to the Qur'an, verse Q 4:34, husbands can beat their wives if they "fear disobedience" (meaning that real disobedience does not even need to occur for the beating to be justified).

The verse Q 2:282 of the Qur'an preaches that a woman’s testimony is only half that of a man, and therefore in a situation of judgement it would take the testimony of more than two women to break the testimony to the contrary of a single man. According to verses Q 4:11 and Q 4:176, a woman can inherit only half of what her brother would inherit. And in a marriage between an Islamic man and a non-Islamic woman, she would lose any right to her husband’s inheritance. According to verse Q 65:4, men can marry and have sex with women who have not yet had their first menstrual cycle, i.e., children.

Still according to the rules of Sharia law, a husband can divorce his wife simply by declaring: "I am divorced", three times in the presence of two mentally sane adult men. And even without having to justify his decision, he will retain custody of all children to the detriment of his wife. In contrast, such power is not given to the wife who can never break the marriage bond and divorce without the acceptance of the husband.

The original Sharia forbids women to rule countries at all levels[iii] and for this reason they could not be caliphs. But many Muslim countries broke this practice a few years ago, as evidenced by Benazir Bhutto’s two-term governments in Pakistan (1988-90 and 1993-96) and that of Shikha Hasina who won the elections three times and has held the position of Prime Minister of Bangladesh since 2009.

The original Sharia also allows male polygamy, that is, a man may have several wives, but in many Muslim nations this custom has been abandoned. In Afghanistan it continues to be tolerated, although it is not common, there has been a growth in this practice during the first Taliban-held government (1996-2001).

Muhammad (in one of his Hadith) asserted that women owe total obedience to men for being inferior beings, deficient in intelligence and in religion. According to him, they curse and are often ungrateful to their husbands and, for this reason, occupy almost the entire kingdom of hell. A man who is not cautious and sensible would run a serious risk of being led astray by them.

Finally, according to Sharia law, rape of women - especially enemies - is permitted and stimulated. According to verses Q 4:3, Q 4:24, Q 23:5-6, Q 70:22-30, of the Qur'an, women of the enemy can be captured in war and become slaves. Having slaves like these is allowed to men even if they are married.

Most modern Islamic countries are progressively reducing gender inequality and adapting to the principles of 21st-century democracy. But Sharia law was the legal body used by the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 and may be again at a time when the Taliban are taking over the government of the country. To understand the impact of this story on the lives and health of women in Afghanistan, it is worth looking back.

 

The Troubled History of Afghanistan: from Monarchy to the Taliban

 

Being a region of passage between East and West and between South and North, the history of Afghanistan has been going on for millennia, receiving influences from Hindus, Huns, Kushan, Persians, Greeks, Mongols, and many other nations and civilizations. The main influence - the Muslim - is also ancient and dates back to the 7th century. But the region where the country is located only was consolidated as a state in 1880[iv], along a period of several colonial wars against England.

Between 1880 and 1933 the country suffered severe turbulence due to colonial conflicts with England, regional insurrections, and border wars. In February 1919, unilateral independence of Afghanistan from England was declared by Amanullah Khan, followed by a third Anglo-Afghanistan war along 4 months. However, in August 1919, an armistice was signed and the country became progressing under Amanullah Khan, first as an Emir and after as a King, until his abdication in 1929 in favor of his Ministry of War, Muhammad Nadir Shah, who reigned Afghanistan from October 1929 until his assassination in November 1933.

Nadir Shah abandoned reforms launched by Amanullah Khan in favor of a more gradual approach to modernization. In 1933, his son, Mohamad Zahir Shah ascended to the throne and reigned until 1973, under some political instability, composing distinct and ephemeral regional and international alliances.

In 1964 he enacted a new liberal constitution that transformed the country into a bicameral parliamentary monarchy and defined the choice by a direct vote of two-thirds of the representatives of Parliament, who were previously appointed by the king. In addition, the Constitution established equality of all (men and women) in issues of rights to health and education, which would be offered by the State. It was a period of liberation and greater opportunities for women[v].

But amid accusations against the royal family involving corruption and malfeasance, and by the poor economic conditions created by the severe drought of 1971-1972, former Prime Minister Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup on July 17, 1973, abolishing the monarchy and repealing the 1964 Constitution. Daoud Khan established a republic and named himself the country’s first president and prime minister. Over the course of seven years, he tried to carry out economic and social reforms that were unsuccessful, and his new Constitution, promulgated in February 1977, also failed to contain the country’s chronic political instability[vi].

In the face of discontent and political instability, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Marxist-Leninist in nature, even a minority, led, with the support of the Soviet Union, a coup d'état in April 1978 that became known as the Saur Revolution. The coup involved heavy fighting between military and civilian groups and resulted in many deaths. Daoud Khan and his family were killed and Nur Muhammad Taraki, one of the founders of the PDPA[vii], takes power as President of the country and Secretary General of the PDPA.

The Saur Revolution was a significant event in the history of Afghanistan, marking the beginning of the current 43 years in which the country is in permanent conflict. The reforms proposed by the new government involved a profound transformation of society, especially in relation to the role of women. The PDPA was an advocate of equal rights for men and women, introducing women into political life in an articulate way. Anahita Ratebzad, an important Marxist-Leninist leader and member of the Revolutionary Council, wrote in the editorial of the New Kabul Times of 28 May 1978[viii]: "The privileges that women should have as right, are equal education, job security, health services and free time to create a healthy generation and build the future of the country ... Educating and enlightening women is now a matter of great government attention".

But the reforms proposed by the PDPA, initially well received by many who were dissatisfied with the Daoud government, resulted in disagreements between the party’s internal factions and lack of support from society. In August 1978, the discovery of a coup attempt led the government to execute and arrest several cabinet members, including General Abdul Qadir who had been the military leader of the Saur Revolution. To maintain greater internal control in the PDPA and government, Taraki appointed Hafizullah Amin[ix] as Prime Minister in March 1979.

From the outset, the PDPA government sought to maintain a moderate approach so that the reforms to be proposed were progressively assimilated. Thus (probably instructed by the Soviets themselves) the government declared that the coup was not communist, as a means to avoid animosity and gain the membership of the Islamic population in the country.

However, Amin, as a strong man in the government, did not seem to share this moderate view of reforms. Since October 1978, the government had launched measures that reached the socioeconomic tribal structure of Afghanistan, such as changing the national flag from traditional Islamic colors (black, red, and green) to a red flag similar to that of the Soviet Union. Some reforms were largely encouraged by Amin’s radicalism, such as restricting agricultural credit (the PDPA was against usury) without creating alternatives for rural producers who depended on the traditional banking system to finance their production, which led the country to a major agricultural crisis.  In a rural country based on small production, the reforms confiscated land in a disorderly manner benefiting no one and reducing food production. This led to the creation of a popular resistance that was the embryo of the mujahidin movement (term meaning engaged in Jihad) which originated in rural areas/ small villages. In addition to these measures, the government under Amin’s leadership promoted state atheism. Men were forced to shave; women were prohibited from wearing the burka and visits and activities in mosques began to be restricted.

Faced with the growing popular resistance stemming from these measures, Taraki seems to have been instructed by the Soviets to remove Amin so that the PDPA would again count on the support of the Islamic tribes in the countryside. Armed with these guidelines, Taraki tried to weaken the cabinet led by Amin by removing him from the post of Prime Minister, but Amin, with his powers and personal prestige strengthened among the military cadres of the government, reversed the situation, removing Taraki from presidential power and having him arrested and killed in September 1979.

The intra-wall communist disputes, in addition to not satisfying the Soviets, threatened to destabilize the Afghan communist regime in the face of growing Muslim resistance. Thus, in the fall of 1979, the Soviets increased their military power beyond the border. On 25 December 1979, the Soviet Army began the occupation of Afghanistan, and two days later, organized a huge military air transport to Kabul, involving about 280 aircraft and 3 divisions of almost 8,500 soldiers each. In two days, Soviet forces seized Kabul, staging an assault on the Darul Aman Presidential Palace, where elements of the Afghan army loyal to Amin opposed a fierce but brief resistance, resulting in Amin’s death.  Babrak Karmal, another founder of the PDPA exiled by Taraki in Czechoslovakia where he was collaborating with the KGB, was led by the Soviets to lead the new government of Afghanistan.

It is possible that the preference of the Soviets might have been to maintain a native allied regime, rather than the invasion of the country, but Amin’s behavior and Moscow’s reluctance to risk the Muslim threat to the communist regime led to a more drastic solution. On the other hand, the provinces of Central Asia annexed by the Soviet Union were also vulnerable to the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism and, with this, keeping Afghanistan as the trigger for an Islamic revolution could set fire to its entire "armory" of Central Asian states.

Karmal had the unconditional support of the Soviets and tried to reverse the sentiment of the population that was contrary to the PDPA. Between 1980 and 1987 the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the national flag regained its traditional Islamic colors. But the internal divisions of the PDPA led Karmal to leave the government in 1986, assuming the presidency Mohammad Najibullah that remained until 1992.

Soviet rule in the country was again one of the most troubled periods in Afghan history. Between 1979 and 1992, when the Soviet intervention ended, the Afghan government lost support and authority among the population. As occurred in the second week of August 2021, in the recent episode of the defeat of the Ashraf Ghani government by the Taliban, Afghan soldiers deserted en masse throughout the period. Muslim tribes, organized under the aegis of the mujahidin movement, subsidized with weapons and financial resources from China, United States and Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, resisted in the mountains against more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers to the bombing of their villages.  Among the distinct groups of the mujahidin movement, the one led by Ahmad Shah Massoud[x] stood out. About 5 million Afghans (almost ¼ of the country’s population) became refugees in Pakistan and Iran, from where they also received support and organized resistance, which led to the characterization of Afghanistan as the "Vietnam of the Soviets".

To top it all, the Soviet Union, disintegrating from 1986 under the aegis of Michael Gorbachev’s Glasnost, began to organize the Afghan evacuation, in the face of the high human, military and financial costs of the Mujahidin guerrilla war, the precariousness of the health infrastructure and the corrupt administration of a country that remained in tatters[xi]. The Geneva Accords led by the United Nations (UN) set the timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the return of the country to national groups. Attempts at peace agreements, led by Pakistan, also contributed to this process throughout 1987 and 1988.

A new constitution came into force in November 1987 and the name of the country returned to be Republic of Afghanistan. The Council of State was replaced by a National Assembly by which separate parties could compete freely and Mohammed Hassan Sharq, a politician not tied to the PDPA, was appointed Prime Minister. Najibullah’s presidency received new powers, albeit with its temporality limited by a seven-year term. But after the Soviet departure, Najibullah overthrew the shared government facade and removed Sharq and other non-partisan ministers from his cabinet.

As a participant and one of the architects of the international effort-coordinated eviction, Najibullah had to face the mujahidin movement without the support of the Soviets at this time. But many countries, including the United States, China, and Muslim countries, supported the mujahidin movements economically and militarily and believed that Islamic resistance could quickly retake the country and overthrow the still-existing communist regime. Faced with the facts, the Soviet Union responded returning it support to Afghanistan with a flood of military and economic supplies. Much of the military equipment belonging to the Soviet units that evacuated Eastern Europe after Glasnost was sent to Afghanistan. Soviet support amounted to more than $3 billion a year around 1990.

The period from 1987 to 1991 resulted in a fratricidal war, in which the mujahideen groups proved incapable of defeating the modern army left to the country as a legacy by the Soviets. They were unable to coordinate tactical or logistical movements and maintain the political cohesion (given the internal divergences among mujahideen groups) needed to confront the national forces during the first three years of the Soviet withdrawal. Very few areas of the country were captured or held under the rule of mujahideen groups.

Gorbachev’s departure from the Russian government and the inauguration of Boris Yeltsin in August 1991 weakened the material and financial support that the Najibullah government still received from the Soviets. Yeltsin has agreed with the United States and the UN a plan to cut back reciprocal economic and military support for both the government and the Islamic resistance, and agreed that they should push for elections in the country, weakening the support received by Najibullah, who began interacting with some of his opponents, taking advantage of the internal division of the mujahidin groups.

But the resources available to the government for this interaction, now without support from the Soviets, were limited, making it impossible to buy loyalties from these guerrilla groups. Thus, with international and popular support for the government dwindling, the fall of the Najibullah government took place on 17 April 1992 by the takeover of Kabul by the mujahidin groups. The choice of a transitional government was proposed by Benon Sevan, Secretary-General of the UN, with the aim of implementing a process of democratic elections in the country.  Sevan sought to secure a peaceful exchange of power from the interim government of Kabul, which replaced Najibullah on 18 April 1992. A transitional government, represented by the forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostam, was established but remained without a peace agreement, given that the Northern Alliance mujahidin group, led by Massoud, was in favor of policies contrary to fundamentalist practices, supporting work and education of women, in addition to the abolition of those religious customs that maintained a strong gender inequity. For these reasons, Massoud was strongly opposed by groups who wanted an Islamic state tied to the radical principles of Sharia law[xii].

Thus, the hope of a neutral and comprehensive approach to a political settlement between the different Afghan mujahidin groups has been dashed. In a week after the inauguration of the government lead by Massoud and Dostam, a new civil war began between the winning groups and the opposition militias, which lasted until 1996. Massoud was appointed Minister of Defense as well as the main military commander of the Afghan government during the 1992-1996 civil war. His militia fought to defend Kabul against other militias led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other warlords and also subsequently against Taliban forces[xiii], who besieged the capital in January 1995, after the city saw fierce fighting with the death of at least 60,000 civilians, forcing it, with its troops, to take refuge in areas controlled by its political and military leadership.

Massoud was opposed to the Taliban on gender issues. Throughout the troubled period of civil war that marked his administration in the areas dominated by his militias, women and girls were not required to wear the Afghan burqa. They could work and attend schools. Even though it was a time of war, women’s schools were open in these localities. In at least two known cases, Massoud personally intervened against forced marriages so that women would make their own choices. In September 2000, Massoud signed a Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women, drafted by women’s liberation groups. The declaration established gender equality before the law and women’s right to political participation, education, work, freedom of movement and expression[xiv].

The Taliban, as a Sunni political-religious group, emerged in 1994 and grew rapidly due to its radical religious appeal and its authoritarian and repressive action against the customs inherited from the secular and anti-Islamic government led by the Soviet Union. Supported by international resources, especially from Pakistan[xv] and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996 and ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, led by the Supreme Council President and founder of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar[xvi]. The Taliban government, known for its Islamic radicalism, has suffered a reduction in its international support, although countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have officially recognized and supported it, in some cases, clandestinely.

With a radical political regime, driven by nonsense religious behaviors, and steel fists, the Taliban leadership imposed strict Islamic edicts, denying women the right to work and education, imprisoning them at home or forcing them to wear traditional garments that sullied their comfort and self-esteem. During the period of Taliban rule (1996-2001), women were punished for their transgressions with lashes, amputations and executions[xvii]. Punishments and executions for those who broke their rules were carried out in public as a way to spread terror and ensure respect for the rules imposed, seeking to avoid collective actions that weakened the processes of female oppression linked to the regime.

During their government between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban "forced Afghan women out of the public eye completely," according to writer Ahmed Rashid. Based on their particularly conservative interpretation of Islamic practice, the Taliban banned women from working and attending school after the age of eight. They were forbidden to appear in public without the presence of a male blood relative and without wearing a burqa. Women accused of breaking these or other restrictions have suffered severe corporal or capital punishment, often in public, bringing humiliation and leading a large part of this women’s population to a high incidence of mental disorders[xviii].

The Taliban also harbored jihad and anti-Western extremist movements, such as the al-Qaeda group, established in 1988, but whose origins date back to 1979, when Osama Bin Laden moved temporarily to Afghanistan before the invasion of the country by the Soviet Union[xix]. Osama bin Laden, with strong ties to other radical Islamic groups throughout the Middle East, has helped organize mujahidin resistance in Afghanistan since that time. 

With the Taliban government established in 1996, Osama Bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan, where he established his headquarters there. Al-Qaeda, previously local and hierarchically organized, has transformed itself into an international movement, with the headquarters and safe haven in Afghanistan, from where, through international franchising and militants scattered in various countries, organized and financed terrorist operations against the West in the name of jihad.

 

The United States and the international collaboration against the Taliban in Afghanistan

 

So far, we haven’t gone into detail about the US’s relationship with Afghanistan. Going back to the 1970s, it can be seen that the US was slow to respond to the Saur Revolution that placed Afghanistan within the direct sphere of Soviet influence. President Jimmy Carter was troubled by the assassination of Ambassador Adolph Dubs in Kabul (February 1979), and although there is no evidence, it may not have been a mere coincidence that Bin Laden arrival in Afghanistan and Dubs[xx] assassination happened during same year. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a few months later (December 1979) aroused American suspicions that there was a major Soviet strategy aimed at occupying a port in the Indian Ocean and controlling the flow of oil into the Persian Gulf.

All these factors led the US government to support the mujahidin Islamic groups of resistance to the Soviet occupation. In 1980 the Carter administration allocated $50 million to mujahideen groups and this support grew during the Reagan administration. In 1985, allocated resources amounted to $250 million, with Saudi Arabia contributing with resources in equal proportions, but not to the same mujahidin groups. The US, in particular, trained and supported Massoud-led mujahideen forces, which also included donating anti-missile weaponry and training for its use. These factors were crucial in the weakening of Soviet positions and in the victory of the resistance groups.

After the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1992, a period of civil war began between Massoud’s forces and the Sunni mujahidin resistance groups, which from 1994 were led by the Taliban. Between 1994 and 1996, domestic support for the Taliban was the result of a mystique about the Taliban’s acts of heroism in defending their religion among rural villages that grew as a gunfire and generated a massive recruitment of young converts to jihad in support of their ranks.

On the other hand, withdrawing the Soviet troops, the George Bush (father) government stopped allocating funds to the militias of Afghanistan, policy that was continued to the beginning of the government of President Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, continued to donate nearly $400 million annually to the Afghan mujahideen who resisted Massoud, especially from 1994 when the Taliban movement was established[xxi]. It also stands out the support given by Pakistan, which, by having large swathes of its territory and border population with a Sunni majority, speaking the same language (Pashtun), had strong ethnic and religious identities with the Taliban.

The lack of financial support from the United States to Massoud’s forces between 1992 and 1996 was a major tactical error of the Americans. The overthrow of Massoud and the rise of the Taliban to the Government of Afghanistan in 1996, with its broad permissiveness to al-Qaeda terrorist actions in the country, represented a new challenge for the US. In 1996 Osama Bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, bringing with him about 2,000 well-trained, loyal al-Qaeda militants. From there, he commanded several international terrorism actions planned by al-Qaeda, which aroused the concern of US intelligence agencies and redirected the country again to a less neutral and more cautious foreign policy towards Afghanistan.  A modest return to US funding of some of the North Alliance’s resistance operations under Massoud’s leadership occurred, especially from 1998 after terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda against US targets. The interest in collaborating with Massoud to track down and eliminate al-Qaeda has become essential to new foreign policy objectives, but this would require far more resources, tactics and training than those transferred by US intelligence-American to the North Alliance until that moment.

Among the terrorist acts carried out by Al-Qaeda are the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998[xxii]. These attacks led the US to enact international legal sanctions against the Taliban government, with the support of the UN Security Council. President Bill Clinton, after the attacks on US embassies, went on to demand from the Taliban government the capture and extradition of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but never received a positive response. Other terrorist acts followed, such as attacks on vessels USS The Sullivans (January 2000), and USS Cole (October 2000), culminating in the set of actions that resulted in the overthrow of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City and the attack on the Pentagon in Virginia State (September 11, 2001) with over 3,000 lives lost and estimated financial losses of over $1 trillion.

Massoud’s death occurred on 9 September 2001, two days before the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, which marked the tragic 11 September that year, considered a watershed in the course of world history. Massoud had warned the European Parliament months earlier that al-Qaeda was planning a terrorist attack of gigantic proportions on US soil, which showed the capillarity of the information system he had, but certainly US intelligence did not consider the issue with the seriousness that should have been given.

The US war against Afghanistan begins following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and is urgently authorized by Congress on September 18, 2001. At that time, the Gallup Institute conducted an international opinion poll in 37 countries, 34 of which were in favor of bringing legal sanctions to the country that would lead to the capture and extradition of al-Qaeda members responsible for the attack[xxiii] prior to the implementation of military solutions.

President George W. Bush, before attempting a military attack, reiterated the request made by his predecessor Bill Clinton for the capture and extradition of Bin Laden, which was once again denied by the Taliban government, leaving the United States the only option of declaring war on Afghanistan to carry out the capture of Bin Laden. On 7 October 2001, with the support of the British government, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom with air raids on Taliban forces, relying on Northern Alliance ground support to the North Special Forces, leading to the seizure of power and the overthrow of the Taliban government in Kabul on 12 November 2001.  Much of the Taliban and al-Qaeda have escaped across borders with Pakistan or have gone into hiding in remote mountainous areas in the country, where they have organized their resistance. In 2002, Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Oman reorganized the insurgency movement against the international forces that occupied the country.

In December 2001 the UN Security Council joined the international war effort against the Taliban by creating a security force for international assistance. At a conference held in Bonn (Germany), they chose Hamid Karzai as the leader of the transitional government that would prepare the country for democratic elections. In 2003, the war effort was commanded by the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)[xxiv]. The country was renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan after 2004, when general elections were held and confirmed, by popular vote, the continuity of Karzai as President of Afghanistan, where he remained until 2014.

Public opinion, both American and international, following the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Taliban’s refusal to accept an international legal solution, such as the capture and extradition of Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda members has come to be openly supportive of US attacks on Afghanistan. At the domestic level, opinion polls conducted in October 2001 showed that 88% of Americans were in favor of military action by US troops.  At the international level, research conducted by the IPSOS-Reid Institute between November and December of the same year indicated that the majority of the population of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom supported the Taliban air strikes conducted by the USA at the end of 2001, although the majority of the population in other countries such as Turkey, Spain, China and Argentina disapproved of it.

The US and international forces war against the Taliban, starting in 2001 last 20 years.  It was complex, intense and prolonged, having gone beyond the borders, with the incursions carried out in countries like Pakistan. It was the longest war the Americans were involved in. According to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs of Brown University[xxv], it resulted in the deaths of approximately 71,000 civilians from its inception until April 2021 (47,000 in Afghanistan and 24,000 in Pakistan).  About 136 press professionals and 550 professionals involved in international humanitarian activities were killed. In addition, about 6,300 US military personnel (career and contractors), 1,000 Allied troops, and 78,000 Afghan soldiers and police lost their lives in the conflicts. About 84,000 Taliban fighters and other resistance groups were killed in combat. To the loss of life, we add the direct and indirect expenditures of US$2.3 trillion of the US public budget, not counting the expenditures made by allied troops, international organizations and humanitarian aid.

Another important aspect is the issue of the integrity of the Afghan government after the inauguration of Karzai and during his term as president of the country, between 2001 and 2014. Much of the international influx of external resources has been diverted by the corruption of the country’s public and military bureaucracy, making Afghanistan the second most corrupt country in the world after Somalia, in 2009, according to Transparency International data[xxvi]. This increased the international perception that the huge external funds mobilized to support the country development and for the war effort were being diverted for private enrichment. Karzai was not reappointed and Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai was elected President of the country in February 2014.

The Taliban received economic aid and veiled (sometimes military) support from countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others in the Sunni Muslim sphere. International support the Afghan government to fight the war and move on the reconstruction of the country’s governance was losing its influence and prestige in the formation of consciences that could lead Afghanistan to a Western-style democracy. According to opinion polls conducted by the BBC, the acceptance of international forces by the Afghan population fell from 87% in 2005 to 69% in 2009.

As a result of the war, Al-Qaeda moved its operations from Afghanistan to Pakistan between 2002 and 2003, settling in mountainous areas around the border and further northwest, where it joined Kashmir’s terrorist groups, with operations aimed at carrying out attacks in India. Although international efforts against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan were not as intense as in Afghanistan, this did not prevent the continuation of terrorist-free trafficking between the two countries. From Pakistan, Al-Qaeda continued to lead many terrorist attacks at the global level with the links it has established with its international terrorist network[xxvii].  But the C.I.A. and other military intelligence agencies in the United States carried out a good long-term tracking work that resulted in the attack and death of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces at the Abbottabad (Pakistan) compound on May 2, 2011, during the Barack Obama administration. As of 2014, in addition to al-Qaeda, the presence of ISIS militants has been detected, although its opposition to the Taliban[xxviii].

Even if the allied troops had substantial resources to finance the resistance war, the Taliban was still able to mobilize many resources, most of which coming from taxes on poppy production, opium trafficking and the production and sale of heroin by illegal Taliban-controlled laboratories in the country. These resources were estimated to amount to $100 and $400 million per year. The funds that financed the Taliban’s operations also came from taxes on the illegal exploitation of minerals, such as lapis lazuli and others (around US$50 million per year) and clandestine external financial for war support from countries and private sympathizers that add up to around US$500 million a year. These resources have been sufficient to finance a well-armed army of 60,000 Taliban militants[xxix].  Smuggling illegal goods across borders, especially tobacco products to Pakistan and Iran (as production and import were not taxed in Afghanistan), is another powerful source of funding for the Taliban, with funds that can reach tens of millions of dollars[xxx]. This would be one of the reasons that would make tobacco taxation one of the subjects that not only benefits the Afghan population by increasing their health condition, but also would reduce the resources of tobacco smuggling used to finance the actions of the Taliban[xxxi].

 

Social Policies and the Female Condition in Afghanistan: Precariousness, but with Advances

 

Despite the negative impacts of the war, significant improvements for the Afghan people start to be noted after the intervention of international forces in Afghanistan.  In the health sector, between 2001 and 2021, the life expectancy at birth, despite being still low, increased from 56 to 64 years. Maternal mortality rate was halved and 89% of the urban population had access to drinking water by 2021, compared with 16% in 2001. The mortality rate of children under 5 fell from 191 to 50 per 1,000 live births from 2006 to 2018, while at the same time the proportion of health units with female employees increased.

Birth deliveries assisted by qualified health professionals among the lowest-income quintile increased from 14.9% to 58.8% between 2003 and 2018. Vaccine coverage of PENTA 3 (a combination of five vaccines in one, covering poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, anemophilous influenzae type b and hepatitis B) doubled between 2002-2018 from 29% to 61% among children aged 12-23 months in the lowest income quintile[xxxii].

 

The rate of child marriage was reduced by 17% between 2001 and 2021, allowing for an increase in school attendance, especially for girls. In 1990, 34% of secondary students in Afghanistan were female. This proportion reached 17% in 2005, after years of Taliban domination, but recovered progressively until 2019, when it reached 36% again. In 1990, around 56% of primary teachers were female. However, this proportion down to 10% in 2000 under the Taliban regime. By 2019, the proportion of female primary teachers had been recovered to 36%. It is also worth noting that the proportion of girls attending vocational training courses increased from 3.6% in 2004 to 13.1% in 2019, but the participation of women in the work force is persistently low, despite having grown from 21% to 25% between 2012 and 2019.

As a result of women not being able to leave their homes to be assisted by male doctors, according the Sharia rules interpretation by the Taliban, maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan were 1450 per 100,000 live births in 2003, but this proportion was reduced to 638 in 2018. This represented a significant decrease, even considering that they are among the highest global maternal mortality rates. The percentage of pregnant women receiving at least one prenatal consultation, which reached 16% in 2004, increased to 65% in 2019.

The adolescent fertility rates, which were stationed among 161 children per 1000 adolescents aged 15 to 19 years between 1990 and 2000, began to fall, reaching 127 children in 2010 and 61 children in 2019. Contraceptive coverage is still low, but increased from 4% in 2000 to 17% in 2018.

The number of children attending school increased from 1.2 to 8.2 million between 2001 and 2013, and in the specific case of girls, increased from 50,000 in 2001 to 3.2 million in 2013. Literacy rates increased from 8% to 43% in the same period. Even so, 44% of children between the ages of 7 and 17 did not attend school in 2021.

But women’s awareness of their state of oppression, even after nearly a decade and a half of the overthrow of the Taliban, was still very low. According to World Bank data, from a survey conducted in 2016, 59% of women in the country considered that their husbands had the right to assault them if they raised their voice to them, and 67% believed their husbands could beat them if they went out home without asking permission.

Since 2001, 5.7 million refugees have returned to the country, but in 2021 it is estimated that 2.6 million refugees are still out, many of whom linked to Taliban families who immigrated to Iran or Pakistan. The civil war has made Afghanistan one of the countries with the largest internal population displacement in the world, with an estimated 500,000 being displaced each year. In the first half of 2021, it was estimated that about 200,000 people had migrated internally to escape from the Taliban-occupied regions.

Afghanistan’s economy, over the 20 years since the defeat of the Taliban in 2001, has failed to have a development project that would allow the country to improve living conditions to its population. The economy grew in the early years, causing per capita income to have grown from $149 to $642 between 2002 and 2012. However, per capita income has declined over the past 8 years, falling to $509 in 2020. The country has great growth potential, as it is an area of passage. Roads between Kabul and the Persian Gulf would facilitate the export of mineral products and, in addition, the country occupies a strategic position on the "silk route", planned to connect China and Europe by road. But no such investment has taken place in the last twenty years.

China, since 2010, has made large investments on mining and highway sectors along the country and has ambitions and potential to contribute to the stability of the country[xxxiii], but the United States has barely planned or provided similar investments.

 

The political deterioration of recent years

 

For many of these reasons, international and national public opinion, since the second half of the last decade, has opposed the continuation of the war. An opinion poll conducted in 47 countries in June 2007[xxxiv] showed that 44 of them already opposed the continuation of NATO operations in Afghanistan. As a result, between 2009 and 2011 many allied countries began to reduce troop contingents at NATO army in Afghanistan, including South Korea, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland and France.

In 2010, 60% of Democratic Party representatives in the United States voted to organize a plan to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and lobbied for a reduction in military spending on the federal budget in 2011. But even so, President Barack Obama continued to send more troops into the country. The death of Osama Bin Laden by special forces in Pakistan brought to the American population the feeling that the war was being won, but this sentiment was short-lived. In the same year, world leaders gathered in Bonn to discuss the future of the war and the process of rebuilding the country and consolidating democracy, with a timetable for troop withdrawal.

In 2014 Barack Obama declared plans to end the war and withdraw troops from Afghanistan. But the renewed attacks by the Taliban on Afghan, NATO and US national troops have prolonged the presence of the Americans in the country. With the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017, the US government began to recognize that the United States was losing the war, but considered that its objectives had already been partially achieved. He recognized the country’s frustration at continuing to lose national lives and investing public resources in an endless war, but considered that there was a need to carry out with caution a withdrawal plan not to create a power vacuum and overthrow the efforts hitherto undertaken in the country.  From 2018 to 2019 Trump opened and conducted peace talks with the Taliban leadership. Elections in Afghanistan were scheduled and postponed successively, but were held in February 2020. Ashraf Ghani was re-elected, but with only 50.6% of the vote, amid fraud contests by opposition candidates.

Political instability has increased since this time but, once Ghani was re-elected, Donald Trump attempted pacification agreements establishing his commitment to withdraw US troops by May 2021 and promising amnesty for Taliban war crimes in exchange for more lasting political stability. Trump’s agreements addressed four issues: (i) reducing violence; (ii) withdrawing foreign troops; (iii) negotiations between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan to maintain democratic stability, and; (iv) a guarantee that Afghanistan will not once again become a refuge for terrorists. The agreement was only the first step in ending the 18-year war that killed over 157,000 with costs for the United States exceeding $2 trillion.

Considering the conditions of the agreement negotiated by Donald Trump, it turns out that the only one who advanced in its fulfilment was the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country by the Joe Biden government. The other conditions that depended on the will of the Taliban have not moved forward and the violence of the Taliban has intensified over the past 18 months. The Taliban have not attempted serious talks to reach a peace agreement with the office of re-elected President Ashraf Ghani. Protests from the population and attacks from the Taliban have continued against a weak and demoralized government[xxxv], and there has been inadequate monitoring by both the US government and the Afghan authorities, to take concrete steps to ensure that the Taliban fulfilled their part of the agreement.  But even so, the Donald Trump government transferred to his successor the commitment to withdraw the troops in May 2021.

Joe Biden, once elected at the end of 2020, reaffirmed on April 14st, 2021 that he would maintain the commitments of full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan before September 11 of the same year, initiating, on May 1st the progressive withdrawal of military personnel from the country. On 6th July, the largest US air base in Afghanistan (Bagram Airfield) was evacuated. However, the Taliban did not respect the peace agreement negotiations, as some analysts expected, and in August the government of several provincial capitals began to fall into the hands of the Taliban, while the guerrillas' encirclement of the capital Kabul increased.  On August 15th, 2021, President Ashraf Ghani left the country on the grounds that he wanted to avoid a bloodbath before the Taliban guerrilla groups took Kabul. Part of the Afghan 300 thousand equipped and trained national army and its special forces (more than three times the size of the Taliban troops) were disbanded, either by desertion or by voluntary incorporation into the Taliban cadres.

Joe Biden, even before running for president, had always been in favor of the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and, even keeping the Donald Trump’s commitments to the Taliban, he was also following his own instincts and convictions. But he was surprised by the rapid takeover of the country by the Taliban, who would no longer respect the democratic rules established in the country. The American population also had an interest in the withdrawal of troops, but did not expect the country to be delivered so quickly into the hands of the Taliban, leaving the US, other countries and the allies who worked in the process of rebuilding the country in a precarious situation, without a consistent plan for its withdrawal from the country.

This situation increases the risk that the last of Donald Trump’s commitments to the peace agreements with the Taliban - preventing the country from becoming a refuge for terrorists again - will not be fulfilled. Further terrorist attacks by the presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda may return, as terrorist groups will surely have more security to host their operations in Afghanistan. And the main element of this tragedy could be the reversal of the gains and achievements of the female population over the last 20 years.

The latest news and footage from the seizure of Kabul, the attempted flight of thousands of people from the country, the violence imposed by the Taliban around Kabul Airport, the difficulty of the US government on planning an executing a peaceful and risk-free exit and the ISIS-K terrorist attacks killing 13 American troops and thousands of nationals from Afghanistan are just a taste of what could happen in the coming years in the country under the disorderly and undemocratic rule of the Taliban. And despite statements by local leaders that they will respect women’s rights and opponents, recent practices do not seem to demonstrate this. As the Americans and the West lose interest in continuing to invest in political reforms in Afghanistan, the Taliban may embrace economic agreements with China and the Sunni Arab countries without receiving political pressure from these partners to re-establish either democracy or gender equality.

 

END NOTES



[i] This article was originally published in Portuguese in the blog “Monitor de Saúde”, Edition 122, Year 16, August 22nd, 2021. I would express my gratitude to Camila Medici (my daughter) to the incentive on publishing this post in English and to her contributions in the review and translation of the original text. The original link of this article is https://monitordesaude.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-guerra-dos-talibas-contra-as-mulheres.html

 [ii] Al-Manteeqi (2016) “A Woman Under Sharia: 8 Reasons Why Islamic Law Endangers Women: An Essential, scholarly comparison of the Rights of Women under Sharia and in the West", September 6, 2016 – Link:  https://counterjihad.com/women

 [iii] Muhammad, upon hearing the news that the people of Persia had made Khosrau’s daughter their queen, declared: "Never a nation that makes a woman its ruler shall succeed".

 [iv] The history of Afghanistan as a state began in 1880 with its establishment as an English protectorate following the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. However, the Independence Day in the country is considered August 21st, 1919 when was signed an Anglo-Afghan Treaty and the country unbound from the protectorate status. The treaty granted a complete neutral relation between Afghanistan and Britain.

 [v] Details of this part of history can be seen in Rubin, M. (2002), “Who Is Responsible for the Taliban?” Article published by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington DC, Mars 1, 2002.

 [vi] Furthermore, Daoud was convinced that closer ties and military support from the Soviet Union would allow Afghanistan to take control of the Pashtun lands in northwestern Pakistan. However, Daoud was also ostensibly committed to an explicit policy of no apparent alignment with the Soviets and was uneasy by Soviet attempts to dictate Afghanistan’s foreign policy. As a result, relations between the two countries deteriorated.

 [vii]Since the 1960s the PDPA has been a party divided into several factions, the Khalk faction (dominated by Taraki) and the Parshami faction (dominated by Babrak Kharmal) being the main ones. But although the Parshami faction of the PDPA supported Daoud’s coup, their representatives were betrayed and began to be persecuted. In 1978, prominent members of this faction were assassinated by the government and with this, PDPA leaders feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate all of them, especially as most had already been arrested by the government shortly after the coup. However, several PDPA military officers managed to remain free and thus organize a military coup in 1978.

 [ix] Also enrolled as member of the Khalk’s faction.

 [x] Ahmad Shah Massoud was a mujahidin leader, politician and guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989. Between 1992 and 1996 he led the government, especially his military wing, against rival militias. But after the Taliban seized power, he took refuge in the mountains and reorganized his militias, returning to be the main commander against the Taliban government, until his assassination by al-Qaeda forces in 2001.

 [xi] About 15,000 Soviets were killed and 54,000 were mutilated by the guerrillas as a result of injuries or illness. The hospitalization rate among the Soviet military was high, as 470,000 were hospitalized. At least 67% of the Soviets who served in Afghanistan needed hospitalization for injuries from accidents and communicable diseases. Scarcity of drinking water, unhygienic field practices, exposure to pests and communicable diseases, unbalanced food rations, as well as dependence on locally purchased items produced without acceptable hygiene rules, were the high frequent health risks.

 [xii] Originally, Massoud was a Sunni Hanafi member. When he was a teenager, the Islamic movement with ideological ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, mentored his first steps on the jihad. However, Massoud wanted people to choose their government and believed that his is the way for an independent prosperous Afghanistan, living in peace with its neighbours.

 [xiii] The Taliban emerged as a movement in Afghanistan in 1994, but their ideology dates back to the history of Islam in India during the English domination of the country. In response to British oppression, the Islamic community opened a school in 1866, by former students of the Delhi Madrasa, in Deoband, with the aim of indoctrinating young Muslims with traditional Islamic values and generating among them intense hatred against the British and all foreigners with non-Islamic influences. The normal length of studies was ten years and their graduates would be well versed in the Qur'an and recognized in their communities of origin as mullahs.  From the beginning, Deoband’s school made a distinction between "revealed" or sacred knowledge of Islam and "human" or secular knowledge. The school ruled out any learning that was not directly Islamic by rejecting being tolerant of other religious traditions such as India’s Hinduism and the Christianity of British missionaries, prohibiting Western-style education and the study of any subjects not directly related to the Qur'an. According to the school, Islam needed to be purified of these strange elements and live the pure Islamic tradition and for this they embraced the Taqlid (acceptance of the old interpretations) and rejected the Ijtihad (reinterpretation of the Islamic precepts to accommodate the times of change).  The Deoband philosophy (adopted by the Taliban) uses the prohibition of behaviors that can lead to sin in a preventive way. For example, the fact that a woman does not cover herself completely in public can lead to immediate immorality and, to prevent, this immoral act it is not allowed. The same reasoning leads to the prohibition of women having medical treatment, since physical and touch tests could lead to the doctor to have immoral thinking and this, by definition, makes the medical care of women by men a prohibited practice. Another principle says that what is "honorable" must take precedence over what is "permitted". For example, when one person is insulted by another, it is "permissible" for the insulted person to take the life of the other, but the "honorable" thing to do is to forgive.  The big discussion is to define what is "honorable" in Taliban thought, given that often ethnic and tribal norms become factors in deciding what is "allowed" and what is "honorable" in each village or locality. As it is practically impossible to separate, which is an "Islamic" value from what is a "tribal" value, the purist religious positions and practices of the Taliban place themselves in conflict all the time, not only in relation to the West, but also among the Afghan tribes, Islamic regions and ethnicities, making religious conflicts permanent and endless. More details on the relationship between the Taliban and Deoband ideology can be found at: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2001/Deobandi_Islam.pdf

 [xiv] Detailed information can be found in Grad, Marcela (2009) "Massoud: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Afghan Leader” (March 1, 2009 ed.). Webster University Press.

 [xv] Pakistan supported the Taliban against the resistance forces represented by the Northern Alliance under Massoud’s leadership. According to Rubin (2002), Pakistan, despite officially denying any support to the Taliban, even provided up to 5,000 recruits to support the Taliban against Massoud’s forces during the period 1996-2001.

 [xvi] Mullah Mohamed Omar, supreme leader of the Taliban, died in 2013 from tuberculosis. But his death was only disclosed two years later, in 2015, succeeding him in this leadership the Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.

 [xvii]  Relevant information in this regard has been collected in a US Department of State document entitled "Report on the Taliban War Against Women", which can be accessed at: https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/6185.htm

 [xviii] United States Congress, "Afghan Women and Girls: Status and Congressional Action" in "In Focus - Congressional Research Service", Updated in August 12, 2021, Link: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11646

 [xix] As a terrorist group, Al-Qaeda has always prioritized the disruption of Western dominant societies - particularly the United States - as a way to make room for radical Islam. Among the terrorist actions carried out by al-Qaeda, before the transfer of its headquarters to Afghanistan in 1996, are the attempted attack on the Hotel Gold Mohur in Yemen (December 1992) the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York (February 1993), and the explosion of establishments in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (February 1995), where the US army was training the Saudi police.

 [xx] Adolph Dubs had been appointed US ambassador to Afghanistan months after the coup known as the Sour Revolution in 1978, with Soviet support. While driving from the embassy to his residence on February 14, 1979 (the same day that Iranian terrorists attacked the US embassy in Tehran), his car was intercepted by four terrorists who kidnapped and drove him to the Serena Hotel in Kabul. The kidnappers demanded that Dubs intervene for the release of Islamic extremists who were imprisoned by the Taraki government, but the Afghan police, even against the guidelines of the US embassy that demanded caution, decided to take up negotiations with the terrorists and ended up rushing in, inadvertently invading the Serena Hotel, which led to the kidnappers murdering the ambassador before they were arrested.  Afghan police investigations into the case never came to light for the Americans and were never completed, which led the Jimmy Carter government to revolt at the Afghan government’s ineptitude and lack of cooperation from the Soviets. For this reason, US foreign aid and support to Afghanistan was reduced and was extinguished when the Soviet Union intervened in the country in December 1979.

 [xxi] See Rubin (2002).

 [xxii] Al-Qaeda is responsible for a large number of terrorist actions prior to this period, notably its participation in the Somali war in 1991, in Afghanistan’s civil war between 1992-1996, insurgencies in Yemen in 1996 and the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance between 1996 and 2001.

 [xxiii] According to this survey, the only three countries in which public opinion was in favor of a military intervention in Afghanistan, before attempting legal solutions, were the United States, Israel and India.

[xxiv] NATO is an international military agreement formed by 28 European countries, two from North America (United States and Canada) and South Korea in Asia. After NATO took command of the war, some of the US military forces became aligned under its command, but the vast majority of military troops in the country continued to be administered by the US military.

[xxvii] Among al-Qaeda’s operations after the 2001 Afghanistan invasion by the US and NATO forces, stand out the following; (i) the participation in terrorist actions in Kuwait of a US military vessel in Malaysia and Kenya (all in 2002), (ii) in North Africa (region known as Maghreb), from 2002 to the present, involving countries such as Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger and Tunisia, in Jakarta-Indonesia (2003), (iii) resistance during the Iraq war, from 2003 to 2011, (iv) terrorist actions in the North West Region of Pakistan (since 2004), Saudi Arabia and Turkey (2003), Qatar and Indonesia (2005) and the North West Caucasus (since 2009), (v) participation in the Syrian war (since 2011) and (vi) participation in Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen (since 2015).  Also noteworthy are the  in Western countries, such as the Madrid train bombing (2004), London metro bombing (2005) and Charlie Hebdo shooting in France (2015), only to mention the most known cases.

 [xxviii] ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), also known by its Arabic acronym - Daesh - was created in 1999, but when internationalized, changed its name in 2014 to Islamic State (IS). The ideology that underlies the action of this terrorist group is a hybrid of Salafism or Salafist jihadism and Sunni Islamic fundamentalism. But while claiming to adhere to Salafi theology, the IS’s positions are contrary to traditional Salafi interpretations, as well as to the positions of most Sunni law schools, and rarely advocate adherence to Islamic studies and manuals, preferring to derive their decisions based on a proper interpretation of the Qur'an and Muslim traditions, based on the writings of the radical theorist of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Sayyid Qutb.  The Muslim Brotherhood started the trend of radical political Islam in the 20th century, seeking the gradual establishment of a comprehensive Islamic system governed by sharia. Even having a presence in Afghanistan as of 2014, and like the Taliban, being led by radical Sunni followers, the IS has strong ideological differences with the Taliban and with al-Qaeda. For the IS, the main objective of jihad is to overthrow the Islamic governments that do not adopt Mohammed’s original Islam and replace them with caliphates, without prioritizing intervention in Western countries, or target the United States. See in this respect the article published on the link https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taliban-vs-isis-the-islamic-state-doomed-afghanistan-13153

 [xxix] See Feature Posted by Azami, Dawood (2018) Afghanistan: How the Taliban Make Money, BBC News, December 22, 2018, Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46554097

 [xxx] See Latif, A. & Willson, K. (2009), The Taliban and tobacco, Published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism website June 29, 2009, Link: https://www.icij.org/investigations/tobacco-underground/taliban-and-tobacco/

 [xxxii] See details of World Bank Health Group of Afghanistan projects at https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2020/10/23/delivering-strong-and-sustained-health-gains-in-afghanistan-the-sehatmandi-project. Further details can be found in the publication "Progress in the Face of Insecurity: Improving Health Outcomes in Afghanistan". Link: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/330491520002103598/pdf/123809-WPUBLIC-MARCH6-530AM-14846-WB-Afghanistan-Policy-Brief-WEB.pdf

 [xxxiii] On 18 August 2021, countries such as Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates were the first to declare that they would be able to recognize the new Taliban government.

 [xxxiv] ] The survey was conducted by the Pew Research Center, which is an independent non-partisan think-tank located in Washington DC.

 [xxxv] Despite its improvements in the Transparency International Corruption Index ranking from 2009, Afghanistan still occupied the 165th worse position among 180 countries in the population corruption perception in 2020.