The United States exited from Afghanistan in August 2021, amidst the dramatic collapse of the country to the Taliban. This withdrawal was principally pushed by American national interests, nevertheless it can be inferred that The united states seeks to go after its main passions in Afghanistan and the bordering location by means of alternative signifies and mechanisms in its negotiations with the Taliban team. Nevertheless, the narratives propagated by the United States and other nations pursuing the withdrawal advise a deceptive and untrue description of occasions. In the following paragraphs, the author will take a look at two of these deceptive narratives.
The to start with deceptive narrative revolves all around the Taliban. This narrative indicates that the existing Taliban has transformed or is unique from the pre-nine/11 Taliban era in their cure of the people, which is considerably from the truth. Not incredibly, this narrative was formulated in Pakistan, but was later on disseminated by the United States, specifically via Khalilzad — the U.S. Unique Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation in the course of the Doha talks with the Taliban. Throughout the negotiations, the United States unwittingly and in a somewhat unanticipated role, assumed the situation of advocating for the Taliban, searching for to encourage the intercontinental group, primarily the European nations associated in the negotiations with the Taliban that the team experienced gone through considerable alterations. The United States eventually built major concessions to the Taliban in the Doha Agreement which was signed in between the two parties in February 2020. An agreement that paved the way for the collapse of the republic government and the return of the Taliban to electrical power in Kabul in mid-August 2021.
On the other hand, subsequent events have clearly demonstrated that the Taliban have not transformed. Indeed, the reverse has transpired, and the team has turn into far more ruthless than they ended up in the 1990s. For case in point, they have imposed limitations on girls’ training, hindered women’s participation in society, and imposed their ideology and tradition on the basic inhabitants across the state. They have also compelled people today to adhere to their traditional gown code, especially brutally enforcing stringent costume polices on gals in urban as well as rural locations, prohibiting them from appearing in public places with out masking their faces, basically mandating the sporting of Burqas or anything related. In addition, they have banned all kinds of songs other than for what aligns with their ideology and traditions.
The Taliban, on the other hand, now possesses U.S. weaponry, which has amplified their confidence and empowered the team to act with impunity. According to the New York Situations, the Taliban have been held liable for the deaths or disappearances of somewhere around 500 previous governing administration troopers and staff members inside of the 1st 6 months right after regaining electric power. Even more, the existence of Daesh (ISIS) in Afghanistan provides the Taliban with a pretext and usually means to do away with perceived threats without the need of accountability to the Afghanistan men and women, a declare they have even touted as a symbol of their victory to the intercontinental local community. In stark distinction to their to start with rule (1996-2001), the Taliban now seems to have handle around media and accessibility to modern-day technology. They exploit these tools to exert control and threaten the folks the two in and outside the house Afghanistan’s borders. More than the earlier two decades, the Taliban have incarcerated and subjected hundreds of youthful people today to torture entirely for expressing their views on social media that did not align with the Taliban’s choices.
Also, when compared to their very first rule, the Taliban now have above a thousand suicide bombers, posing a threat to both their opponents within just Afghanistan and neighboring international locations. In accordance to Bloomberg, amid a water dispute with Iran, the Taliban have deployed hundreds of suicide bombers to the border with Iran.
The second misleading narrative, propagated by Pakistani politicians immediately and used by the U.S. and quite a few other Western politicians in reaction to criticism about their conclusions associated to the existing circumstance in Afghanistan, revolves close to the characterization of Afghanistan as a classic and complicated culture. Though it is genuine that Afghanistan is a advanced and ethnically varied country, it is significant to take note that not all its citizens adhere to traditional beliefs, specifically those subscribed to by the Taliban team.
On the 1 hand, embracing custom does not equate to endorsing the ideology of the Taliban. On the other hand, it’s vital to understand that various areas of Afghanistan have their distinctive traditions and cultures. For instance, cities like Kabul, Bamyan, or Herat vary appreciably from provinces like Kandahar or Helmand, which serve as strongholds for the Taliban. Even though the Taliban may well indeed replicate the common values of rural Pashtuns, it’s vital to note that this does not encompass all Pashtuns. Even now, the question arises: why must this custom be imposed on the overall inhabitants of the country that has distinct traditions? Or a more significant concern can be lifted: really should a country be handed above to a terrorist group only mainly because of their common beliefs?
Most importantly, the main victims of the August 2021 tragedy are the young adult men and women of Afghanistan. These are people today who received their education through the existence of the international group in the country—a era that breathed the air of freedom for a few many years. They are a era that aspires and yearns to pursue their desires, make their individual alternatives, and celebrate their likely and capabilities. Regrettably, this generation is now enduring some of their darkest days, and yet, the entire world stays mainly silent. Even though the worldwide group may well have selected justifications for the older generation in Afghanistan on their decision to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban, they look to have no recourse for addressing the plight of the youthful generation.
As anyone who was born throughout the war with the previous Soviet Union, began primary education throughout the war with the Taliban, and completed significant university, bachelor’s, and master’s amount experiments in a far better situation, but all through the war with terrorism, and finally still left the nation in the next Taliban rule, I thus regard the previous two decades (2001-2021) as the ideal part of my lifetime. I also wholeheartedly thank the intercontinental local community for their twenty-calendar year presence in my state and their assistance in diverse sectors. Nonetheless, I are not able to transform a blind eye to what is taking place in my nation now supplied the horrific human legal rights abuse by the Taliban regime. While I am not assigning total blame to the worldwide neighborhood for all of Afghanistan’s problems and acknowledge the destructive contributions of my country’s politicians in this regard, it does make me ponder how the liberal world radically relinquished command of a place to a person of the most extremist groups in the earth. What is significantly disturbing and surprising is the attempt to rationalize this by way of deceptive narratives now.
In conclusion, the repercussions of the Taliban regime are not only harmful to the properly-getting of the bulk of the Afghanistan population, main to every day victims, but they also have the probable to affect the liberal environment in the very long run. The liberal environment, consequently, should not compromise its commitment to human legal rights values in pursuit of short-time period national pursuits. As a substitute, they need to adapt their narrative concerning the suffering in Afghanistan in a way that is sustainable in the lengthy time period. In fact, acknowledging previous mistakes can serve as the very important 1st move in this endeavor, and it has the potential to ease at least some of the suffering experienced by the new era in Afghanistan.
[Photo by the U.S. Department of State, via Wikimedia Commons]
The sights and views expressed in this post are those people of the author.
Sultan Ahmad Aria is a Ph.D. applicant in Politics at Manchester Metropolitan College, British isles. Prior to his Ph.D. scientific studies, Mr. Aria worked as a Lecturer in political science at many universities in Afghanistan for six decades. He has revealed far more than 15 analysis and analytical content in countrywide journals, and newspapers in Afghanistan.
