The Taliban in government: A grim new reality is settling in
It has been 20 months since the Taliban took Kabul. The warfare has indeed ended, but the lives of millions of Afghans have not improved. Afghanistan is facing a serious humanitarian and human rights crisis, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.
While the Taliban has been able to continue certain government functions with the help of the UN, it has violated basic human and civil rights, suppressed dissent and rejected any form of national dialogue or political inclusiveness.
The country is now ruled by a small circle of dissenters determined to stamp out dissent and ban women from public life, even if it means deepening the country’s international isolation and further impoverishing its population. Without changes to this core of the system, there is a hard limit to how much governance can improve and how stable the country can become.
As the Taliban seeks international recognition, it is important to examine its performance in government to date.
Services
After two decades of war, the Taliban have established themselves unexpectedly well in the Afghan state. The Afghan bureaucracy has effectively been incorporated into the re-established Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). With the exception of those working in the judiciary and security sector, most lower and middle-ranking civil servants have kept their jobs for the time being and are receiving their salary, albeit at a reduced rate.
Despite a chaotic transition, the World Bank, UN agencies and the IEA have worked out a scheme to maintain the delivery of health services at pre-August 2021 levels.
Under an agreement with the IEA, the UN also regularly sends shipments of $40 million in cash to operate in the country given the restrictions on the Afghan banking sector. Most of this money goes to much-needed food aid and basic health care. It also indirectly stabilizes the Afghan currency and prevents a complete economic collapse.
The education sector has taken a major hit after the Taliban banned girls from attending high school and college on public and private intuitions. This causes untold damage to the Afghan youth and the future of the country.
However, the Taliban are currently paying the salaries of female teachers. Notably, primary school enrollments for both boys and girls have increased in some parts of the country as security has improved.
The Taliban has also managed to pay the country’s power import bill, which powers most of the country, although there are frequent blackouts. The government is also continuing key water management projects completed before 2021, but resource constraints may hinder further progress.
The economy and the private sector
After the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban, the country experienced a massive economic shock, with gross domestic product (GDP) shrinking by 30 to 35 percent. Today, the country’s economy is no longer in free fall due to the cessation of hostilities and the UN’s money transfers.
However, the new economic balance has left virtually the entire country in poverty and two-thirds of the population needs international aid to survive. The urban middle class, a major beneficiary of international aid, has been completely wiped out as the flow of foreign financing stopped.
Despite the economic contraction, the Taliban government has managed to collect some budgetary revenue. The mining industry has helped boost both government revenue and exports.
The Taliban Ministry of Agriculture also collects religious levies of ushr and zakat from farmers, but it is unclear how much these amounts, as this category of income is not integrated into the Treasury Ministry’s reporting system. The Taliban also continue to tax the illegal drug industry, another undeclared source of income.
While keen to disclose revenue collections, the Taliban leadership remains secretive about expenditures. Other than a mini-budget released shortly after it resumed control, the Taliban have not been transparent about how they spend the money raised. Some analysts suggest that the security sector – not social services – could make up the bulk of the government budget.
In 2022, merchants surveyed by the World Bank reported benefiting from less corruption and safer roads, but suffered from sanctions, legal uncertainty, increased taxes and an impoverished customer base. But recent decrees issued by Amir al-Mu’minin, Hibatullah Akhunzada of the Taliban, which are intended to curb nepotism and bribery within the Taliban government, may indicate an increasing level of corruption.
According to ILO reports, the Afghan labor market has contracted sharply. Unemployment and reduced incomes have affected millions, mostly women, and undermined the economic resilience of poor families. Restrictions on women’s presence in public have harmed women’s businesses and women workers, making home work the only option for many women.
In the service sector, telecommunications are used for surveillance and censorship. Although it could have avoided a complete collapse, the banking sector is still in a crisis caused by sanctions and liquidity shortages. The Taliban’s central bank wants to replace conventional banking with Islamic finance, but no clear timeline or guidelines have yet been developed.
The political system and security
Despite initial hopes for a different outcome and the formation of an inclusive government, the Taliban have effectively revived the Islamic emirate, firmly placing power in the hands of the movement’s main religious figures.
The current government continues to operate as a caretaker government and no timetable has been set for when a permanent government can be expected. This may be due to the fact that when this cabinet was formed it created serious internal tension as different factions within the Taliban competed for posts.
Meanwhile, aided by a cohort of religious scholars from Kandahar and a few trusted government officials, Akhunzada has increasingly asserted his power statewide, silencing and sidelining internal critics. Tensions between Kabul and Kandahar, as the two loci of the group’s power, have become increasingly public.
Currently, there is no prospect of intra-Afghan dialogue or reconciliation beyond the Taliban to provide protection for Afghan politicians associated with the previous regime who choose to return. While the Taliban have promised amnesty for all, the documented cases of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and torture, often targeting ex-military officials, raise serious questions about the IEA’s ability and willingness to administer the amnesty in a uniform manner. force.
Despite publicly conciliatory messages to Afghanistan’s ethnic and religious minorities, the IEA has excluded them from power and failed to protect them from attacks by the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP).
Afghanistan’s independent media has collapsed, while the Taliban’s crackdown on freedom of expression and foreign funding halted. Public criticism is not tolerated and is regularly punished.
Through a ruthless and bloody campaign, the Taliban succeeded in largely suppressing armed resistance against their regime in the north, but tensions in the area remain. ISKP remains the most serious internal threat against Taliban officials and religious minorities in Afghanistan as it has regularly carried out deadly attacks since August 2021.
The legal system
The Taliban have suspended the prosecution service, purged the judiciary and abolished the independent bar association. Judges are appointed directly by the group; female judges no longer conduct court cases.
In court, the Hanafi School of Islamic Law is applied to resolve disputes and punish any act the judge deems an offense. Publicly, the police and officials of the Ministry of Virtue and Prevention of Immorality summarily punish citizens who violate the Taliban’s uncodified rules of decency.
Crime rate data is not available, but anecdotal evidence suggests that crime is rampant. The Taliban have used old methods to try to control the situation by reintroducing public hanging, flogging and disgrace. The religiously prescribed punishments of hudud are still rarely practiced; instead courts punish various acts using their discretion (taizir) or authorize retaliation in kind according to the Islamic doctrine of qisas.
Have the Taliban suspended the laws of the land pending a full review yet to be finalized. Outside the judiciary, however, administrative law is still used to keep bureaucracy and tax collection going.
The Taliban has also reconsidered final court rulings before August 2021. In the event of a challenge, the supreme body of the Supreme Court for making fatwas, dar ul-fatwa, acts as the court for review of those decisions and can overturn an existing ruling.
The Taliban has not issued a draft constitution. The administrative and legal regulations for courts adopted by the judiciary draw heavily from the Ottoman-era codification of the Hanafi school of Islamic law.
These legal, political and economic developments over the past 20 months indicate that the Taliban has succeeded in establishing itself in the seat of power in Kabul and taking over the reins of the state. The government has succeeded in providing some basic services and economic stability to the general population, but they remain largely dependent on humanitarian aid.
The governance model developed by the Taliban clearly concentrates power in the hands of the Amir al-Mu’minin and a small circle of trusted associates. This form of decision-making does not bode well for the future of the country. Unless there is a radical change at the core of this system, the Afghan state will remain a poor, unstable, repressive theocracy under Taliban rule.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.