A study on the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan and how foreign entities are involved has been released by a Texas-based think tank, George W. Bush Institute.
Titled “Captured State: The role of foreign enablers in perpetuating Taliban corruption in Afghanistan”, the 25-page report explores through interviews and data how the Taliban is being financed and what are some of the impacts of its rule.
The report ends with five recommendations including one that calls for the Taliban to be designated as a terrorist organization in order to dissuade governments and companies from doing business with the extremists.
Rukhshana Media interviewed one of the three authors of the report, Albert Torres, about some of the points raised.
Q:You referred in your report to the violation of women’s rights and the issue of gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Can you elaborate on this?
A: The violation of women’s rights and gender apartheid have only become worse since the Taliban took over. It’s one of their methods of systemic oppression that violates basic human rights in every way. It includes cutting women’s job opportunities, shutting down businesses, making it harder for them to receive humanitarian aid, more cases of young girls being sold to Taliban members as child brides – and more physically oppressive ways like torture and imprisonment. All of it is isolating Afghan women from the community and making it harder for them to live.
There are already signs that it’s going to get worse with the new edict that was recently announced allowing women to be publicly flogged and stoned to death. This has happened before, but the announcement shows that they don’t care about hiding it anymore and intend on going back to their traditional oppressive system of control in a more public manner.
So, really, what we want to emphasize through the reports is that this is happening and it’s their strategy to keep control over Afghan women through violence, isolation, and fear. If the international community ignores the situation, it’ll only get worse.
Q: If the international community engages with the Taliban, do you think the situation of Afghan women will still get worse?
A: It depends on the type of engagement. If we see more countries and actors willing to partner with the Taliban or support their claim [to Afghanistan], then yes. The Taliban will take advantage of the support and see it as an endorsement of what they’re doing. Or they’ll think, the international community doesn’t care, so we can do what we want, which will include getting more openly aggressive against women. It’s always been their approach. I don’t see how engaging with them will change that in any way, especially if there’s no pressure on them.
However, it’s important that we engage in the sense that we hold them accountable and call them out. If we ignore the situation, then the Taliban have no pressure and will continue doing what they choose, which is what we’re seeing now in most instances. The alternative is openly engaging with other actors to raise awareness of the crisis and realize the severity of the situation, whether that be with other countries, organizations, or the private sector.
By increasing awareness, we can increase the amount of pressure against the Taliban, and that will become a much more complicated situation for them to move on from.
Part of what we’re currently seeing are instances where different international organizations, as well as different international countries, have provided some sort of economic or diplomatic recognition or support. And when you engage with them in this sense, then what you’re doing is building up their courage and willingness to go back to their old ways in a more public manner. Same applies if you ignore what’s happening – what ends up happening is they keep doing exactly what they’re doing because they know they can do so with no repercussions.
Any sort of engagement with the Taliban must consist of pressure against what they’re doing and nothing else. The goal should be to squeeze them and force them to scale back their repression of human rights, especially with women who face the most aggressive punishment of all communities.
Without those levers of pressure, the Taliban will maintain control by themselves, with no change in their behavior. And we want to make sure that they don’t continue to control everything with little to no outside influence, especially anything that they might be able to use to support their claim to power.
Q: In your report, you mention that Iran, China, and Russia are enabling the Taliban. Can you explain this further?
A: I think there’s no question about it. I think the way that these enablers are navigating the situation is that they’re getting involved with the Taliban, but they’re not necessarily saying it publicly. They’ve maintained that distance so that there is some sort of plausible deniability happening so that they’re able to say that they don’t officially recognize the Taliban. However, at the same time, they’re operating behind the scenes and engaging in deals with the Taliban that benefit them financially.
And it might not necessarily be the government itself – even though we have seen instances where the governments of these countries are engaging with the Taliban. We also see the private sector getting involved. In one case, there was a mining deal in Afghanistan that was signed by several private companies based in Iran and China.
Even though the governments are enabling this behavior, it’s oftentimes private companies within these countries working with the Taliban. So the governments can distance themselves from this behavior all they want, but they are ultimately the ones benefiting from these deals. There’s also the factor that countries like China and Iran have no interest in complying with international law, which can be seen through their vile human rights abuses and illegal activity.
Q: What impact could normalization of relations between Western countries and the Taliban have on women’s situation?
A: One of the main issues right now is isolation. The international community has either informally supported the Taliban or completely ignored the crisis.
Because of this, there’s been very little accountability for the Taliban and everything that they’re doing, including the targeting of women. So, what we’re seeing is women struggling to obtain resources and other means of support due to edicts that the Taliban have implemented since taking over. So, again, they’re basically bottom of the rung when it comes to receiving support.
This is what we’ll continue to see if the international community normalizes relations with the Taliban, because they’ll start to see that their oppression can continue without punishment.
As long as the Taliban stay in power, it’ll continue to be that men receive priority when it comes to anything – when it comes to resources, policies, practices and things like that.
