Afghanistan: Of Taliban, terror and a humanitarian crisis

Winter has set upon mountainous, rugged Afghanistan. In August 2021, the US withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving it in the hands of a combative Taliban, that while being resilient, relentless and unyielding in war, had not the wherewithal to rule a bankrupt country.

Now, according to UN statistics, 23 million people in Afghanistan are faced with starvation. 55% of its 40 million people face acute food insecurity between now and March. And the World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that 3.2 million children are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in the country’s brutal winter. The World Food Programme says 8.7 million people will be facing emergency levels of hunger this winter.

Reports have it that parents are now forced to sell their children due to poverty and food insecurity. Even Afghans with means are facing pressure, as regulations on banking withdrawals and the rapidly depreciating Afghani, Afghanistan’s currency, has led to a severe cash crunch across the country.

In Kabul, it is estimated, that almost 90% of people are jobless. Private sector employers are unable to employ and pay workers as financial institutions within the country have limited withdrawals to $US400, and they have no easy access to their bank accounts, so that they cannot pay their workers or their suppliers.

Afghanistan’s public sector that, for decades, has been the largest employer, has been forced to cut staff, and work at minimum capacity. Lower level workers like bodyguards, drivers and cleaners have been rendered jobless. The public sector has largely depended on foreign aid to employ people and pay wages. Now many government workers have not been paid in months.

In fact, international development assistance constituted 43% of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75% of its public expenditure before the Taliban took over. With the Taliban in power, international funding ran dry, leaving the country in dire straits.

One of the major tests for the Taliban, today, is the ability to reorganise a country even as top gubernatorial skills are fleeing, and to prove to the international community that they are not the same Taliban of two decades ago, and have truly enlightened, if they want the funding back.

As it is, the US has frozen the $9bn in Afghan central bank assets, which the Taliban vocally wants back, to function its cash-strapped nation. International aid has all but reduced to a trickle, and aid agencies are wary of US sanctions if they resume financing.

It has been reported that the World Bank is finalising a proposal to deliver up to $500m from a frozen Afghanistan aid fund to humanitarian agencies. These funds are planned to be redirected from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), which has a total of $1.5bn.

While something drastic needs to be done to alleviate the suffering of the masses, it is another headache for the World Bank, the UN, the G-20 and other funding agencies to see that the aid percolates down to the needy and not be siphoned off by the Taliban, even as the world bodies feel hard-pressed to engage the Taliban in the imminent aid work needed.

For the Taliban, there is an urgent need of money to tackle the increasing terrorism within the country. The Taliban are facing difficulty in effectively fighting terrorism in Afghanistan due to lack of financial resources. The Taliban has no money, the country’s financial accounts have been frozen by the US, and Western sanctions have paralysed the Afghan banking system.

In fact, according to a UN envoy to Afghanistan, the Islamic State Khorasian (IS-K), the Taliban’s deadly enemy within, has perforated across the country and now appears present in nearly all 34 provinces. The Taliban has 30,000 fighters, while the IS-K has just about 3,000. The numbers may not seem as daunting as they actually are. It is estimated that the number of the IS-K’s terror attacks have increased from 60 strikes in 2020 to 334 this year.

Among the more notable attacks by the IS-K this year, and since the Taliban took over, was the suicide bombing on a Shiite mosque, on October 16, in southern Afghanistan, that killed 47 people and injured scores more. A week earlier, a suicide bombing killed 46 people at a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan.

Barely had the Taliban taken over Kabul, in August this year, when the IS-K launched a horrific terror attack on Kabul airport, in the midst of evacuation by the international community of their citizens, that killed 13 US soldiers and 60 Afghans and left around 160 wounded.

The IS-K, is the regional affiliate of the Islamic State terror outfit, as recognised by the Islamic State core leadership in Iraq and Syria. The IS-K was established, in January 2015, by former members of the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. It gradually grew by poaching militants from various other groups.

By 2018, it managed to consolidate territorial control in several rural districts in north and north eastern Afghanistan. Within its first three years, IS-K launched attacks against minority groups, public areas and institutions, and government targets in major cities across Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2018, the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index had listed it as among the top four deadliest terrorist organisations in the world.

The Islamic State, itself, was founded in 1999, by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and participated in the insurgency in Iraq as a fallout of the specious US invasion of Iraq. And by December 2015, it held an area extending from western Iraq to eastern Syria, containing an estimated eight to twelve million people, where it enforced its interpretation of sharia law. Islamic State is believed to be operational in 18 countries, including Pakistan. In 2015, Islamic State was estimated to have an annual budget of more than US$1 billion and more than 30,000 fighters.

The Taliban has fought a long war of attrition and terror with the US, ending in the defeat of the US and the Taliban coming out trumps. But they now have to swallow the same bitter poison, when they themselves are left to govern the country they laid siege to for decades.

The Taliban, itself, can be traced back to the mujaheedin that was involved in a war of insurgency with the Soviet Union, after the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet Union, itself, turned invader out of fear that Islamic extremism was threatening the Central Asian region.

Pakistan’s ISI, with direct approval and complicity from the US, stoked the insurgency against the Soviets, channelling money and equipment to the mujaheedin. About 90,000 Afghans, including Mohammed Omar, the founder of the Taliban, were trained by Pakistan’s ISI during the eighties. After the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, the Taliban gained power in Afghanistan. By 1996, the Taliban controlled around three-fourths of Afghanistan.

In 2001, they lost control of the country following the 9/11 terror attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan by the US. Two decades later, after claiming the country again, they are faced with the bitter reality of terrorism stalking the terrorist.