THE stories coming out of Afghanistan in the wake of the take over of the running and governing of the land as an Islamic Emirate by the Taliban since August, 2021, have been harrowing to say the least. The Taliban had a government around a very strict interpretation of the Quaran and Islamic conduct during their first stint in governance until 2001 when they were dislodged through the United States (US) invasion of the land, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US by Al-Qaeda elements, harboured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their return to power twenty years later was supposed to herald a different and much changed Taliban, with the leadership promising a more inclusive government and governing process as well as a more dignified treatment of girls and women. But the world has watched with consternation as the promises have been kept more in the breach with Taliban announcing a government composed more of their hardliners. Girls have been prevented from returning to high schools and universities much as women have been prevented from returning to work.
Even so, the reaction from the rest of the world has been understandable, with nobody yet extending recognition to the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan apparently because it is difficult to be seensupporting a government that insists on treating its female population as second-class citizens, with no rights to dignified existence and education. And outside of recognition, the US and many other countries have also suspended aids to the country and in some respects frozen its foreign reserves. Unfortunately, Afghanistan has been such that needed to depend on international aids for most of its programmes, making it difficult for anything to work with the suspension of massive aids. It would seem, therefore, that the Taliban are left to continue to pretend to administer and govern the land even as things crumble before their very eyes. With a so-called Taliban government in place, salaries have not been paid to government workers for months and there is no prospect that salaries would be paid or resume being paid as the Taliban government does not have funds and access to funds with which to mount an effective government.
In the midst of this is an incipient harsh winter that has made it difficult for Afghans to have access to food. Indeed, it is said that hunger has taken over the land, with the average Afghan facing the risk of starvation. Says David Beasley, the Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP): ‘It is as bad as you possibly can imagine, … In fact, we’re now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth. … Ninety-five percent of the people don’t have enough food, and now we’re looking at 23 million people marching towards starvation … The next six months are going to be catastrophic. It is going to be hell on Earth.’ Perhaps we really do not have to wait for Mr. Beasley’s projection of six months to start confronting the ‘hell on Earth’ in Afghanistan as the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Asia-Pacific Director, KanniWignaraja, insists that Afghanistan is almost at the point of a unique ‘universal poverty’ where poverty rate would hover around a whopping 97 to 98 percent. And the implications of this unconscionable poverty level are all there to see with reports of Afghans selling their children to survive becoming rampant.
Just last week came reports of Abdul Malik in Northern Afghanistan selling his 9-year old daughter, Parwana Malik, for $2,200 to be able to afford food for his wife and other kids. A few months ago, he had also sold her 12-year old sister to make ends meet, saying, he is broken, and that, ‘we are eight family members – I have to sell to keep other family members alive.’ And last month, an Afghan woman named Saleha said she sold her 3-year old daughter for $550 – as she did not have enough money to sustain herself. Sure, Afghanistan must have really descended into an arena of hell to become the habitual setting for the sale of children by parents for whatever reasons! Yet, the Taliban want to continue to preside over these depressing fortunes in Afghanistan, raising legitimate concerns about what they really are up to with their insistence on running, if not more of ruining, that unfortunate land. Why, for instance, as stated by all female US Senators in a letter to President Joe Biden on the deteriorating conditions of girls and women of Afghanistan under the Taliban, would the Taliban be against the fact that last year, roughly 3.5 million Afghan girls were attending school, and 100,000 women were enrolled in universities and that in 2020, women were elected to senior government roles and the Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry reported over 1,000 female entrepreneurs’ emerging in the country?
Instead of celebrating these developments, the Taliban would rather subject girls and women to predation, making them targets of beatings and killings. Is it that the Taliban do not realise that the world has changed enough, since their first coming, that increasingly any ‘nation that wants international legitimacy or connection to the rest of the world—and that does not want to be deemed a pariah state—must not interfere with the universal human rights or fundamental freedoms of its people, and should demonstrate respect for and inclusion of women and girls, in all their diversity, including supporting their education and employment opportunities?’
The situation in Afghanistan is dire as the place is manifestly unravelling, with the people experiencing unspeakable suffering and deprivations. But this is basically only a situation of the Taliban’s making and the world must look for a realistic way of stopping them from sinking Afghanistan and its people further into avoidable misery on the altar of their own religious understanding.
- Yakubu is of the Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan.
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