(MENAFN- Asia Times) The economic and Political isolation of Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021 has worsened a humanitarian crisis in the country. The World Food Program projected that between November 2022 and March 2023 the number of food-insecure Afghans would rise to 20 million – 3.2 million of them under the age of five. Some six million people were classed in urgent need of assistance.
Arguments that the west should attempt to engage more effectively with the Taliban were mounted throughout the US-backed governments in Kabul that were put in place after the 2001 coalition invasion following on from the 9/11 terror attack on New York.
These were the driving force behind the doha peace talks in 2018 which led to a deal in which the US agreed to withdraw its forces by May 2021. The US failed to meet this deadline and, as the newly installed Biden administration delayed, American forces were forced to make a chaotic withdrawal before the Taliban took control of Kabul in August that year.
The Taliban has been designated a terrorist organization since 2001. Nevertheless, there have been repeated calls for a degree of engagement by the West. Arguments for engagement are twofold: first on purely humanitarian grounds, but also arising out of the belief that continuing total isolation would lead to the Taliban tightening its already oppressive policies.
Some advocates are arguing that engagement should progress beyond the current focus of merely providing humanitarian support and into the political and diplomatic arena. Washington was even poised to open diplomatic channels for the potential recognition of the taliban regime back in March 2022. But the plan was shelved when the Taliban banned secondary school for girls.
Many of the US sanctions imposed against the Islamic Emirate (IE) have been softened over the past 18 months through the issuing of US Treasury general licences. These are meant to permit broad financial relations between the US and other countries and entities around the world.
Schoolgirls attend class in Herat on August 17, 2021, after the Taliban takeover of the Afghanistan. Many wondered how long this will be tolerated by the regime – and in now girls over 12 are banned from going to school. Photo: AFP / Aref Karimi
Afghanistan-related licenses since December 2021 effectively permit most financial transactions that involve the Taliban and its affiliate, the haqqani network (a group that officially remains under the Taliban leadership but has its own chain of command and semi-autonomy). But direct money transfers to these groups, which are still designated as terrorist entities, remain prohibited.
The IE even received an exemption from the US sanctions regime that was designed to punish Russian businesses following the invasion of Ukraine. Under gl28 , individuals and corporations can continue dealing with Russia's TransKapitalBank (TKB).
But the 18 months of Taliban rule in Afghanistan show that this easing has not been met with any concessions on the part of the Taliban administration. Those expecting that engagement might be reciprocated by the Taliban appear to have gravely underestimated the group's determined adherence to its repressive core ideology – even at the cost of ignoring deteriorating realities on the ground.
Afghanistan's extremist rulers have intensified their repressive policies rather than reacting positively to the easing of sanctions. This has been particularly marked in the case of policies relating to women, as the table below shows:
Taliban decisions curtailing women's rights parallel to US sanctions waivers through Treasury Department general licenses (GL). Kambaiz Rafi, Author provided
Kabul has meanwhile received more than $3.7 billion from donor countries during 2022 – close to one-third of it from the US. This is less than half of the more than $8bn that the former western backed republic received annually before 2021. But it indicates that there is still a degree of international goodwill that any less oppressive regime could make better use of.
Is the Taliban playing ball?
Reluctance among the Taliban's leadership to pursue genuine engagement can be seen in the fact that the Taliban office in Doha, Qatar, which was instrumental in negotiating the us withdrawal agreement in February 2020, has been marginalized since the takeover. The man who led the talks from the Taliban side between 2015 and 2020, sher mohammad abbas stanikzai – who has been critical of the way the regime is treating girls – has been downgraded to the relatively obscure post of deputy minister of foreign affairs.
Administration of the Taliban's government is now firmly in the grip of Hibatullah Akhundzadeh, who has shifted the group's power base to southern Kandahar province, where conservative loyalists tend to dominate. He is now seen as having consolidated his faction's grip on the IE's domestic and regional policy.
Akhundzadeh's attitude to women could be seen in his refusal to meet un deputy director-general amina mohammad – the UN's highest-ranking woman – when she visited in January, chiefly to engage the regime's leadership.
Prominent women's activist Mehbouba Seraj – who has been shortlisted for the 2023 nobel peace prize – remains an advocate of engagement with the Taliban.“If we don't sit down and talk to them and see what it is exactly that we can do and they can do, the ones who are going to be paying for it, and who are paying a huge price, are the poor people of Afghanistan, the women and children,” she said in February.
But realities on the ground since August 2021 show that ideological extremism cannot be countered by wishful thinking. Any continued western engagement should come with a price tag for the IE, not offered on the cheap. It should be based on clear communication of reforms by the regime, particularly to improve the conditions for women and an entire generation of girls who are being denied education.
kambaiz rafi is an ESRC postdoctoral fellow at soas, university of london .
This article is republished from the conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .
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