Black-and-white also describes Western countries’ approach to Afghanistan since their humiliating exit from the country on August 15th 2021. They have made any progress—sanctions relief, recognition of the regime, a seat at the UN—conditional on restoring rights for women and girls, who are barred from many areas of public life including secondary education. The Taliban have only ratcheted up their restrictions. They refuse to countenance negotiating over what they consider an internal matter.
Not that the West seems to think much about Afghanistan at all. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are immediate crises. Dealing with challenges posed by China’s rise is an ongoing focus, while America’s election is all-consuming at home and watched nervously abroad. Western leaders have nothing to gain from reminding voters of a 20-year-long war that ended in abject defeat. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings collapsed with the botched exit from Afghanistan. American “foreign policy has been to keep it out of the headlines and keep it off the president’s desk,” says Ashley Jackson of the Overseas Development Institute, a think-tank. Afghanistan has not so much been forgotten as it is being wilfully ignored.
From a security perspective, being able to ignore a country that has been a source of instability for most of the past half-century is a welcome novelty, notes Graeme Smith of the International Crisis Group, another think-tank. But he worries that “we are now overlooking some things that could come back to bite us”. To ignore Afghanistan is also to ignore the 44m Afghans who live in it, half of them women and girls. It is to ignore the 12.4m in dire need of food, a fifth of them on the edge of famine. It is to ignore a looming migration crisis as Afghans try to leave for anywhere offering hope of a job. It is to ignore the ravages of climate change, which is worsening the country’s periodic droughts. It is to ignore the toll of natural disasters. In the past 12 months Afghanistan has been hit by an earthquake that killed nearly 1,500 people and a series of flash floods that have killed hundreds more.
And to ignore Afghanistan is to ignore international security, too. Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), a terrorist outfit based in the country’s west, is a foe of the Taliban, of Afghanistan’s neighbours and of the West. ISKP has carried out multiple attacks in Afghanistan and Iran; it claimed responsibility for a horrific assault on a concert hall in Moscow in March; it has its eyes on Central Asia, Pakistan and India. There are murmurings of stop-start co-operation on counterterrorism between American and Afghan governments, though neither side will admit it. “The emotional fact is that it is difficult to stomach the idea of working with the Taliban,” says Mr Smith.
Afghanistan’s neighbours have taken a pragmatic approach. China is exploring economic opportunities, particularly in the country’s mineral wealth. Iran wants to keep America out, suppress ISKP and discuss water-sharing. Pakistan’s main interest is in defanging Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a vicious jihadist group that finds a haven in Afghanistan. The one point of consensus among neighbours, regional powers and the West is that there is no appetite for regime change, nor for renewed civil war.
If there is a benefit to the lack of attention it is that it allows some freedom of manoeuvre. The UN has organised three rounds of talks on Afghanistan in Qatar between nearly two dozen global and regional powers. The Taliban were not invited to the first and refused to take part in the second. But they attended the third, this summer, after the UN agreed to exclude women and other Afghans from outside the government. The talks produced no firm results, but mere engagement passes for progress. They are unlikely to have gone ahead if the unseemly exclusions had been subject to the glare of media attention.
Similarly, the World Bank announced earlier this year that it would resume financing a project, known as CASA-1000, connecting the energy powerhouses of Central Asia with Pakistan through Afghanistan. The transit fees will go into an Afghan account in Abu Dhabi and can be used only to purchase electricity. Yet if the Taliban can spend less on power, that frees up funds to spend on other things, making the regime stronger and more effective. The announcement elicited little media reaction.
Where does that leave Afghanistan’s people? There is some good news. The country is safer today than it was three years ago, mostly because the people doing the shooting and bombing now run the country. Hospitals in remote regions are newly accessible, thanks to better security and repaired roads. Many women and girls quietly gain an education by attending “training courses” or madrassas. The number of Afghans who go hungry has fallen nearly by half from its peak of 23m. The economy, though shrunken and stagnant, has stabilised. Businesses report markedly lower levels of corruption, even as they gripe about the Taliban’s efficient tax collection.
But the bad outweighs the good. Hospitals may be accessible but they are underfunded, under-staffed and under-equipped. Poorer Afghan women cannot afford the so-called training courses; they are hit hardest by education bans. Jobs are scarce. Every day thousands of men crowd the squares of Kabul looking to pick up daily work. Maybe one in five finds a job. On average a daily-wager will find two days of work a week, says Hsiao-Wei Lee of the World Food Programme (WFP), a UN agency. That is more than in 2022, at the peak of the post-war economic crisis, but less than before the pandemic. Many Afghans are trying to emigrate.
Aid is drying up too. Donor fatigue is deepening. The absolute number of people in need is the highest of all conflicts, says Salma Ben Aissa of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organisation. WFP faces a shortfall in the country of $700m in the next half-year. As usual, the worst affected are women and children. “The only good thing is security, but what should I do with security if I can’t feed my children,” says Jamila (name changed), a mother of three living just outside Kabul.
This dissatisfying state of affairs is likely to continue. The West will not drop its insistence on restoring the rights of women and girls. The Taliban will not change their policies on women, nor dilute their efforts to build a religious police state. Afghanistan’s neighbours are happy to look out for their own interests and leave the lofty rhetoric of values to America. Several countries, including Western ones, have re-established a presence on the ground, stopping short of formally reopening embassies. But the outside world has no plan, no clear objectives, and faces no pressure to come up with solutions to Afghanistan’s problems. As one Western official based in Kabul puts it, “I don’t think we’re at the stage where we actually have a tangible road map.” Afghans suffered through war. Now they suffer in peace.
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