Afghanistan
Afghanistan performs in the low range across all four categories of the Global State of Democracy conceptual framework. It also falls among the bottom 25 per cent of the world’s countries in all factors except Absence of Corruption. Over the last five years, it has experienced notable declines across almost all metrics of performance, especially since the Taliban retook Kabul in 2021. Of particular note are Representation, as the Taliban show no plans for national elections; Civil Liberties, as every right to public speech and expression has been severely curtailed, most drastically for women; and Rule of Law, given the lack of an independent parliament or judiciary. Despite being one of the world’s most resource-rich nations, notably in minerals, Afghanistan is heavily dependent on external support. Its economy includes services, agriculture, and industry, all of which have seen sharp downturns since 2021.
Afghanistan’s politics are the product of a diverse society, two foreign invasions, and a patchwork of guerilla groups that fought to repel one or both of those invasions. Constant fighting and a stagnant economy led Afghanistan to be among world’s leading countries of origin for refugees. The failure of competing victorious factions to share power following the victory of Afghan mujahadeen over the Soviet Union in 1989 made space for the rise ohttps://www.jstor.org/stable/29768089f the Taliban, a militant group holding to an extremist vision of Islam, who secured a loose hold over about 85 per cent of the country by 1996. After the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States (U.S.), the U.S. and its allies invaded and installed a new government. Over the next twenty years, the coalition never fully defeated the Taliban. Despite widespread international support, a peaceful change in executive power, and the entry of Afghan women into public life and civil society, the U.S.-backed government lost legitimacy over time. It gained a reputation for corruption and self-dealing, widespread voter fraud, and relying on repression at a regional level. A renewed offensive by the Taliban after the U.S. agreed to withdraw led to mass desertions and retreats by the Afghan army, and the Taliban quickly retook control of the country.
Afghanistan’s society is very diverse, and its ethnic and religious groupings map imprecisely onto its politics. The Taliban is Sunni Muslim and fundamentalist, and predominantly Pashtun, the largest of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups at 42 per cent of the population. The other major ethnic groups, in descending order of prevalence, are Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Aimaq, Turkmen, and Baluch. Of these, the Hazaras are the only majority Shia Muslim group, and are therefore a frequent target of the Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan, which also operates within Afghanistan and has increased its activities to compete with the Taliban. The Taliban’s opposition to women’s rights and involvement in public life, including the right of girls to attend school, divides them from the professional class that came up under the U.S.-backed government. The Taliban itself has shown divisions between more religiously conservative leadership based in Kandahar and more accommodationist officials in Kabul.
The inability of the Taliban and U.S. to cooperate led to a sudden cessation in aid and an ongoing economic collapse. Looking ahead, it will be important to watch divisions within the Taliban, which could impact the levels of security and therefore all aspects of Rights.
Monthly Event Reports
July 2023 | Taliban bans beauty salons
A verbal decree by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada banned all beauty salons in Afghanistan on 4 July, following bans on women and girls attending schools, working at NGOs, and visiting public areas such as parks. The decree is expected to result in more than 60,000 women losing their jobs and the shuttering of 12,000 businesses. The International Labor Organization told Reuters the decrease in women’s employment is expected to be significant, and that many women working in the industry are their family’s primary source of income.
March 2023 | Taliban civil society crackdown deepens
Human Rights Watch reported an expansion of the Taliban’s crackdown on journalists, women’s rights protesters, civil society activists, and humanitarian workers in what it described as an effort to crush all criticism as the path to political legitimacy. Those detained were denied access to lawyers and their family, and in most cases, authorities offered little or no explanation for the detentions, let alone how long detentions would last or under what legal pretext. In a separate statement, the United Nations Security Council urged the Taliban to relax its restrictions, worrying hunger and insecurity were taking an increasingly devastating toll on the country’s citizens.
January 2023 | Rules against female aid workers relaxed
The Taliban tacitly relaxed some restrictions on female aid workers working in health and nutrition. The Taliban had decreed in December that women would be banned from aid work for alleged failures to comply with its interpretation of Islamic clothing codes.
December 2022 | Taliban resumes public executions
The Taliban publicly executed a man in the Afghan city of Farah on 7 December, the first such execution since it returned to power in August 2021. United Nations officials condemned the execution as well as the Taliban’s reinstatement of public floggings, more than 100 of which have reportedly been carried out since 18 November 2022.
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