Ignoring the Taliban won't make them go away

Commentary on Afghanistan is still bogged down by the insurgency phase of the Taliban and the illegitimate nature of their takeover. This prevents the world from  taking pragmatic steps to contain the Taliban’s worst totalitarianism.

The Taliban are not an absolute evil, they are just another less than ideal entity ruling a country. By obsessing over what is and how it came to be, we pay little heed to making the current reality better. The current humanitarian crisis, civil rights of Afghans, and the threat of terrorism that should be cause enough to push the world into a meaningful engagement with the Taliban.

The larger narrative with regards to Afghanistan overly focuses on reminiscing over the gains lost instead of thinking about preserving what remains. Yes, democracy was lost. Yes, women and girls’ access to work and education was restricted. Yes, the media space was altered and confined. But there are still civil activists in Afghanistan that require support.

Internal and external pressure finally drove the Taliban to open public universities for women and promise to open girls’ schools in March. There are private universities that provide education to Afghan women who can barely afford tuition anymore. There are avenues in the economy that can be expanded for more women to seek employment. Above all, the Taliban have shown some willingness to engage as seen in their meeting of their political opponents in Iran and civil society in Norway. The Taliban also adopted a humanitarian declaration in their recent visit to Geneva.There are viable ways of moving forward but avoiding the Taliban is not one of them.

We have to question the wisdom of avoiding the Taliban in the aid process since it creates more issues than it solves. Though it might  absolve the United States and its allies of appearing to support the Taliban, it ends up depriving Afghanistan of any chance of sustainable governance. The Taliban won against the odds and they are unlikely to go away anytime soon. The international community, by choosing international organizations to deliver basic services in the country, is depriving the Taliban the chance of integrating into a governance role and learning in the process.

We have to question the wisdom of pushing international organizations into a parallel government role of providing services with its large overhead and lack of localized knowledge. The Taliban’s emergence was not the sole reason for the economic collapse that the country experienced. Its preposterous aid dependency was a primary reason. The same aid dependency being created in the country again with the current model. There is also the issue of how the international community not letting money or aid get into the hands of the Taliban is causing hunger and desperation among their ranks which is in turn producing rent-seeking behavior among the Taliban which is causing an even larger disconnect between the Taliban and the citizenry of Afghanistan. All are issues that can be avoided if strict monitoring is implemented and the consequences of non-compliance are communicated.

The last time the Taliban were in power, their disregard for international norms coupled with the international community’s indifference towards them led them to become pariahs and in turn a failed state. The vacuum created then became the perfect breeding ground for foreign extremists to conduct their pan-Islamist aspirations from Afghanistan. The resurgence of the Taliban is a reaction to the wrong policies taken towards the country.

Extremism cannot be eradicated with the elimination of the extremist, but rather with the alleviation of the population to not find such ideologies appealing — which is also called drying the well. Hoping to choke out the Taliban has two negative consequences. First, it punishes the population the international community aspires to protect. Second, it strengthens groups such as ISKP in finding more recruits in the form of defectors from the Taliban or desperate Afghans who find more reason to hate the west. 

The current policy towards the Taliban might make sense if the international community had better alternatives lined up. But the United States already accepted the Taliban as an unfortunate reality that they negotiated and signed a peace deal with. So why is it now so hard to imagine a process of dialogue in order to produce positive outcomes?

Of course, this is not to say that the Taliban should not be held accountable, but the longer we delay the question of dealing with the Taliban, the longer they go unchecked and the Afghan people suffer. 

There are sensible ways of releasing Afghanistan’s frozen assets in phases under strict monitoring. There are ways of demanding that the Taliban meet expectations with regards to civil rights and education but that too has to be communicated subtly (in order to not incur a reputation cost for the Taliban among their ranks and cause defection) and in exchange for some level of engagement.

Considering the leverage the United States and its allies still have on the Taliban including the prospects of releasing assets and further relieving sanctions, there are paths forward, the world just needs to realize the futility of its current approach and care enough to review it.