TSF - Portugal

What is the current political and social situation in Afghanistan based on the information you can get from people living in the country?

Okay, I try to deal with information from the ground as much as possible. I'm in touch with different people and community leaders all over the country. You know, three years after the collapse of the Republic, the situation is quite solid from the Taliban's point of view, there's a solidification of the regime. They've paid a lot of attention and spent a lot of money trying to secure and stabilize their rule. The other issues that the Afghan people are facing are somewhat fluid, both in terms of the economy, which is obviously under great pressure, on the one hand because of the cut in development aid after 2021, and also because of the poverty and corruption that is endemic in Afghanistan. And also the sanctions regime, which has obviously damaged the economic prospects of many people. The other issue that is very much on people's minds is the ongoing humanitarian crisis. As you may have seen in the news lately, children are dying of malnutrition, with over 3 million considered severely malnourished.

What is a negative record for malnutrition…

Well, the situation was not better before, but it is getting worse, because before there were billions of dollars of money flowing into the country; now that is not happening, so the current regime depends on internal revenues. The humanitarian demands are great, and funding is decreasing, unfortunately, from the international community. Donors are distracted by other crises around the world and perhaps they also feel some fatigue towards Afghanistan. And they expect perhaps more from the Taliban and the Taliban are being more rigid in terms of their social and religious codes and edicts. Unfortunately, when it comes to women and girls, education, work, there is no improvement and so the law…

In other words, did the strengthening of the Virtue Promotion Act further diminish women's rights?

The law that was introduced, as Ricardo said, has further diminished the space for women and girls, although what we also recognize is that there is great opposition to this type of policy within the Taliban itself. How far this can go and how far it can change some mindsets, we do not know.

Is this internal opposition expressing this out loud...?

Sometimes, some people have their own way of expressing opposition. It is not our normal way of coming out. It is a kind of underground system, it is a very different system from what we know and the hierarchy is a very different hierarchy. The decision-making is also very different, so we have to understand how that works, but it is very clear and all stakeholders understand that there are differences of opinion within the Taliban. There are also issues to do with political inclusion. There was an expectation that the Taliban would allow space for other members of Afghan society to play a role and have a voice, and in the new system, that has not happened, they have relied mainly on their own followers and their own loyalty system. And there is not enough intra-Afghan engagement and dialogue that should be happening; Afghanistan needs to open up more space for political exchanges, at least, to happen between different communities in the country. So that is also a challenge that remains to be met.

Can we say that this discrimination against women is somehow an ideological priority of the Taliban?

It is part of a mindset within Taliban education. It is a very complex issue. It has its roots in the 1970s when the communists came to power and imposed some very extreme measures on the villages and the villages fought back. In the late 1970s, early 1980s, this led to a nationwide rebellion against the communist regime and it is also rooted in some rural cultural, ideological and religious tendencies that were forced and reinforced by the madrasa system that was created during the 1980s and 1990s, especially in Pakistan and in some refugee camps, and which were influenced by non-traditional schools of thought like Salafism and Wahhabism, among other schools. So it is a very complex mix of different elements that have come together to create this mindset within a certain section of the Taliban body, especially those who are a little bit older and come from those schools of thought. But that is one aspect of the ideology. There are others as well. There is, for example, a restriction that has been placed on the Jafari school that Shias in Afghanistan follow, so Shias feel that the space for their religious schooling has diminished, and although the Taliban tolerate it, it is not codified and it is not being formalized as such. So these kinds of ideological issues still exist in the country.

For years, you have focused a lot on the need for intra-Afghan dialogue… What can be the role of the Afghan diaspora in this regard, given that the Taliban are consolidated in power and may not even be interested in such dialogue?

It’s a very good question, something I’m very involved in and have been involved in for the last two or three years. I’m part of several platforms that aim to use engagement and dialogue to rebuild some trust and open up channels of communication so that Afghans can talk to Afghans, even if they have fought each other in the past. It’s a challenging and very, very difficult and complex proposition because of the sixty-year history of continuous conflict in different forms, including various invasions and occupations and all sorts of regional proxy interventions and, above all, internal civil conflicts. All of this combined has obviously created a very difficult situation after almost five decades of violence in Afghanistan. So there needs to be a very thoughtful approach in terms of how, when and where to start the dialogue and what kind of dialogue can work in the Afghan context. The first thing that needs to be done is to acknowledge each other, acknowledge the other side. And so the next thing we need to do is to start a long conversation with each other, regardless of whether you are communist or liberal, whether you are Taliban or one shade of Islamist or another, or this or that, whether you are in the country or outside the country, although of course most of the people from the previous regime are now outside the country. But obviously there are still 40 million people or so living inside the country and they belong to different communities and societies and families and tribes and ethnic groups, and so there is a lot of dynamic activity going on inside the country.

The assembly called Loya Jirga…

The Loya Jirga has always been an option or an instrument that can be used if and when all parties agree that this is the best way to meet, discuss and decide. So it remains an option. There are other tools that can be used, but we are not there yet. We are at the beginning of a long process that starts with mutual recognition, mutual respect, sitting down and talking and building trust, because the most important thing that we have lost in Afghanistan is intra-Afghan trust. So how do you do that? Usually people have tried to use weapons in conflicts and tried to start conflicts to impose the will of one side on the others. So I hope that we have learned the lesson that through violence and armed activity you cannot achieve your goal. 50 years of history have proven that, so we need to follow a different path because the other ones have not worked and they do not work and they do not give us any desirable results. So this is where dialogue and engagement need to start. It is very different in the Afghan context, but we can learn from other countries as well. At the same time, we need to make sure that it is as inclusive as possible, that it is structured and that it builds trust, in order to build consensus over time. Otherwise, I think we will be stuck where we are and the country will not have the opportunity to have a more inclusive and more participatory system in the future. The only way to have that is if we start talking to each other.

What about the US? There are sanctions, but on the other hand, even though Afghanistan is isolated internationally, the United States remains its largest donor, providing more than 3 billion in aid since 2021… are you worried that this aid could be suspended if there is a Republican victory in the White House and/or Congress on November 5?

Well, I think the history of sanctions has always been very questionable as to their effectiveness and I think that I, at least, was one of those who thought that these kinds of sanctions, the way they were implemented after the collapse in 2021 and the way they targeted certain groups and others, were probably not the best way to deal with the situation, because they could backfire or end up ineffective. And that's what we see. I think what the international community is doing now is reviewing the way we engage, the way we decide what to do. And you can see in the United Nations, in the Security Council that the consensus that existed 3 years ago no longer exists, that a few days ago two countries were kind of opposed to any kind of discussion or issuing any kind of statement, I mean Resolution, on the human rights issues in Afghanistan; two countries in the Security Council were not willing to do so. So the United Nations is still, in my opinion, after the work done last year by the special rapporteur and the independent special envoy, who gathered opinions from everyone, the best way forward. But the United Nations also has limitations in this regard because of great power rivalries, and so I think that in order to break the impasse, we need to take gradual steps: we need to have a long-term vision of how to deal with Afghanistan. It is a long process that will require building trust also within the international community, and not only among Afghans. So there is a plan, there is an idea, there is a concept, there is a process through the Doha Process, to address these issues.

I participated as part of the civil society group last time in July, in the third Doha meeting, I was one of the civil society participants, so we... there were five women and two men, and most of them came from within the country and we expressed our views freely and independently about what needs to be done. The Taliban came in, in another meeting, expressed their views. The international community, each of the parties involved, expressed their views. So we need to continue this discussion. We need to continue these deliberations and take practical steps to ensure that Afghanistan is not forgotten or isolated, that the humanitarian needs of the people are met, that we do certain things that help the economy but do not particularly help any one side or group. But at the same time, we need to make sure that we address issues that affect the people, which has to be people-centered. And we need to depoliticize certain aspects of our engagement, because the more politicization you have, the greater the likelihood of backlash and the greater the likelihood of even, in some cases, more drastic measures that could be implemented or imposed on the Afghan population.

Does Omar Samad think there is more international inaction or negative international action towards his country?
That’s a good question. I don’t have the answer, of course, because we don’t know. First of all, the foreign policy stance of both parties in relation to the changes in Afghanistan is very much about the past. You did this, I did that. I blame you for this, so there’s a lot of that kind of rhetoric. And then the other side reacts. So there’s a lot of rhetoric about the past. There’s hardly any thought about the future when it comes to Afghanistan, so what needs to be done, obviously, is that those who are serious thinkers and strategic thinkers need to think about how to engage in this part of the world or reconnect, figure out what works best, what doesn’t work, and deal with the realities on the ground as well as the opportunities and challenges. So we need to deal with the challenges, whether they’re in the form of Taliban constraints or the opportunities that exist in terms of rebuilding bridges and building confidence and making sure that there’s some consensus on Afghanistan so that it doesn’t become a threat or a problem or a failed state again. That discussion is not really happening yet, I expect it will happen at some point, so I can't predict what the United States will do, but I think there is an obligation on the part of the international community to make sure that the Afghan people are not starving to death because of sanctions or bad policies inside or outside the country. So we need to make sure that we make the right decisions and that we take into account the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people.

The world now looks elsewhere, to Ukraine, to the Middle East, and no longer to Afghanistan…

I think there is less interest, less attention, and more… maybe… apathy. Other priorities, other issues, internal and external. I think Afghanistan has been in a very long war that could and should have ended much earlier than 2021 and in a better way. Of course, we have missed many opportunities. There are many lessons to be learned from the 20 years of Western presence in Afghanistan, both for Afghans, for the region and for other countries. So I hope that we use the case of Afghanistan in a constructive way and that we learn and do not repeat the mistakes of the past and that applies also to the Afghan people, to Afghan leaders and to those who claim to represent, let’s say, the communities in the Diaspora. We have to be more responsible about the future of the country and not get caught up in the noise and emotionalism that sometimes does not help the people on the ground.

The Islamic State group (IS) claimed responsibility for the suicide attack a few weeks ago outside the prosecutor's office in Kabul... so the Taliban have failed to deliver on their main promise. To provide security...

Well, it's a question of trying to compare the security before, the security now, some attempts by some groups sometimes to attack opportunistically. I think the Taliban... and it's not me saying this, it's the intelligence and the secret and security services of the world, the ones that are more realistic, who say that the Taliban and this so-called Korahsan group of the Islamic State (IS-K), which is supposedly affiliated with ISIS or ISIL, have been at war for at least the last 10 years. And they don't see eye to eye, and they have a very different view of how to impose Sharia on a society. And so over the last three years, the Taliban seemed to have, to a large extent, perhaps not entirely, but to a large extent, demeaned and weakened the position of IS-K in Afghanistan, despite the unfortunate tragedies that have happened like the one last week that took several innocent lives, and I think this fight will continue as long as there are attempts and motivations on the part of certain groups in the region and outside the region to use terrorism as a tool, and so it is easy to do so.

It's not just in Afghanistan, it's happening in many different places. We need more cooperation and more collaboration to find these kinds of threats that are aimed at destabilizing Afghanistan or XYZ countries, or because it's an anti-Western threat. We need to find common ground and collaborate to diminish and neutralize these threats. But we need to be very clear about where each element is; so we can't mix apples and oranges here. We really need to try to be very clear and this is the job of very sophisticated security services and especially intelligence services, which have the information. I don't think the general public has enough information to be able to determine and discern very carefully who is who and what, what they're doing and who they're doing it for and why they're doing it. So we have to be very careful about these issues.