Key Reflections
* The West has understandably focused and prioritised its efforts in helping Ukraine, but as a result, the Taliban have seized this opportunity to undermine the civil liberties of Afghans, especially women, and carry out extrajudicial killings.
* The Taliban remain the same entity they were when they first ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. They retain close ties to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, as demonstrated by the Haqqani Network, who are the main authority in the country. The presence of IS-KP also complicates the security situation.
* The Taliban’s order for women to cover up from head-to-toe is designed to reinstate their misogynistic agenda, whilst also punishing male members of Afghan households who don’t enforce the draconian policy.
* Before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, women constituted a significant number of the workforce, and many were breadwinners. As the Taliban banned women from society, many have become destitute and forced to beg as a way to earn money. Almost 90% of the population is starving.
* Taliban fighters have received a distorted religious education in Pakistani madrassas that is incompatible with current Afghan cultural norms.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
MQ: Meetra Qutb
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak to Meetra Qutb who is an independent researcher and commentator on Afghan politics who has worked with refugee and migrant organisations in the United Kingdom. We discuss the plight of Afghans especially women under Taliban rule and the impact that is having within Afghanistan as well as the wider international security implications.
Meetra Qutb, thank you very much for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive.
MQ: Thank you, thank you for having me.
SG: There are a lot of things happening right now in Afghanistan that perhaps don’t get the attention that they need to. One thing in particular, is the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, or I should say, the complete lack of any rights. The Taliban has reneged on its promises for women to be entitled to employment, for girls to be educated. Should we be surprised by this?
MQ: Well, thank you, the Taliban’s restriction on women surprised many and didn’t surprise another group. It surprised the activists, and diplomats, and Afghanistan watchers, who listened to the Taliban and who trusted the Taliban’s promises during the negotiations and the peace talk, who said that they are going to observe and respect women’s rights, including their freedom of movement, their access to education, their access to employment.
But it did not surprise one specific group: the women who were present and who left the first rule of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001. The women who suffered during the first rule of Taliban; they were expecting this to come back to them. And, especially, this was women of Afghanistan, who had gone through the Taliban’s restrictions on them, on their education, on their work, on their freedom of movement, during the first rule of Taliban, and they were expecting this to happen.
SG: If we look at the Taliban ideology in itself, it seems to be a very misogynistic movement. So, the fact that the Taliban are anti-women, is that part of their ideology? Or is there another dynamic to the Taliban that perhaps some people don’t understand?
MQ: I believe that Taliban religious ideology is a very fundamentalist and extremist interpretation of Sharia, and it is an ambiguous amalgamation of Islamic ideology. This is based on the Deobandi school. [The] Deobandi school is characterised by fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, opposition to innovation, and any injunctions against women outside the home. So, they are against any meaningful participation of women in society, including women’s education, women working outside, women’s appearance in the public sphere, such as women in politics, women anywhere. I think this is the very fundamentalist ideology of the Taliban, which leads to their misogynistic approach against women’s rights in Afghanistan. And they have implemented these approaches since they came back to power.
SG: What worries me is that by taking away the rights of women in Afghanistan, by preventing girls from being educated, they are being deprived of their future, and ultimately, they have no role. Now, one thing I’ve noticed in Afghanistan is that many households are women led, they are the breadwinners, if they are not allowed to work, women will effectively be destitute, they will be living in poverty, and perhaps the only means to earning anything is to beg. Is the situation as concerning as that?
MQ: Yes, this situation is very concerning, because during the past eight or nine months that the Taliban came back to power, women were working, they were making [up] a good amount of the workforce in Afghanistan, their employment was okay. I don’t want to say that the situation for women before the Taliban was very ideal, it wasn’t like that, but, however, women were allowed to work. And the breadwinners, they lost their jobs because the Taliban came to power.
They unemployed lots of women, they fired many women from work and the country is going towards a hunger crisis, an acute hunger crisis, almost 90% of the population are starving. You can see many women begging on the streets. It’s not only women, but lots of men also lost their jobs. But when men lost their jobs, it was not because they were fired from the work that they were doing, but because unemployment rose, and lots of good projects, lots of internationally funded projects or work, that people were working in the offices, in the organisations, they stopped working in Afghanistan. So, lots of people lost their jobs. And lots of people, including the women, were fired from their jobs, because the Taliban didn’t want women to work.
And you can see lots of women who are begging on the streets just to provide some food on the table for their children, because they don’t have a man to work for them. And especially now that the Taliban banned women’s participation and women’s appearance in society, in the public square. Women even cannot go begging. It’s such a very upsetting situation in the country, and especially for women. They have closed all ways for women to work, to study, to even beg, for example, in this situation.
SG: It’s deeply tragic and painful what is now unfolding, and what you’re conveying only highlights just how dire the situation is. You mentioned this aspect about misogyny, and we know that the Taliban practice that, it seems to be part of their identity, their ideology. How much do you think the role of misogyny plays in the rise of extremism? So, for example, when there was women’s empowerment in Afghanistan, when there was a vibrant civil society, extremism to a degree was being contained. But if you start seeing the rise of misogyny, do you also start seeing as well, the rise of extremism, of terrorist groups, of radical groups emerging at the same time?
MQ: I believe that the radical groups and fundamentalist groups have this thought in common, and that is: any opposition against women’s meaningful role and participation in the society. So, this is what brings these groups all together, and they are inspired by each other when it comes to women. They copy each other when it comes to women’s rights and women’s appearance outside the house. But I would like to say that the Taliban specifically, they are not educated in Islamic history and Sharia, they’re very poorly tutored in Islamic history and Sharia, they do not have a manifesto, an Islamic manifesto, or any historical analysis, which would ground their perspectives in Islam.
So, whatever the restrictions they are posing to them, it does not have any basis in the Islam that the people of Afghanistan are following. They are actually grounding their arguments that ‘we are doing this according to the Sharia,’ but 99% of the country are Muslim, they have always followed the Sharia. This is not the type of Sharia that people of Afghanistan know. This is not the type of Islam that people of Afghanistan are following. I believe that this misogynistic approach, of the Taliban against women’s rights and their education and any participation outside the house, comes from their own, very old fashioned, I would say poor, ideology, which is against any participation of women outside.
SG: You say that the Taliban are poorly educated, and I think that’s very apparent when you look at the fighters on the ground. They seem to be very surprised when they see the new Afghanistan, the Afghanistan that’s been created over the last 20 years. They, for example, couldn’t understand the new technology that was brought in the development of infrastructure. For them, this was all very new, which kind of shows you how sheltered their life has been. Where have these Taliban fighters been brought up? Could it be in some parts of Afghanistan? Or is it more likely that they were being trained and educated in neighbouring Pakistan?
MQ: Yes, if we go back to the history of how the Taliban emerged, we can go back to the civil war and the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 80s. They were the group of clerics who were studying at Pakistani madrassas, the madrassas bordering Afghanistan, between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They met each other there and they were funded by some wealthy Arab countries and at some points, the Taliban managed to oust all other Mujahideen or jihadist groups, who are fighting at the same time against the Soviet Union.
So, according to some research, they were a more organised group, they had horizontal ties and vertical ties with their own group and among the people. So, they managed to come to power with the support, of course, of the Pakistani ISI, and some wealthy Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia. So, most of the fighters they have studied, they have been tutored at those madrassas and they were being educated with a very fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia, such as the Deobandi schools. They have been running since these years in these areas of the bordering areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
They are coming from there, because even we witnessed that most of them cannot even speak any of the languages spoken by the people of Afghanistan, they do not dress like the normal, ordinary people of Afghanistan, they have not seen women outside the house. [Over] the past 20 years, women had some achievements in Afghanistan, they could go out, they could work, they could dress normally, according to the traditions of the Afghan society. But these fighters came into the city, as if they had never seen normal human beings in their lives. So, that’s how they treated women, when they were not obeying them. They didn’t know how to treat women, even the Taliban officials, they also admitted that their fighters are not educated on how to treat women. They don’t know how to behave with women. And they even admitted that they are looking to educate their fighters, their members, to treat women.
But, however, I find this a propagandist approach and something which they would want [to make] people think that they have changed from the past 20 years, however, they have not changed at all. And they totally forgot about what they said for the fighters that are going to educate them on how to treat women. However, even the leaders, the officials, they started posing more restrictions on women, they don’t even care about what the world is saying about them and what the world wants from them in order to recognise them.
So, coming back to the point of where these fighters come from. I believe there have been religious schools where they educate these young fighters from a very young age. They educate them with the very fundamentalist interpretations of Sharia, according to the Deobandi school that they believe, and they believe in jihad. They believe in making an Islamic emirate and they are being educated with the Deobandi brand of Islam, which adheres to orthodox Islamism, and they are insisting that the Sunni Islamic law, Sharia, is the path of salvation. And they also insist on making Islamic practices alive, which goes back to the very first centuries, or the seventh century, the time of the Prophet Muhammad. And they also think that the notion of global jihad is sacred duty to protect Muslims.
So, these are the thoughts that they are growing up with. And also, this also leads to any opposition to women’s presence outside the house and any role for women outside the house. So, this goes back to their own ideology again.
SG: As you say, the Taliban have not changed. It’s clear that Taliban 2.0 is effectively the same as Taliban 1.0. And if we recall the Taliban, in their previous rule in Afghanistan in the 1990s, they allowed al-Qaeda and other jihadist terrorist groups to operate inside Afghanistan and use the country as a launchpad for terrorism. Where does the Taliban stand today, when it comes to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups? It’s interesting that they have not condemned al-Qaeda as yet. And it’s also interesting that you have people like Amin ul-Haq, who was at one time bin Laden’s bodyguard, returning to Afghanistan, from Pakistan, with a guard of honour from the Taliban. So, it is very worrying what’s taking place. But I’d be interested in your take as to where you think the relationship is between the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups.
MQ: As you mentioned, the Taliban have a very close tie with al-Qaeda, even this led to their overthrow from power in 2001, because the Taliban provided safe haven for al-Qaeda. And that led to al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack in New York.
The Taliban still remain very much connected to al-Qaeda through the Haqqani Network. For example, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the deputy of the Ministry of Interior of Taliban, who is also leader of the Haqqani Network, published this op-ed in the New York Times, and he kind of illustrated how interconnected these two groups are. I mean they have ties, they have woven family relationships, because they are actually existing in the same region between the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even if the Taliban does not actively permit use of territory of Afghanistan for terrorist organisations or terrorist operations, they wouldn’t even have the ability to deter terrorist groups from establishing their presence in the country, even if they deny, for example, that they do not have any ties with al-Qaeda. But the Taliban also lacked the capability to prevent any activities of terrorist groups in Afghanistan. We have seen them.
And the leadership’s concern is nowadays mostly on how they should get recognised and how the funds should be released. But they also fail to provide security to the people and make the borders secure. So, I believe the tie still remains and they have not denied it. But, however, they have illustrated that they are interconnected, and they have links with this group.
SG: It’s interesting that you spoke about the Haqqani Network led by Sirajuddin Haqqani. So, the Haqqani Network is an internationally proscribed terrorist group. It carried out some of the most deadly terrorist attacks in Afghanistan across the last 20 years. Sirajuddin Haqqani himself is a proscribed terrorist.
Is he the most powerful person in Afghanistan? Are the decisions that are being made by the Taliban when it comes to security, education, and the lives of Afghans, are they all impacted by the decisions that Sirajuddin Haqqani makes?
MQ: I believe, if we look at the internal dynamics of the Taliban, we can figure out two different groups who are saying that “we are together.” But then we have the Kandahari Taliban who are the Taliban, the Afghan Taliban. And then they have the affiliated Haqqani Network. I believe that they seem to be the same, but the dynamics and the disagreements in many of the decisions stem from the differences that these two groups—showing as one—have with each other and they have some disagreements. At some points the rivalry—inside rivalries and competitions—will lead to lots of failures.
For example, we had in the news that some Taliban members agree with the reopening of girls’ high schools, and some other Taliban members do not agree. On the other hand, we had statements from Haqqanis, for example, yesterday, or the other day, Anas Haqqani, the other very famous figure of the Haqqani Network, he said that—after the decree on hijab—he said, “let us not make people hate Islam by imposing such decrees, such as covering your entire face.”
And then he also said another statement that the Taliban will come up soon with a decision about reopening girls’ high schools, but at the same time other Taliban leaders, such as Mullah Baradar, he didn’t say anything about it. So, it seems like half of these groups agree with something and the others don’t agree. So, they have their own disagreements that might even block some decisions. And this has implications on the lives of the ordinary people of Afghanistan.
SG: It seems very paradoxical what’s going on inside Afghanistan, with these different Taliban factions that you mentioned. They have agreements, they have disagreements. It’s unclear sometimes who is actually making decisions, whether those decisions are national or whether they are regional. It is interesting that there are those divisions, fault lines that are emerging between some of those groups.
And in addition, you do have a resistance movement that is showing signs of growth known as the National Resistance Front, the NRF, which is predominantly based in the Panjshir Valley. Talk to me about what’s going on right now with the NRF. Are they making gains? Is this a movement that can be taken seriously in terms of being able to undermine the Taliban’s domination of Afghanistan?
MQ: As we can see in the news that nowadays, there is heavy fighting going on in some northern provinces of Afghanistan. These resistance forces have emerged since months, and they are saying that they are fighting the Taliban. Well, yes, the fighting is going on in the Panjshir, and Andarab [District] and Takhar. And there are very grave human rights violations taking place in these cities. The resistance groups are there, they are fighting the Taliban. But at the same time, the Taliban are taking the civilians of these provinces hostage. The killing machine is open, the killing machine is going on, they are killing the normal civilians and stamping them as being members of the resistance forces. However, they are profiling people of those provinces. In other cities like in Kabul, they’re looking for Panjshiris, they’re looking for people from Baghlan or Andarab and people from Takhar, these northern provinces. We can see that clashes are going on. Some districts and some villages have fallen into the hands of the national resistance forces. The resistance forces did not just remain restricted or limited to the northern provinces, we could see the rise of other resistance forces in other provinces such as in Nangarhar, such as I think in Khost, provinces in the South and in the East. But the more active are in the north of Afghanistan.
I’m just following their social media and their statements, and there have been clashes, there have been casualties on both sides, and there have been some parts falling into the hands of the national resistance forces. We also read in the news, and it was verified, it was confirmed that the TTP—the Pakistani Taliban—they have joined the Afghan Taliban in these provinces to fight the national resistance forces, which creates such big concern for the people, because we are scared. Genocide is taking place, as you could see, like there have been mass killings in these provinces. They are taking the people hostage, they are detaining, the Taliban are taking the men of the families in these provinces with them, just for allegedly being a member of the national resistance forces. And we do not have lots of coverage for this in the international media, unfortunately. I believe that this should be really spoken about.
SG: Do you think that one of the problems is that because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that perhaps the West has got a little distracted with that conflict, and that the Taliban are taking advantage of it in the hope that these extrajudicial murders that you’re talking about aren’t getting the attention and the spotlight that perhaps they need to? And that the Taliban are quite savvy, they can see that the crisis in Ukraine is dominating the headlines and that they can carry out their systemic detention, torture of Afghans in the hope that it will go under the radar, and it won’t get enough attention?
MQ: I believe so, because since the Ukraine war started, the world’s attention kind of changed to Ukraine instead of Afghanistan. I wouldn’t say that the world shouldn’t pay attention to Ukraine. I would like to say, like an equal attention to the situation in both countries. However, Ukraine is very close to the European countries, but in Afghanistan, the war has been going on since over decades now. And there are lots of atrocities taking place in Afghanistan that need special attention. A terrorist group, a recognised terrorist organisation is taking the 40 million people of Afghanistan as hostage, just to get recognised and to get the funds released. I believe that the international community needs to pay attention equally to Afghanistan as they do to Ukraine. In Afghanistan, there is a very long list of human rights violations, starting from women’s rights, and then going to the extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, forced displacements of people who, for example, have Hazara origins, Tajik regions, and the forced disappearances of the former national security and defence members, former Afghan government employees, disappearance of women protesters. There are some women who we still don’t know their whereabouts, the families are calling, the Taliban have detained, but they don’t know where they are. And there’s such a long list of human rights violations. I mean, this group is taking 40 million people of Afghanistan as hostages for their political gains.
And they don’t even now care what the world wants from them. They’re just implementing their barbaric rules on women and on the people of Afghanistan. In their recent decree on covering women’s faces, they have actually tried to take the domestic violence into the houses of people, it gives the men of the family more power to use violence against women, because the man or the male guardian will be punished on behalf of the woman if she doesn’t cover her face. So, if we think that the violence in Afghanistan starts from the home, and it gets bigger when you go out of the home, I believe, just going back to Ukraine, I believe that the world and international community must pay the same attention that they are paying to Ukraine. It’s not only the war and human rights violations that the world has forgotten about in Afghanistan, but it’s also about the Afghan refugees and the evacuees outside the country. Since the war in Ukraine started, all attention was paid to the Ukrainian refugees, and they forgot about Afghan refugees who were evacuated from the country. So, I think there should be an equal treatment of both groups.
SG: It’s an important point that you raised about not forgetting the Afghans and the Afghan refugees, as well. And you’ve painted a very stark situation as to the human rights abuses that the Taliban are carrying out. Two things I’d like to connect to that: one of the communities that has been really badly affected by the return of the Taliban has been the Hazaras, who are the Shia community inside of Afghanistan. And they’ve not just faced mistreatment by the Taliban, but also by the ISIS affiliate known as IS-KP. My question is, some people say that IS-KP is the enemy of the Taliban, and then there are others that say that actually, it’s much more murky, and that on occasions IS-KP works with the Taliban, especially the Haqqani Network. Could you talk more about how the Hazaras have suffered since the Taliban returned? And also, perhaps if you could connect it to the role of the Taliban and IS-KP as well?
MQ: Hazaras are the ethnic group, and they follow the Shia sect of Islam. They have always been a target by fundamentalist or extremist Sunni terrorist organisations. IS-KP started this activity, according to reports, in 2015. And the main target were the Hazara communities in Afghanistan. We witnessed lots of terrorist attacks against the Hazara community by the IS-KP in Afghanistan, mostly that the IS-KP is taking responsibility for. For example, they attack mosques in Kandahar and Kunduz and other provinces and in Mazar[-e-Sharif], in Kabul. The IS-KP carried out all these attacks. IS-KP has emerged as a rival to the Taliban; however, we don’t know if they have ties behind the scenes or not. But their major targets are the Hazara and Shia communities of Afghanistan because of their ideology. Again, they deem that these groups are infidels, and they should be vanished. This leads to Hazara genocide. And…even the previous government failed to secure the lives of the Hazara people in Afghanistan. This systematic discrimination and systematic killing of the Hazara community in Afghanistan has been going on since years.
And now that the Taliban came back to power, the Hazaras are not safe at all at their schools and the mosques and educational institutions. They have lost jobs, they have been fired from where they were working, and…affiliated members of the Taliban have replaced them. So, this group is facing a particular discrimination and systematic discrimination since years in Afghanistan. However…since the Taliban took over, they have been targets of the attacks by IS-KP. They have, before the Taliban, been targets of the attacks by IS-KP, for example, they attacked their hospitals, their babies were killed, the hospitals got attacked, the schools got attacked many times, and IS-KP took responsibility for carrying out all these terrorist attacks. We still don’t know if the Taliban and IS-KP are together in this. But however, their ideology…I believe both are extremist and fundamentalist. The Deobandi school of thought is an extremist ideology, and they do not accept the Shia sect of Islam. However, I think in this, they have something in common.
SG: Indeed. It’s interesting that the IS-KP, they do seem to carry out attacks against the Kandahari Taliban, and yet they have never carried out an attack against the Haqqani Network, which often makes you wonder just how murky the relationship and the nexus of these entities are.
So, one other thing that I want to touch upon which you raised earlier, which I thought was very interesting, is this role of the TTP, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistan Taliban, you mentioned how they’re working together with the Afghan Taliban. Why this is important is that the former government of Imran Khan, they used to say that if the Taliban returned to power, then it would provide greater security for Pakistan and that the TTP would not be able to operate, whereas in fact, we’ve seen the complete opposite. The TTP are not only operating, but they are increasing their operations, and they are growing. Was Pakistan naive in assuming that the TTP would come under control if the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan?
MQ: Many people thought that the Pakistani government, by supporting the Afghan Taliban, will create a kind of rival group that would fight the TTP. However, we see that the TTP has joined the Afghan Taliban, who for years have been rivals and competitors to terrorist groups. I wouldn’t exactly say that the Pakistan government was very weak in understanding this and thinking that supporting the Afghan Taliban would help them vanish the TTP, but the Pakistani government in many ways managed to take control of Afghanistan and its affairs by supporting the Taliban coming back to power by providing them safe havens for many years in its territories. However, I think now, the TTP and the Afghan Taliban coming together, they have become a new challenge to the Pakistani government. As we could see, the airstrikes carried out by the Pakistani air forces in Khost province, in Kunar Province, they claim that they have targeted the TTP bases in these provinces was one of the signs that the Pakistani government felt insecure about thinking that the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban would make good allies against the Pakistani government. But however, I don’t think that would be the case. Because the Afghan Taliban are more affected by the Pakistan government and the ISI. We could see it from the very beginning, when the Taliban came to power, the head of the ISI came to Afghanistan and visited them. And without the support of Pakistan, I wouldn’t believe that the Taliban of Afghanistan would really survive.
SG: Well, it’s an important point that you’ve helped to clarify. One final question, Meetra, is, just for our listeners, could you also explain your own connection to Afghanistan and the work that you’re now doing to help Afghans? And also, if you could perhaps provide some perspective on what more others can do to help the Afghan people during this very difficult time.
MQ: I was born and grew up in Afghanistan. And I was very young during the first rule of the Taliban from ‘96 to 2001. That’s why I said in the beginning that people like me were not very much surprised by the coming back of the Taliban and did not really believe that the Taliban have changed…they have not changed. We were expecting, people like me, my mother, we were expecting such a thing would happen. Because this connection…you know, my connection with the how Taliban ruled in Afghanistan is very old, because I was very young, and I was witnessing how they are oppressing women. I am actually determined to raise awareness. And if I’m not inside the country to fight and raise awareness about the situation of women in Afghanistan, outside the country, or at least advocate for the rights of the people, for human rights, I am now a reporter for an international broadcasting TV, I cover mostly the reports about women’s situation, the human rights situation. And I report and write about women’s rights and the situation of women, restrictions imposed on them. I believe that my networks in the UK and in Europe, hopefully, get my message and get the situation of women in Afghanistan, and I expect them to raise awareness as well.
So, what we can do outside the country is to raise awareness, to write a lot about the situation in Afghanistan and the human rights crisis, the women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan. This is what I would expect from my international friends and Afghans in the diaspora. That you can just write, if you are not fighting inside the country. I mean, if I’m not there, and if I cannot go back there, at least I could just write about them and spread the word, advocate, whenever, wherever possible, for the rights of women and Afghanistan, and hopefully, make a network of people who would pressurise the policymakers in the UK, in Europe, and like in a bigger context, the international community, to put pressure on the Taliban, to bring changes and to make the improvements in the situation of people, and especially the women in Afghanistan, the minorities. However, this is less probable that the Taliban would change, especially after the hijab decree that they issued. The world actually cut off its hope to the Taliban, and the Taliban also didn’t care. So, coming back to my point, all that I would like to say is that if we are outside the country, all that we can do is to talk about it. Raise awareness. Let’s not forget Afghanistan. I know we have the war in Ukraine, but let’s not forget the people of Afghanistan as well.
SG: You’ve been very impassioned about the rights of Afghans, the rights of women. It will certainly resonate. And we wish you the very best in your endeavours. And most grateful that you’ve been able to spend the time in providing your primary perspectives on Afghanistan. And it’s just a reminder how the world must not forget what’s going on inside that country, because what happens in Afghanistan doesn’t just stay in Afghanistan. It has much wider global ramifications. Meetra Qutb, thank you so much for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive, and we hope to have you back again in the future.
MQ: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.