Key Reflections
* Toxic ethnic politics in Afghanistan could potentially lead to the federalisation or the breakup of Afghanistan as a single country.
* The many Afghan opposition groups to the Taliban lack cohesion. These groups, operating in different countries around the world, need to come together, form a single entity, and come up with ideas for governance the way an opposition government should.
* The Taliban’s model of governance is not sustainable. Using force on the population will not work when that population is hungry and impoverished. This raises the potential for a popular uprising against Taliban rule by the people of Afghanistan.
* Pakistan’s support of the Taliban in Afghanistan has now come back to bite it, as the country faces threats from the Taliban’s Pakistani offshoot known as the TTP, who receives support from the Afghan Taliban.
* High-ranking Taliban members and their families who live abroad should be named, sanctioned, and have their passports removed.
* Foreign governments should not recognise the Taliban, and international NGOs should be more transparent about the challenges they are facing from the Taliban government in Afghanistan, rather than feeling forced to pander to them.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
LOD: Lynne O’Donnell
SG: Welcome to the NATO DEEP Dive podcast, I’m your host Dr Sajjan Gohel and this is the third and final part of our series about Afghanistan and the Taliban with the Foreign Policy magazine columnist Lynne O’Donnell.
After previously discussing what life is like in Afghanistan under the Taliban and who the key decision-makers are, in this episode, we talk about the future security challenges that will emanate from both Afghanistan and Pakistan which could impact directly on the West once more.
We know that the one movement that is trying to stand up to the Taliban is the National Resistance Front, you have spoken to members of the NRF. Are they a legitimate force that can actually make inroads against the Taliban and is one of the challenges they face that they are seen as too Tajik and [do not have] enough Pashtun representation?
LOD: I try to steer clear of the ethnic politics, because I think that that’s a really toxic road to go down. I have talked to Ahmad Massoud a few times and to people around him and to people who support him. I find that the NRF as a movement, like very many of the other groups that have set themselves up or would like to set themselves up as Taliban opposition groups, lack ideas, they lack cohesive ideas. And, you know, one of the reasons that I don’t really go into the ethnic politics of things is because it bores me.
For instance, I set up a group in Pakistan, an organisation, like an umbrella, to help Afghan journalists who are stranded in Pakistan, and there are many hundreds of them and their situation is pretty desperate. And yet they divide themselves into Hazara, Tajik and Pashtun. And I’m like, ‘come on, guys, think of yourselves as journalists and that’s your tribe, and others in your tribe, in our tribe, will help you if we can.’ But no, they want this differentiation, which I fear may ultimately lead to the federalization or the breakup of the country. But I think you know what I would like to see happen is that the different groups talk to each other. I’ve talked to former generals of the Afghan forces who are actively fighting the Taliban across certain parts of the country, who have never been contacted by NRF leaders. They’re all trying to do the same thing, but they’re doing it for themselves.
I would like to see some more cohesion. I would like to see the different groups that have set themselves up in Europe or in Turkey or Tajikistan or wherever, I’d like to see them form one group, as an opposition group. Come up with a name that suits everybody, ‘the Afghan opposition,’ or whatever, and try and get some support. Not for an armed resistance, because it’s too early, nobody is interested in funnelling to anti-Taliban groups yet, we’ve got Ukraine going on, Africa is being lost to similar extremist groups, and it’s too soon to expect any country, especially the United States or any of the NATO members to really want to get involved militarily in Afghanistan again. But in the meantime, what they could be doing is supporting the development of a cohesive opposition to the Taliban, so that you’re creating the ground for political dialogue.
Because the Taliban, I said this in the interviews that I was giving after I came out of Taliban detention last year, they’re not sustainable. Holding guns on hungry people is not sustainable because pretty soon when they get to starving, they’ve got nothing to lose, and your guns are not going to stop people rising up against you. And the excesses are going to start annoying the people who are putting money in that you are stealing from people who are hungry, which is what they’re doing. I think the creation and the encouragement of a cohesive political opposition would be a step forward that we haven’t seen yet. But it also means that the people who would be this political opposition have to start working together.
You’ve got the warlords around Dostum in Turkey, and then you’ve got Ahmad Massoud, really trading on the charisma of his late father and people around the former foreign minister, Haneef Atmar in in Germany, I just think until they start working together and come up with some ideas for governance, the way an opposition should, then it’s just going to be [in a state of] attrition like it is in the Panjshir at the moment, it’s just the Taliban with the firepower, killing people who don’t like them.
SG: Yes, and as you said, the ethnic fault lines tend to be a very toxic issue, it’s what’s created so many of the problems that have mired Afghanistan into the problems that it’s now experiencing. As we get to the final part of our discussion, one aspect to address is the so-called elephant in the room, we’ve talked about it briefly, but perhaps now to focus on it and that is Pakistan. Pakistan was accused of supporting the Taliban. There have been accusations that they enabled the Taliban to return to power. That relationship was of course very strong in the 1990s. Post-9/11 Pakistan became the hub for a lot of the Taliban fighters, including the Haqqani Network, but yet the relationship seems to currently have problems. There seem to be some challenges that Pakistan is facing with the Taliban. Is that a correct analysis or, again, are there dynamics that perhaps are not getting enough attention?
LOD: I think that the general level of buyer’s remorse, amongst those countries that supported the Taliban return, is probably most acute in Pakistan, because it’s closest to the problem and yes, they bankrolled the Taliban’s return, they encouraged it, they were right there on the battlefield alongside the Taliban in those final months, and ensured that what happened. So, yeah, I think Pakistan is largely responsible for the situation that prevails. But the backlash is really—there would be a lot of Afghans who would say this is what they deserve. I don’t think anybody deserves what happened in Peshawar the other day, that terrible suicide attack at the mosque that killed more than 100 policemen.
But I do think that Pakistan now finds an uncontrollable Taliban on its border. It finds a Taliban that is rewarding its friends for their support and amongst them are the TTP. I think that the TTP and the Afghan Taliban are one and the same, the only difference is territory. I think that the TTP is posing an existential threat to the Pakistani state and with their economy the way it is, with the social problems that the country has, dire poverty that is getting worse by the day, no jobs, no prospects, no hope for people across the country. If they don’t get a handle on this situation very, very soon, then Pakistan is going to go the same way as Afghanistan. I think that’s a very, very real prospect.
SG: Yes, and one of the challenges that Pakistan now faces is that the military establishment had often spoken about and created the perception within Pakistan that if the Taliban returns to power in Afghanistan, it will actually mean the end of the TTP and that Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan would be more secure. Now, the irony is that the complete opposite has happened, that the TTP have become stronger, they are able to carry out attacks across Pakistan, they actually seem to be growing in strength across the board, you mentioned the horrific attack that took place in Peshawar at a mosque just now. Do you see Pakistan imploding in a similar way that Afghanistan has? And how does that play domestically in terms of say, the now opposition leader Imran Khan, who plays a lot of populist politics as well and that he’s often seen as a friend of the Taliban? Do all of these dynamics cause further challenges for Pakistan?
LOD: I think…there’s a lot of a lot to unpack in that, isn’t there? Let’s start with Imran Khan. I think that Imran Khan is not the solution. He is, like you say, he plays populist, but he plays religion as populist, and that’s dangerous in itself. In recent months, there have been huge demonstrations across the northwest in towns and cities and valleys all across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa against the remilitarisation, calling on the government to make sure that the TTP does not return and terrorise them the way they did in the early part of this century. People want jobs, they want their kids, girls and boys, to go to school. Women want to be able to run their own businesses. They don’t want the TTP back, and their pleas, their public pleas, for the government and the military to ensure that they are safe from terrorism are very, very real and very loud.
I think the military has backed itself into a corner. It’s become…it’s very complex. Pakistan’s military is too obsessed with its own enrichment and survival now. They did relax on the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan. They’ve been so focused on India since the creation of the Pakistani state that they thought that they were clever enough to be able to, as Hillary Clinton said, keep the snakes in next-door’s backyard. They have not taken their eye off the ball, they never had their eye on the ball in the first place. If you’re focusing on a threat far away, like India, without looking at what’s happening to your own people on your own turf, then I think that this has become inevitable—it was inevitable that the Taliban in Afghanistan would offer safe haven to their Pakistani brethren, and every jihadist organisation on the planet has been emboldened by the Taliban’s victory, aided by Pakistan. So they haven’t been paying attention, you know, by saying that India is the threat, they’ve allowed the real threat to come home, and now they are threatened. And really, if elections do take place in Pakistan later this year, and Imran wins, which he may well do because there’s such disenchantment with the establishment in Pakistan, then I just hope that he gets some good, solid secular advice on how to get his country back on track, socially, politically, economically, and security wise, because really it’s like starting from scratch—not even, it’s like starting from where you never wanted to be, and sometimes I think if you just sort of disbanded the country and started again, you’d have a better chance of making it work. But at the moment, what’s the population, 320 million? Probably 300 million of those are not doing very well, especially as the rupee keeps falling against the dollar, and there’s capital flight and basic state bankruptcy looming. It’s not a good situation.
SG: It’s all very disconcerting what is transpiring. As a final question, Lynne, what can be done to help the people in the region, especially in Afghanistan, when it comes to, say, women’s rights, supporting independent media, trying to create or maintain what semblance of civil society there is? Or is it that there is nothing that can be done? I mean, very often, we keep hearing people say, “Recognise the Taliban.” I’m not personally convinced that’s the solution. I don’t know if that will actually achieve what people want to achieve. But where do you stand on these issues?
LOD: Well I’m with you on diplomatic recognition. I’m also a little bit sceptical about some people saying that this is what the Taliban desperately want. The United States State Department people like to say that. I’m not so sure. They’re doing okay without it. I think there need to be consequences for the excesses and the abuses, and so far there haven’t been. There’s a lot of thoughts and prayers, it always used to be, you know, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families of this enormous terrorist attack perpetrated by people that we’re actually having talks with in Doha.” It’s like, oh give me a break, you know? That’s the same thing that’s going on. I think what we need to see is serious sanctions, sanctioning not only the Hassan Bahisses of this world, but their families as well. Their families should be deported from countries like New Zealand, Australia, America, Denmark, wherever they are, and they should all be forced to live in Afghanistan. Their kids should not be allowed to go to school in the West, their wives shouldn’t be allowed to work and walk down the street freely in nice little towns like Hamilton. And their passports should be cancelled. There should be very serious application of Magnitsky-style laws against human rights perpetrators. For a while it seemed that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and UNAMA itself, who do good work on collating abuses, were all competing to do the worst, you know, “how bad is it?” but they didn’t name anybody. What I want to see is human rights abusers named and sanctioned personally so they can’t travel, their assets are frozen, their families are deported, their passports are cancelled, they can’t get on planes to go anywhere. And this would really humiliate them and really let them know that there are consequences to actions that are not acceptable by any entity that calls itself a government. But that’s not what we’re seeing. What we’re seeing is, “Please, Mr. Taliban, let women go to school. Oh, okay then. Here’s another billion dollars.”
It’s time for consequences and accountability. Where’s that money really going? I did some reporting recently on Taliban pilfering of international aid. And one of the senior people who works for the United Nations was asked about it on BBC Radio, and he called the report “calumny.” Basically, he was calling me a liar. I have letters from the United Nations to the Taliban de facto authorities complaining about the pilfering of international aid for purposes that are not meant for. I have the documented evidence. Why can’t the United Nations come out and speak publicly about that sort of abuse of trust by the Taliban? The last week or so, I’ve been assailed once again by the World Food Programme over their apparent willingness to abide by the Taliban’s edict against having women work for NGOs. Now they put a lot of effort into telling my bosses that my reporting is inaccurate, when all I did every time that they pushed back against me was provide more backup for the report. Why doesn’t the WFP come out and say, “We really feel pressured to continue our work, but on a men only basis, because we feel that blah, blah, blah,” whatever their thinking is behind it, or actually say to their implementing partners like Care International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, or Save the Children or whoever, why don’t they say to them, “We’re not going to be able to do…We feel the need, if we want to stay in the country, to go along with the Taliban edicts, but you please find other implementing partners and do it the way you can?” Why aren’t they just upfront about it? Why don’t they just say what the situation is for them, instead of pandering to the Taliban? I think the time for consequences, not recognition, but consequences in return for engagement has come, because nothing else has worked.
SG: Time for consequences, it’s a sobering aspect for everyone to reflect on and to think about. Lynne, you’ve been very gracious with your time across these episodes, and I’m very grateful. I also want to just acknowledge all the hard work you’ve done in writing about this and reporting, holding the Taliban accountable, giving a voice to a lot of people in Afghanistan that feel lost and helpless. Please keep doing what you’re doing. And, again, I just want to say thank you so much for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive and hope to speak to you again in the future.
LOD: Thank you. Thank you for having me and for your time. I really appreciate it.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of NATO DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP). My producers 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 NATO 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.