After two weeks of mystery about which Taliban the world would be dealing with, we learned on Tuesday the list of those Taliban leaders who will form the “interim government” that will rule the country for however long this interim is. The makeup of the group leads to the conclusion that that this “interim” could be the longest in political history (provided, of course, they don’t lose the potential civil war). All the members of this “interim cabinet,” as it has been called, are senior leaders who go back to early days and raw memories of the previous Taliban rule.
Those memories, of course, are what drove hundreds of thousands of Afghans, both those who had some relationship with the US and those who did not but still dreaded a return of the Taliban, to rush for the exit as soon as the they walked unhindered into unguarded, deserted government buildings. As we know, there are many thousand left behind who are still in line to exit. The post-war exodus has just begun according to this morning’s news (though the news reports indicate that there were no Afghans among the 130 people on that first plane out on Thursday).
The makeup of this “interim” leadership must be sending shivers down the spines of the great mass of Afghans who are desperate to get out, and dimming quickly the hope of most of their neighbors as well as Western nations that some “new Taliban,” bringing more modern ideas to bear on previous retrogressive policies (for example about the role of women) would be included in the leadership. The ‘interim government’ looks very old Taliban to me and to many others I suspect. It is an all-male cabinet, and all but three are ethnic Pashtuns. The three non-Pashtuns are very old-school northern Taliban. In fact, it is the vintage look of this group that raises doubt about how interim it is; it is difficult to see how these men, who have been among the leaders of the Taliban since almost the beginning, do not consider themselves the rightful, permanent leaders. How will they ever be changed, since the Taliban has said, quite clearly, it doesn’t believe in elections.
I will not run through the list as this is being widely discussed in the press, but I cannot help mentioning a couple of the self-elected leaders which strengthen the signal I believe the group is trying to send. Mohammad Hasan Ahkund is acting Prime Minister and also on the United Nation’s sanctions list. Even more interesting, especially I suspect to both the US and to Pakistan, is the acting Interior Minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the feared boss of the Haqqani Network militant Sunni organization, designated by the US as a terrorist organization, responsible for a number of deadly terrorist incidents in both Islamabad and Kabul.
I had written, only last week, that I thought that the Taliban would concentrate, at least at the beginning, on gaining legitimacy and seeking aid for a rapidly sinking economy and an approaching humanitarian disaster. I was wrong. This cabinet appears to be signaling to both their neighbors and to the Western nations that are holding out the bait of such assistance as a reward for moderate, inclusive policies toward women and minorities, that it will the path of isolation and reject the idea of integration into the 21st century international system.
The inclusion of Haqqani in the government seems to me a clear signal of this, a pretty clear statement that foreign assistance and recognition give those donor countries little leverage over this set of Taliban leaders. I fear that the human cost of this contrast of priorities will be significant. I also fear that this disregard for its own people could lead to serious political instability in Afghanistan, and serious violence (as that is the only way the Taliban know how to treat dissent and resistance, viz. the way they are now responding to demonstrations in the streets (by very brave women mostly) against their rule. But as far as I can tell, these demonstrations are taking place only in a few urban settings, probably mainly in Kabul. The rural areas are (to paraphrase a great novel) another country in which one rural woman is quoted as saying she had never seen a foreigner who wasn’t carrying a weapon. From the rural population, whose social attitudes are similar, the Taliban draw their strength. Civil war seems unlikely in that context
Friday morning’s news carried the statement by a Taliban spokesman which pushed back at general international criticism of the interim cabinet’s makeup and especially at the continuation of sanctions against “senior leaders” (read Sirajuddin Haqqani) saying that the Islamic Emirate considers that a “violation of Doha agreement,” neglecting to mention, of course, that the Taliban were, and are, serial violators of that agreement. More alarming news, however, came from the UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan who said that, without inflows of new money, Afghanistan could suffer “a total breakdown of the economy and social order.” At the same time, a UNDP assessment released on Thursday warned that Afghanistan “teeters on the brink of universal poverty).
I mentioned last week that Pakistani PM Imran Khan told the PBS Evening News about 6 weeks ago that civil war was the worst-case scenario for Pakistan because more millions of Afghan refugees would be an intolerable burden for his country. It could turn out that the Taliban almost instant takeover of the country is just as bad an outcome. If the predictions of economic disaster obtain, the flood of refugees would be equally burdensome. So, as one would expect, Pakistan joined Qatar in calling for unconditional humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and the unfreezing of Afghan government assets abroad.
I am sure that none of the countries involved want to see the humanitarian disaster that is predicted if the international community does not provide a significant amount of assistance in the coming year. But not every country will want to provide unconditional assistance to a country ruled by a Taliban government little changed in outlook or policy from its repressive, retrogressive, very exclusive, brutal policies of its 1990s reign. There will be a great tussle within and between the large donors, whose governments have to answer to publics who find Taliban values repugnant. Unlike the Taliban, and some of the one-party states involved, these governments do have to face elections.
In addition, there is a serious problem of what the economists call “moral hazard” in any such situation. Pakistanis know this term as it has been applied to Pakistan in several instances in which international inflows have propped up the Pakistan economy and permitted the government to continue counterproductive economic policies it promised to reform. It began as a purely economic term but has now been seen to be more widely applicable; a more general definition taken from “Investopedia” could be “the risk that a party has not entered into a contract in good faith.” Since Pakistan policy makers paid only passing attention to moral hazard through the years, there is no reason to expect they will think of it in the dire situation of Afghanistan. But other governments will think of it, especially Western ones who have to answer to an electorate which would expect, for example, changes in Taliban policy toward women in response to large Western support efforts.
And we have to think of the possible victims of economic and/or other disasters (natural, social, etc.) in the context of moral hazard. There is a moral question as to whether rich countries can let victims die because they have not intervened with assistance for even the most recalcitrant of countries, and Afghanistan certainly looks to be in the vanguard of that group. At least, we don’t have to worry about these cosmic issues in the case of Afghanistan. I suspect that nations long friendly to Afghanistan, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE both of which were the only other nations with Pakistan to recognize the Taliban in 1996, will eschew moral issues and provide unconditional assistance.
I wrote just after the takeover, that history shows that insurgent victories over long-entrenched governments – takeovers by force such as those in China, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Cuba—tend to result in three kinds of behavior, not mutually incompatible: purges, mass emigration, and/or a search for international legitimacy. I think we can rule out the latter given the “interim government” the Taliban have now announced. We cannot yet rule out mass emigration, as we know hundreds of thousands would like to leave. But as of yet, the Taliban have not let them, and I suppose most are still waiting to see if it will. A permissive Taliban reaction to this mass urge to flee also seems unlikely to me, given the makeup of the cabinet. And of course, the depth of the economic collapse as well as the retrogressive level of social constraints will play a role in determining the number of Afghans who try to leave despite what measures the Taliban take to restrain emigration. That leaves purges as the most likely of the three modes of behavior history shows normal after an insurgent takeover. Of course purges will add to the incentives to emigrate, and many of the putative immigrants may add to the list of the purged. It can be very complicated, but I expect the next several years to be very violent and bloody and, at the same time produce a mass migration. Whether Pakistan is ready for this is unclear; the proxy may threaten its creator.
The article appeared in the Friday Times