Afghan black hole stays that way
As India celebrates its 75th year of independence on August 15, neighbouring Afghanistan observes the first anniversary of the second coming of the dreaded Taliban.
This day last year, the Taliban usurped power in the wake of the American troop withdrawal, enveloping the country in a dark cloak of oppressive obscurantism. The day leaves a lot for Afghans to yearn, not celebrate. Today, half the population lives under the poverty line. Even the foreign aid helping feed the millions went out of the window after the Ukraine war started and the West found a new villain in Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Hardly any promise the Taliban made on restoring civil liberties as compared to its brutal rule in the 1990s—to get international recognition—has fructified yet. The Afghan economy is expected to contract by more than 20% partly because women have been taken out of the workforce after reimposition of the strictest interpretation of the Shariat. A recent protest by a small bunch of brave women demanding bread, work and freedom was brutally crushed in Kabul.
The internal security situation in the countryside is a mess as the trigger-happy Taliban militia only believe in the law of the jungle. Trained government officials have been eliminated in hundreds, depriving the administration of its skilled workforce. Dozens of journalists, too, have been shot dead. Perhaps the only thriving enterprise is terror, another promise the Taliban made to control. The recent assassination of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul safehouse that belongs to an aide of the Haqqani brothers—part of the Taliban government—showed how intertwined terror outfits are at their roots.
Under such trying circumstances India is tentatively restoring its presence in Kabul. Officials inspecting the embassy recently were surprised that the stuff they left behind in locked compartments during their hurried exit a year ago was not disturbed. Like its outreach to Lanka, India sent initial consignments of food aid to Kabul, and intends to expand it. The black hole of Taliban rule cannot be wished away, but the people shouldn’t be abandoned either.