Alwaght- Since the Taliban takeover of power, formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan has been one of the key demands of the world countries and neighbors as a condition for recognition of the group’s acting government. It has been over two years since the Taliban takeover, but the group has taken no action to form the demanded government and only claims that its government system is comprehensive.
In recent days, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed in reaction to calls by Central Asian and German leaders to form an inclusive government and commit to the human rights said: “The current government is inclusive and the rights of women are secured in the county and these two are internal issues of Afghanistan.”
The remarks by this Taliban official come while the international community has so far seen no signs of the formation of a comprehensive and inclusive government in Afghanistan, and even though about 38 countries do business with the Afghan government, due to the monopolization of power by the group and the lack of a constitution to regulate economic and social affairs in the country, they do not recognize it.
World countries tie the Taliban government recognition to formation of a compromise government and this has been highlighted in various international meetings on Afghanistan. In the recent Moscow Format conference that was held with the presence of Afghanistan neighbors in Russia, once again inclusivity of the government and the ways of helping Kabul tackle the current challenges were discussed. Russia meeting showed that as long as the Taliban takes no steps towards meeting the world community’s demands, it will not succeed in securing cooperation with world countries. Analysts believe that the Taliban see their government as representing all ethnic groups in the country, while the world community and the people of Afghanistan do not recognize it as the official representative of the Afghans.
Inclusive government a demand of Afghan people
The insistence by the Taliban that the international demand for formation of an inclusive government is a foreign interference is essentially false because this is a demand of the Afghans and political factions.
After taking power, the Taliban suspended the national constitution and banned all political parties and their right for political activity. Many Afghan people demanded the drafting of a constitution. Despite the fact that the current government does not have international and popular legitimacy, the Taliban do not pay attention to the people’s wishes.
Facing the worst political and economic conditions and even do not have security at their homes because of the strict Taliban rules, the people in Afghanistan call on the world community to take steps to restore their lost rights.
In justifying their claims that the acting government is an inclusive one, the Taliban have repeatedly argued that Abdul Salam Hanafi from the Uzbek minority and Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat and Maulvi Nuruddin Azizi from the Tajik minority are present in the cabinet. This is while these people are officially members of the Taliban and have been accused of carrying out various terrorist activities in the past years and do not have a social base among people. More than 99 percent of the members of the Taliban government and its senior officials are Pashtuns, and less than 1 percent of other ethnic groups, mainly those who over the past years have fought alongside the Taliban and do not make the government inclusive, are involved in the government structure.
The people of Afghanistan, neighbors, and world community want a meaningful involvement of various ethnic groups and minorities in the power in Afghanistan, but what the Taliban says shows that this group looks at the ethnic participation in the political process and government as a symbolic matter and argues that the share of the ethnic groups is distributed like in the previous government and under Pashtun rulers.
According to some analysts, Afghans have repeatedly said that the Taliban does not even fully represent the Pashtun ethnic group, let alone its very limited number of non-Pashtun members, so they cannot represent the rest of Afghanistan’s ethnicities. Afghans believe that the Taliban is a proxy and terrorist group that usurped power and controls the country through a deal with the US.
An inclusive government has now become a global demand, and even the White House, which has taken hostage $7 billion of Afghanistan’s assets, has tied the release of them to formation of an comprehensive government, and if the Taliban respects the global demand, any excuse from the West to block Afghanistan assets will be eliminated and these funds can solve part of the economic problems of Afghans. But it seems that the leaders of Kabul prefer purely Taliban governance over anything.
Afghanistan crises are not internal-sourced
There is no doubt that Afghanistan’s crises over the past two decades have had damaging effects on all countries, and therefore, the world community, and particularly the neighbors and regional states, cannot remain silent to what is ongoing in Afghanistan and that the Taliban’s claim that these countries intervene in the country’s home affairs is incorrect. Actually, the conditions of these countries for recognition of the Taliban can be labeled an interference only when Afghanistan’s developments bear no consequences for the neighbors and other UN members.
In recent decades, Afghanistan has been a source of big challenges to the security of its neighbors. Even now the security in this Central Asian country is highly worrisome and the insistence of the countries on formation of a inclusive government in this country is driven by a hope for convergence in the Afghan society to uproot the security crisis.
Currently, the presence of the ISIS terrorist group in Afghanistan, which from time to time carries out suicide attacks in different cities of this country, is still one of the problems that threatens the neighbors, and if there is no political stability in Afghanistan, the threat may spread to other Central Asian countries, Iran, and Russia.
Another concern is the Afghans’ immigration that has taken a rising rate since the Taliban seized the power in August 2021. So far, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have immigrated to the neighboring countries, causing challenges to them. Feeling threatened by the Taliban rule, people flee the country to other countries and continuation of this challenge is not something the world community can close its eyes to.
Over the past year, Iran and Pakistan have made a lot of efforts to return the Afghan immigrants to their country, but the Taliban has not taken any effective action to fulfill its obligations. According to UN figures, Afghanistan has recorded the largest number of immigrants with more than 7 million worldwide, and has expressed concern about the continuation of this trend under the Taliban rule.
Drug trafficking and opium cultivation in Afghanistan are the biggest challenge that countries are dealing with and the Taliban has paved the path for growth of this illegal business. The UN said in a September report that methamphetamine trafficking within Afghanistan and neighboring countries has increased in recent years, even despite the Taliban claims that it has curbed heroin trafficking since seizing the power. Therefore, these actions are a great danger for the international system, especially the countries of the region, and the claim of the Taliban that the international demands are interference in Afghanistan’s internal affair is a false argument.
From another perspective, the acting government has proven that the women as a half part of the society do not enjoy even the least rights. Strict rules against women by the government had drawn waves of international criticism and the rights organizations describe them rights violations. In reaction to these violations, Afghan women have so far held massive protests, but they were quelled with an iron fist.
The Taliban has such a misogynistic thought that it even does not approve of meetings with female foreign diplomats, and recently the Taliban summoned the Saudi Arabian Chargé d’Affaires in Kabul due to the presence of a female diplomat in the meeting of the Saudis with the group’s delegation in Riyadh. Such behavior reinforces the view that the Taliban, contrary to its claims, has not learned from the mistakes of its first government in the 1990s and has maintained its past practice of ignoring the principles of human rights, and this is an obstacle to its acceptance to and integration in the international community.
The inner reality of Afghanistan is contrary to what the Taliban leaders try to paint, and people have shown patience with the Taliban rule in anticipation of power transfer from the acting government to an inclusive administration. At the same time, regional countries are putting strains on the Taliban to agree to formation of a new government with constitutional formula that would help it gain international legitimacy and restore foreign interactions with Kabul. But some groups in the government body are unwilling to interact with the world and this not only worsens the economic conditions of Afghans, but also produces waves of new crises to the world community.
