Do the people of Afghanistan deserve Taliban rule?
By Hamayon Rastgar
“Every nation gets the government it deserves,” Joseph de Maistre, a conservative political theorist and diplomat, wrote in 1811. His provocative thesis still resonates. The Taliban’s return to despotic power in Afghanistan, the apparent powerlessness of its people, and the absence of a political alternative begs the question: Do the people of Afghanistan deserve the Taliban tyranny?
Since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban has established a parasitic mullahcracy that is plundering resources and terrorizing the population. Their inhuman and misogynist policies have stifled the economy and pushed the country into an unprecedented level of poverty, to the point where 98 percent of the people can’t afford to eat. Their anti-education policies have paralyzed the education system, jeopardizing the development of the country for generations to come.
Mistreatment of people, arbitrary violence, imprisonment, and killing of dissidents are common. Their gunmen whip women for walking in a local market and thrash drivers who give rides to women passengers who are travelling without male chaperones. They slap youths on the street for their choice of clothes or for their hairstyle. The Taliban regime is determined to enforce a form of sharia law that revels in medieval corporal punishments, public floggings, amputations of hands, and public executions.
The two percent of the population that has enough to eat is the Taliban and their allies, which are busy hoarding wealth, monopolizing resources, and consolidating their own power. Their cadres marry second, third, and fourth wives, often forcing young girls into marriages against their will. So many people have given up and now hope for a better life outside of Afghanistan that massive crowds flock around passport offices for travel documents.
Their regime is isolated internationally – even their regional allies find the Taliban too unsavory to diplomatically recognize.
Given such obvious instability and lack of legitimacy, why does there not seem to be a serious alternative or organized political opposition to the Taliban regime? The Taliban are in power not because of their own strengths but because of the absence of political alternatives that can unite the broadest layers of the masses around a political project that challenges the Taliban: Building a state based on rule of law that respects equal rights for all citizens.
The pathetic situation of the non-Taliban political forces – their lack of initiative, their political and ideological hollowness, and organizational weakness – suggest that the people of Afghanistan are condemned to live under Taliban’s rule. One of the most significant hurdles in the path of developing an alternative capable of challenging the Taliban is the ethnonationalism and ethnic fragmentation so prevalent in the country. Many in the political and chattering class are mired in a swamp of ethnic bigotry. Their political horizons do not fly higher than marsh flies and constantly sink under the weight of ethnic bickering. Sometimes, the level of political debates is so dispiriting, that it seems that the Taliban are behaving like adults in the room, to put it provocatively.
The pessimism and hopelessness are so pervasive that most commentaries and political discussions about what could end the current nightmare revolve around foreign intervention or the internal disintegration of the Taliban regime. Yet, the historical experience of Afghanistan and elsewhere teaches us that without a progressive alternative the country could sink into worse chaos, which would only deepen people’s pain, suffering, and misery.
The political paralysis and intellectual cowardice of not actively imagining and working for a better, more inclusive post-Taliban Afghanistan are going to serve the Taliban and intensify the historical crisis in the country. Ethnic divisions serve Taliban interests. The Taliban are chauvinists and ethnic supremacists. Their mullahcracy is also an ethnocracy with power concentrated in the hands of Pashtun mullahs, mainly from Kandahar. The Taliban’s Pashtun supremacism is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it alienates and inflames ethnic sentiments among non-Pashtun ethnicities. On the other hand, it mobilizes Pashtun chauvinistic tendencies and could mobilize them into the service of their regime. Yet, the continuation of the Taliban regime will have disastrous consequences, including the intensification of social backwardness. In the end, the pauperization of the masses will harm all the country’s people, including the Pashtun masses.
Therefore, it is imperative that the people of Afghanistan rely on positive historical experiences of inter-ethnic cooperation to develop political ideas and practices that can unite the majority of people from all ethnicities. That cooperation can lead to a national popular alternative that could challenge the Taliban regime. That desire for a better Afghanistan for future generations to live in peace and prosperity should prove more powerful than the brutality of the Taliban.
Until there is a political alternative that can successfully challenge the Taliban’s tyranny, the Taliban and their like will continue to perpetuate the wretched country’s miseries, and the people of the country will be doomed to suffer.
Hamayon Rastgar is the communications and research officer at Zan Times.
