THE TALIBAN REGIME AND AFGHANISTAN’S HUMANITARIAN CRISES by - Ramsha Siddique

THE TALIBAN REGIME AND AFGHANISTAN’S HUMANITARIAN CRISES

Authored by - Ramsha Siddique

Abstract

One year after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan remains in the clutch of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The country economy has collapsed and more than half of Afghan face the real prospect of hunger and starvation. For Afghanistan 2021 was one of the shed Year in it’s history after 20 years of war the US pulled back its troops from Afghanistan which led to the return of the Taliban to power. Several countries have suspended or substantially cut aid to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover ,the country is now on the verge of the humanitarian disaster. Almost 80 percent of countries took over Kabul on August 15 most of the benefactor suspended government aid. The US has also frozen nearly 9.5 billion dollars of Afghan’s Central Bank Assets . the Taliban remain on the US treasury department sanctions list.

INTRODUCTION

Humanitarian crises can be defined as event or series of events that threaten the health, safety and well- being of people at mass or it is an emergency situation where the basic human rights of people getting infringed. Human rights are the rights that are available to human or which are attached to human dignity. These rights are essential for the survival of human on this Earth, still many countries are going through human right crises in this paper we will highlight the situation of Afghanistan under Taliban’s government.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Afghanistan is known as the empire of graveyard, because many superpower countries enter Afghanistan but return after humiliating themselves. The britishers came in the 19th century, they had to bear a very humiliating defeat. In the 20th century, the soviet union came to Afghanistan and returned after 9years with a lot of embarrassment and in 21th century, the US came to Afghanistan  and returned in 2021. It is not that Afghanistan had never been conquered before, if we glance at the history, we will find several instances on this. Macedonian ruler alexander had done it. The Arabs did it. Mongol ruler Changez khan. Mughal ruler Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb had done it. And the Sikh king Raja Ranjit Singh had also done it. But it is believed that the Afghans warriors make it really difficult for any foreign ruler to keep Afghanistan area occupied. The period of 1800 century is relevant when there was a large Russian empire in the north at the time and the British empire in the south, India was then occupied by the British. And in the middle, there was a buffer zone that was Afghanistan, now Russia and Britain were wary of each other , they were afraid if the other country occupying Afghanistan and creating problems for them. Initially, the western countries didn’t know much about Afghanistan. When a Scottish explorer Alexander Burnes went there and safely returned. In 1838, the Britishers started feeling motivated enough and they were confident about their victory. They were sure that they would win. There was a king in Afghanistan, his name was Emir dost Mohammad of the Barakzai dynasty. The British started the war and overthrew Emir Dost Mohammad from the throne and placed their puppet Shah Shujah on the throne. There was not any army in the Afghanistan then, instead there thousands of small, isolated villages. In 1893 an international line was drawn between Afghanistan and British India . in 1907, there was an agreement between British and Russian Empire wherein Russia recognized that Afghanistan lied under the British influence and Russian promised ton stay away from Afghanistan. Third Anglo-Afghan war took place in 1919 known as the war of independence of Afghanistan

PRESENT DAY CRISES :

CHILD TRAFFICKING

Many families has little choice but to sell their own children especially in the rural province of Afghanistan. Across the county Taliban violence has given rise to the huge wave of the refuges many were forced to leave everything behind. since the Taliban took power again Afghanistan grinding poverty has grown worst and its children who suffer most, children being sold to the highest bidder, parents  sell one child to save all the others  from starvation. child trafficking defined by the United Nations as the Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring and receipt of a child below the age of 18 years for sexual exploitation and labour exploitation.

GROSS VIOLATION OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Life of women and girls is very different with harsh rules and restriction on education and employment. Afghanistan is a men’s rule conservative country but the rules are now set by the ultra  conservative Taliban. Spaces which has opened up for women have now been desist. Taliban rule has had a devastating impact on women and girls, the Taliban  impose restrictions such as mandatory burqa, and prohibited women from appearing in public spaces without the male chaperon. Women are not allowed to use public transport unless they are in the company of male relative. Taliban rule increases in violence against women and girls and almost no support, child marriages are rampant, women face increased threats of gender based violence and severe restrictions on their right to freedom of speech and assembly ,including on even their choice of clothing. The ideology behind the restrictions imposed on women is that the Taliban claimed to follow a pure, fundamentalist Islamic ideology, yet the oppression they perpetrated against women has no basis in Islam. The Quran puts significant importance on acquiring knowledge with more than 800 references to the word “Ilm” (knowledge) and its derivations.

ECONOMIC ROOTS OF HUMANITARIAN CRISES

There is a major humanitarian crises spiraling in Afghanistan. More than half of the population lives in poverty. People heavily rely on assistance for most basic commodities. The country has witnessed a lot of changes apart from the dwindling economy. The health and infrastructure of the country is in shambles. The economy has collapsed, a great many people have lost jobs and livelihood, social services have been decimated. Taliban complete lack of transparency on budget expenditure is unacceptable and may mask irregularities or more likely allocation of large amount of funds to the security sector and other Taliban priorities. Taliban ideology is getting in the way of sound economic management. Their recently announced ban on opium, if implemented would shock the economy and thousands of people would lost their livelihood. Restrictions on the education of the girls would have disastrous consequences on the economy of the country in long run because if women are not educated of a country half of its population will remain ignorant, to educate a girls means to educate a future family line  but the conservative ideology of Taliban force women not to acquire education. The economy of Afghanistan was completely artificial and revolves around assistance and to see that on day one- the loans, everything gets cut. How Taliban are going to survive? How they can provide services if the foreign resources are curtailed and the international organizations cut their assistance.so the US on the other hand don’t want the Taliban to get their hand on any of this money but it has crippled the economy. One of the big problem is major shortage of cash, in a country that runs on cash, the banks don’t have enough cash and have set limit on withdraw and everything is getting more expensive especially imports like fuels because the currency of afghani has dropped low against the dollar, people at work are not getting paid. For a country that had budget of $ 11 billion in 2019, and now having literally nothing. It’s a humanitarian crises. Not a single country has officially recognize the Taliban government. The Afghan people are also herding from this isolation the UN and other international aid agencies are still working in Afghanistan to deliver food and supplies. That is the main way help is getting to a Afghan people right-now, but Afghan needs so much more than just an emergency aid, it needs to be able to trade like any other country.

LGBTQA PEOPLE’S RIGHTS

The spokesperson of Taliban said that LGBTQA rights would not be recognized by the sharia law. Afghanistan’s penal code continue to criminalize consensual same sex relations. Life is not great, but it seems its getting worse day by day for the LGBTQA community in Afghanistan, they can’t step out from the house. If anyone identifies them, their life will be under threat.

CONCLUSION

The term Taliban means the ”students” in the Pashto language. The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist nationalist. The violence of Taliban in Afghanistan has reached new heights of egregious human right violation. Demonstrating the rapidly increasing and devastating strategy of directly targeting civilian population by terrorist group. The latest report of latest targeting includes attacks on young women and girls exercising their right to education, civil society academics, health workers, human rights defenders, media workers and civil servants. The international community must take Taliban ‘s recognition contingent on their track record on responsible and inclusive government. Legitimizing Taliban should be conditional and subject  to positive change in Taliban’s behavior and policies. Islamic scholars, leaders and influential figures must condemn the Taliban’s decision to ban secondary education for girls and engage with the Taliban to influence or reverse their destructive policy.

REFERENCES

https:www.state.gov./trafficking-in-person-report/

A/75/926,S2021/570, para 18

https:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/humanrightcrisesinafganistan