By Sayed Madadi

One year ago, on Aug. 31, 2021, the last foreign soldier left Afghanistan. Since then, the situation in the country has only grown more fragile, marked by deteriorating living conditions, widespread human rights violations, and increasing political instability. One key contributing factor to the crisis is a dysfunctional centralized governance structure that has become more paralyzed and unresponsive under Taliban control. The group has greatly aggravated the problem with its rigid religious ideology and exclusive political agenda, but it well predates the Taliban takeover. The situation has steadily deteriorated over the past two decades as a result of a system that undermined local mechanisms of resilience, deprived people of access to basic public services, and marginalized them politically. With the Taliban at the helm, the system now only perpetuates further political exclusion, economic deprivation, and human suffering. The worsening economic conditions and political environment in the last year offer ample evidence of this.

Ever hungrier population

According to the most recent data from the World Bank, Afghanistan is now the poorest country in the world and the per capita income has declined to 2006 levels. The Taliban’s return to power exacerbated an already worrisome economic and humanitarian situation. Pushed to the brink by recurrent droughts, chronic cycles of violence, and poor governance, the insurgent offensive that captured Kabul last August created a shockwave that neither the economy nor the people could absorb. Before 2021, the latest poverty rate in Afghanistan was 47% and 35% of people reported that they were unable to meet their basic needs for food and other essential goods. Now, according to the World Bank and the United Nations, more than 95% of the population is poor, with more than 70% suffering from food insecurity. In an undiversified and limited economy that does not have much to offer, only a staggeringly low 2% said that they did not face limitations in spending. Rising prices caused by high inflation, the liquidity crisis, and a massive drop in international trade, coupled with sharply decreased household incomes, have reduced purchasing power for millions and increased unemployment to record levels, even as an estimated 600,000 people enter the labor force annually.

Many of these sources of fragility, of course, existed before the Taliban came to power. For over a century, Kabul has grown in monetary wealth, human capital, and opportunities at the expense of the rest of Afghanistan. The economic wealth and metropolitan character of the capital has come with the centralization of state power and revenue collection since 1880. For decades, lack of opportunities — and later on conflict — brought the best and the brightest from around Afghanistan to the capital, thus gradually draining the provinces of intellectual capital and economic resources. Historically, the Kabul-based kings gave land titles and trade monopolies to traditional power-holders in return for revenue, while the latter extorted the local population to raise what was required to pay Kabul. The central state relied on the periphery for resources, soldiers, and legitimacy, but hardly provided anything in return.

The 2004 constitutional architecture did little, if anything, to change that. As foreign funding flowed in at unprecedented levels, the concentration of political power and economic planning in the capital continued to draw resources and talent from the periphery, eroding the foundations of local resilience. Local and provincial power holders and economic tycoons survived only because they maintained strong ties with those who controlled financial wealth and political decision-making at the center. The immense wealth that the Karzais gained in the south or the riches that Atta Mohammad Noor was able to raise in the north were not possible without the backing of central authorities, which in both cases were highly formalized: Ahmad Wali Karzai was the head of Kandahar’s provincial council and Atta served as the governor of the lucrative Balkh Province for over a decade. Staggering levels of corruption and state capture enabled a select group to easily gain control of the country’s economic riches and move them abroad.

The population was already struggling by the time the Taliban returned to power. Studies and analysis by the U.N., the World Bank, and independent observers had long warned about increasing poverty, unemployment, and cyclical droughts. After last August, the depletion of human resources and economic wealth and the withdrawal of the international presence in Kabul disrupted value production and business enterprise around the country. The crisis has left millions of people helpless, not only because of their reliance on the Kabul-centric legal regulatory framework, but also because most of the job market — the public sector and the NGOs — was funded by donor money from Kabul. The full international withdrawal shrank the economy by more than one-third and the implications of the political crisis disrupted the markets for much longer than the country could afford. After severe drought and conflict displaced over 700,000 people last year, hundreds of thousands have left Afghanistan since August 2021 in search of a better life.

The Taliban's inability and unwillingness to provide public services and reinvigorate economic activity led to the further deterioration of living conditions and heightened the people’s vulnerability. The World Bank reported that more than 81% of household heads were self-employed after Aug. 15, 2021. An absolute majority of them are not business owners but job seekers turning to physical labor and street vending to avoid starvation. The Taliban authorities claim that they have increased revenue collection at border crossings, mainly by curbing corruption and expanding ports with taxable trade. However, the regime does not provide even basic public services such as education and health with that revenue. For example, nearly half of schools are closed as the Taliban still refuse to allow girls to access secondary education, resulting in a major decline in public spending. Most of the health infrastructure is supported through international humanitarian aid by the U.N. and ICRC, and the extravagant Afghan National Defense and Security Forces no longer exist. On top of that, only a fraction of public servants go to work, and after months of delays they now receive far lower salaries based on the regime’s new pay scale — labor earnings in the public sector have declined by 69%.

Therefore, without offering social protection, public services, and economic opportunities, the centralized revenue collection continues to further deplete the provinces of resources that could otherwise help them mitigate the risks of economic and environmental shocks. The Taliban's interference in the distribution of humanitarian aid takes away from the neediest people their only means of survival in the midst of destitution, further compounding local fragility. Despite a year of trials and the infusion of more than $2 billion in aid into Afghanistan, the economic and humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Although conventional humanitarian assistance programs help people get by in the short term, they also reinforce a relationship of dependency on aid without developing opportunities for employment and private enterprise, thus reinforcing deeper vulnerability. These approaches — coupled with the Taliban’s centralized and unaccountable governance — build on ineffective modalities that disenfranchise local communities, compound economic deprivation, exacerbate environmental shocks, and intensify human suffering.

A totalitarian regime

The political and human rights situation has equally deteriorated under the Taliban. While the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says more than 1,500 people have been killed by the regime since last August, some independent observer groups report that around 2,000 civilians from the Hazara ethnic community alone have been killed. Protests by women have been repeatedly suppressed and participants have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The government is populated entirely by Taliban clerics, excluding all other political forces and non-Pashtun groups. The persecution of Tajiks in the name of quelling the military resistance in the north and of Hazaras justified by ethno-sectarian divisions — the latter are mostly Shi’a — continue. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prevents girls from getting an education by barring them from secondary schools. Most women cannot work, and a woman’s political agency and social status are tied to that of a man, who has to accompany her, fully veiled, anywhere she goes outside the home. According to Reporters Without Borders, 40% of all media outlets in the country have disappeared and 60% of journalists have lost their jobs. The figure for female journalists is even higher, at 76%.

The Taliban have managed to consolidate their power within an Islamic Emirate that borrows significantly in structural design from its predecessor Islamic Republic, rather than introducing a new institutional architecture. Save for a few tweaks, the broader framework of the system has remained the same. The judiciary system, for example, and its relationship with the head of state have not changed. The Taliban have kept most political and governance institutions as they were, filling positions across the ministries and provinces with their own appointees. The major institutional change the Taliban have brought has been the removal of elections to establish popular legitimacy: The head of state is now a divinely mandated supreme leader, and there is no legislative branch. These alterations, while substantial on paper, have not changed much in practice. Given the highly centralized nature of the republic with an overly powerful president at the top, electoral processes had failed to produce either legitimacy or accountability for much of the last two decades. In many instances, elections provided opportunities for embezzlement and corruption by enabling actors with ulterior motives to buy votes and then abuse public office to enrich themselves. This was particularly true in the case of the parliament and provincial councils, institutions captured by a handful of kleptocrats who failed to keep an overly strong executive in check.

The binary division of a republic versus an emirate was what bogged down the peace talks until they fell apart in the run-up to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. The fact that the group has consolidated its power through the very system it so vehemently rejected says a lot about the actual democratic character of the centralized political institutions. The narrowing of the public space under the Taliban, for example, indicates that the degree of openness for debate and democratic practices before 2021 was not necessarily a byproduct of a meticulous institutional design that checked the use of power and ensured accountability. Rather, it was attributable to the personal commitment to democratic values of those in control. For over a decade, Hamid Karzai, who ruled through tribal consensus and appeasement, enabled a conducive environment in which a vibrant media industry and civil society took root. Across Afghanistan, especially in Kabul and other key urban centers, demonstrations against the government were ubiquitous.

After 2014 when Ashraf Ghani came to power, the democratic space began to shrink for a variety of reasons, chief among them the intolerance of the president and his inner circle. Crackdowns on public protests, silencing of independent media and civil society, and marginalization of political opponents and critics, including through the use of force, became increasingly common. In order to act with the utmost impunity, Ghani maintained a facade of accountability through the ministries while monopolizing state functions by creating parallel institutions at his own office. Since last August, the Taliban, undeterred by any prospects of accountability, have further centralized the structure by removing the subsidiary units of the Arg, Afghanistan’s presidential palace, and have instead directly utilized the formal government bureaucracy to consolidate their power, implement their extremist views of what an Islamic society should look like, and silence any voices of dissent. In other words, the centralized political and governance institutions of the former republic were unaccountable enough that they now comfortably accommodate the totalitarian objectives of the Taliban without giving the people any chance to resist peacefully.

What lies ahead

The Taliban, who claimed to represent rural Afghanistan, have further oppressed and marginalized Afghans outside Kabul as their core members continue to settle in the now dual capitals of Kabul and Kandahar. The Taliban’s thinking about governance based on a rigid interpretation of religion and ethnonationalist politics, as much as it evolves in practice over time, has further centralized political decision-making and economic resources in the hands of a few. As economic resources become more scarce, wealth will be controlled by those who hold political power at the highest levels.

This will only deepen the drivers of fragility and conflict, including poverty, exclusion, and discrimination. With drought likely to become an annual occurrence by 2030, the financial and banking crisis set to continue for the foreseeable future, and the economy expected to keep shrinking, people across Afghanistan are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Moreover, the unsustainably large but still inadequate humanitarian aid budget, which has offered a minimal lifeline to the country, will be in danger of getting smaller in light of recent security developments that further limit the parameters of international engagement with the regime. The United States has reportedly withheld talks about the possible unfreezing of Afghanistan’s central bank assets held by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.N. Security Council has not extended travel exemptions for 13 Taliban leaders. These developments also mean that potential foreign investment, even from friendly partners of the regime, such as China, will likely take a long time to materialize. The overall impact of all of this will be to push Afghans across the country further and deeper into cycles of economic deprivation and political instability with substantial implications for health, education, and human rights, especially for women and children.

However, as much as centralization allows the Taliban to consolidate power in the short run, it equally makes its long-term survival unlikely. The group led a highly decentralized, mobile insurgency where local commanders oversaw the war in their areas in whatever way they saw fit. That was vital to withstand the republican army and its partners, as well as recruit non-Pashtun commanders in the north, which later proved fatal to the republic. But now they are struggling to transform from a decentralized insurgency into a centralized government and what were previously strengths have become weaknesses. Commanders such as Fasihuddin, once trusted with complete authority, are expected to give up their autonomy and obey orders. The regime is also facing difficulties integrating key battlefield leaders into its new official structures in an appropriate way, as the appointment of Qayum Zaker to an arbitrary assignment managing the resistance in Panjshir illustrates. These trends stemming from the centralization of power will eventually push away those who were key to the Taliban’s success — similar to how President Ghani’s exclusionary politics alienated the republic’s natural allies. The Taliban have long prioritized their cohesion over any other political objective. Now, unable to govern and unwilling to share power with other political forces, the centralized regime’s disintegration becomes increasingly inevitable — and arguably has been expedited — as it fails to incorporate even its own senior political and military leadership into decision-making processes.

Sayed Madadi is a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies and a Nonresident Scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies Program. You can follow him on Twitter @MadadiSaeid. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own.

 Read at Middle East Institute

 

Published in News
Wednesday, 11 September 2024 14:33

The dangers of empowering the Taliban

By Sayed Madadi

For years, the world tried to soften the Taliban’s extremist ideology by exposing them to modernity. As an insurgency they learned diplomacy and negotiation tactics, but their medieval thinking remained just as rigid. Now that the Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the international community continues to appease them, assuming it can convince them to form an inclusive government and ease their regressive policies while alleviating the country’s worsening humanitarian disaster. That is a naïve assumption that overlooks the root causes of the current crisis. Not only will the international community not get what it wants, but it also risks creating a much greater crisis: a Taliban theocracy that institutionalizes its repressive rule at a steep human and economic cost.

The international community’s first priority has been to avert an unprecedented humanitarian and economic crisis, which has been severely exacerbated by the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. Efforts thus far have focused on conventional approaches, such as lifting sanctionsreleasing frozen assets, and pouring billions of dollars into ineffective and inefficient channels such as the U.N. These efforts ignore the fact that the main drivers of the crisis are political, not economic. The Taliban’s incompetence, discrimination, and intimidation have caused massive human and physical capital flight, disrupted the public sector and the economy, and undermined any sense of trust or stability.

No amount of aid will avert the catastrophe. Even if nearly $1 billion of the $9.1 billion in cash reserves in private banks is released, Afghans are likely to use the money to flee the country rather than inject it into the market by buying critical commodities. The argument that unfreezing assets will bring economic and currency stability assumes that the Taliban will govern the Central Bank as a professional monetary institution — a task they are neither willing nor capable of carrying out. Moreover, there is already ample evidence of misuse of humanitarian aid by the regime: They have discriminated against people in need based on their ethnic and religious identity and have used aid to pay their fighters’ salaries. Thus, as the amount of aid and engagement increases, so too will the group’s grip on power, while poverty will only deepen. President Joe Biden’s recent unjust and illegal executive order to split $7 billion of these assets between 9/11 victims and humanitarian aid will further destabilize the country’s economy while minimizing the international leverage over the Taliban. The question, then, remains: How much aid is the world prepared to provide, and for how long?

As a second priority, the world has tried to encourage the Taliban to form an inclusive government by including non-Pashtun ethnicities in their emirate. It is unlikely that the regime will agree to this as it would, in its view, taint its ethnic identity. One of the reasons that the Taliban’s Islamist ambitions have remained limited to Afghanistan is because of their deep merger with Pashtun identity and the goal of creating a mono-ethnic power structure. Even if they agreed to include other ethnic groups in their government, little would change. Inclusive and representative governance is only meaningful in a pluralistic and democratic system, where the voice and approval of the people drive state legitimacy and public policies. In authoritarian regimes, in which one or a handful of people make all the decisions with no accountability, their identity makes little difference. Old empires and monarchies in the region have long filled their royal courts with ethnic minorities, knowing that they did not have the power to pose any real threat. The Taliban already have several officials from other non-Pashtun communities, including their deputy prime minister, who is an Uzbek; their chief of army personnel, who is a Tajik; and two Hazara deputy ministers. Yet, these ethnic groups — particularly the Shi’a Hazaras — suffer structural persecution at the hands of the regime on a daily basis. Moreover, calls for inclusivity ignore women, the largest disenfranchised group in the country, who have put up the fiercest resistance against the regime. The Taliban will never incorporate women into government.

The third aim of the international community has been to convince the Taliban to soften their medieval governance methods. The result, however, has been the opposite: The group’s extremism has only hardened since their return to power last August. This is in line with the takeaways from years of talking peace with them and experiences in other parts of the world, which show that appeasing authoritarian rulers only emboldens them. During the negotiations in Doha, I observed how compromises made as confidence-building measures only solidified the Taliban’s intransigence and their refusal to abandon their maximalist positions. The most striking example of this was the release of 5,000 of their prisoners in the face of U.S. pressure; most of those released returned to the battlefield and the gesture did nothing to help at the negotiating table. The futility of international investment in the Taliban’s political office in Qatar is evidence that the rare tendency of some of their leaders to compromise has no effect on the group’s broader worldview — thus, such leaders are easily sidelined. A key example is the movement’s co-founder, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar: He was expected to become the highest Taliban decisionmaker, but instead has completely lost his relevance and authority to hardliners, such as the leader of the notorious Haqqani Network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who runs the Ministry of Interior. The more the Taliban consolidate their power, the more unyielding they become to domestic demands and external pressures. They expect that in the end, the international community’s national security interests will trump its stewardship of humanitarian values; in the Taliban’s view, it will ultimately acquiesce and give them access to financial and political resources.

International efforts thus far have assumed that the Taliban are a conventional state apparatus that intends to abide by international law. However, groups like the Taliban derive their legitimacy partly from defying the international order. For such regimes — as we have seen in North Korea, Syria, Iran, and in the old Soviet republics — grim prospects of human suffering and hunger or the attractions of political acceptance are no deterrent to bad behavior. Unless the international community realizes that, its current approach — including the decision about the fate of frozen assets in the U.S. — will only bring further destitution to people in Afghanistan and chaos to the region, both through the worsening humanitarian and economic catastrophe and the empowerment and institutionalization of a predatory and fanatical regime. No one wants to live under such a regime, and the people of Afghanistan, who strive for freedom and dignity, are certainly no exception. Helping Afghanistan must begin by acknowledging that the Taliban are at the heart of the problem, not the solution.

Sayed Madadi was the Director of Foreign Relations at Afghanistan’s State Ministry for Peace and a Senior Member of the Joint Technical Secretariat of Afghan Peace Negotiations in Doha, Qatar. He tweets at @madadisaeid. The views expressed in this piece are his own.

 
Published in News
Wednesday, 11 September 2024 14:29

To Save Afghanistan, Try Differently

By Sayed Madadi

As global attention shifts further away from Afghanistan to Ukraine and elsewhere, time is running out to change course before the country’s freefall under the Taliban becomes irreversible. There is no silver bullet for the problems facing Afghanistan and some of what is needed and possible could very well require uncomfortable, tough decisions and strategic patience to yield any results. But pivoting away from the counterproductivity of current efforts to appease the Taliban, as I have argued before, is necessary if the country’s future is to be saved.

Proponents of ongoing leniency justify it in the name of averting worse outcomes, such as the rise of Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), a deadly civil war, or a full-scale famine. They fail to acknowledge, however, that the Taliban are not a guard against those worries, but rather an enabler of them. According to the U.N., since the Taliban’s takeover, the economic catastrophe is only deepening toward a point of irreversibility despite more than $2 billion spent in aid, and ISKP recruitment has increased dramatically. Therefore, if Afghanistan is to avoid any or all of those outcomes, the limits of the Taliban’s ability and willingness to change must be put to the test. The international community needs a two-pronged, interlinked approach to normalize the economy and stabilize the political scene. While economic support could incentivize commercial activity, it is the political solutions that will ensure stability.

Supporting People: Minimal but Effective

The first step should be to rethink the current aid architecture, focusing on effectiveness, accountability, and conditionality. It is critical for aid money to build resilience by supporting economic activity at the local level instead of fueling further dependency through short-term, piecemeal interventions. Efforts should rely on domestic capabilities, especially human capital, to minimize costs, cater to local needs, increase employment, and sustain capacity for the future. Even after the departure of hundreds of thousands of educated Afghans, enough operational and technical expertise remains to execute such programs. Additionally, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship, especially in the areas of food production, basic commodities, and agriculture, would help to rebuild local supply chains given the complexities that remain around international trade and transactions. The growth of grassroots civil society in recent years as foreign funding dried up shows that such times of crisis also provide opportunities for creativity. One solution is to let an international organization such as the ICRC manage the Afghanistan Red Crescent Society in order to play a more robust role in humanitarian response. The organization suffers from corruption and low capacity, but it also has the widest reach of any indigenous institution. Ensuring its independence by removing it from Taliban control and boosting its efficiency by decentralizing its operations would allow for the incorporation of local perspectives in the implementation of what is now a fully foreign-driven agenda.

The accountability of aid money is just as important as many have already raised concerns about the transparency of these programs. There has been, unsurprisingly, reluctance on the part of U.N. agencies whose overhead costs are disproportionately high compared to their programmatic spending to be fully open to outside scrutiny, including from the media. There is also a growing trend of NGOs mushrooming to undertake humanitarian activities similar to the early days of the post-2001 era. It is important not to repeat mistakes of the past. In 2015, I reviewed financial documents from the two largest national NGOs: the Afghanistan Development Association (ADA) affiliated with Jilani Popal, the former head of local governance, and Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance (CHA), then run by Salam Rahimi, who later became President Ashraf Ghani’s chief of staff. They both had submitted the same report to the Ministry of Economy for more than five consecutive years — each year executing around $12 million in development money. Recently, I also came across an organization engaging in humanitarian activity that, in addition to what it officially charges for its services in distributing aid, had a designated line in its fundraising appeal for donations as “tips,” without clarifying where the money would go. Humanitarian response can provide employment, but it must not turn into a lucrative business enterprise.

To that end, three layers of accountability measures are necessary. At the highest, the international organizations should have regular reporting cycles to publicize the financial and programmatic details of their activities. Entities such as Transparency International and Freedom House that track global accountability and access to information can partner with credible platforms such as Etilaat-e-Roz newspaper in setting up a designated accountability portal to track the expenditure of international aid in Afghanistan. Parallel to that, local and community-level accountability platforms should be set up to involve beneficiaries. This is important not just in identifying the right priorities, but also in supporting community-engagement practices that would strengthen the foundations for any meaningful democratic experiment in the future. To avoid commercialization and duplication, a uniform structure should be built into the design of aid programs based on past experience and existing institutional foundations. As a third-layer support system, easy-to-use, homegrown technological solutions could allow access to information, crowd-sourced reporting and documentation, and cost-effective feasibility studies and impact evaluations.

While the rapidly deteriorating economic situation and the power vacuum left by the disintegration of the republican state pushed the international community to assume the primary responsibility for mitigating the crisis in Afghanistan, the Taliban must begin to play their role if the outside world is to entertain any further meaningful engagement. It is obvious that humanitarian aid alone cannot solve all of Afghanistan’s problems. A calibrated degree of conditionality, thus, is necessary to prevent increasing aid from empowering the Taliban and to gauge their will to transform. Conditionality of aid and more robust diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, however, must be part of a comprehensive architecture with specific expectations of deliverables rather than vague, immeasurable commitments such as those made by the group in the Doha Agreement. Efforts thus far have failed to account for such delicacies. The U.S. Treasury comfort letters and general licenses allow transactions on issues related to “rule of law, citizenry participation, government accountability and transparency, human rights, access to information and civil society” without accounting for the shrinking space for such work under a cabinet full of sanctioned terrorists. Blank checks like these could foster aid embezzlement on the one hand and help cement the Taliban’s rule on the other.

Demands for gradual sanctions relief, asset defreezes, and similar actions should solicit in return clear changes in behavior from the regime. The Taliban must immediately end its campaign of arbitrary retribution and address the problem of legal ambiguity by acknowledging the validity of previous legal frameworks until they are reviewed — a key step to any economic and political normalcy. Moreover, the international community must define a series of fundamental non-negotiables to support and protect the people of Afghanistan against the Taliban. Key among them are the rights and civil liberties of women. It cannot be acceptable in 2022 for a regime, under whatever pretense, to remove half the population from public life. The international interest in paying the salaries of teachers and medical workers must be used as meaningful leverage to not only open schools to girls, but also influence the content of the curriculum and the broader issue of women’s employment. Of course, conditionality can only be effective if violations are met with credible consequences.

Additionally, access to the Central Bank’s foreign reserves must be conditioned on reforming its Board of Governors to include international representatives such as officials from the International Monetary Fund, allowing robust independent monitoring mechanisms as many have suggested, and fully implementing the Central Bank Law. The Taliban must allow this board to appoint an independent expert as governor of the bank and monitor recruitment and operational processes at senior levels. The issue of Afghanistan’s assets abroad, however, goes beyond the bank’s reserves. There are commercial properties abroad that produce revenue, hundreds of military aircraft in neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan the fate of which has not been declared, hundreds of millions of afghanis in an European country that were printed in the last months of the republic, and a growing number of embassies vacated by diplomats as they run out of resources and supplies, including blank passports. A comprehensive but lean arrangement such as an U.N.-mandated taskforce involving other entities like the Asian Development Bank and Organization of Islamic Cooperation, can be established to manage all of Afghanistan’s foreign belongings until a truly representative government is in place in Kabul.

Political Roadmap: Decentralized Pluralism

Interventions to address the economic crisis can only be effective if political solutions are also implemented in parallel to ensure lasting stability. The Taliban have taken their grip on power and their brutality to new heights in an environment of legal ambiguity and political uncertainty. The best solution remains a political process to define a roadmap for the country’s future that would include all segments of Afghan society. A decentralized, pluralistic configuration would cater to the country’s political and socio-cultural diversity. The Taliban have utilized operational decentralization in their insurgency and know its merits well. They have to give in to political decentralization to ensure a basic level of stability and even their own survival. During the peace talks in Doha, they showed some degree of openness in informal engagements to democratic practices at the local level. Their rejection of national elections stems as much from their ideological rigidity, which considers sovereignty to be divine, as from their insecurity about winning public votes. Thus, pressuring them to allow other ethnic groups and political forces to define preferred forms of government in their regions would be a starting point, especially if they continue to dominate national politics.

Such a political process should be comprehensive and multilayered. One of the reasons the Doha talks failed was because of the simplicity of their design and the lack of a comprehensive, long-term roadmap. The reliance on a single-track direct negotiation would make the entire process vulnerable to the whims of individual actors, who could sabotage it when their narrowly defined interests are not served maximally. Additionally, it would limit the space for broad representation by enabling a select group of individuals on behalf of wide and diverse constituencies without necessarily speaking for their interests or being accountable to them. It also does not need to begin with the immediate conventional practices of holding grand meetings and conferences. That was what happened in Bonn in 2001 and in the Doha talks in 2020 and it proved disastrous. The last thing the international community should do is to bring back the corrupt old guards or to mobilize a new such class. The focus should be on structural changes rather than tokenistic incorporation of individuals into the Taliban’s emirate.

Such a political process should begin with a series of unilateral measures by the Taliban to establish trust and their willingness to work with others. They should realize that despite a near absolute hold on power, they are on the vulnerable end of any potential conflict. The unsuccessful talks in Doha can possibly provide a foundation to build on. For example, the U.N. should demand the Taliban sign the principles document that was developed in preparation for the Istanbul talks that ended up not taking place. This short document asked the Taliban to commit to civil liberties, democratic processes, equality of all citizens, and freedom of expression, among others, as the guiding principles of any meaningful negotiations. More broadly, the world should pressure the Taliban to provide the bare minimum of an environment conducive to political activity. Coherent and credible alternatives will eventually emerge on the ground in organic and indigenous ways. A basic level of protection for political dissent and diversity is required to ensure those alternatives are non-violent. The Taliban’s intransigence must be seen not as a constant to accept but an obstacle to overcome.

Precondition: Collective Action

Admittedly, achieving these objectives will not be easy. But any chance of success requires reestablishing the credibility and authority of the international community — which equally suffers from a trust deficit — so it can play a positive and effective role. The first step in doing so is better internal coordination and cohesiveness. Disunity and lack of consensus have been one of the key factors undermining global efforts to end the conflict in Afghanistan. There appears to be a lack of coordination even between the two American envoys: Rina Amiri, who is communicating a more critical approach on human rights, and Thomas West, who often appears more ready to compromise on the political front. It is imperative to mobilize more cohesively in pressuring the regime. Individual bilateral engagements only bolster the Taliban’s ability to bargain and play multiple stakeholders against each other. Additionally, working with regional countries remains critical to the effectiveness of external efforts. Using a more robust and coherent strategy of carrots and sticks can still yield some results.

The other component is a holistic, multi-dimensional negotiation strategy. The Taliban use a maximalist approach that starts negotiations from very low bars in order to use every ordinary matter as a point of leverage. For example, contrary to previous promises and assurances, they have taken the entire country and its people hostage, partly to use as bargaining chips against the international community to solidify their rule. The outside world, however, barely knows what it wants from the regime and what it would do if its demands are rejected. The European Union reopened its diplomatic mission in Kabul despite none of its five-point engagement benchmarks being fully met. Similarly, while almost all of Taliban leadership are on multiple sanction lists, they are roving around the globe, as we recently saw in Turkey, to expand diplomatic alliances; they are also expected in London for an upcoming donor conference. In order to negotiate effectively, the international community needs to have clarity about its interests and priorities. Limiting engagement with the Taliban to the U.N. mission in Kabul and the group’s Doha office by penalizing travel against sanctions would be an example of such strategic calibration. Sanctions will not have any consequences for the Taliban if transgressions (by the regime and members of the international community) are not addressed. Unless the international community uses its leverage effectively, it will soon have to give in even more helplessly than it already has — all to the detriment of Afghanistan’s future and undermining its own national security interests.

Sayed Madadi was the Director of Foreign Relations at Afghanistan’s State Ministry for Peace and a Senior Member of the Joint Technical Secretariat of Afghan Peace Negotiations in Doha, Qatar. He tweets at @madadisaeid. The views expressed in this piece are his own.

 
Published in News

By Omar Sadr

The exponents of Afghan ethno-nationalism desperately aim to present a benign image of the Taliban.

Unlike most societies, political alignment in Afghanistan is not divided along the right and the left axis. Most of the policy debates in the last two decades of the so-called republic were shaped by the right — either Afghan/Pashtun ethnonationalism or political Islam. At times, both these political strands were amalgamated with naive populism. 

Currently, political fragmentation and polarization under the Taliban have become an existential conflict over culture and ethnicity. The Taliban are a terrorist group, having successfully synthesized both Islamic extremism and Pashtun/Afghan ethnic chauvinism as their ideology. Ironically, they rule over one of the most diverse countries in the world.

The Taliban use two vague criteria to dismiss all progress made in the past two decades or, for that matter, any undesirable but transformational changes that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s: Afghan and Islamic values. The first category denies internal social diversity while the second rejects Islamic pluralism. After usurpation of power by force, the group proudly boasted of committing over a thousand suicide attacks. Now, it is officially forming a suicide bombers brigade within its security agencies. 

Organic Intellectuals

The exponents of Afghan ethnonationalism desperately aim to present a benign image of the Taliban. Having fundamental, political and social ties with the Taliban, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, they form the Taliban’s “organic intellectuals.” Unlike the traditional intellectuals, Gramsci argues, organic intellectuals are linked with a social class. Contrary to Gramsci, I use it as a negative term as they represent the extreme right. Their genuine undeclared mandate is to articulate and represent the interests and perceptions of the Taliban and to downplay the risks of the group’s rule.

In other words, these organic intellectuals are systematically engaged in PR for the Taliban. The irony is that the same people are recognized as the voices of Afghanistan rather than of the Taliban in Western academic and think-tank circles. Afghan ethnonationalism and its exponents are only challenged by the Persian-speaking Tajik and Hazara intellectuals, whose voices have been relegated to the margins due to acceptance of the Taliban order as the new normal.

The organic intellectuals have the nature of a chameleon, speaking in two different languages to address different audiences and constituencies. On the one hand, they praise and welcome the establishment of the so-called “order,” albeit Taliban-centric, but, with a liberal audience, they speak the language of peaceful coexistence, “cultural particularism,” relativism and political pragmatism. To incorporate such a self-contradictory stance, they adopt a fence-sitting position.

The justifications of the Taliban made by these organic intellectuals contradict both the realist and moralist approaches in political philosophy. First, let us address the five justifications before returning to the philosophical questions.

The Taliban Order

To begin with, treating the Taliban-centric order as default and ignoring the ideological dimension of the Taliban, it argues that the group is adaptable to political and policy reforms. Thus, it tries to undermine the possibility of a thorough transformation of the current scenario through any means.

The telos of political reform is expanding the horizons of rights and liberties. In a totalitarian regime, the goal of reform is not to improve the condition of individuals and communities but to consolidate the regime’s power. To suggest political reform essentially means to work with the existing political framework, not its transformation. This entails admitting the terms and conditions of the totalitarian regime.

Compared to reforms in an authoritarian regime, the prospect of successful political reform and change toward emancipation in the totalitarian regime is limited because, in the latter, the state is based on a rigid doctrinal ideology. An ideological state does not accommodate change and reform unless there is an alteration in the constituent ideology. The longer a totalitarian regime stays in power, the less likely the possibility for political transformation. Thus, change in a totalitarian regime is easier to achieve in the early stages, when its power is not consolidated. 

The Taliban government currently installed in Afghanistan is not simply another dictatorship. By all standards, it is a totalitarian regime. A totalitarian regime, according to British philosopher John Gray, is not the one that negates liberal democracy — it is one that brutally suppresses civil society. The Taliban have created a monstrosity equivalent to that of other totalitarian states. 

Political Pragmatism

The second justification of Taliban apologists is political pragmatism — the Taliban is a reality that could not be done away with and thus it shall be acknowledged. As part of my research on the Afghanistan peace process, I conducted an opinion poll in 2018 that showed the Taliban’s popularity as below 10% across the country. Thus, this so-called pragmatism is constituted upon a false assumption. But the Taliban are a reality, like racism, Islamic fundamentalism, bigotry and slavery. Also, they are a reality fostered by sponsors: the Pakistani establishment.

Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that bigotry, racism and fundamentalism could not be eradicated through endorsements by the intellectuals and those who have a moral commitment to fight them. Irrespective of the logic of morality, one cannot buy the argument to accept bigotry or extremism just because they were a reality. Endorsing the Taliban is equivalent to recognizing their wicked acts. 

Third, it is proposed that if we accept the Taliban as a reality, the costs of establishing political order would be reduced. For example, it can prevent another civil war. This argument is built based on a false assumption regarding the nature of the Taliban. Historically, the group has been extremely violent by nature: War, jihad and suicide bombings are an integral part of its ideology. What country in the world prides itself on having suicide squads?

In the seven months of their rule, the Taliban have killed, tortured and humiliated numerous civilians, former security officers and women’s rights activists, primarily ethnic groups like the Tajik and Hazara. Moreover, they maintain strong ties with an international community of jihadists, including al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Turkistan Islamic Party, among others. 

There is an inherent contradiction in the nationalist stance advocating for so-called reconciliation. The nationalists argue that war is costly and hence we should accept working with the Taliban. However, countless civilians being slaughtered or abused by the Taliban on a daily basis is ignored as the human cost of Taliban rule. A doctrinal state imposes its ideology on every single individual even if it is at the cost of the individuals’ lives. 

Naïve Intellectualism

Fourth, the naive social-media public intellectuals suppose that they can hold the Taliban accountable by citing some verses of the Quran or some articles of the law of Afghanistan. It is not that ideological totalitarian regimes do not understand what law is; rather the Taliban misuses the law to further limit the sphere of civil society and expand the regime’s control. Hannah Arendt argued that totalitarianism is primarily a denial of law, the emergence of a state in the absence of law. By this standard, the Taliban are simply a totalitarian entity.

The assumption that the Taliban would be held accountable through a Twitter post is naïve. The issue is not negligence in the application of the law by the Taliban; rather, the fundamental issue is the group’s illegitimate rule. The Taliban have suspended a functioning state apparatus by military takeover of the state that led to the collapse of the republic, purging many technocrats from bureaucracy and creating an environment of terror, intentionally undermining the Doha peace talks.

Lastly, cultural particularism suggests that the Taliban represent a specific culture and shall be given time to adapt and develop according to its own history and context. Taking a relativist stance, it is said that there is no ultimate truth and no one is a final arbiter. Thus, relativist logic fails to recognize evil in its totality. The truth about the evil nature of the Taliban could not simply be dismissed by reducing the issue to a matter of a difference of opinion.

Unlike relativists, cultural pluralists are not naïve enough to engage with evil. According to their line of thinking, although ultimate values are diverse, they are knowable; any order which negates and denies peaceful coexistence is outlawed. The Taliban eschews all forms of coexistence. They treat the Persian-speaking Tajiks, Hazaras and other nationalities as second or third-class subjects. They campaign against Persian cultural heritage such as Nawroz celebrations, the Persian language and much of the country’s pre-Islamic heritage.  

The Realist/Moralist Challenge

Exponents of the Taliban have to respond to both a moralist and a realist question in politics. From a moralist standpoint, by neglecting or dismissing any moral standard, they adopt a peace activist cover. They aim to humanize the Taliban in order to make the group pleasantly acceptable. 

The question here is, what is a morally correct stance against a terrorist group that has a track record of deliberately inciting ethnic hatred, racism, ethnic supremacy, oppression, mass atrocities and terror? The answer is clear: Any act that demonizes humans and perpetuates violence for the sake of subjugation of others is condemned. The perpetrator would thus be fully responsible.

On the contrary, any single word that misrepresents the Taliban and presents a false benign image of the group is a betrayal of the moral principle of justice, liberty and claims of intellectualism. Any responsible citizen and public intellectual has a moral obligation to not just renounce them publicly but to denounce totalitarian regimes and any act of terror.

Denunciation not only entails a public condemnation of evil in its totality but also an avoidance of any word or deed that contributes to the consolidation of the regime. By any standard, a terrorist group does not have a right to rule. Anyone who advises or applauds terrorist statements or policies is morally bankrupt. When faced with a totalitarian regime, one can only be either for or against it.

Lastly, the realist question is what British philosopher Bernard Williams calls the Basic Legitimation Demand (BLD): “the idea of meeting the BLD implies a sense in which the state has to offer a justification of its power to each subject.” This is the very first question in politics.

Before any other virtues, a state has to present an acceptable answer to those that it rules. Otherwise, the people who consider themselves alien to the rulers and have a basic fear of subjugation, humiliation and persecution, as well as those who are radically disadvantaged, have every right to disobey. As Williams says, “there is nothing to be said to this group to explain why they shouldn’t revolt.”

Read at Fair Observer

 
Published in News

By Omar Sadr

Nonviolent resistance must mobilize the people and create synergies between different strata within the democratic constituency.

It is a dark age for Afghanistan. The reemergence of the Taliban twenty years after its initial defeat has brought back a totalitarian regime, leaving the country with an unsuccessful peace process, failed state, humanitarian catastrophe, the deprivation of rights, and an unprecedented rise in ethno-cultural injustice. Despite the twenty-seven years of lived experience with the Taliban, there are many misunderstandings about the group. It is important to note that the Taliban is not just like any other authoritarian government. It is neither a single-party system, a traditional monarchy, nor a military dictatorship. Instead, it is an absolute religio-tribal totalitarian regime.

Immediately after it seized Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban received a proactive, nonviolent pushback from women, civil servants, and human rights activists. I have described this elsewhere as steady, sporadic, and spontaneous. Another common pattern of passive, nonviolent resistance in Afghanistan has been the mass exodus of the country’s non-Taliban citizens, which first took place in 1996 during the Taliban’s initial period of rule. It is now happening again. During the last seven months of Taliban rule, millions have left the country, and many more will escape as the Taliban’s rule becomes harsher. But unlike in the 1990s, resistance to the Taliban has not remained limited to a passive exodus of the non-Taliban from Afghanistan.

A successful long-term, nonviolent movement, however, should neither be submissive, sporadic, nor spontaneous. Indeed, those carrying out nonviolent resistance to the Taliban should abandon a simplistic understanding of passive resistance and instead adopt political defiance as an approach.

To begin with, nonviolent resistance is not a call for obedience and passivity. It is constant activism, which requires the mobilization of the masses. Unlike passive, nonviolent action, nonviolent resistance is defiance, and it leaves no room for submission. This is what Robert Helvey called “political defiance.” Nonviolent action, therefore, will help discourage obedience to the Taliban.

Second, while nonviolent resistance entails noncooperation with the autocratic or totalitarian regime, the secular ideologues of the Taliban consistently suggest cooperating with the regime. Nonviolent resistance does not allow even the acceptance of the regime; it instead aims to overthrow and disintegrate it. Unlike political defiance, cooperation with a totalitarian regime like the Taliban creates obedience. Obedience in turn facilitates the sustainability of totalitarian rule, helping convert the citizens into submissive, atomized individuals who lose their self-confidence and do not dare protest. Historically—be it colonialism, apartheid, or racism—nonviolent resistance has aimed to overthrow the hegemonic and discursive order under these regimes. The same shall go for the nonviolent resistance against the Taliban regime. Beyond being organized, nonviolent resistance must present a plausible alternative to the ideology and institutional infrastructure of Talibanism. In other words, to borrow from Gramsci, it must produce and articulate counter-hegemonic discourse based on the cultural pluralism and rich history of the land.

Third, nonviolent resistance should now move beyond its initial stage of sporadic and spontaneous resistance. Instead, it should adopt a more strategic approach that addresses key questions such as the issues at stake with the Taliban, the effectiveness of various tools of nonviolent resistance, and whether and when to negotiate with the Taliban. Gene Sharp, a political scientist who had extensive influence over the nonviolent movements, has given a conscious warning to democrats on the prospects of negotiations with dictators. He argues that when the stakes of the issues are very high or there is a power asymmetry between the democrats and the dictators, negotiations can be a trap that the democrats must be cautious of. He argues that a “halt to resistance rarely brings reduced repression. … Resistance, not negotiations, is essential for change in conflicts where fundamental issues are at stake.” The issue at stake with the Taliban is both cultural and political. Hence, both the cultural and political forms of nonviolence are crucial. On the other hand, as the people of Afghanistan are suffering from the economic crisis, nonviolent economic actions—such as strikes, boycotts, and hunger strikes—may not be effective. Similarly, government strikes and boycotts of the civil service may not work, as the Taliban could easily replace protesters with its loyalists in the bureaucracy. With this in mind, the effective approach to resistance is the one that targets the weakness of the totalitarian regime and identifies the strengths of the people.

Fourth, the mandate of a political defiance movement does not end with disintegrating the totalitarian regime. Rather, the policy of political defiance shall be aimed at reestablishing a democratic order. This cannot be done by elevating the corrupt political elite to leadership or moving toward an elite-centric agenda. As a totalitarian regime directly assaults the autonomous institutions of the society, political defiance in Afghanistan must revive and establish civic institutions, which strengthen society to stand up against the regime. This will increase the capacity of people to resist the regime for longer.

Fifth, nonviolent resistance is a breath-taking exercise. While the aim is to reduce suffering, resistance itself has great costs. Fighting for liberation and the disintegration of a totalitarian state involves pain, suffering, and risks. However, resistance should avoid any form of hatred; nonviolence is fighting hatred without detestation. Hence, the ultimate end of nonviolence is not avoiding suffering but prohibiting hate, especially ethnic or racial hate. Therefore, nonviolent resistance against the Taliban cannot be sentimental, and any belittling or personal attacks cannot be allowed.

For Afghanistan, resistance in general, and nonviolent resistance in particular, should function as praxis to maintain fundamental freedoms, democratic aspirations, and the recognition of diversity in Afghanistan. It should not hesitate to articulate its ideas and struggle to convert them into norms. Simultaneously, the resistance must step forward to actively practice them. The political defiance of the last few months has had payoffs. Many pro-Taliban apologists have shifted their positions and now criticize the Taliban. This has been caused by consistent protests, both on the ground and on social media, which have increased the cost of supporting the Taliban.

Nonetheless, the Taliban and its secular ideologues present a complicated challenge. This challenge precludes any easy and ready-made solutions. Rather, it requires a strategic approach to mobilize the people and create synergies between different strata from within the democratic constituency.

Omar Sadr is a Research Scholar at the Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh.

Read at The National Interest

Published in News

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  • ASIA Spotlight with Prof. S. Frederick Starr on Unveiling Central Asia's Hidden Legacy
    Thursday, 28 December 2023 00:00

    On December 19th, 2023, at 7:30 PM IST, ASIA Spotlight Session has invited the renowned Prof. S Fredrick Starr, who elaborated on his acclaimed book, "The Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane." Moderated by Prof. Amogh Rai, Research Director at ASIA, the discussion unveiled the fascinating, yet lesser-known narrative of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment.

    The book sheds light on the remarkable minds from the Persianate and Turkic peoples, spanning from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang, China. "Lost Enlightenment" narrates how, between 800 and 1200, Central Asia pioneered global trade, economic development, urban sophistication, artistic refinement, and, most importantly, knowledge advancement across various fields. Explore the captivating journey that built a bridge to the modern world.

    To know watch the full conversation: #centralasia #goldenage #arabconquest #tamerlane #medievalenlightment #turkish #economicdevelopment #globaltrade

    Click here to watch on YouTube or scroll down to watch the full panel discussion.

  • Some Lessons for Putin from Ancient Rome
    Thursday, 04 January 2024 17:01
    By S. Frederick Starr 
    American Purpose
    January 4, 2024
     
    Vladimir Putin, having sidelined or destroyed all his domestic opponents, real or imagined, now surrounds himself with Romano-Byzantine pomp and grandeur. The theatrical civic festivals, processions of venerable prelates, cult of statues, embarrassing shows of piety, endless laying of wreaths, and choreographed entrances down halls lined with soldiers standing at attention—all trace directly back to czarism, to Byzantine Constantinople, and ultimately to imperial Rome. Indeed, Putin considers himself as Russia’s new “czar,” the Russified form of the Latin “Caesar.”
     
    But besides all the parallel heroics, Roman history offers profound lessons for today’s world. All of America’s Founders saw the Roman Republic as the best model for their own constitution. Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler, by contrast, found in imperial Rome a stunning model for their own grandeur. True, some of Rome’s ancient chroniclers, including the celebrated Livy, so admired specific politicians that they saw only their good sides and ignored the problems and failures. Yet there were others, notably the pessimistic Sallust, who not only wrote bluntly of history’s painful issues but delved deep into their causes and consequences.
     
    Is Putin likely to delve into the history of Rome for insights on his own situation? Unfortunately for Russia, Putin is not a reader, preferring instead to engage in exhibitionist athletic activities, preside at solemn ceremonies, or offer avuncular obiter dicta. However, if he would study the Roman past, he might come to realize that that model presents more than a few chilling prospects that he will ignore at his peril.
     
    To take but one example, a glance at Roman history would remind Putin that self-declared victories may not be as victorious as he and Kremlin publicists want to think. Back in the 3rd century B.C., when Rome was still a small state in central Italy, it was attacked by a certain King Pyrrhus, a rival ruler from Epirus, a region along today’s border between Greece and Albania. In his first battles Pyrrhus routed the Roman legions, and celebrated accordingly. But matters did not end there.
     
    Like Pyrrhus, Putin’s army scored some early victories in its war on Ukraine. As recently as December 1, Putin’s Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu was still claiming, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that Russian forces “were advancing on all fronts.” Pyrrhus made similar false claims, only to discover that his own soldiers were no match for the determined Romans. As the Romans drove Pyrrhus’ army from the field, he groused, “If we win one more such victory against the Romans we will be utterly ruined,” which is exactly what happened. Pyrrhus’ statement gave Romans the term “Pyrrhic victory,” which we still use today. Putin should apply it to his “victories” at Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
     
    Another crisis in Rome’s early formation as a nation occurred when a peasant uprising threatened Rome itself and, according to the historian Livy, caused panic in the Roman capital. In desperation, the elders turned to Lucius Cincinnatus, who was neither a military man nor a professional politician, but who had earned respect as an effective leader. It took Cincinnatus only fifteen days to turn the tide, after which he returned to his farm. George Washington rightly admired Cincinnatus and consciously emulated him, returning after the Battle of Yorktown to Mount Vernon. By contrast, Putin’s “special military operation,” planned as a three-day romp, is now approaching the end of its second year. Putin, no Cincinnatus, doomed himself to being a lifer.
     
    Roman history is a millennium-long showcase of motivation or its absence. In this context, Putin might gain further insights by examining Rome’s centuries-long battle against the diverse tribes pressing the empire from the north. For centuries Rome’s legionnaires were well trained, disciplined, and committed. The list of their early victories is long. Both Julius Caesar and the philosopher-emperor-general Marcus Aurelius succeeded because they motivated and inspired their troops. But over time the Roman army was increasingly comprised of hirelings, déclassé men who fought not to save the empire but for money or a small piece of the bounty. Inflation and rising costs outpaced pay increases. Punishment was severe, in some cases including even crucifixion. In the end, Rome’s army eroded from within.
     
    This is what is happening to the Russian army today. Putin attacked Ukraine in February 2022 with what was then an army of several hundred thousand trained professional soldiers. But after the Ukrainians killed more than 320,000 Russian troops, their replacements were unwilling and surly conscripts and even criminals dragooned from Russia’s jails. Putin quite understandably fears such soldiers. Putin’s army, like that of the late Roman Empire, is collapsing from within.
     
    By contrast, Ukraine’s army at the time of the invasion was small and comprised mainly Soviet-trained holdovers. Both officers and troops of the line had to be quickly recruited from civilian professions and trained. Yet they quickly proved themselves to be disciplined and resourceful patriots, not tired time-servers. True, Ukraine is now conscripting troops, but these newcomers share their predecessors’ commitment to the nation and to their future lives in a free country.
     
    Sheer spite and a passion for avenging past failures figured prominently in Putin’s decisions to invade both Georgia and Ukraine. Roman history suggests that this isn’t smart. Back in 220 B.C., Rome defeated its great enemy, the North African state of Carthage. Anticipating Putin, the Carthaginian general Hannibal sought revenge. Acting out of spite, he assembled 700,000 foot soldiers, 78,000 mounted calvary, and a force of war elephants, and crossed the Alps. Though he was a brilliant general, Hannibal’s war of spite turned into a disaster.
     
    Why did Hannibal lose? Partly because of his sheer hubris and the spite that fed it, and also because the Romans avoided frontal battles and simply ground him down. They were prudently led by a general named Fabius Maximus, whom later Romans fondly remembered as “the Delayer.” Today it is the Ukrainians who are the Delayers. By grinding down Putin’s army and destroying its logistics they have positioned themselves for victory.
     
    The Roman Republic fell not because of any mass uprising but because of the machinations of Julius Caesar. A victorious general, Caesar looked the hero as he was installed as imperator. As was customary at such ceremonies, an official retainer placed behind the inductee solemnly repeated over and over the admonition to “Look behind you!” Caesar failed to do so and underestimated the opposition of a handful of officials and generals who feared the rise of a dictator perpetuus. Even if Putin chooses not to read Cicero, Plutarch, or Cassius Dio, he could productively spend an evening watching a Moscow production of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
     
    Turning to a very different issue, Putin seems blithely to assume that whenever Russia defeats a neighboring country it can easily win the hearts and minds of the conquered, whether by persuasion or force. This is what many Roman generals and governors thought as well, but they were wrong—fatally so. Speaking of the impact of corrupt officials sent by Rome to the provinces, the great orator-politician Cicero declared to the Roman Senate, “You cannot imagine how deeply they hate us.” Does Putin understand this?
     
    Finally, it is no secret that Russia today, like ancient Rome, is increasingly a land of immigrants; its economy depends on impoverished newcomers from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and elsewhere in Central Asia who fled to Russia in search of work. Yet Moscow treats them as third-class citizens and dragoons them as cannon fodder or “meat” to die by the thousands on the Ukrainian front. Rome faced a similar problem and wrestled with it unsuccessfully over several centuries. Over time the despised immigrants who poured across the Alps from Gaul demanded a voice in Roman affairs, and eventually took control of the western Roman Empire.
     
    Sad to say, neither Putin himself nor any others of Russia’s core group of leaders show the slightest interest in learning from relevant examples from Roman history or, for that matter, from any other useable past. Together they provide living proof of American philosopher George Santayana’s adage that, “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.” In Putin’s case, though, he seems never to have known it. 
     

    ABOUT THE AUTHORSS. Frederick Starr, is a distinguished fellow specializing in Central Asia and the Caucasus at the American Foreign Policy Council and founding chairman of the Central Asia Caucasus Institute.

    Additional Info
    • Author S. Frederick Starr
    • Publication Type Analysis
    • Published in/by American Purpose
    • Publishing date January 4, 2024
  • CACI Chairman S. Frederick Starr comments on "Preparing Now for a Post-Putin Russia"
    Friday, 03 November 2023 18:30

    Whether Russian President Vladimir Putin dies in office, is ousted in a palace coup, or relinquishes power for some unforeseen reason, the United States and its allies would face a radically different Russia with the Kremlin under new management. The geopolitical stakes mean that policymakers would be negligent not to plan for the consequences of a post-Putin Russia. On November 2, 2023, CACI Chairman S. Frederick Starr joined a panel organized by the Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia for a discussion on how US and allied policymakers can prepare for a Russia after Putin.

    Click here to watch on YouTube or scroll down to watch the full panel discussion.

  • Central Asia Diplomats Call for Closer Ties With US
    Monday, 26 June 2023 00:00

    REPRINTED with permission from Voice of America News
    By Navbahor Imamova

    WASHINGTON -- U.S.-based diplomats from Central Asia, a region long dominated by Russia and more recently China, say they are eager for more engagement with the United States.

    Many American foreign policy experts agree that a more robust relationship would be mutually beneficial, though U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations express deep concerns about human rights and authoritarian rule in the five countries: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

    Michael Delaney, a former U.S. trade official, argued in favor of greater engagement this week at a webinar organized by the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce.

    He noted that three of the five republics are World Trade Organization members and the other two are in the accession process — a goal actively encouraged by the U.S. government.

    "I've always believed that this is a geographically disadvantaged area. There are relatively small national economies," he said. But, he said, collectively the region represents a potentially more connected market, about 80 million people.

    Key issues

    In this virtual gathering, all five Central Asian ambassadors to Washington expressed eagerness to work on issues the U.S. has long pushed for, such as water and energy sustainability, security cooperation, environmental protection and climate, and connectivity.

    Kazakhstan's Ambassador Yerzhan Ashikbayev said that despite all factors, the United States does not want to leave the field to China, its global competitor, which actively invests in the region.

    "Recent visit by 20 companies to Kazakhstan as a part of certified U.S. trade mission, including technology giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google, but also other partners like Boeing, have shown a growing interest," Ashikbayev said.

    The Kazakh diplomat described a "synergy" of economies and diplomatic efforts. All Central Asian states are committed to dialogue, trade and multilateralism, he said. "As we are witnessing the return of the divisive bloc mentalities almost unseen for 30 years, it's in our best interest to prevent Central Asia from turning into another battleground of global powers."

    During his first tour of Central Asia earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, meeting separately with the foreign ministers of all five countries.

    That was deeply appreciated, said Meret Orazov, Turkmenistan's longtime ambassador, who also praised the regular bilateral consultations the U.S. holds with these countries.

    Uzbek Ambassador Furqat Sidiqov sees the U.S. as an important partner, with "long-standing friendship and cooperation which have only grown stronger over the years."

    "The U.S. has played a significant role in promoting dialogue and cooperation among the Central Asian nations through initiatives such as the C5+1," he said, referring to a diplomatic platform comprising Washington and the region's five governments.

    "This is where we address common concerns and enhance integration," said Sidiqov. "We encourage the U.S. to bolster this mechanism."

    Tashkent regards Afghanistan as key to Central Asia's development, potentially linking the landlocked region to the markets and seaports of South Asia. Sidiqov said his country counts on American assistance.

    'Possibility of positive change'

    Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington, ardently advocates for the U.S. to adopt closer political, economic and people-to-people ties with the region.

    In a recent paper, he wrote that among dozens of officials, diplomats, entrepreneurs, experts, journalists and civil society leaders interviewed in Central Asia, "even those most critical of American positions saw the possibility of positive change and … all acknowledged that the need for change is on both sides, theirs as well as ours."

    This is the only region that doesn't have its own organization, said Starr, arguing that the U.S. could support this effort. "We have not done so, probably because we think that this is somehow going to interfere with their relations with their other big neighbors, the north and east, but it's not going to. It's not against anyone."

    "Easy to do, low cost, very big outcome," he added, also underscoring that "there is a feeling the U.S. should be much more attentive to security."

    "Japan, the European Union, Russia, China, their top leaders have visited. … No U.S. president has ever set foot in Central Asia," he said. He added that regional officials are left to wonder, "Are we so insignificant that they can't take the time to visit?"

    Starr urges U.S. President Joe Biden to convene the C5+1 in New York during the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly in September. "This would not be a big drain on the president's time, but it would be symbolically extremely important," he said. "All of them want this to happen."

    Read at VOA News

  • Read CACI Chairman S. Frederick Starr's recent interview on the resurgence of Imperial Russia with The American Purpose
    Tuesday, 23 May 2023 00:00

    Why Russians Support the War: Jeffrey Gedmin interviews S. Frederick Starr on the resurgence of Imperial Russia.

    The American Purpose, May 23, 2023

    Jeffrey Gedmin: Do we have a Putin problem or a Russia problem today?

    S. Frederick Starr: We have a Putin problem because we have a Russia problem. Bluntly, the mass of Russians are passive and easily manipulated—down to the moment they aren’t. Two decades ago they made a deal with Vladimir Putin, as they have done with many of his predecessors: You give us a basic income, prospects for a better future, and a country we can take pride in, and we will give you a free hand. This is the same formula for autocracy that prevailed in Soviet times, and, before that, under the czars. The difference is that this time Russia’s leader—Putin—and his entourage have adopted a bizarre and dangerous ideology, “Eurasianism,” that empowers them to expand Russian power at will over the entire former territory of the USSR and even beyond. It is a grand and awful vision that puffs up ruler and ruled alike.

    What do most Russians think of this deal? It leaves them bereft of the normal rights of citizenship but free from its day-to-day responsibilities. So instead of debating, voting, and demonstrating, Russians store up their frustrations and then release them in elemental, often destructive, and usually futile acts of rebellion. This “Russia problem” leaves the prospect of change in Russia today in the hands of alienated members of Putin’s immediate entourage, many of whom share his vision of Russia’s destiny and are anyway subject to Putin’s ample levers for control. Thus, our “Putin problem” arises from our “Russia problem.”

    Click to continue reading...