The Taliban’s Next Five Years |
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: The Taliban mark five years in power in Afghanistan, a Pakistani court orders that former Prime Minister Imran Khan be moved to a hospital, and the U.S. ambassador to India breaks decades of policy precedent with remarks about Kashmir.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: The Taliban mark five years in power in Afghanistan, a Pakistani court orders that former Prime Minister Imran Khan be moved to a hospital, and the U.S. ambassador to India breaks decades of policy precedent with remarks about Kashmir.
The Taliban’s Surprising Stability
The Taliban, mainly because of their abhorrent treatment of women and girls, arguably constitute the world’s most brutal regime. The group also shelters terrorists, and its leaders are sanctioned and globally isolated; only Russia formally recognizes the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government.
The August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has left the Taliban—known more for their warfighting than policymaking—saddled with the responsibility of managing a chronically weak economy without the foreign assistance that long helped prop it up.
And yet, today, the Taliban can be regarded as surprisingly stable—albeit through brutish means.
First, the group hasn’t faced real threats to its political survival. To be sure, Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K)—the local branch of the Islamic State—has periodically targeted the group. But that hasn’t diminished the Taliban’s strength, instead serving up a contrast of an even worse alternative.
By some measures, security has improved. Since August 2021, Afghanistan has not been at war, as it was for the previous four decades. Terrorist attacks have also declined in recent years, following Taliban offensives against IS-K. This doesn’t mean that Afghanistan is secure—especially for women, religious minorities, dissidents, and others threatened or targeted by Taliban violence. But it’s more stable than it was when convulsed by conflict.
Furthermore, Afghanistan’s economy—weakened by decades of conflict, the absence of a diverse private sector, massively diminished foreign assistance, multiple humanitarian crises, and global economic shocks—has performed better than many observers expected. The World Bank earlier this year estimated that the country’s real annual GDP growth would be nearly 5 percent. That is in part due to the Taliban’s success in generating revenue through customs duties and tax collection, and also to robust trade with Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors.
The Taliban may be isolated, but the group is not the global pariah it was in the 1990s. Nearly 20 countries still........