Deprived of oxygen, hope still flickers in Afghanistan, but for how long?
by Shamil Idriss, CEO, Search for Common Ground
Hope hangs by a thread in Afghanistan, where I spent last week meeting with dozens of civil society leaders, community activists, international organizations, and Taliban officials. I went to learn about ongoing reconciliation and rebuilding efforts — and I was rewarded with incredible stories of resilience and commitment to peace in the face of tremendous uncertainty. But as I returned to the news of the Biden Administration’s decision to split the Afghanistan Central Bank’s frozen assets between humanitarian assistance and potential restitution to victims of 9/11, that thin thread of hope is about to snap.
I lead Search for Common Ground, a global peacebuilding organization with decades of experience working in countries emerging from — or trying to prevent — mass violence. What I saw in Afghanistan is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, but also a nation of women and men marshaling extraordinary resolve to improve their lives, and being forced to do so with their hands tied behind their backs.
And not only by the Taliban. The international community is directly thwarting locally-led efforts to build a viable future for 40 million Afghans.
Consider the story I heard in Kandahar from a middle-aged man who runs a community Peace Center that provides training for Afghans to resolve disputes.
He launched the Center in July 2021, but stopped all activities when the Taliban swept to power. After they began offering gender-segregated trainings on how to resolve inter-communal disputes, a Taliban official showed up to observe their first all-male training. Approaching the nervous staff after the trainees had left, he complimented their service to the community and urged them to do more. But days later, just as the first all-female training was set to launch, the Center was again ordered to cease all activities — not by the Taliban, but by an international donor who felt it was too risky. Women who had trekked to the Center — some from hours away — turned around to go home, dejected and demoralized.
In meetings with more than 150 local activists and international actors last week, I heard variations of this story again and again: Afghan women and men committed to reconciling and developing their communities, overcoming tremendous anxiety about engaging with the Taliban, and then finding the new government to be more pragmatic than they had anticipated. Yet they found their good work blocked in myriad ways by the policies of an international community that is effectively choking the country off from all but the most basic humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian and peacebuilding workers whose work is funded by international donors, for example, are told they cannot use any of their funded salaries to pay taxes to the current regime — forcing them to either quit their jobs or risk a clash with tax authorities. I talked to one woman who was pleasantly surprised to be called back into her refugee-support position in a ministry. She is proud to serve the most vulnerable Afghans but has not been paid for months due to international sanctions that do not distinguish between such public sector jobs and ‘support to the regime.’ I spoke to another who convinced Taliban officials to let her continue to run a safe house for victims of domestic violence, but now struggles with cash-flow challenges due to international banking restrictions.
The international community has reason to be concerned in light of numerous stories of violence and intimidation. While I was there, reports emerged that women’s rights activists abducted following their participation in street protests had since disappeared. We met with a young woman whose friend was beaten by police for driving without a suitable male guardian. Such stories shock the conscience and cry out for a response.
But if the goal is to prevent the suffering of the Afghan people, the blunt instrument of current policies applied to Afghanistan will produce the opposite result.
The current approach must change. Cash must be allowed to flow through the economy, lest 40 million people be doomed to poverty and despair. Afghan-led efforts to develop their country must be robustly supported to give a population that is, on average, just 18 years old, a chance at a future. International donors must not impose their refusal to deal with the Taliban onto local Afghan civil society for whom such an approach is both impossible and dangerous.
Policy-makers would make better decisions if they paid attention to a wider diversity of Afghan voices from within the country, and not solely the stories that fit the narrative with which they are most comfortable. Today, coverage of Afghanistan exclusively reports stories of desperation and victimhood, leaving observers with the impression of a hopeless situation that, in reality, is considerably more complex and, yes, even hopeful in parts.
As I heard repeatedly last week, Afghan women and men — both those who loathe the Taliban and those who are cautiously optimistic after decades of war — have a fierce commitment to reconcile and rebuild their country. Their voices are reflected in the universal outrage with which the Biden Administration’s recent decision is being met in Afghanistan and the hope that those funds — as well as those frozen by Germany, the UK, the UAE and others — will make their way back into the local economy where they belong.
My Afghan colleagues assured me for weeks before my arrival that I would find signs of hope amidst the despair that is so readily reported. They were right. That is why Search for Common Ground is staying and expanding our support to locally-led efforts to reconcile and rebuild Afghanistan. We urge the international community to do the same. Or at least to stop throwing up barriers to their efforts.
Follow Search for Common Ground on Twitter at @SFCG_ and Shamil Idriss at @ShamilIdriss
