Deep Breath Before the Plunge

%2F%2Fsendy.thesgnl.co%2Fl%2FzdmQv1cOekMDhqFHCAD1Mg%2FUCeYN9kHV4HDEsu9jPH77g%2FSzcw8peLBBKaPns892apENaQ/1/010f017b5dd48991-639f388e-97cc-49f1-a4f2-060e7f23c7dc-000000/VbxMF3pkywRNfkPYUPqo9UaUzeU=16 “If there’s a demonstration defending women’s education, will the Taliban be willing to talk even about some separate-but-equal approach? Or will they come in with clubs and beat the women down?” Waiting on the Edge How will life change for Afghans under Taliban rule? Anatol Lieven on the uncertain future of a war-torn country. Scenes of a chaotic American evacuation from Afghanistan—scenes that include people grasping for and plummeting from a U.S. Air Force plane as it took off—have shown the desperation of many Afghans as the Taliban returns to power for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion of 2001. The United States and countries around the world now face the logistically difficult and politically fraught question of taking in refugees from Afghanistan. But what of the Afghans who can’t or don’t leave? How will life change for them? Anatol Lieven—a senior research fellow at the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of [Climate Change and the Nation State](%2F%2Fsendy.thesgnl.co%2Fl%2FzdmQv1cOekMDhqFHCAD1Mg%2FOaftHYtKGglUQwVsuVR61A%2FSzcw8peLBBKaPns892apENaQ/1/010f017b5dd48991-639f388e-97cc-49f1-a4f2-060e7f23c7dc-000000/t3vz5An49-khA7pdS3N5BT6REEU=16)—says women’s rights “will be greatly restricted,” but it remains uncertain how dramatically the Taliban will change the country. The worst-case scenario Lieven envisions is the same brutal approach the group took in the 1990s, which he describes as “deeply ignorant, savagely repressive of any kind of cultural difference, banning women’s education altogether.” The best-case scenario he can imagine is that Afghanistan ends up looking something like Iran—a theocratic government with some modern technocracy and the educated class needed to maintain it, which would include at least some educated women. The country would still be repressive, but it would allow more freedom than the Taliban has in the past. America could use aid to Afghanistan to try to influence the Taliban, Lieven says—by developing institutions such as schools that women can attend or women’s hospitals—but the U.S. will need help in that endeavor. “Future American and Western influence, if it exists at all, will have to be exercised in cooperation with Afghanistan’s key neighbors—Russia, China, Pakistan, and, yes, Iran,” Lieven says. “The only way to modify Taliban behavior is to work with these countries.” ——— Graham Vyse: How did Afghanistan’s security forces and government fall so quickly? Anatol Lieven: I got a taste of the reason for it more than 30 years ago, when I was a British journalist embedded with the Mujahideen in the late 1980s. In several areas I visited, local Mujahideen forces had arrangements with local Communist forces not to fight each other. This was partly because of tribal links between them. It was partly for the sake of a quiet life. Often, it was partly because they were sharing the heroin trade between them and war was bad for business. This was also true of the Taliban during their rise in the 1990s. They had these long-standing talks with Mujahideen forces, and what this means is that all the pieces are in place for a negotiated surrender—a surrender on terms. If these people have been talking to each other, if they’ve been doing business together, if they share tribal links for years, then it’s much easier at a certain point for one side—in this case, the government’s side—to give up and go home, with promises from the winning side that they won’t be massacred or persecuted. The Taliban have generally stuck to that very honorably for good, pragmatic reasons. Obviously, if you kill large numbers of people who try to surrender, nobody’s ever going to surrender again. So under the surface, you had a whole web of arrangements that paved the way for the Afghan forces to surrender and go home. The other issue is that the Afghan state was profoundly rotten and many of the generals were rotten—stealing their men’s pay, selling off their equipment, dealing in heroin. This was a deeply demoralized force, whereas the Taliban—with all their terrible faults—obviously had high morale. More from Anatol Lieven at The Signal: “I don’t suppose the Taliban would allow the American University of Afghanistan to keep going, but they might rename it. Maybe the Chinese will take it over and call it the Chinese University of Afghanistan. If the Taliban close Kabul University, which is an old, indigenous educational establishment, that will be a terribly bad sign. It’s one thing to insist women wear a headscarf, as in Iran. But if they go back to flogging any woman who doesn’t appear in a burqa or any man who trims his beard—that’s another thing.” “We’ve underestimated the Taliban throughout. Too many American officials and soldiers believe their own propaganda. The Taliban are absolutely rooted in the rural peasant culture of southern Afghanistan. American general after American general said the Afghan army was much stronger and more loyal than it actually was.” “If the Afghan army wouldn’t fight for its own state—and if that was because their own commanders and officials had stolen American aid and stolen from the Afghan people—that cancels the West’s responsibility in a sense. But there are more specific moral responsibilities. The West has a duty to the people who worked directly for us and risked their lives—interpreters, Afghan workers for the American and British military. We owe something to educated Afghan women, who we encouraged to hope that they had a future as educated women. I strongly support continued aid to Afghanistan to give us leverage, including over not supporting terrorism, suppressing the drug trade, and maintaining certain spaces for educated women.” %2F%2Fsendy.thesgnl.co%2Fl%2FzdmQv1cOekMDhqFHCAD1Mg%2FvOTsLnqme1ksFGWSyKg1wg%2FSzcw8peLBBKaPns892apENaQ/1/010f017b5dd48991-639f388e-97cc-49f1-a4f2-060e7f23c7dc-000000/pspWijEZfSrzNVgwsqUrWNmqrJA=16 ——— %2F%2Fsendy.thesgnl.co%2Fl%2FzdmQv1cOekMDhqFHCAD1Mg%2FLo0L0g48nXf5FR763gauMruQ%2FSzcw8peLBBKaPns892apENaQ/1/010f017b5dd48991-639f388e-97cc-49f1-a4f2-060e7f23c7dc-000000/Ky1exTBnCGW-kx-KOT6o8wcBNW8=16 ——— For exclusive access to The Signal’s full articles, artwork, and archive: %2F%2Fsendy.thesgnl.co%2Fl%2FzdmQv1cOekMDhqFHCAD1Mg%2FOAfVkZ9VejvrzrACs1u2pw%2FSzcw8peLBBKaPns892apENaQ/1/010f017b5dd48991-639f388e-97cc-49f1-a4f2-060e7f23c7dc-000000/asOisj--5EiMET-H-t6nURI9cuU=16 %2F%2Fsendy.thesgnl.co%2Fl%2FzdmQv1cOekMDhqFHCAD1Mg%2F616mHNJhpqBxspombfOFuQ%2FSzcw8peLBBKaPns892apENaQ/1/010f017b5dd48991-639f388e-97cc-49f1-a4f2-060e7f23c7dc-000000/mHYLTBksdiZHU7Qe9sTWBo2_NFs=16 This email was sent to {EMAIL} We recently resolved a broken-link issue with our opt-out function. 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