Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Monday was the first anniversary of the Taliban taking power, but celebrations were low-key because Afgha...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Monday was the first anniversary of the Taliban taking power, but celebrations were low-key because Afghanistan is struggling with growing poverty, drought, malnutrition, and women losing hope that they will play a key role in the country's future.
Some people shot into the air in Kabul to celebrate, but the city of 4.5 million people was mostly quiet a year after the Taliban took over the capital.
The country is safer than it was when a hardline Islamist movement was fighting an insurgency against U.S.-led foreign forces and their Afghan allies. However, a local branch of Islamic State has carried out several attacks.
But Afghanistan's relative safety can't hide how hard it will be for the Taliban to put the country on a path to economic growth and stability. The economy is under a lot of stress, and a big reason for that is that the country is cut off from the rest of the world because other countries don't recognize its leaders.
Development aid, which the country relied on a lot, has been cut because the international community wants the Taliban to respect the rights of Afghans, especially girls and women, who have less freedom to work and go to school.
The Taliban want the $9 billion in central bank reserves that are held overseas to be returned. However, talks with the U.S. are hard because the U.S. wants a Taliban leader who is subject to sanctions to quit his job as the bank's second-in-command.
The Taliban say that they will not give in to these demands because they respect the rights of all Afghans according to how they understand Islamic law.
And until there is a big change in either side's position, there is no immediate way to stop prices from going up, unemployment from going up, and hunger from getting worse as winter approaches.
A doctor from the southeastern province of Ghazni, Amena Arezo, said, "We are all going to darkness and bad luck." "There is no future for people, especially for women."
About 25 million Afghans live in poverty, which is well over half of the population. The UN says that as the economy slows down, up to 900,000 jobs could be lost this year.
LACK OF OPPORTUNITY
Fatima, who lives in the province of Herat in the west of the country, said that security had gotten better over the past year. However, she was upset that schools for girls had closed and that women didn't have many job opportunities.
She asked that only her first name be used because, like many Afghans, she was afraid of being hurt.
Jawed, who is from the southern Helmand province, where there was a lot of fighting in the past, said that security had gotten a lot better since the Taliban came back to power 20 years after they were kicked out by U.S.-backed forces, but he also said that inflation was out of control.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, women were not allowed to work and girls were not allowed to go to school. Strict Islamic law was also enforced in a very harsh way, including by putting people to death in public.
Civil society and independent media have also shrunk, and many of their members have left the country. In a recent review, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said that journalists, activists, and protesters were being arrested when they spoke out against the government.
A Taliban spokesman said the U.N. report was wrong and that arrests made for no reason were not allowed.
The country's government is still seen as a caretaker government or "de facto" authority, with acting ministers whose decisions can be overturned by the group's supreme spiritual leader, who lives in the southern city of Kandahar.
Some constitutional and legal experts say it's not always clear how the Islamic code of law and morals, called Sharia, will be interpreted and used in real life.
"The most obvious problem is that the laws are not all the same," said Zalmai Nishat, an expert on Afghanistan's constitution who used to work as a government adviser.
"Right now, it's up to the (Taliban) leader in Kandahar and those who are leading on his behalf. That's the problem; it's the lack of predictability."
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