The macho and strapping crop of current global politics gasconades many political leaders with their alpha-masculine demeanor. In human history, irrespective of territories, men have been portrayed as the saviors of society, reflecting truly in all walks of life. Our current global politics is no exception. We see the new demiurges with bare chest and alpha walk bragging their virile, laddish body and making sensational and simmering photo shoots in the front line media.
After the Taliban Takeover Afghanistan and the United States (US) left it, the country is currently facing severe challenges to reinstall social, political and economic systems. Afghans are craving for basic amenities to meet their daily needs for their survival. Before the Taliban regime, the West and its close allies had a strong presence with social, economic, cultural, and political infrastructures and they were providing basic support to the people. Everyone left the Afghan people behind in chaos and hope, which is more than a nightmare. People have already faced a greater risk of human security, poverty, health and education, and thousands of people have been displaced and migrated to other countries. The new Taliban government has a greater challenge regarding the functionality of the system, and the administration has not yet succeeded in bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan.
The condition in Afghanistan remains serious and pitiable, where there is major instability regarding economic, political, and civil unrest. Meanwhile, the non-state threats are looking for opportunities. The Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) has an edge to take benefit under the Taliban regime, which has had already an openly adversarial relationship. The ISK mainly takes advantage of recruiting, fundraising, and territorial control within the rule of poor governance of the Taliban. This is only one example of a local ethnic group inside Afghanistan, but there are also other players. However, the Taliban is likely to lose its ideological legitimacy. There is a vulnerable situation with the Haqqani Network which has already gained the share of power in the Taliban government. The Haqqani has closely worked with Al-Qaida and Pakistan-aligned militant groups, e.g., Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. The Taliban has numerous challenges in how he deals with these groups and minimises their activities and risk in Afghanistan.
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan was considered to be a ‘risk of worsening’ by the International Rescue Committee in 2022. It could be the decade’s most vulnerable situation, where 97% of the population are at ‘risk of sinking into poverty’. The Rescue report says that almost ‘2.6 million Afghans have been displaced across borders’, 22.8 million people are facing ‘the worst level of food crisis’ and the inequality of women is increasing day by day. Similarly, a country with 41.7 million people out of 24.4 million people needs humanitarian support in Afghanistan. The collapse of the economy and public services resulted in an ongoing drought and hunger crisis and COVID-19 has already weakened the situation in the country. For example, The Guardian report said, “The temperature is dropping to below zero in western Afghanistan and Delaram Rahmati is struggling to find food for her eight children.” She was forced to leave her village because there was no viable land and drought has already made it unliveable. This has resulted in ‘acute food insecurity’ due to ‘impacts on crops and livestock’.
Meanwhile, the Taliban gave hope that they would be able in the condition to ‘open all schools for girls’ in the country by the end of March. Since the Taliban’s takeover, girls beyond grade 7 have been not allowed back to school. Likewise, the ruling government, the Taliban keeps on assuring that they are working to normalise the situation across the country. Afghanistan is facing a major crisis by not getting enough humanitarian aid, due to the issues of recognition of government by the world. Recently, “India and five Central Asian countries have decided to set up a joint working group to provide aid to Afghanistan to address the humanitarian crisis”. The commitment has been made, while the Prime Minister of India, Narender Modi called a virtual summit with leaders from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Consequently, the Taliban is desperately looking to the West for humanitarian aid and other immediate needs for the country. Recently, the representative of the Taliban government organised three days of talks with Western officials, as well as Afghan women’s rights and human rights activists in Norway on the 23rd January 2022. The Taliban delegation was led by the Acting Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaq in Oslo and he expressed his hope for a hopeful promise and “a gateway for a positive relationship with Europe” as well as expected to free up nearly USD 10 billion. The Taliban representative has already travelled to Russia, Iran, Qatar, Pakistan, China, and Turkmenistan. The United States has already set up a Special Representative for Afghanistan, and a US delegation is led by Tom West. He expressed his plan to discuss the following issues with the Taliban: the formation of a representative political system, responses to the urgent humanitarian and economic crises, security and counterterrorism concerns; and human rights, especially education for girls and women.
However, the Taliban has proposed a Joint Mechanism to mobilise humanitarian aid with the cooperation of its officials and international donor representatives during the middle of January 2022. The Taliban led Afghan government wants to coordinate with international representatives for billions of US dollars planned for Afghanistan. But it is yet not clear whether the United Nations and foreign governments would support a joint body. The Taliban-led government is facing major challenges by Western sanctions, only basic supplies of food and medicines are allowed. Afghanistan’s acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam said “The goal of this committee is coordination on a higher level for facilitating humanitarian aids of the international community and to distribute aid for needy people”. On the 11th January 2022, the United States announced to give more than USD 308 million in humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. The Biden administration has also allocated ‘one million additional COVID-19 vaccine jabs to the Afghan people to tackle global pandemic. The United States has already contributed some of USD 474 million and 4.3 million doses of the COVID vaccine since October 2021. Meanwhile, the United Nations has also appealed to mobilise nearly USD 5 billion aid to the Afghan people by 2022.
Conclusion
Afghanistan is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in a decade, where almost USD 623 million is needed only to provide shelters to needy people. Almost half of the population is facing acute hunger and the UN has already mentioned that almost 5.7 million people have been displaced in five neighbouring countries since the Taliban’s takeover started last year. The change of the political system in Afghanistan caused a serious threat to human security. Once again, Afghanistan is not any more stable which has also created challenges to South Asian regions not only in terms of economy, but it is more concerned with the matter of regional security. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver (2003) termed the regional security complex (RSC) approach for South Asia’s security mosaic and their meaning was about Afghanistan’s security stake in the region. The recognition of the government path by the world is not so easy yet, and the Taliban still needs to go beyond the miles. On the humanitarian ground, the world needs to take care of the Afghan people because of not only the entire region, but also other parts of the world can face the more severe consequence. However, there are many active militant organisations there and they could target the young Afghans to create insecurity for the entire world.