Reviewing 2023: The Afghanistan Report

Top left: Afghan Prime Minister receives Chinese ambassador in Kabul. Top right: Afghan Minister of Defence Mullah Yaqoob in Badakhshan. Bottom left: Pakistani politician Maulana Fazlur Rahman. Bottom right: Afghan ambassador received in Beijing by Chinese official.

One year comes to a close as another arrives. The challenges of 2023, however, remain. Internationally, Israel’s unrelenting onslaught on Gaza, encouraged, supported, funded and armed by the USA, has killed 22,000 civilians thus far. It continues into 2024.

Challenges remain,, as we’ll explore, for Afghanistan. The second half of 2023 (read the first half here) brought with it noteworthy developments, some wins, and many challenges. Hardly is it new for Afghanistan to be undergoing some level of difficulty or problem, but the scale of these cannot be overstated. A UN report has called for a Special Envoy to Afghanistan, sanctions have been announced against Taliban leaders, and relations with Pakistan have spiralled. The trajectory shows no signs of changing course.

Our report and the key stories we picked up on from the latter half of 2023 are not just a wrap up of previous news coming out of Afghanistan. They are ongoing items whose subsequent developments we should be attentive to in 2024.

Herat Rocked By Devastating Earthquakes

Thousands of people died in the western Afghan province of Herat as it was devastated by a series of consecutive earthquakes. Part of the reason for the relatively muted coverage devoted to the earthquake and the destruction it caused was due to the earthquake’s timing. The first earthquake struck on 7th October, coinciding almost perfectly with the Hamas offensive against Israel.

Three subsequent earthquakes followed, the last of which took place over a week later, on 15th October. As of November 2023, the World Health Organisation documented that 275,000 in 382 villages were directly affected, primarily mainly in the districts of Herat (city), Injil, Kushk, Zindajan, Gulran, Guzara, Ghoryan, Karukh, and Koshan. Over 1,400 were estimated to have been killed, and 2,000 injured.

The earthquake’s heavy casualty toll notwithstanding, local infrastructure had also been severely damaged. Forty health facilities had been damaged,  over 10,000 homes had been obliterated and severe damage had been incurred by 220,430 more. More than 47,000 families had been forced into temporary living settings.

Even the humanitarian catastrophe that unfolded, however, was not free of diplomatic squabbles. As dozens of countries pledged financial and humanitarian assistance to those afflicted by the earthquake, Kabul reportedly rejected aid from Pakistan. The reason, allegedly, was due to a tweet from Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar; Kakar’s tweet had alleged that Kabul had approached Islamabad for aid. Kakar’s assertion, it would appear, was not well received in Kabul. The aid was refused.

The squabble takes place amidst widening and escalating tensions between Kabul and Islamabad, to be covered in greater depth below.

Mines, Canals, Dams, Railways and Tunnels

Economic development is a coveted goal of many a state and party. The Taliban are no exception. A characteristic feature of Afghan governance since the Taliban takeover in 2021 has been the emphasis, both avowed and practical, toward widening the country’s economic capacity. The topic formed the crux of a recent feature report by the Washington Post, which paid particular attention to the Taliban aspiration to autarky. Economic capacity, as it turns out, has numerous avenues, ranging from diplomacy to the mundane business of road building domestically.  The second half of 2023 thus followed this trend. The Salang Tunnel, connecting northern Afghanistan with Kabul through the winter, has been repaired and re-opened. Roadbuilding continues in earnest.

The Qushtepa Canal was initially envisaged in the 1970s during the tenure of President Daud Khan. Daud’s violent toppling in a 1978 communist coup d’etat dragged the country into the cauldron of a four decade war that only ended in 2021. Conflict relegated Daud’s ambitious and potentially transformative infrastructure projects to mere footnotes of history, the memory of which were infrequently resuscitated depending on political need. Like much else, this changed in the post-2021 Afghan paradigm. Whilst the preliminary steps for the Canal’s constructions were undertaken during the Ghani regime, the Canal’s construction has been an area of renewed and much publicised attention by Kabul. On 29th September, RTA (the Afghan state broadcaster) published official pictures of the Canal, whose first stage was announced to have been built. 

The Canal’s completion could mark a watershed for Afghanistan. It would firstly mark a major win for the Taliban in the form of their achievement of a tangible advancement in the country’s infrastructure and economic position. The improvement of the economic standing cannot be overstated; the Canal’s successful completion is projected to not just ameliorate a chronic dependence on grain imports. It could also propel Afghanistan to be a net grain exporter. The autarkic benefits of lessened dependence on imports need be viewed in the geographic context: Afghanistan is a landlocked country. It is cripplingly dependent on, but at increasing loggerheads with, Pakistan as a transit route.

Keeping geography in mind, and notwithstanding the Canal’s benefits for Afghanistan, its completion is not without challenges insofar as otherwise cordial Afghan-Uzbek relations are concerned. The Canal’s source is the Oxus River once visited by Alexander of Macedon himself. The River marks the Afghan border with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, all of whom enjoy water rights to it.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed concern as to the Canal’s potential impact of altering the balance of water in Central Asia and called for a joint working group to discuss the Canal’s impacts further. The challenges posed by the Canal’s construction are thus only likely to deepen as Afghanistan continues work to complete it, coupled with increasing water scarcity in Central Asia as a whole due to climate change. More on the topic can be read here.

Major Mining Deals

Another major headline was the announcement of a mining deal on 31st August. Officials from the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum as well as the office of Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Bradar announced mining deals awarded to seven companies amounting to $6.5billion dollars. The deal included companies from Turkey, China and Iran, and signifies the keenness of Kabul for its vast and overwhelmingly untapped mineral reserves to be invested into. The economic impact of the deals will materialise, if they do, not just in 2024, but over the following years and, perhaps, the decade.

Diplomacy

  • Pakistan

Diplomacy is always a mixed bag. Whilst engagement with Kabul has persisted, this has been balanced on the other hand by steadily deteriorating relations with Pakistan: Afghanistan’s main neighbour. Central to the standoff between Kabul and Islamabad has been the accusation by the latter of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group being stationed in and launching attacks from Afghan soil. Previous attempts at negotiations between Islamabad and the TTP, with Kabul’s mediation, failed, and Pakistan’s domestic fissures have only deepened further in the aftermath of Imran Khan’s ouster.

The presence of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and its exploitation for political ends is no new phenomenon. Pakistan’s proclivity toward highlighting its generosity in hosting Afghan refugees has remained a staple of its foreign communications strategy. That is whilst the abuse of Afghan refugees has coincided and been correlated strongly with deterioration in its relationship with Kabul. Afghan refugees were threatened with deportation in 2017 under then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; even then, they were subject to senior officials scapegoating Afghans as security threats and bearing responsibility for terrorism.

Relations between the neighbours have again deteriorated over the issue of the TTP,. Afghan refugees, once again, found themselves in the familiar and unenviable position of being scapegoated by Islamabad. Amidst claims that 14 out of 24 suicide attacks in 2023 had been conducted by Afghan refugees, Islamabad made its move. On 2nd October, Pakistani interior minister Sarfraz Bugti announced that all illegal Afghan refugees (numbering approximately 1.73 million) were to be given one month, until 1st November, to return to their country. If they did not comply,  security forces would be deployed to enact the order forcefully.

The reasoning for the deportations was made clear by caretaker Pakistani Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar. ‘Pakistan’s recent actions,’ Kakar stated, were ‘ neither unexpected [n]or surprising.’ The deportations were a result of ‘Pakistan [taking] matters into its own hands,’ as a result of Kabul’s ‘non cooperation.’ The Afghan government had been told, Kakar conveyed, that it had to ‘choose between Pakistan and the TTP.’

The deportations have pushed ahead. Condemnations from Kabul followed swiftly and were predictably loud. The most strongly worded of these came from the Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai. Stanakzai warned Islamabad to ‘not to force [Afghanistan’s] hand,’ and directly implicated Pakistan’s powerful military establishment in the deportations. In addition to Kabul’s protestations, international organisations have raised alarm at the abuses being committed against Afghan deportees by Pakistani security personnel. The Guardian reported an exit fee that Western diplomats labelled as ‘shocking’: the fee was to be levied on Afghan refugees who had fled following the Taliban takeover, and were temporarily in Pakistan, where they were awaiting resettlement in Western countries. Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, raised attention to and condemned the abuses suffered by those being deported to Afghanistan, which included ‘mass detentions, [seizure of] property and livestock, and [destruction of] documents of thousands of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers.’

The escalating tension with Pakistan coincided with a visit to Iran by the Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Bradar Akhund. Bradar, previously a formidable military commander who had spent eight years incarcerated in Pakistan, did not miss the opportunity to take aim, albeit indirectly, at Pakistan. In addition to thanking Iran for hosting Afghan refugees, he was reported to have added that ‘Iran, with regard to refugees, recognises Islamic [conduct], humanity, [good] neighbourliness and [refugee] rights.’ Whether true of Iran or not, the contrast he was drawing to Pakistan was clear.

Beyond subtle digs at Islamabad, however, Bradar’s visit also included several other topics of discussion. These included further easing bilateral trade, developing Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor (which borders China) to connect Iranian-Chinese trade, widening Iranian-Uzbek trade through Afghanistan, a railway line extended to Qandahar, and developing Iran’s Chabahar port to facilitate imports to and exports from Afghanistan. The final point in particular was significant. Discussions on the Chabahar port were not new; they had first been seriously held during the US occupation. The occupation had ended. The aim, however, of making Chabahar a viable port had been inherited by the Taliban and reflected a deeper impulse: to alleviate landlocked Afghanistan’s crippling dependence on Pakistan and its Karachi port. The impulse had only grown more acute with the downward spiral relations had taken.

Deteriorating relations seems likely to persist into the new year, as Pakistan looks likely to continue grappling with a resurgent TTP in the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas: a hotbed of TTP activity. A sliver of hope that could reverse this trajectory was news from 18th December; the Afghan government extended an invitation to Maulana Fazlur Rahman, with sources presuming his acting as mediator between Kabul and Islamabad. Fazlur Rahman certainly isn’t new to the overlap between the two: an ethnic Pashtun and religiously trained scholar, he is an influential politician in Pakistan whose leadership of the JUI (Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam) has been marked by his unwavering personal and organisational support for the Taliban. Fazlur Rahman, in more recent times, condemned the ‘ruthless’ expulsions of Afghan refugees.

Rahman is, however, a controversial figure in light of the perceived dichotomy in his politics on both sides of the Durand Line. His enthusiastic support of the Afghan Taliban has been widely contrasted with his active participation in Pakistan’s semi-democratic political process and support for Pakistan’s republican constitution., leading to what many perceive to be his bizarre opposition to the TTP: the Afghan Taliban’s comrades.

Fazlur Rahman, though, attempted to rationalise this dichotomy by pointing toward the US’ occupation in Afghanistan: a factor specific to Afghanistan, that did not apply to Pakistan. This reasoning, however, suffered from a major blind spot. Even as Fazlur Rahman personally opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan, as a state, did not. Pakistan was thus indicted by Rahman’s rationale, as it played a key role in facilitating the very US occupation of Afghanistan to which Fazlur Rahman was so opposed and served, par excellence, as the preferred transit route for American military machinery en route Afghanistan.

Upon the signing of the Paigham-e-Pakistan in 2018, Fazlur Rahman had gone as far as saying that ‘all religious parties and scholars are with the [Pakistani] state and Constitution,’ against groups like the TTP.  As a collection of government-sponsored religious rulings (fatawa), the Paigham-e-Pakistan (Message of Pakistan) aimed to gain the Pakistani state a religious legitimacy that had been blunted in the aftermath of its active role as an ally of the US in its War on Terror. The fatwa declared armed opposition (like the TTP) as constituting ‘rebellion,’ per the classical Islamic understanding. This made rebellion religiously prohibited together with suicide bombing: incidentally a preferred Afghan Taliban method of waging war. Conspicuously for many, Fazlur Rahman: the ardent Afghan Taliban supporter, was foremost amongst the Paigham-e-Pakistan’s signatories.

Whether Fazlur Rahman can successfully bridge the gap between the neighbours remains to be seen, and is worth observing, as the region heads into 2024. Speaking on 29th December, Fazlur Rahman reiterated his commitment to ‘restor[ing] ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan,’ and highlighted the importance of Afghanistan’s stability for Pakistan. Still, PhD candidate and Kabul University lecturer Dr. Faiz Muhammad Zaland remains sceptical as to the prospects of Fazlur Rahman’s visit being a success.  ‘A breakthrough requires a mediator [acceptable to] both sides,’ Zaland said ‘but there is [currently] no such mediator able to safeguard the interests of both parties.’

Whatever opinions are on Rahman, the task before him is daunting, as the escalating tensions between Kabul and Islamabad showed no signs of relenting as 2023 drew to a close. On 29th December, a documentary was released by Shamshad News, and covered the life of Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani: the Afghan Minister of Refugees, and brother of Jalal ud-Din Haqqani. The documentary featured Haqqani discussing his incarceration in Pakistan. The incarceration, Haqqani bluntly stated, only ended due to a prisoner exchange facilitated by former TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud himself. Whilst the exchange and Haqqani’s (and Afghan Taliban) ties to the TTP have long been known, the calculated and public admission will undoubtedly prove embarrassing for Pakistan’s powerful military establishment. Few realities contradict Islamabad’s narrative of good (Afghan) Taliban versus bad (Pakistani) Taliban, like Haqqani’s release being facilitated by the TTP. A reality Haqqani states publicly.

That was followed up on 31st December, the final day of the year. The Afghan Minister of Defence upped the rhetorical ante against Pakistan. At a Kabul press conference, he directly alleged the role of Pakistani and Tajikistan nationals in orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan following 2021. The subtitled speech can be found here.

  • Russia

The year has also seen a notable prominence to Russo-Afghan relations. The pattern in this dialectic, however, has remained largely unchanged. Zamir Kabulov, the Uzbek-born Russian Special Representative to Afghanistan, has remained front and centre in bilateral relations. That centrality has been undergirded by Kabulov’s prolificity in issuing public statements on Afghanistan. These included calls for ‘ethnopolitical’ inclusivity in Kabul: an essential condition for Moscow to lend its formal recognition to the Taliban. The addition of ethnopolitical inclusivity marks a new development beyond the previously coined ethnically based inclusivity. The Kazan Declaration did acknowledge increased ethnic inclusivity in Kabul. Yet this, it made clear, was not enough, as political inclusivity was amiss. It was not sufficient, in other words, for non-Pashtun Taliban to be represented. Moscow wanted non-Pashtuns and non-Taliban in the corridors of power. ‘Ethnopolitical‘ inclusivity par excellence.

Kabulov’s preoccupation with intra-Afghan ethnic dynamics was displayed in other instances. He also, and somewhat more inappropriately for a foreign diplomat, claimed that over half of Afghanistan’s population consisted of non-Pashtuns. The contention, like much else regarding Afghanistan’s demographic makeup, has no veritable data to prove (or disprove) it. It was, however, a few steps beyond Kabulov’s usual soundbites on inclusivity. 

Another development was a gathering held in Moscow on 24th November for a conference. The conference was hosted by a Russian Justice Institute, supported by the Just Russia Party and the Russian Academy of Science, and was attended by fugitive Afghan politicians opposed to the Taliban. These included Shukria Barakzai and Fawzia Koofi: widely seen as and portraying themselves to be women’s rights activists, as well as Muhammad Muhaqqiq: the Shia Hazara leader who was instrumental in recruiting and deploying Afghan Shia to Iran’s legions of Shia foreign fighters to buttress the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. It also included Ahmad Massoud: son of the late commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Massoud Junior leads the foreign-based and self-styled National Resistance Front.

The conference marked the most prominent appearance of Massoud since he was reported to have asked Israel for its help against the Taliban. That was, at least, what Israeli outlet Maariv reported; the story soon generated a storm of controversy after it was translated into English and reported by the Middle East Eye and The Jerusalem Post. So contentious was Massoud’s plea for help that his organisation, the NRF, dismissed claims of its contact with Israeli media as ‘baseless,’ though this was a denial by the NRF as an organisation, and did not deny Massoud himself having done so. Semantics notwithstanding, it’s unclear what incentive Maariv would have in falsely reporting the story. Afghanistan is far enough to be considered peripheral in Israel’s regional calculus. That peripheral relevance is only reinforced by Massoud’s largely inconsequential position within the country. His pleas for Israeli help, or even allegations to that effect, would be charitable insofar as attracting much-needed attention to the young leader. Time has only lengthened and darkened the shadow cast over Massoud due to his reported request for Israeli help; Israel’s campaign of wholesale slaughter in Gaza has only continued, thus far killing almost 22,000 civilians. The NRF, as an organisation at least, did issue a condemnation on 15th October as Israel initiated its offensive.

Massoud’s speech in the conference focussed on familiar themes. He was incisive in his criticism of the Taliban: they had, he said, held the people of Afghanistan hostage, demonstrated their intransigence, failed to establish ethnopolitical inclusivity, and their gaining of power was possible only through an ill-defined ‘conspiracy.’ The conference, therefore, was not groundbreaking insofar as its topic of discussions. Nor indeed was it groundbreaking in the fact it was held in Moscow; it was, after all, not hosted by the Russian government, but by political parties and institutions. The fact it was allowed to be held, however, sent a clear signal by Moscow to Kabul on the gulf that still persisted between the two capitals. If needed, Moscow was more than able, through hosting Afghan fugitives well-accustomed to servicing foreign interests, to cause political headache for Kabul. At the very least.

Conferences and fugitives aside, however, the relationship has been balanced by ongoing interaction between the two governments. The Russian Ambassador in Kabul visited Afghan Foreign Minister Muttaqi the day after the conference, and subsequent meetings have been held between Kabulov and Muttaqi, as well as between Kabulov and Afghan Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani. Whether inclined (or not) toward the Taliban or indeed Russia, an interesting relationship nonetheless.

  • China

Arguably the biggest development in foreign relations came with regard to China. Chinese engagement with Kabul is not new, and the Chinese participation in multilateral summits on Afghanistan in Samarqand and Islamabad were both covered in our newsletter summarising the first half of 2023. The mining contracts of August, that included Chinese companies, totalled $6.5billion, have already been covered above.

Shortly after the announcement of the mining deal, another milestone was reached. Zhao Sheng, a Chinese diplomat, was appointed as Beijing’s new ambassador to Kabul. Sheng’s appointment included what was customary practice in inter-state relations, but a noteworthy practice insofar as it concerns post-2021 Afghanistan. Sheng’s appointment to Kabul saw his formal reception by, and the presentation of his credentials to Afghan Prime Minister Mullah Hassan Akhund. The reception took place in an elaborate ceremony that Kabul keenly organised to showcase its growing acceptability internationally. The fact it was China, a superpower in the making, only added to the prestige of the event. Whilst many commentators speculated as to whether this appointment and reception constituted Beijing’s formal recognition of the Afghan government, other analysts were quick to highlight that this was not the case. Formal recognition, if and when it occurred, was implied by a foreign country accepting the Taliban’s ambassador. Not vice versa.

That scene soon materialised in practice, as China’s appointment of a new ambassador to Kabul was followed by an appointment in kind. On 1st December, Bilal Karimi, formerly a spokesman, was appointed to, and officially received by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Afghan ambassador to Beijing. Karimi was presented his credentials to and was received by Hong Lei, the head of the foreign ministry’s protocol department.

Karimi’s formal reception soon triggered discussion as to whether this was (or wasn’t) formal recognition of the Taliban. Karimi had not been received by Xi Jinping or any other senior Chinese official, but a relatively low level official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Whilst noteworthy ceremonially, it mattered little in practice. Taliban ambassadors in foreign capitals was nothing new; there were Taliban ambassadors in Pakistan, Iran and other countries, but their appointments were necessitated by the host countries’ need to have a diplomatic address through which to engage with the government in Kabul. China, however, had now formally accepted and received a Taliban ambassador. China had gone a step further. Finally, and according to the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Karimi’s reception by the Chinese President Xi Jinping is on the agenda. Something to look out for in 2024.

The evolving relationship between Kabul and Beijing has been noted by Mansoor Ahmad Khan, former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul, in an op-ed.

Sanctions

On 9th December, the US announced new sanctions on two Taliban leaders implicated in ‘serious human rights’ abuses, specifically against women and girls. The two ministers were Shaykh Khalid Hanafi: the Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, and Fariduddin Mahmood, the head of the Afghan Academy of Science.

The importance of those sanctions, however, is limited. The two aforementioned are not the first (nor probably the last) Taliban members to be subject to US sanctions, and nor, as far as Washington is concerned, do they reflect a high-risk, high-priority calculation. Barnett Rubin, ex-advisor to the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, highlighted the inconsistency in the US’ human rights concerns, most notably with regard to the US-supported Israeli onslaught on Gaza. ‘With respect to Afghanistan, it means the administration will continue to castigate the Taliban as a kind of virtue signalling without taking any concrete actions to help Afghanistan,’ Rubin said, ‘except sending some money for humanitarian aid.’