The political future of Afghanistan

The recent US airstrikes against the Taliban have raised doubts about the possibility of a complete American withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of the current year. Ongoing violence in Afghanistan is straining the US agreement with the Taliban and is complicating the desperately sought US exit from the region. Yet, it is highly unlikely that the US will enhance its military presence in the region having seen the futility of such efforts in the past. Instead, we will probably continue seeing a redoubling of efforts to ensure a negotiated settlement to the Afghan imbroglio.

Pakistan is currently in an elated mood for its role in not only convincing the US to sign a peace deal with the Taliban, but for facilitating the peace negotiation process, and further engaging in the even more difficult task of enabling intra-Afghan talks. However, the eventual outcome of the sputtering intra-Afghan talks remains a million-dollar question.

Creating a stable Afghan state is not going to be easy but there are some very interesting ongoing debates concerning what the political future of Afghanistan may look like.

The Bonn Agreement which tried to re-create the state of Afghanistan following the post-9/11 US intervention has now become redundant. The US and its Nato allies have spent billions of dollars over the past 19 years to create a sustainable Afghan state. Yet, despite a series of elections, incumbent governments lacked legitimacy, and were prone to fragmentation, infighting, and corruption. As a result, there are now varied actors with competing interests operating across the country.

The contours of the future political system remain uncertain but given prevailing ground realities it is likely that a new hybrid regime will see the Taliban assume a dominant position, while their opponents’ authority is diminished. Ashraf Ghani will certainly need to relinquish significant amounts of power. Ghani does not have a good record sharing power with Abdullah Abdullah, and it is unlikely that the Taliban will agree to a centralised government headed by him.

Yet, the Taliban also know that they cannot go back to their old ways and that they too need to compromise. It would not serve the interests of the Taliban to be completely isolated by the West. According to some experts, the Taliban are weary of becoming another North Korea. Instead, they apparently aspire to be treated like Saudi Arabia, with whom Europe and the US maintain close relations without challenging the Saudi monarchy’s ultraconservative ideological positions.

While Afghanistan is no Saudi Arabia, the Taliban today are also not the same group which had swept into power during the 1990s. The so-called ‘neo-Taliban’ are now less reliant on Pakistan, and have developed strong ties with other regional actors like Qatar. The Chinese are also making deals with the Taliban to protect their economic interests in the country. The Taliban also seem to have reached some understanding with Iran, whereby they would not target the Shias as they did after their takeover in the 1990s.

Even if a bloody civil war can be averted, the current Afghan Constitution will probably not survive, and a renegotiated governance structure will need to be put into place. The Taliban may desire altering the current Afghan state into a theocracy, many others want to preserve as much of the current democratic setup as possible.

According to Kamran Bokhari at the Center for Global Policy in Washington DC, the likely compromise could be a Sunni Afghan version of the Islamic Republic of Iran. There could be a republican component to the future state, but that component may be circumscribed by a thick theocratic layer.

Hopefully, whatever the new constitutional setup in Afghanistan turns out to be, it can be flexible enough to allow for equitable resolution of differences between various competing groups by enabling adequate devolution of power.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2020.

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