Will Afghanistan become the world’s largest open-air prison?

Photo by Mohammad Rahmani on Unsplash

The day before Kabul fell to the Taliban, Salima Mazari, district governor near Mazar-e-Sharif, said this to the Associated Press:

“There will be no place for women. In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes.”

Other than former colleagues, I don’t have a personal connection to Afghanistan and have never been there. The closest I’ve gotten was standing on the banks of the Amu Darya River on the Tajikistan side, looking south across the border at the legendary country and “graveyard of empires”. But it is hard not to feel that what is happening in Afghanistan affects us all.

Scenes of desperate Afghans crowding outside of Kabul’s international airport have dominated the news as the US and NATO military withdraw. In pulling out, the West is abandoning its incomplete state-building project. It is also abandoning most of the people of Afghanistan to their fate.

What is shocking about the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan is that it has happened so rapidly, and to so many people at once. 40 million, to be precise. First the swift takeover by the Taliban. Then the shutting down of the country’s borders, and now Kabul’s international airport.

With the near complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan evacuees and refugees are the lucky ones. They’ve made it out. Everyone else is waking up in a country that could turn into the world’s largest open-air prison.

And Afghan women potentially face a triple exclusion. They will be prevented from leaving the country, prevented from working, and confined to their homes.

With the Taliban in control of all border points and access to the airport, virtually all Afghans are being blocked from leaving the country. Not being allowed out is a particularly severe form of exclusion. Ask any prisoner. Or anyone from the former East Germany, or North Korea, or Gaza.

It could well be that Afghan women will no longer be able to participate in professional and civic life. Reports are emerging that women have already been sent home from schools and workplaces.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said that women should stay home, for their own safety.

Depending on who joins or allies with the Taliban, people will sort themselves into either guards or prisoners.

And, as in a prison, it seems likely that neither privacy nor property rights will be respected. People are vulnerable to searches of their homes and cell phones anytime a man with a gun shows up at their door. Under previous Taliban rule, women were not even safe in their own homes.

Even worse, this could be a prison full of untrained rogue “guards”. It is an open question how much control the Taliban leadership has over its men.

In advising women not to leave their home, Mr. Mujahid noted that the Taliban’s “security forces are not trained [in] how to deal with women – how to speak to women [for] some of them.”

Now, just take a moment to picture the Taliban training its forces on how to deal with and speak to women. Try not to laugh…or cry.

It is one thing to end a war and leave in haste. It is another to condemn the country’s citizens to become prisoners in their own land.

Let’s assume that no country is going to be able to defend humanitarian rights in Afghanistan. The leverage that the outsider world still has –the Taliban need money to govern – will be used to ensure internal stability and avoid more chaos that would contribute to an outflow of refugees.

So, now the fundamental question becomes: What can other countries do, from outside the prison walls, to help the Afghan people, and in particular, its women and girls?

I don’t have an answer.

In the meantime, @LinaAbiRafeh, intrepid women’s rights activist, is posting ways you can help.

Nils Junge August 26, 2021

4 migration factors will keep inclusion on the agenda for most of this century

*Image: David Mark from Pixabay 

Today dark clouds hang over Afghanistan as the Taliban takes over the country. The situation may soon deteriorate into a humanitarian crisis, leading to a mass exodus of refugees to neighboring countries and beyond.

However the story in Afghanistan unfolds, at least four critical global developments will keep migration at the top of many country’s policy agendas for decades to come.

More people crossing borders, whether as refugees or economic migrants, ensures that countries will be unable to ignore questions of inclusion and exclusion.

  • Conflict and terrorism. A 2019 paper estimated that global conflicts were at an all-time high since 1945. all-time high since 1945. Ongoing as well as new conflicts and terrorism will result in more refugees and economic migrants. Pressure will increase on countries to either accommodate more people from outside their borders, or they will use ever more draconian measure to keep people out. 
  • Climate change and the devastation wrought by extreme weather events are pushing people to cross borders. Last year, in a lengthy article on the subject, New York Times declared that the “The Great Climate Migration” has begun. An unprecedented number of people will migrate to more temperate zones. Madagascar, already extremely poor, is suffering from a devastating famine. UN organizations are linking it to climate change.
  • Democratic backsliding. In 2021, Freedom House reported the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Lack of participation in democratic processes across the globe—Tunisia, the one Arab country where the Arab Spring did not end in failure, is the latest example—means fewer people are participating politically. If people can’t vote at the ballot box, they will vote with their feet, and get out if they can. Already thousands of people have fled Belarus to escape President Lukashenko’s violent crackdown after elections were rigged.
  • Falling birth rates and ageing populations in the rich world are contributing to a labor deficit. The number of births per 1,000 is now half of what it was in 1950, and fertility rates are falling well below replacement levels. Unlike the push factors above, low fertility will act as a pull factor for migration. If societies are to continue to prosper, higher workforce participation will be key. This will involve skills training and better childcare options to make it easier for those who don’t work, while making it easier for more migrants to enter.

Meanwhile, racial injustice in the US and elsewhere has been brought into relief by the killing of George Floyd in 2020, and the broader recognition that the issue can no longer be ignored. Many more people have become aware that African Americans and other minorities still don’t enjoy the rights and privileges other citizens take for granted. Hate crimes against people of Asian descent in the U.S. are up.

These global developments all but guarantee that the issue of inclusion, who gets in and who doesn’t, will only grow more acute as the century progresses.  

Broader inclusion and the diversity that comes with can bring huge benefits, but it won’t be easy, either for societies or organizations.

How policy makers manage these pressures and processes, without inciting more backlash from anti-immigrant groups, will pose a major challenge for policy makers for generations to come.

In many countries, the urge to erect more barriers—physical and otherwise—will compete with calls to let more people cross.

Can we muster the empathy to recognize that anyone of us could be a migrant, excluded, and struggling to start a new life? Can enough of us muster that empathy?

Nils Junge August 17, 2021