Taliban and the Ethical and Human Rights Crisis of Our Time

In this article, we attempted to address the trust-fund and financial aid economy and Afghanistan’s education crisis. The crisis which, from our point of view, was deliberately created by the Taliban in order to cut the budget costs and still be a self-made problem for the international community to resolve, which, unfortunately, is being implemented extremely thoroughly.

Another important point is to know that the trust-fund and financial aid economy is not one of the Taliban’s strategies; It is a strategy of hidden or indirect support of governments through international organizations and especially UN sub-groups. It needs to be reminded that another very important issue is the “Secular Foreign Policy” of the Taliban, which is the basis of our deliberations in this text.

Taliban and Secular Foreign Policy

The ideological reasons for the Taliban barring girls from attending schools again can be many. Still, we should not only focus on such reasons because the Taliban’s motivation is not based purely on religious beliefs. The Taliban after 2001 are a new Taliban; They have changed! These Taliban have come to know a trust-fund economy that finances them because of their insistence on extremist militancy and fundamentalist ideological positions.

The trust-fund economy of the Taliban has been formed over the past 20 years; Although it existed before that, and in fact, the Taliban group was originally formed with this economic system; However, at that time, whatever was earned was used for faith, while now, the luxurious life of Taliban leaders shows that this time they are using faith to gain wealth. In a way, it can be said; Now religion and group ideology are the means of income.

The current Taliban do not have any specific goals of religious nature; In fact, the main change that can be seen in this group is that this group now wants to maintain its sovereignty at any cost, but this goal doesn’t have any religious basis.

This group’s friendship with China and Russia, requesting help from international institutions, allowing the activities of these institutions, demanding the presence of representatives of all Islamic and non-Islamic countries in Kabul, and most importantly, the agreement and pact of this group with a country that it considered its enemy (that is, the United States) itself expresses that the current Taliban has removed religion and Sharia from its foreign policy. Maybe, consider small religious actions; otherwise, they will be exposed entirely as secular, but the principles they are trying to obtain and implement are not based on Sharia principles.

With its desire to join the world, this group wants to guarantee its sovereignty and limit itself to implementing Sharia law on the people of Afghanistan. Political relations between countries do not follow the religious principles of any country but are based on components such as national interests, in which case the interests of other nations are also raised, and every government must realize the interests of many people of the world regardless of the religion in order to achieve their own national interests.

Of course, it is yet to be seen whether the Taliban has the ability to do such a thing or not; Because many large terrorist groups similar to al-Qaeda have special dominion over this group, and it seems very unlikely that this group can be free itself from the influence of other terrorist groups.

Trust-Fund and Financial Aid Economy

The reason is that the Taliban has weakened the role of Sharia in its foreign policy and is trying to establish political relations with the modern and secular governments of the world without paying attention to religious customs. This way, it is possible to play in politics whose decisive role is played by the same governments.

This time, the Taliban want permanent sovereignty, and for this reason, they are looking for a relationship with the world in every way. The most important solution for the Taliban in this regard is the politics described earlier. Based on this type of relationship, the Taliban keeps the field of dialogue open for itself. This is one of the new characteristics of the Taliban (willingness to talk with the world), and it can be called the diplomacy of terrorism; Diplomacy that connects such a group with the so-called reformed policies and emerging from democratic processes.

On the other hand, governments also try to secure their interests through the Taliban based on the same policy that was put forward by this group; These policies include economic and intelligence influences.

If we want to skip the possibility of secret pacts and economic agreements that follow; we can instead talk about governmental financial aid institutions from governments or those supported by governments:

In January 2022, in an interview with Associated Press, Zabihullah Mujahid talked about the need for the cooperation of the international community in Afghanistan’s educational affairs. This request for cooperation was the beginning of many hopes to open schools for girls. Due to this requirement, international donors emphasized that they want to work with the people of Afghanistan to maintain and expand educational programs.

On January 22, Tom West, the US special representative for Afghanistan affairs, said that his country is ready to pay all the teachers’ salaries if girls’ schools are opened. Then, in early 2022, the World Bank announced the release of more than one billion dollars to support Education and some other essentials. On March 31, 2022, a conference of countries co-hosted by the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was held in order to collect urgent humanitarian aid in the amount of 4.4 billion dollars (The request for this amount of money is the highest amount proposed for fundraising by the United Nations).

Recently, twenty-five million dollars have been donated from the World Bank for Education in Afghanistan.
It means that all this money was given only from the World Bank for an educational system that is 60-70% paralyzed, without any guarantee or hope that this money will be used for the students.

Also, other plans have been created and proposed to support the grassroots and popular groups who are active in Education. Many of these plans are based on the condition that financial aid should be given only to provinces where girls’ schools have been opened.

The general plan proposed by Human Rights Watch is to facilitate Education without discrimination. In fact, if the Taliban accepts to open schools for girls, they will face an influx of financial aid from various international organizations.

According to this institution, international aid can play an important encouraging role for local communities and Taliban officials.

Maybe it is becoming clear what the strategy of the financial aid economy is from our point of view. As you can see in the collected statistics and reports, the principle is the limitation created by the Taliban; In fact, the demand to open schools is one the Taliban created with restrictions in the first place. Then, we see the plans that are proposed by international organizations and governments to meet this demand. Of course, this coordination is astounding; however, the most important thing to pay attention to is the Taliban’s efforts to restrict female students despite such plans.

The importance of this issue is that it shows how the Taliban controls international aid by restricting and slowing down the educational process of girls and, at the same time, highlights it as a political tool for self-recognition.

Human Rights Watch’s plan was that financial aid is possible only in provinces where girls’ schools have been opened. They also added that this help could encourage Taliban officials to reopen schools.

This is what confirms that the Taliban’s blackmail policy is working. By restricting girls, the Taliban can even highlight it as the only important condition for their recognition. To the extent that, for example, going to school becomes an ideal in the form and image that the Taliban wants.

The Taliban imposes restrictions, and international organizations come up with a new plan to solve it; The result is that the Taliban create a need, and international organizations pay the cost of meeting that need. Then the Taliban, who have all the economic channels in their hands, easily take their share of what is sent to Afghanistan to help with Education, and what a big share it is!

The crisis of Education and financing of the Taliban with the help of international organizations

Some crucial points regarding the benefits that the Taliban get from the self-made crisis of Education should be mentioned:

The most important thing is to accept that Education and the expenses it entails are among the most enormous budgets that the international community is willing to pay in a country after the security budget. Also, one of the most costly ministries is the Ministry of Education.

After this, we realize that the paralysis of the educational body in a country, first of all, causes a kind of cutting expenditure measure in the field of Education. Especially when a group like the Taliban is in power and needs to strengthen itself in terms of security. Because the Taliban considers girls’ Education to be an additional expenditure of the government, or because they had already created the background for such an idea, they easily used the option of eliminating girls and, in fact, eliminating the spending budget for girls.

From the point of view of the Taliban, this is to prevent excessive consumption, But why didn’t they do this for the boys? Because there was no Islamic reason to prevent the Education of the boys, and if they did, they would automatically announce that they were unable to maintain a key ministry such as Education.

Well, this is only part of the story, and the critical part is what was explained earlier; That is, imposing restrictions means creating a need and finally stimulating international organizations to pay for this need, which is another aspect of this story; Of course, by maintaining the uniqueness of this tight coordination between the producers of the needs and the designers of the solutions!!!

The flow of aid money to Afghanistan indirectly ends up benefiting the Taliban; Even if the people get all their income and salaries from international organizations, which is happening, it is the Taliban who benefits here. Because without getting involved in issues such as Education, job creation, etc., it only focuses on taxation and other economic control matters and still takes money from the people.

The Islamic Emirate is the only government that collects the most taxes from the people without the smallest services. Food commodities have reached their highest prices today, and this is more related to the increase in customs and taxes than transportation and trade problems, where the indirect tax on the purchase of goods is imposed on the people. When the merchants pay more tax at the customs than usual, he sells the goods with a higher price tag than usual; Therefore, additional customs money will be borne by the people who are buyers.

While people’s income is either through remittances sent by family members from abroad or foreign organizations paying people as assistance and livelihood. Cross-border jobs are also important because families earn part of their expenses from these types of jobs.

Of course, there are many reports that show that the aid sent is taken over by the Taliban in different ways. Now that most of the economic and financial channels, especially the Central Bank, have fallen into the hands of the Taliban. Even people’s bank accounts are under Taliban control, So if a teacher puts their earnings in a bank account, how to use it and withdraw it from the account is under the control of the Taliban. This issue is very important because we have already seen how the Taliban transformed the banks into a long line for remittance payments.

In Conclusion

The Taliban’s way of not yielding to the opening of girls’ schools has economic roots more than anything, and then it goes back to the issue of their government being officially recognized or not. We also consider it worth noting that international organizations never aim to help Education in Afghanistan but use this method to strengthen the Taliban. This is a disgrace that has violated the political ethics and human rights of our era. There are intelligence reasons and macroeconomic plans that justify such a policy for governments. The United Nations and its subsidiaries are never independent of these governments because even their own budgets are paid by these governments. Unfortunately, girls’ Education is not just an ideological issue, but more than that; It is an economical solution for the Taliban and its supporters.