2023-08-15 06:58:12
Months pass and the mullahs’ regime is increasing its control over the Afghan population. In this year 2023, the last illusions about their vision of the place of women have been definitively buried. After colleges and universities were closed to young girls and their presence in NGOs and United Nations organizations was banned, beauty salons reserved for female customers had to close their doors in July, depriving thousands of ‘Afghans a valuable income in these times of economic slump.
After two years of Taliban rule, the situation of Afghan households remains very worrying. “The rollback of women’s and girls’ rights sabotages other Taliban efforts for post-war economic recovery”warns Crisis Group in a recent report.
According to the World Food Program (WFP), 15 million Afghans out of a population of 41 million have to make do with one meal a day, and three million are in an emergency situation. Donors, burned by the policy of segregation of women, do not rush to respond to calls for funds from the UN agency.
The United States renews dialogue with the Taliban
While affirming their “concerns” on human rights, the United States relaunched its informal dialogue with the Taliban during a meeting held in Qatar on 30 and 31 July. The US delegation took note “recent data indicating lower inflation, growth in Afghanistan’s merchandise exports and imports in 2023”and declared herself “open to technical dialogue on economic stabilization issues in the near future”. While the Americans maintain the freezing of the assets of the Afghan central bank, the Afghan trade indicators indeed seem to be drawn upwards due to the pacification of the country.
During the Doha meeting, the American negotiators credited the Taliban with the fall of the attacks in the country. «The population, which lives 75% in the countryside and remains deeply conservative, appreciates the end of the bombings and the decline in delinquency, in particular kidnappings, which prevented them from moving to rural areas, recalls anthropologist Georges Lefeuvre, associate researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris). On the other hand, the regime remains extremely brutal. The Taliban are capable of bringing about order and justice, but that does not mean they have a sense of statehood, as evidenced by their inability to put in place anything other than a regime led by the Pashtun ethnicity. »
The Taliban attack the opium poppy
Another sign of their hold on the country, the Taliban have succeeded in one year in what the international community had failed to do in twenty years: to attack the production of poppy, reduced by more than 80%, according to the feedback from the field and the satellite images studied by Moosea geolocation company that works in particular with the United Nations. «About 740 hectares of poppy were grown in 2023 in Helmand, the region that produced half of Afghanistan’s opium until today, compared to more than 129,000 hectares in 2022 »notes consultant David Manfield, who has been working on drugs in Afghanistan for more than twenty years. If they did not give any figures, the American authorities also noted the decline in the cultivation of the flower which is used to manufacture more than 80% of the heroin consumed in the world.
This is not the first time that the Taliban have tackled drugs with bans, grubbing-up campaigns and lawsuits against recalcitrant farmers. During their first passage to power (1996-2001), the regime had reduced this cultivation to a few hundred hectares. They had decreed its prohibition for religious reasons, but also for the sake of attracting the good graces of the international community. At the time, some doubted that they would be able to extend in time this fatwa (religious decree) which went against the vital interests of the peasants of the Afghan countryside.
Once again, the same questions remain among drug specialists. «The Taliban clearly do not have the means to compensate for the loss of income of opium producers, says geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy. When stocks of opium, built up over years of heavy harvests, run out, the ruling power in Kabul will face much greater resistance and incur serious political risks.. »
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Two years under the Taliban regime
On August 15, 2021, the Taliban invaded the presidential palace in Kabul, following a dazzling offensive that began in May, following the start of the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan. President Ashraf Ghani flees abroad.
On September 7 and 8, 2021, the new masters of the country appoint a government trustee by historical leaders of the Taliban, who had taken power from 1996 to 2001. There is no woman minister.
On March 23, 2022, the Taliban prohibit girls from going to high school and college, just hours after the reopening of schools, which had been announced for a long time. This is the first of a long series of bans.
On June 22, 2022, an earthquake kills at least a thousand people in the southeast of the country, an area already hit by severe drought, amid widespread poverty.
On July 30 and 31, 2023, the Americans and the Taliban are renewing the dialogue.
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Seven months in detention for journalist Mortaza Behboudi
The Taliban have been holding Franco-Afghan journalist Mortaza Behboudi in a Kabul prison for more than seven months. The fundamentalists, who blame him “relations with opponents of the regime”, are considering a trial on a date that has not been set, for espionage. Independent reporter, this young man of 29 years collaborates with many French media, such as MediapartLiberation, the Cross, Radio France, Arte and TV5 Monde. His professionalism and courage in the exercise of his profession earned him an award at the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy prize for war correspondents in 2022.
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