Faced with the adrenaline of combat, power is a tedious task. The Taliban have gone from being an insurgent group that hid in the mountains to plan attacks against the US invasion to living a comfortable life, with office jobs and in luxurious houses with their wives in the best neighborhoods of Afghanistan, while the rest Afghans starve and more than a third of children are forced to work.
With the seizure of power in Afghanistan, on August 15, 2021, and the United States and NATO forces withdrew from the country; The Taliban faced the challenge of adapting to the demands of office life, and gained administrative skills after nearly two decades of insurgency. But accustomed to a life of combat, many members of the movement are now bored at their jobs, governed by mundane bureaucracy and official rules.
Guerrilla fighter Haji Akhtar spent part of his youth fighting on the ground against US forces but now his life is constrained by governance tasks. “With the jihad, life was very simple, we just had to plan ambushes,” he explained to the Efe agency Akhtar, now an Interior Ministry official. Now, on the other hand, “it’s very exhausting: coming every morning and staying more than nine hours for a little work, there’s really no work,” he admits.
However, the transition came with stark contrasts: while high-ranking Taliban enjoy lavish lifestyles with houses, cars and multiple wives, lower-ranking ones must take on familial and bureaucratic responsibilities to which they have not been accustomed. The insurgent movement used to cover the needs of the families of the members of the group, but the new reality demands economic support that is sometimes not available.
The transformation from insurgency to governability also posed a challenge for those in charge of maintaining the former ambushers and snipers, who are now in charge of citizen security. “We used to be free most of the time (in our previous position), but now I spend all day in the sun on the streets checking cars and managing traffic six days a week,” officer Sarubiwal told the Spanish agency. resigned.
Some also lament the devastation they caused during their battles against the ousted government after nearly two decades of war, such as the highway connecting the city of Kabul to Kandahar, vulnerable to explosives planted by fundamentalists in wartime.
Among the security forces there are some issues that have raised difficulties, such as the protests of women and girls, an experience hitherto unknown. “If we hit them, it’s not good, but if we don’t, the protesters will create trouble,” said Raza Khan, a member of Taliban security. On one occasion “we had to evacuate a protest when we used water to put out fires, and a woman got wet and fell. At that moment I wished I could go back to our time of jihad so that I wouldn’t see such harsh action against women,” she admits.
The luxurious style of the Taliban after two years of power is far from Afghan society struggling to survive a humanitarian and economic crisis that worsened after the rise to power of fundamentalists.
Critics argue that such a lifestyle evidences the corruption of the system, given the dire economic circumstances facing the majority of the population in a country devastated by decades of conflict.
95% of the Afghan population does not have enough food to eat and such a luxurious lifestyle in such a short period of time is “proof of corruption”, says social activist Habibullah Taqwa.
That is why this Tuesday, declared a holiday by the Taliban government, has some celebrations. “The conquest of Kabul has shown once again that no one can control the proud Afghan nation and that no invader will be allowed to threaten the independence and freedom of the country,” Taliban authorities said in a statement in the morning.
The black and white flags of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name given to the country by its new rulers, flew at security checkpoints in the capital. However, the streets of the capital remained very quiet during the morning, according to journalists from France Presse.
“Today is a happy day, it is the date of the end of the occupation of our country,” Mortaza Khairi, a 21-year-old medical student, rejoiced with AFP. Impossible studies for girls who no longer have access to university. During these two years women have suffered harshly under the laws described by the United Nations as “gender apartheid”
Restrictions on women’s rights are a major obstacle in negotiations over the recognition of the government by the international community and the help it could provide.
A group of UN experts denounced on Monday the broken promises of the Taliban authorities to establish a more flexible regime than the one they had established during their first term in power, from 1996 to 2001.
“Despite assurances from the de facto Taliban authorities that any restrictions, particularly in terms of access to education, would be temporary, events on the ground have demonstrated the existence of an accelerated, systematic and comprehensive system of segregation, marginalization and persecution,” the experts said in a statement.
