Inclusive Governance Or Endless Conflict In Afghanistan – OpEd
Afghanistan has shed off all the stability plans in a span of more than four decades. The Kabul government has been preoccupied with monarchists, communists, mujahideen groups, technocrats under the Republic and now Taliban. Each promised order. Another wave of war was created by both. That tendency is significant because it suggests that Afghanistan crisis is not simply the matter of power, the slogan which they use. It is worrying about the making of the state, its beneficiary and those it puts on the other side of the fence.
Afghanistan is a multicultural country whose history is based on the local identity. Pashtuns comprise 40-45 percent of the population, the Tajiks make up 25-30 percent, Hazaras make up 9-15 percent, Uzbeks and Turkmen make up 10-13 percent and minorities, that include Baloch, Nuristani, the Ismaili, Sikh and Hindu Afghans. These categories are not abstract ones. They live in some places, they have common memories and they insist on exercising power. It puts diversity under permanent stress once the power is sucked to one core network and becomes an object of pursuits of one core network.
The reconstruction of the state by Taliban has been implemented since 2021, based on an overpowering Pashtun leadership core. The best decision-making circles among the tribal Pashtun networks especially the Kandahar and the southern belt are strongly influenced. These same social and religious backgrounds which passed through the movement in the insurgency years prevail on top management. This establishes a closed political culture. It does not recompense with national legitimacy, which is extensive as the communities in the country, but with loyalty to an inner circle.
The expression of such an imbalance comes out in governance. It is a known fact that a small Pashtun clerical elite has dominated the cabinet and the main ministries. The Tajiks and Uzbeks are given little information and in offices that do not affect the national decision making. There is no significant representation of the Hazaras on the top and women are not even represented. As well, there is low impact of the provinces where most of Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek population resides in the process of decision-making, which affects their lives. It is impossible not to pay attention to the message: the state is not the project; it is the means of a group.
With the Taliban rule, they argue that their government is not ethnic but Islamic. But politics, not rhetoric is gauged by outcome. The type of Islam that the government has forced is widely viewed as being stringent and it is being incorporated into the Pashtun tribal practices in a way that would see most Afghans feel ostracized by this. The only valid social norm is seen as a Sunni Hanafi norm that is rather narrow and the rest of the sects and traditions is stigmatized or even disregarded by institutions. Religious identity is transformed into the means of political control where the obedience to the doctrine turns into a measurement of obedience to politics. It is no recipe of unity in a nation where Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, and other cultures are made up in its social fabric.
The Hazarases have a stiffer and more threatening issue. They must deal with double marginalization: they do not receive high-level roles, they are not well-represented in security agencies, and they are as well constantly attacked in their religious and educational institutions. The lowest discrimination as witnessed in land disputes results to the other source of resentment as land is not simply property in Afghanistan but dignity and existence. With a society not fully feeling safe in the state and having no access to the state, it is inevitable that they will find a way out. Such is the way the militia stand-offs are reappearing, such is the way the parallel power growth and the loss of the central control.
The Tajiks, the Uzbeks are also experiencing the same situation of their own space diminishing especially in the northern part whereby the administrators who were appointed centrally are replacing the local administrations. This waters down the old bargain that had some of the parts of Afghanistan loosely attached to Kabul. At least, Kabul has been a comparatively plural city prior to 2021. Minority was present in education, commerce, civil service and professional life, but with extreme flaws and corruption. A new generation of exits was the result of the Taliban conquest. Most of the minority professionals and academicians gave up their offices because there is no future in a system that considers them outsiders. A state of which the skilled section is deprived of its skill becomes incapacitated. It also fails to gain trust through losing the same on identity lines.
The exclusion is not only between the Pashtun and the non-Pasifika. Even the Pashtun politics has an inner hierarchy of the Taliban. Kandahar aligned networks appropriately usurp power. Other groups of the Pashtun like the eastern networks that are affiliated with the Haqqanis have a reason to be suspicious of marginalization. Unequal distribution of power in a movement enhances the number of opponents. It also generates an additional desire of splinter groups to have their own deal, their own territory and build their own armies.
This is the fact that makes minority marginalization a time bomb to the Taliban. It inculcates the logic of conflict. It reminds the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the others that the ballots, councils and negotiation would not do any good since the system is not meant to include them. Within this kind of environment armed fronts would start to seem like the only language that the centre understands. The resistance forces that are already present and they will seek to wear down the Taliban through regular attacks and arm-twisting in the less developed areas. Even though these groups are not so united nowadays, the fuel is provided, and it is the discontent, intimidation, and the sense that the state is monopolized.
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