JURIST EXCLUSIVE – Law students in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Here, a law student in Kabul offers his latest observations and perspective. For privacy and security reasons we are withholding his name and institutional affiliation. The text has been only lightly edited to respect the author’s voice.

On Friday, 3 September 2021, the Taliban were to announce their government’s administration and leadership. Nothing happened, however, and around 8pm the Taliban started frivolously lighting up the sky over Kabul with thousands of bullets and broadcast a pre-edited video of Taliban fighters doing a ridiculously childish military parade. By the look of their rifles and the fact that not a single person’s face was shown to the camera  it would seem that the video was filmed previously and in an unknown location with ordinary actors for their supposedly leaders.

This propaganda was shown to deceive the public and damage the morale of the anti-Taliban resistance by provoking the rumor that the Panjshir valley has fallen into the hands of the Taliban. Although the rumor died out pretty quickly with resistance commanders releasing details of their resistance. making it clear that their strongholds are intact, it was then stated by the Taliban that the firing of guns was to welcome their leader Mulah Bradar into Afghanistan. Still this irresponsible and inhumane celebratory gunfiring took the lives of 17 people and 40 civilians were injured. These numbers only cover the Emergency facilities in Kabul city; god knows how many other people were incidentally harmed by the hundreds of thousands of random rounds fired into the sky.

On the other hand, the Northern Alliance resistance has inflicted heavy casualties on Taliban fighters and has taken down two tanks in the last three days. The Taliban have infiltrated parts of Khawak mountain pass of Panjshir province, but an undetermined number of Taliban fighters have died or have been taken captive, and the commander of  Taliban’s Red Battalion also died in this battle.

The Afghan resistance has made a counter-attack on the Taliban in Andaraab district of Baghlan province, which cut off the Taliban from their forces. As a  result the fighters who were closer to Panjshir provinvce were left stranded and forced to surrender with every sort of equipment they had. According to resistance sources, more than 250 of the Taliban Red Battalion surrendered. Resistance sources also informed the people of the Taliban’s attempts to recruit civilians from the northern provinces by force, and added that the Taliban made three failed attempts to gain strongholds in the resistance controlled regions. The Taliban have now reportedly lost more than 2000 soldiers in last couple of days of battles, and give-or-take 500 hundred vehicles were destroyed or have been taken by the resistance during these battels, said resistance sources.

Today, Saturday, the chief director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) landed in Kabul, seemingly to resolve an internal dispute between Taliban and help them reach an agreement on the form of the government and the distribution of power between them. This has raised anger among the people of Afghanistan as the Pakistani official acts as the overlords of the Taliban and has come to collect his spoils of war.

The Taliban have not been able to organize a governing body for the government or think of a way to prevent or at least damage-control the economic and financial collapse of the country. Since the installation of the Taliban in Kabul up until now, the banks are on pace to bankruptcy at full speed, and are barely alive. There are various reasons for the banks to collapse and some are not preventable. First, public confidence in banks utterly does not exist, thus the banks are holding money from their clients which aggravates this issue even more. Secondly, the banks significantly lack cash in their reserves – the reserves of the Da Afghanistan Bank (DABS) the central bank of the country, were emptied by the Afghan president upon his escape. On the other hand, cash flow in the country is less than minimum rates comparing to the pre-Taliban times. Currently, cash flow only exists in small purchases of the people for their daily accommodation and small distance transports. This is not enough to render the market “active”, rather it’s more like a dying animal in its last breaths. Thirdly, the international funds from USA which covered three-fourth of Afghanistan’s annual budget do not exist, the IMF has denied any withdrawal for Taliban and the assets of the Afghanistan’s former government are frozen in Washington; I really cannot decide if all that is for the better or worse.

Given the Taliban’s delusional ideological beliefs, it is likely that in the very near future the Taliban will start interfering – or in their belief “correcting” – the Afghan taxation system. Afghanistan’s tax system is one of the few systems which actually worked to a high standard, given that it was funded and pushed by the World Bank to be standardized and functional. Now that the ancient Neanderthals are in charge they will surely try to make it Sharia-compliant, hence their failure will cut revenue collection for the government and will make the public’s lives even harder than what they are already. Further, these terrorists believe in restricting the job market to who can work and in what profession, so unreasonably so that this will only intensify the current financial crises and make the country vulnerable to other upcoming calamites. A not-so-bright person would understand that you need every abled body and mind to be working to their fullest in these dire situations, or food crises and employment rates will consume the country, yet the Taliban yesterday met women protestors in Herat and today in Kabul with violence and tear gases and beat their cameraman bloody purely for commiting the unforgivable crime of wanting to work.

It is a well-known fact that if any quality restriction, regulations or higher rates of tax are applied on commodities, the burden will one way or another be transferred to the citizens.  The same is with the few governments controlled by terrorist groups. The Taliban are fed and clothed and paid in high numbers by god knows who, yet the burdens of sanctions and solitude would be transferred to the general public. I can see this it first hand; since 15 Aug of this year I have lost my job, and today my father was dismissed from his job in a medical profession without receiving any compensation for his last months of work. Like my father, hundreds of people have spent their lives serving for decades in their community and their reward is not to receive a pension but to be dismissed from their profession by an ignorant murderer whom cannot read or write and believes in pursuing a cause by bombing a maternity hospital and strapping explosive to the chests of ten-year-old boys, thinking this is all permissible and noble.

It greatly saddens me to see the international community as passive and indecisive as it is today. Maybe if in April 1945, during the very first UN session, someone had proposed a motion to insert at the end of the United Nations Charter that: “the UN and all its commissions will act in accordance with the goals of the United Nations Charter; unless it doesn’t make commercial sense for the West”. That would  have been pretty, but at least it would have been honest.