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Afghanistan, a country reputed for following a highly conservative form of Islam, has recently opened a can of worms with the rising awareness on rampant child sex slavery practised by the warlords and influential men in the middle eastern country.

Baccha Bazi or Child play is a practice in which young (and often pre-pubescent) boys are made to dress like girls and dance erotically in front of middle-aged Afghan men (thus called dancing boys). The boys are referred to as baccha bareesh whereas the men are called Baccha Baz. Often, the victims are brought into the profession through human trafficking syndicates or by kidnapping.

The practise of Baccha Bazi is a result of deep rooted pedophilia present in the Afghan society.

The victims of this pedophile-flesh trade syndicate are often considered as outcasts by the society. The Daily Mail says that even if the victims wanted to marry, it had to be done in a discreet fashion due to the social stigma against the Baccha Bareesh. On the other hand, Afghan warlords who participate in the Baccha Baz tradition are often considered to be powerful and host such parties to show off their power and wealth. (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3384027/amp/Women-children-boys-pleasure-secret-shame-Afghanistan-s-bacha-bazi-dancing-boys-dress-like-little-girls-make-skirts-abused-paedophiles.html)

Usually, the horror begins after the party ends, when the middle-aged guests of the warlord take the child to hotel rooms and mercilessly rape them.

Interestingly, homosexuality is believed to be a sin according to mainstream Islam. During the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, participating in Baccha Bazi was a crime punishable by death. However, after the fall of the Islamic terror outfit, there has been an increase of Baccha Bazi in the country.

The Afghan warlords argue that Baccha Bazi is a loophole to the Islamic practises since they merely lust for the child and dont exactly love them, and are therefore not committing the Islamic sin of Homosexuality.

During the Afghanistan war, NATO forces were surprised to see middle-aged men going to parties with prepubescent boys hand-in-hand. However, they were asked to see the other way and not interfere in the local tradition.

The Daily Mail says that 2/5th of the Baccha Bareesh victims were between the ages 13 and 15. Several victims of the heinous act are said to have taken to drugs like heroin to cope with the repeated sexual abuse.

Once I grow up, I will be an owner and I will have my own boys, a then-17 year old Ahmad told Reuters in 2007.

The boys who were brought into the system usually carried the tradition forward by becoming masters and bringing another set of pre-pubescent boys into the tradition.

Until recently, when a law by the Afghanistan government banned Baccha Bazi, police officers also participated in the tradition and sat as audiences in the parties.

According to Dr. Sobhrang, who was then the woman commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission(AIHRC), the tradition puts victims under psychological trauma, who cannot cope and are forced into narcotics. Usually, a warlord has about 10 Baccha Bareeshs, who pass it on from one generation to the other.

The problem of Baccha Bazi still persists in Afghanistan, but the new laws introduced by the Afghanistan legislation aim to end this barbaric practice and free victims.

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The dancing boys of Afghanistan: A report on the rising baccha bazi in the country - OpIndia

This piece is part of 19A: The Brookings Gender Equality Series. In this essay series, Brookings scholars, public officials, and other subject-area experts examine the current state of gender equality 100 years after the 19th Amendment was adopted to the U.S. Constitution and propose recommendations to cull the prevalence of gender-based discrimination in the United States and around the world.

As the United States reduces its military presence in Afghanistan while the Taliban remain strong on the battlefield, and while peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban have commenced, a massive question mark hangs over the fate of Afghan women and their rights. The deal that the United States signed with the Taliban in Doha on February 29, 2020, leaves the future of Afghan women completely up to the outcomes of the intra-Taliban negotiations and battlefield developments. In exchange for the withdrawal of its forces by summer 2021, the United States only received assurances from the Taliban that the militants would not attack U.S. and its allies targets, conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. and allies assets, or allow the territory under Taliban control to be used for such terrorist attacks. How Afghanistan and its political order is redesigned is left fully up to the negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government and other Afghan politicians, powerbrokers, andhopefullyrepresentatives of Afghan civil society. But there are strong reasons to be believe that the fate of Afghan women, particularly urban Afghan women from middle- and upper-class families who benefited by far the most from the post-2001 order, will worsen. The United States leverage to preserve at least some of their rights and privileges is limited and diminishing. But it is hardly zero. And so the U.S. must exercise whatever leverage it has remaining to preserve the rights and protect the needs of Afghan women.

The expected negotiations and the state of the battlefield

Long gone are the days when the George W. Bush administration embraced womens rights and empowerment of women as a justification for its war on the Taliban. Long gone are the days of the Barack Obama administration when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the preconditions for U.S. negotiations with the Taliban included the Talibans renunciation of al-Qaida and their commitment to uphold the Afghan constitution and protect womens rights. Less than ten years later, the renunciation of al-Qaida has yet to be explicitly and publicly made; the constitutional order and womens rights are still subject to intra-Afghan negotiations and will be affected by the evolving balance of military power.

And, amidst COVID-19, violence on the battlefield has only intensified as the Taliban relentlessly and steadily pound Afghan forces.

Though originally expected for March, formal negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban finally started in September. The Afghan government has appointed a 21-member negotiating team that includes five Afghan women. Afghanistans president, Ashraf Ghani, also established the High Council for National Reconciliation, a higher supervisory body to monitor and direct the negotiating team. Out of 46 appointed members only nine are women, while former warlords and older male powerbrokers dominate the list. Although the list continues to be contested between the factions of President Ghani and Abdullah Abdullahhis chief political rival and the head of the High CouncilAfghan commentators interpreted it widely as marginalizing Afghan women and only giving them representation in reserved seats, and reflecting a 2001 Afghanistan power structure exclusively dominated by warlords and tribal elders.

But the Talibans negotiating team contains no women at all. Both Western observers and Afghan civil society representatives have repeatedly highlighted the absence of womens representation in the Talibans governing structures, political offices, and the negotiating team and raised the issue with the Taliban.1 But the Taliban have remained rigid and unresponsive to suggestions it include women in at least some of its governing and political bodies and particularly its negotiating teama position that reflects the Talibans continual marginalization of women.

The women appointed to the two government bodies are urban, educated women, some of whom held government positions and others who are members of civil society. They are to represent all Afghan women. These women have consistently spoken out against Taliban abuses and strongly oppose any return to political arrangements that would significantly weaken the rights of Afghan women. Afghans expect them to oppose constitutional and social changes that would significantly reduce the formal rights that Afghan women obtained over the past two decades. However, at least some rural Afghan women do not feel connected to such elite urban women nor do they believe that urban elite women necessarily speak for them. The preferences of these rural women lean much more heavily toward a desire for peace even if it means sacrificing some formal womens rights that they are currently unable to exercise anyway, as detailed below.2

Moreover, will these women representatives carry sufficient weight? The current Afghan government is committed to womens rights, although it is able to enforce the rights for only a small segment of Afghan women and only sporadicallyprincipally for urban women whom male relatives allow to access education and jobs. And, as indicated above, there are limits to how much the government is able to challenge Afghanistans power structures.

Nonetheless, the Afghan government, strongly displeased with the deal the United States signed with the Taliban and dreading the prospect of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, continually uses the issue of womens rights as a tool to persuade the United States not to withdraw its forces even after the May 2021 deadline set by the Doha agreement. Meanwhile, the Afghan government continually seeks to delay and avoid negotiations with the Taliban, hoping that the United States will reverse itself and agree to either retain forces in Afghanistan for years to come or, ideally, deploy them to fight the Taliban.

But whether these hopes of the Afghan government materializeand even if they dowhether they translate into actual empowerment of Afghan women is a huge question. Whether Afghan representatives on the negotiations team can force the Taliban not to weaken womens rights and existing behavioral practices and socio-economic opportunities of middle and upper-class urban Afghan women will principally depend on what happens on the battlefield. It will also depend on how long negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban drag onand how badly weakened the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government become. Whether or not the Afghan political system implodes into factional violence and coups detat before that are also crucial factors. Moreover, informally, the Taliban continuously bypass the governments negotiating team by engaging with Afghan powerbrokersall menas they seek to strike separate behind-the-scenes deals, including potentially a joint interim government. At least some Afghan powerbrokers are open to such explorations. If the Taliban manage to strike separate deals with key Afghan powerbrokers before the government manages to get any negotiations with the Taliban going, the representation of womens voices and interests will be marginalized further.

In short, the issue of womens rights in Afghanistan faces highly uncertain prospects, and most likely womens rights will deteriorate.

How life has improved for Afghan women over the past two decades and how it has not

Many Afghan women, particularly those in urban areas, have much to lose from a bad intra-Afghan deal. During the 1990s, the Taliban not only brutally imposed social restrictions on women such as mandatory burqa coverings, but, more fundamentally and deleteriously, restricted their access to health care, education, and jobs. It prohibited women from appearing in public spaces without a male chaperon, de facto sentencing widows and their children to starvation. The Taliban regime destroyed Afghan institutions and the economy, which was already devastated by decades of fighting and the Soviet scorched-earth counterinsurgency strategy. The resulting immiseration critically affected women and children. And, with the exception of poppy cultivation and opium harvesting, the Taliban prohibited women from holding jobs, including working as doctors for other women.

The post-Taliban constitution in 2004 gave Afghan women all kinds of rights, and the post-Taliban political dispensation brought social and economic growth that significantly improved their socio-economic condition. From a collapsed health care system with essentially no medical services available to women during the Taliban years, the post-Taliban regime constructed 3,135 functional health facilities by 2018, giving 87 percent of Afghan people access to a medical facility within two hours distanceat least in theory, because intensifying Taliban, militia, and criminal violence has made travel on roads increasingly unsafe.3

In 2003, fewer than 10 percent of girls were enrolled in primary schools; by 2017, that number had grown to 33 percent4not enough, but progress stillwhile female enrollment in secondary education grew from six percent in 2003 to 39 percent in 2017.5 Thus, 3.5 million Afghan girls were in school with 100,000 studying in universities.

Womens life expectancy grew from 56 years in 2001 to 66 in 2017,6 and their mortality during childbirth declined from 1,100 per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 396 per 100,000 in 2015.7

By 2020, 21 percent of Afghan civil servants were women (compared with almost none during the Taliban years), 16 percent of them in senior management levels; and 27 percent of Afghan members of parliament were women.8

Instead of economic, social, and political empowerment, Afghan women in rural areaswhere an estimated 76 percent of the countrys women liveexperience the devastation of bloody and intensifying fighting between the Taliban and government forces and local militias.

Yet these gains for women have been distributed highly unequally, with the increases far greater for women in urban areas. For many rural women, particularly in Pashtun areas but also among other rural minority ethnic groups, actual life has not changed much from the Taliban era, formal legal empowerment notwithstanding. They are still fully dependent on men in their families for permission to access health care, attend school, and work. Many Afghan men remain deeply conservative. Typically, families allow their girls to have a primary or secondary educationusually up to pubertyand then will proceed with arranged marriages. Even if a young woman is granted permission to attend a university by her male guardian, her father or future husband may not permit her to work after graduation. Without any prodding from the Taliban, most Afghan women in rural areas are fully covered with the burqa.

Instead of economic, social, and political empowerment, Afghan women in rural areaswhere an estimated 76 percent of the countrys women liveexperience the devastation of bloody and intensifying fighting between the Taliban and government forces and local militias. Loss of husbands, brothers, and fathers to the fighting generates not only psychological trauma for them, but also fundamentally jeopardizes their economic survival and ability to go about everyday life. Widows and their children are thus highly vulnerable to a panoply of debilitating disruptions due to the loss of family men.

Not surprisingly, the position of Afghan women toward peace varies greatly. Educated urban women reject the possibility of another Taliban emirate. They dream of a peace deal in which the Taliban are a weak actor in the negotiations and is given some political and perhaps government representation, but not the ability to shape the rewrite of the Afghan constitution and the countrys basic political dispensation. Rather than yielding to the Taliban, some urban women may prefer for fighting to go on, particularly as urban areas are much less affected by the warfare than are rural areas, and their male relatives, particularly of elite families, rarely bear the battlefield fighting risks. For them, the continuation and augmentation of war has been far less costly than for many rural women.

By contrast, as interviews with Afghan women conducted by one of us in the fall of 2019 and the summer of 2020 showed, peace is an absolute priority for some rural women, even a peace deal very much on the Taliban terms.9 This finding was confirmed in a recent International Crisis Group report. The Taliban already frequently rule or influence the areas where they live anyway. While rejecting a 1990s-like lockdown of women in their homes that the Taliban imposed, many rural women point out that in that period the Taliban also reduced sexual predation and robberies that debilitated their lives.

But the issue of womens rights is a highly contested and charged political debate among Afghan women themselves beyond the rural-urban and Taliban-non-Taliban divides. A recent study by UN Women and partners showed that only 15 percent of Afghan men think women should be allowed to work outside of their home after marriage, and two thirds of men complain Afghan women now have too many rights. Male Afghan political powerbrokers often resent quotas for women in public shuras (assemblies) and elections such as for parliament, where 27 percent of seats are reserved for women. Women representatives feel systematically marginalized, ignored, patronized, and harassed, with men trying to order them back to the kitchen.

The UN study also revealed that 80 percent of Afghan women experience domestic violence. Some 50 percent of women in Afghan prisons and 95 percent of such girls have been jailed for moral crimes such as having sex outside of marriage. Others have been prosecuted for killing their brutally abusive husbands, including in self-defense. Distressingly, not only the Taliban but important segments of Afghan society appear to be growing more conservative, embracing doctrinaire versions of sharia that call for reducing womens rights and freedoms.

What the Taliban say about womens rights now

How much Afghan womens rights deteriorate or (highly unlikely) improve depends on whether Afghanistans current civil war significantly intensifies and how weak or strong a deal the Afghan government is able to negotiate with the Taliban. Currently, there is no realistic prospect of the Afghan government defeating the Taliban. There is also little reason to believe that even an open-ended American military commitment to Afghanistan, including a new significant increase in U.S. forces, can significantly weaken the Taliban, let alone defeat them. If a prolonged and bloody civil war can be avoided through negotiations, the Taliban will most likely become a significant actor in the Afghan government. It is conceivable that the Taliban could become the dominant and most powerful actor in a future Afghan government.

The Taliban already rule significant parts of the countryindeed much of the countrysideand determine, sometimes in negotiations with local communities, what local life is like, including what freedoms women have or do not have. Thus, the Taliban inevitably will shape in significant ways the rights and existence of Afghan women.

Distressingly, not only the Taliban but important segments of Afghan society appear to be growing more conservative, embracing doctrinaire versions of sharia that call for reducing womens rights and freedoms.

Various Taliban and Taliban-linked interlocutors interviewed by one of this articles authors in the fall of 2019 claim that they do not want a return to the 1990s, with its economic collapse, or want to adopt the very brutal treatment of women which then prevailed.10 Their firmly stated position is that the Taliban protect and will protect womens rights under shariaa rubric, however, that can cover a range of policies and behavior. Almost always, it means mandated codes of dress and behavior. However, some versions of sharia, such as in Saudi Arabia, can drastically subordinate a womans life to decisions of her male guardian. In other versions, such as in parts of Indonesia, the interpretations of sharia can be far more permissive and thus maintain womens abilities to access education and, crucially, employment. Often, sharia systems compete with formal legal systems within a country, even as the latter can also be informed by sharia. In some countries, such as Pakistan and Somalia, sharia courts often protect womens property rights far better than formal judiciary systems or informal traditional systems, but still subject them to many severe restrictions and even brutal physical punishments such as beatings and stoning to death for adultery and being raped. By stating that they will protect womens rights under sharia, but otherwise refusing to specify how womens rights and life in Afghanistan would change if they attain their preferences, the Taliban give themselves a wide berth of options. Very likely, however, the Talibans inclinations will be to weaken womens rights, further tighten cultural restrictions on women, and shrink socio-economic opportunities for them, even if the Taliban in government did not formally embrace as brutal a system for women as in the 1990s.

Some of the Taliban interlocutors suggested during the fall of 2019 interviews11 that in a future Afghanistan, with the Taliban in control or sharing power (as they imagine will be the outcome), women could still hold ministerial positions, though a woman could never be the head of state or government. Others pointed to Saudi Arabia as an example of a system they would apply to womens rights and social order.12 The lack of specificity and the varied Taliban positions reflect two dynamics. First, many Taliban tell their interlocutors what they want to heargiving different messages to Western diplomats, journalists, and researchers; Afghan powerbrokers or Afghan society in general; and their rank and file. Second, there may well be little agreement among members of Taliban leadership shuras, and between them and mid-level military commanders, as to what any kind of peace should look like regarding a variety of social and political arrangements, including the roles, freedoms, and restrictions on women. Thus, Taliban leaders and spokesmen prefer to leave crucial elements vague, hoping first that they will be able to negotiate power division in the country, ideally becoming the dominant government actor, and only then worry about the details of social and political rules.

On the ground today, Taliban rule varies significantly among local Taliban military commanders and shadow district governors and their views. In some places, it includes the same old brutalities, such as whipping women for sex outside of marriage, stoning them to death for certain offenses, and punishment for not wearing a burqa. Elsewhere, the Taliban are more permissive. As fieldwork by one of the authors shows, even in Afghanistans north where non-Pashtun ethnic groups dominate and in some cases adopt less restrictive social mores, such as in Badakhshan, the Taliban restrict music and soap operas, but tell the local population such restrictions are only temporaryuntil they come to power formally as the official, and not merely shadow, government. But a loosening of restrictions may not, in fact, arrive should formal Taliban rule emerge at the national level; rather, the opposite is likely. The Taliban may be trying simply to obfuscate their restrictive inclinations while strengthening their hold on local communities. Elsewhere yet, older males in some communities often approach the Taliban and demand from them that the Taliban enforce traditional social mores, including severe restrictions on womens rights.

At the same time, the Taliban have moderated their behavior after defeating the uprisings against their rule that started in the city of Ghazni in 2012 and for two years spread across the country. The Taliban smashed the uprisings, keenly prioritizing a military pushback against them and often killing all males in villages involved in the anti-Taliban fight. But since crushing the uprisings, the Taliban have stopped shutting down primary schools in many areas, including in Ghazni and Helmand Provinces. They now allow, at least, pre-pubescent girls to attend school. Rather than shutting down the schools, they send representatives to ensure schools do not teach anything the Taliban disapprove of. Clearly, censorship of education is most problematic, but having some educationeven if it is merely basic literacy and numeracy in addition to Koranic instructionis preferable to no education at all. Moreover, Taliban representatives also make sure that teachers actually show up in classrooms instead of tending to other jobs, as they often do in government-controlled or militarily-contested areas. In many areas, the Taliban no longer prohibit government clinics, electricity delivery, and other government servicesit taxes them instead. This also guarantees that resources are not stolen via corruption and theft and punishes clinic operators for not having adequate supplies of medicines.13

How the Taliban relate to women in an area is often negotiated with the community. And, like many other jihadi groups, the Taliban deliver swift and non-corrupt sharia justice that often guarantees inheritance-property rights to womenunlike in Afghanistans formal justice system that remains mired in endless delays, paralysis, and corruption. Indeed, for one of us who commanded U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, it was only here, in the administration of swift, un-corrupt justice, where the Taliban could compete with the Afghan government. The Taliban could not provide fresh water or electricity or any civil services, but the Taliban could provide near-instantaneous sharia-based justice that sometimes served the best interests of both Afghan women and men and ended disputes and violence.

In short, even with this moderation in behavior, it is very likely that the Taliban in power will seek to restrict the formal rights that Afghan women have today, worsening these womens social, economic, and political conditions. The question is, how much and in what ways?

What the United States and the international community can do to promote womens rights in Afghanistan

Even while the United States withdraws its forces from Afghanistan, it should maintain a strong policy focus on womens rights in the country, just as it did during the period of the NATO International Security Assistance Force. Such a focus is not merely a humanitarian imperative. Womens empowerment continues to serve U.S. primary interests in the country because women are vectors of both peace and economic progress in Afghanistan. The United States should seek to influence intra-Taliban negotiations, to preserve maximum freedom and human rights protection of Afghan women that Afghan society is prepared to accept by insisting to the Taliban and Afghan powerbrokers that womens rights are crucial qualifications for U.S. and international aid. An exodus of Afghan women from the country or their lockup in family compounds will only augment the stagnation and violence dynamics in the country.

The United States should set minimal standards of womens rights below which it would refuse to provide economic aid to an Afghan government (whether including or run by the Taliban). For example, the United States can insist that statutorily denying women access to health care and primary and secondary education, prohibiting women from appearing outside of a household without a male relative, or in a blanket manner disqualifying women from jobs would disqualify an Afghan government from U.S. aid. The United States should also make clear that even in the absence of statutory prohibitions, a systematic failure to uphold minimal rights would disqualify Afghanistan or a part of it from the majority of U.S. economic and humanitarian assistance. The United States should also insist that those who violate the basic rights of Afghan women as they are defined by the Afghan constitution, or as set by minimal international human right standards, such as by committing murder, lynching, and grievous domestic violence against women, are brought to justice, prosecuted, and imprisoned.

Even as it draws down its military presence, the United Statesand its allies in Afghanistanis not powerless. The U.S. retains other leverage with the Talibanincluding maintaining economic aid to the country. For that reason as well, the Taliban are keenly aware they need to caterat least to some extentnot only to the preferences of the Afghan population, but also to the United States. Taliban interlocutors consistently indicate that they do not want a loss of U.S. economic aid after a U.S. military withdrawal when, as they believe, the Taliban will be in power in some form. Maintaining the above-highlighted conditionality on economic aid that does not jeopardize basic humanitarian objectives, such as in the COVID-19 pandemic, but shapes the Talibans behavior for the better, will likely be a crucial and perhaps potent tool.

The United States should also facilitate the travel of some Taliban leaders to other countries, particularly Islamic countries where women enjoy significant freedoms, to expose the Taliban to how womens rights can be consistent with sharia and what laws and governance systems would increase the chance that U.S. and western aid is preserved for an Afghan government of which the Taliban is part. Countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, and Turkey come to mind.

Importantly, the United States and the international community should preserve economic and political support for defenders of womens rights in Afghanistan. That includes providing them with asylum visas if they become targets of violent retaliationwhether by the Taliban, government-associated powerbrokers, or male relatives. Many Afghan NGOs have seen a dramatic collapse of western funding over the past several years. Those drops should be reversed. Maintaining support for NGOs that focus on women in rural areaswhether by providing shelters where battered women can live, delivering medical aid, or teaching basic job skillsis crucial.

While the intra-Afghan peace process will grapple with matters such as levels of violence, detainee release, and local, regional, and national power sharing, such power restructuring will not necessarily get to the central issue of the future of half the Afghan population: the women of Afghanistan, who by Afghan adage hold up half the sky. Only a determined, long-term process of securing the rights and hopes of Afghan women and holding the Taliban and others in Afghanistan accountable for them will guarantee a future of that allows the country to prosper and includes access to credible membership in the community of nations. Otherwise, Afghanistan will forfeit the gains achieved at such a high price by so many, and the women of Afghanistan will endure and labor again under the dark sky of brutal rule, a darkness enshrouding all of the country and casting a shadow of shame on the international community.

The research reported here was funded in part by the Minerva Research Initiative (OUSD(R&E)) and the Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory via grant #W911-NF-17-1-0569 to George Mason University. Any errors and opinions are not those of the Department of Defense and are attributable solely to the author(s).

John R. Allen assumed the presidency of the Brookings Institution in November 2017, having most recently served as chair of security and strategy and a distinguished fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings. Allen is a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general and former commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. During his tenure as ISAF commander, he recovered the 33,000 U.S. surge forces, moved the Afghan National Security Forces into the lead for combat operations, and pivoted NATO forces from being a conventional combat force into an advisory command.

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, and eastern Africa. Felbab-Brown is a senior advisor to the congressionally mandated Afghanistan Peace Process Study Group. She is the author of several books, including Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2013).

The agreement signed on February 29 in Doha between American and Taliban negotiators lays out a plan for ending the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and opens a path for direct intra-Afghan talks on the countrys political future. Brookings experts on Afghanistan, the U.S. mission there, and South Asia more broadly analyze the deal and []

My colleagues here at Brookings have written artfully about the pros and cons of the recent U.S.-Taliban peace deal, and the overall outlook for Afghanistan. I agree with much of their analysis, all of which is rooted in their deep expertise on the issue at hand. Having led all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan []

The deal that the United States and the Taliban signed on Saturday allows the United States to extract itself from a stalled war. For years, the fighting showed no signs of battlefield breakthrough, while the United States held the Afghan security forces and Afghan government on life support. Since at least 2015, U.S. policy has []

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The fate of women's rights in Afghanistan - Brookings Institution

DOHA, Qatar The Taliban and the Afghan government began historic peace talks in Qatar on Saturday, aimed at shaping a power-sharing government that would end decades of war that have consumed Afghanistan and left millions dead and displaced.

If realized, a peace deal would be the first time in generations that a new form of Afghan government was not being established at the point of a gun: The current model was ushered in by the American invasion that toppled the Talibans harsh Islamic regime in 2001, and each previous one back to the 1979 Soviet invasion was set off by coup, collapse or conquest.

But as the Qatar talks begin, against the backdrop of an American troop pullout and grievous violence against Afghan officials and civilians, some critics of the process argued that the Taliban insurgency was still, in essence, holding a gun to the governments head.

The peace talks opened on Saturday morning in Doha, the Qatari capital, with formal ceremonies held under tight security and strict coronavirus measures. The negotiations will be complicated at every turn by the threat of continued insurgent assaults, deep political divisions after a disputed election, decades of loss and grievance, and by foreign powers pulling Afghan factions in opposing directions.

Still, the fact that delegations from the two sides are finally coming to the table, after repeated delays, offers the nation a rare opportunity in its recent history: a chance to find a formula of lasting coexistence before the withdrawal of another foreign military creates a vacuum, potentially repeating the countrys cycle of misfortune.

We have come here with the good will and good intention to stop the 40 years of bloodshed and achieve a countrywide and lasting peace, Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of Afghanistans High Council for National Reconciliation and the leader of the delegation from Kabul, said at the opening ceremony. The current conflict has no winner through war and military means, but there will be no loser if this crisis is resolved politically and peacefully through submission to the will of the people.

The Talibans deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said the insurgents would participate in the talks with full sincerity, and he urged both sides to exercise calm and patience.

Mullah Baradar offered little detail about the Talibans vision for a future Afghanistan, except in broad strokes. But many on the Afghan negotiating team said that his tone in contrast to previous Taliban speeches in public forums was measured and offered hope.

We seek an Afghanistan that is independent, sovereign, united, developed and free an Afghanistan with an Islamic system in which all people of the nation can participate without discrimination and live harmoniously with each other in an atmosphere of brotherhood, he said.

The direct negotiations became possible after the United States signed a deal with the Taliban in February that began a phased, 14-month withdrawal of the remaining American troops from Afghanistan and pressured the Afghan government to free 5,000 of the Talibans prisoners.

Because the Taliban had long insisted on not holding direct, exclusive talks with the Afghan government, which they consider illegitimate, Mr. Abdullahs delegation includes not just government officials but opposition politicians and other figures outside the administration.

Members of Mr. Abdullahs team said their priority was to get to a lasting cease-fire a silencing of the guns, as one delegate, Nader Nadery, put it. The violence, whose total daily death toll on all sides often surpasses 50 lives, is exacting an enormous cost on the nation of just over 30 million.

The war is also devastating the Afghan economy, with about 90 percent of the population living below a poverty line of $2 a day, President Ashraf Ghani recently said all while billions of dollars a year in foreign aid, mostly from the United States, holds the national budget together.

The Taliban have been so singly focused on securing the withdrawal of U.S. troops that they have provided little clarity on how they envision the countrys political future beyond broad statements about establishing an Islamic government. When in power in the 1990s, they curtailed civil liberties and deprived women and minorities of basic rights.

While many in the Taliban indicate that they have learned from the experience of struggling to govern in the 1990s, others fear that the intervening decades of fighting may have propped up an even more hard-line generation of insurgents, limiting their negotiators ability to compromise.

Diplomats and officials said that getting the Taliban to agree to a permanent cease-fire right away would be difficult, as the insurgents will be reluctant to give up their main leverage before a political settlement is finalized. Right on the eve of the talks, the insurgents carried out attacks in 18 of the countrys 34 provinces, Afghanistans defense ministry said.

But many officials suggested that the sides could agree to an immediate humanitarian cease-fire what Mr. Abdullah mentioned in his remarks to create more space for negotiating a settlement that will include a permanent cease-fire.

The U.S. deal with the Taliban, under pressure from President Trump to get American troops out, has been criticized by many Afghan officials as having been rushed and giving the Taliban too much without assurances in return.

The American troop withdrawal began on the Talibans promise that they would negotiate with the Afghan government and not let terrorist groups use Afghan territory as a haven and staging ground for international attacks. But in the months since, some international observers have questioned the Talibans commitment to their vow to abandon their allies in Al Qaeda and other such groups.

Before the talks began, Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that international forces would continue to support the Afghan forces on the battlefield and make clear to them that their sacrifice is not lost on us.

But in Doha, as hundreds of diplomats and dignitaries took their seats in the large ballroom General Miller, in uniform, walked under the chandeliers and across the hall to the Taliban side and offered greetings an image that made clear his direct war with the Taliban was largely over.

The Taliban team includes some of the delegates who negotiated the deal with the United States. But they have brought in a new chief negotiator: Mawlawi Abdul Hakim Haqqani, an influential religious scholar who has led the Talibans network of Islamic courts in recent years.

The 20-member negotiating team that came from Kabul, led by Mr. Ghanis former spy chief Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, includes only three women not five, as earlier believed underscoring how Afghan women have struggled for equality since the Taliban were driven from power, despite various promises.

The careers of the three female delegates reflect the hard-fought gains that women have made in Afghanistans patriarchal culture gains that they must now convince the Taliban to accept in a future system. One delegate, Habiba Sarabi, was the first female governor of an Afghan province. Another, Fawzia Koofi, a single mother, fought her way to the deputy speakership of Afghanistans Parliament; the third, Sharifa Zurmati, was a journalist before switching to politics and entering Parliament.

During speeches by about 20 foreign ministers and other dignitaries, many of them given via video conference because of coronavirus travel restrictions, Ms. Zurmati said she was taking note of which country made a point of stressing the protection of civil liberties and womens rights in the future political system.

Afghanistan is deeply dependent on foreign aid. The Taliban, who struggled to govern because of cash shortages when in power, have said they would want foreign aid to continue even after the Western military coalition leaves. Some diplomats see that as leverage to get the Taliban to soften some of their positions.

As you make your decisions, you should keep in mind that your choices and conduct will affect both the size and scope of future U.S. assistance, said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was at the event.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan peace, said there was still an opportunity for the country to reach some sort of equilibrium. A veteran diplomat, Mr. Khalilzad was an adviser to the American government during the Cold War when the United States was funding insurgents to push Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.

The Afghan tragedy has been not being able to get to an agreement on a formula and then stick to it, Mr. Khalilzad said. There was a great victory after the Soviet departure, the Afghans had this great victory. The rest of the world benefited from it a lot: we became the only superpower, Eastern Europe got liberated, Central Asia got freed. But Afghanistan continued this disintegration. The Afghans they won, but they lost.

But now they have another chance to get to a formula where imposing one groups will on the rest with the force of arms has not been a successful formula. The historic record is not encouraging, but the lessons could be instructive for them.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Najim Rahim contributed reporting from Kabul.

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Afghanistan Peace Talks Open in Qatar, Seeking End to Decades of War - The New York Times

September 16, 2020

By Sandy Feinzig

This weekthe Taliban and the Afghan government beganpeace talksin Qatar with the goal of shaping a power-sharing government to end decades of war. One issue at the heart of those talks is whether Afghanistan will hold on to the gains women have made in the past two decades. Another issue is the economy, decimated by the ongoing war, and a population 90 percent of whom live below the poverty line.

Against this daunting backdrop, Covid-19 in Afghanistan continues to have serious consequences for this struggling country. While just 37,676 cases have been officially reported in a population of approximately 37 million, international aid groups report that at least 80 percent of infections nationwide are likely going untested. The fragile healthcare system, the devastated economy, and the legacy of decades of conflict leave Afghanistan uniquely unprepared for a deadly pandemic, and a national lockdown in the initial months of the outbreak was quickly loosened when the economy went into free fall.

The economic consequences of the pandemic may be more severe than the public health crisis. The World Bank has projected an economic contraction of 5.5 to 7.4 percent in 2020, which could push the poverty rate as high as 72 percent by the end of the year and trigger a sharp decline in government revenues. Restricted imports, falling customs revenues, and the ripple effects on the manufacturing, construction, and service sectors are further stressing the brittle economy. Households that rely on daily labor for their livelihoods are among the most economically vulnerable. The World Bank has committed $380 million in support for Afghanistan, including food distribution programs, although desperate households might prefer cash subsidies to more flexibly meet their own needs.

For Afghan women and children, poverty, home confinement, lack of healthcare, and high levels of domestic violence are additional burdens. The incidence of violence has been on the rise as children have stayed home from school, and lost livelihoods and worsening poverty have exacerbated household tensions.

Unfortunately, women and girls have not had equal access to healthcare during this time of crisis. Afghanistans Ministry of Public Health reported in July that fewer than one-third of confirmed cases of Covid-19 were women, a perplexing figure that officials attribute to womens lack of access to healthcare in a deeply conservative society.

Afghan women and girls have continued during the pandemic to suffer from some of the worlds highest rates of gender-based violence, which affects a reported 87 percent of the female population, making Afghanistan one of the most dangerous countries for women and girls in the world.

Women who work outside the home have also faced disproportionate economic struggles. Confined to their houses at the beginning of the pandemic, many seeking to return to work are now finding that their jobs have disappeared in the ailing economy. Women entrepreneurs are also finding it difficult to reactivate their businesses in the face of the same obstacles as their male counterparts: lack of customers, closed borders, suspension of transportation, and lack of resources. Nearly half of the female-owned businesses in Balkh Province, which previously employed more than 2,000 women, were still shuttered weeks after coronavirus restrictions were lifted. Those that have reopened are operating at a fraction of their previous level, and many women have simply lost their livelihoods.

More research and data are needed. The Asia Foundation is now in the process of conducting a series of surveys, the Flash Surveys on Perceptions of Peace, the Economy, and Covid-19 in Afghanistan, which will make quarterly assessments of the rolling crisis and guide the humanitarian response. The Foundation will also be conducting a study on the effects of Covid-19 on vulnerable groups in Afghanistans border areas. Since the early 2000s, The Asia Foundation has conducted the annual Survey of the Afghan People, with in-person polling in all 34 provinces. The global health crisis has made that impossible this year, but the Flash Surveys will be stepping into the breach.

As we await the data, and the insights that will be gleaned from these surveys, there are some actions to take now, particularly for Afghan women. Afghanistan has been unable to effectively combat gender-based violence in the past, and the hardships and dislocations of the pandemic have made the situation of women and girls even more challenging. Civil society must mobilize to direct resources to women-led organizations, which have developed local networks and mechanisms to provide services such as womens support centers and shelters. Donors must connect with these civil society groups to address womens special needs and concerns. Stakeholders should identify what has been effective so far in helping women and girls during this crisis. The Asia Foundation has already identified several smaller, local organizations that have mobilized quickly and effectively to provide relief, and our implementing partners have identified others. This information should be shared with all stakeholders.

When supporting community-based interventions, international organizations must avoid approaches that may look great on paper but require technology or connectivity that are just not available, or that may run afoul of Afghan social norms.

Jails and prisons have been hotbeds of Covid-19 around the world, and many women and girls convicted of moral crimes continue to be imprisoned under deplorable conditions. Turning our backs on this population means giving tacit support to a system that perpetuates gender-based violence, and international organizations should work with legal-aid groups and the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association to petition the Presidents Office on their behalf. Efforts should be made to identify women who can safely be released, either to homes, halfway houses, or shelters.

There are some institutions, such as the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, headed by a woman, that can be effective partners to help mobilize civil society and coordinate with local government.

To move forward collaboratively, we must identify and empower more Afghan women who can lead the wayand they are out there! This global tragedy represents a singular opportunity for women to stand up and become agents of changeto be leaders as well as followers. Afghan women can rise to the occasion, but they must have the space and the place to do so, and the resources and support of the international development and humanitarian communities.

Sandy Feinzig is The Asia Foundations deputy country representative in Afghanistan. She can be reached at sandra.feinzig@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

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Afghanistan Flash Surveys to Glean Data on Perceptions of Women, Peace, the Economy, and Covid-19 - The Asia Foundation - In Asia

That said, the right question, now as always, is: Whats next?

As the need for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan declines, they should be redeployed for other missions. Because America is a global power with global interests and responsibilities, there is plenty of other work on the to-do list. Moreover, the military has to train and prepare for future missions.

What is key is that the withdrawal of U.S. forces has to be based on real-world conditions, not managed by the calendar. The Trump administration has taken that approach. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has consulted with the host nations, which have agreed that the troop drawdowns make sense.

In neither case is the United States abandoning our friends or responsibilities. This is important in Afghanistan, where the United States has made clear to the Taliban that the future of American troop levels will be determined by progress in the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The Taliban are dead wrong if they think the United States simply will forget the Afghan people and walk away.

Likewise, the United States has no interest in ceding ground in the Middle East to Iran. The United States will continue to partner with the Iraqi people to continue strengthening both their security and economy.

Indeed, the next steps for really advancing U.S. interests and regional peace in the Middle East and South Asia will not be focused on the size of U.S. forces in the regions.

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JAMES JAY CARAFANO: U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan show progress in resolving endless wars - SCNow