I see it online whenever Afghanistan comes up somewhere:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why doesn’t anyone do something about the Taliban? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do Afghans support the Taliban?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I am as frustrated as the people that post these questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand the answers, you first have to understand what the Taliban is and how it’s funded:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taliban is an Islamic death cult. They believe in a version of Islam that isn’t rooted in the Koran but, rather, in the ancient, patriarchal Pashtunwali<\/em> code of Pashtun tribal culture, which the Taliban enforces as religion. They believe it doesn’t matter that people are dying from preventable diseases, that women are dying in childbirth at record numbers, that babies are dying soon after birth, because all that matters is the afterlife. Tell them people are dying without medicine, food and health care and they just shrug and say, “It’s God’s will.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vast numbers of the Taliban are illiterate. That’s important to the Taliban, to keep people ignorant – and, therefore, easier to control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taliban is well-funded: their leaders are oh-so-wealthy (some even send their daughters to other countries to receive education that is illegal in Afghanistan), and they have always been able to pay their members well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taliban was originally created and funded in the 1990s by Pakistan<\/a>. They also received significant financial backing from Saudi Arabia and private donors in the Gulf states. And make no mistake: these funding countries loathe the Taliban and have nothing but the most racist ideas about Afghans of any tribal group. They care nothing for the well-being of Afghans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taliban kept getting funding even after they were overthrown the first time through private donors, through Russia, and through extortion. Since regaining control of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban primarily funds itself through illicit taxation on everything – they control all trade into and out of the country – through extorting everyone involved in the drug trade, and through siphoning off money from foreign humanitarian aid. The Taliban also control all mining in the country and extort money from ongoing legal and illegal mining operations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the BBC<\/a>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the past two decades, a significant amount of Western money has also unintentionally ended up in Taliban pockets.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Firstly, the Taliban have taxed development and infrastructure projects – including roads, schools, and clinics – mostly funded by the West.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Secondly, the Taliban are thought to have made tens of millions of dollars annually from taxing truckers supplying international forces stationed in various parts of the country.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n They are also thought to have made a significant amount of money from services provided by the Afghan government BEFORE the fall of the government in 2021. The head of Afghanistan’s Electricity Company told the BBC in 2018 that the Taliban were earning more than $2m a year by billing electricity consumers in different parts of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why don’t other countries care about what the Taliban is doing to the people of Afghanistan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistan believes the Taliban keeps India’s interests in Afghanistan at bay, so they have no interest in getting rid of them. Unless the Taliban starts being able to recruit and mobilize large numbers in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and other countries on the border, and as long as the Taliban will always take back Afghan refugees these countries expel, those countries aren’t going to care either. China loves the Taliban because they let them do whatever they want in terms of mineral extraction. Many Iranians care about the Dari speakers of Afghanistan, since that is an earlier dialect of Persian Farci and many Iranians see these people as part of their ethnicity and culture, but they also don’t want any more Afghan refugees in their country, and they have their own concerns in Iran. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The USA turned Afghanistan over to the Taliban in 2021, per the written agreements coordinated by the first Trump administration. The Biden administration wanted to end military operations in Afghanistan and was happy to adhere to those Trump agreements. Europe and the UK had no interest in continuing without the USA. So they all walked away from Afghanistan, feigning shock that the Taliban took over in days. They all hoped very much the world would forget about Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, here we are. No country, officially, cares about Afghanistan. None. It’s only individuals all over the world who still care. The United Nations does still have programs in the country, some of which are working to help women and girls, but they are so low profile that when I asked a former UN program Resident Representative to Afghanistan, who I used to work with, for a program referral, he smugly said “We practically closed the office there. Almost everyone has left.” He even still works with the UN but had no idea the UN was still working in Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While we can help Afghan refugees and immigrants who might be near us, while we can donate to NGOs who are trying to help women and girls in and from Afghanistan, we are powerless to do anything about the Taliban. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why don’t people in Afghanistan overthrow the Taliban? A big reason is because Afghans aren’t united. They still think of themselves as Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Nuristanis, and each group looks with hostility at the others. They don’t celebrate their different ethnicities – they retreat into them and say some rather vile things about others. It’s very hard to organize and fight alongside someone who believes you are from an entirely different race of people that can never be as smart or clean or whatever as their “race” is. Or to fight alongside someone who represents a group who has regularly targeted your tribe with violence and oppression. Until Afghans see the strength in their diversity, this isn’t going to change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The majority of Afghans do NOT like the Taliban. Most Afghans are focused just on themselves and their families – they haven’t had the luxury of thinking about anything else. For them, the Taliban are just the return of oppressors in a long line of oppressors. I don’t think there’s a lack of bravery among Afghans as much as there’s a lack of any kind of vision of something different, something better, something possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another issue is the Afghan people’s exhaustion from conflict. They are in survival mode. Given the choice between oppression, even selling their children for food, or picking up arms and fighting, they are going with the former for now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Religion is also a problem. When you believe that your suffering is God’s will, you don’t fight back – you just welcome death and the glory of Heaven someday. And that’s not just a Muslim issue, by the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rebellions are based on hope. That’s not just a line from a movie. You have to believe there’s something better to work toward, and that it’s possible, and that it’s going to be better than what’s happening now, and that it’s worth the sacrifice, the death, the loss, the instability, to pursue. Afghans have no hope. They do not believe change is possible. That’s why, given the choice, MOST Afghans would leave their country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, now? I’ve no idea. The Taliban has absolute control. And they know that so long as they don’t have mass roundups and mass murders of Hazaras, and as long as they don’t make the execution of women a spectacle in a soccer stadium, as long as their most henious acts don’t make the international news, the world will stay silent and do nothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no country nor individual donors funding an insurgency. Because there’s no one that has an economic interest to so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The only way the Taliban will be removed, it seems, is for leadership to evolve into something else, something less strict, something less racist, something less greedy, or for them to start fighting each other and creating a power vacuum for something better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Please consider donating to Parsa Afghanistan<\/a>, one of the few nonprofits still operating there, or Mayhew Afghanistan<\/a>, which is trying to help animals there. UNICEF Afghanistan<\/a> is also a great option for your donations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n