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The USA can not afford to neglect the extreme struggling and exploitation of the inhabitants of Afghanistan because the Taliban seized the state over two years in the past.
The Taliban’s extremism, misogyny, and brutality are actively undermining Afghanistan’s prospects for peace and stability. Elementary to this vicious pursuit of energy is the strategic use of corruption and kleptocracy to cement loyalty among the many Taliban’s ranks, punish Afghans who refuse to conform, and, most particularly, line leaders’ personal pockets.
Though worldwide leverage has modified, the US and the worldwide group should take a extra definitive position in confronting the Taliban’s atrocities. The income streams the Taliban use to reward themselves signify the most important untapped stress level that the US and the worldwide group can goal, because the George W. Bush Institute acknowledged in a letter to the Home Overseas Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Center East, North Africa, and Central Asia final week.
The Bush Institute stays steadfast in our solidarity with and assist for the Afghan folks, particularly girls and youngsters, and we urge Congress and the administration to work collectively to carry the Taliban accountable.
For 20 years, courageous Afghans partnered with the US and our allies within the pursuit of peace and stability for all. Like folks all over the world, Afghans merely wish to stay in freedom and create a brighter future for his or her households and communities.
Corruption has featured prominently all through Afghanistan’s historical past and was a vital contributing issue to the speedy collapse of democracy in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the Taliban must be measured in opposition to their very own claims that they might eradicate corruption.
Since retaking energy, the Taliban have leveraged their takeover of the state paperwork to develop the safety equipment, award authorities licenses and jobs to Taliban members and their households, and extort taxes, bribes, and precious companies from the Afghan inhabitants and the non-public sector. They’ve manipulated and siphoned the distribution of humanitarian assist and exploited their management over the nation’s assets to their very own profit.
The Taliban proceed to revenue from the trafficking of medication, weapons, and navy tools, in addition to from human trafficking, pressured marriage, and baby labor, upending harmless lives.
Educators, artists, musicians, college students, journalists, and activists have been detained, tortured, and infrequently silenced. Former authorities officers, safety forces, advocates, and ethnic and spiritual minorities have been hunted, imprisoned, and killed by the Taliban and different extremists with few if any repercussions.
Practically 60 p.c of the Afghan inhabitants is in want of lifesaving humanitarian help, in line with USAID, and the economic system is getting ready to collapse.
Nobody has paid a larger value for the Taliban’s greed and unrelenting pursuit of energy and management than Afghan girls and youngsters.
Barred from secondary and better training, employment, and freedom of motion, Afghan girls’s well-being has been suffocated beneath the Taliban’s brutal enforcement of gender apartheid; girls are denied company over their lives.
Taliban officers and their loyalists have deliberately ignored, manipulated, and eroded crucial infrastructure, together with colleges, hospitals, clinics, and different important companies.
Consequently, households face what the United Nations has described as “unparalleled” ranges of malnutrition and meals insecurity. This contains an estimated 4 million kids beneath 5 and breastfeeding and pregnant girls who want lifesaving diet assist.
Preventable and curable sicknesses have surged, tragically claiming the lives of not less than 167 Afghan kids day-after-day, in line with UNICEF and the World Well being Group.
On the identical time, sanctioned Taliban leaders have utilized for and been granted journey ban and asset freeze exemptions by the U.N. Safety Council for medical therapy in international locations like Turkey as a result of satisfactory care isn’t out there in Afghanistan. Extremely, the US voted in favor of granting these and different journey ban exemptions to sanctioned Taliban leaders.
Entry to justice for girls and women fleeing violence and abuse has been ferociously dismantled in favor of an archaic interpretation of Shariah legislation that always rewards and incentivizes abusers. Ladies are subjugated, victimized, and revictimized throughout each side of the Taliban’s imaginative and prescient for Afghanistan.
A lot of those that have escaped the horrors of the Taliban’s autocracy face extra challenges as visa pathways and everlasting resettlement choices stay out of attain, regardless of vital threat of persecution primarily based on each their gender and their prior work in assist of a free and democratic future in Afghanistan.
It doesn’t should be this fashion.
The USA and its allies ought to develop anti-corruption sanctions; use the International Magnitsky Act on Taliban management; and designate the Taliban as a Overseas Terrorist Group and Afghanistan as a Major Cash Laundering Concern beneath the USA Patriot Act, Part 311. These designations would have necessary cascading results limiting the power of corrupt Taliban officers to revenue from enterprise offers or maneuver looted funds to counterpoint themselves or to fund extremist actions.
U.S. authorities representatives should embrace and advocate for participation by a wider vary of Afghan stakeholders in all convenings, hearings, and negotiations specializing in the way forward for Afghanistan. They need to additionally frequently seek the advice of with girls, ethnic and spiritual minorities, civil society leaders, and members of the Afghan diaspora, prioritizing intergenerational, regional, and socioeconomic range.
The USA must also assist organizations and initiatives that accumulate knowledge and amplify the views of Afghan girls and different marginalized communities whereas shedding mild on the Taliban’s conduct and expenditures.
American management stays crucial to reining within the Taliban’s atrocities. Congress and the president ought to act immediately.
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