Author: Fazel Mahmood Fazly
August 13, 2025
Afghanistan’s recent 35-year history has been filled with severe crises and ups and downs. There is a need for an in-depth historical analysis of the country’s politics — from the dark decade of the 1990s, through the formation and eventual collapse of the Republic, to the current Taliban oppression.
The Dark Decade of the 1990s and the Beginning of the Republic
Before discussing the 20-year period of the Republic, its fall, the current situation, and the future, it is necessary to reflect briefly on the pre-Republic era.
This decade, which came when Afghanistan was on the threshold of completing a century of modern statehood, was the darkest, most shameful, and most regressive period in the country’s history. From 1992 to 2001, half under the rule of jihadist factions and the other half under the Taliban’s extremist despotism, the country experienced anarchy, lawlessness, civil wars, the destruction of the army, police, and air force, the obliteration of cultural and historical heritage, and the ruin of education and the arts. Afghans were deprived of all the essential features of a functioning state.
If we recall Kabul’s situation just before the events of September 2001 — a city that had once symbolized resistance and victory in the First Anglo-Afghan War — its population had dropped to around 500,000–700,000. The vast majority had fled abroad due to the internal fighting between Jamiat-e-Islami (Rabbani), Shura-e-Nazar (Ahmad Shah Massoud), Hezb-e-Islami (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), Junbish-e-Islami (Dostum), and Hezb-e-Wahdat (Mazari). Those who remained were people who could not afford to leave.
The city’s economy was dire; most families lived in deep poverty and malnutrition. Psychologically, under Taliban rule, people were subjected to constant physical and mental torture. In markets, mosques, streets, and alleys, hundreds were humiliated, beaten, and sometimes imprisoned every day. All traditional recreational and cultural activities such as local music, songs, and many games were erased.
Politically, Afghanistan had lost its identity in the region and the world. The only functioning telephone in the Gulkhana Palace in the Presidential Palace compound had a Pakistani country code (0092), and Afghanistan’s own code (0093) had disappeared entirely. This illustrated that the country’s highest political office, ARG, was under the telecommunications and intelligence influence of Pakistan.
From 1992 to 2001, Afghans were without all the elements of an organized state. Physically and mentally crushed, people had lost all hope for life. In Kabul and the provinces, residents had been reduced to skin and bone, their spirits dead. Afghan intellectuals and patriots abroad whether political or cultural groups saw no practical path to change and most resigned themselves to the joint anarchy of the mujahideen and the Taliban.
Only limited individual efforts abroad, mostly through media, aimed at reviving Afghanistan’s identity and dignity — but these were neither sufficient nor effective. After the events of December 2001 and the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghans were able to breathe again. People in cities and villages alike celebrated the end of jihadist and Taliban oppression.
The Overthrow of the Taliban Regime and the Beginning of a New Political Chapter
In 2001, the United States secured an almost global consensus to overthrow the Taliban regime. Even America’s traditional rivals Russia, China, and Iran stood shoulder to shoulder with this effort.
On November 14, 2001, UN Security Council Resolution 1378 supported the formation of an interim administration, the prevention of the Taliban Emirate’s restoration, and the UN’s role in creating a new political framework. Soon after, Resolution 1383 (December 6, 2001) recognized the “Bonn Agreement” and strengthened coordination for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance. On December 20, Resolution 1386 paved the way for the formation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to take on security responsibilities in Kabul and its surroundings in support of the Afghan Interim Administration.
The Impact of Global Consensus
Afghanistan, having spent a decade in statelessness, anarchy, identity loss, and socio-economic collapse, suddenly drew unprecedented global attention. The UN’s decisive resolutions and the agreement between East and West created the belief among many Afghan intellectuals, patriots, former civil servants, technocrats, and journalists that Afghanistan would no longer be abandoned and would gradually move toward political stability. Consequently, many Afghans joined the new republican state’s official and unofficial structures.
However, the main allies of the U.S.-led coalition were jihadist factions and warlords. They were firmly embedded in the state’s economic, military, and political institutions. To give the state a respectable appearance, some technocrats, intellectuals, and members of non-jihadist parties were also included in the administration.
The Beginning of the Republic
In its early years, the Republic marked the end of the dark decade of the 1990s. The 2004 Constitutional Loya Jirga was, in the eyes of many Afghans, an important political step and a great hope for the future. Subsequent years saw progress in legislation and lawmaking.
Afghanistan’s identity was restored internationally: the constitution came into force, the national flag and anthem were reinstated, and the country’s representatives regained their positions in international organizations. With the reactivation of the telephone country code, the communications sector advanced rapidly. International flights resumed, maternal and child mortality rates dropped, vaccination coverage increased, and education saw significant growth.
The foundations of the national army, national police, and air force were rebuilt; three critical institutions destroyed by the mujahideen in 1992. These were all signs of a good start, but the momentum was weak.
Why did these advances not last? Why were they fragile? Why did they fail to become more institutionalized year after year? The main reason was the deliberate prevention of a genuine national political process. Another major reason was the lack of commitment from the very beginning to real peace and stability.
The Prevention of a National Political Process
Domestic Factors
The new system’s foundation was crooked from the start. The structure of the interim government, formed under the leadership of Hamid Karzai, had a jihadist–military background from day one. It included all the perpetrators of the dark decade of the 1990s and individuals accused of war crimes. The political ecosystem of the new system was designed in such a way that it was clear from the outset that power would never be transferred to the people.
On paper, the state’s structure was based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law, but in practice, power remained in the hands of those responsible for the crimes and destruction of the previous decade. Not only were they uncommitted to law and values, but they also competed in breaking the law.
In 2018, during a conversation I had with Dr. Abdullah about an internal government matter, he plainly told me:
“Dr. Fazly! You’re right that the constitution and other laws exist, and your argument is legally correct — but this is Afghanistan.”
Some technocrats existed only for decorative purposes, to give the Republic a façade of legitimacy. Some patriots, in their naivety, believed that over time the rule of law would strengthen but this assumption was a major mistake. Another group of technocrats and liberals consciously defended the arrangement because it served American hegemony. For them, adherence to values was secondary, and to justify their stance they called themselves “realists” and “pragmatists.”
Former King Zahir Shah was also brought back to Kabul purely for appearance’s sake and to create false hope, sending a message to the public that Afghanistan was supposedly returning to the democracy of the 1960s.
In such an ecosystem, the environment was ripe for the growth of personal power. Everyone, inside or outside government, sought to increase their economic, political, and even military influence by any means, legitimate or illegitimate. The entire system became personality-centered at every level. Even the issue of national sovereignty remained personality-centered until the end, with ownership of the country’s political, security, and economic affairs never genuinely in the hands of the state — because the state itself was a collection of individuals with personal agendas.
Another major obstacle to a national political process was legal and bureaucratic restrictions. Although legislation was the Republic’s biggest achievement, the Political Parties Law remained incomplete and contentious for two decades. Many of its provisions contradicted the fundamental principles of democracy and created barriers to the growth of new parties. This problem emerged under the influence of jihadist armed factions, with some technocrats, foreigners, and institutions playing a negative role.
The situation was similar to the 1964 constitution, which legally allowed party formation but never ratified a Political Parties Law until the monarchy’s end. The same scenario was repeated under the 2004 constitution: party formation was constitutionally free, but in twenty years the Parties Law was never fully enacted.
Elections should have been held under the constitution, but the Election Law remained incomplete to the end because doing so would have threatened the interests of jihadist factions, individual technocrats, liberals, NGO opportunists, and even the U.S. and its allies. Efforts were made during both Karzai’s and Ghani’s presidencies to address these core problems, but all these efforts were individual in nature, and, in a such ecosystem, such attempts inevitably failed.
Countless other factors gradually created a vacuum of legitimacy, sovereignty, and Afghan ownership across the country:
• The resistance of warlords to transitional justice
• The weakening of the Attorney General’s Office and courts through parallel structures
• The daily strengthening of local strongmen
• The spread of administrative corruption, nepotism, and patronage networks
• Injustice in implementing provincial development projects
All these were secondary and procedural causes present in almost every government, but the main domestic cause remained the prevention of a national political process, the failure to take political ownership, and ultimately, political defeat.
Foreign Factors
Although I believe that foreigners always interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and that our focus should be on our own domestic weaknesses, the post-2001 foreign factors in Afghanistan were quite different from similar interventions elsewhere.
The foreigners, led by the United States, encountered a ruined, unstable, and broken Afghanistan left over from the dark decade of the 1990s. Their arrival was based on UN resolutions, but in practice their influence far exceeded the limits of national sovereignty. Their annual financial expenditures were nearly 100 times Afghanistan’s national budget; their civilian staff was three times larger than Afghanistan’s civil administration; and their ground, air, and intelligence capabilities were so overwhelming that they were incomparable to the collective capacity of the Afghan state and society.
From day one, U.S. policy was to empower local strongmen, warlords, smugglers, land grabbers, and jihadist commanders. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld openly defended this policy. His doctrine stated that for Afghanistan’s “stability,” regional warlords should be strengthened.
This policy had two parallel effects:
1. Strengthening warlords weakened the central state.
2. Institutionalizing the NGO system, through which hundreds of non-governmental organizations were created, not only covertly supported warlords but also became an alternative and rival structure to central authority.
Due to foreign pressure, the NGO Law was never passed until the Republic’s collapse, ensuring that the state could not influence them. Through this same system, U.S. led international communityblocked national and foundational projects, preferring instead to fund short-term, low-impact projects.
A clear example of this was in the electoral process: over 20 years, the United Nations spent nearly $1 billion, yet failed to establish an electoral system that could reliably verify voter identities or count votes transparently.
When, in 2018, the Afghan government proposed distributing electronic ID cards and collecting biometric data during voting to address this issue, it faced fierce opposition from international community particularly U.S., UK, NATO, and UN representatives. Even some key domestic figures, such as Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, opposed it. In a joint meeting at the Presidential Palace, foreign ambassadors expressed their “concerns” to President Ghani that implementing this plan would cause widespread unrest in Kabul. Despite this opposition, the ID card distribution began — still considered one of the most important achievements of the Republic era.
Through the NGO network and the empowerment of warlords, international community introduced a new term: “effective and influential individuals.” The real purpose behind this was to ensure that the central government always remained subordinate to these people’s approval.
As a result of this policy, in 20 years there were never any elections for district councils or mayors because these “influential” individuals opposed popular representation at the local level, and foreigners backed them.
Combined Domestic and Foreign Factors
The crises of Afghanistan’s recent decades were not solely the product of internal problems or foreign interference — they were the result of both. The most significant among them were the war-driven strategies and anti-peace policies implemented after 2001 by the United States and its allies, which were, to some extent, approved and carried out by their Afghan partners.
On October 7, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the start of “Operation Enduring Freedom,” stating that its goal was to “eliminate the Taliban regime and disable al-Qaeda.” U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly emphasized that “the Taliban must be completely eliminated.”
Afghan jihadist allies, who had come to power with U.S. support and were intoxicated with power, took a hardline pro-war stance. For example, Hamid Karzai said in 2002 regarding the Taliban: “If Mullah Omar is there, he will be captured.”
That same year, Mullah Omar offered to surrender and make peace — but this proposal was firmly rejected by Rumsfeld and Afghan warlords. At the time, Hamid Karzai declared that peace with “criminal Taliban with blood on their hands” was impossible. From that point until 2017, the dominant policy in Afghanistan was to keep the war going and to block peace efforts. To justify these approaches, the West systematically used NGO-based media, liberal figures, warlords’ propaganda, and even ethnic tensions.
In 2013, the Afghan government set conditions for peace talks so strict that, in practice, they made peace almost impossible. Due to America’s war strategy, after 2002 the rate of barbaric bombings in Afghanistan increased dramatically. Even Germany which had not deployed its army abroad since World War II sent air and ground forces to Afghanistan, leading to many civilian casualties.
During this time, countless innocent Afghans were handed over to Americans by jihadist warlords on charges of being Taliban. The Bagram and Guantanamo prisons filled up with them; weddings were bombed; thousands disappeared into secret prisons. Even Barack Obama — a Nobel Peace Prize winner — sent more than 110,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan during these years, intensifying the war further.
At the same time, the U.S. encouraged the Afghan government and army to fight but also maintained secret diplomatic contacts with the Taliban in Europe and Gulf countries without the Afghan government’s knowledge.
In short, the anti-peace, violence-driven policies of the U.S., its international allies, Afghan warlords, and the NGO network collectively blocked the emergence of a genuine democratic political process in Afghanistan and prolonged the war.
Post 2018
Through the empowerment of warlords, NGO elites, parallel structures, and the deliberate weakening of the central government, the international community led by the United States and their Afghan allies managed to block a national political process during the first 16 years. This situation prevented the creation of real, Afghan-owned mechanisms for broad political consensus, leaving most political activity limited to individuals.
The U.S. already had secret contacts with the Taliban, but in 2018 these became public. Due to the rapid changes in the global order, from that year onward, the U.S. spoke with the Taliban alone on Afghanistan’s core issues, while its contacts with the Afghan government were reduced to secondary matters. The U.S. was able to persuade key regional powers including China, Russia, and even Iran that Taliban rule was in their interest. As part of this policy, with U.S. encouragement, the Moscow Conference, China meeting, Tehran meeting, and Uzbekistan’s Tashkent Conference were all held with Taliban participation.
In February 2018, the Afghan government offered unconditional talks to the Taliban, but the Taliban rejected the offer, and the U.S. implicitly accepted their stance, subsequently starting open negotiations with the Taliban without the Afghan government. To implement its proposal, the Afghan government needed broad political consensus, but it failed to gain the consensus.
The U.S. managed to divide Afghan warlords, NGO-linked politicians, civil activists (many of whom had been created by U.S. funding), and the media (also established with U.S. help) away from the state, fragmenting them into individual and group agendas. Some even lined up in hotel corridors waiting to pledge allegiance to the Taliban.
Could the Afghan government have tried harder to achieve this consensus? Yes — but it would have had no outcome, because on one side the U.S. had unmatched influence and power, and on the other, there were no accepted rules or foundations for a political process. The result was that the Afghan government was sidelined, while warlords dreamed in the corridors of Doha, Moscow, Tehran, and Islamabad hotels about the Republic’s collapse and their positions in a new “Islamic government.”
On February 29, 2020, after the shameful Doha Agreement, the U.S. advanced everything with the Taliban in detail based on both secret and open arrangements and laid out the final steps for the Republic’s fall. Direct negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban were never part of the plan and never happened; the real talks were solely between the U.S. and the Taliban.
In the end, due to deep global changes and to prepare itself for rivalries with other great powers, the U.S. used the 2020 Doha Agreement to change the nature of its presence in Afghanistan.
The Fall of the Republic: A Political or Military Defeat for Afghans?
In short, the fall of the Republic was first and foremost a political defeat — a defeat for Afghans — and for the world and for the United States it was both a political and a military failure.
The soldiers of the Afghan National and Defense Forces stood to defend the country under the slogan “God, Country, Duty,” sacrificing themselves. After 2015, they managed to defend the country even though only around 10,000 American troops remained in Afghanistan. They did not suffer a military defeat; the real defeat was suffered by the political class, which chose individualistic, liberal, warlord-driven, and “NGO-style” politics instead of genuine national and organized politics.
The result of such politics was that strategic ownership of the national security and defense forces remained ambiguous until the very end.
Just two months before the Republic’s collapse, more than 100 American military logistics contractor companies — responsible for supplying Afghan forces — withdrew abruptly from Afghanistan without any clear plan for transfer to the Afghan government. This sudden move created a nationwide logistics crisis for the national forces.
In June 2021, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and CENTCOM presented the Afghan government with an impossible plan called the “Afghan Forces Consolidation Plan.” In simple terms, it meant that if the Afghan government wanted U.S. support, it had to withdraw all civilian and military forces from 24 provinces. This plan was neither logistically feasible nor politically acceptable.
Transport and combat aircraft of the Afghan Air Force, which had been sent abroad for technical maintenance, were not allowed to return by the United States. Furthermore, in July 2021, some Afghan military officers were told that they would be relocated to the U.S. with their families. All this happened while the U.S. and the Taliban were finalizing the last details of power transfer according to the secret and open annexes of the Doha Agreement.
In short, the fall of the Republic was not military but political — because ownership of the system was never in Afghan hands.
Was Afghanistan Really Not Ready for Democracy?
A liberal democracy copied from abroad, which only serves the growth of individuals and does not represent the people, is doomed to fail from the very beginning. This is exactly what happened — it failed and was rejected by society. Afghans want and accept national politics: politics based on genuine representation from within the people, where citizens feel involved in national decisions through their elected representatives.
In Afghanistan, individual politicians have not only failed but have lost all their political and social credibility. Basing the country’s political future on individuals is a wrong and irresponsible act. This system was tested for twenty years and failed.
Afghans’ struggle against dictatorship and tyranny is not new. In the early 1900s, the Constitutionalists movement, and later from the 1950s onward, the pure Afghan movements for democracy and against despotism, are clear examples. These movements had no foreign sponsors, had roots in provinces and districts, and eventually succeeded in transforming the absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy in 1964.
At that time, the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) and Meshrano Jirga (Senate) existed, and elections were conducted with the Afghan state’s budget, ownership, and management. There may have been shortcomings, but the process was in our own hands and could have been improved through reforms over time. In short, Afghanistan has experienced democracy through an Afghan-led popular political process, and Afghans want such a system.
The Loya Jirga is an ancient institution of Afghan representation, and the 2004 constitution introduced broad reforms to make it even more inclusive. In our culture, if an Afghan is excluded from decision-making in something as small as a wedding, they won’t accept it and will be offended. On a national scale, it’s the same: Afghans want to participate in national decisions through their representatives — and that is democracy.
Were the Taliban Given Power Because They Understand the Pulse of Society?
The Taliban have never had genuine ties with any segment of society neither in their childhood nor in adulthood so how could they understand the pulse of society? Most Taliban members have grown up deprived of the emotional and human connections of their families, hometowns, and communities. Someone raised away from their family’s love, in a foreign country’s religious intelligence center, cannot possibly understand the feelings of a father, mother, sister, or brother.
They have no real connection with any societal group — not with teachers and scholars, not with farmers and tradesmen, and not with tribal elders and community leaders. The Taliban came to power due to the failure of Afghanistan’s political class, the absence of nationalpolitical parties, and the political vacuum within society.
Historically, colonial powers have used extremist religious groups in poor countries to block and crush popular movements. The Taliban are a clear example of this.
The Current Oppression
The Taliban’s current four-year rule is, in nature, a complete mirror of the dark decade of the 1990s. The form and method of oppression are very similar; the only difference is that in this phase they carry out their hypocrisy more openly.
For example, half of the country’s population, women, have been deprived of education and work, and the entire country resembles one vast prison. Yet, they host foreign Western women whether as tourists or intelligence operatives taking photos with them, placing flowers around their necks, and socializing with them. The Taliban send propaganda messages in English to their Western sponsors about women’s rights, while they address Afghan women with whips.
To whitewash the Taliban, foreign colonial powers in pursuit of their own interests and in their rivalry with other major powers keep the Afghan people, especially women, under the oppression of the Taliban’s extremist regime. In this process, some Afghan lobbyists, either naively or under the influence of U.S. propaganda, were convinced that the Taliban had changed. Others, through project funding, deliberately tried to whitewash the Taliban, despite knowing full well that the Taliban would never change their core principles.
In the past four years, the Taliban’s authoritarian rule has inflicted such damage on the country and its people that its effects will become a major disaster in the medium and long term. Like their ideological predecessors in 1929, 1992, and 1996 — who destroyed the fundamental pillars of Afghan identity — the Taliban have abolished the only credible social contract between the Afghan people and the state: the constitution. They have censored history books, destroyed pre-Islamic historical artifacts, and eliminated arts such as cinema, music, and painting.
Education, the most important pillar of our identity has come under multi-pronged assault by the Taliban’s authoritarian regime. Closing the doors of work and education to twenty million Afghan women and girls is not only a massive injustice but also the greatest betrayal, corruption, and intellectual genocide of the 21st century.
Alongside erasing Afghan identity, the country is now under a rule where elders are humiliated daily, the educated class is insulted, women are arrested in markets by unrelated men, imprisoned, and then shamelessly released to their families on bail. Hundreds of cases have been recorded of sexual abuse against women and boys by the Taliban.
Although the Taliban’s nature and ideology were already well known, in the past four years they have given the public a firsthand experience of their oppressive rule. Now neither the Taliban nor their foreign supporters and lobbyists have the moral courage to use the problems of the Republic as a justification to absolve them.
The Road Ahead
We must remember that, as Afghans, it is our responsibility to rescue the country and the people from the current oppression. We cannot afford to lose hope, and we must say firmly that despair is not our right. Colonial powers and religious extremists want us to lose hope, but we must destroy this expectation of theirs.
In the future, we must believe in ourselves. Colonial powers and their beneficiaries try to instill the idea among the people that nothing is possible except by their will and approval. Yes, many actions are carried out under the direction of colonial forces and their proxy groups, but every step they take for us is either a reminder of the dark decade of the 1990s or of the past four years of oppression and tyranny.
The most important lesson from past experiences is that war only benefits the colonial powers and their proxies. War has never been the solution. The supporters of war are either the warlords of the 1990s and their second generation or groups operating under the management of regional intelligence services and major powers, in which Afghans have no ownership.
Those of us who believe in mainstream national democracy must completely distance ourselves from wars and bloodshed funded and owned by outsiders. Another major lesson from the 20 years of the Republic is to stay away from any movement that prevents the formation of national political organizations and blocks a popular political process. Such movements are often NGOs centered on individuals, supported financially and politically by foreign countries, and in some cases even collaborating with the Taliban — holding donor-funded conferences on women’s education and work.
The consequence is that the more some NGO figures, writers, and journalists engage in “reasoning” whether logical or religious with the current authoritarian regime about girls’ education and work, the more this anti-education tyranny persists, leaving half of our population deprived of education and social participation. Men, too, are deprived of their basic rights due to continuous decline and oppression.
The only sustainable and real solution is the creation of independent political organizations based on a national political process — organizations that draw no ideological inspiration from abroad, nor rely on foreign military or economic funding.
The first step is for political–ideological organizations to elect leaders through their internal procedures and elections for building party structures.
The second step is an agreement on rules of engagement between organizations for activities and interaction ensuring that only those with a background in organizational struggle and who are current members or leaders can enter the political process.
The third step is drafting a national consensus document that sets principles for joint action and prepares the ground for national agreement provided this process has Afghan roots and remains free from foreign influence.
This process will be long, exhausting, and full of obstacles, and foreign pressures will also exist. The current political class, which has long believed that any change is only possible through foreigners, will resist it. But historical experience from around the globe shows that this is the only correct and realistic path.
Other paths especially personality-centered and foreign-backed ones have been tried and offer no lasting political guarantee. Fortunately, signs of political awakening are gradually appearing among the young generation. Young people understand that political stability comes only through sustained effort, calculated sacrifices, and the framework of political organizations not through projects, seasonal figures, or propaganda gatherings.
In short, the bloody experiences of the past fifty years show that the main cause of Afghanistan’s continuing instability is the absence of a national political process. This vacuum can only be filled through the creation of serious and mature political organizations within a national political process. History dictates that the era of personality-centered politics must end and that now is the time to take practical and fundamental steps for national, indigenous, and organizational political continuity.
13 August 2025Afghanistan’s Political Failure and The Road AheadFazel Mahmood Fazly