Restricting Internet Access Is the Taliban’s Latest Ploy to Cut off Afghanistan’s Most Vulnerable 

Restricting Internet Access Is the Taliban’s Latest Ploy to Cut off Afghanistan’s Most Vulnerable 

Human suffering and unchallenged radicalization open the door for a security crisis of cataclysmic reach.

By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jessica Ludwig

Source: thediplomat.com

Four years into their totalitarian hold on Afghanistan, the Taliban continue to prove that their tyranny has no limits.

Their latest actions – restricting online content and obstructing internet access for communities across the country – threaten to have catastrophic consequences for Afghanistan’s women, children, and other persecuted communities. The move is the latest on a lengthy list of human rights abuses and global security challenges.

The United States is right to be concerned about the growing security threat emanating from the region, especially considering Afghanistan’s strategic location within Central Asia. But American leaders could have far greater impact on advancing national security interests if, instead of focusing on negotiating with Taliban officials and reacquiring Bagram air base, they looked to embolden Afghanistan’s greatest resource: its people.

To do this, U.S. and global leaders should take the long overdue action of leveraging accountability mechanisms – like expanding targeted sanctions against Taliban leaders – and mobilizing support for Afghan-led efforts that directly challenge the Taliban’s suffocation of personal freedoms.

Tremendous individuals and organizations have resisted, often through everyday actions now criminalized in the Taliban’s version of Afghanistan. Critical thinking, constructive discourse, freedom of expression, secular education, and independent media have been essentially outlawed under Taliban rule.

Independent media platforms have persisted in documenting Taliban atrocities, including the hunting, torturing, and killing of former government officials, Afghan security forces, journalists, educators, and advocates. Activists and data collectors have documented Taliban leaders’ abuses like pilfering humanitarian aid, promoting jihadi propaganda, and providing refuge to terrorists.

Educators and entrepreneurs have created underground schools, online learning platforms, and e-businesses to nurture hope, opportunity, and resilience amid unimaginable persecution and the callous subjugation and exclusion from society of female citizens and ethnic and religious minorities. Women-led media have ensured that stories of women and girls are still told.

Mobile health support and other innovative interventions have stepped in to save lives amid the haunting realities of daily existence in Afghanistan, including Afghan mothers and children grappling with starvation, destitution, and exploitation. Maternal and infant mortality rates have also exploded, and most of these deaths are preventable and treatable when basic health care is accessible.

Meanwhile, senior Taliban members and their loyalists operate with impunity and often in direct violation of the very “vice” and “morality” edicts they enforce on the rest of the population. They pillage, profit, and promote extremist ideology directly undermining international stability and prosperity, as we have documented in a George W. Bush Institute report series.

The United States and the world cannot afford to leave Afghans alone to suffer in darkness again, especially at a time when the Taliban are again expanding their extremist madrassah system and severely curtailing access to information, education, and other essential freedoms.

What actions the Taliban may take next under the cover of this darkness is left to the imagination, but with history and the Taliban’s current behavior as a guide, the international community should anticipate that the country will once again become a launch pad for terrorist groups, criminal networks, and other nefarious actors.

These realities should haunt not only U.S. policymakers but leaders everywhere around the world. The Taliban appear to be methodically following their 1990s blueprint, designed to dehumanize the population and strip away alternative futures for the country in their pursuit of dominance.

To legitimize their capture of Afghanistan, the Taliban want global recognition without having to change their ways. Now more than ever, world leaders must deny them any perceived conferral of legitimacy. And those that do should be visibly named and shamed.

The United Nations Security Council should expand the list of sanctioned Taliban leaders, which would significantly limit their ability to travel abroad and access personal assets held outside Afghanistan. Sanctioned Taliban leaders have increasingly been granted exemptions to travel for meetings of dubious value, according to the Bush Institute’s Taliban Travel Tracker. Moreover, over 90 percent of named Taliban officials are jet-setting abroad with limited scrutiny as to their whereabouts, activities, and connections.

Countries around the world should apply targeted sanctions similar to the U.S. Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act to impose visa bans and financial restrictions on specific Taliban leaders responsible for corruption, kleptocracy, and other human rights abuses. To date, 35 countries, including the United States, have adopted legislation like this.

Finally, U.S. leaders and their global peers must do more to elevate diverse Afghan voices and ensure their meaningful and prominent inclusion in decision making platforms relevant to Afghanistan’s future. Support for independent media, civil society, and underground education initiatives is more crucial than ever as the Taliban continue their amplification of misinformation and extremist propaganda.

Not only do these efforts counter the Taliban’s authoritarian and extremist narratives locally, but they also bolster information gathering and other vital international security efforts, especially in the wake of the international withdrawal from Afghanistan.

What is happening in Afghanistan isn’t about faith or culture — it’s about control. The Taliban fear an educated and informed population that embraces accountability, opportunity, and good governance.

Prioritizing human rights and access to information in Afghanistan is crucial to preventing the country’s destabilization. As was demonstrated 24 years ago, human suffering and unchallenged radicalization open the door for a security crisis of cataclysmic reach.

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