You Try Ruling Afghanistan

Just how secure is the Taliban’s control? Benjamin Hopkins on foreign subsidies, the drug trade, and civil war. “If you make a list of the 10 largest cities of Afghans in the world, only five are in Afghanistan. This is a globally linked and globally embedded country.” Nothing Is Easy Just how secure is the Taliban’s control over Afghanistan? Benjamin Hopkins on foreign subsidies, the drug trade, and civil war. Appearing as an unstoppable, omnipotent force, the Taliban seemed to retake control of Afghanistan in just a few days last month. But that image was unsettled by the suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport on August 26 by the [Islamic State-Khorasan]( (IS-K or ISIS-K), which has been battling with the Taliban since 2016. The Taliban has since fired warning shots to disperse hundreds of [protesters]( in Kabul on Tuesday, a demonstration that continued daily protests begun last Thursday by women in [Herat]( and [Kabul]( demanding greater rights and government representation for women. The new Taliban government, [announced on Tuesday]( is meanwhile confronting serious [financial problems]( as the United States has blocked access to $9.4 billion in international reserves, while the International Monetary Fund has suspended plans to distribute more than $400 million in aid. And the National Resistance Front says it is still [fighting]( Taliban forces in the Panjshir Valley, a mountainous area about 100 miles north of Kabul. How much power does the Taliban actually hold in Afghanistan now? According to Benjamin Hopkins, a professor of history at the George Washington University who has written a [history]( of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s position is deeply contested. Beyond their own internal tensions, Hopkins says, the Taliban will struggle to meet the heightened expectations of citizens who now demand much more from the government than they did when the Taliban ruled from 1996 to 2001. To Hopkins, the international community won’t give the Taliban the subsidies required to rule the country unless the group ends its reliance on the heroin trade for financing. The country has been in a civil war almost continually since 1978, and even if the Taliban can win militarily, Hopkins says, it will still have to negotiate a political solution to the conflict before it can consolidate its authority. ——— Michael Bluhm: How strong is the Taliban’s position in Afghanistan? Benjamin Hopkins: That’s a huge, open question. There’s been a presumption that with the “conquest,” the Taliban are now the government of Afghanistan. Afghanistan does not have a functional government. The Taliban is going to struggle as they move from an insurgency into a governing authority. Over the past two years, the Taliban never made any pronouncement of their vision of governance. The speed of their apparent conquest might have been illusory. There are plenty of opponents that may have surveyed the ground and thought it best to keep their powder dry. There’s definitely a possibility that in the coming weeks Taliban rule will be meaningfully challenged. We talk about the Taliban as a unitary or cohesive organization, but there are factions within the Taliban. As they move to governing, there will be tensions—if not rivalries—among these factions. More from Benjamin Hopkins at The Signal: “The Taliban is often uncritically lumped together with other ‘jihadist’ groups, including IS-K and the remnants of al-Qaeda. This is a gross mistake, because these are really different entities. The attack on the airport was as much an attack on the Taliban as it was on the United States.” “The population has 20 years of different expectations and experiences. This is one of the existential and fundamental challenges that any government, Taliban or otherwise, is going to face. More than 50 percent of the Afghan population was born after the American invasion in 2001. Their expectations—what they want and demand from a state—are fundamentally different than generations before.” “The Taliban are well aware that they are going to depend on a foreign subsidy. For that foreign subsidy, they need to be viewed as legitimate, and that requires them to no longer countenance the heroin trade. One of the major challenges for the Taliban is to disengage themselves from the political economy that supported their insurgency and instead build a new political economy that supports their rule as legitimate state authority.” ——— Never Surrender Where is right-wing media in the U.S. going now that the Trump presidency is over? Brian Rosenwald on the new heroes, villains, and plotlines of a long-running reality soap opera. (Originally published 2021 | 06.04) It’s a new moment of change for conservative media in America. Back in the 1980s, the radio host Rush Limbaugh pioneered a form of right-wing talk radio that connected with millions of listeners, fueled resentment toward political and cultural liberalism, and helped elect Republicans across the United States. Fox News debuted in the 1990s, bringing a new televisual force to the American right while casting itself as an alternative to mainstream media dominated by left-wing bias. In the following decades, conservative media increasingly shaped the style and substance of Republican politics—eventually epitomized by the brash and brawling former President Donald Trump, a one-time reality-TV star. Throughout Trump’s presidency, these media outlets championed him—and with him, a populist form of right-wing politics increasingly in tension with traditional conservative ideas. With Trump out of office, how is the conservative-media ecosystem adapting? As Brian Rosenwald—a historian of politics and media, and the author of [Talk Radio’s America]( it, these institutions are becoming, if anything, more Trump-like. They show sympathy for Trump’s supporters and no mercy with his detractors. In the meantime, they continue to portray Biden as a senile stooge of socialist radicals and it will, in all likelihood, continue to oppose him no matter what he says or does. They might struggle at times to portray elected Democrats as villains, Rosenwald says, but will then reliably pivot to cultural coverage, decrying a “woke” left-wing tendency that they, traditional conservatives, and others see rising in schools, workplaces, and the corporate world. Right-wing media may eventually not need Trump but, to Rosenwald, it will indefinitely need in business what Trump has always needed in politics: threats and enemies. ——— ——— [The Signal]( is a new, independent digital publication exploring vital questions in democratic life and the human world—and sustained entirely by readers like you. To support The Signal and for full access: We recently resolved a broken-link issue with our opt-out function. If you’ve received this in error, our apologies—you can immediately unsubscribe below. Thank you. © 2021 The Signal The Signal | 717 N St. NW, Ste. One, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by newsletters@thesgnl.email