After three months of the Taliban takeover of Kabul, Afghanistan is considered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises with a poor economy. As the harsh winter season begins, aid agencies have issued a warning that more than half of the country’s population, or nearly 22.8 million people, will face acute food insecurity, including 3.2 million. children under five. Now that the Taliban are in power, the inability of the Taliban to provide essential services exacerbates this dire humanitarian situation. Women journalists who fled the country told Al Jazeera they had no choice because of fears of persecution by the Taliban.

But immediate support is a distant prospect as the Taliban deliberates over the country’s governance and the global community reflects on how to engage and pressure the fledgling government. With internal strife leading to maneuvers for power and a severe shortage of technical capabilities, the Taliban are less prepared to deal with these problems. “There is no solution,” said Stephen Brooking, former adviser on the Afghan peace process for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan at the US Institute of Peace. “How will the Taliban use the income they receive?” Is there a budget they can put in place? So far, “They haven’t changed from an activist movement to a government,” Brooking said. Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans live in increasingly inhumane and sordid conditions and face an uncertain future.

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What is the future of the Afghan people?

“Most of the people I know want to leave Afghanistan,” said Naheed Farid, MP from Herat province. “They want to flee because they don’t see a future for themselves and their family. In the midst of this humanitarian and economic crisis, the West is applying several sanctions to the Taliban government. Washington has frozen the $ 10 billion in Afghan Taliban assets housed in the US Federal Reserve. The World Bank has also cut funding for Afghan public health services and the IMF has suspended the loan service. The weakness of the Afghan economy has long depended on foreign support that has dried up since the Taliban takeover.

At a UN donor meeting in September, donors pledged more than $ 1 billion in aid. And at the end of October, the United States announced that it would provide additional aid of $ 144 million, bringing total U.S. aid to Afghanistan and refugees to nearly $ 474 million this year. But more will be needed to cope with this crisis, as a huge aid deficit remains. “There is a big math problem here,” said Scott Worden, director of USIP in Kabul. He noted that the United States and Western countries provided $ 7 billion in aid before the Taliban took control – and even with that, Afghanistan faced major humanitarian challenges. The global community has pledged just $ 2 billion in total, with Taliban sanctions limiting further aid.

Even if sanctions are lifted and aid is restored to previous levels, the Taliban cannot run the country’s economy or deal with the full scale humanitarian crisis. The Taliban proclaimed the makeup of their interim government in September, which almost included members of its top leadership. Women are not one of them; no senior Afghan politician has ministerial status in the Taliban cabinet. Brooking said: “I know one of the reasons they did not include other politicians in government as they were busy settling their internal differences.” Members of the Haqqani Network wing hold vital ministries such as the Home Office.

LotfullahNajafizada, director of the Afghan TV channel, said: “The Haqqanis are more powerful than the rest. The tension between the Haqqanis and the traditional Kandharis has not yet been resolved. The main issues between the two groups are the rights and roles of women and girls in society. “The Taliban ground soldiers would question their leadership,” if they agreed to give rights and freedom to the women and girls they have had for the past twenty years, said Farid, who also worked as the Afghan Chamber’s standing committee for human rights, civil society and women’s affairs. .

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Why have we struggled for two decades?

This could push Taliban militants to establish dissenting fictions or even join the Islamic State Khorasan, which has already shown strength in carrying out several deadly attacks since the capture of Kabul by the Taliban. “I think the Taliban are very concerned about this split in the group and have therefore been careful in their decision-making,” Brooking said. In recent days, the Taliban has made progress in establishing a government and appointing 17 new provincial governors and ten provincial police chiefs.

Despite the divisions of the Taliban, there is no significant political opponent of the Taliban for the foreseeable future. Although fractured by ethnic and political divisions, Najafizada said Afghans need unity on all sides if such an alternative emerges. When the Taliban entered Kabul, they said “all good things,” Farid said. “They announced that they had no problem with educating girls. Women can work freely. The Taliban will ensure the basic rights of women; they had no objection. But, the Taliban quickly fell behind and began to impose restrictions on women’s education and the right to work. “I can say about the situation against [Afghan women] a “gender apartheid,” said Farid.

After the withdrawal of US troops and NATO, some believe that the world community has abandoned Afghan women. “I cannot accept that there is not a greater outcry from the world community,” Najafizada said. How the Taliban behave with women will be a crucial benchmark in whether the international community engages with the Taliban government. Farid argued that the international community can now do more to ensure that women’s voices are included in aid efforts and diplomatic engagements. She said Afghan women should not be seen only as “victims” of Taliban militants or “recipients” of Western aid.

“Women should be a part of all delivery, planning, design and implementation of all this aid going to Afghanistan,” said Farid. She also showed her disappointment in the global community for rarely including women in delegations that meet with Taliban leaders. Afghan women decided that they would continue to fight for their human rights. “In a country where your president has moved, there are girls who are not afraid of the Taliban and protest in front of them for their rights. This shows that women have a voice during the last two decades of the democratic process.

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Many of Afghanistan’s other hard-earned gains over the past 20 years beyond women’s rights, including freedom of speech and media, have evaporated mainly during the previous Taliban rule. “The objective reports are hardly there or are not there as much as we would like,” Najafizada said. On a positive note, he added: “There are hundreds of journalists who have courageously chosen to stay and continue working. We should be grateful to them. There are indicators that the world community will begin to engage the Taliban.

This week, US Special Representative Tom West said the US is considering reopening the Kabul embassy but wants to see positive behavior from the Taliban. Germany’s special envoy for Afghanistan is reportedly traveling to Kabul to “reassess” Germany’s relations with the Taliban. The Taliban foreign minister recently met with representatives from Pakistan and China. Can world powers put pressure on the Taliban to moderate their behavior, or is there a source of internal pressure that can do the same? If the Taliban cannot achieve some legitimacy in Afghanistan, “then international recognition and international legitimacy will be sorely lacking,” Brooking said.

The question is, how will the Taliban react to such pressure? “Will they respond… by adapting, by relaxing policies, by being more inclusive, or will they have a crackdown? Worden asked. The Afghan crises require immediate urgency on the part of countries in the region, which will be forced to cope with refugee flows and instability if further chaos ensues. “I think the region made strategic miscalculations… I’m afraid the region doesn’t believe the Americans would leave,” Brooking said. With Afghanistan heading down a disastrous path, “we hope people can sit down together to come up with a more multilateral approach,” he added.

“But, I have no hope.” The Taliban have shown that they resist pressure, leaving world powers in a dilemma. World powers will have to engage with the Taliban in one way or another to deal with the massive crises in Afghanistan. But, there are no quick or easy fixes, which means the Afghans have a hard road ahead.

The author is a guest lecturer in the Department of International Relations, Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan. The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.