Why Do Many Afghans Support The Talibans Extreme Version Of Sharia Law

To understand why this cuts through, we must first appreciate the extraordinary scale of the devastation visited on Afghan society during the eighties and nineties. Around a fifth of men aged between 21 and 60 died during the Soviet war – all men, not just combatants. In provinces bordering the USSR, 16 per cent of the entire population died. By the end of 1987, 44 per cent of the surviving population were refugees.

The Afghan refugee crisis has continued unbroken ever since, and many Afghans have been displaced multiple times. Only in 2015 were Afghans overtaken by Syrians as the largest refugee population in the world.

After the fall of Afghanistan’s communist government in 1992, there was a civil war, and the country was ruled by rival warlords who had led different factions of the anti-communist mujahideen. In many regions the state had effectively collapsed. Afghans were extremely vulnerable and life became next to impossible. Farmers had their lands stolen, merchants and craftsmen couldn’t enforce contracts, there was widespread looting and extortion rackets.

The Taliban offered security and a legal system that worked. A functioning, reliable legal system, even one as oppressive as the Taliban’s, allows people to engage in the economic activities necessary to sustain themselves better than a hopelessly corrupt legal system, or no legal system at all.

The Taliban are often interpreted in terms of extremist ideology, but offering an alternative legal system, superior to the official one, is a classic insurgent strategy seen in numerous other places. The IRA did it during the Irish war of independence. In Afghanistan it took the form of sharia because that was the available cultural script. But the reason it worked is less due to the ideology than to the service it provided.

This analysis of the Taliban was well-known to the US and their coalition allies, who poured enormous resources into building a justice system during the occupation, as described by Frank Ledwidge in his book Rebel Law. But the attempt failed. In much of Afghanistan over the past 15 years, Afghans have had a choice for resolving disputes – the courts of the new government, village elders, or the Taliban. In many places, they consistently chose the Taliban.

The reasons that the government was unable to establish a credible court system are complex. One clue is in the reports on Friday that defeated president Ashraf Ghani flew into exile with a suitcase containing $169 million in cash. Whether or not this is true, Afghans will find it believable.

James E. Baldwin teaches history of Islamic law at Royal Holloway, University of London

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