ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: The Taliban has ridden into town —now who will run the actual show?

People have a habit of projecting fear and panic. It’s not always misplaced, mind you. Consider the fear and panic of what would happen to India “after Gandhi”, or SA “after Mandela”. Some of us loyal Arsenal fans are going through hellfire and brimstone in this period “after Arsene Wenger”.

And so I get to Afghanistan “after the occupation”. Let me focus on what society (including the political economy) may emerge in Afghanistan in the coming weeks, months and years.

I am, of course, being superficial in the sense that I have not visited the place, nor have I spoken to any Taliban officials. I did, nonetheless, write a master’s dissertation on the political economy that followed the collapse of Somalia and Liberia.

I am also being speculative, because I am quite averse to predictions. What, then, can we expect of the economy and society of Afghanistan after the occupation?

Initially, I suspect, there will be a free marketeer’s paradise. With the central government and its attendant powers of regulation in tatters, we may quite rapidly see just what unfettered free markets, lack of regulation and of the provision of public goods and service can really do to a society. I witnessed it in Mogadishu in late 1993.

Then there will be a crackdown. Emboldened by the rush of blood — now a toxic blend of religious zeal and gun-barrel authority — the Taliban will more than likely start reeling in the freedoms of speech, movement and assembly.

I suspect that beyond that — and copper-bottomed Marxists should be happy — the Taliban could assert control over everything in society. It’s useful to remember that within the first 10 years of the former Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks had overthrown the provisional government, which was somewhat democratic. The Bolsheviks were by nature hostile to any form of popular opposition.

Recall that the Taliban said Afghanistan would not be a democracy. The Bolsheviks set to work on their “revolutionary” programme with ruthless force to suppress any democratic or popular political opposition. They ruled by decree backed up by terror.

What type of political economy will emerge in Afghanistan? Hannah Arendt once wrote that if you’re going to destroy something, make sure you have something better to replace it with. Now consider the way the ANC rode into SA on horseback bearing flags and singing songs of liberation with toothless peons along the sidewalks bidding them welcome (OK, I made that up for effect). Then the liberators had to actually manage and administer a large and sophisticated government and political economy.

Parenthetically, whenever I think of the proposed “nuclear build”, I think about the lot who run our taxi industry, and the other lot who are too scared to make taxis stop at red lights, or not park on red lines, and I fear for the country. I really do. Taxi organisations are a law unto themselves, and they are armed. This seems tangential, but there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

There is no evidence that the Taliban has in its ranks any technocrats who know how to run power stations, provide public goods (libraries, traffic lights, public schools), and manage fiscal or financial policy, nor the entire financial system for that matter. Forget about an orderly and trustworthy police service of women and men. If history is any lesson, women will be their first target.

Over the past weekend I finished reading a memoir by Tamim Ansary, West of Kabul, East of New York. The author was born in Afghanistan and now lives in the US. The memoir was a type of follow-up of an e-mail message he sent out after the attacks on New York two decades ago. The following is an edited extract from the original e-mail:

“The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. It’s not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity, they were the first victims of the perpetrators. Some say, if that’s the case, why don’t the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they’re starved, exhausted, damaged and incapacitated.

“A few years ago the UN estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan — a country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately 2-million men killed during the war with the Soviets.”

The following passage from his memoir sums up more accurately what the Taliban represents. Bear in mind that the current crop of Taliban leaders grew up in Pakistan refugee camps. Ansary recalls an interview with a young boy a few years earlier. The boy was asked: “Would you like to go to America?” He replied: “Do they have fighting there?” 

“No, in America you can live in peace.” Without missing a beat, the 12-year-old told the journalist: “Oh, then I don’t want to go. Afghanistan is better. Here you can fight and fight, kill your enemies every day.”

What political economy? What hope is there for Arsenal “after Wenger”. Well, Afghanistan and Arsenal are fighting for their lives in the relegation zone.

• Lagardien, a visiting professor at the Wits University School of Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank, as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.