THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY28, 2022 55
I reminded him that there was a hu-
manitarian crisis on his city’s outskirts.
“I hope that climate change and the
drought will end,” he replied. There was
also a plan to send people back to their
villages, “with the help of N.G.O.s.”
But what could he do now? Many of
the people I had met had nothing to
eat. Islamjar assured me that he had “in-
structed the Red Crescent and others
to give them some assistance.” He added,
“But we’re trying not to give them free
food, because it creates a pattern of more
people coming and establishing them-
selves here just to receive assistance. The
main problem we have is that our as-
sets are frozen. The situation of these
people is the responsibility of those who
have frozen our assets.”
J
ust about everyone I spoke to in Af-
ghanistan believed that the U.S. and
its allies should release funds for hu-
manitarian assistance. Withholding
them would be cruel, and would also
likely deepen anti-Western resentments.
“Punishment is not the answer,” Gailani
told me. “Sanctions don’t hurt the lead-
ers, only ordinary people.”
The public-relations disaster of the
U.S. withdrawal left Joe Biden with a
conundrum: ignoring the desperate sit-
uation in Afghanistan would make him
look callous, but coöperating with the
Taliban would make him look weak.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who led the Amer-
ican team in negotiations with the Tal-
iban, told me, “I thought after the over-
throw that we should use the leverage
we had to get the Taliban off the terror
list, gradually release funds, and reopen
the Embassy—so we could get what we
wanted from them in exchange, which
is counterterror coöperation, women’s
rights, and an inclusive government.”
But, he said, “it’s a problem for the Biden
people, politically. How do you talk
about a grand bargain with the Taliban
if the American people think they’re a
terrorist group? Especially when the
Talibs have not done enough to dispel
that perception.”
Since last fall, the Administration
has been working to provide relief with-
out giving the regime access to funds.
It granted licenses for hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars in U.S. aid, and has
backed a “humanitarian exchange fa-
cility” that would allow aid organiza-
tions to help pay doctors, nurses, and
other workers. The Administration has
also encouraged the World Bank to re-
lease hundreds of millions of dollars
from its Afghanistan Reconstruction
Trust Fund. During my visit, I saw
cash, food, and winter clothing being
handed out by people working under
the aegis of international agencies.
In February, Biden announced a
plan for handling the seven billion
dollars in Afghan money held in U.S.
banks. Half would be set aside to po-
tentially pay damages to a group of
relatives of 9/11 victims who are suing
the Taliban and Al Qaeda; the other
half would go into a trust fund for hu-
manitarian aid in Afghanistan. This
plan provides continued relief, but it
leaves the Taliban almost unable to
govern, with a teetering central bank
and no diplomatic recognition from
the West. “The Americans need to en-
gage with the current Afghan govern-
ment through official channels, to rec-
ognize the Afghan government and
coöperate with it,” Mujahid, the spokes-
man, told me. “Like the good relations
the United States has had with Saudi
Arabia, an Islamic country—they can
have the same with us.”
In recent years, though, Saudi Ara-
bia has made at least token gestures at
making its version of Islamic law more
palatable to the West (notwithstanding
its persecution of political dissidents).
In Herat, Governor Islamjar suggestedthat the Afghans, too, were pursuing a
“softer” sharia. The new appointees to
the Ministry for the Promotion of Vir-
tue and Prevention of Vice were “just
encouraging people to behave,” he said.
Under updated rules, “criminals will be
tried three times.” In the case of a death
sentence, he said, the Supreme Leader
would have to sign the authorization;
no one else would have the authority to
order people killed. When I asked about
the men who had been hanged fromcranes in his city, Islamjar looked cha-
grined. “They don’t plan to do this in
the future,” he said quietly.
In Kabul, I spoke with Mullah
Abdul Salam Zaeef about the diffi-
culty of reconciling these disparate vi-
sions of Islamic governance. A legend-
ary figure, Zaeef is a big, broad-faced
Pashtun in his mid-fifties. He grew up
in Kandahar, went to a Pakistani ma-
drassa, joined the war against the So-
viets, and helped create the Taliban.
A close friend of Mullah Omar, he
served for a time as the Taliban’s de-
fense minister and, after their fall, spent
four years at Guantánamo.
Zaeef, dressed in a white shalwar ka-
meez, told me that he was still a Talib
but had not joined the government be-
cause he wanted to “be free.” (An Af-
ghan who knows him well told me that
his real motivation was concern about
the Haqqanis, though Zaeef denies this.)
In the meantime, he had an N.G.O.,
which helped war orphans, and ran a
radio station, with broadcasts to “ex-
plain Islam to people” in the country-
side; he also had a madrassa, with fif-
teen hundred students. Zaeef seemed
most enthusiastic about farmland he
owned in Kandahar, where he grew pis-
tachios, pomegranates, and grapes.
“They are good for the birds, and na-
ture,” he said.
The Taliban’s laws are being applied
inconsistently across the country, and
some abuses are clearly occurring. During
my visit, reports circulated of Hazara
farmers being forced from their land by
ethnic Pashtuns, of raids on activists’
homes, and of extrajudicial executions
of former government soldiers and in-
telligence agents. Zaeef acknowledged
that the criminal-justice system remained
slow and uneven, because the new au-
thorities were not up to speed on the
laws; it would take time. “Afghanistan
will not be a democracy,” he said. “But
it won’t be a complete dictatorship, ei-
ther. For at least fifteen years, we need
a system that will not allow the people
to do wrong.”
His dream was for sharia to be im-
plemented in a way that benefitted all
Afghans. He conceded that the Tali-
ban, like the Americans, had made mis-
takes, but he hoped they would get it
right this time. “Islamic law should not
be hard. For the Muslim, it is a good