American President Joe Biden signed an executive order to divide the freezer Afghan funds for victims of 9/11 and Afghan humanitarian aid. This move was reprehended by the Taliban, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and other international actors. The moves showed that the US is not sincere about the stability in Afghanistan, and it is might not be in the interest of the US to bring stability to Afghanistan because destabilized Afghanistan will put regional countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan in the same quagmire in which the US remained for ten years.
The Newyork Times columnist reflected this celebration after the inconspicuous withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan. However, this will be myopic strategic thinking because the lack of a stable regime will increment human insecurity in Afghanistan and can be a threat to regional and international security.
Read more: The Renaissance of new Taliban leadership in Afghanistan
Understanding the Human insecurity in Afghanistan
Human security is an approach that fixates on the security of the denizens rather than the security of the state. To ascertain human security, a vigorous state structure is consequential, and human security additionally avails in invigorating the state. Human security accentuates providing health security, food security, employment opportunities, and aegis from other threats to human well-being. A vigorous state structure is very consequential to ascertain human security, and it is also predicated on the social contract theory where the state provides people bulwark from threats, and the citizens abide by the rules and regulations of states.
Therefore, human security has a fundamental paramountcy in ascertaining the rule of law in any state. Human insecurity enervates the social contract between the citizens and states, engenders resentment as well the predicaments for states in ascertaining rule of law. Consequently, it gives opportunities to other actors to utilize the resentment against the state to create instability and violence.
There are lots of studies where human insecurity engender grievances against the regime and terrorist utilize these grievances to eradicate collective action problem and incentivized people against the state. Let’s take the example of two problem human security problems food insecurity and unemployment, which exists in Afghanistan. One study was published in the Journal of International Relations and Development, where authors studied quantitative samples from the developing countries from 1980 to 2011. They demonstrate, in their study, that there is a deleterious link between food insecurity and terrorism in the developing world.
Furthermore, some studies demonstrate the negative impact of terrorism and conflict on access to aliment. It engenders further challenges in physical and economic access to food. It becomes a cyclic process, where terrorists use human insecurity to engender violence and that violence further deteriorates the situation of human security and gives them more people. Similarly, unemployment is also a threat to human security. Unemployment can also lead to an incrementation in the cases of terrorism. The article published in the journal of Socio-Economic Planning Science highlighted that there is a link between unemployment and domestic terrorism. It showed that in a country like Afghanistan where the state apparatus is inchoate, human insecurity can become a reason for regional and international security challenges.
Read more: The return of the civil war in Afghanistan
The added challenge of terrorism in Afghanistan
There are lots of terrorist groups are operating in Afghanistan such as ISKP, TPP, and other numerous terrorist organizations are present there. Human insecurity can provide the opportunity to recruit people from Afghanistan, especially when the regime is in Afghanistan is the incipient stage with little international apperception. They do not even have funds, governance apparatus, and experience to provide human security to the people of Afghanistan.
The UN has warned many times that Afghan people are on the verge of famine without international support. In the absence of a vigorous regime that can full fill its contractual obligations, these terrorist groups can facilely entangle youngsters by providing lucrative employment opportunities and ascertaining aliment security. When they are entangled, they can utilize grievances against the government to destabilize the regime in Afghanistan. It can again destabilize Afghanistan and engender a vacuum for regional and transnational organizations. Taliban are still very impuissant and are not in a position to full fill their promises. In the wake of the civil war, Afghanistan will be in consummate chaos.
Consequently, to avoid this situation, the regional and international players must converge to ascertain peace and stability in Afghanistan. There is a desideratum to understand that regional and international security is linked with human security in Afghanistan. Furthermore, to achieve human security, economic connectivity and investment are compulsory. If the regional and international players don’t come forward to ascertain human security in Afghanistan, then it will be a matter of time before Afghanistan again becomes a hub of the terrorist organizations with regional and international agendas. The regional and international peace will be in danger.
The writer is working as a researcher at the Institute of Policy Studies, Islamabad. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.