Remarkable Victory of Taliban with Justice, What Actually Happened?

Part I: Legal Troubles | Worries About Problems with the Court System.

When the Jihad happened, Afghanistan changed a lot, and this brought problems to the way the country was organized. Baczko talks about these problems, especially about issues with who owns the land.

A lot of land was argued over because many people had to move and leave their homes. People thought that after the government came in 2001, they could use the legal system to solve these problems. But they quickly got disappointed because the legal system didn't work well.

Baczko shows how the governments of Karzai and Ghani had problems. They didn't give much money to the legal system, only 3% (while they spent 6% on clearing landmines). Also, 45% of the judges didn't even have law degrees, and they had to build 57% of the court buildings from nothing.

Even if you wanted to use the courts, it was hard for regular Afghans. The courts were expensive, there was a lot of corruption, and the police often didn't make sure the court decisions were followed.

Baczko also talks about some mistakes that were made. For instance, Italy, which didn't know much about Afghanistan and its customs, was given the job of making sure there was a working legal system. He also says that the international community didn't really help set up a strong legal system like they were supposed to. Instead, some countries tried to help the new Karzai government avoid the legal system when it suited their interests. For example, they pushed for labor and business law changes when the parliament wasn't in session. Meanwhile, Western forces didn't follow the rules and stayed outside of any legal framework, especially when they were carrying out targeted killings.

According to Baczko, at a certain point, the Western countries involved in Afghanistan realized that the legal system wasn't working well, so they gave up on trying to fix it. Instead, they decided to work directly with local powerful people, like warlords. Baczko explains that the West spent a lot of money to support a traditional idea of Afghan law, involving councils called Jirgas and Shuras. However, this didn't really work out because there was no good coordination between all the different groups involved. There were too many local councils, so if someone didn't like the decision made by one council, they could just go to another one for a different decision.

Baczko mentions that US General McChrystal admitted that the Taliban started to become more popular, even among people who didn't fully support them. This happened because the Taliban's legal system was working better than the one set up by the international community.

Part II: The Taliban judicial structure | How the Taliban Set Up Their Legal System.

Baczko explains that the Taliban don't consider their return as something new, but rather as a continuation of their previous rule. He mentions that the way they set up their legal system in the areas they controlled was similar to how they ran it from 1996 to 2001 when they were in power. So, the Taliban were already experienced in managing a legal system. As a result, the decisions made by their courts were quite predictable, and people who had issues to resolve through the Taliban's arbitration knew what to expect.

Baczko explains that some Western social scientists believe that during a civil war, there is usually a lack of law and order. However, the example of the areas controlled by the Taliban in recent years contradicts this idea. In those areas, there was a well-structured legal system. It included different levels of courts, such as local courts, regional appeal courts, highest courts, and courts for reviewing cases. Additionally, the process of choosing judges followed a strict pattern. Most of them had graduated from religious schools in Pakistan that followed a particular curriculum called Deobandi. This meant that the judges had received similar training.

To make sure that the judges were fair in their decisions, the Taliban leaders required them to change their positions every few months. This rotation helped prevent any bias or unfairness in their judgments.

Although the Taliban's judicial system was more efficient than Kabul's, Baczko still highlights some problems with it. One big concern was that the judges weren't involved in the most important political decisions made by the highest Taliban group, known as the Leadership Council or the Quetta Shura.

Some judges also admitted that they had to learn how to do their job as they went along. They found that there was a big difference between studying the theory of law and actually putting it into practice.

But the biggest challenge for the Taliban judges was that they didn't have their own police force. So, they had to rely on military commanders to enforce their decisions. However, these military commanders sometimes acted independently, and some of them were young and not well-behaved. The judges were supposed to supervise these military commanders' actions, but it wasn't always easy to control them.

Part III: Restructuring the social order through law | Changing How Society Is Organized Using Laws.

One of the most powerful things the Taliban did to change society, according to Baczko, was to centralize power. As mentioned earlier, their legal system was centralized. They also made efforts to control the behavior of their own members. To make sure their group stayed united, they included strong and somewhat independent leaders in their top decision-making bodies.

Another way the Taliban reshaped society, closely connected to centralization, was by promoting a national identity that resembled the time before the Soviet invasion. This new identity downplayed differences between different ethnic groups, although it still favored the Pashtuns.

In the beginning of the book, Baczko talks about how the idea of being Afghan has changed over time. Before the Soviet invasion, the leaders in Afghanistan, who were mostly Pashtuns, didn't necessarily see all Pashtuns (who are a part of the Afghan ethnicity) as the only people who could be called Afghan. However, because Pashtun dynasties had been in charge of Afghanistan since 1747, they had more power than other ethnic groups.

The Soviets were one of the first to encourage ethnic differences to create divisions. During the civil war among the Afghan mujahideen groups, warlords started using ethnic identity to get support from their own ethnic groups. After 2001, the government also used ethnic quotas to divide power among different ethnicities.

The Taliban, on the other hand, went back to an earlier understanding of Afghan identity from before 1979. They tried to emphasize that being Muslim was the most important thing that united Afghans. They didn't say they were just a Pashtun group, even though most of their members and leaders were Pashtuns because they originated in the southern part of Afghanistan.

Baczko emphasizes that the Taliban see law as crucial because it's a way to make society more moral. According to the Taliban's beliefs, only when Afghanistan becomes a truly moral community will Allah bring lasting peace. Since these courts are deeply connected to religion, being knowledgeable about religious matters became the most important social skill for advancing in the administration.

Baczko also mentions that because these legal experts made their judgments based on Islamic rules, it was very difficult to question or dispute their decisions.

Baczko criticizes the Western portrayal of the Taliban as extremely harsh in their efforts to shape society. He argues that researchers shouldn't rely solely on the views of liberal voices in Kabul because this tends to present a one-sided view of the Taliban as oppressors. This limited perspective makes it hard to understand how the Taliban were able to gain control over more and more areas due to the effectiveness of their legal system.

Keeping this in mind, Baczko also discusses issues related to women and how different Afghan governments have historically used the situation of women to justify their policies.

The communists said they wanted to help women by changing old traditions. In the 1980s, the anti-Soviet fighters wanted to make things right for women, who they believed were treated badly by the communist government. Later, when the US and Western countries got involved in 2001, they said they wanted to make life better for women in Afghanistan. But over time, women's rights became a way for these groups to achieve their own goals, and women wearing burqas became a symbol of the difficulties faced by Afghan women.

Baczko, however, disagrees with this Western perspective. He thinks it's not fair to blame only the Taliban for how women are treated now without looking at all the problems that have happened in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion.

When it comes to women's experiences under the Taliban, Baczko reminds readers that the Taliban originally formed as a movement to protect women's dignity and personal space from warring warlords. However, a side effect of this was that the Taliban became quite strict in controlling how women behaved.

Baczko also argues that, contrary to what many people believe, many of the rules the Taliban enforced were not entirely new. In fact, they were in line with measures supported by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Ahmad Shah Massoud, in particular, was portrayed romantically by Western media after his death in 2001.

Baczko talks about how, when the Taliban was in charge, women had a hard time going to court because they needed a male guardian to accompany them. But he also wants to clear up some misunderstandings from the West. He says that the Taliban had different rules for big cities and small villages. In big cities, they were very strict because they thought those places could be influenced by Western ideas. But in villages, they were more relaxed. They allowed women to work outside, like in fields, and they didn't force them to wear traditional burqas.

So, according to Baczko, only women in big, Westernized cities, which had fewer job opportunities, faced the toughest restrictions. There were around 40,000 to 150,000 women in these cities who had a harder time under the Taliban's rules.

In his book, Baczko talks about how the Taliban changed over time and became less strict in their rules. For instance, he says that the Taliban didn't want to be seen as outsiders by the rest of the world because of their connection to Al-Qaeda. So, they focused their legal system more on solving problems in Afghanistan.

To show this change, Baczko points out that the Taliban started to follow international rules about treating people better. In their orders, they began talking more about what should happen to people who weren't fighting. They also said that it's not okay to attack schools or clinics, and they allowed groups like NGOs to do their work in Taliban-controlled areas.

The Taliban also started talking a lot about human rights. In fact, on their website, about half of the things they talked about were related to human rights. This shows that they were trying to seem more in line with what the rest of the world thinks is right.

The Taliban wanted to change how society worked. They did this by saying that some of the customs in Pashtunwali were not allowed anymore. They said that only the rules in Sharia, which is Islamic law, should be followed.

But sometimes, judges in local areas had a hard time because people wanted the strict rules from Islamic law to be used, like in cases of adultery, which is when people cheat on their partners. But to avoid causing problems in their communities, these judges would sometimes use the more flexible rules from Pashtunwali instead. This way, they could keep peace in their areas.

In the 1990s, the government stopped being very strict about how long people's beards could be. This happened because a lot of people didn't like those rules, and the government saw that.

But when it came to serious crimes like having sex when you're not married (fornication), especially in rural areas, most people agreed with the government punishing those who did it, even if it meant using very tough punishments like the death penalty.

This book is fun to read. The writer, Baczko, is fair in what he says, even though some might say he's too kind to the Taliban. What's also good about this book is that anyone, even if they don't know a lot about Afghanistan's past, can get it. Afghans and folks who want to find out about what's going on in Afghanistan now would enjoy this book.