These days, a familiar question circulates among Afghan politicians and intellectuals: how can the Taliban regime be changed or dismantled? Some argue that this transformation must be achieved by any means necessary. Others remain uncertain about the path forward. A few hope that the passage of time will pressure the Taliban into altering their ways, while some still cling to the belief that the movement can somehow be reformed.
But before drafting any blueprint for changing the Taliban, two fundamental questions must be confronted, questions we may never have asked ourselves honestly: Why has Afghanistan, time and again over the past century and a half, reached the threshold of modernity only to be pushed back? What is the Taliban, that in every era it reemerges under a new name and form to dominate our people? What has been the role of Afghan intellectuals in the struggle between modernism and traditionalism?
Afghanistan is a land with deep civilizational roots. Balkh and Herat existed centuries before the Ghurid and Timurid dynasties, but under these two rulers, they reached their peak of scientific and cultural flourishing. Timurid Herat resembled a “grand university of the Islamic world,” while the Ghurids turned Khorasan into a center of knowledge through their schools and architecture. In modern history, Afghanistan also experienced brief but illuminating encounters with modernity: Mahmud Tarzi through modern journalism, Fayz Muhammad Katib through scientific historiography, and Dr. Abdul Rahman Mahmudi by strengthening Kabul University, each laid cornerstones of reform. After 2001, Dr. Sharif Fayez introduced some of the most advanced educational models to Kabul by establishing several new universities and founding the American University of Afghanistan.
This history demonstrates that Afghanistan and its people possess the capacity for progress and modernization. Yet over the past 150 years, unlike its neighbors, the country has repeatedly paused at the edge of modernity only to be forced back. The roots of this recurring failure lie in a constant struggle: the battle between civilization and backwardness, between city and countryside, between the cleric and the man in a necktie. This internal divide, coupled with foreign meddling, economic dependence, and the manipulation of Afghanistan’s political transformations, turned modernization into fragile, unsustainable projects.
A fair reading of history shows that tribalism has permeated all Afghan ethnic groups, though it is often solely attributed to the Pashtuns. King Amanullah, himself a Pashtun, sought reforms but was toppled by a joint uprising of traditionalist forces—including both Tajiks and segments of Pashtuns. His successor, Habibullah Kalakani, a Tajik from rural origins, relied on custom and tribe to dismantle Amanullah’s achievements. Opposition to modernity, therefore, has never been confined to a single ethnic group; it has been the expression of a long-standing conflict between city and village, a conflict that has trapped Afghanistan for 150 years even as its neighbors found paths forward.
All the countries surrounding Afghanistan faced similar challenges, yet each managed to bridge the urban-rural divide. After 1923, Atatürk’s reforms in Türkiye standardized the language and education, while linking mid-sized cities to new industries. In Iran, under Reza Shah and later during the 1960s, the state introduced Tehran University and land reforms that brought literacy and services to the countryside. Post-independence India extended local democracy to villages and, with the Green Revolution of the 1960s, gave people both bread and the ballot. The Soviet Union, beginning in the 1920s, pushed literacy campaigns, industrialization, and healthcare deep into Central Asian villages, even through coercive means.
Afghanistan, however, missed each wave. Its reforms were either imposed from above, dependent on foreign backers, or lacked roots in society. Whenever modernity sprouted in the cities, it was met with traditional resistance in the villages and eradicated. Unlike its neighbors, Afghanistan did not lack capacity but rather the ability of its governments to deliver a unified legal system, public services, and modern education to the countryside, the very mechanisms through which neighboring states contained tribal culture.
The Taliban are not a fleeting phenomenon but the embodiment of a recurring historical cycle. Each time modern Afghan governments failed to forge unity and connection between city and countryside, tribe and tradition resurged. Whenever states leaned on foreign aid, outside powers exploited religious and tribal networks to assert control. And whenever tribal forces held power while intellectuals sought change, imported and rootless formulas were imposed on Afghanistan, deepening divisions instead of healing them. The Taliban represent that same entrenched primitivism, only this time in the garb of a state.
Today, the tribal logic has been translated into ministries and government decrees. More than 700 university textbooks from philosophy and human rights to online journalism have been banned. Women have been stripped of education and work, while professional professors have been replaced by ideological clerics. Universities, which should serve as engines of civilization, have been turned into factories reproducing ignorance, much like the medieval Catholic Church, which kept Europe in darkness for centuries with its Index of Prohibited Books. Even in their official text, The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban state explicitly: civil law is null and void; women are defined as a source of “temptation”; freedom of expression is a crime; modern sciences are illegitimate; and Western civilization is equated with immorality.
I use the term “artificial backwardness” here because social growth and development are normally natural processes. Societies typically advance over time in accordance with their historical and geographic conditions. Afghanistan’s neighbors began such a process more than a century ago, but in Afghanistan itself this trajectory was unnaturally blocked, even violently suppressed.
The roots of this artificial backwardness can be traced to three main factors:
- Internal tribalism which perpetuated the divide between city and village.
- Foreign interventions and colonial projects exploited this divide and mobilized traditional groups against reform.
- The financial dependency of the Afghan government which opened the door to foreign influence and undermined political independence.
These three factors operated in tandem: financial dependency enabled foreign penetration; foreign penetration reinforced tribalism; and tribalism toppled civil government. What might have broken this cycle of enlightenment and a sustained bond between intellectuals and society was, at many critical junctures, absent.
This raises a vital question: in the face of this ignorance, deeply rooted in society, what did Afghan intellectuals actually do? Mir Ghulam Muhammad Ghobar once warned that Afghan intellectuals often stood apart from their traditional society. He wrote: “The Afghan intellectual is sometimes like a premature fetus underdeveloped in thought, in contact with the people, and in assuming responsibility.” The Taliban emerged from within society, while the intellectuals distanced themselves from it. One was the product of structural ignorance; the other was the victim of estrangement from the people. Together, they kept Afghanistan trapped in a cycle of civilization and backwardness.
Today, Afghanistan faces a defining choice. The Taliban hold all the levers of power, while much of the civic and political leadership remains outside the country. The danger is that the same historical cycle of primitivism, dependency, and intervention may repeat itself.
The path forward is clear, though difficult to implement:
- A national charter built on principles such as universal education, a unified legal system, women’s freedom, and political participation.
- Civil service networks inside Afghanistan that generate real legitimacy through classrooms, clinics, and tangible initiatives, not slogans;
- Targeted international pressure that restricts the Taliban’s resources without harming the population;
- A decentralized political system that breaks Kabul’s monopoly on power and grants provinces genuine roles in decision-making.
The message is clear: to the intellectual who has abandoned Afghan society’s faith and traditions and grown alien to its people; to the politician who remains oblivious to the real needs of the community and lives in the vacuum of slogans and power; and to the military commander who defines struggle not as liberation and defense of the people but as fabricating enemies and killing civilians. Before we once again repeat the errors of the past, let us look honestly at our people, our traditions, and our land not with prejudice, anger, or hostility, but with understanding, responsibility, and respect. Only then can we break free of a century and a half of regression and build a new future grounded in civilization, independence, justice, and a decentralized system of governance.
Afghanistan’s future hinges on this choice: either the repetition of the same dark cycle or the beginning of a new one founded on civilization, independence, and justice.
Sources
- Mir Ghulam Muhammad Ghobar, Afghanistan in the Course of History, Kabul, 1967.
- Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040, Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
- Wael Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford University Press, 1964.
- Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, Yale University Press, 2000.
- Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
- Hasht-e Subh Daily, “Hanafi Fiqh in Taliban Captivity: When Ignorance Replaces Wisdom,” August 26, 2025.
- Independent Persian, “Taliban Ban More than 700 University Books in Afghanistan,” September 2025.
- BBC Persian reports on the closure of girls’ schools and universities in Afghanistan, 2022–2024.
- The New York Times, analytical reports on the fall of Kabul and the educational consequences of Taliban rule, 2021.
- The Guardian, articles on Taliban policies regarding women and education, 2021–2023.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
