Afghanistan brain drain complicates Taliban rule

PARIS: Many of the more than 120,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan are qualified professionals from civil servants to lawyers, a brain drain that will affect the Taliban’s ability to rule, experts say.

During the airlift from Kabul led by the United States and other Western countries, people who had worked with the US-backed government as well as Nato forces were prioritised, along with anyone who had reason to fear the new Islamist regime.

This included bureaucrats, bankers, people who had worked for NGOs, civil society activists, journalists and other graduates who formed the backbone of the former Afghan state and society that was corrupted by the West in the eyes of the Taliban.

"I never wanted to leave my country, to start from scratch someplace else," Rachid, a former senior civil servant in Kabul, told AFP in France where he is seeking asylum along with his wife and child.

"In Afghanistan, I had everything: job satisfaction, 50 people under my supervision, social prestige. But more importantly, what I was doing was useful for the Afghan population," said the 40-year-old graduate who has a masters degree from a European university.

He asked not to be identified with his full name or with his university out of fear of reprisals for his family back home. "The 30 or 40 people who studied with me abroad all left. It is a big loss for our country," Rachid said.

After years of suicide bombings and targeted killings, people like him dismissed out of hand attempts by the Taliban leadership to reassure them they would be safe and free to continue working. The losses for one of the world’s poorest countries are considerable and will complicate the ability of the Taliban to run the country, experts say.

The Taliban appeared to realise this, with a spokesman accusing America of removing "Afghan experts" on August 24, a week before the airlift ceased. "We ask them to stop this process," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at a press conference in Kabul. "This country needs their expertise. They should not be taken to other countries." Frederic Docquier, a migration expert at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (Liser), said the exodus from Syria in 2015 included many of the country’s skilled workers, with the more educated always over-represented among migrants.

"We dont know exactly the composition of the Afghan refugee outflow, but when there is a crisis in a country... the percentage of educated people among asylum seekers is higher than in the population of origin," said Docquier.

Michael Barry, a specialist on Afghanistan who taught at the American University in Kabul, said that many members of the Taliban are from rural areas and lack the know-how and education to run the state bureaucracy.

Many exiles maintain links with their country of origin and help develop trade and two-way investment over time. But if the Taliban revert to the style of their brutal 1996-2001 rule, with its virulent anti-Western propaganda, today’s Afghan exiles risk making a long-term break with their country of origin. "I saw 30 years ago the dramatic impact on my own country, Somalia, which has many things in common with Afghanistan: civil war, a tribal society..." said Ali H. Warsame, a teacher at the East Africa University in Nairobi, Kenya. "I left in 1990, the year I graduated and it took me 20 years before I returned," he said.

Meanwhile, defiant Afghan women held a rare protest on Thursday saying they were willing to accept the Burqa if their daughters could still go to school under Taliban rule. "It is our right to have education, work and security," the group of around 50 female demonstrators chanted, waving placards on the streets of Afghanistan’s western city of Herat.

During the Taliban’s first stint in power, before being ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001, women and girls were mostly denied education and employment. Burqas became mandatory in public, women could not leave home without a male companion, and street protests were unthinkable.

"We are here to ask for our rights," Fereshta Taheri, one of the demonstrators, told AFP by phone. "We are even ready to wear Burqas if they tell us, but we want the women to go to school and work," the photographer and artist added.

Herat, an ancient Silk Road city close to the Iranian border, has long been a cosmopolitan exception to more conservative centres, though some women already wear the Burqa."We follow the news, and we don’t see any women in Taliban meetings and gatherings," said Herat protester Mariam Ebram. The group have now promised a softer brand of rule, pledging that women will be allowed to work but within the limits of Sharia law.

The rebranding is being treated with scepticism, with experts questioning whether it will be a short-term bid to seek international recognition and a continuation of vital aid. "The talks are ongoing to form a government, but they are not talking about women’s participation," Basira Taheri, one of the rally’s organisers said.

"We want to be part of the government -- no government can be formed without women. We want the Taliban to hold consultations with us." She described how "most of the working women in Herat are at home", out of fear and uncertainty.

Ebram said that those who had returned faced resistance from the new Taliban forces in control. "Some women, like doctors and nurses who dared to go back to work, complain that the Taliban mock them," Ebram said. "The Taliban don’t look at them, they don’t talk to them. They only show their angry faces to them."