Be Careful What You Wish For

There are some ideologies and political ideas that although they may look workable both on paper and also in theory ...

Some Ideologies Are Better In Theory

 .... but are doomed to fail in the real world, if ever applied.

The most obvious of these movements that fail, are 

1. Pure Communism and 
2. Hard line Sharia regimes. 

What is left of communist regimes after their rise in the last century, are either nationalistic one party dictatorships, or semi feudal kingships:

• China - Nationalist/Communist one party state, with partially capitalist economy.
• Vietnam - Communist one party state, with partially capitalist economy.
• Laos - Communist one party state, with partially capitalist economy.
• Cuba - Communist dictatorship - one party state, with mostly state run economy. 

Of course some have deviated by such an extent, that although their leadership occasionally profess socialist ideals, they are more oligarchies or quasi-feudal states than anything else.

• North Korea - One family, hereditary dictatorship/quasi communist one party state, with state run economy.
• Russia - Presidential federation/Oligarchy, with partly capitalist economy, combined with large statist sectors.

The countries listed above, were all originally pure Marxist/Leninist Communist states, but that concept soon collapsed as being really unworkable, and they quickly became repressive one party dictatorships, ruled by fear, secret police, prison camps and often low economic attainment.

However of all these former pure communist states, the one stand-out, and most obviously successful is China, which is undoubtedly on the rise and is likely to become the worlds largest economy, if possibly not the worlds number one power, inside the next couple of decades. The others are as described, with some economic success where they have opened up to free enterprise e.g. Vietnam. 

As for Islamic Sharia based governance ... well its probably never been successfully applied since the original first couple of Caliphates in the early middle ages. But that was at a time when it wasn't much different in practical terms, to the form of governance in Christian and other lands. But the last three hundred years has seen the West and many other geographic areas, move to more socially liberal and democratic forms of governance, and also move economically far ahead of most Islamic countries. Although oil wealth, especially in the United Arab Emirates, has allowed some of those countries with that natural resource to catch up economically, other Muslim countries have generally fallen behind, unless they adopted more secular forms of governance ... I am struggling to give an example of this, but perhaps Indonesia fits the bill.

However, despite the fact that Islamic Sharia based governance has not worked well for centuries, and had proved to be a socially and economically sterile system for even longer, that hasn't stopped Islamic theorists preaching that only pure Sharia based governance is truly Islamic. Many Islamists have said that democracy is a foreign idea incompatible with Islam, but not realised that the capitalist world economy (China not withstanding), is also based loosely upon democracy and free choice, and that in fact Sharia run states have not really proved to be compatible with a successful modern economy.

So we continue to see attempts to create Islamic Caliphates/Emirates around the Muslim world. From the Philippines, through Southern Thailand, West Africa, the Sahel, and the Middle East ... So firstly Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and now the Taliban in Afghanistan has emerged as pure Sharia run government .... but the IS state, never ran as more than a terrorist economy, shipping drugs, smuggling oil and stealing from the non Muslim residents of their short-lived Caliphate. 

The Taliban on the other hand, face a different kind of challenge ... running an undamaged modern state as an Emirate, on Sharia lines. When terrorists and Islamists take over a country they do so because:

1. They can, and 
2. For idealogical reasons. 

They rarely consider what this will do to the economy of the country and its population, or how they will govern it once they are in control. The Taliban ran a bankrupt, impoverished state when last in power, but could claim its was because of the damage caused by the insurrection against the communists, and subsequent civil war. This time it was a lightening campaign and almost bloodless takeover ... but once again the country is already a bankrupt, impoverished state (although not in infrastructure ruins).

Now according to the World Bank, a nation is considered to be aid-dependent when 10% or more of its gross domestic product comes from foreign aid. Afghanistan was dependent upon about 40% of GDP from international aid. That aid has largely stopped after Western powers suspended giving it, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund also halted payments ... China and Pakistan do not offer that type of aid, and in any case theirs goes directly to the regime (who use it to pay their fighters), not support the population.

The Taliban has been blocked from accessing the old regimes limited overseas assets by Western nations, partly because of fears it would be used to support terrorism, but also because of very real concerns about its treatment of women and minorities, as well as its lack of respect for basic human rights or the rule of law .... So assessing how to deal with the hardline group is problematic at best, impossible at worst. All this means that wages to civil servants and other workers have been withheld, the currency value has collapsed and inflation has rocketed and the economy will likely contract by up to 30% this year. So the economy has collapsed, and the country is already bankrupt.

Afghanistan was receiving large amounts of income via foreign aid after the US led invasion, with estimates suggesting that the OECD countries donated $65bn to Afghanistan between 2001 to 2019. A large proportion of of this aid used to filter through into the economies of nearby Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, through trade, and also Afghani corruption, but as this has now dried up, their economies have also taken a big hit.

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has declared the country to be among the world's worst humanitarian crises, if not the worst (replacing Yemen), with only five percent of Afghan families having enough to eat every day. Obviously the Taliban leaders care little, as personally they and their supporters will continue to be fed, clothed and housed ... but the fact that once again the population is having to try and avoid starvation, women are locked indoors (some allegedly selling their children), and many are heading towards refugee camps in neighbouring countries, just shows how impoverished an ideology, the regime is based on.

So the Emirate in Afghanistan is already a failed state, barely 3 - 4 months after the takeover. Its hard to see any good outcome, other than the return of Afghanistan to its abysmal state of the past. It seems less likely that we will ever see another intervention, either directly by a foreign power, or indirectly by arming internal insurgents, at any time in the future.

So the Taliban got their wish but possibly will rue the day they did, as it has simply exposed the flaws in their ideal system of governance. In that respect they are no different from the Communists in Europe in the 20th Century.