Cole Bunzel
Since the Taliban’s August 2021 return to power in Afghanistan, amid the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, questions have swirled around the kind of state that the group is building in the second iteration of its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Is it the kind of state that will inevitably pose a threat to its neighbors and the international community, or is it one that will join the community of nations and be domesticated by the international system? Is it the kind of state that will reinstate a severe form of sharia, as it did in the past, persecuting women and meting our barbaric punishments, or is it one that will respect the rights of women and modern norms against cruel and unusual punishment? Perhaps most important of all, as far as the United States is concerned, is the question of international terrorism. Will it harbor terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, as was the case before, or will it adhere to its commitments under the Doha agreement of February 2020 not to allow those groups to use Afghanistan as a base from which to threaten the security of the United States and its allies?1
When it comes to understanding the nature of the renascent Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, perhaps the most relevant source—and one that has largely been overlooked—is the Arabic book on political theory by the Taliban’s top religious scholar, ‘Abd al-Hakim al-Haqqani. Published in April 2022 by the Kandahar-based publishing house Dar al-‘Ulum al-Shar‘iyya, the book is titled al-Imara al-Islamiyya wa-nizamuha, which can be translated as “The Islamic Emirate and Its System.” Announced on Twitter (now X) on April 23, 2022, the book, totaling some 300 pages in length, takes the form of an extended scholarly rumination on the nature and form of a proper Islamic state.2 Some of the discussion is on an abstract or theoretical level, while some relates directly to policy issues facing the Taliban, such as the question of women’s education.
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