Entering Afghanistan is easy, leaving is hard: is the Taliban Pashtun nationalist? How did it solve such a difficult problem?

Behind the Taliban who govern Afghanistan today lies 48 years of experience in defending the homeland. An experience kneaded with great sacrifices, with martyrs, with veterans, with strategic and tactical moves, and with patience and perseverance. What feelings, what ideas, or, in Ibn Khaldun's phrase, what kind of asabiyya motivated these people, who, after the Russians, made the US too regret bitterly ever having come to Afghanistan, and who acted with an uncompromising consciousness of independence? Undoubtedly, as one gets to know them a little more closely, it is very clear that this motivation is an extremely religious one, and moreover a religious one in its most authentic form, not passed through the mediation of the modern mind and not ideological.

Exactly what Omar Mukhtar, the Lion of Libya, said 95 years ago to the Italian commander who had taken him captive, these men have said to their enemies on every occasion: Our religion commands us to fight you. Because you are occupiers, and you are occupying a Muslim land and trying to impose your own immorality there. You say we cannot win this war because you are a superpower, but to win or not to win is not a decision for us to make. We will fight you even for a century; if you can endure it, then by all means stay here, but however long you stay, you will not be able to defeat us either.

This stance of the Taliban's representatives wore down the US and NATO forces in a short time. Soon they could not set foot outside certain districts of Kabul, and from the very beginning they began looking for ways out. To attribute ignorance now to the Taliban, who wore down the US with incredible battle tactics and successes, and who moreover are a group that, as the name itself says, consists of students of knowledge, seems to be a customary perception and attitude. That Taliban they do not like solved in a short time a drug problem that no power would solve, established a social peace that no one could reach, and achieved throughout the country a level of security that Afghanistan's history has never experienced. We have asked and confirmed all this information repeatedly through different channels. In a way not seen for 50 years, one can travel comfortably to every part of the country without experiencing any security problem.

When we say all this, we are of course not saying that all of Afghanistan's problems coming from its history and culture have been solved and that it has become a developed, modern country. What we point to is the enormous problems that the Islamic Emirate has solved in a short time, which no one else could solve, and the extraordinary performance it has displayed on this path.

Otherwise, the Taliban had been waging a war against the occupiers in the mountains or underground for 20 years, and was putting up a resistance in the hardest conditions possible. During this time it had no opportunity, and could not have had, to train cadres able to run the state administration it took over in an extremely professional manner. That is why it now experiences many instances of inexperience even in the simplest matters of state administration. It has not been able to fully organize the bureaucracy that will run affairs. But even this deficiency is experienced as an advantage that gives it a very quick capacity to move. Because in this way they are at a founding stage in which they can settle many matters by a shortcut, without interposing bureaucratic procedures. For the country has many problems awaiting resolution.

We presented the Arabic edition of our Book on Friendship to Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

There is a cleanliness in the avenues and streets of the city of Kabul that one would never come across in other eastern countries. This shows that good municipal work is operating. When we asked a little, we learned that this too is one of the matters on which the Taliban has left its stamp. Previously, cleaning work done in the city through high-value tenders left behind giant heaps of garbage and filth. Now, with a cost that can almost be called free compared with the old sums, the cleaning work has revealed a spotless Kabul. Likewise, the implementation of many road and infrastructure projects that had been left unfinished or never begun since long ago is rapidly continuing.

More important is the economic stability that has been established in the country within 4 years. When the Islamic Emirate administration took over, the dollar, which stood at 130 Afghanis, fell within a short time to 65-70 Afghanis and still hovers at those levels. Meanwhile inflation is almost below zero. In our meeting, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi claims that Afghanistan is the cheapest country in the world.

We gave the Arabic edition of our book entitled On Friendship as a gift to Minister of Commerce Nooruddin Azizi, whom we visited.

Minister of Commerce Nooruddin Azizi, whom we visited, is also asked how they managed to pull the dollar down and keep it at that level and how they fixed the economy despite so many sanctions and post-war disarray. He makes an interesting analysis and gives important information: 1. We prevented transactions in dollars, he says. 2. Previously almost 90 percent of the trade circulating in the market was conducted in dollars. Now 95 percent of it is conducted in the local currency. 3. We took foreign currency out of being a subject of trade. No one can speculate on foreign currency and target the Afghan currency anymore. 4 and 5. And most important: we reduced corruption to zero and brought public spending down to the lowest possible level. Thanks to this, many problems that previously could not be solved with much larger budgets are being solved, and many projects are being undertaken.

The examples he gives about this last point truly constitute another example of the Taliban's impossible politics that we mentioned earlier. Previously the salary and expenses of a provincial governor were no less than 40-50 thousand dollars. When he moved, he would reportedly move in convoys of 20 vehicles. Now the governor of the same province goes to and from work alone in his own vehicle, there are even those who go by bicycle, and his salary is below 1000 dollars. Many senior administrators eat their lunches from the tiffin carrier they bring from home.

In fact, the fact that the leader of Afghanistan himself, Hibatullah Akhundzada, instead of coming to the capital Kabul and sitting on the seat of state, lives in Kandahar, in his own madrasa, away from the eyes of others, completely removed from pomp, is itself a very extreme example of the Taliban's way of looking at life. They do not see governance as a lucky bird perched upon their heads; it is as if they see it as a great responsibility that causes spiritual distress. An impossibility that brings state and morality together seems to have become possible here.

Meanwhile the Minister of Commerce is of Tajik origin and holds a very important position within the Taliban. He presents himself as an example against those who accuse the Taliban of being Pashtun nationalists, but he also lists one after another many non-Pashtun names at the very highest level of the state. One of them is the Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi. This situation leaves no pretext to Rashid Dostum, who claims to be the representative of the Uzbeks and is remembered for nothing but the war crimes he committed, or to those who build dreams on him. In fact they take Dostum seriously in no way; although he tries to open up a space for himself by accusing the Taliban of being Pashtun nationalists, it is in vain, it has no resonance in society, and the Taliban is not based on an exclusionary Pashtun nationalism as people like him claim. Azizi says that the Islamic Emirate fully observes the sensitivities of Islamic Sharia in this respect as well. According to this, all believers are brothers and all the people of Afghanistan are one whole, and duties are assigned not according to lineage but according to competence and merit.

In fact, nothing could be more natural than for the Pashtuns in Afghanistan, being the majority and the dominant culture and community, also to be predominant in the administration. But for this to be an exclusionary asabiyya would change the color of the matter. Yet the Taliban, as in other matters, without any advertising of this, and without even being driven to defend itself, displays a very real difference in this matter too.