On August 19, a few days after the Taliban occupied Kabul, the afghan capital, it was announced that the islamic emirate of Afghanistan would be re-established.
24 years ago, the Taliban also changed the name of the country to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after occupying all of Afghanistan. This change is not just a change in the name, but a change in the form of political organization of the whole country from top to bottom.
During the first creation of the emirate, the Taliban had not yet done anything when they were ousted by the United States in the name of counterterrorism. Subsequently, with the support of the United States, Afghanistan established a republic.
Today, the Taliban once again control Afghanistan, and their choice to establish an emirate in the eyes of the world is both surprising and reasonable.
Why has the Taliban insisted on establishing an emirate, and how is this different from a republic? Why the Taliban insist on establishing an emirate in Afghanistan has to do with their origins.
The Taliban was born and developed in the 1990s. At that time, because of the resistance of Afghanistan to the Soviet Union, many forces were generated in the country. After the Soviets were gone, these forces began to fight for power and profit. The situation in Afghanistan is turbulent and the people are not happy.
At this time, an Islamic religious student named Omar pulled up a team in southern Afghanistan, which was called the "Taliban" because it was made up of religious students.
"Taliban" in Pashtun in Afghanistan means is the student of an Islamic religious school. It was originally of no political significance until the Taliban became more and more powerful.
The Taliban were formed in 1994, and two years later, the Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, and began to establish their own regime. In 1997, the Taliban formally decided to convert Afghanistan into an Islamic Emirate.
The Taliban's close ties with the chieftainate are due to the fact that the main component of the Taliban organization is the Pashtuns.
From the establishment of the Taliban to its development, the Pashtuns have been firmly in charge of the leadership of the Taliban. According to the form of organization of the Pashtun regime, they practiced the chieftaincy system.
What is a chief? According to today's parlance, it is the socio-political leader who manages a certain number of people, but in the history and culture of various countries, such political leaders have been called and described differently.
In addition to the chieftain's political leadership, many times he was also associated with his ancestors and gods. In africa today and in some Islamic countries, chiefs are in a sense God's spokesmen for the world.
In Islamic countries, the word chief was first used in Arab history as emir. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, known by Muslims as the only messenger of the Allah, after his death, because there was no predetermined heir, resulting in a struggle for power and profit within the Muslims.
Later, Abu Bakr won the contest and was recognized by many Muslims as Muhammad's heir, the caliph.
After the death of Abu Bakr, Umar Khatab became the second caliph, and when he was in charge of the powerful Arab Empire, he called the feudal lords and some powerful tribal chiefs under his command amir, meaning commanders and chiefs.
Although emil held great power, he was not the leader of the country, more like a duke in medieval Europe or like a prince during the Zhou Dynasty in China.
So in today's Middle East, some completely independent countries, such as Qatar and Kuwait, have their own heads of state, and the fuehrer is in full power, not like the princes, so they no longer use the word emir, and there is no chief in the country title.
Instead, it is the UAE, because the country consists of 7 emirates of greater or smaller size, and the supreme power of the state is held by the 7 chiefs jointly, so the name of the country is the United Arab Emirates.
The people in the Taliban organization are basically Pashtuns, and the Pashtuns are the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan, which means Pashtuns specifically before "Afghans" were defined as all people living in The Afghan region.
Afghanistan is strategically located at the heart of Eurasia, so the region has been chaotic for a long time.
In the 18th century, the Pashtuns gradually rose, and in 1747, they established the Durrani dynasty, and a unified Afghan state began to take shape.
Since then, the Pashtuns have largely occupied a major position in Afghan politics and have been ruling the Afghan region. They fought in the south and the north, constantly expanding their territory, and gradually formed the outline of the territory of today's Afghanistan, until the arrival of the British.
In the 19th century, the British built a huge empire around the world. Relying on India, they began to erode into Central Asia. From the 1830s to the beginning of the 20th century, the British invaded Afghanistan three times, but all of them failed in the fierce resistance of the Afghans.
After the British left, Afghanistan basically became a battlefield between the United States and Russia. After World War II, the Soviet Union launched a decade-long war against Afghanistan.
After the arrival of the Soviets, the gradual decline of the Pashtuns, already in the struggle for power and profit among the various tribes in Afghanistan, was even more vulnerable. With the rise of various forces in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns once lost their political position in Afghanistan, which made them very dissatisfied.
So, after the Soviets left, the Pashtuns formed the Taliban. In the early days of the Taliban, its top leaders were largely Pashtuns.
From the Taliban's earliest leader, Omar to Mansour, and now Akhonzada, they are all from the Pashtun tribe.
From the very beginning, such a political composition led them to a goal, that is, to establish an Islamic emirate and restore the glory of the Pashtuns.
The brilliance of the Pashtuns has two meanings, including both the leadership of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and the harmonious unity of Afghanistan under the rule of the Pashtuns. That's why the Taliban are very repulsive to political interference in Afghanistan by foreign forces, especially the United States.
They believe that the root cause of the ongoing civil war in Afghanistan is the interference of external forces. In 2019, the Taliban publicly published an article titled "What is the Path to Peace", in which the Taliban claimed that the main reason for the war in Afghanistan was foreign occupation, and that the main condition for ending the war and establishing peace was the elimination of foreign occupation.
So after the Taliban captured Kabul and reoccupied Afghanistan, they could not wait to declare the establishment of an Islamic emirate.
The establishment of an emirate was the original pursuit of the Taliban and the key to the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan. While today's Taliban have learned to keep up with the times in some ways, the main members of their organization are from Pashtun tribes.
It is only no longer concentrated in the Kandaha Pashtuns, but is generally distributed among the various Pashtun tribes. As for the non-Pashtuns, there are many in the Taliban organization, but these people do not have the right to speak, most of them are middle and lower-level managers.
The most important impact of such an organizational structure is that the Taliban are controlled by the Pashtuns, who emphasize loyalty to the family and to the tribe. And the position of the chieftain in the tribe is self-evident.
So the Taliban made sense to establish an emirate.
In fact, the establishment of the emirate is also in line with the situation in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is one of the least developed regions in the world, with an economically impoverished country, a population of unsightly people, and tribal formations as a common local administrative unit.
Many low-level Afghans grew up in the tribe, received ideological and cultural education from the tribe, and have been implemented throughout their lives.
This situation makes most of the Afghan people not enthusiastic about the political system of the republic, which is the main reason for the failure of the United States in Afghanistan.
The U.S. government has been operating in Afghanistan for 20 years and has spent nearly $2 trillion. From the formation of local administrative organizations to the formation of republican governments. The United States wants to establish the Afghan government in its own way, but the Afghans do not eat the American set.
Afghanistan is a country heavily influenced by religious ideas, and the cultural practices of Islam have been largely integrated into the life and politics of the Afghan people.
This, coupled with the presence of numerous tribes, has left this religious influence deeply rooted in the soil of the Afghan state, and to change this situation, it is necessary to start with a change in thinking, just like the new cultural movement in old China.
Finally, the difference in the distribution of power between emirates and republics in this day and age is not as great as it seems. Just like the UAE and the United States.
The United States is a republic, with a separation of powers, a predominantly state at the local level, and the autonomy of the state governments is very large, and it can even make laws belonging to the state.
Although the UAE is made up of 7 emirates, its power composition is very similar to that of a parliamentary system. Usually, the central government is governed by the president, and at the local level, the various emirates have a lot of autonomy. At a special time, the leaders of the seven emirates met to decide on the country's major policies.
Countless national histories prove that there is no best political system, only a political system suitable for one's own country. As long as the Afghans themselves approve, whether it is a republic or an emirate, the will of the people is the truth!