Legacies of Conflict
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Legacies of conflict

Local peacebuilding in now Taliban - controlled Afghanistan
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Seventeen months after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on 15 August 2021, little has been done to address local level grievances and disputes that have fuelled decades of conflict. This report, based on field research conducted from October 2021 to March 2022 in Helmand province, strongly argues that these grievances risk erupting into renewed violence and further destabilising the country.

This paper suggests several elements of a possible approach to addressing the grievances in a practical and holistic manner. Despite the less prominent role of traditional district mechanisms in Helmand and other provinces now, enlisting traditional dispute mechanisms in order to address community disputes and elicit local Taliban buy-in still remain one of the possible important approaches.

Product details
Date of Publication
April 2023
Publisher
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung e.V., Schumannstraße 8, 10117 Berlin
Number of Pages
27
Licence
All rights reserved
Language of publication
English
Table of contents

Acronyms and glossary 3

Executive summary 4

Chapter 1: Introduction 6

1.1 Methodology 8

Chapter 2: Multi-Dimensional Grievances 9

2.1 Taliban, their Families and their communities 9

Chapter 3: Former Government Officials and

Security forces 12

3.1 Civilians and wider communities 14

Chapter 4: Taliban‘s Effort 17

4.1 The Taliban‘s General Amnesty 17

4.2 The Taliban Courts and Authorities 18

Chapter 5: Addressing Grievances 21

5.1 Potential approaches and Elements to consider 22

Conclusion 25

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