The report submitted to the UN Security Council by Special Coordinator Feridun Sinirlioghlu laid out a plan for national dialogue and talks to achieve an inclusive national administration, as well as restoring women’s rights.  The plan thus doubles down on inclusivity as one of the prerequisites for normalising Afghanistan’s relations with the international community.  But the Taliban have denied the need for any such political process.  They again asserted that their administration is inclusive, because, they say, they have appointed officials from all ethnic groups.

This episode considers this Taliban claim in the light of our analysis of the top rank office holders in the Islamic Emirate.  We consider the extent to which the Taliban’s administration is unrepresentative of Afghanistan’s diverse society.  We find that in its third year the Emirate remains a men-only one-party regime, with a narrow ethnic base, in which power is still concentrated in the hands of first generation Kandahari Taliban and clerics, now in their fifties.

Podcast produced by Colm Heatley.