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The New Leader Of The Islamic Republic Of Afghanistan

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In 2014, Ashraf Ghani was elected as the new leader of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This was the second time in the country’s history that a direct election was held and a position of power was democratically transferred. As a matter of fact, the country has made progress since 2001, when a United States-led invasion, with the help of UN, toppled the Taliban government. After decades of being ruled mostly under an emirate, monarchy, and dictatorship, Afghanistan now runs under a democracy. According to Huntington, democracy is where the “most powerful collective decision-makers are selected through fair, honest and periodic elections in which candidates clearly compete for votes and in which virtually all the adult population is …show more content…

The ripples of the fundamentalist movement’s decisions changed the political course of the country since its inception. In September 1996, the Taliban formed a government in the country and ruled it as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It thrived in a post-Soviet era when the Taliban promised stability and prosperity after years of conflict within the country from other Islamic fighter groups. Unfortunately, the Taliban had religious extremist views that were influenced by their own interpretations of the Sharia or Islamic law. The group committed massacres across the land just to gain control over the country. Soon, the Islamic law was brutally enforced by imprisonment, executions, and amputations for those who disobeyed. Accordingly, the Taliban regime met opposition from other countries and international organizations since the beginning. In fact, only the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia acknowledged the Taliban government. It finally came to the point that the UN Security Council released resolutions in the late 90s regarding the Taliban’s human rights violations and their refusal to extradite another Islamic extremist group, Al Qaeda. This sparked a 13-year war in Afghanistan that resulted in the loss of 92,000 people in which 26,000 were civilians, and also displaced hundreds and thousands of lives. There are numerous reasons why the Taliban regime was not

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