afghanistan culture research paper

What Is Afghan Culture? Some Reflections on a Contested Notion

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• Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6393-4068 2  

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Following a brief reflection on the meaning of the term culture, this chapter highlights assumptions about Afghan culture—often described as a “mingle-mangle” of practices that hinder social progress and prohibit implementation of basic human rights. Western buzz words like “culture of impunity” and “culture of female suppression” evoke images of burqa-clad Afghan women or heavily armed Afghan men. Yet, many Afghans would refer rather to honor, respect, hospitality, and family solidarity as essential elements of Afghan culture. In this chapter, I deconstruct some prevailing notions about Afghan culture, examining the link between cultural practices and social norms and values, and other factors, like decades of violence, that leave an imprint on them. It is argued that forced marriages cannot solely be perceived as a typical trait of a patriarchal culture, but must be viewed in light of factors such as the honor code, poverty, and power relations in society.

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Rasuly-Paleczek, G. (2021). What Is Afghan Culture? Some Reflections on a Contested Notion. In: Hosseini, S.B. (eds) Temporary and Child Marriages in Iran and Afghanistan. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4469-3_5

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Conserving Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage Under Taliban Rule

The Taliban’s sudden return to power in August 2021 has renewed cultural preservation experts’ fears for the preservation of Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage. In 2001, the regime destroyed the monumental 1400-year-old Bamiyan Buddha statues, decrying them as “idolatrous.” Their destruction prompted uproar worldwide, but little has been done to curb the group’s ruinous actions. After being ousted in 2001, the Taliban returned to power in 2021 and now proclaims support for cultural heritage, perhaps in response to the global backlash against its demolition of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. But many question whether the Taliban is being truthful. Still more doubt they can uphold their professed commitment to cultural heritage, especially as critical international humanitarian aid to support Afghanistan is withheld as punishment for the Taliban’s infringement on women’s rights.

The stakes in this challenge are high. As a historic crossroads between the civilizations of the Near East, South Asia, China, and Central Asia, Afghanistan harbors countless archeological treasures. However, many artifacts have been lost, stolen, or destroyed in past conflicts—especially in the 1993 looting of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. More than two years into their latest rule, the Taliban find themselves charged with protecting profoundly valuable and vulnerable cultural heritage. Whether they will—or even can—support preservation efforts will determine if the remarkable extant Afghan heritage will survive.

A History of Heritage Loss

The Taliban’s dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddha marked just one of many instances of cultural loss in Afghanistan’s history. In the 1960s, French archaeologists caused irreparable damage by using bulldozers to excavate Ai-Khanoum, an ancient Greek city. In 1989, Russia ended its 10-year occupation of Afghanistan. When its forces pulled out, civil war ensued . During the conflict, in 1993, a bomb aimed at the Ministry of Defense hit an unintended target across the road: the National Museum of Afghanistan. That opened up the walls to plunderers, who stole an estimated 70 percent of the museum’s collection over the following months, including statues from antiquity and the famous Begram ivories, thousands of decorative plaques and figures carved from ivory and bone.

The loss of cultural heritage persists today. In April 2023, a report revealed that Dilberjin, the largest ancient city in northern Afghanistan, had been significantly and systematically looted from 2019 to 2021. Looting and illegal excavations in the Bamiyan Valley, where the Bamiyan Buddhas had been located, have also been reported .

In 2022, two excavations of caves potentially containing rich cultural heritage took place in the Bamiyan Valley. Though no one has found anyone directly culpable, many suspect professional international smugglers. The perpetrators seemed familiar with excavation techniques and knew the locations of the caves and the general area well. These excavations were unsanctioned. The Bamiyan Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage site, meaning all digs in the area require the pre-approval of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Professional excavators like these have ferried looted artifacts to museums across the world, from Paris to San Francisco. The international demand for these treasures continues to fuel their excavation.

It is in this context of looting, excavations, and loss that the Taliban has assumed power and the responsibility of protecting Afghan cultural heritage. The dire state of preservation in Afghanistan makes their job all the more difficult and important.

Real Commitment?

The question of whether the Taliban will, in reality, try to fulfill their promise to preserve cultural heritage is exceedingly difficult to answer. Afghanistan does have laws in place that emphasize the necessity of protecting heritage and mandate the government plays a role in these efforts. The Afghan Constitution states that both the government and the people are responsible for protecting cultural heritage. It further stipulates that all artifacts on Afghan soil, known or unknown, are the property of the government and, therefore, any transfer of artifacts without the government’s permission is theft. The Penal Code of Afghanistan additionally makes a host of actions regarding cultural heritage illegal, such as failing to notify officials of new heritage discoveries and damaging sites. These laws de jure render the looting of heritage sites illegal and task the government with enforcing the requisite punishments.

It is unclear whether the Taliban will enforce these laws. The constitutional amendment regarding cultural heritage preservation was introduced in 2004 when the Taliban was not in power. Nevertheless, the Taliban do profess to be aligned in principle with these laws. “Cultural heritage is our national priority,” Taliban’s deputy minister of culture and arts Mawlawi Atiqullah Azizi said . The Taliban also claimed it will invest one to two percent of its GDP in a heritage fund if it runs out of foreign capital for heritage preservation. For context, the United States’ National Endowment of the Arts, an analogous fund, received roughly 0.012 percent of the country’s GDP in 2020. The absolute value of the American investment is much larger than the Taliban’s proposed investment, but the sheer portion that the Taliban say they will invest is notable.

The Taliban may also be using cultural heritage to improve their reputation abroad. Since the Taliban’s return to power, many countries have cut them off from much foreign aid. Supporting culture not only brings in funds for preserving heritage but could also promote foreign investment in other areas, such as Afghanistan’s mining sector or NGOs that help feed the many hungry Afghans , by recasting the Taliban in a kinder light. This strategy would not be new. For instance, investment in art has exploded in Saudi Arabia, funding an impressive slate of cultural events: an international film festival in its third edition, concert raves in the middle of the desert, and an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Maraya concert hall, the largest mirrored building in the world. This investment in culture has led some to applaud the burgeoning art scene and, implicitly, the government that has paid for it. Though oil-rich Saudi Arabia does not need funds like the Taliban does, its investment in art demonstrates how cultural heritage could improve the reputation of the Taliban and, in turn, the foreign aid flowing into the country.

But in Saudi Arabia, and in Afghanistan too, support for the arts and cultural heritage should be caveated by the real possibility that these promises are empty and these regimes are just falsely claiming support for cultural heritage to improve their reputation. In the case of Saudi Arabia, despite its growing art scene, the government is most notorious for its countless human rights violations . Some rights groups believe the regime’s support for the arts is not genuine, but rather an attempt to distract from its poor human rights record —which includes restrictions on freedom of expression, abuse of migrant workers, and diminishment of women’s rights.

Ultimately, it is hard to know whether the Taliban’s professed support of cultural heritage is genuine or not. What is undeniable, though, is that even if the Taliban truly hopes to preserve cultural heritage, they may not have the means to do so.

Funding Troubles

Putting a price tag on conserving Afghan heritage is hard. It is clear, however, that the Taliban is strapped for cash. Before its ousting in 2001, 80 percent of the Taliban’s budget was funded through foreign aid. Foreign support has since plummeted. Humanitarian aid is 75 percent less so far in 2023 compared to last year. The UN’s annual budget for aid to Afghanistan dropped from US$4.6 to US$3.2 billion over that same period. To be sure, there have been some signs that foreign investors still want to support cultural heritage in Afghanistan. The Swiss foundation Aliph recently gave the Aga Khan Trust for Culture US$1 million to preserve Mes Aynak, a 2,000-year-old Buddhist city that mining companies want to destroy to access the valuable minerals beneath.

However, that investment seems more like an outlier than part of a trend. In 2022, the Taliban submitted an application to include the Bagh-e Babur gardens on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The success of this endeavor could have potentially assured financial assistance from the UN to preserve the historic site. But UNESCO never responded . For the UN and many other potential donors, the Taliban’s rights violations are too great to ignore—supporting cultural heritage appears akin to condoning rights violations for most international bodies. The regime bars women from secondary schools and many public spaces. It institutes punishment for acts such as robbery and kidnapping. Investing in such a government seems to come at too high a moral cost for many. Moreover, it makes funding cultural heritage seem somewhat less pressing. Can it be right to invest in monuments when, for instance, women cannot go to a public park? Though cultural heritage is invaluable to countries’ identities, the humanitarian crisis at hand is critical and worsening .

In this light, it becomes difficult to see how the Taliban will be able to fund conservation efforts, despite their importance. If their professed support for preservation—genuine or not—convinces more foreign aid organizations to donate, then there may yet be hope for Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage. So far, though, those efforts have failed, dragged down by the Taliban’s restrictive social rules. At the moment, it appears that only with the rollback of these regulations will organizations consider funding to preserve cultural heritage in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

William Mao

William Mao is a staff writer with the Harvard International Review.

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Negotiating Cultural Diversity in Afghanistan

This book analyses the problematique of governance and administration of cultural diversity within the modern state of Afghanistan and traces patterns of national integration. It explores how modern state construction in twentieth-century Afghanistan led to forced assimilation, expulsion and multiple forms of discriminations and how Afghan nationalism was manufactured as an ideology to reinforce the process of Afghanisation. It further explains the shifts in the state’s policies and societal responses to different forms of governance of cultural diversity. The author shows how the legacy of Amir Abd-ur-Rahman continued to influence the transitions in the 1990s and 2000s and how the current political structure of state established after the second transition in 2001 repeats the faulty model of centralised Westphalian State. The book problematizes liberalism, communitarianism, and multiculturalism as approaches to governance of diversity within the nation-state. It suggests that while the western models of multiculturalism have recognized the fact to accommodate different culture, they failed to engage with them through intercultural dialogue. It also elaborates the challenge of intra-group diversity and problem of accommodating individual choice and freedom while recognising group rights and adoption of multiculturalism. The book develops an alternative approach through synthesising critical multiculturalism and interculturalism as a framework on a democratic and inclusive approach to governance of diversity. A major intervention in understanding a war-torn country through an insider account, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics and international relations, especially those concerned with multiculturalism, state-building, nationalism, and liberalism, as well as those in cultural studies, history, Afghanistan studies, South Asian studies, Middle East studies, minority studies, and to policymakers.

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Javeed Ahwar

The Afghan State: Internal Colonization, Ethnic Hegemony and Resistance-Concerning state-building in Third World Countries, the state as a universal reality is often taken for granted. In particular, the instability in Afghanistan is wrongly attributed to the absence of a strong central government. The aim of this paper is to contest the Afghan State as the legitimate representative of the nation (the population living in Afghanistan). Relying on the dominant theories of the state and the existing scholarship on Afghanistan, I have divided my position into five key arguments: (1) the Afghan State represents the ruling ethnic group, (2) an ideological project is put in place to legitimize the hegemony of the ruling ethnicity, (3) the state practices and media discourses attempt to reify the idea of Afghan State as an independent entity, (4) the Afghan State plays a great role in reinforcing the culture of the ruling group as the national culture, and (5) I may argue that Afghan State is a historical construct.

This article takes a comparative look at the 2004 and 2009 presidential elections to examine the critical role of ethnicity in post-Bonn politics. Afghanistan is home to a large number of sizeable ethnic groups. The national constitution and anthem have recognized 14 different major ethnic groups—making it truly the ‘land of ethnicities’. Since the establishment of the modern state in 1880–1901, ethnicity has had a drastic impact upon the political development, and conversely, political development greatly affected ethnic communities. Ethnicity gained in salience, particularly during the Soviet occupation, and gained the magic power to glue ethnic groups together during the civil wars, when state institutions failed, all platforms for constructive discourse were destroyed, and, above all, the resistance (jihad) evolved from an ideological cause into a mere ethnic struggle. The voting patterns in the 2004 and 2009 presidential elections clearly show that there still exists a great tendency of ethnic animosity on the part of one ethnic group against another on the fundamental question of power distribution, state legitimacy, and joint ownership over the new Afghanistan. Keywords: Afghanistan; Ethnicity; Identity; Ethnic Grievance; Conflict; Elections

Conrad Schetter

When it comes to the meaning of ethnicity concerning the current Afghan War different opinions collide. On one hand, there are numerous journalists (e.g. RASHID 2000) and researchers (e.g. RIECK 1997) as well as policy-makers such as Colin Powell or Joschka Fischer who categorise the Afghan conflict as an ethnic one. On the other hand, the majority of Afghan politicians – in spite or just because of their different ethnic backgrounds – deny the importance of ethnicity in public. Against this background I intend to discuss in this paper the perception of ethnic groups by the Afghan people as well as the significance of ethnic groups regarding the design of a future government in Afghanistan.

The IUP Journal of International Relations

Ambrish Dhaka

The state structuration in Afghanistan began with the ethnopolitical portioning of the state. This had intrinsic limitation as the common Afghan would only see state coming through particularistic arrangements conveyed through traditional authority. The secular institutions such as bureaucracy, law and civil society had disadvantage in this setup. The provincial governance showed better resilience to such ethnopolitical structure and at the same time National legislature too strived for more powers that could lend credence to secular institutions in Afghanistan. The role of democracy in promotion of such cause was only partially successful as the majoritarian power often slipped into the dominance of Pashtun warlords that carried a sense of distrust due to the superimposition of Taliban identity in their geocultural realms. Therefore, it depended a lot on leaders to make a careful choice between limited democracy and limited ethnocracy. The minority in Afghanistan took up the cause of secular institutions as they were the larger guarantee of their inclusion in power sharing. But the majoritarian leadership has often bargained outside the institutional framework that can be seen as consociational arrangement effectively weakening the secular institutionalization. This paper looks into the power sharing arrangement between Pashtun and non-Pashtun groups within the fiduciary limits of ethnofederalism and ethnogeopolitics that have shaped the evolution of Afghan state post 9/11

Journal of Applied Environmental and Biological Sciences

This paper overviews the historical causes of ethnolinguistic polarity in the contemporary Afghanistan. Significant political events are focused to find the genesis and evolution of schism in the multiethnic and multilingual Afghanistan. This paper finds the roots of ethnolinguistic polarity in the faulty process of nation building. The different ethnic groups in Afghanistan are geographically concentrated and they consider their ethnolinguistic identity as an important part of their existence. However, the ruling Pashtun elite considered this diversity as a threat to integrity of Afghanistan. The campaign of integration was viewed by the non-Pashtun ethnolinguistic groups as an attempt of their extermination. This paper proposes that respecting the diversity is the best way possible for the integration of Afghanistan.

Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Institute for Foreign Relations)

Emile Badarin

The essay reflects on the cultural dimensions of the imperial invasions of Afghanistan in the wake of the US retreat from the country in 2021. It argues that Afghanistan can be added to the list of failed liberal peace and statebuilding interventions undertaken since the 1990s, and this further underlines the need to critically scrutinise the whole neo-colonial practice of exporting the supposedly ‘universal’ values of the ‘superior' culture to discipline the unruly periphery. Because Afghans remain loyal to their traditions, they appear to outsiders to be culturally stagnant and lacking the ability to change. And when this flawed reading is enmeshed into foreign policy imaginaries, it provides the perfect rhetorical ammunition for imperialist civilising missions and interventions that take on the guise of freedom and humanitarianism. Culture and values are not used to champion co-existence and productive exchange, but to serve power and hegemony.

Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism

Rahmatullah Amiri

Nations and Nationalism

Dr. Niamatullah Ibrahimi

Raghav Sharma

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Researchers explain social media's role in rapidly shifting social norms on gender and sexuality

A new paper summarizing decades of research demonstrates how social media has supported an explosion of diversity in gender and sexuality in America during the 21st century, and also how these technologies have equally enabled a cultural backlash.

The paper's authors, UC Santa Cruz Psychology Department faculty members Phil Hammack and Adriana Manago, identified five main narratives about gender and sexuality that they believe emerged through social media as people have strived to be "authentic" on these platforms. The findings, along with resulting recommendations for psychology researchers and practitioners, were published in American Psychologist .

Since its inception, social media has essentially reversed the flow of information in American society, challenging traditional sources of authority and empowering individuals to create and share information for themselves, the paper says. The formats and customs of social media especially encourage self-expression and "authenticity," or sharing your inner experience. Online connectivity also removes geographic barriers to finding other like-minded individuals.

Together, these conditions set the stage perfectly for new cultural norms to emerge, the paper's authors argue. Manago, an associate professor of psychology who studies how communication technology shapes human development, explained that the team's theory runs directly counter to "social contagion theory."

"We've seen so much change so quickly in things like pronouns and sexual orientation that people have been hungry for an explanation, and as a result, social contagion theory is this very harmful idea that has become popular, despite not being backed by good evidence," she said.

"Social contagion theory argues that adolescents are going online and seeing that expressing yourself as having an LGBTQ+ identity is cool and popular, so they are conforming to a popular notion outside of themselves," Manago continued. "Our paper argues the opposite. The diversity that we're seeing now was always there, but the dominant cultural paradigms previously masked it. Now, new communications tools are bringing it to light by promoting and enabling authenticity."

New cultural narratives of gender and sexuality

Among the new cultural narratives that researchers say have emerged from online authenticity is the concept of gender as self-constructed, meaning that there can be a difference between sex assigned at birth and a person's gender identity or expression. For example, research shows that Tumblr blogs have helped transgender people navigate the gender affirmation process, and TikTok has become a central resource for youth who are questioning their own gender or sexuality to explore identities and connect with others.

Hammack, a psychology professor and expert on generational differences in gender and sexuality, emphasizes that people are using social media as a tool to better understand complexities around gender identity that they already feel within themselves.

"We have to remember that with social media, an algorithm responds to the person," he said. "So if you're starting to question your gender, you're going to look for related content, and then the algorithm affirms that, but you are still the active agent who is on social media liking things. That agency sometimes gets downplayed when we talk about the influence of social media."

Another narrative that has gained traction on social media is the idea that sexuality is plural, playful, flexible, and fluid. One aspect of this is the possibility for attraction to multiple genders. For example, research that used the Craigslist personals section to recruit participants has bolstered new understandings of bisexuality among men and has also shown that some people who identify as straight still seek same-sex contact. Meanwhile, Tumblr helped to popularize the pansexual identity. And new social networking websites for people with fetishes have increased acceptance of a wider variety of sexual practices.

Some modern online narratives also present sexuality and monogamy as cultural compulsions, rather than biological ones. For example, asexuality has become an accepted identity for those who feel little or no sexual attraction, with help from a website that challenged traditional pathologizing views. And new dating apps have been developed specifically to support forms of consensual nonmonogamy that are gaining public visibility.

Intersectionality has become a key part of many online narratives too, such as the #SayHerName campaign on Twitter, which sought to draw attention to state-sanctioned violence against Black cisgender and transgender women alike. New terminologies and forms of identity have also developed on Tumblr that increasingly recognize how gender and sexuality intersect with each other, and these concepts have spilled over onto platforms like Twitter, now called X, and TikTok.

But not all online narratives that seek to convey authenticity in gender and sexuality promote diversity. A transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic backlash has also spread through social media technology, sometimes resulting in real-world violence. One example is how Reddit and TikTok have spread "incel" or "involuntary celibate" ideology that views both women's equality and sexual and gender diversity as threats to masculinity.

"These reactionary forces that are being destabilized from their dominant position in society are also using authenticity narratives about being a 'real man' to spread their views, and they're claiming that all of these other narratives are false," Manago explained. "So authenticity is a central concept in all of the narratives on gender and sexuality that we see emerge through these platforms, regardless of whether they're progressive or regressive."

Recommendations for psychologists

Based on their findings, the paper's authors offer several recommendations. Psychology researchers and practitioners should start by grounding their work in people's lived experiences, the paper says. That could include counselors making sure they stay up to date on new popular terminology around gender and sexuality and researchers asking more open-ended questions and offering write-in options for collecting information about gender and sexuality.

The team also recommends approaching emerging forms of identity with affirmation, rather than suspicion and focusing on the phenomena of sexual and gender diversity more so than individual identity labels, which inevitably always leave someone out. The paper advises that social change on these issues is fluid and nonlinear, and the current context is not necessarily one of "achievement" for rights and recognition, as evidenced by regressive authenticity narratives that have spread alongside progressive ones.

Hammack and Manago ultimately encourage psychologists to continue challenging normative thinking, both around sexuality and gender and around social media's role in identity formation. They say social media is neither a source of youth corruption nor a cure-all for advancing acceptance and equity. Instead, meaningful cultural change that starts on social media should result in new resources and support in our geographic communities.

"If community spaces and educational spaces don't keep pace with these changes, that can become dangerous, because young people will continue to turn to social media, and they may lose confidence in other sources of authority, like teachers and parents, who they see as being socially behind the times," Hammack said.

"As adults, the responsible thing is for us to acknowledge that we live in a time of great change in gender and sexuality and to find ways to integrate new perspectives into education, our communities, and our families, so that young people don't experience isolation and don't lose confidence in us."

More information: Phillip L. Hammack et al, The psychology of sexual and gender diversity in the 21st century: Social technologies and stories of authenticity., American Psychologist (2024). DOI: 10.1037/amp0001366

Provided by University of California - Santa Cruz

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I.C.C. Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Israeli and Hamas Leaders

The move sets up a possible showdown between the international court and israel with its biggest ally, the united states..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Earlier this week, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and its defense minister. The move shocked Israelis and set up a possible showdown between the world’s top criminal court and Israel, together with its biggest ally, the United States. Today, my colleague, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Patrick Kingsley, explains.

It’s Thursday, May 23rd.

So, Patrick, earlier this week, there was a pretty surprising announcement by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It had to do with Israel and Hamas. Tell us what happened.

Well, on Monday morning, we were all taken by surprise by an announcement from the chief prosecutor at the ICC, the International Criminal Court, the top criminal court in the world. It tries individuals accused of war crimes. And the chief prosecutor announced that he was requesting arrest warrants for five individuals involved in the war between Israel and Hamas for crimes against humanity. Three of them were from Hamas — Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas within Gaza, the Hamas military commander, and the political leader of Hamas, who’s based in Qatar.

But maybe the biggest news in this announcement was that the chief prosecutor was seeking the arrest of two of Israel’s top leaders — Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister. And this was a massive bombshell. These two men are leaders from a major US ally. They’re in regular contact with the US government, and they were being implicitly equated with the three top leaders of an organization, Hamas, that many consider a terrorist organization. And this equation sent shockwaves through Israeli society and, indeed, around the world.

So this is absolutely remarkable, Patrick. I mean, I, for one, was quite surprised by seeing this. I want to dig into it with you. So who is this prosecutor behind these requests for these warrants? And how did he reach this decision to go for them in the first place?

So the prosecutor’s name is Karim Khan, and he is a British lawyer, a British barrister. He is 54. He’s led a very impressive career. He has spent years working on human rights cases, both defending people and also prosecuting in such cases.

He was involved in tribunals related to the wars surrounding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda. He investigated Islamic State crimes in Iraq. And in 2021, he is appointed the top prosecutor at the ICC.

And what are his responsibilities as top prosecutor?

Well, it’s his job to travel the world and investigate allegations of human rights abuses, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and in the process, plays a key role in deciding who gets prosecuted at the International Criminal Court. The ICC and the ICC prosecutor investigates and tries people who would not be pursued by the judicial system within their countries of origin. It steps in when it seems like the domestic authorities in any given country are not doing their job.

And last year, he famously went after President Putin in Russia in connection with the war in Ukraine.

So at what point did this prosecutor, Karim Khan, turn his attention to Israel and Gaza?

Well, he actually inherits an investigation from his predecessor that’s looking at Israel’s conduct and also that of Hamas during a previous war in 2014 between the two sides. But then that gets superseded on October 7th by the horrors that we saw that day committed by Hamas and then by the scale and damage caused by Israel’s bombing campaign in its counterattack.

And we begin to see not only revulsion and horror at what Hamas had done in early October, but also growing criticism and condemnation of what Israel and its Air Force did in its response. You’ll remember that earlier this year, the International Court of Justice, a separate court also in The Hague, began to address claims that Israel was and is committing a genocide in Gaza, a claim that Israel strongly denies.

Right. That was the case that South Africa brought. We did an episode about that.

Yes, exactly. So as the world’s attention focuses on this new conflict, so does Karim Khan’s.

Also today, the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, QC, has wrapped up a visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Khan has visited the region to investigate if war crimes were committed on October 7th.

We start to see him arrive in Israel visiting some of the sites that Hamas attacked last year, talking to survivors, talking to leaders, reviewing security camera footage, and so on.

I have just come from the border of the Rafah crossing, and we could see Gaza, at least we could see cranes that were on the territory of Gaza.

And he also visited the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, talks to Palestinians.

At the Ministry of Justice in Ramallah, the chief prosecutor of the world’s highest court.

He goes to the Israeli occupied West Bank, to Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is based, building up evidence that led to this announcement on Monday.

Today, I’m filing applications for warrants of arrest before Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court.

And he makes this very dramatic announcement in a video.

My office has diligently collected evidence and interviewed survivors and eyewitnesses at the scene of at least six major attack locations.

Flanked on each side by two of his deputies.

I have reasonable grounds to believe that three senior leaders of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed DEIF and Ismail Haniyeh, bear criminal responsibility for the following international crimes.

And the accusations that he makes against the three Hamas leaders focus on the violent actions that Hamas took on October 7th.

Extermination as a crime against humanity. Murder as a crime against humanity.

And he walked through a long list of charges stemming from the extraordinary violence during that attack.

The taking of hostages as a war crime. Rape and other acts of sexual violence during captivity.

And he says there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity. And he cites assessment of medical records, video, and documentary evidence, as well as interviews with victims and survivors.

And I repeat and underline my call for the immediate release of all hostages taken from Israel and for their immediate safe return to their families.

So this prosecutor sees the atrocities on October 7th and then what followed with Hamas taking the hostages, abusing them, as crimes against humanity. That’s what it amounted to in his view?

And what about the charges against the Israelis?

These are slightly different.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the following international crimes.

Obviously, a lot of the outcry and horror at the war in Gaza has centered around Israel’s airstrikes that have killed tens of thousands of Gazans. But Karim Khan focuses not on the military actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his defense minister, but on the accusation of —

Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.

— starvation. The idea that Israel has allegedly sought to restrict and block aid deliveries, food supplies to Gaza with the intent to starve the civilian population there.

These individuals, through a common plan, have systematically deprived the civilian population of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.

And that’s primarily based on the fact that for the first two weeks of the war, until October 21st or so, Israel blocked all aid entry to Gaza after Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, one of these two Israelis whose arrests Mr. Khan seeks, said that he was imposing a total siege on Gaza — no food, no fuel, no electricity. And while that total siege was eased towards the end of October, Khan also notes that there have been continuing restrictions on essential supplies, like food and medicine, ever since.

That conduct took place alongside attacks that killed civilians, the obstruction of aid delivery by humanitarian organizations, and attacks on aid workers that forced many of those same humanitarian organizations to either cease operations or limit their life-saving efforts in Gaza.

The implication is that the famine that he says is present in some areas of Gaza and imminent in other areas is in part the responsibility of Netanyahu and Gallant.

That starvation has caused and continues to cause deaths, malnutrition, dehydration, and profound suffering among the population. My office charges Netanyahu and Gallant as co-perpetrators and as superiors in the commission of these alleged crimes.

Why is the focus of these charges starvation? I mean, given that the airstrikes, as you say, were in many ways really the focus of this war and certainly the focus of the world’s attention on this war, the civilian deaths from the military operation. Why starvation?

Karim Khan does not explain why he focuses on starvation rather than Israel’s military tactics, which he mentions only in passing. But legal experts have said that it’s easier to prove that starvation was used as a method of warfare than it is to prove that there have been any specific crimes involved in any specific airstrikes. And that’s because under the rules of war and international law, it’s not necessarily illegal in and of itself to kill civilians during wartime. If a military assesses, with the help of military lawyers, that the likely civilian death toll caused by that strike is proportional to the value of the military target, then that, in many cases, will be in accordance with the rules of war. If a military can prove that sense of proportionality, then it’s actually quite hard to prove that there was any crime committed in the process.

So in other words, military actions are often weighed quite carefully. In the case of, say, a modern military like Israel’s or the United States, there are lawyers that look at these things. It’s not necessarily so easy to prove that something was disproportionate and should be considered a crime.

Exactly. Whereas with the crime of starvation, legal experts say that it’s potentially easier to prove that there was some wrongdoing there because Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defense Minister, went on record in a public statement, and he announced that there would be a total siege on the territory of Gaza. And that was followed by an action, the action of closing off Gaza’s borders for the next two weeks, and no aid was allowed in. During that time, there were restrictions on electricity, water, fuel, as well as food. And that’s why legal experts think that Karim Khan has gone after Israel with the crime of starvation rather than focusing on their military operations.

But I suppose just thinking about our coverage, Patrick, and the conversations you and I have had, famine and starvation and a civilian population in extreme distress trapped in a small piece of territory is also not a small thing, right? That is also something that makes sense that the court would be considering.

Absolutely, it’s a huge thing. People don’t have to be hit by an airstrike to be living through an absolutely catastrophic situation.

So these charges really seem to spell bad news for Israel and for these two Israeli leaders, Netanyahu and Gallant. And it’s remarkable because these are men who, as you say, are some of America’s closest allies. I mean, they’re, you know, at the Pentagon. They’re having meetings with President Biden. And now, the chief prosecutor of the ICC is saying that they are war criminals.

Yes, it is a very dramatic moment in the view of some people, a turning point, and certainly, we can say that it is one of the harshest rebukes of Israel’s wartime conduct since October 7th.

But within Israel, there’s been a very different reaction. And it’s not all bad news for Benjamin Netanyahu.

We’ll be right back.

So, Patrick, what do Israelis make of this announcement?

Within Israel, the reaction has been very different. Whether it’s Netanyahu’s allies or his critics, there has been almost uniform outrage that the prosecutor for the ICC would make these accusations. And it means that at a time of rising domestic criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu across the political spectrum, with only a very few exceptions, everyone has rallied behind Netanyahu and Gallant. Despite the fact that Netanyahu is increasingly unpopular and even within his own government, there have been growing criticism of his wartime strategy.

For example, just two days before the prosecutor’s announcement, one of the senior members of his own wartime cabinet, Benny Gantz, issued Netanyahu with an ultimatum, warning him that he would quit the government if he did not spell out a plan for a post-war Gaza. Then, suddenly, the announcement comes from Karim Khan that Netanyahu and Gallant are under investigation. And Gantz is one of the first to come out with a condemnation of Karim Khan and a defense of the Israeli government. That is the clearest example of how even critics of Netanyahu have fallen in line, circled the wagons, and presented a united front.

This is really interesting. So this action by the prosecutor has kind of had the effect of actually closing divisions that were starting to appear in Israeli society, effectively bringing Netanyahu’s critics kind of back into his camp, or at least making it harder to criticize him.

Exactly. And Israelis, in general, feel that Israel has always been targeted unfairly, held to a higher standard than many other countries, and that this is, once again, another example of that, another example of Israel being accused of things that other countries do but get away with. And there have been broadly three criticisms from the Israelis of the ICC prosecutor.

First, the Israeli claim is that the ICC prosecutor is making a horrible false equivalence between Hamas, a terrorist organization, and Israel, a democratic state. Hamas raided Israel and launched the bloodiest attack on Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. Israel, in the eyes of Israelis, is fighting a righteous response to protect their citizens and to win back the liberty of the hostages that were captured on October 7th.

This guy is out to demonize Israel. He’s doing a hit job.

And Netanyahu himself articulated some of the clearest versions of this argument when he went on American television.

He’s creating false symmetry, false facts, and he’s doing a grave injustice to the International Court.

And he called Khan’s decision absurd, an effort to demonize Israel and to hold it to far higher standards than any other country. He said it would have been as if after 9/11 —

That’s like saying after 9/11, well, I’m issuing arrest warrants for George Bush, but also for bin Laden.

— arrest warrants had been issued for both Osama bin Laden and George Bush.

Or after, in World War II, well, I’m issuing arrest warrants for FDR, but also for Hitler. It’s a hit job. It’s not serious. He’s out to defame Israel, and he’s also pouring gasoline —

The second criticism from Israelis has been about process. The ICC was created about two decades ago by a treaty. More than 120 countries have signed that treaty, but Israel has not. And Israel contends that the prosecutor doesn’t have the authority, therefore, to go after Israeli political leaders.

Israelis also say that Khan didn’t spend enough time assessing whether Israel was itself investigating these allegations within its own judicial system. Remember that the ICC is a court of last resort. It’s only supposed to intervene when a domestic judicial system is genuinely not making any effort to investigate the alleged crime.

And Israelis are saying that Khan didn’t spend enough time investigating Gallant and Netanyahu. The ICC prosecutors have spent 10 years investigating alleged crimes committed during a previous war between Israel and Hamas, but this decision has been issued within just a few months. And Israelis are saying that Khan jumped the gun in that sense.

So the Israelis are saying, look, we’re trying to get to it, but you just didn’t give us enough time.

Exactly. And they’ve even said that Khan’s team was supposed to be coming this very week to continue that conversation and assess whether Israel was genuinely looking into these allegations by itself. And that they misled Israel by pretending that they would be making that assessment when, in fact, all along they were planning to request arrest warrants.

Interesting. So for Israeli officials, they’re seeing it as a kind of activist thing, as opposed to a neutral judicial decision.

That’s their claim, at least. The prosecutor’s office says that they have tried to sincerely engage with Israel on this issue, but that it’s become clear to them that Israel does not seriously investigate this kind of crime.

So you said, there are three elements to this. What’s the last?

The third and last element is on the content of the claim itself. Israel flatly denies that it is responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It even denies that there is a famine or that the situation is on the point of a famine. It points out all the ways in which it has worked to get much more aid into Gaza since October, including opening more crossings, allowing the US to create a pier on the shoreline of Gaza. It’s allowed some countries to airdrop aid. And certainly, the amount of aid that has gone in recent months has dwarfed the amount that was going in October and November.

And while it accepts that its soldiers have obstructed and, at times, even killed aid workers, it says that that obscures the fact that it coordinates every day in detail with aid groups to facilitate thousands of aid missions every month.

Isn’t Israel’s argument that these shipments could also include things that could be very useful for Hamas, the group that just killed 1,200 of its citizens?

Exactly. No one’s disputing, least of all Israel, that Israeli officials are examining all the aid going into Gaza. The dispute is about whether that’s necessary. Israel says it is. It says that if it didn’t check, then some of these aid convoys might be smuggling in weapons or material that could be used to fight Israel, to kill Israeli civilians. And that, therefore, Israel has no choice but to examine some of these goods going in. Again, the counterargument is that Israel’s checks are far more stringent than they need to be and end up preventing the entry of everyday items that pose no military threat.

OK, so that’s the Israeli perspective. How does the United States see the prosecutor’s request here? I mean, the US, obviously, Israel’s biggest ally.

Well, the American president, President Biden, condemned it in no uncertain terms. He said the prosecutor’s decision was outrageous. And he condemned him for drawing an implicit equivalence between Hamas and the leaders of the state of Israel.

And why did Biden come out so strongly against the prosecutor? We know that humanitarian aid has been a major concern for this administration. So why would Biden be so opposed to something that really is calling out Israel for this aid?

First of all, because Israel is a major ally of the United States, and the United States wants to show support for its ally. Second of all, they fear that this kind of criticism, this kind of intervention, will actually make Israel less, rather than more, likely to bring the war to a halt, because the feeling is that it will make Israel more defensive and in turn batten down the hatches.

The third reason is that the United States, historically, has never been a particular fan of the International Criminal Court. We mentioned earlier that Israel did not sign the treaty that created the ICC. Well, the United States did not do that either. And that’s in part because American leaders fear that having an international global court undermines American sovereignty. They think it’s the role of the American judicial system to investigate American citizens.

And there is a fear that with the United States so active militarily in many parts of the world, that membership of the court, involvement in the court could pave the way for American soldiers being tried for acting on behalf of the United States. And that could somehow dent American foreign policy goals across the world.

OK, so the United States doesn’t really like this court, you know, has troops in a lot of places, doesn’t want a court swooping in and prosecuting them when something goes wrong. But I guess the question then, in my mind, Patrick, is does what this prosecutor is doing matter? I mean, America is not a signatory. Israel is not a signatory. So why is this important?

Well, for the time being, its meaning is more symbolic than anything else. First, Karim Khan has not issued an arrest warrant. He has requested an arrest warrant for these five people. And three judges will now spend weeks and possibly months deciding whether to uphold those requests. That process can be less than a month. In the case of Vladimir Putin, it was just shy of a month. President Bashir of Sudan was issued with a warrant. That process took roughly a year.

When and if they do do that, however, there will be practical effects. If an arrest warrant is issued, it means that any country that’s a member of the International Criminal Court, in theory, should arrest any of these individuals if they enter their territory. That includes more than 120 countries all over the world, much of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and so on. Yes, it’s true that the United States and Israel are not signatories, and neither are Turkey or Qatar, two of the countries where Hamas officials spend much of their time when they’re outside Gaza. So there will still be places for officials on either side of these accusations to travel to.

But there are lots of other countries, like France, Italy, both places where Benjamin Netanyahu traveled in the past year, where, in theory, they will not be able to set foot.

So the negotiations over the war can still continue, but if Netanyahu travels to France or to Italy, he could be arrested, which is pretty wild.

Yes, at least that’s the theory. The national authorities in any given country still have to make a choice about whether they want to follow through with it.

But would those countries perhaps not arrest him out of deference to the United States?

I think the expectation is that if we got into this scenario, then someone like Netanyahu simply just wouldn’t travel to such a country. But the truth is, we just don’t really know. We are entering unchartered waters.

So this is really isolating Netanyahu in the world. Should it go forward?

Yes, isolating Netanyahu and to some extent Israel itself. And it has not just practical implications for the physical movement of Netanyahu and his defense minister, Gallant, but it also compounds Israel’s relationship with foreign allies. It complicates Israel’s ability to arm itself. More countries may grow more unwilling to sell Israel arms, or at least they’ll face growing pressure because of this decision not to do so.

And it also could force the country to become ever more reliant on the United States as it becomes more of a pariah over its actions in Gaza.

Which, of course, puts the United States in an even trickier position with an ally who’s been pretty hard to be friends with of late.

Right. And in truth, while the practical consequences of this move are still unknown, they do, in general, compound the sense that Israel is facing more and more diplomatic consequences for its actions. More than a decade ago, a former Israeli prime minister warned that Israel would face what he called a diplomatic tsunami if its conflict with the Palestinians went unresolved.

And it’s possible that years later we’re starting to finally see what he meant. Israel does still have its supporters, many of them, but we’re also now seeing during this war a level of criticism that goes above and beyond the kind that we’ve grown used to seeing directed at Israel over the years.

In addition to the warrant requests we’ve seen this week, we’ve obviously had an extraordinary wave of protests on American campuses and elsewhere in the world. And earlier this year, we had a watershed moment when the International Court of Justice began hearing accusations of genocide against Israel. And this week, several European countries recognized Palestine as a state.

So if the tsunami hasn’t yet arrived, we can at least say that the waves are getting stronger.

Patrick, thank you.

Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]

On Wednesday, the leaders of Spain, Norway, and Ireland announced that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state. The move was largely symbolic, but raised the concern that if neighboring countries followed their lead, Europe could become a counterweight to the American position that statehood for Palestinians should come only from a negotiated settlement with Israel.

Here’s what else you should know today. Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who dropped her Republican presidential bid in March, said on Wednesday that she would vote for Donald Trump but stopped short of officially endorsing him. Haley was Trump’s longest standing rival in the 2024 primary contest and had carved out an important lane for herself as the voice for voters looking for an alternative to the former president. Her decision on whether to endorse him could play a pivotal role in the race. Haley has built a formidable network of high-dollar donors and a solid base of college-educated voters that Trump needs to win.

And the city of Uvalde, Texas, has reached a settlement with most of the families of children who were shot by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in 2022. To avert a lawsuit, the city promised to overhaul the city’s police force, create a permanent memorial to the victims, and pay $2 million.

Today’s episode was produced by Will Reid and Diana Nguyen with help from Shannon Lin. It was edited by Liz O. Baylen with help from Michael Benoist, contains original music by Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

• May 29, 2024   •   29:46 The Closing Arguments in the Trump Trial
• May 28, 2024   •   25:56 The Alitos and Their Flags
• May 24, 2024   •   25:18 Whales Have an Alphabet
• May 23, 2024   •   34:24 I.C.C. Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Israeli and Hamas Leaders
• May 22, 2024   •   23:20 Biden’s Open War on Hidden Fees
• May 21, 2024   •   24:14 The Crypto Comeback
• May 20, 2024   •   31:51 Was the 401(k) a Mistake?
• May 19, 2024   •   33:23 The Sunday Read: ‘Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?’
• May 17, 2024   •   51:10 The Campus Protesters Explain Themselves
• May 16, 2024   •   30:47 The Make-or-Break Testimony of Michael Cohen
• May 15, 2024   •   27:03 The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System
• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Patrick Kingsley

Produced by Will Reid ,  Diana Nguyen and Shannon M. Lin

Edited by Liz O. Baylen and Michael Benoist

Original music by Elisheba Ittoop

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

This week, Karim Khan, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Patrick Kingsley, the Times’s bureau chief in Jerusalem, explains why this may set up a possible showdown between the court and Israel with its biggest ally, the United States.

On today’s episode

Patrick Kingsley , the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.

Background reading

Why did a prosecutor go public with the arrest warrant requests ?

The warrant request appeared to shore up domestic support for Mr. Netanyahu.

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Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. More about Patrick Kingsley

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