Recent reports—including the BBC’s shocking report from Ghor province, the self-immolation of an engineer in Kabul, and repeated accounts of people selling kidneys—have laid bare a human catastrophe that pains the heart of every Muslim. In some cities, long lines of people searching for work, hunger, and poverty have become a tangible reality. Others, crushed by destitution and debt, have been forced to sell their young daughters in order to save the lives of other family members. UNDP Reports indicate that three out of every four people in Afghanistan cannot meet their basic living needs, and more than ten percent of the population is on the brink of famine.

The Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir / Wilayah Afghanistan stresses that the roots of this crisis lie not only in drought or the cutoff of foreign aid, but in unhealthy economic structures and the continuation of the republic-era economic mindset and capitalist based economics policies. Current officials describe the existing poverty as the result of the collapse of the “artificial economy” of the past twenty years; but this justification does not conceal the bitter reality of the absence of fair wealth distribution.

Afghanistan is not a poor country in terms of resources. This land has vast mineral reserves, agricultural land, water, a strategically important geographic position, a young workforce, and significant productive potential. The core problem is not a lack of resources, but the absence of a system that manages these resources on the basis of justice, transparency, and Sharia-based responsibility.

Today, economic resources, administrative posts, and job opportunities are largely monopolized by a limited set of circles and the rulers’ affiliates, while mineral extraction—carried out without transparency or fair competition—has concentrated wealth in the hands of specific groups. This is the very logic of the capitalist system: instead of securing people’s essential needs, it focuses on the superficial growth of the economy and on the “market”—a market that accumulates wealth in the hands of a small minority and drives the majority into ruin.

Our argument, based on Islam, is clear:

In Islam, poverty is an individual’s inability to secure basic needs—such as food, clothing, and shelter. A system’s inability to provide these needs means its economic policies have failed.

The economic problem is not a lack of resources, but the unjust distribution of wealth. A successful economy is not measured by the volume of production or the increase in state revenues; rather, its real success is measured by its ability to distribute wealth and secure the basic needs of every individual.Islam obliges the state to ensure that wealth reaches every individual, whereas the current state has failed both to build a productive economy and to distribute wealth fairly.

In the Islamic system, if someone is unable to work, or if no opportunity to work is made available, meeting that person’s needs is first the responsibility of close relatives and then the responsibility of the Bayt al-Mal (public treasury), that a father should be forced to sell his own child simply to pay for a child’s treatment or to buy food is evidence of a collapse in responsibility on the part of both state and society.

Major mines of gold, oil, and gas are “public property”, and their revenues must be spent on the welfare of the people—not placed at the disposal of private companies, belligerent states, or specific circles of power. The current approach is, in reality, nothing but the organized plundering of the Ummah’s wealth.

The current rulers of Afghanistan must understand that pragmatic stopgap approaches, imposing heavy taxes on poor people, and pinning hopes on projects and aid from colonial states cannot fill the empty stomachs of the poor and the orphans. The path to salvation is a complete break from the remnants of the republic’s economic thinking and the policies of capitalist economics, and a return to Islam’s economic system under the Rightly Guided Caliphate—an order founded on justice, human dignity, and the sound distribution of wealth, which does not treat poverty as a natural condition but as an exceptional situation that must be eradicated.

[وَمَنْ أَعْرَضَ عَن ذِكْرِي فَإِنَّ لَهُ مَعِيشَةً ضَنكًا]

“And whoever turns away from My remembrance [i.e., the Sharia’s solutions, as framed in the text] will indeed have a life of hardship and constraint.” [Ta-Ha: 124]

Press Release

Widespread and Structural Poverty in Afghanistan: The Result of Failing to Implement Islam’s Economic System—And the Persistence of the Republic-Era Economic Mindset

(Translated)

Recent reports—including the BBC’s shocking report from Ghor province, the self-immolation of an engineer in Kabul, and repeated accounts of people selling kidneys—have laid bare a human catastrophe that pains the heart of every Muslim. In some cities, long lines of people searching for work, hunger, and poverty have become a tangible reality. Others, crushed by destitution and debt, have been forced to sell their young daughters in order to save the lives of other family members. UNDP Reports indicate that three out of every four people in Afghanistan cannot meet their basic living needs, and more than ten percent of the population is on the brink of famine.

The Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir / Wilayah Afghanistan stresses that the roots of this crisis lie not only in drought or the cutoff of foreign aid, but in unhealthy economic structures and the continuation of the republic-era economic mindset and capitalist based economics policies. Current officials describe the existing poverty as the result of the collapse of the “artificial economy” of the past twenty years; but this justification does not conceal the bitter reality of the absence of fair wealth distribution.

Afghanistan is not a poor country in terms of resources. This land has vast mineral reserves, agricultural land, water, a strategically important geographic position, a young workforce, and significant productive potential. The core problem is not a lack of resources, but the absence of a system that manages these resources on the basis of justice, transparency, and Sharia-based responsibility.

Today, economic resources, administrative posts, and job opportunities are largely monopolized by a limited set of circles and the rulers’ affiliates, while mineral extraction—carried out without transparency or fair competition—has concentrated wealth in the hands of specific groups. This is the very logic of the capitalist system: instead of securing people’s essential needs, it focuses on the superficial growth of the economy and on the “market”—a market that accumulates wealth in the hands of a small minority and drives the majority into ruin.

Our argument, based on Islam, is clear:

In Islam, poverty is an individual’s inability to secure basic needs—such as food, clothing, and shelter. A system’s inability to provide these needs means its economic policies have failed.

The economic problem is not a lack of resources, but the unjust distribution of wealth. A successful economy is not measured by the volume of production or the increase in state revenues; rather, its real success is measured by its ability to distribute wealth and secure the basic needs of every individual. Islam obliges the state to ensure that wealth reaches every individual, whereas the current state has failed both to build a productive economy and to distribute wealth fairly.

In the Islamic system, if someone is unable to work, or if no opportunity to work is made available, meeting that person’s needs is first the responsibility of close relatives and then the responsibility of the Bayt al-Mal (public treasury), that a father should be forced to sell his own child simply to pay for a child’s treatment or to buy food is evidence of a collapse in responsibility on the part of both state and society.

Major mines of gold, oil, and gas are “public property”, and their revenues must be spent on the welfare of the people—not placed at the disposal of private companies, belligerent states, or specific circles of power. The current approach is, in reality, nothing but the organized plundering of the Ummah’s wealth.

The current rulers of Afghanistan must understand that pragmatic stopgap approaches, imposing heavy taxes on poor people, and pinning hopes on projects and aid from colonial states cannot fill the empty stomachs of the poor and the orphans. The path to salvation is a complete break from the remnants of the republic’s economic thinking and the policies of capitalist economics, and a return to Islam’s economic system under the Rightly Guided Caliphate—an order founded on justice, human dignity, and the sound distribution of wealth, which does not treat poverty as a natural condition but as an exceptional situation that must be eradicated.

﴿وَمَنْ أَعْرَضَ عَن ذِكْرِي فَإِنَّ لَهُ مَعِيشَةً ضَنكًا﴾

“And whoever turns away from My remembrance [i.e., the Sharia’s solutions, as framed in the text] will indeed have a life of hardship and constraint.” [Ta-Ha: 124]

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir

in Wilayah Afghanistan