Enamullah Samangani, head of the Taliban’s Information and Culture Department in Kandahar, has expressed his views on the concept of “national” in Afghanistan, saying that under the country’s current circumstances, there is no such thing as “national.”
Samangani said that the Ministry of Defense, radio, army, and police, as well as the Pashto and Dari languages, cannot be described as “national.” Explaining his position, he added that Pashto and Dari are the two equal languages of the country.
His remarks come after Latifullah Hakimi, the Taliban’s inspector general at the Ministry of Defense, expressed a different view on the status of Pashto and Dari in an interview with Shamshad TV.
In that interview, Hakimi said that although Pashto and Dari are Afghanistan’s official languages, only Pashto can be considered the country’s national language. He added that the commonly held view that both languages are national is incorrect.
These differing positions among Taliban officials regarding the status of Pashto and Dari come amid a message attributed to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, published in 1403 (2024–25), which emphasized the need to address linguistic discrimination.
The message stated that anyone who discriminates between Persian and Pashto would be referred to a court and punished a position that emphasizes equality between the two languages.
Meanwhile, over the past three years, the Taliban have replaced Persian-language names and inscriptions on signs at a number of government offices with Pashto. The move has drawn criticism from several cultural activists.
Critics have accused the Taliban of discriminating against the Persian language, while Taliban officials have expressed differing views on the status of Pashto and Dari and on whether either language should be described as “national.”
Writer:Salima Aryaei
