Who controls the data, controls the future: AI in Afghanistan | Alireza Hussaini

In this episode of Afghanistan in Review, the question was direct: can artificial intelligence meaningfully address Afghanistan’s crisis, or are we projecting hope onto a tool we barely govern?

Alireza Hussaini, founder of gandomai.com, was cautious from the outset. “At the end of the day, AI is a tool,” he said. “You can use it either in positive or negative way.” For him, the core of Afghanistan’s crisis is not technological but political. “The main or the fundamental problems of Afghanistan are political rather than technical.” That distinction matters. Technology does not operate in a vacuum. It reflects power.

And power, in Afghanistan, is already using AI.

Alireza pointed to “90,000 CCTV cameras in Kabul” and warned that such infrastructure is not neutral. “They already use it for surveillance, already use it for operation,” he said, adding that biometric databases and social media manipulation are no longer theoretical risks. “They are using it a lot.” In a system without transparency, data becomes leverage. “More than infrastructure,” he argued, “the issue is how you’re going to govern your data.”

Yet the conversation was not dystopian. It was strategic.

For Alireza, ignoring AI would repeat historical mistakes. “We have this chance to join this transformation and be part of it and define our role in it,” he said. “Or we can ignore it. Then it means another 100 years that we will still stay backward.” His warning was not rhetorical. Afghanistan missed the Industrial Revolution. Missing the AI revolution, he implied, would compound that gap.

On education, he rejected simplistic solutions. AI cannot replace the social fabric of school. “When we are going to school, it’s not only about learning math,” he said. “We are learning life competencies.” At the same time, access to information is transformative. “Now we have access to any kinds of information… That’s the biggest game changer for us.”

Perhaps his most striking concern was digital identity. “I’m afraid that we lose our digital identity,” he said, referring to Afghan Persian and Pashto dialects underrepresented in global models. Without investment in local language models, Afghanistan risks invisibility in the AI era.

His final appeal was directed at the diaspora. “If we really think to make AI something that should be really helpful for Afghanistan, we have to work on something collectively.” Not slogans, but systems. Not hype, but infrastructure.