Understanding the Taliban for what it is

 

While it is undeniable that the Taliban subscribe to an ideology, they are also playing cynical politics

A realistic assessment of the circumstances in which it has to operate should have induced the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to follow a moderate course. Instead, it has sent out unmistakable signs of a preference for extremism. A peculiar state of mind is almost certainly in play, but to ascribe the dissonance solely to this factor would be a mistake.

The Taliban’s obduracy

Afghanistan desperately needs financial assistance from the international community. This is not only because of the looming food crisis, which could push lakhs of people to the brink of starvation within weeks. Donors will probably provide food aid in time. But the government has no money to pay salaries or get the machinery moving.

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Before the U.S. shut shop in mid-August, it is estimated to have taken care of 80% of public expenditure in Afghanistan. Several billion dollars worth of Afghan government funds have now been frozen by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Other donor countries and the International Monetary Fund have also cut off the flow of finance. Russia, Iran and the Central Asian republics cannot pick up the slack; China believes in loans, not grants; and Pakistan is a near basket case. The only source of revenue that the authorities in Kabul can hope to tap is customs payments and a good part of those could be siphoned off by the militias that control border check posts.

Western countries are not likely to recognise the Taliban regime as the legitimate government — a necessary condition for the loosening of purse strings — unless it fulfils three conditions: Kabul will have to ensure that terrorist groups do not find sanctuary in Afghanistan; the rights of women and minorities must be protected; and the government must be inclusive. But judging by the first steps they took after taking over, the Taliban seem untroubled by these demands or the consequences of non-compliance. In forming a cabinet, the Taliban defiantly signalled that they were inclined to lead their country back to the despotism they had imposed during their earlier stint in power. Hardline Pakhtoons control most ministries, other ethnicities have only token representation, and women have been excluded. Indications about how this lot would rule soon followed. The Education Ministry ordered male teachers and students back to secondary school but made no mention of women educators or girl students. Working women were told they must stay at home until proper systems are in place to ensure their safety. There is no longer a Women’s Ministry; the Taliban have brought back the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They have banned protests that do not have their approval.

Minor concessions on the demand for inclusiveness of non-Pakhtoons are not likely to satisfy the world or the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Ministry formation has added another hindrance to the flow of funds. Many in the cabinet figure in the UN’s sanctions list and the U.S.’s terrorism list. The U.S. may even impose sanctions on other countries who provide aid to this Cabinet.

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Given these apparently insurmountable hurdles, why have the Taliban displayed such obduracy? A sensible course would have been to show compliance, obtain recognition in order to establish diplomatic ties and get the funds flowing. Revival of the hardline could have been postponed until the regime’s position as a legitimate entity had been secured. Other governments would have found the rupturing of ties more difficult than withholding recognition from the outset.

A hotchpotch of militias

The general belief is that the Taliban are fanatically devoted to a pre-modern world view. This narrative is designed to embed in the world’s consciousness the idea that the young Talibs form the core of this enterprise and are such strong believers in whatever they have been taught that they will turn against their political leaders if there is any deviation from the world view and policies they espouse. The story goes that any compromise by the elders or nominal superiors will drive these young Talibs to join the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP).

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It is time to call this bluff. Young Talibs, whether drawn from the villages or the refugee camps, are probably all true Muslims and most might have some respect for their mullahs. But they are not as unexposed to the world as the generation preceding them. According to reports, they have had no inhibitions in posing for photographs or listening to music, activities frowned upon by the strictly conservative. The earlier generation of Talibs might have respected Osama bin Laden for sacrificing a life of luxury to join the jihad. But that did not motivate them to join al Qaeda even though bin Laden made an oath of allegiance to their revered leader, Mullah Omar. After all, there were no Afghans among the 19 militants associated with 9/11. If that was the case in the heyday of jihadism, there seems to be little reason to think that these young men will now drift towards the IS-KP. Are the extremists who have cornered the plum posts in the cabinet likely to make common cause with the IS-KP if they are thwarted from implementing their policies? They do subscribe to an ideology that is a mix of Pakhtoonwali (the old tribal code) and a paternalistic interpretation of the Shariah. Devotion to the cause did not prevent them from diverting aid meant for refugees to investments in the Gulf and luxury housing in Quetta. They are certainly conservative and ruthless. But their proclamation of intent to establish a system based on their own interpretation of selected Islamic texts appears nothing more than cynical politics.

Overall, the impression sought to be created is that the Taliban movement is an extremist-controlled monolith and unstoppable. Actually, the Taliban are a hotchpotch of militias, which are constantly repositioning themselves in relation to one another. Designations such as Defence Minister have little meaning when the army no longer exists, and Mullah Yaqoob has full control only over the men raised from his locality. Other militias co-opted to serve with his men could drift away over time. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has gained possession of the intelligence dossiers in his Interior Ministry, and who has the power to appoint governors, might be the only real winner here. Resistance to his appointment might have been a factor that led Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed to intervene directly in Afghan’s ministry formation. Haqqani’s ascendancy certainly advances Pakistan’s agenda. But the road ahead is fraught in Afghanistan where fault lines run every which way. Pakistan knows that it faces a tough task inside the territory of its western neighbour. Meanwhile, it seems intent on garnering what benefits it can. In prompting its protégés to be intransigent, Pakistan can present itself before the world as the only entity capable of controlling the crazies.

Kesava Menon 

Source: The Hindu, 4/10/21

Who are the Taliban? Part 3: Why Taliban is not going to find it easy in second coming

 

The ability of challengers to pose a forceful and unified opposition will determine how the Taliban preserves control and presents themselves to the public, both in terms of leadership and policy

Every year, Afghanistan observes ‘Massoud Day,’ a national holiday in honour of Ahmad Shah Massoud, known to his supporters as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud was a legendary guerrilla commander who defended his home province of Panjshir from the Soviets so successfully that the Wall Street Journal described him as “The Afghan Who Won the Cold War.” When the Taliban started their ascendence into Afghan politics in 1994, Massoud publicly denounced the group, citing his opposition to their interpretation of Islam and regressive value system. He later created and led the famed Northern Alliance, a diverse coalition against the Taliban that at one-point controlled territories housing over 30 per cent of Afghanistan’s population. The man who is believed to have said “we will never be a pawn in someone else’s game,” stood his ground when all other resistance leaders fled the country.

On September 9, 2001, two days before Al Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers, Massoud was assassinated. Later, reports emerged that he had been killed on the orders of Osama Bin Laden who wanted to curry favour with the Taliban thereby ensuring safe haven in Afghanistan after 9/11. Despite the remoteness of its location, Massoud’s funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. He is remembered not just for his military tactics but also for his ability to bring together ethnic groups that centuries of rulers had failed to unite. The people of Panjshir Valley continue to fight the Taliban even today.

For centuries, foreign and domestic leaders have tried to conquer Afghanistan but failed to suppress the strong will of its people. If history is any precedent, the Taliban, while likely to take power, are also likely to struggle to retain it. Given their lack of governance experience and any discernible policy there are three main challengers to Taliban rule, namely, the Afghan government and security forces, foreign nations, and other competing groups. The ability of those challengers to pose a forceful and unified opposition will subsequently determine how the Taliban preserves control and presents themselves to the public, both in terms of leadership and policy.

The Afghan Government

Democracy in Afghanistan is contingent on the Afghan government’s ability to resist the onslaught of the Taliban. Based on their performance thus far, proponents of a democratic system have reasons to be pessimistic.

According to Vanda Felab-Brown, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, “the government and security forces are not just losing to the Taliban, they are giving up to them altogether.” When the Americans began the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Taliban controlled under 20 per cent of the country. Today, a little over two months later, they control over 54 per cent. Unsurprisingly, the collapse of organised resistance to the group has also hampered the progress of inter-Afghan peace talks. With little leverage, the Afghan government has struggled to elicit any significant concessions from them.

In January 2019, the Taliban chief negotiator, Abbas Stanekzai, said any peace agreement would require the dismantling of Afghan security forces. By July, the group instead announced that thousands of Taliban fighters would join the Afghan security forces after the withdrawal of US forces. To some, that’s an indication of moderation, to others, an indication of how little the group has to fear from existing state institutions. Falling in line with the latter, Felab-Brown believes that inter-Afghan peace talks will only meaningfully begin once the government manages to present a sustained military opposAfghan rulers for their part seem to accept the inevitability of their position. While never openly admitting defeat, statements from key officials indicate a willingness to share power with the Taliban. After meeting with Joe Biden, Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s current President, declared that he has called on the Taliban “to engage in a political process because a political settlement is the ultimate mechanism of ending the war.” Quoting Abraham Lincoln, he went on to assert that “the best way of treating an enemy is to turn him into a friend.”

Unlike Lincoln, however, Ghani has little military leverage and even less support from elements within his country. Hamid Karzai, a former President who is still politically very influential, took Ghani’s statements even further. In a thinly veiled display of contempt for his successor, Karzai stated in an interview with The Hindu that while he hopes for a continuation of democracy in Afghanistan, he also accepts that there is no way forward without the Taliban.

However, while the government may not be able to resist the group’s rise to power, it does have some mechanisms to keep them in check. The Taliban is still reliant on the government to provide basic services and Afghans who lament the corruption of government officials still depend on them for education and healthcare. According to Felab-Brown, “if there is a road to be built, the Taliban will order people to build the road. But if there is a hospital that needs to be built, equipped, and staffed, the Taliban are reliant on the government and international actors stepping in.” She asserts that while the Taliban are adept at providing swift justice and maintaining stability, they have “no technical capacity to organise social and public services themselves.” Additionally, the Taliban are still heavily dependent on foreign aid and need to stay in the good graces of the internationally backed government to ensure that those lines of funding remain open.

Given this complicated situation, observers retain some hope that the Afghan government can force the Taliban to accept a power-sharing agreement. This would include some sort of preservation of the existing political order, including provisions for elections and basic human rights. Ideally, it would result in the Taliban agreeing to cede power at the national level, while continuing to provide de facto governance to the provinces under their control. Essentially, in Felab-Brown’s opinion, the government (and most international observers) hope for an outcome resembling the deal in Colombia with FARC in 2016. However, she concludes that such an agreement is unlikely as “the Taliban have made it clear that they don’t want to share power with Ghani” and “any change in the balance of power would require a significant degradation of Taliban military facilities.”

Foreign Nations

Since the nineteenth century, Afghanistan has been bankrolled by a series of foreign powers from the British to the Russians to the Americans today. The US currently provides Afghan forces with $3 billion in aid annually. Moreover, international non-profits contribute strongly to the functioning of Afghan social services although exact monetary details remain unknown.ition to the Taliban.

In comparison, according to the UN, the Taliban generate anywhere between $300 million and $1.6 billion annually through various criminal activities including extortion and drug trafficking. Hypothetically, if the Taliban upsets the international community either by committing massive human rights violations or by supporting terrorism, there is a good chance that the US will ramp up funding to opposing groups and non-profits will withdraw funding for basic services. Perhaps more significantly, the Taliban will also risk isolating themselves from international trade. A combination of these three factors could subsequently result in the collapse of the Afghan economy and the end of Taliban rule.

For those reasons, most experts agree that the Taliban need international legitimacy to function. Based on the group’s attempts to form relations with the governments of India, China, Russia, and the US, it would seem like they too concur with that assessment. The Taliban clearly do not want to exist as a pariah state like they did in the 1990s but it is still uncertain what they would have to do to invoke international condemnation. Realpolitik maintains that countries can and should act in their own national interests. New Delhi may not like the idea of a Taliban-led Afghanistan, but it would like the idea of an Afghanistan solely under Pakistan’s orbit even less. The US similarly might not agree with the Taliban’s stance on women’s education but is also unwilling to dedicate any more time and resources into a prolonged ground conflict.

In an interview with Indianexpress.com, Carter Malkasian, a former advisor to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “many countries have shown a willingness to deal with the Taliban as a necessity. We don’t know whether that will prove to be a good or a bad decision.” That calculus would change in the event of a terrorist attack being launched from Afghan soil. This red line over terrorism however could send the unintended message that barring interacting with terrorists, the Taliban can do what they’d like without having to worry about international interference.

This is akin to the situation with NATO in which the group provided memberships to certain countries but by excluding others, gave Russia the green light to invade them. On this point, Dipali Mukhopadhyay, Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, worries that the Taliban is capable of pushing the limits. “If they believe that they can get away with a lot as long as they do not allow, on paper, for a terrorist attack to be launched from Afghanistan, they will go for the most maximalist political position they can achieve.”

Ultimately, according to Malkasian, there are three ways in which the international community could interact with the Taliban. If the group supports extremism or interacts with terrorists, they would immediately be shunned and/or penalised, and no country would recognise them. If they continue as they are, countries will agree to do business with them but fail to formally recognise them. In the third scenario, which is contingent on significant internal reform of the Taliban, countries will recognise the group and continue to funnel resources into Afghanistan.

With this assessment in mind, the Taliban will have to decide how important international legitimacy is to them and how much they stand to lose or gain from it. On the surface, the third scenario is the optimal one, but the Taliban have historically functioned best as an insurgent group. For over two decades, they have derived their raison d’etre from being a bulwark against foreign oppression. In their mind, scenario one may cost them economically, but would provide fodder for masses by giving the Taliban an external enemy to blame for the country’s woes.

Other groups

Currently, according to Felab-Brown, the biggest challenges to Taliban rule are the power brokers across Afghanistan. Although fractured and often unorganised, local militias have considerable influence over certain regions along with the military capacity to defend their territory. In an ideal situation, those militias would band together as they did, to an extent, under the Northern Alliance. But Massoud’s achievement in putting the alliance together is remarkable because of how difficult it has been to get different factions to work together in the past.

Pashtuns, Uzbeks and Tajiks along with the countless other ethnic groups that make up the country have their own ideologies, beliefs and loyalties. Moreover, over the last decade, the Taliban has shown a willingness to accommodate those groups, shifting from being an entirely Pashtun organisation to being only a predominantly Pashtun organisation. Even if this inclusion is just for show, according to Felab-Brown, the Taliban “have been remarkable in terms of how they have managed to avoid deflection”. The biggest deflection she notes has been the Islamic State and they are not influential enough to mount a meaningful resistance to the Taliban.

Collectively, the militias have made limited headway. They have attempted to come together with President Ghani to form a national unity council against the Taliban, but progress has been hampered by internal power competition. Individually, there has been considerably more headway with individual militias backed by Iran and Russia resisting the advance of the Taliban in the North. Some reports even indicate that a new Northern Alliance is being formed under the leadership of former Vice-President Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum.

However, the Taliban have been better than the government at securing the loyalty of militias according to a report from the Brookings Institute. It states that the Taliban have been intensely negotiating with powerbrokers both in Pashtun strongholds in the South but also with Tajiks and minority politicians in the North. This strategy has been effective as of now, but Malkasian thinks  in the long term it could be undermined. “The Taliban have a commitment problem” he says, noting that “groups that are being included in the Taliban ranks have no reason to trust the Taliban or to believe that they will continue to be tolerant once they are in power.”The efficacy of local militias in resisting the Taliban will depend on public support for their cause. The Taliban are accepted in some conservative parts of the country but are deeply unpopular in others. Particularly in the Northern states and provincial capitals, young and educated Afghans oppose Taliban rule.

As a result, Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the powerful Taliban ally, the Haqqani network, like many other Taliban spokesmen, has recognised the need to appeal to popular sentiment. In an op-ed for the New York Times, he states that the Taliban will have to transition from being a “military and jihadi” movement into one that is capable of civilian governance. For that, he writes, the group will have to “behave well with the general public”. Haqqani understands that if the Taliban fail to govern effectively or are plagued by internal discord, they could struggle to hold many of the territories that they’ve gained by force.

“As soon as the Taliban are forced to present a governing project and political vision” says Mukhopadhyay, “the sooner the weaknesses in the group are exposed.” Given that the Taliban already allow for differences in policies depending on the cultural values of certain regions, it is possible that implementing a unified political vision will cause fissures within the group. Returning to public opinion, if the Taliban are unpopular in certain regions, especially the big cities, and are subsequently weakened internally by that unpopularity, the public could conceivably resist their rule. According to Malkasian, “even if the Taliban capture cities like Kabul, resistance against them can still continue.” Overthrowing them, however, may not be as plausible, especially given the Taliban’s strict control over the media and access to the internet.

If the militias do successfully challenge the Taliban it could result in a prolonged civil war across the country. This would in turn destabilise the economy and potentially provide a pathway for groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda to exert control. As mentioned before, this is the most likely outcome but also the least desirable one. Afghan security forces challenging the Taliban could result in some sort of quasi democracy in which elected officials hold minor positions. Foreign intervention and public opinion could force the group to moderate some of their harshest tendencies and could enable a patchwork of different policies across the country. However, challenges from the militias in comparison can only lead to further conflict. Given the plethora of ideologies the different militias espouse, they are almost incapable of providing a uniform system of governance and according to Malkasian “are unlikely to be able to take over and play the role that the Taliban have played.” Perhaps even more concerningly, Mukhopadhyay warns that “while the militias do represent a line of defence against the Taliban, their own value systems threaten the democratic progress that has been made.”

Source: Indian Express, 6/08/21

Who are the Taliban – Part 2: Will there be changes on the ground?

 

On the surface, several Taliban officials have indicated a willingness to moderate their position on matters such as education. But how the Taliban will govern will likely depend on the degree of resistance they face from the Afghan people.

From 1919 to 1929, Afghanistan was ruled by a progressive monarch known as Ghazi Amanullah Khan. Initially popular for winning the Third Anglo-Afghan war which gave Afghanistan independence from the British, Khan signalled the beginning of his reign by embarking on a series of reforms aimed to modernise the country. In 1923, he promulgated a new constitution that gave all ethnic communities equal rights and ended the long-standing practice of caste-based slavery. He also created schools for both boys and girls, established trade relations with the West, abolished strict dress codes for women and banned practices such as polygamy and child marriage.

In response to these changes, Khan faced two major uprisings during his rule. The first, in 1924, originated in the conservative South, allegedly over a marriage dispute, and was quelled only after mass bloodshed. The second, in 1928, originated in the combative North, in response to Khan’s wife Soraya and several other women removing their veils during a Grand Assembly of Tribal Leaders. Khan’s opponents, bolstered by the unrest caused by Soraya’s demonstration, set out to overthrow the king. To gain public support, they distributed pictures of Soraya in low-cut gowns, and got 400 clerics to issue a religious fatwa against Khan for violating Islamic values. Soon after, Khan abdicated the throne and fled to Europe where he died three decades later. Subsequent national leaders took note of Khan’s missteps and whenever they proposed any significant cultural changes, they ensured that they implemented those changes in a gradual manner.

Amanullah Khan’s reign tested the limits of modernity in Afghanistan and exposed the schism between reform and culture that exists even today. While 20 years of democratic rule may have whet the appetite of progressive Afghans, the Taliban’s all but certain return to power is rooted not just in fear and violence but also in this cultural divide that permeates the country. Many Afghans espouse conservative values and either see some merit in the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law or, at least, are willing to accept some of the group’s limitations when faced with a choice between them and the corrupt Afghan Government. Currently, people living in districts controlled by the Taliban have witnessed a return to many of the policies that characterised the late 1990s and according to Ali Yawar Adili, a researcher based out of Kabul, several basic freedoms in the country are being threatened. “The Taliban are imposing many restrictions,” he says, “and people are bound by those restrictions because they know that there will be consequences if they don’t comply.”

How the Taliban will govern is unknown but will likely depend on the degree of resistance they face from the Afghan people. Many in Afghanistan, mostly the young and relatively liberal, do not accept Taliban rule, but whether they value their freedoms enough to resist it will be the true test of cultural change.

On the surface, several Taliban officials have indicated a willingness to moderate their position on matters such as education. Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of the Taliban Supreme Leader’s main deputies, in an op-ed for the New York Times argues a similar point. He writes: “I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity.”

Additionally, Taliban representatives in Doha told their US counterparts that they do not intend to reimpose the strict regulations that were once enforced by the group’s Ministry for the ‘Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.’ A Crisis Group report also allows for this possibility, cautiously speculating that the Taliban may recognise women’s right to education and employment while still insisting on segregating schools and workplaces. This, in turn, would mitigate pushback towards the Taliban from foreign nations and the potential withholding of key developmental aid. However, these changes, the report notes, would still be more restrictive than Afghan government policies and often falls short of human rights standards. Most importantly, it clarifies that “while such thinking may be current in some Taliban circles, it has yet to be cemented into formal Taliban policy.”

How the Taliban makes policy

According to Abdul Basit, a researcher at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, “there is no document that articulates the Taliban’s vision for Afghanistan.” The group has rejected Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution but has never articulated their own, deliberately refusing to commit to any policies “because they don’t want to be held accountable.” Instead, the Taliban govern in a reactionary manner, maintaining their core Islamic beliefs but allowing for flexibility in implementation depending on external pressures.

This is largely because the Taliban are at their core, an insurgency group that derives purpose from having a common enemy – whether that be the Mujahideen or the US forces. Dipali Mukhopadhyay, Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, elaborates on the shortcomings of having such an identity. She asserts that there is a fundamental difference between being an insurgency group or governing as a rebel group, which the Taliban do in many districts, and being a legitimate governing entity. “So far they have been agents of disruption and destruction,” she says over a phone call with Indianexpress.com, “and that’s very different from constructively creating a political order that people will accept.”

In response to this uncertainty, several experts and organisations have attempted to speculate how the Taliban makes policy. One such report from the US Institute of Peace (USIP) states, “the Taliban make and approve policies based on three core factors: security, political ramifications and regional suitability. Many policies cut across all areas of concern, meaning that a mix of military, civilian and religious actors all shape policy making within the movement.” It goes on to note that “although the Taliban leadership might like to present a more organised, hierarchical picture of governance, policymaking in practice has been at least as much bottom-up as it has been top-down.” Vanda Felab-Brown, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, concurs with this assessment, stating that “a lot of the rules vary with different commanders – there is no uniform set of rules as such.” Furthermore, given that the Taliban courts function under Islamic law which is subject to considerable interpretation, there is no justice system either that would create any form of policy standardisation.

This flexibility in governance is best represented in the Taliban’s educational policy for girls. In her 2003 bestselling novel, Norwegian author Åsne Seierstad, paints a horrific picture of the lives of Afghani women under the oppressive rule of the Taliban. While she alludes to certain institutional constructs that formulate behaviour (students being taught math in terms of bullets, guns and infidels for example,) more interesting was her portrayal of complex community structures in which ideals rooted in patriarchy and misogyny took precedence in even the more seemingly liberal of households. While the eponymous bookseller Sultan Khan is undoubtedly the antagonist of the novel, his wives and children are all portrayed as active participants in a constant cycle of oppression that blurs the lines between victims and perpetrators. In Seierstad’s account, women are seen as a distinct and more often than not, lesser entity in Afghanistan regardless of who occupies the echelons of power. Sexism then is a byproduct of culture not politics, with rules created in accordance with local customs. In Afghanistan, districts that are culturally more progressive tend to have provisions for the education of girls, either through non-profits or state institutions, even when those districts are controlled by the Taliban.

To understand the cultural differences in Afghanistan, one must understand its myriad of different ethnicities and how each of them settled, suffered, and prospered over the course of the country’s history. That itself is a monumental task, but in short, the areas dominated by the Taliban, ones which espouse a more rigid and conservative culture, also tend to be those in which there is a strong Pashtun majority. South and East Afghanistan for example has long been a Taliban stronghold, largely due to its shared border with Pakistan and the largely nomadic lifestyle of the Pashtun tribes occupying the area. It is also worth noting that the Taliban is a Pashtun group and has favoured its own ethnic kin at the expense of other groups. Conversely, the Tajik areas of the country – mainly in the North have long opposed the Taliban. The Tajiks benefited from proximity to the Persian Empire and by extension, advanced Persian culture. As a result, 14 of Afghanistan’s 20 largest cities are in Tajik dominated areas and they tend to be socially more liberal than other parts of the country. Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens and Aimaks make up a smaller percentage of the Afghan population and are neither as pro-Taliban as the Southern Pashtuns or as anti-Taliban as the Northern Tajiks. How public opinion varies according to these regional and cultural differences is the key determinant of how they would be governed under the Taliban.

How public opinion is reacting to Taliban’s policies

Taking the example of girl’s education, the first thing to note is how the landscape has changed since 2001. According to a report by the Human Rights Watch, “since 2002, in cities under Afghan government control,Patricia Gossman, an Associate Director at the Human Rights Watch, and one of the authors of that report put those figures into context during a phone conversation with indianexpress.com. “Education was the poster child for the intervention,” she states, “however, the gains were unevenly distributed, with urban areas tending to benefit far more than rural parts of the country.” Furthermore, “since 2014, corruption within the Ministry of Education, biases in supporting girl’s schools, entrenched conservatism and rising insecurity made it very hard for girls to go to school.” So, in urban areas, and areas free from conflict, more girls have been enrolled in schools over the last two decades, causing a mindset shift amongst many communities. According to Gossman, “this is especially because younger members of the family, the brothers and so on, persuade the reluctant fathers and grandfathers to accept change.” In rural areas and Taliban strongholds, the shift is less pronounced but still significant.

The Human Rights Watch report highlights these differences, noting that in areas like Kunduz and Logar (in the North and East respectively,) schools for girls are allowed to operate whereas in certain districts within the Helmand province in the South, girl’s schools do not exist at all. This, according to a Taliban spokesman interviewed for the report, reflects regional differences. He says, “we have to take into account local norms. We cannot impose from the top. We are working to change peoples’ minds.… The Kunduz province is different from Helmand—we cannot establish the same rules and guidelines for all of Afghanistan. It has to be done in a case-by-case manner until the whole country is under our control.”

There is some truth to that statement, but by and large, Afghan’s are willing to allow women greater freedoms today than they have been in the recent past. According to a 2019 survey by the Asia Foundation, while 99 per cent of Afghans still favour women dressing conservatively, 86 per cent also believe that women should have access to education. However, that statistic requires some clarification because while there is acceptance for basic education, only 38 per cent of men think that women should have the same educational opportunities as they do. That pattern is true in Taliban controlled areas as well. Typically, according to the USIP report cited earlier, under the Taliban, girls are “allowed to go to school until the sixth grade when the community advocates for it; when they don’t, girl’s schools are closed.”

Adili, the researcher based in Kabul, disagrees with this conceptualisation though. He states that “this urban-rural divide is a myth” as women in rural areas “want their children to have access to education, healthcare and freedom of movement” much like women in urban areas do, they just often don’t have the means to advocate for it. Gossman reinforces Adili’s claim, pointing out that even in progressive districts, with the Taliban, “there isn’t much negotiation on human rights issues, you kind of just accept it.”

Currently, areas under Taliban control are not as strictly governed as they were in the 1990s although it is ambiguous whether that is because the group are, for whatever reason, more moderate now, or whether they are waiting to seize power entirely before reimposing the draconian policies of the past. For some people however, all these questions are irrelevant altogether. According to Mukhopadhyay for one, “the differences in regional governance are just at the margins, in the sense that the overall goal of the Taliban is still to establish an Emirate and to marginalise everyone else at the expense of that Emirate.” millions of girls have gone to school.”

Written by Mira Patel 

Source: Indian Express, 30/07/21

Who are the Taliban – Part I: From hardliners to moderates, is there a generational shift?

 Under the watchful eye of the Shawali family, locked in the Kirka Sharif Shrine in Kandahar, lies the sacred cloak of Muhammad. Believed to have been worn by the Prophet, this cloak was brought to Afghanistan by Ahmad Shah Durrani who founded the country in 1747. From the old king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, to its current President, Ashraf Ghani, many Afghan leaders have sought legitimacy and guidance in the presence of Muhammad’s cloak. However, only one, Mullah Omar, has ever dared to wear it.

According to a legend, in 1996, when Omar removed the cloak from the shrine and donned it in front of a large crowd, several people fainted, while others feverishly chanted ‘Amir al-Mu’minin’ or ‘Commander of the Faithful’. In that moment, Omar became the undisputed leader of the Holy War and soon after, bolstered by public support, went on to conquer most of the country as the Emir of a radical insurgent group known as the Taliban.

In February 2020, the Taliban and the US Government struck a deal in Doha that committed the US to withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban to abstain from attacks on the US forces. Notably, that deal did not impose any significant frameworks for how the Taliban would operate within the current Afghan political system nor did it specify any guidelines for how they should govern in terms of human rights and democratic values.

Since the US began the process of withdrawal, the Taliban have made enormous strides, conquering 221 of Afghanistan’s 320 districts and fighting for control over an additional 113, as per the Long War Journal, a website that tracks the battles. The group is thought to be stronger in numbers than at any point since they were ousted in 2001 – with up to 85,000 full-time fighters according to recent NATO estimates.

“It is striking to me how fast the Afghan Security Forces are crumbling, the Taliban are dramatically on the march and the speed at which they are taking over is traumatic,” Vanda Felab-Brown, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, described the situation bluntly in a conversation with Indianexpress.com.

History of the Taliban

The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan, following the removal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It was a predominantly Pashtun movement that first appeared in religious seminaries mostly paid for by Saudi Arabia. Preaching a hardline version of Sunni Islam, the Taliban spent half a decade fighting for control over Afghanistan, promising to restore stability in the country by ruling it in accordance with Islamic law. By 1998, the Taliban were in control of almost 90 per cent of Afghanistan. Ordinary Afghans had grown weary of the infighting amongst the Mujahedeen following the departure of the Soviets, and initially welcomed the Taliban, seeing them as a force against corruption, lawlessness and conflict.

However, as time went on, the group’s single-minded commitment to Sharia law, harsh social policies and ruthless delivery of justice undermined their early popularity. Under the Taliban, women were no longer allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied while men were forced to maintain a certain beard length. Music, dance and television were banned from society. Punishments for those who violated Taliban rules were public and severe. Adulterers were savagely beaten in front of their families, thieves had their hands chopped off and in one particularly gruesome incident in 1996, 225 women were rounded up and lashed for not adhering to the Taliban’s strict dress code.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a NATO coalition led by the United States invaded Afghanistan and rapidly ousted the Taliban from power. In its place, the US established an Interim Afghan government, which ‘elected’ Hamid Karzai as its leader. Since then, Afghanistan, at least on paper, has remained a democracy. The Taliban meanwhile went back to their roots as an insurgent group, fighting battles across rural Afghanistan to wrestle back control from US troops and the Afghan Security Forces. It remains an insurgent group today. With the Taliban gaining ground once again, all of that may soon change. In light of these shifts, many may be wondering who the Taliban actually are; who are their leaders now, how are they different from the old Taliban, what are their policies and what is the likelihood of them retaining power in the long-term.

Carter Malkasian, a former advisor to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who spoke to Indianexpress.com via telephone, borrows a phrase from the recently-deceased American politician Donald Rumsfeld to summarise the situation. For Afghan citizens as well as foreign observers, the Taliban represents a “known unknown” and who they are and what they represent is anyone’s guess.

In order to understand the Taliban, it’s worth noting the conditions under which they were overthrown. Despite what many may believe, the Taliban was never strongly aligned with Al Qaeda before 9/11. After the attacks, US President George Bush issued the group an ultimatum – hand over Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden or be prepared to face the consequences. Mullah Omar, the cloak wearing founder of the Taliban, and its leader at the time, vehemently refused. When asked why by Rahimullah Yusufzai, one of the few journalists who ever interviewed him, the reclusive, one-eyed, Omar cited the tradition of Pashtun hospitality. “I don’t want to go down in history as someone who betrayed his guest. I am willing to give my life, my regime. Since we have given him refuge I cannot throw him out now.”

This staunch adherence to religion, custom and culture, however misguidedly interpreted, is what defines the Taliban. Throughout their brief period of rule, and long period of insurgency, it is the one thing that has remained constant. Internally, the group is dominated by hard-line religious scholars and despite shifts in public opinion and a changing world order, the Taliban are unlikely to deviate from their core doctrine. The Taliban are bound by religion and according to Ali Yawar Adili, a researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network based out of Kabul, the people under their control are in turn “bound by fear and terror,” circumstances that make it hard for them to resist the group’s dominance.

Internal structure of the Taliban

As mentioned, Mullah Omar was the founder of the Taliban and remains till date it’s longest serving leader. After the coalition entered Afghanistan, Omar went into hiding, spending 12 years reportedly residing near a US military base in the southern province of Zabul. Omar is said to have died in 2013, although his death was not reported until 2015. According to Malkasian, “very few people in the Taliban had heard about it and I don’t know anybody outside the Taliban who knew.” This secrecy around Omar’s death, in Malkasian’s opinion, perfectly encapsulates the extent to which the Taliban keeps its internal governance private.After Omar, Mullah Akhtar Mansour led the group, but his short reign was marred by an alleged internal leadership crisis in which Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of Omar, rejected his appointment. In 2016, only one year after taking over, Mansour was killed by a US drone strike and Hibatullah Akhundzada, the head of the Taliban’s Islamic courts, took his place.Like Omar and Mansour, not much is known about Akhundzada. According to Malkasian, Akhundzada has never appeared on television and there are very few photographs that exist of him. His deputies, on the other hand, are relatively more prominent. His first deputy, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the powerful head of the Haqqani network, a US-designated terrorist organisation with strong ties to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda. His second deputy, Mohammad Yaqoob, enjoys a strong following within the Taliban for his connection to Omar and recently replaced Ibrahim Sadr, a prominent field commander, as the head of the Taliban’s military affairs.

Several experts, including Antonio Giustozzi, a Taliban expert with the Royal United Services Institute in London, believe that Yaqoob is part of a more moderate faction of the Taliban along with Mullah Abdul Baradar who represented the group during the Doha negotiations with the US. Unlike Akhundzada, who reportedly issued most of the Taliban’s fatwas, Yaqoob and Baradar are thought to be less rigid and willing to favour a negotiated end to the conflict.Prominent politicians in Afghanistan also seem to be willing to negotiate on behalf of the Taliban. Along with the group’s foreign spokesperson Suhail Shaheen, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai has spoken for the group internationally. Shaheen said in early July that he considered China to be a friend of Afghanistan and after meeting with Karzai this July, the Russian envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, stated that he believed the “Taliban were ready for a compromise.” Indian officials have also been in contact with the Taliban, although it is unclear whom exactly they spoke with. This tacit international recognition of the Taliban by other countries gives them valuable credibility and legitimacy on the global stage. Although it is worth noting that despite this relative thawing of diplomatic relations, the most prominent members of the Taliban remain highly controversial and the international community continues to view them as being affiliated with terrorism, extremism and fundamentalism.

The New Taliban

In part, due to the appointment of Yaqoob and Baradar, several publications have pointed to the emergence of a ‘new’ Taliban. One which is more moderate and structured than the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Alluding to this, a recent report from the International Crisis group states, “as the Taliban have grappled over the last decade with the imperative to govern and provide services to civilians who have come under their influence, they have gradually adjusted some of their harshest stances on education, modern technology and media consumption – albeit to a degree that remains more restrictive than most Afghan government policies and often falls short of international human rights standards.”This relative moderation, according to the United States Institute of Peace, extends to areas such as education, healthcare and criminal justice. In a 2019 report, the organisation states that in an attempt to avoid the foreign policy mistakes of the 1990s, in which the Taliban was recognised only by Pakistan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the organisation, under Mansour attempted to reform its external image. Along those lines, after 2014, the Taliban “regularly met in the Gulf States with UN officials to discuss measures to mitigate civilian harm and broaden humanitarian efforts.” The report adds that fighters on the ground had also established “workable (if heavily coercive) relationships with state and NGO actors in the education and health sectors” and had taken a more liberal stance on issues like women’s rights.In interviews and publications, some Taliban leaders have even admitted to this shift, suggesting that in the past, the organisation was known as an insurgent group, not one that was expected to govern. As a result, they claim the Taliban never had a central doctrine and was therefore sometimes inflexible with their policies. Reports from the ground indicate that there are now provinces ruled by the Taliban in which women are allowed to go to school and leave the house unaccompanied by a male guardian. However, those freedoms are generally confined to areas that are culturally more liberal and are largely a by-product of the Taliban allowing its commanders to dictate local policy.Abdul Basit, a researcher at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, who spoke to Indianexpress.com over the phone, addresses the idea that the Taliban has become more moderate but was generally sceptical of how that would play out in reality. Noting that the ‘new’ Taliban “have engaged in suicide attacks and fought side-by-side with Al Qaeda” he argues that “the concessions that they have made in the name of moderation is only for public consumption.”

When asked about the group’s push to include more Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras within their ranks, Basit was reserved in his assessment. Despite this public demonstration of change, he believes an inclusive Taliban is still one in which its members adhere to a strict religious doctrine. Basit does acknowledge the shift however and speculates that the moderate Baradar is most likely to be the face of the Taliban in order to appease the West. Ultimately though, he says, “I wouldn’t use the word moderate to describe any element of the Taliban. There are hardliners and less hardliners in the organisation.”

Cultural changes, greater foreign scrutiny and the need to integrate Afghanistan into the global economy will likely dictate some of the Taliban’s prospective policies. However, whether they return to their rigid Islamic policies from the 1990s or adopt a surface-level form of pluralistic theocracy along the lines of Iran is yet to be seen. What is almost certain however, is that the Taliban must and will rule in accordance with Islamic doctrine. It is a core part of their identity and more importantly, it’s the only justification they have for existing at all.

Written by Mira Patel 

Indian Express, 22/07/21