AFGHANISTAN : Fighting Rages as Taliban Besiege Three Key Cities

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 (a) Fighting rages as Taliban besiege three key cities (msn.com)ng rages as Taliban besiege three key cities (msn.com)

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      Fighting Rages as Taliban Besiege 

                    Three Key Cities

Fighting is raging around three major cities in southern and western Afghanistan as Taliban militants seek to seize them from government forces.  

© EPA Fighting is reported to be taking place in a number of locations in Herat

Taliban fighters have entered parts of Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar.

They have made rapid gains in rural areas since it was announced almost all foreign troops would go by September.

But the fate of these key cities could be crucial amid fears of a humanitarian crisis and how long government forces will be able to hold out.

The fundamentalist Islamist militia is already thought to have captured up to half of all Afghanistan's territory, including lucrative border crossings with Iran and Pakistan.

• Mapping the advance of the Taliban in Afghanistan

One MP in Kandahar told the BBC the city was at serious risk of falling, with tens of thousands of people already displaced and a humanitarian disaster looming.

Gul Ahmad Kamin said the situation was getting worse hour by hour, and the fighting within the city was the most severe in 20 years.

He said the Taliban now saw Kandahar as a major focal point, a city they want to make their temporary capital. If it fell, then five or six other provinces in the region would also be lost, Mr Kamin said.

© EPA Thousands have been displaced in Kandahar, amid fighting between the army and the Taliban

He said the Taliban fighters were on several sides of the city and because of the large civilian population government forces would not be able to use heavy weaponry if the militants got fully inside.

• EXPLAINER: Life in Afghanistan after America leaves
• ANALYSIS: Was 20 years in Afghanistan worth it?
• BACKGROUND: Who are the Taliban?

In Herat, a Tolo News reporter said clashes had intensified, with Taliban fighters entering southern parts of the economically important city.

There are reports of fighting in at least five different locations.

The US is still carrying out air strikes to support the Afghan forces, who have recaptured a district around the airport.

A guard outside a UN compound near the airport was killed on Friday in what the UN described as a deliberate Taliban attack.

Residents say few places in the city are safe and some people are taking up arms to defend themselves.

Ismail Khan, a former commander who fought against Soviet forces in the 1980s, has launched an armed movement to try to defend the city.

In Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern province of Helmand, insurgents are reportedly still within 2km of the city centre, although government forces had succeeded in holding back an advance overnight.

The commander of Afghan forces said the militants had suffered significant casualties.

Local sources told the BBC the Taliban had advanced close to the governor's office on Friday before being forced back.

'Islamic Emirate'

The EU's special envoy for Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson, said he believed the war was set to get much worse.

He told the BBC's chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, that he feared the Taliban way of thinking now was "something they had in the past - re-establishing... their Islamic emirate".

And the former head of the British Armed Forces, Gen David Richards, warned the international withdrawal could result in the collapse of the Afghan army's morale, leading to Taliban control and possibly a renewed international terrorist threat.

Humanitarian organisations have also warned of a major crisis in coming months as the Taliban continue their offensive - with a lack of food, water and services, and overcrowding in camps for the displaced.

© BBC

US troops and their Nato and regional allies forced the Taliban from power in November 2001.

The group had been harbouring Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures linked to the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

But despite a continued international presence, billions of dollars of support and training for the Afghan government forces, the Taliban regrouped and gradually regained strength.

In February 2020, then-US President Donald Trump and allies agreed to formulate a deal with the Taliban on the withdrawal of international combat forces.

This year, President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal would take place by September.

TALIBAN : Who are the Taliban – Part 2 of 3 Parts

SOURCE: 

(a)https://indianexpress.com/article/research/who-are-the-taliban-part-i-from-hardliners-to-moderates-is-there-a-generational-shift-7416339/

 (b) https://indianexpress.com/article/research/who-are-the-taliban-part-2-what-will-be-taliban-policy-on-the-ground-7429118/ 

(c)

____________________________

Part I : WHO ARE TALIBAN- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-i.html

Part 2: WHO ARE TALIBAN- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-2.html

Part3 :  WHO ARE TALIBAN-https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-3-of-3.html

 SOURCE: 

(a)https://indianexpress.com/article/research/who-are-the-taliban-part-i-from-hardliners-to-moderates-is-there-a-generational-shift-7416339/

 (b) https://indianexpress.com/article/research/who-are-the-taliban-part-2-what-will-be-taliban-policy-on-the-ground-7429118/ 

(c)

____________________________

Part I : WHO ARE TALIBAN- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-i.html

Part 2: WHO ARE TALIBAN- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-2.html

Part3 :  WHO ARE TALIBAN-

Backgrounder

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           Who are the Taliban – Part 2

                       Will there be changes on the ground?

 by Mira Patel 

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.

July 30, 2021

Afghanistan is a country in permanent pursuit of equilibrium. Bound to its religion, constrained by its culture and fractured by its past, Afghanistan today is the legacy of an eternity of chaos, infighting and foreign occupation. With the Americans gone, the government in disarray and the Taliban on the rise, Afghans must once again adapt to changing circumstances. This three-part series will explore those changes and attempt to decipher the new political reality.

Part one will look at the current leadership structure of the Taliban and how the organisation is intrinsically linked to the concept of a theocratic state.

Part two will address how Taliban rule will impact the Afghani people and how the progression or regression of human rights will be linked to differing cultural sensibilities across the country.

Part three will introduce the challenges to Taliban rule, examining how Afghanistan’s history of conflict indicates the probability of continued oscillation in leadership.

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.

 Ghazi Amanullah Khan (Wikimedia Commons)

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.

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

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, millions of girls have gone to school.”

                         Afghan girls at school (Wikimedia Commons)

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.”

TALIBAN : Who are the Taliban – Part I of 3 Parts

 SOURCE: 

(a)https://indianexpress.com/article/research/who-are-the-taliban-part-i-from-hardliners-to-moderates-is-there-a-generational-shift-7416339/

 (b) https://indianexpress.com/article/research/who-are-the-taliban-part-2-what-will-be-taliban-policy-on-the-ground-7429118/ 

(c)

____________________________

Part I : WHO ARE TALIBAN- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-i.html

Part 2: WHO ARE TALIBAN- https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-2.html

Part3 :  WHO ARE TALIBAN-https://bcvasundhra.blogspot.com/2021/07/taliban-who-are-taliban-part-3-of-3.html

Who are the Taliban – Part I

: From hardliners to moderates, is there a generational shift?

by Mira Patel

Since the US began the process of withdrawal, the Taliban have made enormous strides, conquering 221 of Afghanistan’s 320 districts. (AP photo)

As the Taliban gain ground, districts across Afghanistan are being ruled by force and fear. But for many international observers and Afghans on the ground, who the Taliban actually are remains a mystery

July 22, 2021 

Afghanistan is a country in permanent pursuit of equilibrium. Bound to its religion, constrained by its culture and fractured by its past, Afghanistan today is the legacy of an eternity of chaos, infighting and foreign occupation. With the Americans gone, the government in disarray and the Taliban on the rise, Afghans must once again adapt to changing circumstances. This three-part series will explore those changes and attempt to decipher the new political reality.

Part one  will look at the current leadership structure of the Taliban and how the organisation is intrinsically linked to the concept of a theocratic state.

Part two  will address how Taliban rule will impact the Afghani people and how the progression or regression of human rights will be linked to differing cultural sensibilities across the country.

Part three  will introduce the challenges to Taliban rule, examining how Afghanistan’s history of conflict indicates the probability of continued oscillation in leadership.

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.

Former Taliban fighters line up to handover their Rifles to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan during a reintegration ceremony at the provincial governor’s compound in 2012. (Wikimedia Commons)

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.

 Mullah Omar (Wikimedia Commons)

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.

Two women walk past the huge cavity where one of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, known to locals as the “Father Buddha,” used to stand, June 17, 2012. (Wikimedia Commons)

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.”

Taliban walk as they celebrate ceasefire in Ghani Khel district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan June 16, 2018. (Reuters)

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.

After Mullah 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

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.

Read |A look at India’s investments in Afghanistan

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.

Members of a Taliban Red Unit in Laghman Province, Afghanistan, March 13, 2020. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times/File)

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.

This November 2011 photo shows Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. It took only two months for US invaders to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, a seemingly tidy success against a government that had given refuge to the 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. (AP)

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.”

From left, Suhil Shaheen, Mawlawi Shahabuddin Dilawar and Mohammad Naim, members of a political delegation from the Afghan Taliban’s movement, arrive for a news conference in Moscow, Russia, Friday, July 9, 2021. (AP)

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.

Also read |Danish Siddiqui, Reuters chief photographer, killed in Afghanistan

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.

Supporters of the Taliban carry the Taliban’s signature white flags in the Afghan-Pakistan border town of Chaman, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The Taliban are pressing on with their surge in Afghanistan, saying Wednesday that they seized Spin Boldaka, a strategic border crossing with Pakistan — the latest in a series of key border post to come under their control in recent weeks. (AP)

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               [basically SHIAS] 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-levelform of pluralistic theocracy along the lines of Iran is yet to beseen. What is almost certain however, is that the Taliban mustand will rule in accordance with Islamic doctrine. It is a core partof their identity and more importantly, it’s the only justificationthey have for existing at all.