Discerning Taliban 2.0 and Afghanistan’s Political Landscape

Abstract

Politically astute and organisationally deft, the Taliban forged ‘antagonistic cooperation’ with key regional players who courted the movement vigorously as it sought to reinvent itself as ‘Taliban 2.0’. However, two years into the rule of ‘Taliban 2.0’, the chasm between rhetoric and reality has widened. This article disaggregates the idea of ‘Taliban 2.0’, arguing that subtle differences notwithstanding the Taliban is an ideological movement which demonstrates a remarkable contiguity in showing fidelity to its hardline ideology manifested in its attitudes towards women, deployment of violence and links with transnational actors. Domestic political actors too stuttered in responding to the Taliban’s momentum amid a dramatically reconfigured geo-political landscape, a glaring power asymmetry, factionalism within opposition ranks and the rise of new actors like the Daesh which attempted to fill the void.

Keywords

Taliban Afghanistan politics geo-politics gender

Introduction

[T]he Afghan Taliban is an important military and political force.… We hope the Afghan Taliban will make a clean break with all terrorist organizations including the ETIM. (Wang, 2021)

Afghanistan’s neighbours were actively re-calibrating for a post-American order. Instructive in this regard was the statement of the Chinese¹ foreign minister, Wang Yi, who while playing host to a Taliban delegation two weeks prior to the collapse of the Afghan republic, etched out the impending transformation.

Similarly, Tehran’s security imperatives led it to articulate its preferred end state as early as 2019 with then-foreign minister, Javad Zarif stating:

I think it would be impossible to have a future Afghanistan without any role for the Taliban. But we also believe that the Taliban … should not have a dominant role.… We disagreed with Pakistan in the 90s when they created the Taliban … 11 of my colleagues were murdered by the Taliban, but we cannot be prisoners of the past … Iran is ready to work with Pakistan. (Zarif, 2019)

Re-alignments characterised by ‘antagonistic cooperation’² provided impetus to the Taliban’s charm offensive as it unleashed the rhetoric of ‘Taliban 2.0’, with their notorious deputy leader and current interior minister, platforming on the New York Times:

We are committed to working with other parties … to agree on a new, inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected and where no Afghan feels excluded. 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. (Haqqani, 2020)

However, the chasm between reality and rhetoric of Taliban 2.0 only widened.

Unpacking Taliban 2.0: Between Myth and Reality

They say they seek normalcy in terms of relations—acceptability, removal from sanctions, not to remain a pariah. (Khalilzad quoted in Burns, 2021)

The West is trying to make a black horse into a white horse but no matter how much they try, it [the Taliban] will not become a white horse. (Sharma, 2023c)

Zalmay Khalilzad’s narrative of a changed Taliban having ‘learned a lot’ from its past mistakes makes for a jarring contrast with that of the suave Afghan diplomat Nasir Andisha, still representing the erstwhile Afghan Republic. Such vastly contrasting narratives coupled with an ever-tightening noose around information flows³ have blurred lines between the myth versus reality of ‘Taliban 2.0’ (WION News, 2019).

The Taliban sought to jettison its image as a medieval regime anchored in a dogmatic interpretation of Sunni Islam and Pushtun supremacism (Elias, 2009). As the lethal Taliban insurgency proliferated outside Taliban strongholds, it was underpinned by conscientious efforts to draw into its clerical and military ranks members from among ethnic minorities such as Uzbeks, Turkmens, Aimaqs and Tajiks, emphasising in particular the Taliban’s ideological rather than ethnic credentials (Giustozzi & Reuter, 2011, pp. 1–2, 16). A cocktail of factors coalesced to provide momentum to the Taliban in its quest to position themselves as a pan-Afghan force. These ranged from re-activation of old networks among communities in the North, drawing on networks of clergy members educated in radical madrassas in Pakistan, corruption and apathy in the Afghan government to the excesses of NATO’s kill and capture strategy (Giustozzi & Reuter, 2011, pp. 6–13), weakening of the mujahideen tanzeems⁴ and prevalence of ‘local rivalries among MP’s and commanders belonging to different factions in Kabul and illegal mining revenues that helped feed the Taliban’ (Sharma, 2023c). This equipped the Taliban with the requisite social capital and local military knowledge that helped it calibrate a pre-emptive strike against the emergence of a resistance 2.0, capturing over 60 districts in nine Northern provinces: Faryab, Jawzjan, Sar-e Pul, Balkh, Samangan, Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan, within the first 10 days of May 2021 (Ali & Clark, 2021).

Even among Pushtuns who are perceived as dominating the movement’s rank and file, the Zadrans loom large over Taliban 2.0. Insightful in contextualising these shifts is the socio-cultural milieu in which the Taliban emerged that is captured well in two Pushtu adjectives nazde or near and lare-far. Distribution of power and forging of matrimonial ties have been shaped by proximity in terms of social status, geography and shared socio-cultural values (Sharma, 2017, p. 37). A visible manifestation of this at play was seen in February 1995 as the Taliban forces from the south marched southeast, they encountered resistance from local Pushtun commanders. Osama Bin Laden helped overcome the initial resistance of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a powerful commander in the Loya Paktia region, hailing from the Zadran tribe—traditionally far removed from vestiges of power. Notably, Haqqani played a pivotal role on holding the military front against Ahmad Shah Massoud, yet in the Taliban’s first emirate he would have to settle for the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, losing out on the powerful defence portfolio owing to ‘jealousy on part of the southerners’⁵ (van Linschoten & Kuehn, 2011, pp. 137, 149).

It was only in October 2001 in the face of an imminent US-led military assault that Mullah Omar elevated Haqqani to the position of the overall commander of Taliban forces. As the Taliban morphed into an insurgency, the influence of the Zadrans increased with Jalaluddin Haqqani finding place in the rahbari shura or leadership council that was dominated by Kandaharis (van Linschoten & Kuehn, 2011, pp. 239, 253). The Haqqanis amassed considerable power within the movement, giving rise to speculation of competing power centres. However, Jalaluddin’s son Sirajuddin Haqqani sought to sweep aside such talk:

The Haqqani Network Group is not … a name we chose. This name is used by the enemies in order to divide the Mujahideen. We are under the highly capable Emirate of the Amir of the Faithful Mullah Umar. (van Linschoten & Kuehn, 2011, p. 271)

Yet rifts continue to flare-up, underscored by brawls between supporters of Mullah Baradar and Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani as also the rare public criticism by Sirajuddin Haqqani who in a veiled attack on the Kandaharis accused them off ‘power monopolization and defamation of the entire [ruling] system’ (Gul, 2023b; Nasar, 2021). Shifting power dynamics though significant are unlikely to affect the cohesion of the movement:

Look at the history of the Haqqani’s, senior Haqqani, despite the fact that he was the most powerful person within the Hezb-i-Islami of Khalis, … stayed loyal until the end to Khalis, until Taliban came to power and then the moment, he pledged loyalty to Mullah Omar. That is exactly the template they are using now.… They are not going to go violently against their leader. They are just going to stick around and solve the problem internally. (Sharma, 2023d)

Taliban 2.0 borrowed from Taliban 1.0’s playbook in seeking to temper its image among the Shias. In 1995, as they marched towards Kabul, the Taliban stitched up an alliance with the disgruntled Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari, similarly close on the heels of intra-Afghan talks at Doha in 2020, it introduced Mawlawi⁶ Mehdi as their first Shia Hazara commander, appointing him as shadow district governor of Balkhab district, Sar-e-pul province (Ruttig, 2020).

These re-alignments, calibrated to make the Taliban palatable domestically and geo-politically with Tehran, were bolstered by a widening chasm between Washington’s geo-political interests and that of regional capitals and the belief that the Taliban would serve as a bulwark against the Daesh. The Taliban’s diplomatic offensive yielded dividends with a dozen-odd countries establishing their presence in Kabul and 14 countries having accredited Taliban diplomats in Afghan missions while withholding formal recognition. The Taliban has had 944 high-level engagements in two years since it seized power, particularly with Turkey, China, Iran and Qatar (Outlook, 2023; Zelin, 2023).

However, at the domestic level, the veneer of ‘Taliban 2.0’ is peeling off. In the interim cabinet core, power remains concentrated in the hands of the clerical Pashtuns albeit with a greater visibility of the Zadrans. It bears the stamp of a ‘victor’s cabinet’ with ‘Taliban 2.0’ discarding even the semblance of inclusivity that tinged the 2001 cabinet ‘when four-fifths of the ministers were military or civilian members of the factions that had opposed the Taleban … and [included] two women’ (van Bijlert, 2021a, 2021b).

Moreover, while the Taliban recruited aggressively in Northern and Western provinces of Afghanistan the subsequent marginalisation of non-Pushtuns is telling. Consider the weeding out of the Uzbek commander Mukhdum Alam, Tajik commander Qari Wakil and liquidation of the only Shia Hazara commander Mawlawi Mehdi who led a revolt against the Taliban.⁷ Particularly instructive is the treatment meted out to Mehdi—once a poster boy for inclusion. His categorisation as a ‘rebel’ provides us a window into understanding why it is unlikely for differences within the movement to mutate into an open revolt:

[N]o one will rebel against the supreme leader. I’m using the word ‘rebel’ cautiously because as a rebel you are subject to be killed immediately. Bagawat in Islam against the supreme leader results in your immediate death, it’s such a serious transgression. (Sharma, 2023d)

The Taliban’s response to Mehdi’s revolt also carried with it an eerie reminiscence of the past,⁸ as the crackdown against him was accompanied by large-scale reprisal killings against Hazara⁹ civilians (Gul, 2022; Pannier, 2022; Raghavan, 2022; Siddique 2022; UNAMA 2022). Prior to Balkhab, Taliban 2.0 deployed coercive strategies in Panjshir, Takhar, Badakshan, Kapisa and Baghlan in the Northeast where resistance is most intense¹⁰ (ACLED & Afghan Peace Watch, 2023; Amnesty International, 2023). These developments coupled with the eviction of thousands of Hazaras from their lands in Dai Kundi, Uruzgan, Helmand and northern Balkh provinces; surge in attacks on Shia-Hazara places of worship and education by the Daesh as well as the Taliban’s July 2023 crackdown on Muharram processions in Kabul and Ghazni reinforce perceptions of the Taliban as Pushtun supremacists and sharpen prevalent ethnopolitical cleavages (Human Rights Watch, 2022) (Etilaatroz, 2023; Kabul Now, 2023; Human Rights Watch, 2021). Such tactics will arguably be discerned against the chequered historical record of the Afghan state vis-à-vis its minorities in general and the Hazaras in particular.

These developments have cast a shadow on the blossoming relationship with Tehran¹¹ underpinned by a convergence of interests in dislodging the United States from the region, countering the Daesh, controlling narcotics and securing interests on the vexed question of water sharing. Tensions are manifesting in frequent border flare-ups the last of which over water in May 2023 snowballed into intense border confrontation. The irony of these developments has not been lost on political actors. Ahmad Massoud, drawing on a poem of Maulana Rumi, posted a cryptic tweet castigating Tehran’s policy: ‘Didn’t I tell you not to go there because I am your friend’ (Heim, 2023; Massoud, 2023). Within Tehran this has given traction to the view that ‘Iran let down the Persianised people’ thereby generating ‘strong internal pressure, if not supporting the opposition, then don’t support the Taliban either’ (Sharma, 2023d). These underlying tensions were captured on camera in an undiplomatic exchange of Tehran’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahain with his Taliban counterpart, Amir Khan Mottaqi, ‘We have been waiting for the formation of an inclusive government for 21 months’ (Abdollahian, 2023). Thus, speculation is rife that Iran has not foreclosed its options. An eminent Afghan diplomat of the former Republic and a close aide of a prominent figure in the opposition opined:

Amir Ismael Khan is in Iran … he has been speaking with a lot of ex Afghan commanders and soldiers in Iran. I believe he could rally them … and perhaps form some sort of front against the Taliban. (Sharma, 2023a)

Despite unprecedented dominance unlike in its earlier avtaar, the Taliban has struggled to contain urban crime, corruption and exercise a monopoly over violence. The Daesh sought to undermine the Taliban’s credibility by systematically targeting religious and sectarian minorities, Taliban ideologues as well as their foreign allies. Seeking to undercut the Taliban on its political turf, the Daesh has been drawing attention to the Taliban’s unsavoury deals with the United States and Beijing (Dawi, 2023; Mackintosh et al., 2023; Shinwari 2023; TOLO News 2023).

Similarly, Pakistan, which had described the Taliban’s victory as having ‘broken the shackles of slavery’, is discovering this to be a pyrrhic victory (Sharma, 2021) with debilitating consequences for Pakistan. Taliban’s return to Kabul has electrified ranks of groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who have found an enabling environment and consequently Pakistan has witnessed a 120% spike in terror attacks (Global Terrorism Index, 2023 2023; Rashid, 2002, p. 195). The Haqqanis have not delivered the TTP to the negotiating table much to the dismay of the architects of Pakistan’s Afghan policy

Pakistan made a huge mistake, investing so hugely [in the Taliban], thinking that the Taliban would listen to them.… Zabuillah Mujahid said that we signed a deal with the Americans in Qatar not with the Pakistani’s. (Sharma, 2023a)¹²

This hardly comes as a surprise given that the TTP and the Taliban¹³ are cut from the same cloth, share tribal and ideological linkages, the TTP provided safe haven to the Taliban when it fought against NATO and above all it provides the Taliban leverage over Pakistan. As the Haqqani-mediated peace talks between the TTP and Pakistan falter, attempts by the Taliban to assuage Rawalpindi’s concerns on TTP safe havens in Afghanistan by offering to re-locate TTP fighters away from the Pakistan border to the North (Gul, 2023a; Khattak, 2022) are unlikely to secure Pakistan’s interests

[D]efence minister Yaqoob said that we don’t recognize the Durand line … so-called General Mobeen has been openly threatening Pakistan … I recently saw an interview with a Taliban foot-soldier in Panjshir … he was like I am not happy because I am not a shaheed. So, he is asked is that going to happen? And he responds by saying yes it will happen because we are going to fight with Pakistan. So, they [Taliban] see Pakistan as the next big enemy and there is not an understanding of this dynamic in Pakistan.… How long can you keep these people on the leash?… It’s not only the leadership but the framework you have given them the narrative you have created. The narrative is that the Pakistani’s and particularly Punjabi Muslims in the army are bad Muslims and enemies of Afghanistan. (Sharma, 2023d)

It is this shared narrative and worldview—and a failure to fully acknowledge it—that is pertinent to situating the Taliban’s symbiotic relationship with an assortment of transnational jihadist groups (United Nations Security Council, 2023). Its unflinching commitment to ideology comes to the fore in Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the Taliban’s Chief Justices, recently published book Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance). His emphasis on the need to follow divine over man-made laws, persist with jihad until a full Islamic system has been established and his views on contemporary education¹⁴ which considers ‘immersion in modern, secular sciences as lethal’ offer insights into the milieu in which their policy decisions are steeped (Butt, 2023, pp. 11–19, 37).

Unsurprisingly, like in its earlier emirate, the Taliban has demonstrated remarkable contiguity in reneging on the pledges of respecting women’s rights. It has imposed crippling restrictions on the rights of Afghan women, implanting thus far 86 edicts, decrees, rules and instructions, effectively dismantling women’s rights and instituting a ‘gender apartheid’ (Nadary, 2023). The Taliban has rapidly redeployed violence despite announcing a general amnesty against former members of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF), officials of the former government,¹⁵ women and journalists (ACLED & Afghan Peace Watch, 2023). Ramped up diplomatic engagement and the eclipse of the political and military landscape has strengthened its resolve to this end. This throws up the question of alternatives to the Taliban? What are the opportunities and challenges before it?

Wither Resistance 2.0?

Resistance is the nom de guerre of everyone here. RESISTANCE. (Saleh, 2021)

Amrullah Saleh’s defiant statement on 3 September 2021 provided surreal hope to some of a moqawamat-e do or a ‘second resistance’ to the Taliban. Armed resistance largely coalesced around the National Resistance Front (NRF) headed by Ahmad Massoud—son of Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud—comprising remnants of the ANDSF. However, three weeks since the fall of Kabul, on 6 September 2021, the Taliban captured Panjshir¹⁶ with Massoud and Saleh fleeing to neighbouring Tajikistan and the NRF claiming a ‘tactical retreat’ to the sub-valleys (Chaturvedi, 2021; Wheeldon, 2021).

In a position of overwhelming and unprecedented dominance, the Taliban squandered away the opportunity to engineer ‘sustainable peace’ through fidelity to their hardline ideology and narrow socio-political base, yet the opposition has struggled to capitalise on this.

Opposition has primarily taken two forms. First is the conventional armed resistance, comprising a dozen-odd armed groups, drawing on mujahideen tanzeems that opposed the Taliban 1.0 and members of the ANDSF. However, they are faced with a power asymmetry given the Taliban’s control over a vast cache of arms and other battlefield equipment worth an estimated $7 billion left behind by NATO. Further, the opposition controls no territory and unlike the 1990s, it is confronted with a reconfigured geo-political canvas, tinged by a convergence of interests between the Taliban and key regional players.

Where is the external support?… For any insurgency to succeed in Afghanistan you need the kind of situation which existed for the Taliban vis-à-vis. Pakistan and that was unique.… Yes Massoud was kept going, but he was only kept going! That’s the closest parallel one can draw and Massoud had people in the field. He had a militia; he had an armed organization. Right now, there is nothing. (Sharma, 2023e)¹⁷

In fact, a cursory glance at insurgent movements around the world ranging from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, Rwandan Patriotic Front in Africa, Karen National Union in Thailand; Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam in Sri Lanka, Palestinian Liberation Organization in the Middle East to the TTP in Pakistan reveals that all these actors confronted a power asymmetry in waging violence against state authorities. Yet many of them managed to impose costs and extract concessions from a much stronger adversary owing to external support and sanctuary, which considerably raises the moral, material and political costs of intervention for state actors who are geographically bound while reducing the costs of organising violence for non-state actors. Empirical data on insurgent groups since 1945 reveals that 55% of insurgent groups operate extra-territorially (Salehyan 2009, pp. 3–7)

Starved of foreign patronage and an external base the armed opposition has stuttered. Notably despite the proclamation of a spring offensive, data compiled for the first six months for 2023 registers a drop in combat engagements between the Taliban and the armed opposition groups compared to the same period last year (ACLED & Afghan Peace Watch, 2023). However, this could change as none of the neighbours have foreclosed the possibility of re-alignment seen for instance in Dushanbe hosting an armed opposition with Moscow’s blessings and the changing tone of rhetoric from Tehran, Rawalpindi and Moscow off late. But the flight of leaders has damaged morale and underscores the systematic weakening of the tanzeems

President Ghani … made the tanzeems quite weak, most of them were looking for money or privileges … opposition groups lost their momentum during and not after the republic.… If you as commander of an opposition group don’t have presence in Afghanistan … like Amrullah Saleh for example living in Australia but writing tweets encouraging people to fight. If you cannot send in your own son to fight on the frontline, how can you expect the son of a farmer or the son of a causal citizen of Afghanistan to go and fight? See doctor saheb, this is the problem, even during the republic and now! When Ahmad Massoud, Saleh go to the frontline that will be the momentum then people will start standing. (Sharma, 2023a)

Compounding the challenge is the fact that figures associated with the opposition carry an unsavoury legacy of corruption and nepotism, casting a shadow on its credibility. Moreover, decades of conflict characterised by prolonged period’s grotesque violence have induced war weariness among Afghans. The exasperation comes across palpably in the words of an eminent Afghan diplomat and a close associate of a well-known tanzeem leader

[T]he scandals coming out of their family and how they are misusing donations,… controlling it [NRF] as a private sector.… And just look at the scandals of Ahmad’s uncles.… He is drunk 24 hours and then all he does is he has set up a lavish office in Tajikistan employing 10–15 people … giving them salaries and doing nothing! So how would I as an ordinary Afghan citizen perceive it? Of course, I feel bad … it’s not possible for me to support these people. You know Ahmad’s uncle killed somebody in Dushanbe while he was driving drunk, and Ahmad paid a lot of money to the Tajik government to hush up the case … someone close to Ahmad was caught smuggling a large quantity of drugs from Afghanistan into Tajikistan and Ahmad again had to intervene. So how can you expect people to support them?

In stark contrast to the Taliban, armed opposition groups lack a cohesive organisational structure, seminal to mobilise, organise and coordinate and they are plagued with factionalism and political ineptitude

I am calling always for unity. I don’t know from the other side there is nothing coming back … they don’t respond … so we go our own way. (Sharma, 2023f)¹⁸

Thus, opposition demands for a political platform of a nature given to the Taliban in Doha have found few takers. The Daesh seeks to capitalise on opposition weakness, mounting a security and ideological challenge to the Taliban

[D]efeat is not losing any piece of land to the kuffar. Rather defeat is to give up or compromise the foundations of the Religion.… The Murtad Taliban shamelessly entered this coalition with America in order to show their loyalty to the Kuffar. (The Voice of Hind 1441, p. 10)

Prevalence of ethno-centrism in Taliban ranks has not been lost on the opposition. While the NRF¹⁹ has tried to craft an anti-fascistic narrative, taking up issues such as ‘gender apartheid’, rule of law and accommodation of socio-political diversity through creation of federal structures. The Daesh is making concerted efforts to recruit from ranks of disgruntled Sunni ethnic minorities. Taking cue from the Taliban, the Daesh ramped up its propaganda, disseminating its message in multiple languages spoken in Afghanistan. It portrays the Taliban as having abandoned the Sharia in favour of ‘tribal laws in order to please the local communities’ and kills local Tajiks and Uzbeks. It also cleverly plays on sectarian cleavages contrasting Taliban 1.0 under Mullah Omar as a destroyer of places of shirk and kufr in contrast to Taliban 2.0 which has developed a ‘soft corner for the apostate regime of Iran and their Shia brethren by protecting the places of shirk and kufr for their nationalist interest’ (Weber, 2022). Estimated to have 1,000–6,000 fighters, the Daesh has unleashed a wave of deadly violence, with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributing the majority of the civilian casualties since August 2021 to the Daesh. The Taliban’s heavy-handed crackdown on Salafi communities in Eastern Afghanistan (Human Rights Watch, 2022) perceived as a receptive breeding ground for the Daesh is only antagonising communities (Parker, 2022; United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 2022; United Nations Security Council, 2023).

In stark contrast to the armed opposition stands the second category of opposition, that is, the non-violent resistance by Afghan women in the face unbridled use of force, arbitrary arrests of women, detention, torture, rape, killings and enforced disappearances (Amnesty International, 2022).

I truly believe if there is one opposition against the Taliban it’s the women of Afghanistan … imagine that a few women who are not being supported by anybody, but they have the courage to take to the streets to raise their voice … despite all the challenges, constraints and restrictions that these women have had inside Afghanistan I believe that the resistance has been quite successful. For me the biggest achievement of the resistance has been that the Taliban has not been recognized even by their closest ally Pakistan until now. (Sharma, 2023a)

The significance of women’s opposition protests has not been lost on opposition groups with ALM claiming to work with ‘many Afghan women’ (Sharma, 2023f) and the NRF espousing the cause of Afghan women and instituting a women’s council. This is striking when contextualised in light of the policies pursued by the mujahideen tanzeeems when they seized power from the communists in 1992.

Conclusion

The Taliban has demonstrated remarkable deftness and organisational finesse in adapting to the changing geo-political canvas. However, the idea of a Taliban 2.0 is a misnomer. It remains an ideological movement and its recalibrations are rhetorical rather than substantive. The armed resistance to the Taliban suffers from fundamental weakness and has been easier to target through the use of asymmetrical force. It is the women’s resistance which the Taliban has found harder to grapple with. The weakness of the first and strength of the second category of resistance tells us much about the changing social and geo-political contours and should direct policy makers to revisit avenues and actors towards whom interventions could potentially be canalised.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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