As the Afghan Taliban regime recently completed five years in power, Afghanistan remains far from stable despite this relatively long period, while chaos, uncertainty and frustration have grown significantly among Afghans. Nevertheless, there are certain quarters within Afghanistan that claim that had the Afghan Taliban not been in power, the situation would have been far worse. However, at the moment, the situation remains extremely difficult in Afghanistan, with panic, uncertainty and a deep sense of insecurity prevailing across the country.
It may be recalled that the Afghan Taliban forced their way back into power on August 15, 2021, as the militia’s troops entered the capital Kabul and the regime of elected President Ashraf Ghani collapsed. The Afghan national army, comprising more than 300,000 soldiers, also collapsed like a house of cards within no time. This paved the way for Afghan Taliban forces to establish their second regime after their ouster by the United States-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in November 2001, within a couple of months of the 9/11 attacks on the US mainland by Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden and hosted by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Importantly, although the Taliban forced their way back into power in 2021, this was only possible after the militia signed a peace agreement with Washington in Doha in February 2020. Under the agreement, the US agreed to withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2021, after almost 20 years of military intervention and presence in the country. Under the Doha peace accord, the Afghan Taliban had agreed that they would establish a broad-based interim government in Afghanistan that would provide a roadmap for the future governmental dispensation in the country.
However, the Afghan Taliban clearly reneged on their promise of forming an interim, broad-based government representing all regions and ethnic groups of Afghanistan. Instead, the Afghan Taliban, which calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (EIA), declared itself the “interim” regime, claiming that it has representation from all parts of Afghanistan. This is clearly a misstatement on the part of the militia.
The Afghan Taliban, since their emergence in Afghanistan in 1994 after their leaders and fighters studied at madrassas in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, have, to all intents and purposes, remained a predominantly Pakhtun group. There may have been a minuscule presence of Tajik and Uzbek militants and a few commanders within the fold of the Afghan Taliban, but the group, in essence, has remained an ethnically Pakhtun movement. This has also been one of the fundamental reasons that the Afghan Taliban regime has been providing extensive support to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, which almost entirely comprises Pakhtun fighters and which Islamabad has designated as Fitna-tul-Khawarij (discord or strife caused by seceders or rebels).
In fact, it was the TTP that provided critical support to the Afghan Taliban during their insurgency against the elected Afghan governments of President Hamid Karzai and President Ashraf Ghani, which were indubitably supported by the US-NATO military presence in Afghanistan. The TTP did so mainly because of its belief that the Afghan Taliban were their co-ethnic brothers. Significantly, Pakistan also last year openly declared that it considered both the Afghan Taliban and the TTP to be part of the same militant phenomenon. There is considerable substance in this argument because the TTP has always considered the founder of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, and his successors as its spiritual and operational guides.
Thus, the Afghan Taliban could not fulfil the promise they made to the international community and, above all, to the Afghan people that there would be a broad-based, representative interim regime that would pave the way for another such government, but only after determining the process and procedure, obviously with at least some democratic elements, to put Afghanistan on the track of stability, reconstruction and development.
Although the Afghan Taliban have been doing their utmost to stabilize and develop Afghanistan, many of their efforts have failed to produce the desired results. The regime may have carried out some civil works and created a somewhat business-friendly environment in Kabul, but these measures have not been enough to address the multiple economic, political and social woes confronting most Afghans.
For instance, according to estimates by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), nearly three out of four Afghans, or around 74 percent of the population, struggle to meet their basic living needs. In other words, around 28 million people face severe economic hardship and subsistence insecurity. Keeping these statistics in view, all claims made by the Taliban regime and its apologists in Pakistan or elsewhere appear to be naïve and disconnected from the realities facing ordinary Afghans. One would therefore like to offer them sincere advice that they should not be carried away by religious sentiments alone and must keep the ground realities in perspective while supporting the regime in Kabul.
Another very important promise made by the Afghan Taliban in the Doha Accord of 2020 was that they would not allow Afghan soil to be used against any other country. This effectively amounted to an admission of the mistake committed by their founder, Mullah Omar, by providing support and sanctuary to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose organization carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Significantly, the Taliban had also assured Afghanistan’s neighbours that they would not permit terrorist groups to operate from Afghan territory. However, the consistent, extensive and seemingly unending support of the Kabul regime to the TTP, which has carried out massive attacks inside Pakistan over the last four years, suggests that these Taliban promises have not been honoured.
Apart from Pakistan, the presence of groups such as Al Qaeda, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Jamaat Ansarullah of Tajikistan poses significant security concerns for Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries and points towards the Afghan Taliban’s inability, and in some cases apparent unwillingness, to rein in these groups.
Against the backdrop of the above situation, the strengthening of resistance to the Afghan Taliban from three major groups, including the National Resistance Front (NRF), led by Ahmad Massoud; the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF), led by General Yasin Zia, a former Afghan Army Chief of Staff, deputy defence minister and intelligence official; and the United Front of Afghanistan (UFA), led by former General Sami Sadat and commander of Afghan Special Forces, should not come as a surprise.
In the coming days and months, the Afghan Taliban are likely to face growing resistance from these groups. It is important to note that together these groups claim to have carried out at least 15 attacks on Taliban positions across nine Afghan provinces in just one week at the end of July and the beginning of August, claiming that around 30 Taliban members were killed.
The attacks were reported in Badakhshan, Kunduz, Baghlan, Kabul, Faryab, Ghor, Herat, Kandahar and Helmand. Noticeably, the Afghanistan Freedom Front, the United Front of Afghanistan and the National Resistance Front each claimed responsibility for attacks in different parts of the country in which several Taliban members were allegedly killed.
So far, these groups have not come together on a common platform. However, if they were to join hands and coordinate their activities, this could mark the beginning of another major phase of armed conflict in Afghanistan. Such a development could potentially have serious consequences not only for Afghanistan but also for the entire South Asian region, particularly Pakistan and other neighbouring states. The possibility of renewed instability, refugee flows, militant activity and cross-border insecurity makes the evolving resistance to the Taliban a development that cannot be ignored.