But fighting for six months at a time is very hard, so most Taliban take time off now and then. Beneath the Quetta shura—the leadership of the Afghan Taliban—you have the middle ranks, who can move readily to Pakistan, and from Pakistan to other parts of Afghanistan.
They tend to move a lot. Then you have a third group, the foreign fighters. These are generally Pakistanis—Waziris, for example—who have been fighting in Helmand and also in Laghman province. They come to Afghanistan to fight, then they go back to Pakistan for a few months. The current Pakistani offensive in Waziristan could push hundreds, or even thousands of fighters into Afghanistan.
As McChrystal tells it, the key element of U. Over time, the population will come to feel protected, and the insurgents will be marginalized.
So goes the plan. As I saw in Afghanistan over the summer, 20, coalition troops were unable to retake more than a third of Helmand province, which is only one of eleven provinces now under de facto Taliban control.
Imagine how many troops—and how many casualties—it would take to secure every one of those provinces, even under the most promising circumstances. And the circumstances are not so promising. In two centuries, the Pashtuns have never once desired a permanent presence of foreign fighters.
Westerners rarely understand how unpopular they are in Afghanistan due to real grievances, from smaller matters like the road-hogging conduct of NATO patrols, to the mistreatment of prisoners and the killings of relatively small, but significant numbers of civilians. In the countryside, Western countries are essentially perceived as corrupt and threatening to traditional Afghan or Muslim values.
Contrary to our self-perception, the villagers see us as the main providers of insecurity. The presence of coalition troops means IEDs, ambushes, and air strikes, and consequently a higher probability of being killed, maimed, or robbed of a livelihood. Any incident quickly reinforces the divide between locals and outsiders, and the Afghan media provide extensive coverage of civilian casualties.
In April of this year, the Afghan networks showed graphic coverage of children killed in a botched NATO air strike, with predictable effects. Very few Westerners speak a local language, and it is too much to expect soldiers carrying pound packs to have sustained contact with the population in hostile villages, where the threat of IEDs is always present.
Without local help, U. To build an army of , by would be a good result. Afghanization is a long-term process. That means any strategy implying high casualties will be politically unsustainable for the coalition. The same strategy, at a national level, and for an undetermined number of years, is politically unfeasible. What strategy should the NATO coalition pursue instead?
The Afghan army and, in certain cases, small militias must protect cities, towns, and the roads linking them together. That will reduce the number of coalition troops who get killed. And fewer casualties will buy the coalition more of the resource it needs most—time—helping it build up the Afghan security forces to the point at which they can stabilize the country and keep out al-Qaeda.
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Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center. Programs Projects Regions Blogs Podcasts. Who Are the Taliban? Gilles Dorronsoro. Summary: The Taliban are mostly local, accepted by the Afghan population. Most are basically farmers. Related Media and Tools.
Print Page. Thank you! Check your email for details on your request. Keeping an Eye on Baghdad. Top U. Instead of waiting for the Taliban to defeat the Islamic State in Afghanistan on its own, Washington should engage more proactively in an inclusive, regional strategy. A primary objective around which these countries could converge would be stemming cross-border militant movement, recruitment, alliances, and funding sources.
The Islamic State in Afghanistan first made headlines in early when the group announced itself as ready soldiers of the caliphate in the so-called Khorasan region. Not long after its official founding, the Islamic State in Afghanistan consolidated territorial control tamkin , a requirement for recognition as an Islamic State province in a number of rural districts in northeast Afghanistan.
Over time, breakaway commanders from the Taliban and other groups tried to establish similar fronts in other provinces across the country and occasionally they succeeded. For almost seven years now, the group has launched highly lethal attacks in major cities and their surroundings, targeting government personnel and institutions.
By , the Islamic State in Afghanistan was one of the top four deadliest terrorist organizations in the world. Over time though, U. The group suffered a series of visible setbacks throughout Then, at the end of the year, hundreds of fighters and their families surrendered to the Afghan government, totaling almost 1, people by the start of Many experts even began to declare that the organization had been defeated.
Despite these losses, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has managed to survive, reconsolidate, and — now — resurge. Its operational alliances with other experienced regional groups and its ability to poach members of other organizations continues to enhance its operational capacity. In the past, the Islamic State in Afghanistan also received substantial financial and logistical support from the Islamic State core leadership in Iraq and Syria.
Al Muhajir is an alleged expert in urban warfare with experience both as a Haqqani network commander and as an al-Qaeda member. His goal has been to guide the organization out of this period of relative decline first by doubling down on sectarian attacks against vulnerable minorities and then by launching a revitalized war against the Afghan Taliban.
In , then-spokesman for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, issued a damning statement decrying the Taliban that set the stage for the violence to follow.
More recently, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has updated its propaganda to defame the Taliban as collaborators of the United States.
For example, a Telegram post on Aug. Is there anything more humiliating than this?!! The continued rivalry between these two groups is firmly rooted in their incompatible agendas and goals, and serves to create space for the Islamic State in Afghanistan in an otherwise saturated militant landscape. They were primarily interested in expelling Western forces from Afghanistan and establishing a government in line with their view of sharia.
One major avenue through which the Taliban-Islamic State in Afghanistan rivalry has played out is defections. It is also too early to say if the Taliban understand they cannot rule against large parts of the population and in isolation from the international community.
This latter factor could alienate sections of the population and lead to resistance. However, there are currently no visible political alternatives inside Afghanistan. Given the lack of stable civil society institutions, which the Taliban reject, there is little chance that public protests might crystallize into a more organized form. The biggest factor is Pakistan. The country constantly supported the Taliban while always being careful to deny it publicly.
Faiz Hameed visited Kabul this past Saturday , August 4, This is significant to mention as it might be a first visible sign of the influential role Pakistan plans to have. Russia and Turkey, for the time being, have ruled out full diplomatic relations. It remains to be seen what lies behind this lack of political recognition and what possible conditions will be.
As for India, its view on Afghanistan will mostly be defined by its conflicting relationship with Pakistan baring potential for more trouble unfolding on Afghan soil. Also the tense Saudi-Iranian ties have played out in Afghanistan in the past, potentially also bringing Saudi Arabia closer to the Taliban again, although there seems to be little visible action.
Qatar is more actively involved and will potentially be a stronger Afghan player in the future. It has already sent 3 planes with humanitarian assistance towards Kabul. It also has established a good working relationship with the Taliban as host for the - now obsolete - intra-Afghan Doha talks. Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and Arab countries, all of them considered non-democratic regimes albeit in different degrees have not been surprised by the return to power of the Taliban.
They were better prepared for it than the West. The current reluctance towards full diplomatic relations with the Taliban is likely not the result of fear that this might impact their relations with the West, but as a sign that there needs to be a mutually benefitting political bargain.
Russia, Turkey and China, for example, have even been encouraged to help getting talks with the Talibans under way, or to repair the Kabul airport. Institut Montaigne. FR EN. In the News. Co-founder and co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
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