Kingshuk Chatterjee

The curious case of the recent brief disappearance of Abdul Ghani Baradar from Kabul, amidst rumours of he being possibly wounded (or even killed) in a factional struggle for power with the Haqqani group, is symptomatic of the fact that the ‘Taliban’ of 2021 is not a monolith, not even an organisation simply ridden by factions, but a loose alliance of different outfits held by little but for a common enemy that is now gone. The crucial question is, now that the common enemy – the occupation force led by the USA – is gone, would the glue of power be adhesive enough to hold it together?

The usual narrative is that the Taliban that was toppled in 2001 is the same one that regained power in August 2021. Indeed, many observers around the world are acutely conscious that the Taliban comprises multiple factions jostling for power, but they argue that it is essentially the same organisation that took and held Kabul between 1996-2001, enforced a repressive variant of Islam; denied women dignity and rights and meted out a harsh punishment. There are some, though, who think that this ‘reloaded’ version of the Taliban have a streak of moderation in them, and could be dealt with.

Such readings are partially right and partially wrong. Virtually the entire top leadership of the Taliban that rode to power with Mullah Omar in 1996 has withered away; it was claimed by US-led military operations in 2001. The youthful firebrand leaders of the 1990s are all middle-aged today, blunted by life in Afghan and Pakistani prisons, or simply with the stress of having been on the run for 20 years. The upper echelons of the present Taliban leadership – such as the new Emir, Hibatullah Akhundzadeh, or Abdul Ghani Baradar – represent that component of the Taliban. They rose from lower rungs to their present position of eminence, gathered around what has come to be called the Quetta shura (caucus).  

Curiously, it is this wing of the Taliban, wizened by age and life in a Pakistani prison, that appears to have led the negotiation team in Doha, and is now speaking of restraint and avoiding the excesses that gave the organisation and the previous regime its well-deserved reputation. 

There is a second component of the present Taliban, about the numerical strength and significance of which not much is known. It comprises those who constituted the provincial leadership of the Taliban before it was toppled or those associated with it (viz. their relations, their children) who sought shelter in Pakistan. This is the Peshawar shura, whose interests at present seem to be represented by Mullah Yaqub, the son of Mullah Omar. They are known to be deeply traditional in their interpretation of Pakhtun values and represent some of the most conservative components of what is made out to be the Taliban ideology (if there is such a thing).

There is a third component of the present Taliban, known as the Miran Shah shura (aka the Haqqani network), which came into being after the Taliban was toppled from sometime around 2006 and acquiring a critical mass by about 2012. Begun by fugitive Afghans from Pakistani soil, the Haqqani network was the first (and so far the only major) component of the Taliban to have crossed the ethnic Pakhtun frontier and aligned with other ethnic groups of Afghanistan in taking the conflict to the American-led military occupation of Afghanistan. Led initially by Jalal al-din Haqqani, and then after his death by his nephew Siraj al-din Haqqani, this particular group represents perhaps the most vicious element of the Taliban from the last two decades. Enjoying the support not only of the Pakistani-ISI but also of the Tehrik-e Taliban-e Pakistan (TTP), the Haqqani network has been the sword-arm of the anti-American resistance movement.

In that capacity Siraj al-din Haqqani virtually forced his way into first the Taliban leadership council and now the Afghan government. It is also believed to be the primary reason why a virtual clerical non-entity Akhundzadeh was chosen as the compromise candidate for succession to the rank of Emir, and Baradar (a close associate of Mullah Omar) was foiled from playing a bigger role in the government and had to reconcile with the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

There is a fourth and slightly indeterminate and amorphous component that has been labeled as the Taliban but is very different from the previous three. These are the men who kept the fighting going all-the-the-time in the provinces against US-military occupation, Karzai and Ghani governments alike, even before the Haqqani network came in from Pakistan and reached out to them. These are deeply traditional Afghans of all ethnic backgrounds, with no Pakistan connection. They resent being dictated to from Kabul without gaining from such diktats in any way.

For the current Taliban dispensation, it is a major challenge to hold these diverse groups together in absence of the enemy they had in common. The economy of Afghanistan for the last two decades was operating on the stilts of foreign aid – whether the aid will continue or not depends on how the Taliban deal with power. If it returns to its previous avatar, the aid could dry up – hence presumably the urge for moderation and amnesty from people like Baradar, who even at one stage spoke of forming an inclusive government. But such moderation would come in the way of calls for vengeance coming from the groups that had done much of the actual fighting and bleed for the resistance – it is no coincidence that Haqqani had to be given the Ministry of the Interior (which, incidentally, was probably what the ISI-chief rushed to Kabul to accomplish). If the Haqqani network tries to grab more power, a bitter fight is virtually guaranteed to break out with the two other shuras. The joker in the pack, of course, is the nameless, leaderless fourth component of the so-called Taliban.  

If the present government succeeds in an equitable distribution of the meager resources of the country in such a way that they do not end up concentrated only in some pockets, this fourth component may prove willing to stay the course. If this Taliban government, like the previous one, fails in such equitable distribution, an outbreak of yet another civil war is a matter of time. It gives little hope that no political dispensation in the previous hundred years has managed to satisfy Afghans with their equity claims.  

(Kingshuk Chatterjee is a Professor in the Department of History, and a Director of Centre for Global Studies Kolkata.)