The war in Afghanistan did not end last year with the NATO military withdrawal and the reemergence of the Taliban regime 2.0. Instead, it only entered a new phase and this fact is now becoming ever more evident to observers.
Taliban is fast learning that running an insurgency and running an even vaguely functioning state are two entirely different things.
The presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan acted as a glue to keep various factions of the Taliban together. But foreign forces are now gone, and so is that glue that kept Taliban together. Today Taliban are divided into several factions but three of them are the strongest: The faction led by Mullah Ghani Baradar, the one led by Mullah Yaqoob and the one led by the Haqqanis. The vacuum that the exit of foreign forces and the collapse of the previous regime left meant that there’s an internal power struggle within the Taliban, which can be exploited if needed.
Sooner or later, the Taliban as a group will naturally break up due to the internal power struggle, which is further strengthened by their political differences. We have already seen intra-Taliban clashes in multiple provinces and more of such incidents are expected in the future as well.
There’s a group within the Taliban that wants to work with the international community, and then there’s a group that wants to keep Afghanistan isolated and stay uncooperative.
Afghanistan under the Taliban will remain dependent on the international community for a long time to come and the current humanitarian situation in Afghanistan means that the group that wants to cooperate with the international community is in a favorable position internally but that could also change over time. If the international community cannot get Taliban to cooperate as a single group, it would be better to fast track the splintering.
Taliban has also not delivered on the commitments it made to the international community as part of the Doha Deal. The main selling point of the Doha Deal was that Taliban has agreed to disassociate from al-Qaeda and will not allow al-Qaeda or other foreign terrorist groups to operate from Afghanistan.
While Taliban agreed to it on paper, it didn’t enforce it on the ground. In fact, it did the exact opposite by giving senior positions to al-Qaeda sympathizers in its ranks. The UN intelligence report released this month says that al-Qaeda still maintains presence in several Afghan provinces including Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, Nimruz, Paktika and Zabul. At the same time, Taliban still continues to harbor other foreign terrorist groups like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is designated as a terrorist group in US, UK, Canada and Pakistan.
At the same time, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Afghanistan branch of IS, continues to grow. As per UN intelligence report, estimates are that ISKP fighters in Afghanistan have doubled since last year, with the current number estimated to be somewhere around 4,000 and this number is only expected to grow in future.
Taliban claim that it is fighting against ISKP and does not need US assistance in its fight against ISKP. It is indeed true that Taliban has made some minor successes against ISKP since it took over Kabul. Much of those successes have been in Kabul, where Taliban has managed to disrupt some ISKP cells and where Taliban also rules with an iron fist, making it very hard for journalists to extract accurate news. Taliban has also killed several non-ISKP Salafis in its operations against ISKP.
Most of these extrajudicial killings occurred in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, where dead bodies are often found hanging from the trees or dumped along some roadside. But despite these minor successes since last year, ISKP is not only still able to carry out attacks against Taliban as well as against soft targets like Shi’ite/Hazara community, but ISKP’s numbers are also steadily growing. And yet Taliban remain insistent that it does not need US assistance against ISKP.
The terrorism-related concerns regarding Afghanistan are not only restricted to US or Western nations. These concerns are shared by Central Asian states, India, Pakistan, China, Russia and even Iran. Kazakhstan, an ally of Russia, has claimed that Afghan fighters fought against the government in Kazakhstan during recent riots. Russia itself has still not removed Taliban from its list of designated terrorists and China has made it clear multiple times that it won’t recognize the Taliban regime unless Taliban earns international legitimacy, which includes delivery on terrorism-related concerns.
Even Pakistan, which is considered to be a state that has maintained close relations with some Taliban leaders over the years, has serious terrorism-related concerns that have not been addressed by Taliban and there’s no indication that Taliban intends to sincerely address those concerns anytime soon in near future.
TTP and the space for US-Pakistan cooperation
TTP, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, is a jihadi group primarily consisting of Pakistani jihadis from Pakistan’s tribal belt along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. As a jihadi group, it has been allied with a variety of foreign terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. TTP is also allied with Afghan Taliban and shares the same ideology with TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud still being loyal to Taliban’s emir Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
Taliban picked up weapons against the foreign forces in Afghanistan while TTP picked up weapons in Pakistan against the presence of military bases of foreign forces in Pakistan (which are no longer there). During the war in Afghanistan, TTP and Taliban have fought alongside against foreign forces on many occasions.
In some cases, TTP would let Taliban borrow suicide bombers from it, which were used against foreign forces as well as local ANDSF. Similarly, Taliban also discreetly aided TTP on occasions during the war, and when TTP was facing military operations in Pakistan, it was Taliban that gave refuge to fleeing TTP fighters, commanders and their families. Today, TTP is headquartered in Afghanistan along with its entire senior leadership and their families.
While Taliban continue to falsely claim that TTP has no presence in Afghanistan, TTP itself has released videos in the past which carry enough evidence to establish the fact that TTP is not only headquartered in Afghanistan but it has also been carrying out cross-border attacks against Pakistan.
While TTP was unable to carry out any major attacks against foreign forces in Pakistan, its next best target was the Pakistani government and Pakistani security forces, which TTP saw as entities allied with foreign forces which were present in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan at the time. Foreign military bases are long gone from Pakistan but TTP never stopped its attacks against Pakistani state. Over the years, TTP has not only carried out major terror attacks against state targets in Pakistan but it has also carried out barbaric attacks against soft targets, with one of the worst attacks being the Peshawar APS attack, which targeted schoolchildren and teachers.
Following Doha Deal between US and Afghan Taliban, both Taliban and TTP took their ties with al-Qaeda on the down-low. In reality, these ties were not cut off and they still exist today.
Al-Qaeda saw Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan as a major victory for itself and its allied jihadi movements everywhere and it seeks to try to implement the same model elsewhere. TTP, which still maintains close ties with al-Qaeda, also seeks to implement the same model in Pakistan. This realization also exists in Pakistani military’s thinking, and just last year Pakistan’s military chief General Bajwa told journalists that TTP and Taliban are two sides of the same coin.
Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, TTP attacks against Pakistan have significantly increased, with a large number of these attacks targeting Pakistani police and security forces. While Pakistani state engaged in talks with TTP last year, which was a foolish move on Pakistan’s part, and was even able to get TTP to agree to a one month ceasefire, TTP simply used that time to regroup and rearm itself.
By the end of the one month deadline, TTP unilaterally ended the ceasefire and restarted its operations. Those peace talks were carried out by Pakistan on the recommendation of Taliban, which refused to hand over TTP militants to Pakistan or take any kind of action against them, and instead advised Pakistan to engage in peace talks. Pakistani government later said that some of the demands laid out by TTP were simply unacceptable for Pakistan. These demands included allowing TTP to enforce its version of Sharia in some areas of KP province of Pakistan. Since the collapse of the ceasefire and the peace talks, there’s realization in Pakistan’s security circles that Taliban cannot be relied upon when it comes to the question of TTP.
Indeed, Taliban are TTP’s ideological and operational allies and they even have ethnic and family relations due to the demographics of the region both groups are based in. Since the collapse of the ceasefire, Taliban has been once again telling Pakistan to resolve its issues with TTP on its own. At the same time, Taliban has maintained deniability by publicly claiming that TTP has no presence in Afghanistan. As TTP attacks mount up with some attacks even taking place in the capital city of Islamabad, Pakistan’s options are now limited. One option it has includes taking direct military action against TTP on Afghan soil. But the calculation in Pakistani security circles is that such an action will inevitably invite direct retaliation from Afghan Taliban, which has already clashed recently with Pakistani security forces along the border on multiple occasions when Pakistan retaliated against TTP’s cross-border attacks.
The next best option for Pakistan is to coordinate a joint CT strategy with the US, allowing US to use Pakistani airspace – and possibly one or more US bases that could be established in Pakistan in the future – to carry out precision strikes against terrorist targets in Afghanistan. These targets could not only include TTP militants but also ISKP militants, which is a threat to both US and Pakistan.
ISKP has already attracted foreign fighters from several countries and it is in the interests of both US and Pakistan to keep a direct check on this group in Afghanistan. It is worth noting here that ISKP not only covers Afghanistan but also the KP province of Pakistan, while the rest of Pakistan is covered by IS Wilayah Pakistan (ISPP).
Taliban was good at rolling back ISKP advances when ISKP still held territory in Afghanistan, but ever since ISKP has lost territory and started operating in the form of small but highly effective cells, it has become visibly evident that Taliban does not hold the capability to tackle the present ISKP threat. Simply put, the present and future ISKP threat in Afghanistan cannot be adequately neutralized by Taliban without the American and Pakistani assistance. If left unchecked, ISKP has the potential to give rise to IS activity elsewhere in the region, which in the future could also prove to be a direct threat to Western nations including the US.
Conclusion:
Right now there’s quite a bit of trust deficit between US and Pakistan and both parties have some legitimate grievances from the other. But this is no time for complaining. With the Taliban proving incapable and unwilling to sincerely address the issue of foreign terrorist groups in Afghanistan and ISKP gaining strength each day, it is important for US and Pakistan to come together in a new CT partnership for Afghanistan.
The immature statements, some of which border on personal attacks against the US President and the Secretary of State, from some Pakistani government officials have further created unnecessary coldness between the two states. Such statements have to be avoided and an atmosphere of cooperation has to be created, which could go a long way in bringing the two states back together as regional partners. US governments have almost always preferred to deal directly with the Pakistani security establishment on critical security matters, which is a theme that should continue.
The civilian government in Islamabad should play its role in smoothening the bilateral security ties with US and play the central role in selling the US-Pakistani security partnership to the Pakistani public. The US-Pakistan ties have remained Afghanistan-centric for quite some time and it is unlikely that theme will change anytime soon in the future. But even this limited domain has much space for both countries to cooperate on mutually critical security issues. These opportunities should not be missed for the sake of personal egos of some people.
