“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York” — Shakespeare’s Richard III.
The Kunduz city centre may have been ostensibly recaptured by the Afghan forces within three days of the city’s fall to the Taliban over a week ago but the aftermath is far from over. The city remains hotly contested and battles are raging in its several districts. Indeed, the battle for post-US withdrawal Afghanistan has just begun. What transpired in Kunduz and is unravelling in several other northern Afghan provinces is perhaps the harbinger of a long winter of discontent for the Afghans. And it will take a lot more than the first snow flurries to dampen the Taliban’s newfound offensive fury. This is clearly a change of tack on part of the Taliban with a shift from countryside fighting and spectacular terror attacks to incursions into the city and district garrisons. The jihadist terror group has clearly decided to bare its teeth after what Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani perhaps mistook for a Taliban smile but to everyone else had looked like a ruse to bide their time.
To the chagrin of both his devotees and detractors, Dr Ashraf Ghani had put all his eggs in the negotiations’ basket held out by Pakistan. Well, now the Afghan president seems to be the one left holding the bag after the Taliban has shown its hand. The capitulation at Kunduz, however evanescent it might have been, will not just leave an indelible mark on Dr Ghani’s presidency but perhaps mortally endanger it too. How deftly he handles the second biggest Taliban surge after the jihadist group’s mid-2000s regrouping and resurgence, will determine not only what lies ahead for Afghanistan but also whether he will get to complete his term in the office. The televised laments of wailing Kunduzi women to Dr Ghani on how the Taliban brutalised them on the ground and his forces from the air cannot be lost on him. The calls for his resignation or impeachment and the chorus of reproach after the fall of Kunduz cannot be conducive for any wartime president let alone for someone with little political history and fast-evaporating political capital. If he fails to wrap his arms around the situation fast, Dr Ashraf Ghani risks becoming the Afghan equivalent of Prime Minister (PM) Neville Chamberlain who was detested for his appeasement of Adolf Hitler and literally shown the door by the British public after the 1940 fall of Norway to the Nazis.
Dr Ashraf Ghani did not heed repeated warnings from within and outside Afghanistan that his peace overtures to the Taliban and their patrons were highly unlikely to bear any fruit. He squandered the opportunity to take the fight to the Taliban when they were most vulnerable politically, even if not militarily, after Mullah Omar’s death was confirmed. An opening that could have been used to liquidate the rump leadership was allowed to slip while signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with those who were alleged to be harbouring that clique. Dr Ashraf Ghani’s gamble that Pakistan could or would leverage the new Taliban emir (leader), Mullah Akhtar Mansour, to make peace not war has cost the Afghans very dearly. The time that should have been used to aggressively lobby world capitals for sustained support and training to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) was spent wooing the Pakistani brass at the expense of Afghanistan’s existing international relationships and agreements. The treasure and training needed for the Afghan security force’s effectiveness was surely not going to come from those who groomed its nemesis. The damning New York Times report on Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s whereabouts and wherewithal, published earlier this week, notes: “He has also benefited from a powerful alliance with the Pakistani military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, the original sponsor of the Afghan Taliban insurgency. That relationship, along with a hefty dose of cash payouts to fellow commanders, was a crucial factor in his ability to manage the succession crisis this summer after news of Mullah Omar’s death finally got out.”
The Taliban war plan has become increasingly clear with the spate of its attacks across half a dozen provinces and, indeed, Kabul. The jihadist group is moving from purely guerilla attacks to offensive action against cities and seeks to topple regional governments but not necessarily hold its ground afterwards. Combined with continued terror attacks in Kabul, such incursions seek to delegitimise the central government, demoralise the people and erode their confidence in the Kabul dispensation. Moving the faceoff to ethnically mixed regions like Kunduz, the Taliban seek to exploit ethno-linguistic fault lines too. Thrust into the areas far removed from the Durand Line gives some level of deniability of foreign patronage and also forces the Afghan security forces to expose their southern and western flank, which could allow moving some elements of the Quetta and Waziristan shuras over to Helmand, Kandahar and Loya Paktia areas. It is unlikely, however, that the core leadership, including Mullah Mansour, would actually step into harm’s way albeit for a spectacular photo op. One also seriously doubts that the current Taliban foray into Kunduz and Badakhshan is designed to start off or buttress insurgencies in Tajikistan and China, respectively, as some analysts have suggested. It is actually the other way around with the Central Asian and Uighur jihadists reinforcing the Taliban ranks.
While the jihadist creed invariably is transnational, the Afghan Taliban remain geocentric, at least overtly, but deadly all the same. The Kunduz debacle indicates that the Afghan forces still need airpower and advisory support from the coalition forces and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future as they spread themselves thinner to counter multiple fronts that the Taliban is opening as the US commander, General John Campbell, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on October 6. General Campbell cannot and will not tell his president what to do but has, in his own words, provided “senior leadership with options different than the current plan”, i.e. a skeleton force of 5,000 US troops in Afghanistan after 2016. General Campbell has, however, laid the groundwork for a rethink of the current US strategy in Afghanistan. It is up to Dr Ashraf Ghani now to make a case for uninterrupted US and international support for Afghanistan while he puts his own house in order. He should know full well by now that those backing the Taliban are not backing off any time soon. The sons of Afghanistan will have to put in a herculean effort to turn an imminent winter of discontent into a glorious summer; whether Dr Ashraf Ghani is ready to transform into a wartime president and lead them remains to be seen.
The writer can be reached at [email protected] and he tweets @mazdaki