Are the Taliban disintegrating? Are we witnessing the natural process of the aging of an organisation that has done little ideologically to maintain itself except for fighting through a number of commanders and obscure leadership? The Afghan Taliban never accepted the US invasion of their country after 9/11. Afghanistan was never directly complicit in the attack either, except that the leader of al Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was hiding in Afghanistan under the protection of Mullah Omer. Had Mullah Omar handed over bin Laden to the US the country would have been saved of the savage destruction it suffered for 13 years.
With the belated news of Mullah Omar’s death, the party is in disarray over the selection of its new leader. From Quetta to Qatar leaders are leaving the party ostensibly annoyed at the party’s decision, first for hiding the news of Mullah Omar’s death for almost two years and then for appointing his successor without due consultation. For all those years when Mullah Omar was dead, he had been issuing instructions to field commanders and to those running Qatar and other Taliban offices regularly. This organisational strategy to hide the demise of top leadership in order to keep unity in the ranks and file is in fact an indication of the Taliban’s vulnerability to disintegrate. It is also an indication of the organisation operating less on ideology and more on a day-to-day tactic.
The Taliban’s desire to negotiate peace with the Afghan government signals pragmatism eventually dawning on a handful of the Taliban leadership about the new reality concerning Islamic State (IS) and its own ranks defecting to it. Mullah Omar’s death has only opened the fissures the party has been experiencing over the years while tipping the scales in favour of a new force that gives new direction to the warring sprits of the ever-fighting Afghans.
Afghanistan is a hard country where individuals with a clear leaning towards a clan/tribe/group consider themselves the best of the lot among themselves and others. Going by their way of management and governance, it gives little reason to doubt that, if not for the US, the Afghans would have been fighting anyway all these years. This is the nature of politics in a country that is neither democratic nor dictatorial in its dispensation.
The Afghans are the most misunderstood people as well, which is why there has been so much misery coming their way. A myth about the Afghan resistance against foreign invaders, throwing them out defeated, is just a myth after all. It so happens that the Afghans, of all hues and stripes, clans and tribes, channelise their warring spirit towards a new enemy that tries to dominate them at a given time. If before they had been fighting among themselves, then with the invasion of a foreign force they fight against it.
The Afghans were losing the Soviet-lad war in Afghanistan when Charlie Wilson came up with the novel idea to dispense shoulder missiles among the mujahideen, and the Cold War’s direction changed. The collaborative efforts of the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia gave the Afghans teeth to drum out the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Later, the Afghans’ penchant for corruption and disloyalty against one another plunged the country into a civil war. From the wombs of the Afghans’ internal greed for power was born the Taliban and not until the Taliban closed their eyes to the ever-expending imperialistic agenda of the western power did its fall come about. What if the Taliban were denied sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas? Could the Haqqanis have mounted detrimental attacks on the US in Afghanistan without the logistical and financial support of Pakistan? That being the nature of the Afghani warring sprit: relying much on outsiders to oust invading elements.
Some Afghans — not all of them, just the Taliban and their supporters — were against the US invasion of their country after 9/11. Many, just like when the Soviet Union invaded Afghan soil, rejoiced the invasion since it meant riddance from the Taliban who had become notorious for their self-styled interpretation of Islamic sharia (jurisprudence). The irony was that those staying back and putting up with the foreign elements made no effort to build their country; the warlords became more powerful, the smugglers wealthier, the opium grower multiplied and the bureaucracy made new records in corruption.
The solution to the Afghan conundrum lies not in crushing their warring spirit or in modernising their political institutions but in giving them the independence to govern of their own accord. The world has to change a bit; it has to stop considering Afghanistan a buffer or a renter state now. Even if the Taliban are disintegrating their relevance cannot be ignored in a country that has yet to learn how to govern itself.
The writer is a copywriter and freelance journalist with an academic background in public policy and governance. She can be reached at [email protected]