Internal Situation of Afghanistan
Taliban representatives show pride and confidence that they have, as they see it, defeated the U.S. The resultant sense of their own power makes them even more resistant to external influence than before. According to Taliban representatives, the current interim or acting (sarparast) government also has major achievements to its credit: ending over four decades of war; overseeing a massive improvement in security; and establishing stable, centralized power over the entire territory of Afghanistan for the first time in over 40 years. The first two are true in the sense that the U.S. withdrew its forces, the armed forces of the previous government collapsed, and the Taliban captured power, so that violence resulting from either insurgency or counter-insurgency ceased. The Taliban believe they can contain the threat from the National Resistance Front (NRF), based in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The undeniable reduction of the number of deaths from armed conflict, however, is accompanied by an accelerating pace of attacks bordering on genocide against Hazaras and Shi’a as well as other targets by the Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP); a Taliban campaign in Eastern Afghanistan of summary execution and enforced disappearances of ISKP fighters or anyone suspected of supporting them; reprisal killings against security officials of the former regime, some of which appear to result from official actions and others from personal vendettas after decades of war; the violent suppression of demonstrations; the imposition of surveillance on the population; house searches and detentions; and the unpredictable and arbitrary exercise of power with no recourse.
Taliban representatives cite a decree declaring a general amnesty and claim that the reported summary killings in violation of the amnesty are the result of personal animosities rather than government policy. Taliban officials report that 17 individuals are currently under legal investigation for acts of revenge. The Taliban also claim there are no political prisoners and that the only detainees are members of the armed opposition, former officials who are corrupt thieves or kidnappers, and those arrested for criminal offences according to the law. It appears that practices toward the officials of the former government are inconsistent, with the amnesty being implemented in some cases and not others.
The Taliban initially enacted policies on media, gender, and other matters that were somewhat less repressive than under their previous regime. These resulted in part from policy changes by the Taliban but also from two decades of transformation of Afghan society, which could no longer be controlled in the same way as before. Whatever changes have taken place are not guaranteed by any institutional framework and could be reversed from one day to the next on the order of the leader; some already have been. Media, which proliferated over the past twenty years, are not all under direct state control, but the authorities have placed them under surveillance and issue warnings about undesirable or prohibited reporting. According to one report, media representatives were summoned to the office of the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) and told that they risked violent reprisals if they reported on fighting, insecurity, or civilian casualties of suicide attacks.
While the Taliban have made some efforts to reach out and offer protection to Shi’a communities, unlike their policy during 1996 to 2001, there are still reports of persecution and harsh treatment. In the thousands of land disputes throughout the country, the Taliban appear to give preference to the claims of Pashtuns over others, especially Hazaras.
The Taliban claim to have reduced official corruption, a virtually inevitable result of the termination of the foreign aid and international operations that funded most of the corruption. Reports on tax and customs revenues relayed by the United Nations tend to support the contention that corruption in revenue collection has decreased. Revenues received by the government have increased. Given the economic crash the country is experiencing, the increase is more likely due to the remittance of a greater proportion of collections to the central government than to increased collections. Afghan businessmen, however, say the increase in tax collection is not sustainable. The Taliban are insisting on full payment of every tax despite the economic crash, the sanctions on the central bank that have brought trade to a halt, and the lack of credit and currency. Businesses are likely to go bankrupt or leave Afghanistan. The Taliban authorities have also been collecting payments on electricity bills and are starting to charge fees for parking in central Kabul. The Taliban state that they have economized on the size of the security forces and on administrative expenses such as high salaries (previously subsidized by aid donors) and elaborate meals provided to government officials.
According to Qatari officials, the government also raises funds through Kabul airport, which is under the control of the ministry of the interior headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani. The airport was operated by a Qatari-Turkish partnership until September, but that arrangement broke down, and management was awarded to a UAE-based company that agreed to all Taliban demands. The airport is reported to be an important facility for smuggling and money laundering. The airport in Khost, the home province of the Haqqanis and a longtime border trading and smuggling center, is the only one of Afghanistan’s 18 airports operating with no international monitoring. There are daily direct flights between Khost and Dubai, a freeport where smugglers of many nations purchase their inventory. This arrangement long predates the current government.
Regarding women’s rights, Taliban representatives point to the decree issued by Amir Haibatullah Akhundzada in December 2021 (see Annex 1). This decree requires women’s consent for marriage, including by widows; outlaws the exchange of daughters between families or clans as a way to end feuds or disputes (baad); affirms women’s rights to mahr, a transfer of wealth to the bride (not her family) at the time of marriage, including for widows, and the right to property and inheritance according to shari’a (i.e., half the share of inheritance of a man, as opposed to no share, as in tribal custom); and requires polygamous husbands to treat all their wives fairly. The decree says nothing about rights to education and employment. The Taliban say that these are secondary issues that are being addressed gradually, and that this decree addresses the most important questions of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Every government of Afghanistan since the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan (reigned 1880–1901), including the previous Taliban government, has enacted similar measures. None of them, however, have managed to abolish these abuses in practice, and so far, there is little evidence that the Taliban are doing any better. Contrary to the decree, some forced marriages of Taliban officials with local women have taken place. Publicity about these cases have spread fear, but monitors on the ground report they have not found evidence that the practice is widespread. Child marriage is also increasing as a result of the economic crisis. The argument that education and employment are “secondary” does not take into account the processes of social change, including urbanization and rising rates of education, which have made rights to education and employment more urgent than in the past.
On education of women and girls, Taliban representatives present the glass as half full. They state that government and private primary schools are open in all provinces, in locales where there are schools and teachers. They claim that private secondary schools for girls are open everywhere, and that public secondary schools are open in 13 out of 34 provinces. They claim that both public and private universities are open to both sexes, though they have been segregated by gender, and strict rules for hijab (headscarf) have been enacted for women students and teachers. While no statistics are available on enrollment, some families are reported to be keeping daughters out of school even where schools are open for fear of exposing them to forced marriages. Girls taking the concours (university admissions exam) are permitted to elect only the faculties of nursing, medicine, and education.
On October 17, at an otherwise supportive international gathering of Islamic scholars in Turkey, the Taliban came under criticism for keeping secondary schools closed to girls. Sounding rather defensive, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid replied:
“Males are educated from the first to the twelfth grade, and the girls also attend schools up to the sixth grade, but from the seventh to the twelfth grade, the schools are stopped, and it is not stopped because we do not want education, we are preparing their principles, curriculum, educational places, and transportation, to make sure that people mentally allow their daughters to be educated, that their hijab is observed, that what they learn is valid, because our past curriculum was made by America.”
He did not explain why a curriculum that is sufficiently Islamic for boys is not acceptable for girls.
The Taliban claim that women are working in many ministries and other institutions, such as the Ministry of the Interior and the Afghan National Bank. Women also continue to work in education and healthcare, at least in those institutions receiving international support for their salaries through a UN trust fund. In the Ministry of Finance, women must report to work once a month to sign attendance sheets and are then sent home. A decree from the Ministry for Prohibiting Vice and Enforcing Virtue requiring women to wear the face-covering burqa in public is thus far not being enforced, at least in Kabul. Women are allowed to go out in public with only traditional hijab and without a male relative within a limited distance from their homes. There are special markets reserved for women merchants and customers in Herat and Mazar-i Sharif.
By definition, we spoke only to Taliban who were willing to speak to us, whereas the ultra-conservative traditionalists behind the most reactionary policies do not engage with foreigners. Those Taliban officials we spoke to recognize that the restriction of girls’ secondary education is an obstacle to sanctions relief and international recognition. They report that, although it was not included in the 11-point resolution released by the Taliban-convened assembly of ulama that met in Kabul from June 30 to July 2, the meeting concluded that this and other issues relating to women are causing problems for the interim government.
The assembly reportedly recommended unspecified changes in policy that were not included in the final resolution. These recommendations were referred to a subcommittee of about 40 ulama and tribal elders who met in Kandahar for several weeks. This body reportedly deliberated on changes in policy regarding women, the structure of the government, and other matters. It has now concluded its deliberations and submitted its conclusions to the leader.
Unconfirmed reports claim that, faced with international pressure and internal dissension, a Taliban commission is now trying to work out a “mechanism” that will allow girls of all ages to attend school. As of this writing, no decision has been made public, and decisions to allow girls’ education have been reversed in the past. The Ministry of Education’s original decision was to open schools to all. When schools opened in March, however, at the last minute the leader issued an order rescinding the decision by the acting minister of education to open all schools to both genders. On September 21, 2022, the Taliban announced that as part of a cabinet reshuffle, Acting Minister of Education Sheikh Mawlawi Noorullah Munir, who had signed off on the decision to admit girls to all schools, had been appointed as head of Dar ul-Iftah, a judicial body. Munir was replaced as Minister of Education by Mawlawi Habibullah Agha, the former chairman of the Ulama Council of Kandahar province, a staunch conservative.
Taliban sources state that the leader is under the influence of a group of extreme conservatives. The three personalities most commonly mentioned as leading this group are Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani (not a member of the Haqqani family from Khost), who is a long-time mentor of the amir; Mullah Hassan Akhundzada, chairman of the council of ministers and former chairman of the leadership (rahbari) shura; and Mullah Nur Muhammad Saqeb, minister of Islamic affairs (Hajj and Awqaf). Sheikh Khalid Muhammad, minister for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice, is in the same camp. Taliban pragmatists included him in some delegations to Doha and other foreign capitals hoping it would broaden his outlook, but it did not work.
While the majority of the population of Afghanistan appears to support girls’ secondary education, the top Taliban leadership is said to be concerned about resistance from conservative communities in its homeland of Greater Kandahar (Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan provinces), from which it recruits many of its fighters. The former minister of education told RFE/RL on September 11, 2022:
If you go out of the Uruzgan market and ask the elders… you will understand. Ask at the mosque what percentage of men with white beards and what percentage of people are willing to send their 16-year-old daughters to school, and you won’t need to ask me anymore. In this regard, we are trying to create conditions so that people don’t protest, and basic education can begin.
In any case, elders in Uruzgan do not represent the entire population of Afghanistan. Uruzgan media, however, broadcast short video clips of residents openly rejecting the minister of education’s remarks. They said they are begging the government to allow girls to attend high school.
Public protests by schoolgirls and others opposing the school closures are occurring in more and more provinces, including Paktia, Paktika, and Kandahar, known as centers of Pashtun conservatism. In some provinces the elders are said to have threatened to revolt against the government if schools are not opened. They were reportedly threatened sufficiently to silence them. Deputy Foreign Minister and former head of the Taliban Political Office in Doha, Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai, has given impassioned public speeches opposing the decision. Though Taliban sources said he had been admonished to keep silent after two speeches in the spring, he reiterated his views in a televised speech on September 25. He stated, “Education is obligatory on both men and women, without any discrimination. None of the religious scholars present here can deny this obligation. No one can offer a justification based on [Islamic] Sharia for opposing [women’s right to education].” The speech also included strong criticism of Pakistan for allowing the U.S. to use bases for counter-terrorism drone attacks in Afghanistan, such as the one that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul on July 31, 2022. It is unlikely that such a speech could have been televised without high-level support. Minister of the Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani (son of mujahidin commander Jalaluddin Haqqani), Minister of Defense Yaqub Omari (son of Taliban leader Mullah Omar), and Minister of Public Works Abdul Manan Omari (brother of Mullah Omar) are reliably reported to share Stanekzai’s position. Despite their prominence and family background, however, they seem thus far as unable to influence the leader’s decision as anyone else.
Taliban spokesmen defending the decision to close secondary schools for girls do not claim that shari’a prohibits girls’ education, a contention that could not possibly be sustained in view of several hadiths, including one that says: “Education is not only the right, but the duty of all Muslims, male and female.” A Taliban official opposing Stanekzai claimed that “Education is not compulsory, but obedience to the Amir is compulsory.” Saying that girls’ education is not compulsory is not the same as saying it is forbidden, but it provides a loophole. Sometimes Taliban claim that “conditions” are not ready for girls’ education according to Islamic standards. Some areas lack school buildings and teachers, and school buildings lack running water, toilets, and boundary walls, but there are no such deficiencies in, for instance, Kabul and Herat, where secondary schools nonetheless remain closed to girls. Instead, the Taliban have fallen back on references to national custom and tradition. The Hanafi school of jurisprudence that Sunni ulama follow in Afghanistan considers tradition or ‘urf as one of six permissible sources of shari’a, but it is a secondary or even tertiary source. The sources of shari’a recognized by Hanafi jurisprudence are Quran and sunna (including hadith), which are the primary sources; ijma’, consensus of the ulama, and qiyas, analogical reasoning, which are secondary sources; and ‘urf and ihtisan, the use of discretion by the jurist, which are additional sources. The latter two are not valid if they contradict the primary sources. Furthermore, the Taliban treat the alleged custom and tradition of rural southern Afghanistan as if it were a national culture and tradition that had remained unchanged. In fact, cultural norms vary among parts of the population, and they have changed consistently in favor of universal education.
International engagement with Taliban representatives over the education of girls and women has exposed a weakness in international dealings with the Taliban. Those with whom the international community engages may be persuaded, but they have no influence over the decision-making of the leader, and obedience to the amir is a cardinal organizational principle and religious obligation of the Taliban. Of all the international representatives currently in Kabul, only one ambassador from a Muslim country is reported to have succeeded in meeting Amir Haibatullah, and the meeting has been kept secret.
Competing Policies
Some argue that therefore more pressure is needed, but it is unlikely that ending talks with the Taliban, or imposing more sanctions or stricter aid conditionality, would succeed where over 20 years of war and 23 years of sanctions have failed. Others advocate more focused attempts to engage with the Kandahar-based leadership directly. Other proposals include making explicit what Taliban need to do for sanctions to be lifted or to obtain diplomatic recognition (a so-called roadmap) or, more modestly, using humanitarian operations responding to the threat of famine and mass impoverishment to engage with and protect the still active elements of civil society.
Taliban officials claim that just “engaging” with the Taliban or the leadership is not enough: the international community needs to offer them something they want. The main diplomatic objective of the Taliban leadership is to gain relief from sanctions and obtain official recognition, above all from the United States. As a journalist working for the Iranian news agency Fars in Dushanbe put it, “The Taliban have many discussions with Russia, China, and Iran, but the moment they get a half-smile from the United States they will forget about all that.” Until now, no one except Russia has given the Taliban a road map of what they would have to do for sanctions to be lifted and for their government to be recognized. Condemnation of Taliban actions by the U.S. and its “like-minded” partners has not been accompanied by any clarity about what Taliban would gain by cooperating.
A road map does not guarantee lifting of sanctions or recognition. A road map describes how to get there, if possible. It would lay out the reasons for the existing regime of sanctions and non-recognition as well as actions by the Taliban that would lead to moderation of that regime, possibly culminating in diplomatic recognition of an inclusive Afghan government. Some reviewers of earlier drafts of this report expressed concern that a road map would offer Taliban unconditional recognition, while as envisaged here it would do the opposite: it would lay out specific changes that could lead to recognition of an inclusive government. It is virtually certain that the Taliban would initially reject the conditions of any road map, but it could serve as a starting point for a concrete discussion. It would also be likely to amplify differences within the Taliban by giving pragmatists grounds to argue for their approach. On the other hand, the international community is quickly losing patience with the Taliban and interest in Afghanistan. The political will for any kind of engagement is fading amid skepticism that any feasible offer would be accepted.
Opposition and Dissension
Since taking power, the Taliban have encountered several forms of domestic opposition to their rule:
- Armed resistance by the National Resistance Front, whose main base inside the country is in the Panjshir Valley, and whose leadership is in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
- Exiled former officials of the Islamic Republic, who are trying to form a common political platform, including with NRF, to oppose or negotiate with the Taliban.
- Civic protest movements, largely led by women, that began in Kabul but that have spread to multiple provinces.
- Internal dissension within the Taliban, including both ethnic/factional power struggles and policy differences.
- Terrorism by the Islamic State Khurasan Province.
The NRF is led by Ahmad Massoud, the 33-year-old son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. The NRF leadership around Massoud in Dushanbe includes his relatives and former members of his father’s resistance organization. All are from Panjshir. Amrullah Saleh, former vice-president and intelligence chief, is also in Dushanbe with some commando units who fled Afghanistan with him. He too is from Panjshir. After 1999, he became Ahmad Shah Massoud’s liaison with the CIA, with which he later had close relations as head of the Islamic Republic’s National Directorate of Security (NDS). He has discussed combining his forces with Massoud’s, but tactical and strategic differences have thus far blocked the merger.
The NRF’s fighters on the ground have almost entirely retreated to side valleys of Panjshir. The Taliban control the main valley, where the population and agricultural land are concentrated. The NRF’s political program consists of opposition to the abuses of the Taliban and demanding talks with the Taliban regarding governance, which they insist must include holding elections and “decentralization” of the state administration. The NRF has not defined the political system under which they would like elections to be held or the model of decentralization they propose. The Taliban are said to believe that they can contain the violence as long as the resisters do not receive foreign support.
Those members of the NRF leadership with whom we spoke did not identify overthrowing the Taliban government by force as an achievable objective. They understand that overthrowing the government is beyond their capability for the foreseeable future. The purpose of their armed struggle, they say, is to inspire and recruit more followers in order to force or convince the Taliban to agree to a political settlement based on holding elections and decentralizing the administration. They recognize, however, that elections have become discredited as a result of widespread voter fraud under the Islamic Republic, and that the Taliban oppose popular elections. The demand for decentralization provokes sharp ethnic cleavages over Afghanistan’s identity and structure.
The military capabilities of the NRF are limited in part by its failure thus far to attract any significant material support from international actors. Some voices in the U.S., including some Republican members of Congress, have advocated support to the NRF, but there is no broad support for the proposal. In any case, given landlocked Afghanistan’s geographical location, it would be impossible for the U.S. to deliver such assistance without the agreement of Tajikistan and therefore Russia, which is obviously impossible.
Tajikistan provides the leadership with security and freedom of movement, including movement of supplies in and out of Afghanistan, but it does not have the resources or political space to provide material support. Russia has reportedly told the authorities in Dushanbe that they may provide whatever rhetorical support they like to the NRF, but that they should in no way provide resources for the resumption of war in Afghanistan. Neither Russia nor China (nor the other Central Asian states) want to see armed Afghans in Central Asia engaged in cross-border warfare. They know how such a situation destabilized Pakistan in the 1980s. Tajikistan’s leadership depends on Russia for its security. The 201st Motorized Rifle Division of the Russian army, about 6,000 soldiers, has been stationed in Tajikistan since the 1993-1996 civil war and outnumbers the armed forces of Tajikistan. Russia has recently moved the 201st away from the Afghan border and deployed about a quarter of its personnel to Ukraine, where it has been badly decimated.
The NRF realizes that it needs to expand its support beyond its current organizational base, limited by ethnicity (Tajik) and geography (Panjshir). It consistently states that it is fighting for national goals of democracy, human rights, and ethnic equality. In an attempt to broaden the NRF’s base, Ahmad Massoud attended a September 15-17 meeting of exiled Afghan political leaders in Vienna. The group was multi-ethnic and had substantial representation of women (see Annex 2 for its final declaration). The final declaration included points that many Afghans would agree with. It called for an “inclusive, responsible, and accountable” government. It said that “political dialogue” was the preferred option for “solving the country’s problems.” It supported the “resistance of the people of Afghanistan … to realize their legitimate and rightful demands,” but made no explicit call for armed struggle or decentralization of the state.
These omissions illustrate some of the dilemmas of the opposition to the Taliban. Opposition to renewal of armed struggle is widespread even among opponents of the Taliban. There are no data to measure the extent of this sentiment, but it prevented several political figures from attending the Vienna meeting. There is likewise far from a consensus around decentralization. Rather than strengthening consensus around future governance, the experience of 20 years under the Islamic Republic, which adopted a version of the same centralized administrative system as all regimes since Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, has intensified ethnic polarization around the issue of centralization. Non-Pashtun political groups demand “decentralization,” while Pashtuns, including both the Taliban and Pashtun politicians of the Islamic Republic, tend to regard a centralized administration as essential to the unity of the country. It is the one position of the Taliban that is supported by even the most anti-Taliban Pashtuns and opposed by even the most Islamist non-Pashtuns.
The ethnic character of the NRF, even if it does not articulate an ethnic ideology, is reinforced by its refuge in Tajikistan. Afghanistan includes about three times as many Tajiks as Tajikistan, and Tajik President Imomali Rahmon has explicitly linked his country’s welcome to the NRF to cross-border ethnic solidarity. The four Turkic Central Asian countries do not echo this sentiment. Another important factor is the massive presence of Afghans on social media. Social media has become comprehensively infested with ethnic and sectarian antagonisms, and Afghanistan is not exempt. Pashtuns report that many online NRF supporters express strong antagonism to Pashtuns. Initial support for the NRF’s national goals by some Pashtuns, they claim, has disappeared in the face of online ethnic antagonism from NRF supporters. Likewise, Pashtuns on line sometimes attack Ahmad Shah Massoud and accuse Tajiks and others of being separatists and worse.
Since the Taliban took power, it has confronted non-violent demonstrations largely led by women and girls over the school closures and other issues. A crackdown on demonstrations and their participants has led some to flee the country. As the ban on secondary education for girls endures, however, demonstrations have spread to several provinces. Recently there have been demonstrations at least in Paktia, Kandahar, Sarobi, a predominantly Pashtun district of Kabul province, and Herat. The Taliban have started to break up these demonstrations by firing live ammunition in the air and arresting and beating demonstrators. As the demonstrations continue, there have been reports of arrests and summary executions of demonstrators. The massacre of Hazara girl students in Kabul by an ISKP suicide bomber on September 30 likewise triggered a series of demonstrations. Like the NRF, these demonstrations pose no immediate threat to the government. Stanekzai’s speeches in support of women’s education, however, have exposed an internal rift in the regime that demonstrations could exacerbate.
While data on the structure and mandate of Taliban security institutions is scarce, the pattern of response to the demonstrations and other civic opposition appears to show a change in the Taliban’s toolkit of rulership. In the first Islamic Emirate, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice was best known for policing city streets and beating people with sticks, especially women whose hijab or other behavior it deemed un-Islamic. The ministry has been re-established and given the building previously used by the now abolished Ministry of Women’s Affairs, but it has a more sophisticated and targeted approach. It now seems to engage in surveillance of key sectors of the urban population, including educated and politically active women. Rather than beating them with sticks, the ministry visits their houses to inform them that their behavior is prohibited and that they will face unspecified consequences if they do not stop. As in other regimes practicing such repression, this spreads fear far beyond the specific individuals targeted.
The Taliban have encountered dissidence in their own ranks. In recent years, in an attempt to redress the imbalance that had made them vulnerable to ethnic opposition, the Taliban made recruitment of non-Pashtuns in northern Afghanistan a priority. This policy bore fruit when the Taliban took control of northern Afghanistan in August 2021 without the deployment of Pashtun troops from the south of the country. Rather than eliminating ethnic conflict, however, this policy has moved it inside the government. Just as President Karzai did when he first took power in 2001-2002, the Taliban government initially appointed local commanders as governors and district governors in the north. Since then, however, it has ousted several Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara Taliban administrators and replaced them with Kandahari Pashtuns, which in some cases has led to local conflicts. In Balkhab district of Sar-i Pol province, the Taliban leadership forcibly removed a Hazara district governor who had refused to turn over coal mine revenues to the central government. The Taliban reportedly carried out dozens of summary executions in the course of this campaign.
In February 2022 the Taliban arrested a longtime Uzbek Taliban commander, Makhdum ‘Alam, in Faryab. After several months of protests by Uzbeks and Turkmen in Maimana, capital of Faryab, the Taliban released him. He was subsequently appointed police chief of Ghazni, a province with no Uzbek population, where ‘Alam would have an official position but no political base. On October 11, BBC Persian Service reported that Salahuddin Ayubi, the Taliban’s veteran top Uzbek commander, who had been demoted from a senior military position in March, announced he was leaving Kabul for his base in Faryab and would not work with the Taliban government until it established “an inclusive government, had women’s full right of access to education, and stopped forced usurping of people’s lands.” He has subsequently been summoned to Kandahar for talks with the leader.
Similarly, after first being captured by local Taliban, Panjshir has been placed firmly under the control of Kandaharis, with the appointment of former head of the Taliban military commission and Deputy Minister of Defense Abdul Qayyum Zakir as military commander in Panjshir and neighboring Andarab. Zakir, a former Guantanamo detainee, is a member of the Alizai tribe from Helmand.
A partial exception is Badakhshan, which remains under the exclusive control of Badakhshani Tajik Taliban. Badakhshan is the only province of Afghanistan bordering on China and also has a much longer border with weakly controlled areas of Tajikistan. It controls supply lines between Tajikistan and Panjshir as well as between Afghanistan and Xinjiang. Pakistan’s 2014 Zarb-I Azb offensive in North Waziristan forced Uyghur separatist forces to flee Pakistan for Afghanistan, where they established a safe haven for themselves right next to the Chinese border. Such militancy, of course, is a predictable response to China’s harsh crackdown on Uyghur identity and politics, which a UN report has likened to crimes against humanity.
So far, the Taliban leadership has shown no inclination to risk destabilizing such a sensitive strategic area, but there are nonetheless tensions between the Badakhshani Taliban and the leadership. Army Chief of Staff Qari Fasihuddin, who is from Badakhshan and is the highest-ranking Tajik in the Taliban leadership, is reported to have been sidelined in favor of commanders from Helmand and Kandahar. More generally, the Taliban’s foot soldiers are not paid or fed consistently. Grievances of all sort are accumulating under the surface. These will not be evident in the short run, but they contain potential energy for internal conflict sparked by a crisis.
There are other inter-group tensions leading to violence. In Kandahar, the Achakzai tribe of former strongman and security chief Abdul Raziq (assassinated by the Taliban in October 2018) is now the object of violent reprisals by Nurzais and other tribes persecuted by Raziq. This is one of those cases in which it is difficult if not meaningless to distinguish reprisals against former officials from local enmities. Other outbursts of local feuds occasioned by past abuses are also likely to erupt.
The Islamic State Khurasan Province was founded in January 2015 after discussions in Pakistan between emissaries of the Islamic State in Iraq and Shams (Syria) and dissident members of both the Afghanistan and Pakistani Taliban. ISKP is generally known in Afghanistan as Daesh, the Arabic acronym for “Islamic State in Iraq and Shams” (al-Dawlah al-Islamiyya fi al-‘Iraq wa al-Shams). The movement originally established territorial bases in parts of Nangarhar and Jawzjan provinces. The Nangarhar sector was led by former Pakistan and Afghan Taliban, while the Jawzjan sector was led by Uzbek former Taliban and government militia commanders joined by Central Asian fighters returning from Iraq and Syria. Both territorial enclaves were eliminated by de facto coordinated offensives by the U.S., Afghan military, and Taliban.
Since then, ISKP has organized a deadly underground terrorist movement in Kabul and Jalalabad, while holding on to some remote bases in Kunar, the only province in Afghanistan with an indigenous Salafi population, which has suffered from indiscriminate reprisals by the Taliban. The largely Uyghur militants who returned from the Middle East have joined up with the Central Asians pushed out of Waziristan in northeast Afghanistan. While some of the Central Asians have remained with ISKP, most have formed their own units under the patronage of the Taliban.
ISKP seems to be trying to duplicate the strategy of its parent organization in Iraq. Its terror attacks were initially concentrated on Shi’a civilian targets such as schools (especially girls’ schools) and mosques. Recently, however, it has also attacked a Sunni Sufi center (Sufis are considered heretical by Salafi jihadists like ISKP), the Russian embassy, and the Friday prayer mosque of central Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, an important Hanafi mosque close to major embassies, government ministries, and the presidential palace. On September 30, ISKP launched a suicide attack against an educational center for Hazara girls in Western Kabul that it had attacked before. Reports differ, but the number of dead is reportedly near to 60. The repeated massacres of Shi’a civilians appear to border on genocide. These attacks have shaken the Taliban’s central narrative of legitimacy: that they have ended 40 years of bloodshed and restored security. They will further discourage international engagement and investment.
External Relations of Afghanistan
No government, not even Pakistan, has recognized the IEA, but no country is supporting a proxy war against it either. From the withdrawal of Soviet troops in February 1989 to the U.S. intervention in October 2001, no political force controlled all of Afghanistan’s territory and population, as the Taliban do now. All the neighboring countries have concluded that a proxy war would not serve their interests. Rather it would create a power vacuum that could provide opportunities for both ISKP and the U.S., the two entities that the most powerful neighboring countries consider preeminent threats. Active Taliban diplomacy over more than a decade has persuaded countries that once regarded the Taliban as a threat (Russia and Iran, in particular) that the movement is more concerned with consolidating its power in Afghanistan than exporting Islamic extremism. The neighbors are, however, concerned about the influx of international terrorist groups into Afghanistan.
It is commonly said that the Taliban committed themselves to “cut links” with terrorist organizations. Their actual commitments are more complex and ambiguous. At a meeting in Doha in August 2011, the then Taliban negotiator asked his U.S. counterparts to define what they meant when they asked the Taliban to “cut ties” with al-Qaida and other such organizations. At a subsequent meeting, the U.S. side presented him with a paper on the subject approved by the inter-agency process. At a meeting in January 2012, the negotiator reported that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan had shown the U.S. paper to the ulama, who had said it was impossible for the Taliban to “cut ties” with any Muslim. He asked the U.S. to suggest new language. The Taliban suspended the talks in March 2012, and no new discussions of counter-terrorism language took place until the talks that led to the Doha Agreement of February 29, 2020.
Under that agreement, the United States was supposed to withdraw all of its troops and non-diplomatic personnel and contractors from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. After a delay caused by the change in the U.S. administration, the U.S. completed the withdrawal by August 31. The Taliban in turn pledged “to prevent any group or individual, including al-Qaida, from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies,” to tell such groups and individuals “they have no place in Afghanistan,” and to instruct all personnel not to cooperate with them. The Taliban pledged that they “[would] prevent [any such group] from recruiting, training, and fundraising and [would] not host them.” They promised not to provide “visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents” to such individuals or groups.
The growth of ISKP, however, poses a dilemma for (or provides an excuse to) the Taliban. If they try to enforce the counter-terrorism provisions of the Doha Agreement against other militant groups, those groups might defect to ISKP. Central Asian militants already seem to include factions aligned with both the Taliban and ISKP. Al-Qaida is an exception, as the antagonism between it and IS is existential for both organizations.
The killing by U.S. drone of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31, 2022, cast a harsh light on the failure by the Taliban to honor the core of the deal. Zawahiri was targeted while on the veranda of his new home in the upscale Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul. The neighborhood, composed of Pakistani-style over-the-top mansions built on former Ministry of Defense land allocated to political favorites by the Islamic Republic’s first minister of defense, Marshall Fahim, is a stone’s throw from the Afghan foreign ministry, intelligence agency, and other official buildings. It was colloquially known as Chor-pur (“sher” means lion, and “chor” means thief), a reference to the corruption that had gotten its inhabitants the wealth and political connections to live there. The house where Zawahiri was killed had been given to a relative and confidant of Minister of the Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani. The Haqqanis had a long (and originally U.S.-approved) relationship with the Arab mujahidin who founded al-Qaida and later with al-Qaida itself.
The U.S. exhibited patience in carrying out the operation. For months it had been monitoring the communications between al-Zawahiri and the Taliban, in which he implored them to provide him a comfortable and secure place to live. Once he moved, the U.S. waited until it was confident that he was not in proximity to any family members who might be harmed by the operation. There are unconfirmed reports that his precise location was provided to the U.S. by elements of the Taliban leadership.
Zawahiri’s presence in a house belonging to a member of the Taliban leadership violated their commitment not to “host” those threatening the security of the United States. This event, as well as others, ensured that on August 23, 2022, the U.S. voted in the UN Security Council against extending the travel ban exemption for peacemaking activities for 13 Taliban members, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi. Two of the 13 who were responsible for education had already seen their exemptions revoked because of the exclusion of girls from secondary school.
China and Russia voted in favor of extending the exemptions, as unlike the U.S. they are actively engaged in negotiations and business deals with the Taliban. Nonetheless, both have indicated that the Taliban’s harboring of terrorists is a non-negotiable obstacle to recognition. Russia is proceeding to trade deals with greater alacrity than China. In a flurry of expectations following the Taliban’s capture of power, Chinese businessmen and officials came to Afghanistan seemingly in search of economic opportunities, but it is difficult to identify a single contract that has actually been signed.
To deal with its main concern in Afghanistan, the Uyghur separatist militants, China has established a training center in counter-terrorism for border guards in the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region of Tajikistan, close to Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor. As a result of provisions in the CSTO treaty, of which Tajikistan is a member but China is not, China had to reach agreement with Russia before establishing this facility. The facility had prepared to confront a major influx of Afghans and others into Tajikistan after the Taliban victory, but this spillover did not take place. The center’s level of activity has correspondingly decreased.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi led a delegation to Kabul on March 24, 2022. According to the Chinese foreign ministry’s official account of the meeting:
Wang Yi emphasized, security is the foundation and prerequisite of development. He hopes that Afghanistan will take effective measures to provide necessary conditions for normal exchanges between various countries and Afghanistan. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is a terrorist organization designated by the UN Security Council and listed by the Chinese government in accordance with the law. China hopes that the Afghan side will earnestly fulfill its commitment and take effective measures to resolutely crack down on all terrorist forces, including the ETIM. Muttaqi said that Afghanistan is highly vigilant against the resurgence of terrorism and will take resolute and effective measures to eliminate terrorist forces in Afghanistan with all-out efforts. The Afghan Taliban [sic — China would not publish the name “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”] fully understands China’s concerns and will never allow any force to use the Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to Chinese friends.
Those talks, however, occurred the day after girls were unexpectedly banned from secondary schools despite Muttaqi’s previous assurances to the contrary. His statements on terrorism are correspondingly less reassuring. Qatari diplomats have observed that it is difficult to deal with a country where the foreign minister does not know what is going on.
Scholars from institutes working for the presidency in Tajikistan estimate that there are 1,400 to 2,000 militants from Tajikistan (primarily members of Ansarullah) in Northern Afghanistan, and a larger number of Uyghurs. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is said to have largely collapsed. The Taliban keep the Tajiks close to the border, in an apparent effort to exert pressure on the government of Tajikistan, which they periodically denounce and threaten for harboring the NRF. In an attempt to appease China, the Taliban have moved the Uyghurs out of Badakhshan and away from the Chinese border, but Tajikistan think-tank officials report that Uyghurs have been given Afghan passports (in violation of the Doha Agreement) and are being employed to train the Taliban’s special forces. There is thus an active threat to China, though Chinese diplomats in Dushanbe observed that Chinese personnel are in greater jeopardy in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. The grievances of the Uyghurs are a response to China’s repressive policies toward them, which a UN report charged likely amounted to crimes against humanity, and the threat to China is almost entirely internal and not attributable to externally based groups.
At least publicly, Russia indicates approval of the Taliban stance toward terrorism. In a recent interview with Sputnik, Russian Presidential Special Representative on Afghanistan and head of the Third Asia Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Zamir Nabievich Kabulov expressed skepticism that the U.S. had actually killed Zawahiri and said he would prefer to rely on the Taliban rather than the U.S. for counter-terrorism. He added, “In foreign affairs, we do not complain to [the Taliban], because they are fulfilling the promise they made to fight terrorism.” For years the greatest terrorism concern that Russia expressed over Afghanistan was ISKP. Russia charged, including in the UN Security Council, that the U.S. was ferrying IS Central Asian fighters from Syria to Afghanistan. One of the positive things about Afghanistan after the first year of Taliban rule, according to Kabulov, is that “the Americans are not there with their military presence, and the corrupt regime they imposed is also gone.” Russia has also signed an agreement with Afghanistan’s acting minister of commerce to supply gas, oil, diesel, and wheat, a deal that evades sanctions on both Russia and the Taliban. This is the same basket of commodities that the USSR provided to Afghanistan in the 1980s, but it remains unclear how the Taliban will pay for it.
Pakistan has also expressed concern about safe havens for terrorism in Afghanistan. Pakistan for years has charged that the Afghan government, with the support of India, was providing support for the TTP and Baloch nationalists. One of its reasons for allowing the Afghan Taliban to operate from Pakistan was to exert pressure on Afghanistan and the U.S. to cease such support. Pakistan anticipated that a Taliban victory would increase the security of its Western border, as the first round of Taliban rule had done. The Taliban government has hosted talks between Pakistan and the TTP in Kabul, but the talks have gone nowhere. Instead, the alliance between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban seems stronger than ever.
Pakistan has been firing into populated areas across the border that it claims TTP is using as bases, causing civilian casualties, and Afghanistan has reciprocated. Pakistani Taliban who fled to Afghanistan in the wake of the 2014 Zarb-i Azb operation are now infiltrating back into Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, where they are blackmailing wealthy individuals and businesses for hundreds of thousands of dollars of protection money. As a result of mobilization by the anti-Taliban Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement, mass demonstrations protesting against the return of the TTP have occurred in KP province.
Pakistan is the sole neighbor of Afghanistan to have experienced an increase of cross-border terrorism from Afghanistan since the Taliban victory. According to a Pakistani think tank, in the year since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan increased by 51 percent over the previous year. Pakistan is now suffering from Afghanistan-based terrorism more than any other country in the world.
In his September 23 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif opined that Pakistan shared international concerns about “the threat posed by the major terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan, especially ISIL-K and TTP as well as Al-Qaida, ETIM and IMU.” He did not note that all of these groups had entered Afghanistan through Pakistan. Now that the Afghan Taliban leadership is back in Kabul and Kandahar, Pakistan seems to have lost whatever leverage it had over them when they were based in Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar, and Waziristan.
In 2001, Iran under reformist President Muhammad Khatami gambled that an American presence in Afghanistan would be less of a threat than Sunni extremists like the Taliban and al-Qaida. Over two decades of experience have convinced Khatami’s hardline successors that this was a bad bet. At the same time, while demanding that the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan, Iran also strongly opposed the way that the U.S. actually left, to the point that Russian special envoy Zamir Kabulov once asked his Iranian counterpart if Iran really wanted the Americans to leave Afghanistan or not.
According to some interlocutors, what Iran most values in the Taliban is its hostility to the U.S., a hostility that, by the way, the Taliban deny having. Former Foreign Minister and advisor to the Supreme Leader Ali Akbar Velayati has described the Taliban as a new member of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.” Iran views hostility to the U.S. as a prerequisite for counter-terrorism, as it charges that terrorism comes from the U.S. So committed to this vision are the security elements in the Iranian state that President Raisi’s special representative for Afghanistan, former Qods commander Hasan Kazemi Qomi, sees America’s hand in all opposition to the Taliban. He has repeated the longstanding accusation that IS, including ISKP, was a creation of the Americans. In an interview that landed him in some trouble in early August, he also charged that “America is organizing a group under the name ‘Resistance Front,’ which is a lie; they seek to create internal chaos in the name of resistance.” Iran’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Muhammad Reza Bahrami, publicly contradicted him, saying he had seen no sign that the NRF was under Western influence. Qomi backtracked, claiming he had been misunderstood. Iranians are satisfied with the Taliban’s opposition to ISKP but wary of their attempts to improve relations with the U.S. Qomi has also expressed concern about the Taliban’s treatment of Shi’a populations.
All of Afghanistan’s neighbors — China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan — have stated publicly that the Taliban government must become more “inclusive.” In a recent interview, Kabulov said:
As far as Afghanistan itself is concerned, we all favor the formation of an inclusive ethno-political government. This is the subject of a special conversation with the Afghan leadership, which has so far stuck to its old line of being inclusive and extraordinary. We are not satisfied with this.
Inclusive Government — This is the first step towards normalizing society, which includes education for girls and jobs and work opportunities for Afghan women and others as the cold season approaches.
Iran went so far as to hold a meeting in Mashhad between representatives of the Taliban and the NRF around Nawruz, but neither of the Afghan sides was prepared to negotiate. China seems to regard the formation of an “inclusive” government as a necessary condition for recognition. The reason for this common stance is the belief that any government monopolized by one narrow group is unlikely to bring stability to Afghanistan.
Russia and China are leading separate regional processes aimed at achieving common goals in Afghanistan, in particular effective action by the Taliban against terrorist groups and formation of an inclusive government. As of this writing, Kabulov is planning to convene a meeting of the Moscow format on November 16, 2022, presumably without an invitation to the U.S. It will be up to this grouping to persuade the Taliban to form an inclusive government.
China has hosted and convened meetings about Afghanistan in a variety of formats, but the one it is counting on most is the Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Neighboring Countries of Afghanistan, including China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The third and last such meeting took place in Tanxi, China, on March 31. Chinese officials claim that this format is superior to the lower-level and more ad hoc Moscow format.
Conclusions
The Taliban will not respond to pressure after they have, in their view (the only view that counts for this purpose), defeated the United States after over 20 years of war and 23 years of sanctions. They are equally unlikely to respond to engagement that is unaccompanied by a credible, even if conditional, offer of recognition. They might respond to engagement accompanied by such a road map to recognition, and they would be more likely to respond to it if the offer were made by a coalition led by the U.S. Such a coalition is now virtually impossible, however. It is also possible that the Taliban would not respond meaningfully to any feasible offer.
If the sole goal of U.S. foreign policy were to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan (spoiler alert: it isn’t), the best policy would be to engage with China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, and the UN to seek a common platform for engagement with the Taliban on the basis of a road map for recognition of an inclusive government. In this counter-factual world, the U.S. could participate in and support the Moscow process. The professed policy objectives toward Afghanistan of these countries are not so different, except that the regional countries want the U.S. to compensate for the damage it did to Afghanistan by contributing heavily to reconstruction without having any presence or influence, while the U.S. is content to have no presence or influence and leave the problem to the region. For obvious reasons, despite some convergence of objectives on Afghanistan, it is now completely impossible for the U.S to engage or cooperate with Russia and Iran. The last-minute decision by the outgoing Trump administration to revoke the foreign terrorist designation of ETIM removed a key point for cooperating with China. India is performing a delicate balancing act between the U.S. and Russia on Ukraine and is unlikely to want to complicate it further. Whatever influence Pakistan may have, it seems unable to use it even to get the Taliban to rein in the TTP.
In addition, the near-term futures of Russia, Iran, and the U.S. are very uncertain. Russia is not winning the war against Ukraine, which is sparking tensions between President Putin and more aggressive nationalists, while hundreds of thousands of potential conscripts flee the country. Iran is under pressure by an unprecedented tide of demonstrations led by women as the supreme leader’s health is failing, and the U.S. is preparing for midterm congressional and quadrennial presidential elections whose results most Republican candidates have vowed not to accept if they do not win. The level of political violence and chatter about civil war in the U.S. is also rising sharply. Pakistan, as usual, is experiencing a variety of economic, political, and environmental crises, including the banning from elective office of the leaders of the two largest parties. Of the countries with the most influence in Afghanistan, China is the only one that is undergoing a relatively untroubled leadership transition at its 20th Party Congress though amid signs of growing economic problems and demographic challenges. This does not bode well for effective international policy.
Corrections and updates: This revised version of the report includes information from Human Rights Watch Reports on the Taliban campaign against ISKP and reprisal killings. It notes some forced marriages have taken place but may not be widespread as previously reported. The definition of mahr, transfer of wealth to the bride upon marriage, has been corrected. The original version of the report repeated some accounts that the nationwide gathering convened at the end of June was a “Loya Jirga”; the Taliban officially announced it as an assembly of ulama, not a Loya Jirga. Former Minister of Education Mawlawi Noorullah Munir has been shifted to director of Dar ul-Iftah a judicial body, not to a lower ranking position in the ministry of education. Uzbek Taliban commander Salahuddin Ayubi has not resigned from the government, but he has left Kabul, announcing opposition to some Taliban policies; he has since been summoned to Kandahar to meet the leader. This version adds a reference to demonstrations organized in Pakistan by the anti-Taliban Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement protesting the return of the TTP to Pakistan and accusing the military of responsibility. Since publishing the original report, we have learned that Russian Special Representative Zamir Kabulov plans to convene a Moscow-format meeting on Afghanistan on November 16. This version also adds a reference to the decision by the Trump administration to revoke the foreign terrorist organization designation of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
Annex 1: Text of the Decree of the Amir al-Mu’minin on Women’s Rights, December 3, 2021
In the name of Allah, the most merciful, and the most compassionate
The Islamic Emirate’s leadership instructs all relevant organizations, Ulama-e-Kiram and tribal elders to take serious actions to enforce Women’s Rights.
- Adult woman’s consent is necessary during Nikah/ marriage (though both should be equal with no risk of sedition).
No one can force women to marry by coercion or pressure. - A woman is not a property, but a noble and free human being, no one can give her to anyone in exchange for peace deal and or to end animosity.
- After the death of the husband, ‘Sharaie Adat’ (four months and ten nights or pregnancy) passes, no one can marry a widow by force including her relatives. A widow has the right whether to marry and or to determine/choose her future. (Though the principle of equality and preventing sedition should be kept into consideration).
- It is the Sharia right of a widow to obtain, ‘Mahar’ from her new husband.
- A widow has heritage right and fixed share in the property of her husband, children, father and other relatives. No one can deprive a widow of her right.
- Those with multi marriages (more than one wife) are obliged to give rights to all women in accordance with the Sharia law and maintain justice between them.
For proper implementation of this decree, relevant organization are instructed to do the following acts:
- The Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs is instructed to encourage scholars to give awareness to the people related to women’s rights through their letters or preaching that oppressing women and not giving them their rights will cause Allah’s dissatisfaction and His torment and danger.
- The Ministry of Information and Culture is directed to publish articles related to women’s rights through its mean in writing and audio, as well as encourage writers and activist to publish useful article on women’s right in order to attract attention of Ulema and people about women’s sharia rights, to prevent the ongoing oppression.
- The Supreme Court must issue instruction to all courts to consider applications for women’s right especially widows’, regarding their rights and oppression against them in a proper and principled manner, in order not to disappoint women of getting rid of oppression and obtaining their Sharia rights.
- Governors and district governors must cooperate comprehensively with the named ministries and the Supreme Court in the implementation of this decree.
Leadership office of Islamic Emirate
28/04/1443 Hijri Lunar
12/08/1400 Hijri Solar
03/12/2021 Gerigorian
Annex 2: Vienna Declaration of September 17, 2022
