Taliban at inevitable crossroads
For months, the Taliban has managed to both talk peace and wage war across Afghanistan.
The strategy appeared to appease the hard-liners within the militant group who want an outright military victory to end the 20-year conflict and moderate members of the movement who would accept a political solution.
But the new, aggressive US push for a peace deal has brought the Taliban to an inevitable crossroads: Accepting a place in a power-sharing government, as proposed by the United States, would bring the group one step closer to its ultimate goal of retaking full control of the country and establishing an Islamic government – and yet any path to power that prevents Afghanistan from again being labelled a pariah state will require compromise at odds with the core beliefs of the militants’ rank and file.
A deadline looms. The Biden administration has until May 1 to withdraw troops from the country, under a US-Taliban deal signed in February 2019, or negotiate a new arrangement. What the Taliban does could signal where the balance of power lies within the movement and what its vision is for Afghanistan’s future.
So far, Taliban leadership has said little publicly to reveal the specifics of what kind of government it would accept, beyond one ruled by Islamic law.
‘‘The intra-Afghan dialogue is progressing. There is no doubt there are some difficulties along the way, but this is the agreed framework, ’’said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s senior political leader at a meeting in Moscow last week.
Baradar appeared to push back against signals from the Biden administration that it may delay withdrawing troops and the proposal of a power-sharing government in a leaked draft peace plan. Both moves would be departures from the US-Taliban agreement signed last year, a document prized by the militants.
‘‘The Doha deal is the best and most effective way to resolve issues and move forward,’’ he said. ‘‘The responsibilities of both sides are clearly written in the peace deal known by the entire world.’’
The US proposal also calls for talks in Turkey next month to supplement talks in Doha, the establishment of an interim government and the drafting of a new constitution to be followed by elections.
The Afghan government has said it will attend the Turkey conference. The Taliban has not yet commented. At the conference, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is planning to propose early elections to choose transition leaders, according to two senior Afghan officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.
‘‘This fight is not to share power. This war is for religious purposes in order to bring an Islamic government and implement Islamic law.’’
Senior Taliban commander
The role foreign countries played in the establishment of Afghanistan’s current government and the holding of elections – a mechanism the Taliban views as a Western-imposed construct – lie at the heart of its argument that the leadership in Kabul is illegitimate.
One senior Taliban commander said he would oppose any deal that does not hand the group absolute power over Afghanistan because he believes the current government is an extension of the US presence in the country, a view echoed by other Taliban fighters interviewed by The Washington Post.
‘‘This fight is not to share power. This war is for religious purposes in order to bring an Islamic government and implement Islamic law,’’ said the commander, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
‘‘If we share power with the government in Kabul, what were we fighting for?’’ he said. ‘‘I wouldn’t accept this.’’
The unity of the Taliban movement as a whole is difficult to gauge, but it is made up of networks that include hard line elements and more moderate leaders. Taliban fighters on the ground have expressed opposition to peace talks with the Afghan government; instead, like the senior Taliban commander, they support taking power through military means.
The first significant test of the Taliban’s unity was the group’s ability to rally support behind the signing of the US-Taliban deal last February and to enforce a week-long reduction in violence. Not a single US service member has been killed in Afghanistan since the Doha agreement.
It is unclear if the Taliban is seriously considering the new US peace proposal. Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha, said it remains ‘‘under review.’’
‘‘This proposal is forcing the Taliban to confront an uncomfortable reality,’’ said Andrew Watkins, senior Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group. The international legitimacy that they say they want is ‘‘never going to come without engaging with the outside world and the international community in a way that could potentially be read by their own members and supporters as having been corrupted by foreign influence.’’
The Taliban sees its fighters as the rightful leaders of Afghanistan, arguing their legitimacy is drawn from restoring order during the civil war and from two decades of fighting against the United States.
The militants’ political leadership also understands that to effectively maintain power on a national level they need the support of the international community.
Without formal international recognition, the Taliban will likely be cut off from billions of dollars in aid that is needed to keep the country afloat and the group’s campaign to remove some of its top leaders from international sanctions lists would be shattered.
There is no way for the Taliban to integrate into international political or economic systems ‘‘without falling into the trap that they say the current [so called] ’puppet administration’ fell into,’’ Watkins said, referencing a term the Taliban use to describe the government in Kabul.
‘‘This could be a put up or shut up moment for the Taliban,’’ he said.