Advancing Taliban try to polish image
KABUL, Afghanistan — In June, when the Taliban took the northern district of Imam Sahib, the insurgent commander who now ruled the area had a message for his new constituents, including some government employees: Keep working, open your shops, and keep the city clean.
The water was turned back on, the power grid was repaired, garbage trucks collected trash, and a government vehicle’s flat tire was mended — all under the Taliban’s direction.
Imam Sahib is one of dozens of districts caught up in a Taliban military offensive that swiftly hascaptured more than one-quarter of Afghanistan’s districts, many in the north, since the U.S. withdrawal began in May.
It’s all part of the Taliban’s broader strategy of trying to rebrand themselves as capable governors while they press a ruthless, land-grabbing offensive across the country. The combination is a stark signal that the insurgents fully intend to try for all-out dominance of Afghanistan once the U.S. pullout is finished.
“The situation is such that it is a testing period for us. Everything done in practice is being watched,” Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban deputy commander and the head the group’s most violent wing, said in a recent radio broadcast to Taliban fighters. “Behave in a good way with the general public.”
But the signs that the Taliban haven’t reformed are increasingly clear: An assassination campaign against government workers, civil society leaders and security forces continues on pace, and there’s little effort to proceed with peace talks with the Afghan government, despite commitments made to the United States.
And in areas the insurgents have seized, women are being forced out of public-facing roles, and girls out of schools, undoing many of the gains from the past 20 years of Western presence.
For much of the Afghan public, terrified and exhausted, the Taliban’s gains have been panic-inducing. And there’s widespread fear that worse is in store, as the Taliban already have several crucial provincial capitals effectively under siege.
Regional groups have begun to muster militias to defend their home turf, skeptical that the Afghan security forces can hold out in the absence of their U.S. backers, in a painful echo of the country’s devastating civil war breakdown in the 1990s.
Old hard-line rules imposed
In places they now rule, the Taliban have imposed their old hard-line Islamist rules, such as forbidding women from working or even going outside their homes unaccompanied, according to residents in captured districts. Music is banned. Men are told to stop shaving their beards.
Documents and interviews with insurgent commanders and Taliban officials show that the success of the group’s recent surge wasn’t entirely expected, and that Taliban leaders are haphazardly trying to capitalize on their sudden military and political gains.
Not all districts have been taken by force. Some fell because of poor governance, others because of rivalries between local strongmen and low morale among the security forces.
Internally, the message from Taliban leadership to its fighters is that even though they’ve seen an increase in casualties, they’re winning their battle against the Afghan government as international forces depart.
More than 1,000 miles away in Qatar, peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives have made little headway, with the two sides meeting infrequently.
For now, the Taliban are focusing their energy on improving their image in places they’ve seized.
Success isn’t a given: The group’s governance record during their time in power before 2001 was poor. Services lagged, public displays of brutality were common, and fear was rampant.
In one northern Afghan district, the area’s new Taliban ruler went straight to the bottom line, trying to convince residents they wouldn’t be killed out of hand.
“Everyone’s life is safe,” Najibullah, a resident who requested to use only his first name, recounted the commander saying from the town square. But, Najibullah added, “People are scared, and they are uneasy.”
As the Taliban gain ground, fighters have directions to treat captured government soldiers with care and ultimately release them. They also have been told to lay siege to larger provincial capitals on their outskirts, but not enter them. In places such as Imam
Sahib, some civil servants are being allowed to return to work — except for women — to help keep towns and cities functioning, although it’s unclear who’s paying them.
Ignoring the deal
These directives are clearly aimed at avoiding bad publicity — destroyed homes, dead civilians and damaged public works — and at least appear to adhere to the U.s.-taliban agreement made in 2020. The deal outlined certain military tactics that both sides would refrain from, including attacking provincial capitals.
But adherence to the deal was seemingly ignored when Taliban fighters entered not one, but several provincial capitals in recent weeks, with fighting reported in the streets, dozens of soldiers and civilians killed and injured, and untold amounts of property destroyed.
Reports of insurgent fighters enacting revenge on the local population also have surfaced, signaling the limited ability of Taliban leaders to control their ground commanders — all of different ethnicities, diverging loyalties and unclear levels of adherence to the group’s command structure.
Even so, the insurgents continue to adapt.
The Taliban are aware of their legacy of harsh rule, and don’t want to “become the same pariah and isolated state” that Afghanistan was in the 1990s, said Ibraheem Bahiss, an International Crisis Group consultant and an independent research analyst.
“They’re playing the long game,” Bahiss said.