Taliban try to better their image as they push for victory

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN >> In June, when the Taliban took the district of Imam Sahib in Afghanistan’s north, 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 has swiftly captured more than onequarter of Afghanistan’s districts, many in the north, since the U.S. withdrawal began in May.

It is 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 allout 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 have not reformed are increasingly clear: An assassination campaign against government workers, civil society leaders and security forces continues on pace. There is 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 is 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.

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 recently captured districts. Music is banned. Men are told to stop shaving their beards. Residents are also supposed to provide food for Taliban fighters.

Documents and interviews with insurgent commanders and Taliban officials show that the success of the group’s recent surge was not entirely expected, and that Taliban leaders are haphazardly trying to capitalize on their sudden military and political gains.

Internally, the message from Taliban leadership to its fighters is that even though they have seen an increase in casualties, they are 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.