How much can we learn about the Taliban in just seven days?
Edward Kenney
Afghanistan Study Group Blogger
Now that Afghanistan is awash with rumors that the Taliban and the Karzai government may be engaged in secret talks—with the prospect of more formal peace arrangement to take place in Turkey later this year—there have been a number of articles deconstructing the Taliban in just the last week. So what have we learned?
*Newsweek has a who’s who guide to the Taliban. Similar to the Karzai government, most of the senior Talibs have long complicated histories dating back to the 1990s or even earlier. Many commanders either led forces against the Northern Alliance or were ministers under Mullah Omar. If the Newsweek article accurately depicts the governing structure of the insurgency, there is perhaps greater hope that a comprehensive peace deal with Omar will be honored by the various Taliban groups.
This report also raises a number of questions. How much do we really know about the Taliban “shadow” government? We know that many of these individuals worked under Omar previously, but how much influence does the Taliban leader still maintain? The uniformity of the Taliban leadership is contradicted by Anand Gopal’s report from last autumn which points out that key members of the insurgency were wiling to break with the Taliban early in the war. Their entreaties were rejected by Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai at the behest of U.S. Also left unanswered: how much of insurgency’s command and control structure has been compromised due to the troop surge? The Newsweek “guide” doesn’t answer these questions, which are crucial to the coalition’s strategy going into negotiations.
*A recent report from the Washington Post looks at the Taliban foot soldiers, and comes away with similar conclusions. For years now, Karzai has been referring to the insurgency as his “Taliban brothers”. Turns out, this isn’t even hyperbole. According to this report, many families have been torn apart by the war. The article follows two brothers—one of whom supports the U.S./Karzai, the other the Taliban. Both acknowledge that they may face each other in battle, but also hope that some day the family can be reconciled. As with the Newsweek article, this report probably indicates that the prospects for reconciliation are better than some might think. To the extent that kinship ties both improve the ability to communicate with the enemy and incentivize the peace process, these familial relationships between ally and enemy can be utilized effectively. But we should also not underestimate the tribal and ethnic divisions that do still exist.
*Adding to this note of caution, Lael Adams writes that international forces have a fundamentally misguided view of the Taliban’s ideology. “…the determination to preserve national and personal freedom and independence [is] the true Afghan ideology,” she writes. She concludes that
“the international community’s refusal to reconsider the actual threat and composition of their enemy on the battlefield is based on their belief that a Talib equals a terrorist and that international troops are defending their respective homelands by fighting in Afghanistan”
Such a belief has led to an unwillingness on the part of the coalition to forcefully push for the reconciliation process.
For the first time since the war began, there is a broader effort to understand the enemy. This trend could not come at a more urgent time, as reports of peace talks continue to increase. Unfortunately there remains a decent chance that our understanding of the Taliban—from the leadership to the lowly foot soldier—remains fundamentally flawed.
