Afghanistan: Back to the Brink

The elevation of Sirajuddin Haqqani, lead­er of the Haqqani network, as Mansoor’s deputy and the Taliban’s top military strat­egist suggests that al-Qaida is finally about to get its long-awaited moment of re-entry into Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe that the Haqqani network is more operationally connected with glob­al jihadist groups than the majority of the tribally-organized Taliban who possess a localized worldview. Sirajuddin is report­edly a member of al-Qaida’s Executive Council, and the US has offered a USD 10 million reward for him, the same as had previously been placed on the head of Mul­lah Omar. This should end hopes that the Mansoor Taliban might act as a moderate force in Afghan politics, if they enter into a power-sharing arrangement with Kabul. Rather, one should expect a process of fac­tionalization within the Taliban insurgency that could benefit not only al-Qaida, but potentially also rival jihadist groups such as the “Islamic State” (IS).

One of the reasons for the defection of Tal­iban fighters to the IS was a suspicion that Mansoor was only negotiating with Kabul to secure political appointments in Af­ghanistan for members of his own Ishaqzai tribe. He was perceived as betraying the in­terests of other Taliban leaders. Desperate to consolidate his position as the Taliban’s new leader, Mansoor has now felt com­pelled to announce the intensification of jihad in Afghanistan.

A Forgotten but Escalating War

Although the International Security Assis­tance Force (ISAF) terminated its mission in December 2014, the US still retains 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, mostly for guard duties, training missions, and special operations. These troops are still scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2016. With the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani keen to compromise with the Taliban, hopes had been raised of a negotiated peace. These are however, fading due to four factors. The first is political: Ghani’s own legitimacy is shaky, considering that he was only able to assume the presidency after his election opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, conceded defeat despite an ambiguous voting result. Abdullah accepted the lesser post of chief executive. The two men have differing views on the Taliban. Abdullah sees the in­surgents as representing a medieval ideol­ogy that has no space in the country’s de­velopmental vision, while Ghani believes that unless they are brought into the politi­cal mainstream and their growing military capability is acknowledged, the country is condemned to more violence.

The second factor that has diminished hopes for peace is economic: Afghanistan is thought to require USD 7 billion annually over the next decade just to pay civil serv­ants’ salaries, keep infrastructure main­tained, and provide domestic security. Af­ghan revenue at present accounts for 29 per cent of the national budget, the remainder coming from foreign aid. With the econo­my stalling for the first time since 2003 and the Afghan currency depreciating sharply, the government will remain dependent on foreign funding. The insurgents know of this weakness and thus see little reason to compromise. For them, history is merely replaying itself according to the script that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 – a weak regime, sustained by overseas donors, is holding off armed rebels only as long as its finances last. Sensing that the West has no interest to continue with nation-build­ing or subsidizing a lost cause, the Taliban feel that victory is within reach and view peace talks as merely a prelude to marching on Kabul once again.

The third factor is military: up to one-third of Afghan territory is at high risk of insur­gent violence. Although this is insufficient to translate into a swift seizure of power, the extent to which Afghan security forces have grown reliant on Western air and in­telligence support over the past decade is now hampering their operational response. The Afghan air force has few ground-attack aircraft for coun­terinsurgency duties, and is struggling to recruit pilots who can be trusted not to change sides. During the Taliban’s rise to power in 1994 – 6, much of their success came from the de­fection of Afghan army and air force per­sonnel, together with their equipment, at crucial battlefield moments. To avoid simi­lar occurrences, Kabul has intensified per­sonnel screening. However, the discovery in 2015 that several weapons captured dur­ing the latest spring offensive came from government arsenals suggests that the in­surgents still have facilitators within the Afghan security forces.

The fourth factor is geostrategic: Afghani­stan’s simmering tensions with Pakistan. The US, China, and Russia want Pakistan to broker a peace settlement between the Afghan government and the senior Taliban leadership. Islamabad for its part is front­ing its preferred faction of the Taliban, the Mansoor faction, as the only negotiating partner with Kabul. The Pakistani intelli­gence service has quietly ousted all other Taliban factions who wish to retain a de­gree of political independence and who chafe at the stranglehold that Islamabad exercises over Afghan affairs. This situation is analogous to the Soviet-Afghan War, when Pakistan insisted on being the West’s sole intermediary with the Afghan mujahi­deen and then used this position to strengthen its own proxies, all radical Is­lamists, while marginalizing more moder­ate resistance factions.

Terrorist Group Power Struggle

To some extent, the war in Afghanistan al­ready represents a worsening threat to the West, regardless of how events play out. If the Mansoor Taliban, with its Haqqani-provided manpower and firepower, prevails over dissident Taliban factions, al-Qaida would be a beneficiary. Western experts worry that the latter, stung by personnel losses in Afghanistan-Pakistan as well as in Yemen, is actively seeking to carry out a spectacular attack in the West. Having al­ready lost a great deal of its recruitment base in Syria and Iraq to the IS, al-Qaida urgently needs to regain credibility as a functional actor if it is to remain relevant in jihadist politics. Since operational success has been the key to the IS’ appeal among new-generation terrorists, al-Qaida will have to compete on similar terms. The ex­pansion of its existing safe havens in Haqqani-controlled areas for attack plan­ning and logistical preparation is exactly what the group needs at this juncture. Sev­eral past al-Qaida plots against Western homelands have been traced to Haqqani territory, which in turn has been prioritized for US drone strikes.

On the other hand, if the Mansoor Taliban fails to assert control over the insurgency in Afghanistan, the country could see further a splintering of jihadist groups. Already, former Taliban members who have been expelled for disciplinary infractions or are disillusioned with the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by their leaders in Pakistan have rallied under the IS banner. There is a per­ception that revenues gathered from the Afghan drug trade are not being put to common use, and are instead being appro­priated by the top leadership for personal benefit. Reliable sources allege that 70 – 80 per cent of all narco-trafficking proceeds obtained by the Tali­ban go directly to the leader­ship, while the Taliban fighters on the ground have to divide the remainder among themselves. Since they run the majority of risks, such an un­equal distribution of rewards has sparked resentment among local commanders.

Unlike the 1990s, when senior Taliban clerics practiced austerity, many political figureheads in the insurgency today show off their wealth in the form of flashy vehi­cles and palatial residences in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Karachi. This has prompted a generational upsurge from younger commanders in the field and cre­ated conditions for the latter to defect to­wards the IS. Part of the appeal is also ego­tistical: the leader of the Taliban is merely a regional “emir”, who according to Islamic convention, is theoretically one among many emirs worldwide all owing allegiance to a higher “caliph”. Taliban fighters who rebrand themselves as warriors of a global caliphate are promoting themselves to a higher status than mere foot soldiers of an Afghan emirate. Thus, the IS label has gained some currency in Afghanistan de­spite socio-cultural and linguistic barriers.

To set up a new identity for themselves, dissident Taliban factions have emulated the IS trademark brutality, beheading their former comrades and burning poppy fields in an effort to “cleanse” society. They have been joined by Uzbek militants fleeing counterinsurgency operations in northwest Pakistan. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Af­ghan Islamist who is a long-standing rival of the Taliban, has also reportedly an­nounced his affiliation with the IS. Inter­estingly though, there have been few accounts of foreign fighters from outside the South Asian region travelling to Af­ghanistan to join the IS.

Funding IS in Afghanistan

Anecdotal reports suggest that IS cadres in Afghanistan are flush with cash. Although the expert consensus is that there are few direct contacts between the IS franchise in Afghanistan and the central leadership in Syria-Iraq, it is possible that seed money has been provided to the new cadres. There is already a precedent for skill-sharing be­tween the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters: In 2005, Iraqi jihadists taught the Taliban how to assemble powerful improvised ex­plosive devices and use suicide bombers to maximum effect. The result was a sharp rise in terrorism-related casualties from the fol­lowing year, which has never abated. It is thus possible that clandestine contacts have been created to transfer funding and tech­nical knowledge to the Afghan branch of IS, even if the latter remains largely auton­omous of Iraqi control.

Another possibility is that IS, with its dem­onstrated talent for racketeering in Iraq, is taking over parts of the Afghan drug econ­omy while attacking those controlled by the Taliban. Reliable reports suggest that opi­um cultivation is booming in Afghanistan. One of the provinces being contested be­tween the IS and Taliban, Helmand, ac­counts for almost 50 per cent of opium pro­duction in the country. In the eastern province of Nangarhar, where the IS drove the Taliban from six of the province’s 22 districts, they have tried to shut down the drug economy, possibly out of concern that they might not be able to exploit it them­selves due to Nangarhar’s close proximity to Taliban strongholds in Pakistan. And there are strong grounds for believing that at least part of the opposition to Mullah Mansoor from within the Taliban itself, mainly comes from his having cornered large portions of the drug trade at the cost of other insurgent leaders who are now in open revolt.