Last Friday’s outbreak of terrorist violence in Kabul, which claimed dozen of lives, is believed to be linked to a power struggle among the Taliban in the wake of the previous week’s announcement that Mullah Omar has been dead for at least two years.
It was followed on Monday by a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport, suggesting there could be worse to come, with the Taliban apparently keen to demonstrate that they remain a potent force in Omar’s absence.
They were in no rush to pick a successor, though, until knowledge of his death became public, and it’s very likely a substantial segment of the force was itself unaware of being formally leaderless. Resentment over being kept in the dark may well have fed into what looks like a power struggle, with challenges emerging to Mullah Mansoor Akhtar’s ascendancy.
In practical terms, one immediate consequence was suspension of the Pakistan-brokered negotiations in Murree between the Afghan government and the Taliban. A settlement of any kind was an extremely long shot, but at least the two sides were talking; and Omar was said to have endorsed the process less than a month ago.
Now the talks are off for the time being, violence has returned with a vengeance, and Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has pointed the finger of blame toward Pakistan, claiming that is where the terrorists came from. That’s not an unusual charge, but this time it comes from someone who has made an effort to mend fences with Islamabad.
The creation of the Taliban and their conquest of Kabul 21 years or so ago were viewed with pride in Pakistan as a considerable military success, and at least a section of the khaki establishment had no intention of abandoning its Afghan assets despite the post-9/11 exigencies. Its possible role in formulating a strategy for the period that began with the departure of most western forces is inevitably unclear, but there are legitimate questions to be asked and it’s hardly illogical for suspicions to arise.
One obvious question is how key figures in Pakistan intelligence hierarchy could possibly have been unaware of Omar’s demise, even if he didn’t, as Afghan intelligence sources claim, die in a Karachi hospital. And if it was a calculated conspiracy of silence, were any other interested parties, such as the CIA, for instance, complicit in it?
Similar questions arose, of course, after Osama Bin Laden was hunted down in his home near the Kakul military academy outside Abbottabad more than four years ago, and they are yet to be convincingly answered. It appears, meanwhile, that even Al-Qaeda’s leadership was unaware of Omar’s fate, given that Ayman Al-Zawahiri re-pledged allegiance to him only last year.
But then again, who knows whether Zawahiri himself is alive? After all, not long after the Omar newsflash, it was reported that Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of a particularly notorious Taliban faction, has also been dead for a year. His son Sirajuddin is purportedly one of Akhtar’s deputies. The Haqqanis are believed to have been particularly dear to the Pakistanis, but there are contradictory reports about where Akhtar stands in this respect.
The latter’s belligerent statements belie his reputation as a relatively moderate Talib, although that doesn’t mean very much in the context of violent extremism, just as the concept of “bad” and “good” Taliban strikes some of us as fairly absurd. But differences of opinion do matter, of course, and could make a significant difference in determining the future of Afghanistan.
Although even its modern roots go back a long way, the upsurge in Muslim extremism can be traced back to a series of unfortunate events in the late 1970s: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s military coup in Pakistan, the communist takeover in Kabul (which was followed less than two years later by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), and the advent of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime in Tehran.
The well-funded mujahideen rebellion in Afghanistan sowed the seeds for much of what has transpired thereafter, including the Taliban rule (and subsequent insurgency, which inevitably spilled over into Pakistan) in that country, and the role played across the Middle East (and beyond) by returnees from the Afghan “jihad.” The US played a primary role in propelling that jihad, and then was surprised, even hurt, by the blowback.
It stupidly waded back into the miasma and compounded its folly by invading Iraq, helping to create the conditions that facilitated the emergence of Daesh. Last Saturday marked the first anniversary of its anti-Daesh intervention, and there’s little to show for it thus far beyond a mounting death toll.
There have been reports in recent months of small groups of Taliban drifting into Daesh, which has already displaced Al-Qaeda as the go-to one-stop-shop for fulfilling “jihadi” fantasies, and disarray among the former followers of Mullah Omar can only facilitate its inroads into Afghanistan and, sooner or later, Pakistan.
There is certainly no cause to mourn Omar’s demise, but nor is there any obvious reason to assume that his absence opens up pathways to peace.
There were no public sightings of Omar after he was seen riding off into the sunset on the back of a motorbike in the wake of the American attack in 2001. Where he ended up, and the extent to which he guided Taliban fortunes thereafter, remains uncertain. The Taliban say he remained in Afghanistan throughout, but that is unlikely, although it is also unclear whether he was part of the so-called Quetta Shura based in the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
The subsequent confusion among the Taliban is reflected in the resignation of Tayyab Agha, the head of the Taliban’s office in the Qatari capital, once reportedly a personal secretary to Mullah Omar and team leader in negotiations between the Taliban and Iran. He referred to the cover-up of Omar’s death as a “historical mistake,” indicating that he, too, wasn’t in the know.
The Taliban’s demise as a coherent force would be a welcome augury, but for the fact that Daesh, which sees the Taliban as wimps, is waiting in the wings.
