13th SOUTH ASIA CONFERENCE - Return of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Implications and Way Forward

The Taliban are back in Afghanistan. Amidst deepening humanitarian and economic crises in the country, the Taliban have announced a caretaker cabinet, mostly comprised of members blacklisted under the UN sanctions list, including the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues from the Haqqani Network. The caretaker government barely represents the remarkable social and ethnic diversity that characterises the Afghan polity. Though several countries have directly engaged the Taliban, they remain circumspect about extending any formal recognition to the Haqqani–Taliban regime in Kabul.

The growing friction among various Taliban groups, particularly between the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, has also come to the fore. Contrary to the commitments made to the international community by the Doha-based Taliban leadership, there have been growing instances of summary executions and revenge killings in provinces and vast rural areas, and enforcement of strict restrictions on women, youth and media across the country.

Though Taliban leaders in their international interactions continue to state that rights of women and ethnic and religious minorities will be protected, and that there will be a general amnesty for Afghans who have worked with the previous government or the Western coalition, including members of the erstwhile security establishment, the situation on the ground suggests otherwise. Whether by design or owing to differences within the rank-and-file, the Taliban leadership appears to be capitulating under pressure from its notably conservative core cadres.

Compared to the 1990s, the Taliban today have several constituent groups with competing ideas and perceptions about ‘genuine Islamic rule’. With the takeover of Kabul, the Islamist veneer on the Taliban movement appears to be cracking as factional power-play deepens within the ‘emirate’. Maintaining ambiguity or contradictory messaging on issues of concern caters to managing differing perceptions within the rank-and-file and simultaneously sustaining the façade of a new and changed Taliban, especially as the Haqqani–Taliban regime seeks international engagement and recognition.

The disconnect between sections of the older leadership that sought to convey a relatively moderate image of the ‘emirate’ to the outside world, and a whole new generation of battle-hardened commanders and overzealous hardliners that predominate the Taliban rank-and-file, is more than palpable. The leadership also remains strikingly all-Taliban and Haqqanis, in the absence of non-Taliban or Shia representation in its senior ranks. This is bound to lead to a strong sense of marginalisation and alienation among non-Taliban Pashtuns and various other ethnicities that together form a vast majority of the Afghan population. The UN Security Council and various other forums such as G7, G20, SCO and CSTO have thus emphasised the need for the establishment of “an inclusive and representative government” in Afghanistan. While the so-called Taliban 2.0 may have realised the value of public diplomacy and communications strategy, their ideological and political impulse, as reflected in their tendency to monopolise and over-centralise power, appears patently old and familiar. 

With the Taliban, who subscribe to the Deobandi-Wahhabi version of Islam taught in Pakistani madrassas, now at the helm in Kabul, the theological and ideological divide among various militant Islamist entities, particularly on matters of jurisprudence, is likely to gain further traction in the region. Unfortunately, the decades-old support structures responsible for sustained sectarian violence and cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan and the region remain fully intact. Such threats have also long-disrupted and long-impeded progress on both intra- and inter-regional trade and connectivity.

Several reports, including by the UN, suggest that international terrorist networks and their regional affiliates of various hue, including those that are state-sponsored, who seek to violently impose their obscurantist ideologies on mostly pluralistic societies in the region, have been regrouping in Afghanistan. Their presence remains a key security concern for countries in the South and Central Asia region, and beyond. Recent developments in Afghanistan are likely to galvanise them into spectacular action, provide impetus to drug trafficking and radicalisation among youth, and thereby sow the seeds of future conflict and socio-political discord in the ‘Heart of Asia’.

The UN Security Council Resolutions 2593 (August 2021) and 2596 (September 2021) have emphasised that the territory of Afghanistan should not be used to threaten or attack any country, to plan or finance terrorist acts, or to shelter and train terrorists, and that no Afghan group or individual should support terrorists operating on the territory of any country.

The larger international community has for now adopted a policy of ‘wait and watch’ towards the developing situation in Afghanistan. However, given the growing humanitarian crisis facing the Afghan people and the threat of refugee outflow, consequent to the collapse of both state machinery and economy, including the flight of capital and trained manpower from the country, the regional and international constituency advocating transactional engagement with the Haqqani–Taliban regime is expanding.

Against this backdrop, the MP-IDSA is organising a two-day conference in an online format on 16–17 December 2021, as part of its Annual South Asia Conference, inviting a cross-section of experts, analysts and policymakers to seek answers to the following questions and dwell on the possible way forward on Afghanistan:

1. How is the situation in Afghanistan likely to pan out in the immediate to short-term?
2. Given the growing pulls and pressures, both within and from outside, will the Taliban be able to hold itself together and provide a stable and effective national leadership?  
3. How are other Afghan political actors likely to respond to the return of the Taliban in Kabul?
4. How are regional and extra-regional countries looking at the return of the Taliban and its implications for the security landscape in and around the ‘Heart of Asia’?
5. In the absence of national reconciliation, how effective and sustainable will the economic and political incentives be in transforming the Taliban, from an armed proxy jihadi network into a moderate, broad-based and independent governing authority?
6. What does the return of the Taliban bode for Pakistan in the long-run?
7. The Taliban 2.0 (as the new pseudonym goes) is being pushed to an ostensibly more moderate position by the more virulent Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) group and its affiliates. In this context, how is it likely to affect the ideological underpinnings of the Taliban and their unity?
8. What is the way forward, in terms of available policy options for the region and the wider international community to deal with the developing situation in Afghanistan?

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