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Afghanistan/TalibanBack
[Published: Sunday August 14 2022]

 Afghanistan’s Security Challenges under the Taliban

 
International crisis Group, 12 August 2022
 
Kabul/Brussels,  - One year after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, fighting has decreased considerably. Yet serious security problems remain, not least the foreign militants still in the country. External actors should press the new authorities to fulfil their commitments and avoid any steps that could reignite large-scale violence.
 
 
What’s new? The world’s deadliest war subsided into an uneasy calm after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021. Violence levels are much lower, but ticking up, as the Taliban combat two insurgencies. Most worrying for outsiders is that the Taliban harbour foreign militants, such as the slain al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
 
Why does it matter? While none of these challenges seriously threatens Taliban rule for the foreseeable future, the de facto authorities are struggling to address them. In some places, they have eased heavy-handed tactics that alienated residents. Their handling of transnational jihadist groups has not inspired confidence – especially among neighbouring countries experiencing militant attacks.
 
What should be done? In seeking to protect their interests, foreign actors should avoid falling into past patterns of supporting proxies or routinely pounding their enemies from the air, neither of which is likely to improve security. Carefully circumscribed engagement with the Taliban may seem far-fetched but could be the best of bad options.
 
 
Executive Summary
 
 
The Taliban victory has brought a measure of unfamiliar calm to Afghanistan, as killing subsided in late 2021 across the vast majority of Afghan territory. But all is not well. The Taliban are fighting two insurgencies – one led by the Islamic State’s local branch and the second comprising the National Resistance Front (NRF) and other groups aligned with the former government. Of greatest concern to the outside world is that foreign militant groups that in the past relied on the Taliban for safe haven remain in the country, as shown by the 31 July U.S. strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. 
 
Still, outsiders should resist any temptation to return to proxy wars or routine drone strikes. They should instead press the Taliban to honour their security commitments and, despite well-founded mistrust, offer modest collaboration on discrete issues. As for the Taliban, who bear primary responsibility for Afghanistan’s security, they must professionalise their forces, abandon collective punishment, and enforce their policy offering amnesty to officials and security forces of the government they overthrew.
 
The emerging picture of Afghanistan’s security landscape under Taliban rule reveals a country significantly more peaceful than a year ago, but with pockets of violence that threaten greater insecurity if not effectively managed. A key feature of the new landscape is the Taliban’s own changing force posture, which has visibly relaxed across much of the country. Hundreds of checkpoints on roads and highways have been dismantled, because the Taliban lack manpower to maintain them and, in any case, do not perceive major threats from the rural villages that hosted their fighters during the decades of insurgency. 
 
At the same time, they are still struggling to adapt to their new role policing the cities and parts of the north where they are unpopular. As they settle into Kabul and plan for the future, the Taliban have announced ambitious plans for a large security apparatus but efforts to build up these forces remain in early stages. The task is likely to take years.
 
 Meanwhile, the Taliban face at least two small insurgencies. In the east and parts of the north, they battle the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP). In the north, they also fight affiliates of the former army, police and intelligence services whom they defeated in August 2021. The brutal campaign against IS-KP has diminished its capacity in the east, but the group has begun to adjust, altering its area of operations and shifting its tactics – even making cross-border strikes in Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbours, likely to signal the ability to act from the Taliban’s own backyard. At the same time, the largest of the northern insurgent factions, the NRF, has been gaining momentum despite – or perhaps in part because of – a Taliban crackdown.
 
As they confront these challenges, the Taliban have also (in a quieter way) been taking limited steps to manage the risks posed by other militants who remain largely dormant but dangerous. These include al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups with regional or global ambitions, which have historically enjoyed the Taliban’s protection. The Taliban’s way of handling of these groups aims at containing them without provoking them to turn against their nascent government. 
 
That precarious balancing act appears to have backfired and may no longer be sustainable in the wake of the U.S. drone strike that killed Zawahiri. His death made plain the contradictions in the Taliban’s desire to host global jihadists who in principle aim to bring down an international system from which the Taliban themselves seek recognition.
 
 When security problems emerge, the Taliban’s first reactions have in some cases made them worse. They have tended to deny the existence of major issues, including by making absurd claims that al-Qaeda has no presence in the country. The Taliban issue similar denials about the scale of local insurgencies, presumably to thwart their adversaries’ publicity and recruitment efforts, while at the same time crushing dissent with heavy-handed tactics. These have included arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment and profiling whereby Taliban security forces target members of ethnic, tribal and religious groups whom they suspect of supporting insurgents or otherwise fostering anti-Taliban sentiments.
 
The Taliban themselves recognise that these harsh tactics have often generated backlash that drives Afghans to support the Taliban’s adversaries, and the authorities are therefore experimenting with more nuanced approaches to security. In some cases, they are relocating Taliban security personnel, to prevent their men from becoming enmeshed in local feuds, and offering to release prisoners on condition that tribal leaders offer guarantees of good behaviour. 
 
They have launched sweeping efforts at disarmament, including unprecedented house-to-house searches to hunt for weapons and confiscate materiel – dramatic steps, but less violent than other counter-insurgency tactics with which Afghans had become familiar over past decades. They are also enlisting the soft power of religious scholars, trying to persuade the entire country not to resist Taliban rule. Perhaps most importantly, the Taliban have reiterated a general amnesty, applicable to everyone who abstains from fighting them, and reached out to former enemies, urging their ex-foes to help rebuild state institutions – including the security forces.
 
 While these initiatives are not yet curbing anti-Taliban violence, the threats to the new regime are not existential and the question from the Taliban’s perspective is how to keep them from worsening. Several future scenarios could pose graver risks to their control: pronounced fragmentation of the Taliban movement itself; opposition groups’ unification; or a revolt by jihadist militants against Taliban efforts to contain them. For now, those developments appear unlikely. 
 
Another danger could lie in regional and Western powers arming proxy fighting forces or Western countries resorting to a new routine of airstrikes or other unilateral action against foreign militants on Afghan soil, with unpredictable knock-on effects. The discovery of al-Qaeda’s leader in the heart of Kabul naturally will lead many foreign governments to doubt the Taliban’s ability or willingness to contain transnational militants. Indeed, the outside world understandably frets about the new Afghan authorities’ seemingly negligent approach toward jihadists who remain (at least for now) affiliated with the Taliban.
 
Still, outside powers’ first priority should be to avoid precipitating a return to high levels of violence in Afghanistan. The U.S. and its partners have made clear that they will retain an “over-the-horizon” capability to strike targets from bases in other countries. But the successful strike on al-Qaeda’s leader does not equate to a wider strategy: more bombing of militant groups will not eliminate them. Nor should foreign governments inflame violence in Afghanistan with a misguided return to proxy wars. Anti-Taliban rebel groups are highly unlikely any time soon to coalesce and prevail in a civil war, seizing Kabul, even with foreign funding. 
 
Instead, such tactics – upping the tempo of drone strikes or attempting to increase the capacity of the Taliban’s rivals to use force – are likely to result in civilian casualties, rising anti-Western sentiment and potentially even greater popular support for the Taliban. They would further fuel tensions between Western governments and the de facto authorities, blocking possible minimal cooperation on matters important to Afghans' well-being and, perhaps, pushing the Taliban further into the arms of jihadists and encouraging defections to IS-KP.
 
A better way forward would be holding the Taliban to their commitments, including their promises to restrain transnational jihadist groups, offering in return limited help on practical security issues. The West will not entertain the idea of security cooperation with the Taliban, but opportunities remain for collaboration: for example, helping the Taliban curb arms trafficking and ensure safe storage of weapons stockpiles. If the outside world wishes the Taliban security forces would behave more professionally, donors might want to expand programs aimed at educating the Taliban about their legal obligations, including on civilian policing. 
 
Stronger border management would also require international cooperation, offering benefits for all sides. A major clean-up of landmines and unexploded ordnance could involve both the Taliban and outsiders. These steps do not require trusting the Taliban. On the contrary, it is precisely because the outside world is doubtful that the Taliban will provide security for Afghans and shield other countries from the spillover of Afghan insecurity that closer attention is warranted.
 
Still, it is the Taliban who now bear primary responsibility for the nation’s security, and the more they can do to shoulder that burden responsibly, the better it will be for all concerned – the Afghan people, outside actors and the Taliban themselves. As Afghanistan’s de facto authorities, they have a duty to develop security forces that protect rather than harm or alienate civilians. They should prosecute their own members who commit abuses, including breaches of the amnesty that is so important to conciliation with ex-enemies, in order to deter misbehaviour. 
 
They must stop targeting entire neighbourhoods, tribes and ethnic groups for the actions of individuals who take up arms against their government. Such steps would make Afghans less fearful that the country will plunge back into the abyss of war. They might also start a long, difficult journey toward practical cooperation between the Taliban and foreign governments on basic issues of peace and stability.   - (ANA) -
 
For the full report, visit: https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/326-afghanistans-security-challenges-under-taliban
 
AB/ANA/14 August 2022 — - -
 
 
 

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