N GEOPOLITICS
Challenging Our Understanding of the Taliban
undefined and Senior VP of Strategic Analysis
Rodger Baker
Senior VP of Strategic Analysis, Stratfor
11 MIN READAug 9, 2021 | 10:00 GMT
Members of the Taliban participate in talks with the Afghan government on July 18, 2021, in Doha, Qatar.
Members of the Taliban participate in talks with the Afghan government on July 18, 2021, in Doha, Qatar.
(KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Most assessments of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the predicted advances of the Taliban, focus on two key outcomes: 1) the reversal of Western human rights and standards in the country, particularly for women, and 2) the devolution of Afghanistan into a terrorist base for outward strikes against distant foreign powers.
These are not necessarily wrong perceptions, particularly given the history of the Taliban’s first conquest of Afghanistan. In a destabilized Afghanistan, stricken with civil war, the Taliban may again recruit or harbor foreign fighters. Indeed, they are already reportedly working with militant Tajik groups along the Tajikistan border. A drawn-out conflict, or even a limited success in key areas in the south, could very well leave ungoverned space where foreign forces could train, plan and carry out strikes on neighboring countries or internationally. The Taliban’s protection of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda 20 years ago would suggest this pattern may repeat, with Afghanistan once more becoming the likely source of the next 9/11-size attack.
But it is important to also seek alternative historical analogies, even if only to test the currently accepted model. In his 1973 book “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy, Ernest R. May writes “policy-makers ordinarily use history badly. When resorting to analogy, they tend to seize upon the first that comes to mind. They do not search more widely. Nor do they pause to analyze the case, test its fitness, or even ask in what ways it might be misleading.” Taking May’s words as guidance, the intent here is not to assert an alternative assessment of the Taliban, but rather to offer additional analogies to consider in examining the future of Afghanistan.
Exploring Alternative Frameworks
As the U.S. security mindset shifts from counterterrorism and counter-insurgency conflicts to peer competition with China, the United States will find itself having to reprioritize its attention and military interventions. This will be difficult given that the 9/11 attacks have shaped a generation of U.S. military leaders and thinkers. The fight against terrorism and insurgency has also dominated the training and deployment cycles of U.S. service personnel. It’s natural that this experience is the primary lens through which the United States observes and assesses potential threats. But as the saying goes, when all you have (or think with) is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Assessments based on the Taliban experiences of the late 1990s in Afghanistan, and then the counter-insurgency operations in the first two decades of the 21st century may once have been entirely accurate. But times have changed, as have circumstances and regional power balances. And given this shifting context and the lessons learned by the Taliban itself over the years, I’d argue there’s a need to review those assessments (and the assumptions they’re based on) by approaching the following three basic questions as if new:
What is the Taliban?
What has the Taliban learned from the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?
What did the Taliban learn from 9/11?
1) What is the Taliban?
This is important as it helps define the movement’s goals, as well as some of its capabilities and vulnerabilities. The common assumption is that the Taliban is a terrorist organization bent on imposing Islamic law in Afghanistan and beyond, and that it has few qualms about hosting foreign international jihadists intent on attacking the United States or Europe. In short, the Taliban is part of a transnational jihadist movement looking to overthrow the Western order globally.
But what if we shift perspectives, and look at the group in the context of other revolutionary movements? In that light, we could describe the Taliban as an ethnographic-religious nationalist movement, intent on rebuilding a perceived past Afghanistan that was strong, self-assured and integrated into limited regional trade and power patterns, as well as capable of defending its own interests. Under this framework, the Taliban would have much more localized goals — perhaps spreading into Pakistan and Iran, or parts of Central Asia — but clearly constrained in its scope and reach. This perspective doesn’t reverse the perception of the Taliban as an entity that will roll back Western norms, nor does it completely eliminate the potential for the Taliban to utilize foreign forces to achieve its goals. But it does put the geography of Afghanistan as the center of the group’s attention, rather than distant Western powers.
The Taliban had nearly achieved this goal in the late 1990s and up to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Its forces had pushed the Northern alliance back, it had begun consolidating power in key parts of Afghanistan, seized control of Kabul. The Taliban had also established diplomatic relations with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and was in discussion with other countries (including China).
Despite the earlier Soviet occupation, the Taliban did not gear its activities toward attacking Russia in revenge. Taliban fighters did periodically engage in clashes along Afghanistan’s regional borders, but those attacks were often more about striking internal opposition forces or asserting claims to a bigger historical Afghanistan, as opposed to trying to attack Russian power. Following its conquest of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban sought U.N. recognition but was repeatedly rejected, driving its attention inward. The group did, however, shield Osama bin Laden against calls for his extradition after the 1998 embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack of the USS Cole, and following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which we’ll address further in the last question.
2) What has the Taliban learned from the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?
The common assertion is that the Taliban, as with its predecessor movements, perceives its long-term strategic advantage in fighting on its own soil. Afghanistan is not called the graveyard of empires for no reason. And the Taliban sees the ongoing withdrawal of U.S. forces as one more example that persistence can drive out foreign forces. History, however, has also shown that such persistence comes at the cost of time, lives, economics and infrastructure. In other words, it weakens Afghanistan, leaving it internally fractured and vulnerable. But part of the mythos of the Taliban or its predecessors is that even with its technological inferiority, it is able to morally overcome “superior” outside power — be it the United States, the Soviet Union or the British Empire. This pattern reinforces a perception of inevitable victory.
But this, coupled with the lessons of Iraq and Syria, may also be one of assessing foreign powers’ priorities. In Iraq and Syria, for example, Turkey’s proximal interests are much greater than the United States’ distant interests, as evidenced by Washington’s shifting attention and force deployment. The U.S. government’s main goal in the Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan conflicts was stopping something, but it had little real interest or commitment to building something new in its place.
The days of post-conflict “nation-building” efforts may have died following World War II, or perhaps survived in part through the Korean War. But there is little U.S. willingness in recent history to take on the monumental cost and responsibility of rebuilding a country in a new image. The U.S. military interventions in the Middle East over the past 20 years haven’t had clear end-games beyond punishing or stopping the development of a particular threat (be it terrorist attacks or fears of nuclear weapons). And even then, the mission creep simply drew the United States into ill-defined, never-ending conflicts. Only with the late recognition of rising peer challengers has the United States begun extracting itself from unending missions, recognizing its limited resources and the waning perception of concrete threat by the American people.
In a similar vein, Russia’s actions in Syria split the difference between the United States and Turkey. Russia is no nation builder, but it has strategic interests in the region — from perceptions of power to facilities outside the Bosporus. But even Russia has found itself nearly stuck in Syria.
The lesson for the Taliban may be that the proximal powers are its biggest concern and that more distant powers are, well, distant. Russia’s interests in Central Asia, along with China’s border with Afghanistan and Belt and Road initiative, give these two big powers more direct interest in the evolution of Afghanistan compared with the United States.
But neither Moscow nor Beijing have any intent or interest in getting drawn into the quagmire of intervention, particularly so soon after the U.S. withdrawal. China has already reached out to the Taliban and laid out its core interests, which include making sure Afghanistan is not a safe haven for Uyghur militants or sympathizers that can strike into China. The Taliban has also reached out to Moscow, and while Russia is reinforcing its relations with its Central Asian neighbors, this is likely to be limited to activities in Central Asia or near the northern border of Afghanistan. The most likely challenges for the Taliban are now places like Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and Iran, where their ethnic and sectarian interests clearly cross the border. For the Taliban, it may have enough on its hands in Afghanistan and along its immediate borders, and thus have little intent to strike far abroad.
3) What did the Taliban learn from 9/11?
If we look at the Taliban as an ethno-religious nationalist movement, even if it is one with political and societal views different from the West, then one potential is that the Taliban sees 9/11 as delaying its consolidation of power in Afghanistan by two decades. In other words, allowing foreign forces to use Afghanistan as a base of operations to plan and carry out strikes against key Western powers (or China or Russia directly) may well push these countries to overcome their reticence of activities in Afghanistan, leading to active opposition and military operations from distant outside powers. And that would once again delay the consolidation of Afghanistan into an idealized unified country and subsequent return to regional significance.
Traditional patterns of limited missile strikes were the norm for U.S. retaliation against bin Laden’s actions from Afghanistan — until they weren't. Striking the U.S. homeland in September 2001 triggered a significant change in Washington’s response. Given this experience, the thought has undoubtedly crossed Taliban leaders’ minds that similar actions toward Russia or China could alter those two countries’ behavior as well.
Currently, China uses economic leverage to try and constrain militant Uyghur fighters in foreign countries. And it may stick to these tools if Afghan-based militants launched attacks only into Xinjiang. But what if those militants began attacking Beijing, or Shanghai? Would China, given its current military developments and global aspirations, feel confident simply letting such an attack go without a strong response? The Taliban must be considering these implications, which may explain its recent talks with Beijing.
Adding Analogies to Test Assumptions
Clearly, these ideas are not definitive. But they do suggest alternative ways to assess the Taliban and its likely actions both inside Afghanistan and beyond. We have seen the Taliban fight against Islamic State spinoffs that represented a competing power center in Afghanistan. It has utilized foreign fighters, but it has also sought to keep them in control or in limited regional operations in the past. The Taliban is already reaching out to gain diplomatic recognition if it overcomes the current Afghan government. This is about demonstrating its legitimacy at home as much as abroad. Living a constant life of fighting may ultimately degrade western intervention, but it does little to provide the services and opportunities to the Afghan people (even if within a narrowly defined set of norms). Without something to show for its actions, the Taliban risks eternally being Afghanistan’s “almost” leaders.
Even taking these alternative approaches into consideration (which require a lot more investigation), more immediate questions remain — namely, can the Taliban or the Afghan government, whether alone or together, assert full authority and control over Afghanistan?
An Afghanistan wracked with sustained civil war may well become the ungoverned space that observers worry about, where other militants can hide, train, and plan as they work toward their either regional or international goals. For all the powers that surround Afghanistan, this appears to be the most immediate fear. For the Taliban, the challenge would be managing the day-to-day governance of the incredibly complex space that is Afghanistan and asserting its nationalistic ideas without provoking immediate threats from big powers like the United States, China and Russia
