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2021-10-28 Afghanistan
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What will the Taliban campaign against IS in Afghanistan lead to?
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
By Boris Rozhin
[Riafan] One of the main commitments of the Taliban in the consultative negotiations with Russia and China, as well as in the negotiations with the United States in Doha (including the inter-Afghan negotiations with the government of Ashraf Ghani , which were unsuccessful) was an active counter-terrorism fight against international terrorist groups. First of all, we are talking about IS, represented on the territory of Afghanistan by the autonomous "Vilayat Khorasan", as well as about "Al-Qaeda" 1.
Continued from Page 4
Since 2019, the Taliban have stated that, being at war with IS, they will strive to destroy Vilayat Khorasan. Therefore, the Taliban's political bureau gave out promises to fight the Islamic State after the end of the war in Afghanistan very easily - in fact, it only formalized the existing state of affairs.
While the Taliban's war with the US may be over, the group faces another enemy: Afghanistan's ISIS affiliate, known as ISIS-K.
The very course of the war in Afghanistan in 2019-20 was regularly accompanied by accusations by radicals against the Ghani government and the United States that they were conniving with IS, trying to use terrorists against the Taliban. This position was partly supported by the opinion of former President Hamid Karzai , who also bluntly stated that the Islamic State in Afghanistan is an instrument of American politics. Accordingly, from the point of view of the Taliban and their propaganda, the Taliban was on one side of the conflict in the republic, and the States, IS and the Ghani government were on the other.
There are nuances
Of course, the picture was somewhat more complicated, since in addition to attacks against the Taliban, IS carried out attacks against civilians and government officials, and also had limited success in battles with government forces in Nangarhar province. Of course, the same Taliban was silent about the role of Pakistan in the activities of the organization.
But all these alignments changed in August 2021, when the Taliban achieved a complete military victory, the Ghani government completely collapsed and fled the country, the United States and NATO ignominiously fled from the Kabul airport, and the Panjshir resistance collapsed without really starting.
Already in September, the creation of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" began on the territory of the republic, where the Taliban had virtually complete carte blanche in matters of state building. It was already clear here that there could be no rapprochement between the IS and the Taliban.
If the latter declared the end of the war and the formation of a state on the basis of Sharia, then Vilayat Khorasan set its official goal to spread its own power throughout the country and fight the Taliban. The group, according to the leaders of the regional cell of IS, betrayed the cause of jihad, entered into an agreement with the "infidels", and if so, the war should continue until the victory over the Taliban by any means. This is how Vilayat Khorasan began to act.
Using cells in large cities that existed before the fall of the Ghani government, terrorists launched a systematic campaign, attacking the Taliban, civilians, ethno-religious groups (Shiites, Pashtuns) in order to cultivate an atmosphere of fear and disillusionment in the Taliban, which cannot ensure the safety of the population. In addition, Vilayat Khorasan is betting on inciting sectarian and interethnic hatred in order to raise the level of radicalism among Muslims in the country and secure an influx of neophyte recruits.
What will the Taliban's campaign against IS in Afghanistan lead to?
The collapse of the old security apparatus, which at least partially limited the activities of IS in large cities, provided terrorists with a kind of "time window" when it is relatively easy to prepare and carry out attacks. It is important to understand that, along with the old government, this apparatus, including the counter-terrorism department, went into oblivion, like most of the police and other security forces working in the field of combating terrorism. Together with them, a significant part of the informants and agent network was lost.
Of course, some security officials went to the service of the Taliban (this mainly concerns specialists at the lower and occasionally middle level who did not participate in operations against the group), but the creation of a full-fledged counter-terrorist structure is still a long way off. Of course, even before August, the Taliban had their own counterintelligence, and conducted their own developments on opponents from IS, but this could hardly be called counter-terrorism work. The radical movement then did not have the systemic task of ensuring security in large cities and preventing a campaign of terrorist attacks.
At the same time, now the Taliban must worry not only about the safety of their militants and supporters, but also of ordinary civilians, who have become their area of ​​responsibility. It would be naive to expect that such a task could be solved by the Taliban in 2 months.
In addition, it should be borne in mind that, like the Taliban, Vilayat Khorasan had the opportunity to interact with the Islamic State militants in Pakistan, receiving weapons and reinforcements from local cells. Of course, it will be difficult to liquidate the IS network of formations in Afghanistan without removing the external support of Vilayat through Pakistan.
New targets
Among the tasks facing the Taliban in building counterterrorism work is the reorientation from the previous practice of carrying out terrorist acts to the practice of countering them. A vivid illustration of this problem is the acting. Minister of Internal Affairs of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" Sirajuddin Haqqani, who during the war years practiced the use of suicide bombers for tactical purposes. Nowadays, they will not help the Taliban in solving problems in the fight against IS suicide bombers, and here it is necessary to do what the Ghani government was doing with grief.
To do this, it is necessary to create a full-fledged counterterrorism structure, which should include not only the Taliban, but also specialists from the old government (from among those who are ready to cooperate with the militants), whose experience will help restore old intelligence networks and create new ones in order to defeat terrorist cells in large cities.
Also, the Taliban currently have an extremely mediocre level of technical equipment for those forces tasked with fighting IS in the cities. The trophies seized from the United States and the Ghani government only partially solve the problem of the low equipment of the new "security forces," which in large cities so far mostly represent all the same detachments of fighters with small arms, partially disguised in American uniforms for pretentious photographs.
Another important aspect: The current economic situation in Afghanistan has a steady tendency to degradation, and this is fraught with massive disappointment in the Taliban, which promised to govern more effectively than the fallen leadership. Many people really believed and still believe that the group will end corruption and be able to do something with the economy, which, under the old government, sat on external support. Frustration with these expectations could heighten socioeconomic tensions in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and again make it easier for Vilayat Khorasan to recruit new recruits.
Legitimacy issues
For the Taliban, the issue of external legitimization is really important, since the possibility of obtaining financial assistance and investment in infrastructure depends on it. This will help stabilize the socio-economic situation in the country and show the local population that the Taliban is capable of not only fighting, but also managing.
In addition, the issue of legitimizing the group opens up opportunities for open interaction between the intelligence services of other states (China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan) with the Taliban "special services" on the counterterrorist line, starting with the banal exchange of information on the activities of IS in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. Here, all the prospective participants have a mutual interest associated with the destruction of the Islamic State, although it can hardly be said that in the foreseeable future the Taliban will have complete trust (except for Pakistan, which already strongly influences part of the factions of the military intelligence lines).
But all this is a matter of the future, especially since the Taliban themselves say that they will need 20 months for a transitional period, and the countries, whose recognition the radicals want, set certain conditions for them, which will take months of active work to fulfill. But terrorist attacks are already taking place systematically, and something needs to be done about it.
Therefore, on the one hand, one can expect that attacks in Afghanistan carried out by Vilayat Khorasan were, are and will be, and the limited successes of the Taliban in defeating IS cells in Kabul, Kandahar or Kunduz at the current stage are unlikely to allow them to end. With the development of the state security apparatus and the strengthening of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", the organization of terrorist attacks will gradually become more difficult, and their number may decrease in the long term.
Despite the current tactical successes, IS is significantly behind the Taliban in terms of resource factors and the number of supporters among radical Islamists. In addition, the Taliban, unlike the Ghani government, can even more actively use various extrajudicial methods of struggle, especially since a full-fledged system of Sharia courts is still being created and often the full justice is transferred either to the newly appointed provincial governors or even to field commanders. The last issue of the fight against the "Islamic State" is perceived simply as the process of killing all the representatives of the rival group discovered.
Boris Rozhin is a Russian military journalist 
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Posted by badanov 2021-10-28 00:00||
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