Five years of misrule in Afghanistan: how the Taliban have created the conditions for reinvigorated resistance

Five years of Taliban misrule

The fifteenth of August marked five years since the Afghan Taliban reoccupied Kabul. The Taliban attempted to celebrate the anniversary and the ‘success’ of their regime. Around Afghanistan, Taliban fighters loaded yellow plastic jerrycan mock-ups of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) into old police pick-up trucks, or tied them to motorbikes, and paraded to their local commemorations. IEDs were hallmarks of the Taliban’s military victory over US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan but killed thousands of Afghans. In the bazaars shopkeepers and rickshaw drivers had been ordered to fly white Taliban flags above their shops. In lustreless provincial rallies, government personnel and a few kids rounded up with a promise of pocket money listened to governors speechifying the Emirate’s achievements.

I was struck by the prevailing tone of different Taliban leaders speaking in Kabul. They had all been instructed by the Amir to pray that Taliban rule would last until the Day of Judgment.  Accordingly, Foreign Minister Motaqi, ‘chief salesman’ of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, made a gushing speech about Taliban achievements and told everyone to forget dreams of political dialogue or negotiation with the opposition – Taliban power is permanent. Administrative Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi made a quaint, rather comic, speech striving to champion the regime’s progress in ‘cutting red tape’. Interior Minister Khalifa Seraj seemed to compete for the prize of  least enthusiastic pro-regime remarks – ‘there are some problems, but we are addressing them’. The most menacing – and perhaps most revealing – line was expressed by Deputy Director of Intelligence Taj Mir Jawad, the Taliban’s ‘Himmler wannabe’ – ‘we shall eliminate all who stand in the way of Taliban power’. This was no idle boast as Taj Mir is currently supervising military operations to suppress dissident Taliban.

Tacit Taliban admission of growing resistance

In the coded language of authoritarian regimes, these nuanced ministerial positions constitute a fascinating top-level acknowledgement that the Taliban’s Emirate faces a new round of resistance. Western media commentary about the absence of challengers to the Taliban overlook evidence to the contrary. This summer, Afghanistan has seen street protests both in a major urban centre (Herat) and in remote districts (Badakhshan). Then a new resistance group caught the zeitgeist when it tik-tokked its brief takeover of a district headquarters and carried off all the Taliban’s weapons. The regime has struggled to deal with rebellious insubordination by one of its own local commanders. Few Taliban watchers have missed the irony of this rebellion being headed by perhaps the only former professional musician to have joined the jihad. Meanwhile, there have been more assassinations of Taliban officials and hints that the established resistance fronts are starting to try and hold ground.

This latest round of resistance to Taliban rule, both civil and armed, can be directly attributed to Taliban policies and actions. These have both generated the grievances which have pushed Afghans into revolt and have helped create the conditions for more effective resistance. On top of their oppression of women, Taliban have increased their pressure on the Shia community. They were already blamed for intensifying unemployment and poverty. Now Taliban are trying to grab all the benefits of a minor minerals boom, usurping the rights of locals in mineral-rich areas of the country. The alienated population is already weakening Taj Mir’s intelligence networks. But, perhaps most ominously for the Taliban, the regime’s intransigence in dealing with Pakistan has created conditions in which anti-Taliban figures and groups are increasingly welcome in Afghanistan’s powerful neighbour.

Liminal resistance to the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate

In studying the civil component of Afghans’ resistance to the Taliban, I have categorised the pattern of sporadic and scattered protests and acts of defiance as ‘liminal’. This civil action is significant because it expresses citizens’ refusal to submit to the Taliban assertion of permanent hegemony. But actions so far neither pose a direct threat to Taliban rule nor can they be interpreted as a gathering wave, promising to develop into such a threat. The logic of liminal resistance is that the resisters anticipate another and more decisive phase, once conditions have become more conducive. The more perceptive among the Taliban can see that their regime’s flawed governance is now helping to create those conditions. But so far, it seems, Taliban are inherently powerless to correct their mistakes. It is as if Foreign Minister Motaqi, by closing the door on dialogue, is himself inviting Afghans to resist.

Read more about the Afghan experience of civil resistance and what this means for pathways to peaceful change in Prof Semple’s new report: Afghans’ Liminal Civil Resistance to Taliban Rule.

Michael Semple is Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queens University Belfast, and is a researcher with Conciliation Resources. He works on innovative approaches to peace-making and engagement with militant Islamic movements in Afghanistan and South Asia. His interests include the political culture of the Afghan Taliban and kindred militant Islamic movements, the role and potential of dialogue and social media in conflict transformation, and the challenge of pluralism in the post-9/11 Muslim world.