Rise and decline of Al-Qaida in Syria

Introduction

During 2014-18 my research team repeatedly contacted members of organisations linked to Al-Qaida in Syria for interviews about recent developments. In total 15 full interviews were carried out, mostly with members of Al Nusra and successor organizations. Two more interviews were carried out with members of Syrian intelligence services, who discussed their views of the state of the armed opposition.

On the basis of these interviews and of public domain sources I set out below to discuss the causes of the fast rise of groups linked to AQ in Syria, especially Al Nusra, their even quicker decline in 2018 and their attempted recovery in 2019.

A land of opportunity

The Syrian opposition to the regime of President Assad started off in 2011 as a widespread insurrectional movement, driven to violence by a violent but poorly organized repression. Typically in the early years of the civil war the bulk of the opposition armed groups were local militias, which defended local communities. The establishment of the Free Syrian Army did not change that significantly: it was an army in name only, remaining instead a heterogeneous coalition of small local groups. Gradually these groups started federating or merging in to larger organizations, a process driven by foreign donors to the armed opposition, who supported various political ‘leaderships’ that were emerging out of the conflict. Tens such organisations emerged, with sizes ranging from a few thousand armed men to a few tens of thousands. Mostly these organisations looked like ‘leaderships’ with access to money and supplies from abroad setting up some logistics to deliver to armed groups, in exchange for their ‘loyalty’. But these ‘leaderships’ had little or no capacity (or will) to restructure the way the opposition armed groups were operating. They were essentially gathering the groups into loose federative structures, with central structures serving essentially to distribute services. The more armed groups each leadership could gather around itself on this basis, the more weight it would gain vis á vis donors when negotiating more funding.

This seemed to work as long as the military effort of the Syrian regime was in disarray. The intervention of Iranians, Hezbollah and assorted militias of international volunteers on Assad’s side from 2013 onwards changed things, however. The opposition was now confronting a reinvigorated enemy, whose forces were displaying much greater aggressiveness. As Assad went on the offensive, the disorganised opposition started losing ground. Most of the leaderships of the opposition did not have the know-how to re-organize their forces, and started losing ground.

There were exceptions, however. One was that of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, an Iraqi organisation that in 2011 moved into Syria and started recruiting locally, eventually becoming the Islamic State. The other exception was a rival branch of Al-Qaida, which was sending into Syria cadres and recruiting promising opposition commanders inside Syria. Al-Qaida’s advisers were bringing the organizational and technical know-how that the average Syrian opposition leadership was sorely missing. From AQ’s perspective, Syria was offering the opportunity to re-launch the global jihadist groups and re-legitimise them. The Syrian civil war was turning into the new ‘cause celebre’ of the Muslim world, attracting plenty of funding from both state and private donors. If AQ could take the lead, its prestige and status across the Muslim world would be immensely enhanced.

Drivers of AQ’s growth

As it usually does, AQ did not establish a large, direct presence on the ground in Syria, but established a number of fronts, whose leaders in their majority or even entirety were members of AQ. While there might be a number of reasons for this choice, for sure one of the purposes of having fronts that did not openly acknowledged their relationship with AQ was to facilitate fund raising. Many institutional and private donors, including in the Arab Gulf, would have found difficult to channel funds and weapons (including sophisticated ones) to AQ itself. Not that most donors were not aware of the relationship between the AQ fronts and AQ itself, but at least they needed ‘plausible deniability’.

AQ and its fronts were quite successful in raising funds and this became one of the drivers of their growth. But the reason why donors were flocking to them was their superior organization. Organizations like Al-Nusra, the largest of the AQ fronts in Syria, invested large resource in governance structure, becoming the main competitor of IS in administering the territory taken from the Assad regime. Around Damascus Al-Nusra even managed to organise an underground network, that was able to carry out highly successful terrorist attacks against regime members and interests. Its military units were more mobile and better integrated than the loose armed groups that still made up most of the opposition’s forces. AQ was also contributing funds directly to its fronts, mainly in order to gain leverage that it used to control these organizations. AQ’s intent was to staff the leadership of these groups with capable and loyal figures, whereas the majority of the Syrian opposition had little meritocracy in the way leaders were selected – what mattered was largely the relationship with the donors.

As Assad’s forces started going on the offensive from 2013 onwards, the loosely organised and poorly discipline opposition groups suffered heavily. They were sitting ducks, waiting for the government forces and their internal allies to gather overwhelming superiority and march on them. These groups were either eliminated, or forced to reconcile, or forced to align with better organised groups, like Al Nusra and Islamic State.

In late 2013, before IS emerged as such, Al Nusra had less than 10,000 men, again according to its own claims. At the peak of its military power, in autumn 2017, Jabha Hayat as Sham, the organization into which Al-Nusra had by then mutated, had almost 42,000 members according to its own claims. Even if we take these claims with a pinch of salt, the change is likely to reflect real growth. That Al Nusra in its various incarnations was growing is also confirmed by both regime sources and external observers. An intelligence source of the Syrian regime put the strength of Hayat Tahrir as Sham at 40,000 at the end of 2017, or about a third of the entire opposition’s strength (including the then rapidly declining Islamic State).

Factors in AQ’s decline

Al-Nusra faced a first period of strong decline during 2014-15, when the stunning successes of ISIL/IS drew many donors away from AQ. The perception was that ISIL/IS would have been a more efficient vehicle for overthrowing the Assad regime. From the nearly 10,000 men that Al Nusra claimed just before ISIL stroke in northern Iraq, it fell to less than 6,000 by the end of the year.

Other organizations linked to AQ suffered to various degrees. Al-Nusra however managed to recover well from this first crisis. It reacted by forming alliances and organizing mergers with other groups. It re-positioned as more cooperative opposition group, ready to work with various other opposition forces against Assad and even against ISIL/IS. In March 2015 it formed a coalition called Jaysh al Fatah, which already in July 2016 was replaced by Jabha Fatah as Sham and eventually in January 2017 by Hayat Tahrir as Sham. Gradually the organization managed to reclaim funding and to start growing again. New donors turned up, who saw Al-Nusra and its successor organizations as the only alternative to the (increasingly unpresentable) IS, which could still deliver victory against Assad.

Jabha Fatah as Sham in particular was marketed as a group that had distanced itself from AQ, even replacing Al Nusra historical leader and senior AQ member Al Julani. Critics at that time (July 2016) questioned whether Jabha Fatah as Sham had really cut links with AQ. In fact it appears that Jabha Fatah as Sham did distance itself from AQ to some extent at least, judging form the turmoil that it caused within the organization. Jabha Fatah as Sham was actually not as successful in raising funds as it had been expected, so already in January 2017 a new organization was launched, that sanctioned some rapprochement to AQ: Hayat Tahrir as Sham. Although Al Julani still did not appear among the leaders, sources within the organization acknowledged that it played a major role behind the scenes.

As already mentioned, during 2017 Hayat Tahrir as Sham, which included a few small AQ fronts on top of Jabha Fatah as Sham/Al Nusra, reached its absolute peak claimed strength of over 40,000 men. This made it the strong anti-Assad group, as the Free Syrian Army had disintegrated. Even the Islamic State never had more then 30,000 men inside Syria (according to claims of its members), and even that only after the pulled most of its forces out of Iraq in the latter part of 2017.

But the seeds of crisis had already been planted. First of all in order to attract sufficient funding to develop into a force large enough to threaten the Assad regime (that is, hundreds of million of US$), Al-Nusra and the other AQ fronts had to dilute the presence at its top level of AQ loyalists. This caused discontent and friction within the organisation. One manifestation of this friction was the split of a group of loyalist in early 2018. They formed Hurras ad Din, which attracted about 7,000 AQ loyalists from Hayat Tahrir as Sham and other AQ fronts. In order to stop the haemorrhage of members, Hayat and other AQ fronts had to be cautious in distancing from AQ. They derived their organizational strength from the many ideologically motivated cadres who had joined these fronts, and from the know-how AQ had transferred. They however struggled to reconcile this with large scale fund raising, involving regimes that AQ had condemned in the past (such as the Saudi one).

In the meanwhile, the military threat posed by the Assad regime and its allies had got much greater. From late 2015, Assad could count on the support of a Russian Air Force contingent, which inflicted devastating blows on opposition groups. The advanced targeting techniques deployed by the Russians proved a challenge not only for the disorganized old opposition groups, but also for the AQ fronts. In addition, from 2016 onwards the advising and training effort carried out by Russian army advisers started bearing fruits, and the performance of the Syrian army improved markedly.

During 2018 new factors came into play, that contributed to deprive AQ’s fronts of most of the funding they had been receiving. The Turkish authorities severed all external links of AQ through its territory, and so did Jordan. Supplies were also almost entirely cut.

By spring 2018 internal sources acknowledged that Hayat Tahrir as Sham was down to 27,000 members, almost 15,000 lower than its peak strength. By August, the number had declined further to under 25,000, always according to internal sources. Sources within Hayat Tahrir as Sham acknowledged that morale within the organization was very low by the summer of 2018, and there was a wide expectation of final defeat in the coming months. Hayat Tahrir as Sham’s foreign fighters were literally scrambling for a passage out of Syria, expecting to be betrayed by their Syrian comrades as soon as Assad’s forces would eventually enter the last strongholds of the organization in northern Syria.

The causes of the decline of AQ’s fronts were ultimately the same of its success. Its radical ideology provided a major boost, but as the influence of AQ inside Syria grew, some key donors to the opposition (even in the Gulf) started becoming worried. Their interference and the constant ups and downs in funding disrupted the development of AQ’s most promising front, Al-Nusra. Eventually one of the main sponsors of the opposition turned against AQ: during 2018 Turkey re-organized parts of the Free Syrian Army and pushed it and other groups supported by Turkey to move against Hayat Tahrir as Sham in northern Syria. Hayat Tahrir as Sham was cornered in the region of Idlib and its leaders were divided between those arguing that the organization should bow to Turkey, those who advocated surrendering to Assad, and those who argued for fighting on till the bitter end.

Remarkably by 2019 the leadership of Hayat Tahrir as Sham had managed to get a grip on the situation and restore morale within the ranks. Most importantly, it managed to combine at least for some time a new flow of cash from the Gulf monarchies and Turkish support, helping the rank-and-file feel that not all was lost. HTS units proved a tougher enemy for the revitalised Syrian army and the militias, but after the defeat of Khan Shaykhun in August 2019 morale suffered a new blow. It remains to be demonstrated that HTS can evolve tactically to the point of becoming capable of resisting the Syrian army ion open field.

President Trump’s decision to pull US troops of Syria within a month and of halving the level of US troops in Afghanistan were not wholly unexpected, but their timings were. Only weeks before his decision, senior and not-so-senior US officials alike were repeating that the Americans would stay in Syria as long as the Iranians were there, and that a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan was not in the cards. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the widespread expectation was that Trump would give 10 months time to his Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, 10 months to fix a peace deal, before deciding a partial troop withdrawal, perhaps even a complete withdrawal.

President Trump’s decisions are clearly dictated by his concern that he should show to his voters how he is working to meet the commitments that he took during his electoral campaign. Still the implications for US foreign policy making, not to speak for Syria, Afghanistan, the Middle East and South Asia, are major ones.

Just to start with, there is an issue of coherence in US foreign policy, with the President contradicting what stated and repeated by his most senior officials. This does clearly not impress US allies favourably.

As for the regional impacts, whether US departure from Syria implies a resurgence of IS there is not clear. The US withdrawal might well actually encourage an already on-going downsizing of Iranian presence. The Iranians are stretched thin now across the region, and with their home economy in crisis they are not in position to spend on Syria more than it is strictly necessary for the consolidation of the gains made by the Assad regime. As the Iranians and Hizbollah gradually downsize, the Israelis and the Saudis will have less incentives to cause trouble for Assad, and Russia’s chances of brokering at least an informal regional settlement will increase.

But if America’s strategy is, or was supposed to be, weakening the Iranian regime or even forcing regime change in Iran (which Washington, rather unconvincingly, denies), then getting out of Syria eases pressure on Iran. The Saudi regime, for one, will not be happy with a move that to some extent undermines its efforts to bankrupt Iran through a myriad proxy wars.

Immediately after Trump’s tweet on Syria, speculation started that US commitment to maintaining a presence in Afghanistan was becoming less credible. Such speculation lasted very short, as Trump next day decided that he would pull out half of his troops currently in Afghanistan (about 14,000). Trump did not commit to keep the remaining 7,000 for much longer, and might still announce a complete withdrawal next summer.

The partial withdrawal from Afghanistan can play out in very different ways. It might even favour the on-going efforts by Special Representative Khalilzad to convince the Taliban that the US are indeed ready to get out of the country. Certainly Taliban hardliners, who have been accusing the Americans of intending to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely, have now a harder case to make.

But the announcement of a partial withdrawal also undermines the negotiating position of Washington and Kabul, especially because of the lack of a firm commitment to keep the remaining troops until at least a peace deal is in place. If there was widespread expectation of a complete American pull-out by the summer even before Trump took his decisions, now that belief is stronger than ever. If Khalilzad were to fail in his mission to broker formal peace talks, then many believe (rightly or wrongly) Trump would order a complete pull-out. Moreover, the departure of Mattis at the top of the DoD removes one of the most powerful advocates of continued US presence in Afghanistan.

The regional powers that would like to see in place an Afghan regime more amenable to satisfy their interests and requests (Pakistan, Iran, Russia) have now an even stronger incentive to push for more concessions from Kabul, in order to help corral the Taliban. The Taliban themselves have little reason to rush into a peace deal, when their negotiation leverage is going to increase dramatically the closer we get to the summer or 2019. That is the date Trump appears to have stated his intent of making a final decision about US presence in Afghanistan.

Pressure is increasing, therefore, on US Special Representative Khalilzad to get formal peace negotiations going quickly. This inevitably will come at the expense of the negotiating leverage of the Afghan government. Khalilzad will have to rely on the help of the only regional power that supports his efforts more or less wholeheartedly, Saudi Arabia. Sources within the Taliban indicate that the Saudis are using their influence among the Taliban, with the help of some cash, to strengthen the pro-negotiations lobby at the top of the Taliban hierarchy.

Now one question is whether the Saudis have enough influence and are committing enough resources to affect the balance of power within the Taliban leadership. Another question is how many and what concessions the Afghan government will have to make, even if the pro-negotiations wing of the Taliban gains enough power to push for a rapid start of formal talks. Many in Kabul, within and without the Afghan government, fear that the independence of their foreign policy and the post-2001 constitutional order might now be at risk.

The relevant questions Much has been written and said about the foreign Shi’a volunteers fighting for the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria. While Iranian and Syrian propaganda describe them as entirely motivated by the desire of defending Shi’a communities from hostile groups (Salafists and Daesh), the Syrian opposition and much of the western media describe them as mercenaries or conscripted cannon fodder, who joined the fight in Syria for money or in order to escape a worse fate (typically detention in Iran, or expulsion from the country with their families).

These unilateral characterisations are characteristic of civil wars and it should not surprise that the parties in the conflict indulge in them. In reality the motivations that push people to risk their lives in a conflict are complex, and rarely unilateral. Moreover, their motivations for joining are not necessarily the most important matter: how did they experience their service in Syria and what kind of attitude they had towards their organizations when they came out of it? An efficient military organization attracts recruits for a wide variety of reasons, often misleading or coercing its recruits, but it then socializes them into the organization. We learn more by looking at the people who come out of a military organization, than at those who enter it.

The largest contingent of foreign fighters joining Assad’s forces came from Afghanistan. There are two organisations of Shi’a volunteers, Liwa Fatimiyun and Liwa Baba Mazari; the former is by far the largest. Liwa Baba Mazari was established only in May 2017 and had according to IRGC sources 1,400 members in early 2018. Fatimiyun, which was established much earlier in 2014, had as many as 10 times that number. Focusing on the Afghan contingent is therefore a reasonable surrogate to the daunting task of discussing in detail the motivations of each of the myriad Shi’a militias operating in Syria. While these organizations had Afghan leaders and cadres, it seems clear that the IRGC proactively encouraged their formation by lobbying and ‘advising’ clerics and activists who wanted to do ‘something’ for their brethren in Syria. In countries like Lebanon and Iraq there were already powerful, well organised armed groups linked to the IRGC or in any case ready to cooperate with it or with Hezbollah of Lebanon, and not as much proactive IRGC work was needed to raise volunteers.

Much of the recruitment did take place in Iran itself, among Afghan emigrant workers, but in this Afghans are a special case in that they constitute a large migrant community in Iran. Iraqis, Lebanese and other volunteers were largely recruited in their own countries. Recruitment for Liwa Fatimiyun and Liwa Baba Mazari too was also carried out in Afghanistan through clerical networks (cautiously because it is banned by the Afghan authorities).

Mercenaries or volunteers?

Stories of Fatimiyun and similar militias being mostly staffed by detainees, who joined in exchange for freedom, or other coerced recruits seem to be at least largely inflated if not completely untrue. Some prisoners taken by the Syrian opposition might well have described themselves as former detainees, but considering that they faced execution at the hand of Syrian opposition groups, it is understandable that they might have lied to obtain mercy. Surely there have been many more Afghans fighting for Assad, than Afghan detainees in Iran. The Iranians do appear to have recruited detained and illegal residents in Iran, but mostly for a separate, non-sectarian militia sent to hold defensive positions, initially in Deir Ezzor. The role of this smaller militia was quite marginal in the conflict.

In reality the IRGC seems to have been nurturing ambitions for militias such as Fatimiyun, that are incompatible with stuffing them with social rejects and undesirable elements. Although it is certainly plausible that many, even a majority might have joined primarily because of the salary and of the perks involved (as some interviewees admit), the IRGC needed a core of true believers large enough to carry the whole of Fatimiyun towards the demanding targets set for them by the IRGC.

And Fatimiyun seems to have largely met the expectations of the IRGC. Syrian army officers mostly have little sympathy for these militias, with whom they have rivalry. Still in interviews they admitted that Fatimiyun and other foreign militias proved to be highly motivated and aggressive fighters, playing a major role in claiming ground back from opposition forces. According to the same sources, this is true in comparison not only to the notoriously ineffective Syrian Arab Army, but also in comparison to a range of Syrian militias, some sectarian and some not. This seems a genuine assessment, as Syrian army officers should have no reason to overstate the capabilities of the foreign volunteers. In addition, fighters in Syria were given leave regularly, but according to interviewees rarely anybody tried to desert.

It is more in general beyond doubt that the deployment of these militias contributed to reinvigorating the faltering military campaign of the Assad regime. It is actually counterproductive for Syrian opposition groups to suggest (as they repeatedly did) that the fighters that played an important role in defeating them were a bunch of essentially slave fighters.

The aggressive attitude and high moral of these militias are not what one would expect of largely mercenary forces either. Veteran interviewees from Afghanistan as well as serving militia commanders in Syria all confirm that the salary package is indeed quite attractive: about $1,000/month for a common fighter, which is much more than what these volunteers would make if they decided to fight for whatever party in their country of origins, Afghanistan. Some additional perks are offered to prospective volunteers, of which probably the one most attractive to many of them is permanent resident permit in Iran (after two tours of duty) and even Iranian citizenship (after three tours of duty in Syria), otherwise very hard to get for Afghans.

However attractive these incentives might be, it should also be considered that the losses in combat have been high. In 2013-17, 2,000 were killed from Fatimiyun’s ranks alone according to the organization’s own claims. One veteran estimated that 20,000 Afghans went through the ranks of Fatimiyun in total up to 2018, – that would make a total KIA rate of around 10%, with at least three or four as many wounded. This is not a light casualty rate by any means, and the Syrian war was described as ferocious even by the Shi’a TV channels that can be viewed in Afghanistan, so the Afghan recruits knew what they were going to face.

The IRGC and Hezbollah played the key role in shaping the several Shi’a militias from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, etc. that flocked to the Syrian battlefields. Clearly were successful in processing whatever lot of recruits they were getting, and in turning them into an effective fighting force.

Victory in Syria: the end or the beginning?

Indeed as hinted above from a relatively early stage the IRGC nurtured ambitions for the foreign militias they were bringing to Syria. Says a veteran, interviewed in Afghanistan in autumn 2018, that

When we were in a training centre at the Imam Hussain military camp, the Iranian trainers and commanders […] told us several times that when the fight in Syria ends, Fatemiyun will remain a well trained force for the Afghan Shi’a community when there will be need for it.

Others have confirmed the same. All veterans interviewed confirmed that the Afghan volunteers were well treated in Syria by IRGC, other Shi’a forces, and by the Syrian armed forces. ‘The Iranian commanders were always behind us and honestly they always listened to us and addressed our problems quickly.’

We were prepared and we had the same weapons of the Iranians and Hezbollah […]. We had the same medical facilities and other stuff. If there had been differences between the Afghan fighters and the others like Iranians or Hezbollahis, then we never have fought there.

The only major issue that appears to have arisen is the treatment of crippled veterans, who were denied benefits. Says one of them, interviewed in Afghanistan, that Iranian police told him ‘you are not useful for Iran anymore because you are disabled.’ Clearly Iranian concern for the Shi’a volunteers was not due to charitable intents, but a clear plan to create armed forces that could support Iran’s or the IRGC’s strategic aims much beyond Syria.

Indeed in 2015-16 already the IRGC started laying the groundwork for setting up an Afghan branch of Fatimiyun (and later of Liwa Baba Mazari as well). Not all those going back to Afghanistan have any intention of joining such structures, as many have been traumatised by the level of violence experienced in Syria and by the loss of comrades. One complaint often heard from veterans is that while members of Fatimiyun were treated as equals in all respect by their Iranian, Syrian and other counterparts, they tended to be sent to the frontline more often than other contingents. Still many veterans remain committed to the cause of ‘protecting our Shi’a communities’ especially if that can be done staying at home.

If there will be need in Afghanistan our own country, I am ready to join with a Shi’a militia against the cruelties and brutalities of Daesh in Afghanistan. As you witness, Daesh is everyday attacking Shi’a communities in west Kabul, if there will be any Shi’a militia against Daesh then I am ready to join them.

Already Hazara politicians, faced with regular massacres of members of their community by Daesh, are beginning to invoke the arming of the Shi’a community.

What is seen a self-protection by a community, can be seen as impending aggression by another. Indeed Fatimiyun provides a good example of these dynamics already because the organization got involved already in the conflict between Pashtun nomads and Hazara settlers in central Afghanistan. Alipur, in the past a commander linked to a local Hazara party, has joined hands with Fatimiyun and started recruiting veterans of Syria into his militia, that has been blocking access to the pastures of Hazarajat in Behsud (Wardak) against armed nomads for years. The two communities accuse each other of aggression.

Recently Afghan police tried to raid Alipur’s headquarter in Lal wa Sarjangal (Ghor) ended up with four dead policemen, several Hazara civilians killed and Alipur returning to Behsud to a hero’s welcome. The raid was seen by many Hazaras as the demonstration that the Afghan state was more active in depriving them of their ability to defend themselves, than in dismantling Daesh terror networks in Kabul. Pashtuns see more than ever Alipur as a villain, accused of many violent abuses.

Whatever the actual facts, this type of dynamics contributes to turning what might even any ‘mercenaries’, who might have joined Fatimiyun because of attractive conditions of employment, into real ‘volunteers’ who believe their community needs somebody like them for self-defence. Communitarian and sectarian tension in Afghanistan and throughout the region provides these militias with a raison d’être, even if that is not why they were formed in the first place and not why individuals originally joined.

Although none of the Afghan veterans interviewed had been offered to deploy beyond Syria or Afghanistan (or Iran for training), other researchers have been in contact with seasoned Afghan cadres sent to Iraq and Yemen. Furthermore, the IRGC has been actively discussing its plans to establish a permanent base in Syria for units from the Shi’a militias it has been sponsoring, implying that it does not plan a complete withdrawal after the conflict afterwards. The Syrian authorities are less than enthusiastic about such plans, the Russians are actively opposed, and even Hezbollah is not keen, so it is by no means certain that it will happen. But the very fact that the IRGC has been lobbying for it highlights its plans for the future. For the IRGC, victory in Syria is the beginning, not the end of militias like Fatimiyun.

There has been speculation during the summer of 2018 that Russia might be positioning itself for getting Iran out of Syria in exchange for some grand bargain with Washington. Such speculation arose in the first place because of western and especially American diplomats claiming that they had been approached by the Russians, who hinted they would see an Iranian withdrawal from Syria with favour.[1] After the summer Russia and Iran seemed to be clutching closer together again as a result of an Israeli raid in northern Syria, which was seen by the Russians as a violation of a Russia-Israel understanding of what Israeli actions the Russians would tolerate in Syria.

In fact interviews carried out by our research team in Syria with Syrian officials and military officers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and members of the organizations linked to the IRGC such as Hezbollah of Lebanon and others, suggest that the peak of tension between Russia and Iran was in 2017, especially the second half of the year. During that period three main bones of contention between Russia and Iran emerged: the Russian determination to seek a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict, the Iranian determination to maintain a long-term military presence (of its Revolutionary Guards and of the international militias they sponsor) even after the end of the conflict, and Iran’s growing influence over the Syrian security apparatus.

It appears obvious that seeking a diplomatic solution and keeping an Iranian presence were in contrast with each other. It would have been hard to fathom how any diplomatic solution of the conflict could have been reconciled with a long term presence of IRGC and foreign militia forces on Syrian soil, especially if all the parties concerned in the conflict were to be involved, as the Russians initially hoped to do.

The Syrian hosts of the Russians and of the Iranians were trying to use this emerging rivalry to score tactically and gain greater influence over processes that were threatening to marginalise the Assad regime. Essential part of the Russian grand plan for resolving the conflict was the replacement of President Assad with another, less compromised Ba’ath figure. Clearly Assad and much of his circle did not like the idea, although even within the regime quite a few dignitaries found that it would have been an acceptable sacrifice to end the war without losing power altogether. Assad and his circle therefore sided with the Iranians, who were resolutely opposed to any replacement of Assad and believed the war could and would be won on the battlefield.

On the other hand Assad and his men were opposed to Iran’s long-term plans for keeping bases in Syria, and for keeping a force of international Shi’a volunteers there indefinitely. Such a solution would have compromised Syrian sovereignty and implied a genetic change in the relationship between Syria and Iran (who had been peers before the war started).

The Assad regime shared the concerns of the Russians also on the matter of the growing Iranian influence over the Syrian security apparatus, and was in fact even more concerned than they were: were the Iranians turning from allies into masters? There had been underlying tension over the ever-expanding Iranian influence over the Syrian security apparatus for some time. The militias trained and often even funded and equipped by Iran were growing in numbers and by 2017 they were larger in size than the Syrian army. A large portion of these militias were foreign volunteers, but the Iranians were investing heavily in the expansion of Syrian militias too. In particular, they mobilised a large portion of Syria’s Shi’a minority into militias. The Iranians were also involved in training and advising the Syrian army. In comparison, the Russians had a much more limited number of advisers in Syria, mostly trying to advise the senior levels of the Syrian armed forces on how to make their military operations more effective.

Until the Russian grand plan to end the conflict seemed to have some traction, for the Assad regime the priority was preventing the replacement of Assad. Most dignitaries of the regime were nervous about the prospect, because of the uncertainties that a coalition government under a new president would imply. Would the future coalition government include allies of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar? How could the regime, whose support was mainly drawn from minority communities, be able to compete successfully with such well resourced competitors? Wasn’t it just a matter of time before the remnants of the Ba’ath were marginalised and thrown out of power?

Fortunately for the Assad regime, but also for Russia-Iran relations, the Russian grand plan was rejected by most Syrian opposition groups, and by their international sponsors, in the Arab Gulf and in the west. Perhaps the Russians expected the grand plan to fail anyway, and used it to build up their credentials as a negotiating partner, who had autonomy from the Iranians and from the Syrian regime. Whatever the case, Russian efforts by the end of 2017 were switching gear towards a less ambitious, but more realistic plan for a partial diplomatic solution of the conflict, one that cut off some actors, but co-opted others. Of particular importance for Assad, his replacement at the top of the regime no longer appeared a necessity.

The Russians negotiators in fact had found fertile ground for the idea of a diplomatic settlement in Turkey; Turkey’s Qatari allies would also end up following the Turkish lead. The Turks had been on a collision course with the Saudis over the Saudi-Qatari crisis from June 2017 onwards. The idea of a post-war Syria dominated by the Saudis (thanks to their immense financial resources) did not appeal the Turks much more than a continuation of the Assad regime; in fact it might have represented a greater threat to Turkey than a weakened Assad regime, especially if Iranian presence was reduced or removed. The Turks and the Russians rapidly hammered together a plan that would turn Turkey into the sole sponsor of the Syrian opposition, one therefore able to drive or even coerce the opposition towards a political settlement, whether of their liking or not. In fact the plan even allowed Turkey to turn the Syrian opposition into a proxy force, that could be used to project Turkish interests in the region. The implementation of the plan would have given Turkey some permanent influence in Syria, and particularly in the northern regions. The Russians even agreed to Turkey sending in a military force to squeeze Kurdish forces out of the Afrin region on the border, and occupy it at least temporarily. The price to pay for Turkey was severing links with global jihadist groups such as Al-Qaida and actively purge the Syrian opposition groups of their sympathisers and clients. This was an unpleasant task for Turkey, because over the years of conflict even Syrian opposition groups closely linked to Turkey had built close relations to organizations such as Al Nusra and its successors.

Relieved that Assad’s replacement no longer appeared to be an imminent threat, the Assad regime started siding more decisively with Russia in its disputes with the Iranians. The importance of Iran’s long-term plans and of its expanding influence over the Syrian security apparatus became relatively much greater for the Assad regime. Moreover, as its battlefield gains in 2018 had been quite dramatic, the regime started seeing the possibility of international intervention (Israel and/or the west) as the only real existential threat left. In this regard, Russia could afford protection (diplomatic and military) and Iran could not.

Still the Assad regime was not completely aligned with the Russians during 2018 either. It did not initially like the idea of a settlement with Turkey and of permanent Turkish influence inside Syria. When Turkish forces entered Syria in January 2018, the Syrian regime wanted to intervene militarily, but was dissuaded by the Russians. In the following months the Syrians were convinced by the Russians to cooperate in the implementation of the plan, of forcing opposition forces to come under Turkish control, or be crushed. The Russians managed to convince the Jordanian authorities to switch to a neutral position in the Syrian conflict, and close the supply lines to the opposition. That left the opposition groups in the south and in central Syria with only limited supplies coming through Israel, not enough to face successfully massive offensives of the reinvigorated, re-trained and expanded forces of the Assad regime (with allies).

The Russians did not simply work to drive a wedge between the Iranians and the Syrians, leaving the former isolated. They also took care of substantial Iranian interests, and made some concessions to Iran’s demands. During much of 2018 the Iranians, especially the IRGC, were sceptical of Russia’s plans, but appreciated that is successful there would have been one major strategic achievement for Iran – cutting Saudi Arabia off from the Syrian opposition and marginalising it. A series of well-planned and implemented offensives in 2018 sent the Syrian opposition in southern and central Syria running; most surrendered or accepted to flee to northern Syria, where the Turks took them over. By the summer of 2018 Saudi influence in Syria was almost dead, and the Russian-Turkish plan had achieved its first stage.

The Russians moreover had shelved plans for Assad’s replacement, even if this was still a Turkish demand as of autumn 2018. Iranian influence over the Syrian security apparatus was not wiped out, but contained. The foreign volunteer forces, largely under Iranian control, started being reduced in numbers, while some Syrian militias were brought under greater control of the Syrian government, or merged into the army. Overall Iran was still left with considerable assets in Syria, and the question of long-term Iranian bases there was also left to be resolved at a later stage.

As of autumn 2018 the Turks were still struggling to re-organize the remnants of the Syrian opposition under their control, and purge them of global jihadist influences. The Syrian regime, with Russian and Iranian support, geared up for a massive offensive against the main remaining opposition stronghold in the region of Idlib. The planned offensive drew western condemnation, but it was Turkey the Russians were looking at. The Turks would have been humiliated by an offensive against Idlib, even if according to the terms of their agreement with the Russians they had not yet delivered their full package – Hayat Tahrir al Sham and some other groups linked to Al-Qaida were still the dominant force in Idlib and the Turkish-controlled opposition forces had not been able to make significant progress towards dislodging them. Russian President Putin reportedly intervened directly to push for a solution that gave the Turks another chance at implementing their part of the deal. The offensive was suspended.

Interestingly for the purposes of this article, the Iranians supported the Russian diplomatic initiative on Idlib, even in the face of Syrian resistance. The Syrian regime was still reluctant to concede any serious space to opposition forces, especially if sponsored by Turkey, but the Iranians joined hands with the Russians in pushing the Syrians to agree to freeze the offensive.

What discussed above seems to suggest that while Russia-Iran tension was real, it is not a matter of an ever-growing divergence between Russia and Iran. Tension peaked in 2017 and by the time it was being discussed in western diplomatic circles as an opportunity to perhaps exploit, it was already waning. The Iranians might be tough-headed, but are not crazed actors who will pursue unachievable aims regardless of the surrounding environment. The Russians made clear to the Iranians (and to the Syrians) that they would help and protect them, but at conditions that the Russians would themselves set. The Syrians and even more so the Iranians tried to renegotiate such conditions, and obtained concessions, but eventually had to adapt. Objectively the Russians were bringing a lot to the tripartite alliance and delivered major results. The Russians played a decisive role in helping Iran achieve a major geopolitical success in Syria – whatever may happen with Turkey, the Saudis have been humiliated already on what not long ago looked like the most promising battlefield of their rivalry with Iran. Perhaps the easing of Russian-Iranian tensions was helped by clumsy and slow western and especially American diplomacy, which drove the two allies back together, rather than further apart.[1] See on this point for a Russian point of view Leonid Issaev, ‘Will Russia force Iran out of Syria?’, Al Jazeera, 29 Aug 2018.

The mining reality

Introduction

Much has been said about the economic potential of mining in Afghanistan and what it could contribute to the coffers of the Afghan state. Most recently US President Trump was convinced to move ahead with plans to invest in extracting those minerals. All this speculation about what mining could contribute to the Afghan economy if developed on a much larger scale has drawn a lot of flak from analysts. One issue that is however rarely raised even by critics is that right now the Afghan state is able to tax only a small part of the mining activity that is already on-going in Afghanistan. If anybody taxes this stream of profits if local strongmen and insurgents, mostly the Taliban.

This paper is looking into the Taliban’s efforts to tax mining operations and tries to assess how important this source of revenue is for them. It also tries to evaluate the Taliban’s experiences in trying to control this flow of resources.

The paper is structured in three sections. One discusses the Taliban structure tasked with handing mining revenue. The second section discusses how successful the Taliban have been in their efforts to raise funds from mining. Finally, a section relations between Taliban and other non-state actors in the mining sector.

The Taliban’s ‘Mining Department’

Within the Taliban’s Central Financial Commission there is a department for mining, which as of mid-2018 was employing 725 staff between its headquarter in Quetta and the provinces of Afghanistan, at least according to Taliban sources.[1] This substantial investment in terms of human resources already highlights that the Taliban have set their eyes on mining revenue as an important component of their fund raising efforts.

The Taliban started taxing mining operations (alongside all other economic activities) in the early days of their insurgency. The current ‘official’ rate charged by the Taliban to mining operations is 3%. In the past it has been as high as 5%, but it was lowered recently ‘to encourage the miners to pay the tax money on time and regularly to Shura’s.’ Some mining operators also pay ‘voluntary contributions’ to the Taliban on top of tax, presumably in order to help the Taliban expand their influence and their business with them. It is typically operators who are mining illegally who support the Taliban with extra funds, because their interest is of course that the Taliban remain in control of the area.[2] According to a mining operator, it is cheaper overall to operate under Taliban control than under the control of the Afghan government, once all taxes and bribes are considered. The Taliban can also help the mining operators moving their goods to Pakistan, bypassing customs.[3]

A source among the mining operators however reported for the same period different (higher) rates, 4-7%, being paid to the collectors from the finance commission. The difference between the official tax rate as stated in Quetta and the rate practiced on the ground may suggests that perhaps there might be some corruption, a problem that is discussed below.[4]

Taliban tax collectors issue papers, which allow the mining operators to move their goods on roads controlled by the Taliban without further hindrance. In some of the largest mines, the Taliban have posted their representatives who are collecting taxes and also checking the overall process of extraction and transportation. Once tax is paid the mining operator is under Taliban protection and the Taliban actively intervene if gangs, warlords or others try to cause trouble to the operator.[5] [6]

Aside from taxing mining operations, from 2015 onwards the Taliban have also taken over a number of mines, which they now exploit directly. Among them are (the list is not exhaustive):

marble mines in Nangarhar;uranium, magnetite and other mines in Khaneshin (Helmand);lead and zinc mines in Dishu (Helmand); gold, zinc and other mines in Musa Qala, Sangin and Kajaki of Helmand;copper, lithium, gold and coal mines in Pashtun Zarghoun, Guzara and Rabat-e Sangi of Herat;silver and copper and other minerals in Push Kho district of Farah;silver in Anardara district of Farah.[7]

In these cases, the Taliban have complete control and dig, extract and transport the minerals away from the mines, controlling all the process from ‘A to Z’. The Taliban say they plan to take over more mining operations in the future. The Taliban acquire the mines by grabbing them from operators who underpay tax or are late with their payments or, in their hope from competitors such as the Islamic State. Clearly mining operators are not happy about the Taliban becoming directly involved in mining, although they can do little about it for now. Tension between Taliban and mining operators might rise in the future, as the Taliban are toying with ideas of expanding their direct control over mining and possibly even eventually control all the mines.[8] The Taliban’s takeover of a number of mines is confirmed by an independent source.[9]

The Taliban’s mining operations seem to be still facing some management issues. One mining operator reported that the Taliban discount taxes to traders who buy minerals from them, as they seem to struggle to sell all their output quickly.[10]

How successful have the Taliban been?

Not unlike the Afghan government, even the Taliban have been struggling to map accurately all mining activity in Afghanistan. Says one of their cadres working in the mining department:

Afghanistan is full of different mines and the total correct numbers of these mines is not available at this time, since these mines spread around the country. We have been actively involved in the extractions of minerals from some mines, but there are some mines that has been discovered recently and so far we or other people have not started any extractions process there.[11]

The Mining Department of the Taliban estimates that there are more than 400 active mining operations that none of the Taliban shuras is taxing yet. The Taliban have plans to extend their revenue collection to these mines too, but in fact the leadership has little incentive to do it for now, because of major problems in revenue management.

Indeed the main problem that the Taliban have been facing is the usual one of the divisions within the Taliban. As of mid-2018 two of the Taliban Shuras (Mashhad and the Shura of the North) were not transferring their mining revenue to the Central Financial Commission. Mashhad controlled about 15% of all the mines under Taliban control, but the Shura of the North controlled 40% of them. That means that the revenue of more than half of the mines controlled by the Taliban did not reach the mining department at all. The Quetta Shura controlled directly only 20% of the mines, with the Peshawar Shura controlling another 15% and Miran Shah only 10%. Even the revenue collected by these three Shuras might not be all making it to the Central Finance Commission, as commanders and shadow governors are suspected of keeping substantial amounts for themselves.[12]

The Mining Department estimates that if all was right it should be receiving about $100 million in revenue from mining all over Afghanistan. In practice only little over 20% of that amount makes it to the Central Financial Commission, with the rest staying with shuras, governors and commanders. The Quetta Shura earned only $10 million from mining in 2017, with another $9 million being sent from the Peshawar Shura and $3 million from the Miran Shah Shura. The source believes that the Shura of the North earned $45 million, which it kept all for itself. Quetta has no information on the revenue collected by the Mashhad Shura.[13]

Taliban leader Haibatullah has tried to deal with this problem and has even ordered the detention of some corrupt Taliban officials, but there seems to have been no impact. The problem appears to have got worse, or as some would say even started, as Haibatullah took over the leadership and divisions among the Taliban deepened.[14]

It is not clear to what extent the cash withheld from the Finance Commission is spent to support Taliban operations, or is embezzled for personal use. Allegations however circulate that some leaders, especially front commanders, are also pocketing the money for personal use.[15]

According to one of the Mining Department’s tax payers, the Taliban tax collectors tend to be loose and easy going in their demands:

there are Taliban commanders who even if you do not give them tax, they do not make any serious problems, I mean their behaviour is way better than Islamic State. Most of the time, the Taliban charge us little in taxes, we can urge them to underestimate how much we owe, … [16]

Tax evasion is punished with a penalty of 50,000 Afs, a modest amount if compared with the risk of death in IS-K areas. A source thinks that the Taliban’s soft approach to tax collection might be related to the challenge posed by IS-K, as they used to be much harsher in places like Nangarhar, before IS-K emerged.[17]

Similarly the Taliban do not punish mining operators who pay tax to IS-K, because they assume that they are forced to do so and are trying to enlist their help in taking back the mines lost to IS-K.[18]

A compounding issue is the growing competition among shuras and among fronts and groups for control over mining operations. In recent times the Miran Shah Shura has been particularly aggressive in trying to take over mining operations from other shuras.[19]

This circumstance is confirmed by a mining operator in Nangarhar:

In the past there was only a single Taliban representative, who was asking and collecting tax from mining business, and in particular this individual was related to Taliban mining and financial commission. But now there are different Taliban members who all ask for tax from mining operators. There are various commanders, Taliban Mining and Financial Commission members for Nangarhar province as well as other different senior and lower order Taliban officials.[20]

In addition to its internal problems, the Taliban have also been facing the external competition of IS-K, which was able to seize control over a number of Taliban-controlled mines, mainly in Nangarhar, but also in Kunar, Zabul, Helmand, Jowzjan, Sarepul and Badakhshan. The Taliban have been able to expel IS-K from the Khaneshin mines and are trying to recover control over mines in Nangarhar and Saripul, but IS-K is proving a resilient enemy. [21]

In Nangarhar, according to a local mining operator, IS-K controls now the bulk of the mining operations. What is left under direct Taliban control (that is being directly exploited by the Taliban) are:

the marble mines of Spin Ghar, Dur Baba District;the marble, chromite, precious stones mines of Lajaikar and Gari, which are exploited by both Taliban and local strongmen;the various mines of Toor Kamar, Soor Kamar and Nawar Tangi;the marble and precious minerals mines of the Markikhil area of Sherzad the marble mine of Agzo, in Haska Meena district;the marble mine of Mamakhil, Kama district. [22]

In fact in Nangarhar at least one of the reason some mining operators give donations to Taliban on top of paying tax is that they fear a take over from IS-K:

Mining operators are pleased with Taliban, because they can communicate and understand each other well and easily, but with Islamic State, that is impossible.[23]

Agreements with other groups

While the Taliban’s leadership in general does not approve of ‘joint ventures’ with groups external to the Taliban in taxing mining operations, the Shura of the North has broken ranks in 2016 and negotiated agreements with groups external to the Taliban, that is local commanders of Jamiat-i Islami and the leadership of the Dawlat Islami - Khorasan. The Quetta Shura is openly at war with the Islamic State and does not enjoy good relations with Jamiat-i Islami, which is still a member of the NUG (despite deteriorating relations), so these deals can only be controversial. Typically these agreements involve equal sharing of tax revenue for mining operations taking place in areas where more than one group has a presence. The Quetta Shura tracks down these agreements, even if does not have the power to stop them, and reports that the Shura of the North has agreements with Jamiati commanders in Badakhshan, Baghlan, Saripul, Takhar and Jowzjan, and with IS-K in Jowzjan, Saripul, Samangan and Badakhshan.[24]

The exception to unapproved Taliban joint ventures with other groups seems to be Haji Zahir in Nangarhar, with whom the Taliban cooperate in the exploitation of some mines, or in moving the mined minerals. [25]

Conclusion

Overall, the Taliban might be more effective than the Afghan government in extracting revenue from the mining business, but are not much better at making good use of it. Little of what the Taliban raise is used to fund the war effort and especially to support any strategy laid out by their official leadership. Even cash kept to pay for sustaining Taliban fronts and groups around Afghanistan contributes little to the current Taliban campaign to seize strategic assets.

The Taliban’s leadership within the Quetta Shura is well aware of this and has been making half-hearted attempts to recentralise its revenue collection. But years of diatribe and infighting have weakened its authority, and the withdrawal of the bulk of US forces in 2014 has removed a key factor keeping the Taliban together.

Nonetheless as in the case of the narcotics trade, the Taliban are intent in taking more and more direct control of mining, in order to increase their overall revenue. This is probably a reaction to repeated threats by their external donors, sometimes implemented, to cut funding to the Taliban. In 2015, the leaders decided that they needed to increase their internal revenue collections, and the drugs trade and mining became primary targets. Although in the end none of this benefited the leadership much, increased revenue collection benefited the middle ranks of the Taliban, who pocketed most of it. This means that the increased extraction of mining revenue by the Taliban instead of helping the leadership consolidate control, actually weakens that control further.

Since the difficulties of the Taliban in centralising their own revenue, already noted in a previous paper on the Taliban and the drug trade, are confirmed in this paper, the question arises of whether the Taliban would able to control Afghanistan even in the event of a military victory.

[1] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[2] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[3] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[4] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[5] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[6] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[7] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[8] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[9] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[10] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[11] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[12] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[13] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[14] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[15] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[16] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[17] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[18] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[19] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[20] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[21] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[22] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[23] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

[24] Sources in the Taliban’s Mining Department, July 2018.

[25] Interview with mining operator in Nangarhar, July 2018.

As external funding declines, IS-K looks for more money in Afghanistan

Introduction

When IS-K was established in early 2015, it was almost entirely dependent on funds sent from IS-Central and from donations agreed by IS-Central, but sent directly by the donors (largely in the Arab Gulf) to IS-K. Although IS-K gradually introduced a number of taxes and started looking for its own local donors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, throughout 2015 and 2016 it remained largely dependent on external funding. Donations from the Arab Gulf went up, while IS-Central reduced its contributions. Funds raised locally remained relatively marginal.

Unsurprisingly in 2017 things started getting more complicated for IS in general, and inevitably for IS-K too. As IS in Iraq and Syria went from defeat to defeat, the flow of money from the centre of the Caliphate to IS-K initially dried up. Donors too started losing their enthusiasm for IS and even IS-K saw donations decline. It became clear that in the future IS-K would have needed to rely more and more on local fund raising. The decline in the funding coming from external donors and from IS-Central was compounded by a crackdown on the financial support structures set up by IS-K in the UAE (mostly Dubai). When these facilities were shut down in early 2017, IS-K started struggling to transfer even the cash it was still receiving from Arab Gulf donors to Khorasan, making increased local fund raising an immediate need.[1]

This paper looks into IS-K’s efforts to raise funds in a variety of ways in Afghanistan, its main area of operations and the only country in ‘Khorasan’ where IS-K exercises significant territorial control.

Towards financial autonomy

After the February 2017 debacle, that led to the closure of the structures of the IS-K financial commission in the UAE, IS-K ended up relocating the headquarters of the financial commission first to Qatar, then to Pakistan (mainly Peshawar) and finally to Achin district (Nangarhar province). Its structures were downsized compared to what had been concentrated in Dubai, and as of mid-2018 the commission had only 62 men based in Achin.[2] Even more importantly than the downsizing, however, was the eventual relocation to Afghanistan, which was probably not unrelated to the on-going shift in the sources of funding, from external to local.

IS-K had some type of local revenue collection already in its early days, but it amounted to little.[3] When IS-K first appeared in Afghanistan in early 2015, it was slow in introducing taxation. It exempted common people from taxes altogether and it focused on taxing wealthy individuals and businesses.[4] Even in this case taxes were usually introduced only several months after IS-K had seized control of an area.[5]

It was the Caliphate’s leadership itself that started encouraging IS-K to raise more money locally, even making direct suggestions about how that could be achieved. Aside from the obvious encouragement to expand the areas under control of IS-K, IS-Central also suggested focusing on the mining sector and seizing agricultural lands.[6]

By 2017 IS-K had introduced taxes on farmers too. As of mid-2018 the ‘official’ tax rates of IS-K were 3% of income for farmers and 7% for all business activities, applying to all those living in areas under IS-K control, ‘because we are providing them with security and other facilities.’[7] They also started collecting taxes on electricity and water.[8] Nonetheless in 2017/18 IS-K raised a modest $15 million in taxes and ‘voluntary contributions’.[9]

IS-K found more significant local sources of revenue in mining and drugs, even if its involvement with the drug trade was unsteady. IS-K claims today to have achieved substantial financial autonomy from IS-Central, and to be already able to sustain the bulk of its operations without any external financial support. Its efforts to wean itself off financial dependency from abroad were helped by the reconciliation of IS-K’s two internal factions in March 2018. Moawiya Uzbekistani, the rebel deputy governor, agreed to accept Aslam Faruqi (whose real name is Qazi Mohammad) as governor of Khorasan, after a standoff which lasted 10 months. The two factions, which had been operating separately, have reunified even organisationally. This also applies to their financial structures. [10]

Mining: the emergence of the ‘Islamic State entrepreneur’

IS-K started targeting mining as a source of revenue early on, but initially with limited impact.[11] As a mining operator stressed, at that time IS-K was not trying to take control of mining operations and contented itself with charging a rather low 3% tax.[12] In 2016/17 IS-K made just $8 million from mining, according to an internal source.[13]

Things changed during 2017. By 2018 IS-K’s fund raising was mostly centered on mining activities. This was achieved by raising the tax rates, and by taking over entire mining operations.

According to a source, in 2017 IS-K was raising 500 Pak Rupees in tax from every tonne of talc mined in areas under its control in Nangarhar, corresponding to 4.9 million Pak Rupees ($49,000 per year) from a single operator.[14] By 2018 another mining operator in Nangarhar was describing the rates as having been increased to 4% on marble and 7% on talc for businesses, and 3% for individuals. At the main mines, IS-K posts a representative, tasked with making sure that mining operator does not cheat pays all his taxes.[15]

IS-K enforces its taxes very strictly, and has no tolerance for evasion or bribing, contrary to what is the case for the Taliban; its checkpoints make sure that any output being taken away from IS-K’s territory has paid its due.[16] It also imposes heavy fines on mining operators who pay taxes to Taliban as well. Reportedly 10 mining operators have been assassinated by IS-K for having broken its rules in Nangarhar alone.[17] The only positive aspect of IS-K control is that it will protect its ‘tax payers’ from attempts by third parties to extract more money. As a result, mining operators tend to have little sympathy for IS-K and prefer the Taliban.[18]

Among the mines which are under complete control of IS-K, according to a source within the organisation itself, are the marble mine of Nawar Tanghi area of Hesarak district, several mines in the Kado Khil and Tarkaki areas of Sherzad district, marble, talc and other mines in Achin, the Samzayee Ziarat marble mine in Kunar, the gem stones mines of Ishkamish, Khosh and Geram districts of Badakhshan province, etc. Ion the future IS-K plans to seize control over more and more of these assets. [19]

When IS-K takes full control of a mine, the hire their own workforce and bring engineers from abroad, namely Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. In some cases IS-K forms joint ventures with mining operators, or grants ‘exploitation licenses’ to mining operators of its liking. The mined goods are sold in Pakistan, where risk of detection is low.[20]

In order to secure a smoother extraction of revenue from mining operations, IS-K signed sharing agreements with the Shura of the North of the Taliban and with the Haqqani network. The former was signed in May 2016 and concerned the extraction of valuable minerals in Badakhshan, while the latter was signed in February 2018 and concerned mining activities all over Afghanistan. [21]

Already in 2017/18, according to a source in the financial commission of IS-K, the organisation raised $88 million from mining, that is well above the $55 million obtained from external donors. A source in the Finance Commission estimated that in 2018/19 mining revenue would grow dramatically, perhaps even doubling on 2017/18. Mostly this revenue comes from talc, marble, gemstones and semi-precious stones mines in the provinces of Badakhshan, Takhar, Nangarhar, Kunar, Nuristan.[22]

So far IS-K’s efforts to seize control over mining activities in Afghanistan have been concentrated mainly in Nangarhar province, where the conflict between IS-K on one side and Taliban and local strongmen has been driven by the former’s desire to acquire control to as many mining activities as possible (chromite, marble, talc, gemstones, etc.). [23] The same can be said of Helmand province, where Taliban and IS-K have been competing for the control of the mines of Khaneshin district.[24]

A troublesome relationship with the drugs trade

For almost a year IS-K collected taxes on the drugs trade, without any hint of being hostile to the drug trade. Then in November 2015 a ban on the drug trade was imposed in all areas under IS-K’s control; IS-K even made of the ban a key point of its propaganda.[25] In its first 28 months of existence, it claimed to have detained almost 300 individuals involved in the narcotics trade.[26]

Given its growing financial needs, the ban imposed by IS-K on the drug trade is puzzling. Indeed the ban was lifted temporarily in south-western Afghanistan in January 2017, but even more puzzlingly was reinstated in May 2018. A source in the IS-K finance commission explained that the ban on drugs was lifted temporarily in the south-west because it was affecting IS-K recruitment too badly:

the regional people were all involved in this trade and they have warned us, that if we did not lift the ban, they would not support or assist us, therefore we have allowed them for a short time […]. …our people and ranks were in need of urgent assistance and money as we were not able to get financial help and support from Syria and Iraq. Therefore, we have considered to allow the drugs trade for some time in order to raise enough money in taxes for answering our basic necessities.[27]

But if these explanations are correct, then why was it reinstated in May 2018, when IS-K’s financial landscape was arguably worse than at the time it was lifted? The ban is reportedly strictly enforced, and IS-K expels members caught breaking it.[28] The current (mid-2018) punishment for those involved in the narcotics business are:

The land of farmers who grow or harvest opium will be seized and given to other people;All heroin Labs must be destroyed and eliminated Smugglers must retire from the narcotics business, if not; they will be hanged to death. [29]

The practice so far, according to a IS-K source, has been to issue a warning to the drug traders when they get caught the first time, and then kill them if they are caught again. The source claims that so far IS-K has executed ten members of Haji Watan’s gang, five members of Haji Lala’s gang and others as well. Unsurprisingly, drug smugglers now tend to avoid areas of strong IS-K presence. [30]

When the ban was lifted in the south-west, drug smugglers were taxed and even in some cases approached IS-K for protection. When the ban was reinstated, those very same smugglers were suddenly ‘outlawed’ by IS-K. Some of them are still trying to lobby IS-K to lift the ban again, without success. Among the lobbyist are the gang of Haji Watan (he is currently in prison), the gang of Haji Lala and the bosses of some militia groups active in eastern Afghanistan. [31]

According to a source in the Finance Commission of IS-K, the ban on the drugs trade was imposed by Al-Baghdadi himself, who declared the drug trade haram. As a result, there was some loss of face involved in having exceptions for too long. Moreover, the suspension of the ban in south-west Afghanistan does not seem to have produced the expected results in terms of recruitments within communities highly involved in the drugs trade, like the Baluchis. In fact, there were fewer Baluchis in IS-K in mid-2018, when the ban was reinstated, than there were when the ban was lifted.[32]

Despite these considerations, from a purely pragmatic point of view, the ban was definitely counter-productive, first of all in terms of generating revenue. IS-K tax collection peaked in the second half of 2015, that is after it took control of large areas of poppy growing Nangarhar province, and before the ban on the drug trade was enforced towards the end of that year.[33]

Second, the ban also drove the smugglers even closer to the Taliban, whose support they sought against IS-K:

In Kajaki district of Helmand province, the drug smugglers played a very dangerous role against us [IS-K] and as a result they succeeded and IS-K has lost its influence and was weakened there.[34]

What next?

The growing financial autonomy of Is-K vis-à-vis what is left of the Caliphate is the result of both a decline in the flow of external funds and of an increase in local fund raising.

The external flows might well stabilise in the future, as by mid-2018 the Caliphate was already no longer in a position to help IS-K, and the hard core donors in the Arab Gulf, who still support IS-K despite the defeat of the Caliphate, might well be there to stay. Internal fund raising is likely to keep growing and certainly IS-K plans with this in mind, but in order to seize control over more mines, IS-K needs to expand its military force and face an increasingly aggressive Taliban leadership.

An even greater degree of IS-K’s financial autonomy cannot therefore be taken for granted. That is, unless the ban on the drug trade was reverted again. One could foresee the influence of the leadership of the Caliphate over IS-K as bound to decline, given that it does not pay directly IS-K anymore. If the IS-influenced donors in the Arab Gulf established a direct relationship with IS-K, then even the last tool of Caliphate influence would wane. While the bulk of IS-K’s members seem to have at least some ideological lining, one wonders how long they will resist the temptation of tapping into the drug trade for fund raising, even if that could cause serious trouble with the distant leadership of the Caliphate.

The arrival in Afghanistan of survivors of the Caliphate from Iraq and Syria has so far been just a trickle, and few senior individuals were among them. Unless that changes, another obstacle towards the growing autonomisation of IS-K is removed.

[1] For details see A. Giustozzi, The Islamic State in Khorasan, London : Hurst, 2018.

[2] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018; Interview with member of IS-K’s finance commission, May 2017.

[3] Rebecca Kheel, ‘Top US general: ISIS in Afghanistan connected to core group’, The Hill, July 27, 2016.

[4] See A. Giustozzi, The Islamic State in Khorasan, London : Hurst, 2018 for details.

[5] Interview with IS-K commander, Kajaki, Helmand, January 2016.

[6] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[7] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[8] Interview with IS-K 57, provincial cadre, March 2017; interview with external participant 18, mining businessman, March 2017; Interview with IS-K 60, financial cadre, April 2017; Katja Mielke and Nick Miszak, ‘Making sense of Daesh in Afghanistan: A social movement perspective’, Bonn : BICC, Working Paper 6 \ 2017, p. 42.

[9] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[10] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[11] Interview with IS-K provincial cadre, March 2017; Katja Mielke and Nick Miszak, ‘Making sense of Daesh in Afghanistan: A social movement perspective’, Bonn : BICC, Working Paper 6 \ 2017, p. 42.

[12] Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[13] Interview with member of IS-K’s finance commission, April 2017.

[14] Interview with mine operator, Nangarhar, March 2017.

[15] Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[16] Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[17] Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[18] Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[19] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018; Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[20] Interview with mining operator, Nangarhar, July 2018.

[21] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[22] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[23] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[24] Interview with member of IS-K’s finance commission, April 2017.

[25] See A. Giustozzi, cit.[26] Interview with member of IS-K’s finance commission, May 2017.

[27] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[28] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[29] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[30] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

[31] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018; interview with finance cadre of IS-K in Farah, March 2017.

[32] Interview with member of IS-K’s finance commission, May 2017; interview with IS-K commander, Jowzjan, August 2018.[33] See A. Giustozzi, cit.[34] Interview with member of IS-K’s Central Finance Commission, July 2018.

Introduction

From November 2017 onwards American forces in Afghanistan, with support from the Afghan government, have engaged in a campaign of strikes (mostly aerial) against drug labs. The campaign was predicated on the claim that the Taliban had been taking over the drugs trade and in particular heroin refining. By hitting at the drugs trade, therefore, Americans and Afghan government were hoping to stem the financial flows towards the Taliban, and slow their overall effort. As of end May 2018, they claimed to have hit around 100 of them, causing large-scale damage. The campaign elicited varying comments in the media and by analysts. The media were mostly positive, whereas analysts mostly critical. In particular David Mansfield pointed out how there was evidence of strikes hitting simple houses, where low level processing of opium might have been taking place in stead of heroin refining, and of significant civilian casualties.[1]

This briefing paper is a fort attempt to assess the American-Afghan ‘campaign against the labs’ within the context of Taliban operations within the narcotics trade and based on sources among the Taliban and among drug smugglers. Of course, both these sources are biased, but so are other sources used so far in the on-going debate. As the reader will realise as he proceeds further, these sources made some startling admissions, which do not seem to be designed for propaganda purposes.

The Taliban’s campaign for the labs

Three different Taliban sources admitted that in the recent past the Taliban’s leadership decided to enter the heroin refining market in Afghanistan. One of these sources detailed that the decision was taken in 2015, as the Taliban struggled to raise enough taxes due to indiscipline among their commanders in the field, and had started seeing some of their donors in the Arab Gulf reducing their commitments. Initially the decision was taken with the aim of boosting the revenue of the Central Financial Commission of the Quetta Shura. Instead of simply taxing the profits of heroin refiners, the Taliban would take the whole profits of the new labs they were going to open, buy or seize.

And so they did. A source in the Central Financial Commission said in June 2018 that in the course of about three years the Taliban had managed to acquire control over about 26% of the heroin refining market in Afghanistan. This might be a far cry from claims by the US military of the Taliban having ‘taken over’ the drugs trade, but it is nonetheless a major development. By 2016-17, the Taliban’s labs were producing revenue in excess of $150 million a year, according to the source.

Unforeseen consequences

This development is important for at least two reasons, neither of which was the intended one (boosting the finances of the Quetta Shura).

For the first time since the Taliban Emirate the Taliban have been directly challenging the interests of many drug traffickers. Heroin refining traffickers are not pleased, although they cannot not move against the Taliban given that they were under even greater pressure from both the Afghan authorities and the Americans on one side and the Islamic State on the other (in eastern Afghanistan). Even those who are not directly involved in refining heroin might not be pleased to see the Taliban trying to assert growing control over the trade. The source in the Finance Commission estimated that 80% of the traffickers were upset with the Taliban. A Ishaqzai trafficker, contacted in June 2018, probably represented the view of many of his colleagues when he said that Haibatullah is suspected of being under pressure from the Iranian authorities (with whom he has close relations) to bring drug trafficking under control.

So Haibatullah risks alienating what used to be a key constituency of the insurgency, even if the traffickers have always hedged their bets between insurgent and pro-government actors, paying both sides. But perhaps the most important consequence of the Taliban’s move to become an direct actor in the drugs trade has been growing competition among the Taliban for drug revenue, which could also be described as ‘corruption’.

Different Taliban factions accuse each other of misappropriating the profits of the heroin labs. A source in the Financial Commission indicated that perhaps only 10-15% of those profits reach their originally intended target, the coffers of the Commission. The rest is appropriated along the way by labs operators, Taliban shadow governors, front commanders, and senior figures in the Quetta Shura. The opposition to Taliban leader Haibatullah within the Quetta Shura accuses him of having increased the powers of the shadow governors in controlling this flow of revenue, in order to make it easier for them to divert funds to Haibatullah himself and his allies. However, figures close to Haibatullah point out that the most powerful of all shadow governors (especially when it comes to drug revenue) is Abdul Manan in Helmand, who is now one of the leaders of the Ishaqzai faction opposed to Haibatullah’s leadership. Over 40% of Taliban heroin refineries, say the sources, are in Helmand under Abdul Manan’s control, and he has been transferring very little money of late to Quetta too. He has not been transferring it directly to Haibatullah either. One of the Ishaqzai smugglers openly admitted in June 2018 that most smugglers prefer Abdul Manan and the Ishaqzai faction, as opposed to Haibatullah. Abdul Manan in particular is reported to be lobbying the smugglers hard and to be very supportive of their interests. Another Taliban heavyweight in good terms with the traffickers and opposed to Haibatullah is Qari Baryal, the leader of the Shura of the North.

Whoever might have started diverting funds, the aims are clear. Personal enrichment probably plays a part and for sure there are rumours about all the main players in the Taliban’s heroin refining business (Abdul Manan, Haibatullah, Gul Agha Ishaqzai, Mullah Shireen), that they have been moving money to Dubai. But perhaps even more important is the lack of trust in the Quetta Shura’s budgeting process. Haibatullah dislikes the idea of the money making it to the central coffers of the Financial Commission, because then he would have to share it with some of his unappealing colleagues, like the prevaricating Serajuddin Haqqani. It is worth mentioning here that Haibatullah should be face a ‘party congress’ soon, where his leadership will be at stake, and that Serajuddin has made clear that he intends challenging Haibatullah for the top job. Haibatullah is therefore running his congressional campaign, trying to build up support. Not the most popular Taliban leader ever, Haibatullah is offering his constituents incentives for supporting him, instead of the committed jihadist Serajuddin, or of a candidate from the Ishaqzai faction, probably Obeidullah, cousin of deceased leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansur. Say sources that Haibatullah is closing not just one eye, but even both of them as his subordinates all dip their hands in the flow of drug revenue and take their cut, leaving little for the Taliban as an organisation. Not only individual leaders and commanders, but even whole fronts benefit from this largesse, while the Taliban’s shadow state machinery and military apparatus suffer. Although the Taliban have substantial funds accruing from donations of security agencies around the region and beyond, the missing hundreds of millions do hurt.

The fact that Taliban leaders are busy chasing the drug revenue flow comes to the detriment of the cause of jihad and in part contributes to explain why this year too the Taliban’s campaign is falling for now short of expectations. The desire to accumulate funds for one own’s combat group (moreover given that the Finance Commission might in the future be that good at providing) is only beaten in terms of negative impact on the Taliban’s fighting morale of allegations of personal enrichment.

The impact of the American/Afghan campaign for the labs

So while the Americans and the Afghan government might have inflated claims of the Taliban taking over the drugs trade and might have over-estimated the positive impact of it on the Taliban’s military effort, they were not entirely wrong. But what has been the impact of their campaign against the labs so far?

A Taliban source admitted that 16 of their own labs were hit during the campaign until mid-June, in the provinces of Helmand, Farah and Badakhshan. More than 100 strikes were carried out, so if these figures are right, the intended target was reached in about 15% of the cases. The remaining targets were either private labs, lesser processing facilities, owned by local families or private entrepreneurs, or simply wrong targets, as investigated by Mansfield. Is this source saying the truth? Hard to be certain, but the source could have denied it all after all; that is the official line of the Taliban, and any evidence of the contrary is safely locked up in intelligence files. Importantly some similar estimates were provided earlier by another Taliban source, contacted through separate networks in March 2018. This second source admitted three months before the other did that out of around 20 strikes in Helmand up to that point, two had hit Taliban labs and one a private lab, with the rest again being lesser processing facilities and wrong targets. This seems to point towards a roughly similar success rate.

Estimating the financial damage inflicted is a bit more complicated. Clearly claims made by the US military were exaggerated, as they estimated the damage on the basis of the street value of heroin in Europe. For the Taliban the real financial damage is:

The cost of setting up the labs, which is very modest compared to the revenue.The lost drugs and processing ingredients, which are not known and would depend on how much opium and heroin was stored at the labs. A smuggler linked to the Ishaqzai faction of the Taliban claimed in June 2018 that the initial strikes in Helmand destroyed big stockpiles of opium and heroin, worth according to him up to $85 million at the Afghan market value. But these drugs were not necessarily the Taliban’s, so the Taliban’s loss would be significantly lower than the total amount. Then inevitably the Taliban started storing as much drugs as possible away from the labs.The lost profits until a replacement lab is ready to go.

It is not known how long it takes on average for the Taliban to replace destroyed labs, but given that they have now set-up a whole industry of making heroin labs, probably not long. So if we say that on average the revenue flow out of the destroyed labs was curtailed by a few months we are probably not too far from a fair estimate. The Taliban source in the financial Commission puts the yearly profit of the Taliban labs at $183 million for the last year, and the labs destroyed at 10% of the total. So the damage could be estimated at somewhere around $9 million of lost profit plus any drugs and precursors lost. Incidentally the same source noted that despite the campaign against the labs, profits from the labs rose by around 7-8% during the last year.

Now the Taliban have been moving their labs to more remote areas and tightening security measures. In 2015-17 they indulged in self-confidence, placing the labs in heavily populated areas, close to the poppy fields, but also easy to stop and for the intelligence to duly note their position down. The Ishaqzai smuggler mentioned above commented confidently that the American/Afghan campaign against the labs is just for show, and that it will never succeed in eradicating or seriously reducing drug smuggling in Afghanistan.

Tough choices for the traffickers

The traffickers have been foraging both Taliban and Afghan government actors after 2001, but since 2016 they have been facing a new situation. The American/Afghan campaign against the labs together with the pressure exercised by the Islamic State on drug traffickers in eastern Afghanistan (at least until recently) and with the detention of several high profile traffickers in 2016, has placed drug traffickers in Afghanistan under the strongest pressure since the Taliban ban of 2000. The traffickers regard the Karzai presidencies as their golden age. Even now they are not on the verge of extinction for sure, but despite ever more opium being produced in Afghanistan smuggling operations are no longer as smooth as they used to be. The Taliban for now still consider this constituency essential to their aims and have recently offered tax discounts to the traffickers to help them recover their losses.

Views within the ranks of the traffickers vary concerning the intent of the NUG, whether it is out to favour some traffickers over others, or whether it is out to smash them all regardless. In any case there are enough drug traffickers feeling threatened by the campaign carried jointly by the Americans and Kabul, as to generate a wave of support for the Taliban, as the only defence available against both IS and the Afghan/US campaign. Both the gangs of Haji Watan (eastern Afghanistan) and of Haji Lala (southern Afghanistan), which were heavily targeted by the Afghan authorities in 2016, have for example increased their funding for the Taliban, according to the source in the Financial Commission. These traffickers who are increasing their support to Haibatullah’s Taliban are however a minority. At the same time more and more traffickers fear Taliban efforts to increase their control over the drug trade, and to turn into direct actors within it. Discretely (as claimed by the Ishaqzai smuggler mentioned above) many drug traffickers have tried to boost ties to government officials and anti-Haibatullah Taliban in the last year or so, in order to evade both Taliban pressure and US/Afghan government targeting. [1] David Mansfield, ‘Bombing Heroin Labs in Afghanistan’, London : LSE, January 2018.

Introduction

There are different accounts of how the opium poppies made their way to Afghanistan originally: some say that it was Alexander the Great’s armies who brought it in the fourth century BC, others that it was Gengis Khan’s armies in the twelfth century; more likely it was brought to Afghanistan by Arab traders for medical purposes. In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo reported the existence poppy fields in Badakhshan. Certainly the Moghuls were making extensive use of opium. For the first time the Afghan authorities reported the presence of opium fields to the Society of Nations in Herat, Nangarhar and Badakhshan in 1924. Records of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan date no further back than 1932, according to UNODC. The Afghan government reported in 1937 that in 1932 3,846 hectares were under cultivation, producing 74.5 tons of opium.[1] During the 1930s, the production and export of hashish also started taking off, according to some sources with the encouragement of the government. This is a small fraction of what the opium trade in Afghanistan would become after 2001, assuming the estimates are correct. The Afghan government forbade the cultivation of opium poppies in 1945, but the initial impact of the prohibition appears to have been limited. In 1956, Afghan authorities reported that production has fallen to just 12 tons, but felt the need to ban opium production again in 1957. Various UN and international assessments did not agree that the Afghan government was doing much to eradicate the problem and that smuggling towards the neighbouring countries continued without noticeable change. Throughout this period the authorities did not take any action against the production and trade of hashish. Only in 1973, the new republican government started clamping down on the cultivation of cannabis and on the trade of hashish in northern Afghanistan, with harsh measures including burning down houses and arresting farmers. [2]

By 1971, the Afghan government admitted that opium production had been increasing again and it was unable to suppress production, an assessment shared by a UN survey team in 1972. In reality, it was in the 1970s that Afghan opium production started taking off, as a result of effective bans on its production in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Already in 1973 prices of heroin were rising so fast that Afghan production was stimulated. Soon the U.S. government would cut aid to Afghanistan in protest at growing opium production. The final ingredient in the take off of opium production in Afghanistan was the beginning of a series of conflicts in 1978, which rapidly saw the control of the central government over the countryside shrink. Remaining production in Pakistan started quickly shifting to Afghanistan. [3]

UNODC estimated that, in 1980, Afghan opium production accounted for 19% of the world production. By the end of the first phase of the Afghan wars in 1992, when the pro-Soviet regime of President Najibullah fell, that percentage had gone up to 42%. Some factions of the armed opposition to the pro-Soviet regime topped up external funding from the United States, Saudi Arabia and other countries with funds deriving from drug smuggling, but it is also likely that the increase in production was due to heightened activity by freelance farmers and smugglers, who no longer faced any restraints.[4]

During the 1990s, external funding to warring Afghan factions declined, resulting in an increased reliance on drug smuggling. Throughout the 1990s, according to UNODC estimates, Afghanistan produced consistently more than 50% of the world’s opium, with peaks of over 60%, until by the end of the decade the percentage rose above 70% and even close to 80%. The destruction inflicted on traditional agricultural crops also contributed to the rising importance of opium production, as the poppies were found to a resilient crop that could be stored in a small space for long periods of time, and had high market value.[5]

The Taliban ban on opium in 2000 led to a collapse in production to 11% of the world’s total in 2001, in a context of falling world output (other producers did not have the time to replace missing Afghan production). The Taliban implemented the ban without offering any compensation or alternative to the farmers, causing severe decline in output of opium. The Taliban ban was the subject of much speculation: were the Taliban trying to cash large stocks of opium held by the traders? Their ban led to a major rise in prices, creating the ideal scenario for those who owned stocks and wanted to sell them. Or did the Taliban cut production because they were trying to obtain diplomatic recognition from Washington, or at least avoid the sanctions that the UN Security council was imposing on them? Analysts remain of different views in this regard.

The question whether the Taliban ban was sustainable or not was never answered because the Taliban regime was overthrown in 2001 and production restarted without much hindrance. The Taliban had some notorious drug smugglers supporting them, but so did the anti-Taliban coalition. By 2003, Afghanistan was accounting again for 74% of world opium production and from then onwards it would continue rising, eventually accounting for around 90% of it.[6]

Drug Supply and Reduction

From the 74,000 hectares cultivated in Afghanistan in 2002, the cultivation of poppies expanded dramatically in subsequent years, despite some fluctuations dictated primarily by prices and plant illness. The peak (so far) was in 2014, with 224,000 hectares being planted according to UNODC. The latest data for 2016 shows 201,000 hectares being cultivated. Production is mostly concentrated in the south (around 60% in recent years) and in the west (around 25%), while the north -- including Badakhshan -- accounted for smaller proportions. Opium production peaked in 2007, with 7,400 tons, but that amount was quite exceptional. In 2016 production was estimated at 4,800 tons, as yield per hectare fluctuated wildly.[7]

The first attempt to implement a counter-narcotics policy after the fall of the Taliban regime saw a British-sponsored plan to pay USD$350 for each jerib[8] that they would eradicate. The plan proved very difficult to implement and was affected by widespread corruption. It had to be aborted after less than a year.[9]

In 2004, counter-narcotics policy shifted towards targeting the smugglers, but corrupt Afghan security institutions allied with the biggest smugglers in targeting their competitors and rivals, favouring the emergence of vertical integration in the drug trade, and concentration of the trade in the hands of a relatively small number of small players. It has been alleged that the smugglers being targeted by the interdiction effort were pushed right into the arms of the re-emerging Taliban.[10]

Before the end of 2004, there was a new shift towards forced eradication, dictated by evidence of rising production. The peak of manual eradication campaigns was in 2005-2009; it mainly achieved results in Nangarhar, where enforcement was stricter. However, it proved unsustainable because of the heavy burden on many farming families. Indeed, it was in 2007 that the all-time high in opium production was achieved, in the middle of the most robust eradication campaign to date. Greater success was achieved from 2008 onwards, reportedly thanks to the lobbying of tribal elders by governor Gul Agha Shirzai. Shirzai harbored political ambitions and wanted to cast himself in a positive light with the international community. Allegations that the eradication policies were pushing opium farmers into the hands of the Taliban also contributed to the declining enthusiasm for eradication. After a peak in 2006 (almost 16,000 hectares reported as eradicated), mostly in Nangarhar, in 2008-11 only 2,500-4,000 hectares of poppy land were eradicated, representing a tiny percentage of all land under poppy cultivation (1-2%). This was enough to upset and scare the farmers, but not enough to make a serious dent in the opium economy. Government officials mostly implemented eradication in a perfunctory way, in order to satisfy demands by the international community or by the government.[11]

It is also well established that several high-ranking members of the political elite maintained close relations with drug traders, and benefited from this relationship. Undoubtedly, the policy of appointments to governorship and senior police positions in the provinces aroused the suspicion that individuals connected with the narco-traffickers were being placed in key positions to facilitate smuggling operations. It is not clear whether this was because positions were offered for sale to the highest bidder (and drug traffickers were well positioned to bid higher), a common tactic used to secure lucrative and influential positions in the Afghan Government, or because of alliances between politicians and drug traders. United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA), for example, regularly provided the Ministry of Interior with blacklists of people involved in drug trafficking, recommending that they not be appointed to any senior position, only to see them ending up as governors and chiefs of police.[12]

In 2009, a new shift in policy saw a return to the interdiction of drug trafficking, but this time focused on smugglers linked to the Taliban, while increasing expenditure on rural development as a means to wean producers off poppy cultivation and into other forms of livelihood. Official estimates put the dependency of the Taliban on drug revenue at 20-40%. By the end of the interdiction policy with the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2013-14, the policy was assessed as having had a limited or irrelevant strategic impact. Moreover, opium seizures in the villages alienated villagers, who often kept the financial reserves in the form of raw opium.

A resurgence of eradication efforts in 2012-13 (around 7,000-9,000 hectares eradicated per year) was not sustained because of the withdrawal of foreign troops, which had provided a backup for these efforts. From 2014 onwards, the limited interdiction efforts still underway were being carried out by Afghan security forces, and corruption and nepotism again affected the outcome. With the massive loss of control over the rural space that began in 2014-16, the Afghan authorities are now hardly in a position to implement any eradication policies. Only 355 hectares were reported to have been eradicated in 2016, a drop of 91% over the previous year.[13]

Poppy eradication appeared to be dead, and counter-narcotics efforts were in decline already in 2013, as foreign troops were beginning to pull out of many districts, leaving the Afghan security forces alone to cope with the insurgency. Between 2012-13 and 2014-15, seizures of heroin declined by 32%, of dry opium by 14% and of morphine by 25%. Similarly, the 2,661 drug traffickers arrested in 2014-15 represented an 11% decline on the previous years.[14] Partial figures for 2015-16 suggest a stabilization of interdiction activities, with 1,000 arrests in the first four months of the year.[15]

Qualitatively, interdiction operation actually scored high in 2016, with arrests of very prominent drug traffickers such as Haji Watan and the son of Haji Lala Jan Ishaqzai, plus nine other “international drug traffickers.”[16] It is too early to assess the impact of the new wave of interdiction operations, but -- undoubtedly -- 2016 has been the most successful year so far in this regard. However, it is worth asking whether all drug traders are being pursued with the same energy. Are some of them, especially those better connected with the political elite, able to manipulate interdiction to their own advantage? This is a key question to be explored in the months to come. While there is good evidence that President Ashraf Ghani is serious about targeting high level drug traffickers rather than farmers, whether his administration will succeed or not in pursuing a more successful policy than in previous years remains to be seen.

Use of Drugs

Of the 4,000-6,000 tons of opium produced in Afghanistan annually, in 2007 UNODC estimated that at least 33% is refined into heroin locally. The percentage is likely to have gone up since then. Raw opium is smoked in large quantities mostly in Iran and in other parts of the Middle East, with Afghanistan, Russia and Europe following in their consumption levels.[17] Significant amounts of Afghan opium are also still being smuggled abroad for refining there. Major traders employ sometimes hundreds of opium buyers, roaming the country on their behalf, buying the cheapest opium (and hashish) from farmers.[18]

A relatively small portion of Afghan drugs feeds the domestic market, which is estimated at about 2.5-3 million users, about half of whom are opioid users. Among the main export markets for Afghan drugs are Iran (3.5-6 million users, of which at least 2 million opioid users), Pakistan (6.7 million users, of which 2.7 million are opioid users), Russia (7.5-8.5 million users of all drugs), and Ukraine (0.5 million). The most populous European countries all have a few hundreds thousand opioid users each.[19] The world total might exceed 21 million users of opiates.[20]

Narcotics Production

Overall opium production in Afghanistan oscillates between 4,000 and 6,000 tons per year, depending mainly on environmental factors. The large majority of producers are small independent farmers, perhaps 300,000 of them. At least some of the druglords and some of the largest drug traders have been buying land to turn it into poppy fields. In some cases, drug traders already own thousands of hectares of land.[21]

Druglords typically own several heroin refineries each as well, and many big drug traders do. Some of the biggest drug traders control tens of refineries. [22] Full control over the production chain results in income for the druglord that is 10-15% higher.[23] The most efficient refiners offer the highest discount, while others are able to offer only smaller discounts.[24] The smaller the size of the narcotics business, the less likely that any vertical integration might be in place.

Heroin refining capacity in Afghanistan has increased even faster than opium production. The general trend has, of course, been one of operators shifting from an opium-based business towards a heroin-based one, because of the higher profit margins allowed by heroin. The tendency to focus on the export market seems to be a common trend, affecting opium and hashish traders as well, particularly for small smugglers who cannot compete with the prices offered by the bigger smugglers. [25] Small smugglers are even willing to take the risk of taking the drugs across borders, in order to make a good profit.[26] However, the heroin trade requires significant start-up capital; opium-only traders and smugglers survive at the low end of the market, trapped in a low investment/low margins cycle. In part, they too cope by selling more and more across the border, particularly in Iran where demand for opium remains high. Increasingly, even simple farmers are beginning to do the same, in order to earn more returns.[27]

Much of the narcotics business in Afghanistan is based around personal relations built over time. A trader in the south might send his opium to be refined in Nangarhar, bypassing refineries in Helmand, not just because of lower costs in Nangarhar, but also because of being allied with -- or on good business terms with -- a refiner in Nangarhar. A trader in the north might buy opium or heroin in the south or in the east, bypassing refiners in Badakhshan, for the same reasons. Once an operator establishes precious contact with foreign narcotics traders, he will have to bring narcotics to the nearest border, regardless of where he is able to purchase them.

Druglords and the major traders are able to purchase opium (or refined heroin) when prices are lowest and stockpile it until prices rise and they can make a good profit. Maintaining stockpiles also allows the smugglers to never run out of supply.[28] Small smugglers who lack political protection are not keen to stockpile much, because of the risk of raids by security forces who could seize their stock.[29] Some smugglers also only order opium or heroin when they get orders from their trading counterparts abroad.[30]

The final price of heroin ready for export is determined by a series of costs, and by expectations of profit among the various actors involved. The price mark-ups grow rapidly as the Afghan border recedes into the distance. By the time heroin makes it to Europe, the mark-up is between 3,000%-4,000%.

[1] UNODC, “The Opium Economy In Afghanistan: An International Problem,” Vienna, 2003; Alain Labrousse, “Afghanistan: opium de guerre, opium de paix,” Paris; Fayard, 2005.[2] UNODC, “The Opium Economy In Afghanistan: An International Problem,” Vienna, 2003; Alain Labrousse, Afghanistan: opium de guerre, opium de paix,” Paris; Fayard, 2005.[3] UNODC, “The Opium Economy In Afghanistan: An International Problem,” Vienna, 2003; Alain Labrousse, “Afghanistan: opium de guerre, opium de paix,” Paris; Fayard, 2005.[4] UNODC, “The Opium Economy In Afghanistan: An International Problem,” Vienna, 2003; Alain Labrousse, “Afghanistan: opium de guerre, opium de paix,” Paris; Fayard, 2005.[5] UNODC, “The Opium Economy In Afghanistan: An International Problem’, Vienna, 2003; Alain Labrousse, “Afghanistan: opium de guerre, opium de paix,” Paris; Fayard, 2005.[6] UNODC, “The Opium Economy In Afghanistan: An International Problem,” Vienna, 2003.[7] UNODC, “Opium Survey 2016,” Vienna, 2016.[8] Equivalent to approximately 2,000 square meters. [9] Vanda Felbab-Brown, “No Easy Exit: Drugs and Counternarcotics Policies in Afghanistan,” Brookings, 2016.[10] Vanda Felbab-Brown, “No Easy Exit: Drugs and Counternarcotics Policies in Afghanistan,” Brookings, 2016.[11] David Mansfield and Adam Pain, “Evidence from the Field: Understanding Changing Levels of Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan,” Kabul : AREU, November 2007; Vanda Felbab-Brown, “No Easy Exit: Drugs and Counternarcotics Policies in Afghanistan,” Brookings, 2016.[12] Matthieu Aikins, “Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State,” Rolling Stone, December 4, 2014; Carl Forsberg and Tim Sullivan, “Criminal Patronage Networks and the Struggle to Rebuild the Afghan State,” Impunity, May 24, 2016.[13] UNODC, “Opium Survey 2016,” Vienna, 2016; Liana Rosen and Kenneth Katzman, “Afghanistan: Drug Trafficking and the 2014 Transition,” Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2014.[14] “Afghanistan Drug Report 2015,” Kabul: Ministry for Counter-Narcotics, 2015.[15] “Hundreds arrested in Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics operations,” Press TV, Aug. 11, 2016.[16] Anisa Shaheed, “MoI Detains 11 Drug Kingpins In Past Year: Official,” Tolo News, 25 September 2016. [17] UNODC, World Drugs report, Vienna, 2010.[18] Interview with smuggler in Nangarhar Province, 2015.[19] State Department, “2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,” Washington, 2016.[20] UNODC, “The opium/heroin market,” Vienna, 2010.[21] Interview with smuggler in Helmand Province, 2016.[22] Interview with smuggler in Kandahar province, 2016.[23] Interview with smugglers in Kandahar and Herat, 2016.[24] Interview with smuggler in Parwan province, 2016.[25] Interview with drug traders, 2016.[26] Interview with smugglers in Nimruz and Badakhshan provinces, 2016.[27] Interview with smuggler in Kandahar Province, 2015. [28] Interview with drug traders, 2016.[29] Interview with smuggler in Nangarhar Province, 2016.[30] Interview with smugglers in Nangarhar, Badakhshan and Nimruz Provinces, 2016.

The recent offer by President Ghani to the Taliban to start reconciliation talks has received no positive answer despite containing a few new elements: some promise of the Taliban taking part in a future review of the Afghan Constitution, a Taliban political office in Kabul, with members being issued Afghan passports, and a ceasefire. The offer was widely reported in the media, but the Taliban essentially ignored it. The speculation flourished in the media as to why the Taliban did not take the offer, or at least engage with it.

A common explanation put forward to explain why the Taliban have so far shown little interest in engaging in reconciliation talks with Kabul is because they feel that they are gaining a military edge and that either they will win the war, or strengthen their negotiating position in the future (so why hurry?). However, this is not necessarily true. What we hear from Taliban contacts is that -- despite the gradual erosion of government influence and control in the rural areas -- the Taliban ‘elite’ is not happy about the way the war is going. The leadership council and the top military leaders had set for themselves ambitious aims (although they never announced them in public): such as taking and holding whole provinces, including the provincial capitals. These aims were set in 2014-15, when the Americans seemed to be bailing out of combat operations in Afghanistan. At that point, the Taliban had a serious chance of making a breakthrough, but despite coming close to it, they were never able to hold a province (Kunduz) in its virtual entirety for more than two weeks. From 2016 onwards the Americans gradually tip-toed into combat operations again, making it harder for the Taliban to completely seize cities, and even harder holding on to them. This failure is a source of much recrimination within the Taliban.

There are two other reasons why the Taliban leadership does not necessarily think time is playing in its favour. One is that the Taliban’s Amir, Haibatullah Akhund, is in a weak position at the top of the organisation and risks losing external and internal support if he does not start delivering more.

The other is that the cohesiveness of the Taliban, never very high, is getting much worse. The reintegration of the Haqqani network into the Quetta Shura’s chain of command in 2015 has only temporarily made things better; now Serajuddin Haqqani and Haibatullah are according to sources in very bad terms with each other. The reintegration of the Peshawar Shura into Quetta’s chain of command was another short-lived success: the Peshawar Shura has de facto disintegrated and the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan are at their weakest for years. Now even the leader of the Shura of the North, Qari Baryal, has broken relations with Haibatullah. In Quetta and in southern Afghanistan, Serajuddin Haqqani has now unprecedented influence, that he uses for contrasting Haibatullah; the Ishaqzai Taliban are not yet reconciled with Haibatullah and do not cooperate with him. Haibatullah’s only recent success has been the recent reconciliation with Abdul Qayum Zakir in an effort to pacify the Alizai tribe, to which Zakir belongs, and appointed him head of the logistics commission a few days ago.

But then, if the Taliban are not so certain of the bright path ahead, why are they not negotiating with Kabul?

First of all, the international relations and funding of the Taliban, which are generally poorly understood, represent a major obstacle. Despite a growing literature on the support that over the years has been accruing to them from Pakistan, Iran and the Arab Gulf, somehow commentators, observers and policy makers seem to assume that such support comes without strings attached, that constrain the freedom of manoeuvre of the Taliban leadership.

Second, as mentioned already, the Taliban are not a unified entity and there are multiple centres of power within it. In order for the official leadership of the Taliban to take a position on such a controversial topic it needs to consult all the different centres of power that to various degree recognise it as ‘the leadership’. Clearly, some of these centres of power fiercely oppose any idea of reconciliation: we can just mention the Haqqani network as the main example. The Haqqani directly control 15% of the Taliban’s manpower, and have influence of many other smaller Taliban fronts, which they support in various ways.

Third, when seen through Taliban eyes, President Ghani’s offers might not seem so attractive. The review of the Constitution might well boil down to a modest Taliban delegation joining the future Constitutional Loya Jirga. The Taliban for sure would like a review process in which they represented half or so of the ‘experts’ reviewing the Constitution. A ceasefire would benefit Kabul mainly, as the Afghan security forces have long lost the initiative in the conflict. The Taliban might agree to it at some point, but, as it stands, they are not going to view it as a concession from Kabul, but rather as a concession they might make to Kabul if everything else is satisfying for them.

Finally, an office in Kabul compares poorly with the office the Taliban have in Doha and that Ghani seeks to close down. Although Haibatullah is not himself an extremist, there are enough hardliners within the Taliban to mean that any rushed decision to sit at a table with Kabul and negotiate would badly split the Taliban. It might well deprive them of much of their funding as well. It is not clear what Haibatullah would get for that: the end state of the talks is foggy and the very fact that President Ghani’s offer was made in public probably arouses suspicions in Quetta and Karachi, where most Taliban offices are. After all, Haibatullah’s predecessor Akhtar Mohammad Mansur tried to negotiate, and split the Taliban for little concrete gain. The reward for his efforts to negotiate was a US drone strike that killed him.Haibatullah needs to consolidate his leadership position before he can even think of talks with Kabul, and to do that he needs to score better on the battlefield. The fighting season started early this year, with the campaign for Farah province, where Haibatullah is trying to earn his first great military success.

Summary

The Afghan National Unity Government (NUG) had a difficult birth, and its life has so far been no easier. The diarchy Ghani-Abdullah proved very difficult to manage in the first year of existence of the NUG. In addition, in 2015, former President Karzai was coagulating around himself various fragments of the opposition, seemingly mounting a serious challenge to the NUG. For some time in 2016, President Ghani’s hold on the NUG seemed to be strengthening, and Karzai’s challenge -- receding. However, in 2017, a series of developments took place to further shake the NUG: (1) The reconciliation with the armed opposition group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar seemed uncontroversial good news at the beginning, but it proved quite destabilizing; (2) The troubled alliance between Ghani and his first vice-president Dostum came to an end, with the de facto exile of the latter; (3) The fight for the control over the main party in the Parliament, Jamiat-i Islami, also intensified; and, finally, (4) Growing international tensions between Iran and Russia on one side, and United States and Saudi Arabia on the other also contributed to adding additional pressure on the NUG. In the end, at the close of 2017, the lack of unity among the opposing entities did not coalesce into a formidable challenge to Ghani or to NUG’s unity. Whatever coalition or coalition of coalitions would end up running the country, it would be a heterogeneous coalition of multiple groups, often unsteady in their own leadership.

Introduction

The Afghan National Unity Government (NUG) was formed in autumn 2014 as a response to the political impasse created by the disputed outcome of that year’s presidential elections. The formation of the NUG may have averted a dramatic political crisis, but from its very beginning the agreement set up a dysfunctional diarchy in the offices of the President and Chief Executive, held by Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, respectively. Despite the negotiation of a power-sharing agreement after the elections, deep rivalries persisted between the two coalitions, which at the same time also faced internal friction and even fragmentation.

These internal divisions were contained by U.S. and European diplomatic pressure on the NUG members to avoid another destabilizing political crisis. But in the first half of 2017 several developments intervened to make the centrifugal forces in the NUG stronger and stronger.

The underlying dynamic has been the preparation by the components of the NUG to contest upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2018 and 2019, often against each other. The first major development that impacted on this underlying dynamic to further test the solidity of the NUG was the reconciliation of the Hekmatyar wing of Hizb-i Islami with the Kabul authorities, following a peace agreement signed in September 2016 and implemented in 2017.

The second development was the decision of the new Trump Administration to recommit to supporting Afghanistan and increase the level of military commitment, while at the same time seemingly siding with Saudi Arabia in the multiple rivalries of the Arab Gulf.

The third development was the riots of June 2, 2017, which started as a protest against the May 31 truck bomb in Kabul, and were exploited by some particularly disgruntled elements of the Jamiat-e-Islami party (opposed to Abdullah) to accelerate the pace of the developing political crisis.

Two other developments in external relations also affected the stability of the NUG:

Delayed direct Chinese involvement in Afghanistan, financial and political, which may have forced President Ghani to increase reliance on ties with Saudi Arabia. [1]The further increase of regional tension between the Saudi monarchy and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which reverberated through Afghanistan

Will the NUG survive the growing centrifugal trends? How will political alliances reshape? What implications would the collapse of the NUG agreement have for the stability of Afghanistan? This paper is based on “on-the-record” and “off-the-record” interviews and personal contacts with high level members of the political parties and groups -- especially those that are most dissatisfied with the NUG (Jamiat-i Islami, Junbesh-i Milli and various Hazara political groups) -- as well as within Ghani’s camp. The aim of these interviews was to assess what these groups intend to do in terms of attitude towards the NUG and to future coalition building. The interviews took place during July and August 2017.

The formation of the NUG and its components

Before the NUG

The Afghan political system was already in bad health before the 2014 presidential elections and subsequent NUG agreement. The Jamiat-i Islami, Abdullah Abdullah’s party and previously the dominant actor within the Northern Alliance and a major player in the Karzai administration after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, has been unable to agree on a new leader since the 2011 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The Hezb-e-Wahdat, an ethnically Hazara party led by Mohammad Mohaqqeq, was fragmented and facing growing competition by new groups rooted in civil society. Junbesh-e-Milli leader Abdul Rashid Dostum from the outset was a controversial figure and had repeatedly been subjected to challenges in the past. And the conspicuous number of former and current Hizb-i Islami figures active on the political scene ended splitting over whom to ally with.[2]

The broader picture was one of a political landscape fragmenting more and more every year. Inevitably, therefore, whatever coalition or coalition of coalitions would end up running the country, it would be a heterogeneous coalition of multiple groups, often unsteady in their own leadership. The NUG was also a victim of this general trend. The two coalitions that confronted each other in the 2014 presidential elections were heterogeneous in their composition, and involved the breakup of old alliances and the start of new ones. Ghani’s camp included Dostum as key partner; Ghani had been very critical of Dostum in the early post-Bonn years, so their alliance was criticised as opportunistic. It also counted on supporters who were not technically part of the coalition, such as hardline Pashtun nationalists like Ismail Yoon (chief executive of Zhwandoon TV and leader of the Tehrik-E Afghanistan party), who was disavowed by the coalition even before the elections took place. Finally, it included some dissident elements of Jamiat-i Islami, such Ahmad Zia Massoud, one of the brothers of late commander Ahmad Shah Massud, and controversial figures such as Haji Almas and Gen. Jurat, who were accused of abuses in the past.[3] Abdullah’s camp was predominantly composed of the internally divided Jamiat-i Islami; it also included Mohammad Khan as a representative of Hizb-i Islami.

The formation of the NUG

When an impasse was reached after the vote in April-May 2014, it took international mediation to find a solution. The formation of the NUG has been repeatedly discussed in detail elsewhere,[4] but some points are worth stressing here, too. The right to choose appointees for the top government jobs was split 50-50 between President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah, but with each of them having veto rights over the other’s choices. This led to much controversy over appointments, slowing the filling of top government positions and turning each appointment into a political issue.

Although tension within the NUG is often portrayed as being a matter of disagreements between Ghani and Abdullah, in fact there was in all likelihood more tension between each leader and his pre-NUG allies. Having formed a power-sharing coalition, neither leader was able to reward his allies with the appointments to positions of power that he had promised. Abdullah faced greater constraints in this regard, in part because Ghani tended to win most confrontations over appointments with Abdullah, and in part because Ghani, as a more assertive personality and as the recognised counterpart of western donors to Afghanistan, towered over his allies to a much greater extent than Abdullah did over his.

The NUG was therefore an arranged, loveless marriage. There was an agreed agenda of constitutional, administrative and electoral reform, of economic re-launch, and meritocracy in appointments. The agendas of the two former rival coalitions generally overlapped on these issues – for sure, nobody wanted economic decline to continue – and more controversial points such as reconciliation with the armed opposition or relations with foreign countries were omitted from the agreement. Still, from its inception the NUG almost ground to a standstill, in particular on the issue of appointments to cabinet positions, which was -- of course -- the first step in operationalizing the deal.

While international mediation and pressure were able to spur the NUG into functionality at moments of crisis, the structural conflicts built into the agreement remained. Sometimes the NUG would just pretend that it had resolved issues; sometimes President Ghani just prevailed over CEO Abdullah and took urgent decisions arbitrarily; sometimes either Ghani or Abdullah would make concessions in order to allow some progress to be made. Friction would then start almost immediately on the next issue, in a nearly continuous tug-of-war.

The NUG in 2015: diarchy, paralysis and Karzai’s challenge

Roots of division

From inception, the NUG faced multiple types of divisions: personal, political, ethnic, and of international alignments. In the different phases of the history of the NUG, the weight of each of these sources of friction varied. Initially, the weight of different personalities not used to working together was a main source of friction. Many found it difficult to work with Ghani because of his temper, as an excerpt from a profile early on in his tenure suggests:

…in Kabul the élite don’t hide their contempt. They call Ghani an arrogant micromanager and say that he has no close friends, no feel for politics—that he is the leader of a country that exists only in his own mind.[5]

Vice President Dostum also proved a difficult figure for other government members to work with. In fact most of the time Ghani and Dostum could not communicate with each other, or completely miscommunicated. Ghani’s office began to communicate with people in Dostum’s office, bypassing him personally.[6]

Political differences gradually started weighing heavier and heavier on the NUG. Although both Ghani’s and Abdullah’s coalitions included self-avowed reformers, the ideas on reform were very different between the two camps. Ghani believes in strengthening the central government (particularly in the security and financial sectors), whereas in Abdullah’s camp reform mainly meant decentralisation, as well as electoral reform. Ghani was by far the most committed and energetic reformer in the NUG, and other views of reform had little currency within the government.

The most controversial aspect of the reforms was the policy of appointments, which is not surprising as of all of the reforms under consideration this was the one going to have the most immediate impact. The NUG was at a standstill most often over appointments. Ghani pushed for the appointment of technocrats, whom often he wanted to choose himself. Despite its slow motion and the constant infighting within the NUG, in terms of appointments the new ruling coalition marked a significant difference from the previous Karzai administrations. Technocrats gained much ground, compared in particular to the 2008-14 cabinets, which Karzai had filled with powerbrokers and other notables (mostly figures with a background in the 1980s-1990s conflict, the “mujahidin”). This spurred accusations of “anti-mujahidin” attitudes, which gradually pushed the majority of the “mujahidin” to gather around their former protector, Hamid Karzai, or at least to start negotiations with him.

Linked to the issue of appointments is also that of ethnic friction within the NUG. Ghani has increasingly been accused by his opponents of “extreme Pashtun nationalism.”[7] Ghani has been surrounding himself largely with eastern Pashtuns, and 75% of the appointments made by the Office of Administrative Affairs (OAA) were reportedly Pashtuns as of September 2015. The leaking in September 2017 of a document from the OAA, detailing the importance of ethnic considerations in hiring gave more credibility to the accusations.[8] Abdullah was also accused of favouring Tajiks, and Mohaqqeq (the second deputy CEO) favoured Hazaras.[9] Other sources, however, see personal loyalty as a greater factor in determining appointments than ethnic background. Rather than being a Pashtun nationalist, Ghani appears to disregard ethnic sensitivities as illegitimate concerns, and to view anybody raising ethnic issues as a political manipulator.

Over time, the different international alignments of the various NUG components also became a source of friction. In his efforts to widen his contacts in the region, garner support for reconciliation with the armed opposition, and attract investment to Afghanistan, Ghani was remarkably successful in engaging with Saudi Arabia and China, although he failed with Pakistan. However, some of his success in this field boomeranged and ended up affecting negatively the stability of the NUG. While China was perceived as politically neutral in Afghanistan, this was not the case of Saudi Arabia. As it will be explained below, the Saudi role in support of Ghani and of the Hekmatyar reconciliation deal played a major role in unleashing the 2017 crisis.

The rivalries among the different components of the NUG are compounded by the persistent reliance of the Afghan state on external aid and other forms of rent, which not only stimulates competition among political groups over its control, but also makes them oblivious to the disruptive (and potentially devastating) consequences of their infighting. There is still not much of a “real” economy unrelated to conflict or aid that politicians would need to protect in order to ensure the smooth extraction of revenue. The current condition of the NUG – permanent friction, with peaks of turbulence, but without actual disintegration and collapse – reflects the desire of the members of the political elite to grab as much as possible of a share of the spoils, but to avoid action that could endanger the flow of revenue from abroad.

The coagulation of opposition around Karzai

Some important figures within the parties that joined under the NUG refused to endorse the agreement, shifting into opposition. For example, Jamiat’s Yunis Qanuni and Bismillah Mohammadi joined Sayyaf’s “Afghanistan Protection and Stability Council,” the main pro-mujahidin lobby, despite still sitting in Jamiat’s Leadership Council. Other groups and personalities who were aligned with neither the Ghani or Abdullah campaigns were left out of the NUG and started coalescing into a kind of opposition proto-coalition, linked to former President Hamid Karzai. According to some of Karzai’s closest advisers,[10] the former president had hoped that the deadlock created by the dispute over the electoral results would allow him to return to power through a Loya Jirga. Karzai later argued that the NUG should expire if it failed to convene a Loya Jirga by September 2016, as foreseen by the political agreement that established the NUG. A common view among diplomats in Kabul during 2017 was that within the NUG there was a concern that the Loya Jirga could be used by Karzai to promote his own political comeback.

Karzai and the Afghanistan Protection and Stability Council[11] were particularly criticised for allegedly toying with the idea of “impeaching” or somehow removing from power President Ghani on ground of ineffectiveness, although there is no clear framework in Afghanistan’s institutional framework for doing that. Karzai and his close collaborators always denied having something like that in mind, being very well aware of the risk of state collapse that it would imply. However, a source close to Sayyaf indicated in 2016 that Karzai had negotiated with them exactly about how to reach this aim.[12]

The repeated crises within the NUG and its failure to satisfy all its members did not lead to significant defections, however, because nobody would willingly surrender access to the prized flow of external cash from foreign donors who were committed to the NUG’s continuation. The few members of either Ghani’s or Abdullah’s coalition who joined the opposition all had been cut off the distribution of the financial flows before they quit.

The NUG’s partners suffered more serious losses among their external allies, who had hoped to join either coalition if the elections had delivered a clear victory. These external allies realised that with the spoils having to be distributed among a much larger number of partners inside the government, there would be absolutely nothing left for the bystanders. Some of these bystanders also started thinking that the NUG would not last and began drifting towards the most obvious alternatives. These included Anwar ul Haq Ahady, who then formed the New National Front, and former president Sebqatullah Mujaddidi and former vice-president Karim Khalili, who together formed the “High Council of Jihadi and National Parties”.

Most of these politicians and groups ended up rotating around Karzai, who was very active in 2015, putting himself forward as the solution to the (wished for) collapse of the NUG. The base of support of the NUG was particularly weakened in the south, a region that had sent many powerbrokers and notables to Kabul under Karzai in government positions. Ghani formed his own alliances with Barakzai, Noorzai, and Achakzai powerbrokers, such as Gul Agha Shirzai (of the Barakzai) who became the Minister of Tribal Affairs. This allowed Karzai to mobilise support among the tribes marginalised by Ghani, such as the Popolzai. For a period Karzai exercised a real attraction even on Jamiat-i Islami, which had had a hard time getting along with him during his 2004-14 presidency. The old conflicts were temporarily forgotten:

Jamiat would accept Karzai again as a leader and president if there was a chance, because we do not forget how good Karzai was when president. We got a lot of money and positions during his time, but Ashraf Ghani is not like him. So Karzai is much better for us… [interview with senior Jamiati cadre, September 2016].

Even when Karzai was not explicitly mentioned, his idea of a Loya Jirga as a way out of the NUG attracted interest:

People are very tired from this government, security got worse, many jobs disappeared. So this government will finish, there must be a Loya Jirga and Loya Jirga must appoint one transitional president for two years. After that the election must take place and a great president must be appointed. [Interview with Jamiati cadre, May 2016].

According to source close to him and to Hazara groups, Karzai also has good relations with Hazara leaders such as Mohaqqeq, Khalili, Mudaber and Akbari. Karzai is not seeing Mohaqeq a lot but often talks to him on the phone. Similarly sources in Wahdat (contacted in 2016) insisted that the leaders of the various factions of the party had more trust in Karzai than in Ghani, even if they did not believe in the possibility of unseating Ghani before his term was over and were more interested in discussing alliances for the future presidential elections.

In reality, Karzai was never keen on being seen as seeking an alliance with Jamiat or Wahdat, busy as he was trying to gather a large Pashtun constituency behind himself.

Karzai also succeeded in presenting his case to the regional powers. According to a source close to him, in mid-2016 he was receiving financial support for his campaign from India, Russia, and China. In late 2016, even Iran started supporting him.[13] Assuming these claims are right, some of these actors, such as the Chinese government, might just have wanted to hedge their bets and invest in Karzai in case the NUG really ended up collapsing, and continued to privilege relations with Ghani during 2016. Other international actors such as Iran and Russia saw Karzai as a useful ally in their struggle against U.S. or Pakistani influence.

The NUG in 2016: Karzai contained, Abdullah weakened and Ghani dominates

Ghani gains the upper hand

The momentum of Karzai’s campaign against the NUG was broken in 2016 for six main reasons:

Active and explicit American opposition to any idea of President Ghani being removed from power, the NUG folding up, and Karzai coming back to power;The failure of Karzai and the dissidents within the NUG to reach an agreement about what would follow the day after: leadership, elections, power-sharing;Widespread concern over the risk of instability and even state collapse as a result of any attempt to unseat Ghani;Concern that Ghani’s replacement could endanger external aid to the country;Ghani’s success in marginalising Abdullah and Dostum and concentrating more power in his hands, adding to his credibility as a leader with staying power;Ghani’s successful engagement with regional powers such as China and Saudi Arabia, without compromising the relationship with Washington, again strengthening his image as a leader.

Ghani managed to isolate and weaken Abdullah by often bypassing him when the two leaders had disagreements and negotiating appointments instead with other leaders of Jamiat, such as Atta, Sattar Murad and Rabbani, or even deciding arbitrarily.

Dr. Abdullah is also somehow given up to Ghani and does not interfere a lot as he was doing before. Afghanistan has not reached the point yet where if the government collapses or the President resigns, then another President comes [smoothly]. We don’t have money for Parliamentarian election, we don’t have that ability to guarantee security during the elections, that’s why both Dr. Ghani and Dr. Abdullah understand that if they create problems or do not work as partners for this government, the country will go back to civil war and all the 16 years of achievements will end in one month. [Member of Abdullah’s office, May 2016]

Dr. Abdullah lost his power over the Jamiat leaders after he gave up to Ghani and joined the Ghani government. Next time in the presidential election if Dr. Abdullah again put his candidacy forward, I don’t think that Jamiat will support him again. Many Jamiat commanders and leaders are unhappy with Dr. Abdullah. [Member of Abdullah’s office, May 2016]

In fact Abdullah was in an impossible position:

All members of Jamiat are demanding positions from Abdullah. It is not possible for Abdullah to give positions to everyone. Another reason is this, that he did not show any reaction against the peace talks with Hekmatyar. This is the reason why support for Abdullah decreased within Jamiat party. [Member of Abdullah’s office, May 2016]

Ghani was similarly able to marginalise Dostum, his other main rival within the NUG, by making appointments of members of Junbesh to senior positions without consulting him, such as Faizullah Zaki as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, or Anwar Sadat as deputy National Security Adviser.

When the parliament turned against some of the ministers, even forcing their dismissal in November 2016, it was speculated that Ghani was, in fact, behind the parliamentary uprising in order to get rid of ministers not of his liking.

While Ghani outmanoeuvred Abdullah and Dostum within the NUG, he also managed to project an image of successful diplomatic engagement, which Afghanistan badly needed. During 2016, the Saudis actively supported (diplomatically and financially) the reconciliation deal with Hekmatyar and its implementation, while the Chinese government seemed willing to bankroll Ghani with large scale investment, support reconciliation with the Taliban and even offer direct aid. Even if hardly any cash flowed to Afghanistan from either Saudi Arabia or China during 2016, this seemingly successful diplomatic engagement added to the perception of Ghani consolidating his role as key interlocutor between Afghanistan and the financial powers of the world, therefore becoming even more indispensable.

These successes in part dispelled the perception of extreme weakness of Ghani’s presidency, which had characterised 2015, and allowed Ghani to take some important, if initial steps in implementing at least some of his reforms. For example, during 2016, Ghani’s campaign against corruption started making some progress at last. Ghani was also able to push through the reconciliation agreement with Hekmatyar, despite strong initial opposition from Jamiat. Even when ministers were Abdullah’s appointees, Ghani managed to increase his ability to put pressure on them and have them choose the next layers of state servants according to criteria imposed by the president himself. One case in point was that of the provincial chiefs of police, among whom professionals reached the highest share since 2001, despite minister Taj Mohammad being a member of the mujahidin’s old guard.

At the same time, by the first half of 2016 the opposition to Ghani within the NUG was dreaming of forming an anti-Ghani front, bringing together the parties claiming to represent the ethnic minorities:

… all the people inside Jamiat have the same views. They are saying that all non-Pashtun ethnic groups must join together such as Tajikis, Hazara, Uzbeks, Turkmen and others. Then it is possible to get a lot of power and make Pashtuns weak and powerless. Hazara accepted this and there is a little problem with Uzbeks (Dostum), up to now they did not accept this and the talking is in progress. Maybe Dostum and Uzbeks will also accept it soon. If we do not do this action, we will be eliminated like the Taliban’s government. We will be very weak. [Advisor to Abdullah, interviewed in May 2016].

Nonetheless, Ghani managed to keep the NUG ship together by making occasional concessions to Abdullah and Jamiat or to Dostum in order to appease them. The appointment of Taj Mohammed, an old style notable of Jamiat, as Minister of the Interior in February 2016, was one such concession. Jamiatis considered his appointment a very positive step, as they believed that Ghani had previously pressured Abdullah to appoint a reformer -- Taj’s predecessor Nur ul Haq Ulumi -- to this position, instead of waiting for Abdullah to bring forward an acceptable candidate (the minister of interior was one of the positions Abdullah should have been filling). Abdullah’s role was merely to confirm Ulumi’s selection, to the chagrin of Jamiatis who had wanted one of their lot in that position.[14]

While up to January 2016 the headlines had been of the emergence of Karzai as a leading opponent of the NUG and of two alliances of disaffected politicians and parties forming, the rest of 2016 did not see any further shift to the opposition as a result of Ghani’s new lease on political life. Politicians and parties critical of Ghani all seemed to be losing steam during 2016. Jamiat did not negotiate directly with Karzai, but had long negotiations with Sayyaf, which -- as of mid-2017 -- had not achieved much yet.

The credibility of Karzai as an alternative to the NUG went into steady decline, too. In interviews carried out in late spring 2016 with tribal elders belonging to seven of the main tribes, some support was found for any prospect of Karzai returning to power: three of the seven elders expressed support for Karzai’s return. But only one seemed open to the idea of the NUG being replaced before its term was due. If Karzai had to come back to power, it had to be through new elections. The elders opposed to a Karzai-led overthrow of the NUG were mostly concerned with the risk of instability and with the possibly loss of essential external aid.

Among Hazara groups, while Khalili always maintained good relations with Karzai, Mohaqqeq never liked the idea of a return of Karzai to power, according to one of his collaborators. The same applies to Dostum. Both Mohaqqeq and Dostum, of course, had a few clashes with Karzai in his days in power, but even among the next layer or two of Hazara and Uzbek politicians, Karzai was not seen as a suitable replacement for Ghani, paradoxically exactly because of the latter’s links to Washington:

Ghani is very clever and he really kept his good relations or made again good relations with America and Europe after President Karzai destroyed these relations. Ghani has very good support from America and I repeat again that at present it would be very difficult to bring Ghani down. […] That’s true, the attitude that Karzai has against America is not beneficial to Afghanistan. We all know that we need America and its support. Our Afghan forces’ salaries are paid by America. If America stops its support, the country will disintegrate [interview with senior Wahdat cadre, October 2016].

Karzai was still perceived as a serious threat by both Ghani and Abdullah, who in part for this reason, showed little or no enthusiasm for calling the Constitutional Loya Jirga that should have introduced the prime ministership; even Abdullah, who had initially been in favour, seemed to have lost his enthusiasm by 2016. However, Karzai became a threat that the NUG could manage. Kerry’s reaffirmation of support for the NUG at the end of the summer of 2016 likely further stemmed the tide of Karzai’s campaign.

By mid-2016 Ghani seemed to be succeeding in raising centripetal forces, which were drawing even some of his fiercest critics towards his camp. The best example of this was the decision in the summer of 2016 of Atta Mohammed Noor, governor of Balkh, to enter negotiations with Ghani over the formation of a new future coalition. This was significant, because Atta had until then led the Jamiat internal opposition to the NUG.

Atta is always in contact with Ashraf Ghani by telephone and also face-to-face negotiations. He was not only in negotiations with Ghani about his future job but also about the situation and peace of Afghanistan (Hekmatyar), about the prime minister position, about Loya Jirga, about Dostum’s conflict with Jamiat and also about his own governorship […]. On certain points, they reached agreements, but on other points they did not [Interview with senior Jamiati cadre, September 2016].

It seemed for a while as if Ghani might be able to spin off a virtuous cycle of political consolidation, with most -- if not all -- the pieces of the political jigsaw coming together. But, although Ghani’s influence was increasing, his actual power remained limited and opposition to him was building up beneath the surface.

The 2017 crisis of the NUG

The latest crisis that started unfolding during spring 2017 had its roots in the 2016 successes of President Ghani. Although he managed to get some of his reforms going, by 2017 the impact was still minimal and the patronage-oriented nature of the system, as it had shaped in 2002-14, had hardly changed at all. Despite Ghani’s plans to mobilise funds for the development of Afghanistan, as of 2017, Afghanistan’s economy was as dependent as ever on financial resources pumped in from abroad, as well as rent accruing from shadowy activities (mining and smuggling). Being excluded from these sources of rent could only mean one of two things for the country’s powerbrokers: political and economic marginalisation or finding new sources of revenue, most likely in the form of “donations” from abroad. While Ghani’s successes in stabilising the state finances were appreciated by all, many of his other early successes and plans sounded more like existential threats to the political elite. And to make this sense of threat worse, throughout the first half of 2017, perhaps on the strength of reconfirmed support from the Trump administration for his personal leadership if not for a direct U.S. presence in the country, Ghani seemed intent on accelerating his consolidation of power.[15]

Hekmatyar comes home: good news or bad news?

When the ongoing negotiations with Hekmatyar were first made public in May 2016, negative reactions came primarily from old civil war rivals like Jamiat-i Islami.

We are happy with the coming of Hekmatyar, but there should be a clear deal with him. All the people of Afghanistan should know that on which basis Hekmatyar is coming in Afghanistan? The contract between Afghan Government and Hekmatyar team, which was published is something not true and we know that behind the curtain there are money and other deals between Ghani and Hekmatyar. [Member of Abdullah’s office, May 2016].

Opposition to Hekmatyar’s return was shared by the various factions of Hizb-i Wahdat, given the anti-Shi’a attitude developed by the Hekmatyar’s party in recent years, although a source close to Mohaqqeq indicated that in reality he was not too worried about Hekmatyar being in Kabul. The suspicion was from the beginning that what was in the making was much more than a simple reconciliation deal with a declining insurgent group:

We have information that these promises in the peace letter are not true, behind the curtain there are lots of other promises for Hekmatyar. We have information that Ghani promised four ministries for Hizbi-i Islami of Hekmatyar, many embassies, many governors and lots of other positions. Hekmatyar is not that much important and he was not that much of a big threat to the security of Afghanistan that the Afghan government or Ghani should promise him so much [Interview with senior Wahdat cadre, October 2016].

To some extent all established parties feared that any further incorporation of Hizb-i Islami in the political settlement would translate in them having to sacrifice at least some of their assets in government. These worries were enhanced by speculation about the possible reconciliation of at least some chunks of Taliban in the future, which could lead to some further redistribution of power.

Although Jamiatis feared that President Ghani might be planning to form a new coalition with Hizb-i Islami in their place, they were convinced to accept the deal on certain conditions: that Hizb-i Islami would disarm its armed groups, that it would accept the Constitution as it is, that it would abstain from activities hostile to Jamiat, and that Jamiat might join any future coalition too.

By early 2017, the concern over Hekmatyar had refocused from his old civil war role, towards the non-transparent role played by Saudi intelligence in sponsoring the deal. Widespread rumours of large scale funding from Saudi Arabia, aimed at transforming the reconciled Hizb-i Islami into a political machine comparable to Palestinian Hamas, elicited very different reactions: almost universal approval from Pashtun tribal elders, and almost universal rejection from Hazara and Tajik politicians. The rise in influence of Haji Almas and other former Hizbi members of Jamiat of Tajik ethnicity and their leaning back towards Hekmatyar was noted. It contributed to make the leaders of Jamiat worry about the impact of a well-funded re-launch of Hizb-i Islami, which could steal from Jamiat the position of largest party in the parliament. It is worth noting that Jamiat, Wahdat and Junbesh also accuse Ghani and Atmar of having distributed large numbers of weapons to Hizb-i Islami in the provinces, essentially turning the old insurgent group into a new pro-government (or rather pro-Ghani) militia. These charges are rejected by both Hizb-i Islami and the government.[16]

Perhaps more importantly, as the deal with Hekmatyar started being implemented in February 2017 (with Hekmatyar’s removal from the UN sanctions list), Iran and Russia activated their influence channels to counter the prospect of a Ghani-Hekmatyar alliance.[17]

It did not help in this regard that the Hekmatyar faction of Hizb-i Islami had deployed a virulently anti-Iran and anti-Shi’a rhetoric in 2016-17. Hekmatyar also rejected invitations to mend fences with Jamiat after returning to Kabul and offensively ranked them at the same level as the Taliban as partners for bringing peace to Afghanistan. His attitude was so controversial that it even caused a major crisis inside his party, between his faction and the faction that was registered in Kabul in 2005 and is led by Arghandiwal (the two factions were still working at a merge as of August 2017). The Arghandiwal faction reportedly objected to Hekmatyar undermining the “pacification” work done by them towards Jamiat in previous years, according to a high level source inside the Arghandiwal group. Arghandiwal is not willing to give up his party’s participation in the NUG, where he has two ministers and Abdullah’s deputy. There was also conflict (confirmed by sources within the party) over Hekmatyar’s retention of armed groups, against the terms of the reconciliation agreement. By June, however, possibly helped by pressure from the donors to the party, Hekmatyar appeared to have forced the Arghandiwal faction to bow to him.

Within Hizb-i Islami the general understanding was that the party would compete to gain well over 100 members of parliament in the parliamentary elections, and then support Ghani in the presidential elections. In subsequent presidential elections Hizb-i Islami would feel free to field its own candidate.[18]

Although Karzai and Hekmatyar met at least twice after the latter returned to Kabul, these cordial relations have little chance of developing into some kind of alliance in the foreseeable future.[19]

Dostum’s affair

Throughout 2014-16, Dostum and his party showed little concern for the alleged Pashtun-Chauvinist tendencies of Ghani, quite the contrary:

Junbesh is not worried about this, that the whole government might be controlled by Pashtuns or Pashtunisation. Because Pashtuns are not doing such activities to take the whole control in their hands. It is Jamiat that they have this aim and mission to have everything under their control. If Abdullah and Jamiat are removed from this government, Pashtuns will give more positions to Junbesh. [Junbesh cadre, May 2016].

At that time Dostum’s main enemy was the governor of Balkh, Atta Mohammed Noor. Dostum and his Jumbesh party even initially collaborated with Hizb-i Islami’s northern leader Juma Khan Hamdard in reasserting his influence in Balkh province in spring 2016, a move that placed very high pressure on Atta.

However, Dostum started being worried about the wider significance of the Hekmatyar deal once relations between Dostum and President Ghani started worsening again in December 2016. Following his assault on Uzbek elder Ahmad Eshchi in November 2016, by February 2017 Dostum was cornered in his Kabul residence. Ghani then started lobbying the Uzbek community to agree on Dostum’s replacement with a more amenable Uzbek. Turkish and Iranian mediation did not achieve much, except allowing Dostum to travel to Turkey in May 2017. Dostum’s entourage claimed he went there for medical treatment, while Ghani’s supporters depicted the trip as “Dostum going in exile.” Dostum’s first attempt to re-enter Afghanistan in July was foiled, forcing his plane to land in Turkmenistan.[20]

While the crisis was unfolding, Ghani also sacked Ahmad Zia Massud from the position of “presidential adviser for reforms and good governance.” Massud was widely rumoured to be one of the Jamiati politicians closest to the Iranians, whereas Dostum was widely believed to be close to the Russians and to the Turks (as of 2017). Massud was also the most open proponent of the need for Jamiat to re-mobilise its militias in northern Afghanistan. He had also been one of the few Jamiatis who joined the Ghani camp during the 2014 electoral campaign, so his sacking was particularly noteworthy, even if the 2014 Ghani-Abdullah agreement had made it impossible for Ghani to honour his commitment to Massud.

Whatever might have actually driven the collision between Ghani and his two former allies, together with Hekmatyar’s meteoric rise in influence after his return to Kabul, these developments combined to shape a perception of Ghani shifting fast towards a strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia, while consolidating the rapport with Washington, at the expense of relations with Iran and Russia. Although Ghani’s relations with these two countries were never very warm, they were pretty decent throughout 2015 and most of 2016.[21]

Atta vs Abdullah

Developments within Jamiat added to the perception that Ghani -- with Saudi support -- was trying to reshape the political landscape, purging Iranian and Russian influence from the government apparatus, either by sacking people or by co-opting them. In October 2016, Atta and Abdullah travelled to Riyadh, invited by the Saudi authorities. Sources inside Jamiat indicate that the Saudis offered financial incentives to the two politicians, for cutting off relations with Iran and Russia and for taking part in a new alliance with Ghani and Hekmatyar. After the trip, Atta resumed his negotiations with Ghani and, in December 2016, he even announced that he was about to reach an agreement with him. The perception at that time was that Ghani had offered Abdullah’s job to Atta, or Dostum’s.

Atta took a lot of flak from Jamiatis for his direct negotiations with Ghani, whose content he does not appear to have been sharing with other party leaders. Atta clearly intended to use his emerging “special relationship” with Ghani as an asset to capture the party leadership and then carry the bulk of Jamiat with him into the new coalition shaping up. In fact, he did offer in public to negotiate with Ghani on behalf of Jamiat as a whole.

In May 2017, Atta succeeded in marginalising Abdullah from the leadership of Jamiat. Atta, who after the trip to Riyadh had flirted with the Saudis for some months, eventually decided in spring to stick with Iran, in part because of his own growing doubts about the feasibility of an alliance with Hekmatyar. The struggle for the soul of Jamiat between supporters of privileged relations with Iran and advocates of closer relations with Saudi Arabia appeared over: all the 64 members of an Interim Council appointed on May 23 to lead the party while the leadership issue was still unresolved were pro-Iran elements, a clear indication of where the debate was heading. Abdullah was left as the only main leader of the party to be closer to Saudi Arabia than to Iran, and he was not even included among the 64 members.[22]

Anti-corruption and reforms or purges?

As Ghani’s campaign against corruption unfolded during 2016, it gave rise to accusations that it had political aims and biases:

Mohaqqeq had two ministers in the Ghani administration but one was suspended following an unjustified accusition of corruption. It was Ghani’s tactic to make a case against a minister whom he doesn’t like or who belongs to another ethnic groups and later sack him from his position [cadre of Wahdat-Mohaqqeq, July 2017].

Similarly the investigations against Dostum for the Ishchi affair are branded as conspiracies by Dostum’s associates, and after the formation of the alliance with Mohaqqeq and Jamiat (see below) by these two parties as well.

Ghani’s divide and rule tactics against his uneasy allies within the NUG were starting to yield decreasing dividends in the first half of 2017, as for example in March/April 2017 when he made Ahmad Zia Massud redundant following the creation of a similar job for Amrullah Saleh (State Minister for Security Reform): in this case Massud turned into one of Ghani’s most bitter enemies and Saleh resigned from his new job in just 3 months.

The May bombing and the June riots: the crisis accelerates

The May 31 truck bomb in central Kabul highlighted multiple vulnerabilities in the security apparatus of the city, but also deep divisions within the political elite. Sources inside Jamiat had already pointed out in 2016 that they were working at the hypothesis of bringing President Ghani down through mass demonstrations in Kabul, if his efforts to marginalise the party continued.

It is possible that the NUG will collapse if the leaders of NUG do not do good work and do not solve people problems. This is possible through a Loya Jirga not the Parliament. If again this does not work, then protests and demonstrations will start. If again protests and demonstrations do not work then there are other ways like fighting, taking guns and other things. [Interview with senior cadre of Jamiat, September 2016].

It seems that some segments of Jamiat (disgruntled young militants and marginalised leaders like Ahmad Zia Massud) saw the backlash against the truck bomb as the opportunity for pressing against Ghani. Most of the Jamiati leaders, taken by surprise, did not even have the time to think about their options. In the end, the crowd that tried to march on the Presidential palace counted about 1,200 people, not the 20-30,000 that Jamiat might easily have brought together if it had mobilised as a whole, and Kabul’s police (many of whose members are Jamiatis) did not sympathise with the demonstrators. The riots that started on June 2 therefore turned out to be just an (unplanned) test and a warning: a test of the potential of mass riots to threaten Ghani’s hold on power, and a warning to Ghani that his alleged plans to reshape the ruling coalition and the political landscape would not go through without resistance.

Although the riots were easily contained, the police as usual when confronting riots used violence and killed seven demonstrators. Although the reaction of the police could be justified with the need to protect the presidential palace in Kabul’s highly insecure environment, the incident had a significant deligitimizing impact on the NUG within Jamiat’s constituency. Perhaps even more importantly, it seemed to demonstrate that Ghani would not be able to resist mass demonstrations and a large march on the Presidential Palace, if another suitable opportunity for calling them was available.

The riots further weakened Abdullah, as the base of the party ended up being fully mobilised against the NUG, to which Abdullah chose to stay loyal despite demands from Atta and Rabbani that he should resign. In fact, arguably Abdullah never aligned so closely with Ghani until this political crisis. By June 2017, therefore, Abdullah was quite isolated: his party was mostly against him and the NUG, while his second deputy Mohaqqeq (representing the interests of a faction of the Wahdat party) formed a new opposition movement with Dostum and Atta (see below).

According to a senior cadre of Jamiat, contacted in July 2017, most of the Jamiati members of the NUG stopped attending meetings with Ghani after the June events. Among Jamiat’s demands were by July 2017 the sacking of the chief of the National Directorate of Security, Stanikzai, and of the National Security Advisor, Atmar, and the cutting off of relations between Ghani and Hekmatyar, as well as the full implementation of the NUG agreement.

Although Abdullah is irritated by Atta’s, Mohaqqeq’s and Dostum’s brinkmanship, he also has problems with Ghani. Throughout 2015-16, Abdullah remained adamant that the NUG would keep going until the end of its term and still Abdullah strongly wants the NUG to end its term. Abdullah has been trying to convince Atta to moderate his position, with no success. In his speeches, Atta has abused Abdullah during July and then again in December. Abdullah is now trying to gather the Panjshiris around himself, in opposition to Atta whose control of Jamiat in northern Afghanistan is unchallengeable. Some Panjshiri notables, however, also, like Amrullah Saleh, General Jurat and Ahmad Zia Massud, stay loyal to Atta. While the northeast, Kabul, Kapisa and Parwan are also somewhat contested between Abdullah and Atta, the latter seems to have an edge.

As intra-regional competition for influence in Afghanistan (and beyond) deepened in the first half of 2017, the Qatar crisis (where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies imposed an embargo on Qatar because of their political divergences) arrived in June to further compound the Afghan political crisis. The Turkish government, which had previously supported Hekmatyar and the reconciliation agreement, and had pushed Dostum towards supporting it too, withdrew from all cooperation with the Saudis and instead supported the Atta-Dostum-Mohaqqeq alliance, signed on Turkish territory on June 28, 2017.

What’s next: elections, stability, alliances

Will elections take place?

The political crisis that exploded in June 2017 makes holding the already troubled parliamentary elections in 2018 even more difficult. On June 22, 2017 the Independent Electoral Commission set the date for elections on July 2018, but there remains widespread criticism that the NUG is not working to make the elections happen.[23] Ghani has little interest in seeing the elections take place, as his position is very weak except in Eastern Afghanistan and perhaps in some cities. Abdullah is even weaker than Ghani, and does not even have a party or coalition anymore to compete. The NUG should therefore not be expected to make a major effort to roll out parliamentary elections, which it hardly has any chance of winning. It would make better sense for Ghani and Abdullah to fold the parliamentary elections into the presidential ones and hold them together in 2019.

On the other hand, postponing the parliamentary elections again could create additional political turmoil. For sure the NUG will need a good excuse for postponing: the best strategy would be to let the Independent Electoral Commission run a delay of its own, or claim excessive levels of insecurity, or again insufficient funding from donors. Postponing the 2019 presidential elections, assuming there will still be a NUG at that point, would certainly unleash another dramatic crisis, and provide the best possible opportunity for another march on the Presidential palace, this time a much larger one.

The NUG might therefore have to go ahead with elections even if it is has no appetite for them. This consideration might in fact contribute to explaining the rush in the first half of 2017, in bringing order inside Ghani’s own coalition. It might also explain why Ghani had to tolerate Hekmatyar’s rather rogue behaviour after the returned to Kabul – he needs him for the electoral campaigns.

Is political stability under serious threat?

Does the opposition to Ghani really aim to overthrow him? Some members of the intra-NUG opposition seem to be trying to convince themselves that this would be a viable option:

America should respect the people of Afghanistan’s rights, respect the people of Afghanistan’s decisions. They are here to help the people of Afghanistan not to help only the Ghani government. America and European countries will support the decisions of the people, if they stopped their support then there are many other countries like Russia to support the new governement [Collaborator of Mohaqqeq, July 2017].

In reality, Atta and his allies in the view of a close associate of Abdullah do not aim to overthrow Ghani, as they know it would be the beginning of a new civil war. Instead they are talking tough in order to force Ghani to make concessions. The intra-NUG opposition’s demands for the sacking of Stanikzai and Atmar are seen as pretest; in reality appointments to positions of power is what the leaders of the coalition want. Atta was also irritated by the blocking of his bank accounts and of those of his companies. As a Jamiati cadre said some months before the June riots, the opposition leaders know that:

It is true that removing Ghani can destroy the country, and we do not want to ally with Karzai because half of the government is ours so why would we do such thing. Up to now Jamiat does not plan such things because it is not beneficial for us. We will only threaten. We do not want to cut relations with America. If we do such things, we will lose power, money and everything. [Interview with senior cadre of Jamiat, September 2016]

The Coalition leaders know that overthrowing Ghani without compromising western aid to Afghanistan is only possible if the demonstrations will be non-violent and sufficiently wide in terms of composition. But who can guarantee that? Things could easily get out of control. In this regard one of the worries of the Coalition leaders is that armed Hizb-i Islami militants might confront Coalition demonstrators in the streets of Kabul, according to a collaborator of Mohaqqeq and to one of Dostum. Hekmatyar himself issued a threat of this kind through the media.

Then, as discussed in Roots of division above, those members of the NUG critical of Ghani, but not deprived of their jobs yet, have little incentive to push the NUG over the brink, even when they might be convinced that in the long run Ghani will try to exclude them from power too:

Jamiat is led by people who are mostly busnessmen and have lots of money, these kind of people never try to collapse the government because of their own business. I believe that these members of Jamiat will prefer Ghani to stay like this for another 50 years rather then resign and cause the government to collapse, then they will all lose their business and money [Enlightment leader, interviewed in July 2017].

Typical of this is the reaction of Jamiatis to the sacking in August of Taj Mohammed, the then-Minister of Interior. Although his successor Barmak is also from Panjshir, he is a technocrat with no clear association with Jamiat. Despite being furious at the replacement and at the prospect of a coming purge of Jamiatis from the Ministry of Interior, the party stalwarts proved to be unable of making a stand and appeared more worried about saving their jobs for as long as possible, than to fight for the party’s influence.

While sources close to Karzai admit that he is trying to organise a Loya Jirga, they deny that he has personal ambitions. The Karzai camp rejects streets demonstrations as a way to resolve the political impasse in Afghanistan; they point out that unless there is an organized opposition able to immediately take over, successful demonstrations could only result in chaos.

I was also member of the “Enlightenment movement” (Junbesh e Roshnayee) but one year ago me and Mr. XXX both left the movement and our main reason for leaving the movement was lack of alternative plan for the new government. [Ally and former close collaborator of Karzai, August 2017]

There is also a belief that the Americans will not allow the NUG to collapse and would intervene if necessary.

Americans are not paying for Afghanistan only because of Ghani or Karzai. If they are really paying for these two people or the five persons circle then we don’t need this help. [...] I am sure that China, Iran and Russia cannot be an alternative for American and other European countries’ support for Afghanistan and the coalition will never accept and never believe that Russia, China and Iran would be an alternative for American support. [MP from Jamiat, July 2017]

The dominant belief is that China, Russia and others will not replace the U.S. as economic benefactors. Naturally, Americans have strategic interests in Afghanistan rather than in Ghani as such; hence they could accommodate another president and another ruling coalition.

All considered, there are at least two reasons why a confrontation cannot be ruled out.

Uncertainty over future elections as a more or less institutionalized path towards regime change might encourage opposition leaders and groups to take an extra-parliamentary routeSources in Jamiat, Jumbesh and Wahdat all suggest that their fears of a purge sponsored by the Saudis and the Trump Administration (increasingly on a war path with Iran and on bad terms with Russia too) is shared by the Iranians and Russian authorities. As a result, both Russians and Iranians are encouraging the opposition groups to ally with each other and to take Ghani on, before he succeeds in completing the transition to a new ruling coalition, cleansed of Russian and Iranian influence.

According to sources in Jamiat, the Iranian authorities certainly would not like chaos in Afghanistan and particularly do not want state collapse. Still the Revolutionary Guards at least believe that a heavily Saudi- and U.S.-influenced ruling coalition, free from “counterbalancing” Iranian and Russian influence, would represent a serious threat to Iran’s national interest, and therefore some risk would have to be taken in order to prevent that from happening. The same sources suggest that Russia’s position is more reckless, probably for reasons that have little to do with Afghanistan: the Russians are willing to take even greater risks of instability, in order to deliver a clear message to Washington that Russia will not bow to American pressure (on Syria and Ukraine even more than on Afghanistan).

The convergence of worsening relations between Washington and Saudi Arabia on one side, and Iran, Russia and Turkey on the other, with the endogenous political crisis of Afghanistan is therefore potentially a highly combustible mix. Of course, even to the extent that there was a growing appetite for a “final confrontation” with Ghani, it would not necessarily mean that his more and more numerous enemies will be able to make it happen. Jamiat and various Hazara groups, such as the Junbesh e Roshnayee, surely have the capacity to mobilize tens of thousands of demonstrators, at least if a suitable opportunity presents itself.

Ghani could defuse the situation by offering some kind of pacification to the Afghan political actors who turned against him. One such attempt was made by NDS chief Stanikzai in July 2017, when he visited Dostum in Turkey and tried to convince him to leave the Coalition in exchange for being allowed to resume his functions as Vice-president. Shortly afterwards the U.S. Ambassador insisted that charges against Dostum should be investigated, but even this type of pressure had little impact.

Another example is that of Mohaqqeq, who received the visit of the U.S. Ambassador, advocating his withdrawal from the Coalition, according to one collaborator, and then of the Iranian one, of course advocating the opposite. Sources close to Mohaqqeq and Atta suggest that by September 2017 Mohaqqeq was ready to break ranks with Dostum, as long as Atta agreed to do the same.

The new alliances taking shape

Ghani for now continues to rely on the divisions among his opponents. The alliance signed in June between Atta, Dostum and Mohaqqeq and called "High Coalition Council for the Salvation of Afghanistan" is a serious threat in this regard. The announcement of the new alliance was not mere rhetoric: an intense activity of high-level meetings followed, presumably discussing the details of how to set it up. Sources in Atta’s and in Mohaqqeq’s camp indicated at the end of June that negotiations were ongoing to extend the alliance to Haji Zahir Qadir, who would then turn into the first major Pashtun member of the alliance, as well as to southern Pashtun powerbrokers. In the meetings reportedly the options of mass riots in Kabul and of seizing control of whole provinces were extensively. Formally, the High Coalition’s key demand is the full implementation of the NUG agreement.

But the alliance has not been tested yet – these three leaders have a record of fighting each other in the past. As of July 2017, the Coalition did not include yet any Hazara or Shi’a groups except Mohaqqeq’s, although negotiations with several of them were going on. The Junbesh e Roshnayee movement seemed all but interested in joining and bitterly criticized Atta, Dostum and Mohaqqeq for declaring themselves as opposition while holding tight on their government jobs and their privileges. Mohaqqeq, in particular, is viewed with suspicion by the Junbesh e Roshnayee movement because of having sided with Ghani over the TOTAP electricity project.

This coalition was made to bring pressure on the government and get spoils from the government for themselves, I don’t think that this coalition was made for the people of Afghanistan, if this coalition was made for the people of Afghanistan, all these three people should resign from the governement, stop using the government services and together with people stand against the governement. [leader, interviewed in July 2017].

The Junbesh e Roshnayee movement also had little interest in plans to bring the NUG down, as it attributes Afghanistan’s problems not to the NUG or Ghani in particular, but to structural problems within the political system, and opposes the old Hazara political elites as much as it does Ghani.

Changing or replacing Ghani or Abdullah means that you have an old car and it doesnt work, by changing its driver we still cannot use the car. Now the government system is very corrupt and very dirty system, for making Afghanistan, we need to change the system of Afghanistan. [Enlightenment Movement leader, interviewed in July 2017]

Instead, the Junbesh Roshnayee movement prefers to focus on demanding the resignation of Stanikzai and Atmar, whom it accuses of complicity in the attacks on the Roshnayee movement demonstration in July 2016.

The High Coalition’s attractiveness is also weakened by the fact that its main component remains leaderless and divided internally:

I believe that Jamiat is too weak now, Jamiat itself is divided in many groups, Jamiat now cannot control its own party, then how will Jamiat find that much power to overthrow Ghani and take power? No old leaders of Jamiat are left now, Jamiat is only history, imagery and dream now, who is Jamiat? Jamiat is Abdullah, Jamiat is Atta who everyday is insulting Abdullah, Jamiat is Ahmad Zia Massud? [leader, interviewed in July 2017]

Within the other components of the coalition (Jamiat and Junbesh) opposition to the agreement was muted. In Jamiat, only Mohammad Nasim Faqiri, possibly the most senior Pashtun in the party (from Laghman), opposed the deal initially, then retracted.

Even more complicated will be linking up the High Coalition with the opposition groups rotating around Karzai, and with Karzai himself. Most of the opposition groups with street power have no interest in gathering under Karzai’s leadership:

Karzai is like a village elder, he is not made for a modern government, he missed lots of opportunities during his period. I am very openly saying this that Karzai is like a village elder, as you know recently a new coalition called Mehwar e Mardom e Afghanistan (Axis Of People of Afghanistan) was formed, many people are saying that this coalition is backed by Karzai. But I say that if there were election and Karzai and Ghani were the candidates, of course I would vote for Ghani. Karzai is too weak and useless compared to Ghani. [Enlightenment leader, interviewed in July 2017]

Karzai is not acceptable for the coalition and he doesn’t have any chance to become president again. [MP from Jamiat, July 2017]

It is worth noting in this regard that Karzai welcomed and defended the reconciliation deal with Hekmatyar, once again showing that his priority to gathering Pashtun support, not a wide multi-ethnic coalition.

Sources close to Karzai indicate that he sees a role for himself in bringing together the disparate coalitions that have been forming after the elections. This is, however, easier said than done. Karzai has been sending emissaries to sound out Junbesh at least, and according to some sources even met Dostum himself in Turkey shortly before the formation of the Coalition. However, according to a source close to him, Karzai still has rather bad relations with Junbesh and Gen. Dostum, from the time when he clashed with them over Akbar Bai.

Within Jamiat-i Islami, memories of working with Karzai are not always fond ones. In 2016, Karzai deployed some negative rhetoric about Jamiat, probably as he was trying to mobilise Pashtun support in the south. Jamiat seems to have resented that, and now wonders whether it should trust Karzai. Karzai and all the other opposition groups are also likely to be wondering whether they should trust Jamiat to share power with them. Still Jamiati politicians have not entirely given up on Karzai. Karzai has relatively close relations with Rabbani, Qanuni, Atta and Bismillah Khan. With Abdullah, instead, relations are cool. Reportedly still during 2017 Karzai was meeting Jamiat’s leaders twice or thrice a month; when Atta Mohammad Noor is in Kabul, he reportedly always meets Karzai.

If the NUG was to be overthrown in a “color revolution” style riot, Jamiat would be in a situation similar to the one it was in 2001: it would have played the key role in the uprising, moving from its stronghold in northern Kabul towards the presidential palace. Mohaqqeq and other Hazara leaders would probably need the Junbesh e Roshnayee movement to contribute decisively, and no other opposition leader or group has much of a base in Kabul city. Sayyaf has armed groups in Shakardara, but the “color revolution” scenario should feature civilian demonstrations, not militias.

Ghani’s efforts to divide and rule seem to be running out of steam. The room of maneuver for Ghani to divide Dostum and Atta is shrinking, following the repeated, protracted and ultimately unsuccessful negotiations of the past with both Dostum and Atta. Both of them now believe they have been manipulated or even cheated by Ghani, and it will be hard for Ghani to convince them that any offer he might make is genuine. Any prospect of splitting Jamiat and seeing a pro-NUG faction emerge seemed even more remote. Dr. Abdullah himself, according to sources inside Jamiat, by the second week of June was reported to have started expressing support for the demonstrators and their demands while attending Jamiat meetings.

Hence, during October and November, Ghani changed tactics and started working to undermine the two pillars of the “Salvation Coalition” from within. Ghani is widely believed to have encouraged some dissident elements of Junbesh to set up a separate organization, which was announced to the public on 11 June: Junbesh-e Nawin (New Junbesh). The leader, a technocrat and former governor of Jowzjan Alim Sayee, was never a Dostum loyalist, and other members hardly had a better reputation than Dostum himself (such as Gul Mohammad Pahlawan). In general the new party was not expected as of summer 2017 to steal much influence from Dostum, especially since it might already have lost support from Turkey (which it was alleged to have initially). But in the autumn Ghani reportedly promised the leadership of the New Junbesh party substantial support, to enable them to steal much of Dostum’s base of support. Some senior leaders of Junbesh, such as Sayed Nurullah, reportedly went to discuss their defection to New Junbesh at the end of October, and appear to have agreed. Karim Khalili, head of his own faction of Hizb-i Wahdat, was also reportedly leaning towards Ghani, perhaps swayed by a promise that he could replace Mohaqqeq in a future grand coalition replacing the NUG.

At the same time Ghani also put pressure on Atta to resign from his Balkh governorship and enlisted Abdullah’s and Rabbani’s support in achieving this, at least initially.[24] At the beginning of November 2017 Atta visited Herat, addressed a large crowd and called for the end of the NUG and its replacement with an interim administration. But within Jamiat there was unease at his more and more confrontational attitude.[25]

The internal fragmentation of Jamiat was by the end of 2017 beginning to take a toll in terms of the morale of the ranks and file. On social media, like Facebook and Twitter, members were often disparaging about the prospects of the party, which might end up running in 2019 two presidential candidates and a deputy candidate on three different tickets.

The dynamics internal to Jamiat also mean that Abdullah and Ghani were able to counter-attack towards the end of 2017, sacking Atta from the Balkh governorship. The fact that Atta has not been hiding his presidential ambitions alienated not only Abdullah, who during 2017 was still planning to run himself, but also Rabbani and others who are tempted by the option of a Jamiati vice-presidential candidate alongside Ghani. By choosing Mohammad Daud, a Jamiati intelligence officer linked to Rabbani, as Atta’s replacement to the position of governor of Balkh, Ghani and Abdullah clearly tried to further undermine Atta’s standing within Jamiat, and highlight how he was fighting his personal battle, not the party’s. Although Rabbani and even Abdullah later came out criticizing Ghani’s decision to sack Atta in December 2017, after the Jamiati grassroots came out in Atta’s support, when President Ghani decided to fire Atta and appoint Daud as governor of Balkh, Rabbani didn't object, and Abdullah approved. Ghani also tried to co-opt Amanullah Guzar, a Jamiati heavyweight in Kabul, to his side by appointing one of Guzar’s associates, Dr. Yasin Zia, as deputy of the National Security Council.[26]

Clearly, as the end of 2017 approached, President Ghani seemed reassured that with renewed U.S. commitment following U.S. President Trump’s speech in August, with the decision of Abdullah to openly dump Atta, with the co-optation of Khalili and his faction of Hizb-i Wahdat, with the formation of New Junbesh and with the successful approval of the new (pro-Ghani) ministers of defence and interior by the parliament in December, he was gaining the upper hand and was now in a position to assert his prerogatives against Atta and the “opposition within the NUG” that he was de facto leading.

Ghani also knows that, without a strong coalition agreement -- preferably identifying already a future “interim president” -- any attempt to overthrow the NUG would be a big gamble, potentially leading to civil war and/or state collapse. Some opposition leaders -- such as Atta -- might want to take that risk, particularly if the alternative path is their own demise, but that is probably not the case for all of them. That is unless some major development, like the Hekmatyar deal or the June riots but of even stronger resonance, intervenes to polarize opposition around a figure or a cause. As the end of December approached, both Ghani and Atta seemed to be pushing their games of brinkmanship towards… the abyss. Ghani had reportedly tasked his Special Forces to take Atta out of the Balkh’s governor office, while Atta was distributing weapons to his militia commanders in the north. Local Jamiat and Junbesh militia commanders were issuing bellicose statements and declaring their readiness to fight on Atta’s side. Police officers were also declaring their loyalty to Atta (like the northern region ANCOP chief, Hasibullah Quraishi, and the deputy Chief of Police of Balkh, Col. Abdul Raziq Qadri), or to the central government (like Balkh’s Chief of Police). The conflict was not limited to northern Afghanistan: in Herat, Ismail Khan offered wholehearted support to Atta and -- more surprisingly -- so did the Chief of Police of Kandahar, Gen. Razziq, probably due to the rumors that he too is on a list of officials to be replaced soon.[27]

Without that, the NUG might therefore well manage to make it to the end of its term, despite the worsening odds, but the political landscape is reshaping nonetheless. Whatever coalition or coalition of coalitions would end up running the country, it would be a heterogeneous coalition of multiple groups, often unsteady in their own leadership.

[1] Diplomatic sources indicate that despite Chinese-Afghan relations being still very friendly, Chinese enthusiasm for diplomatic and economic involvement has been cooling down during 2017, for a variety of reason ranging from difficulties over the two signed Chinese projects in Afghanistan (Aynak copper and Sar-i Pul oil) to close Chinese relations with Pakistan, to competition between India/Iran and China/Pakistan over trade routes.

[2] Thomas Ruttig, ‘Still Temporary and Exclusive: A new leadership for Jamiat’, Berlin : AAN, 5 July 2013; Thomas Ruttig, ‘National Coalition vs National Front: Two opposition alliances put Jamiat in a dilemma’, Berlin : AAN, 4 January 2012; Thomas Ruttig, ‘Jamiat after Rabbani: The competition for the top job’, Berlin : AAN, 23 October 2011; ‘Old Guard Hazara Politicos Resist Grassroots Democratization’, US Embassy Kabul cable, 1 December 2008; ‘Hazaras Divided By Karzai, United Front Politics’, US embassy Kabul cable, 16 March 2008; Robert Peszkowski, ‘Reforming Jombesh: An Afghan party on its Winding Road to Internal Democracy’, Berlin : AAN paper, 2012; Niamatullah Ibrahimi and Robert Peszkowski, ‘Reforming Jombesh’, Berlin : AAN, 31 August 2012; Thomas Ruttig , ‘New Trouble in the Jombesh: Dostum reasserts leadership’, Berlin : AAN, 17 February 2013.

[3] ‘Killing You is a Very Easy Thing For Us’, New York : Human Rights Watch, July 28, 2003; ‘Blood-Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Legacy of Impunity’, New York : Human Rights Watch, 2005.

[4] Ali Jalali, ‘Forging Afghanistan’s National Unity Government’, Washington: USIP, 2015;

[5] George Packer, ‘Afghanistan’s Theorist-in-Chief’, The New Yorker, July 4, 2016.

[6] See among else Azam Ahmed, ‘Afghan First Vice President, an Ex-Warlord, Fumes on the Sidelines’, The New York Times, March 18, 2015 [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/world/asia/afghan-first-vice-president-an-ex-warlord-fumes-on-the-sidelines.html].

[7] The accusation surfaced several times in interviews with members of the ethnic minorities.

[8] ‘NUG One Year On: Struggling to Govern’, Foreign Policy, September 29, 2015.

[9] ‘Afghanistan: The Future of the National Unity Government’, Crisis Group Asia Report N°285, 10 April 2017.

[10] Interviews carried out with two of them in June 2016 and August 2017.

[11] The Council was led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf (leader of Islamist party Dawat), Omar Daudzai (who served in several ministerial and ambassadorial jobs under Karzai), Ismail Khan (the main powerbroker in Herat province), Yunis Qanuni (one of the leading figures in Jamiat) and Sadiq Mudaber (who also served as minister under Karzai).

[12] Interview with close associate of Sayyaf, Kabul, June 2016.

[13] Interview with close collaborator of Karzai, Kabul, June 2016.

[14] Interviews with mid-ranks and senior members of Jamiat-i Islami during 2017.

[15] Trump appears to have signaled this support to Ghani directly in two telephone calls shortly after his election at the end of 2016, and through diplomatic channels. See http://ijr.com/2017/03/822619-i-had-dinner-with-the-afghanistan-ambassador-what-he-said-about-the-differences-between-trump-obama-is-stunning/

[16] Interviews with senior members of Jamiat, Junbesh, Wahdat and Hizb-i Islami during 2017.

[17] Interviews with senior members of Jamiat and Junbesh during 2017.

[18] Interviews with cadres and senior figures in Hizb-i Islami during 2016 and 2017.

[19] Interviews with cadres and senior figures in Hizb-i Islami during 2017.

[20] Interview with senior Junbesh member, July 2017.

[21] Interviews with senior members of Jamiat, July and August 2017.

[22] Interviews with senior members of Jamiat, July and August 2017.

[23] Ali Yawar Adili, ‘Afghanistan election conundrum (1): political pressure on commissioners puts 2018 vote in doubt’, Berlin : AAN, 18 November 2017.

[24] See footnote 26 below.

[25] Interviews and telephone contacts with senior members of Jamiat, July-November 2017.

[26] Telephone contacts with senior members of Jamiat, November-December 2017; ‘Abdullah says he approved of decision over Noor’, 1TVNews, December 25, 2017. Daud in one interview said that he supported ‘supported’ by Rabbani and had in fact been introduce to Ghani for the job by Rabbani himself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e96PLzdaUtk).

[27] Telephone contacts with Jamiati and Junbeshi commanders in Faryab, Sar-i Pul, Balkh and Takhar, December 2017.

Summary

As the end of 2017 approached, IS in Khorasan had a lot going against it. The upheaval in Syria and Iraq was having a negative impact on funding, and probably on morale too. The central IS leadership struggled more and more to control its local forces. Finally, the underlying tension within IS Khorasan erupted in open rivalry during the summer, with the organisation splitting into two distinct factions.

The IS reaction to these multiple challenges has been a series of attempts to mend fences with at least some of IS Khorasan’s main enemies: the Pakistani authorities and the mainstream Taliban of the Quetta Shura. These attempts were at least in part successful, as relations with the Pakistanis seem indeed to have improved, and a ceasefire with the Quetta Shura was in place for about three weeks, before ultimately collapsing. At the same time, these IS efforts are exacerbating the internal split, which from the outset was unacceptable to hardliners.

The Taliban, on the other hand, have shown an interest in reaching an understanding with IS Khorasan, since the Taliban's conflict with IS has been a significant distraction from its aim of fighting the Afghan government. Moreover, fighting a war against a jihadist organisation is implicitly deligitimising for the Taliban. Still, a permanent ceasefire and long-term coexistence between the Taliban and IS Khorasan are ambitious aims as the two organisations compete for territory, recruits and -- increasingly -- for sources of revenue.

Introduction

The Taliban and the Islamic State have now been uneasily co-existing in Afghanistan for almost three years. From their rather friendly beginnings in late 2014, the two organisation locked horns during 2015, fighting each other bitterly, especially in Nangarhar and Zabul provinces. Fighting continued in 2016-17, even if it subsided somewhat. At any given time during these three years, there have been substantial parts of the Taliban and of the Islamic State (IS) that stayed out of the fight, and even in some cases signed formal non-belligerence agreements with each other. Despite frequent clashes, occasionally there have been allegations of Taliban-IS cooperation in specific cases. From the perspective of Afghanistan’s stability, an improvement in IS-Taliban relations could be a dangerous development that would substantially increase the threat faced by the Afghan authorities. However, the question remains of how likely is that to happen? And to what extent Taliban and Islamic State converge in their aims and to what extent are they incompatible?

This paper assesses the state of Taliban-IS relations as of October 2017 and looks into future prospects of collaboration and conflict between the two organisations. The paper is divided in four sections. The first section is a brief summary of what the Islamic State in Khorasan looks like today. The second section is a short summary of what the Taliban look like today. The subsequent two sections analyse the Taliban/Islamic State relations, first until 2016 and then during 2017 respectively.

This paper is based on extensive research on both Taliban and Islamic State in Khorasan (primarily based on oral sources), carried out in 2011-2017. Given the rapidly changing nature of IS-K and Taliban relations, our new interviews have been carried out specifically for this paper in October 2017, in order to update the information available. The bulk of the information contained in this paper comes from Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) interviewees and contacts, or from similar Taliban sources. Despite the fact that the source of information is primarily from the insurgency side (i.e. Taliban, IS-K), the information is not unilateral in character. In fact, the rivalry between the two organisations and their internal divisions allowed the author to use these sources for cross-checks and for verification. Having stated this, it is clear that relations between Taliban and IS-K are slippery ground for any analyst, not least because of the factionalization of both Taliban and IS-K as neither group is uniform.

The Islamic State in Khorasan today

IS-K made the headlines in 2015 because of its official appearance in various locations in Afghanistan and its intransigent attitude, inspired by Salafi views. It enforced religious strictures on the population, and attempted to rely largely on coercion in its relationship with local communities, not least implementing an unpopular ban on drug cultivation and trade. This ban in itself turned many communities against IS-K. By late 2016, a significant shift was noticeable, as a more pragmatic leadership emerged after the death of ‘governor’ Hafiz Saeed in the summer. Hafiz Saeed’s rigid approach had earned him constant opposition, particularly among Afghan members of IS-K. The new leadership (Special Envoy Abu Yasir Al-Afghani, interim governor Hasibullah Logari and the 40 members of the Military Council) adopted a more flexible approach with local communities, trying to co-opt them more than to coerce them. Although IS-K continued being perceived as a violent and ruthless organisation in Nangarhar, where most of its violence took place, the new approach seems to have given a new boost to IS-K’s expansion until mid-2017, when the successor to Hafiz Saeed, Hasibullah Logari, was also killed. Combined with weakening supervision from the increasingly embattled central leadership of IS in Syria, this contributed to unleash a succession struggle within IS-K.[1]

In the summer of 2017 IS-K split into two factions, one led by Aslam Farooqi, a former commander of Lashkar-e Taiba, and one led by Moawiya, a former IMU commander. The cause of the split was the controversial decision by a majority of the military council of IS-K to select Aslam Farooqi as the new governor of Khorasan province. A minority, mainly composed of Central Asians, with some Afghan commanders linked to them, rejected Farooqi and de facto split away. The minority suspected Farooqi of being an agent of the Pakistani ISI, or at least of having links to them. The Central Asians accuse the Pakistani authorities of having tried to exterminate them when they were based in Waziristan (still as IMU at that time), and rate the Pakistani state as non-Muslim. There seems to be some truth in these accusations of Farooqi having links to the Pakistani authorities. Sources in the Farooqi faction admit that after Farooqi was chosen as governor, relations with the Pakistani authorities improved greatly, to the extent that they now even receive some financial support from the ISI and are allowed to use some areas of Pakistan for training, logistics and recuperation. In exchange for this support, the Farooqi faction has reportedly agreed not to carry out attacks inside Pakistan.[2]

One reason for reaching an understanding with the Pakistani authorities could be the need for safe havens in Pakistan, following the heavy casualties inflicted on the leadership (as well as rank-and-file) of IS-K by US air strikes on Afghan territory. Whatever Farooqi’s actual relations with the ISI might be, he must be mindful of the fate of his two predecessors (both killed in US strikes) and of most of the original leadership of IS-K. The need for a safe haven, sheltered from constant US strikes, was evident by the summer of 2017.

From here onwards in this report the Farooqi group will be referred to as IS-K (F), while the Moawiya group will be referred to as IS-K (M). Despite attempts by the IS leadership in Syria to mediate, relations between the two factions have been tense and there were even a few violent skirmishes in Nangarhar. As a result IS-K (M) moved all its men to northern Afghanistan, where its main force was concentrated already, giving the split a geographic dimension as well. Negotiations sponsored by the central leadership of IS in Syria went on for months, but IS-K (M) remained adamant that Farooqi is unacceptable to them as a governor. The IS-K (M) source indicated that negotiations were abandoned at the end of the summer. The two factions are trying to attract each other’s members to their side, including some of the top figures, and are actively negotiating to achieve this aim. The intent seems to be to reach the critical mass required to get the leadership of IS to recognise them as the one and only branch of IS in Khorasan. Each of them also claims to be closer to the central leadership of IS. For now the central leadership of IS has not officially recognised Aslam Farooqi as governor. The source in IS-K (M) claims that the central leadership of IS was not pleased with IS-K (F)’s dealings with Pakistan’s ISI and with the Taliban and that it might now be seeking to slowly undermine Farooqi’s leadership, but there is no independent confirmation of this.[3]

The Pakistani component of IS-K (Tehrik-e Khilafat Pakistan) fully followed Aslam Farooqi into IS-K (F), as did the bulk of the different Afghan groups within IS-K: those of Azizullah Haqqani and Muslimdost, as well as Khilafat Afghan and Tehrik-e Khilafat Khorasan. IS-K (F) is active in Nangarhar, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Logar, Paktika, Zabul, Kapisa, Parwan, Baghlan, Ghazni and Helmand as far as Afghanistan is concerned. The main concentrations are in Nangarhar, Kunar and Zabul. In Pakistan it is present in Peshawar, Kurram Agency, Orakzay, Hangu, in North and South Waziristan, in Bajauar, Momand, Swat, Karachi and Baluchistan. The main concentrations are Orakzay, Bajaur, Hangu and Kurram.[4]

With Moawiya were mainly the Central Asians of the Omar Ghazi Group (an offshoot of the IMU which fully joined IS) and Shamali Khilafat, a group made up of Afghan Tajiks and Uzbeks, plus some other assorted commanders. They are active in Jowzjan, Faryab, Sar-i Pul, Samangan, Badghis, Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar, Badakhshan. The main bases are in Badakhshan and Jowzjan.[5]

Overall, IS-K seems to have suffered from the split. IS-K (F) claims about 8,000 members, while IS-K (M) claims about 3,800; before the split IS-K was claiming up to 20,000 members.[6] Although there are some questions about the reliability of the higher end figures, there might have been some reduction in the strength of IS-K as a result of the split. There have been heavy losses especially to US air strikes, but it is also possible that some groups and commanders might have opted not to declare their loyalty to either faction. Even before the split there were some components of IS in Khorasan that were in fact autonomous from the IS-K leadership (the Iranian and Tajik branches, for example). In terms of nationality, the largest component of IS-K (taken as a whole) are Afghans, followed closely by Pakistanis. The rest are primarily Central Asians and Baluchis. In terms of ethnicity, IS-K (F) is almost entirely Pashtun, whereas IS-K (M) is Central Asian (mostly Uzbek, with Tajiks as well and few others) or Afghan Tajik and Uzbek.[7]

In order to understand the relationship established by IS-K with the Taliban, it is necessary to briefly discuss the status of the Taliban in recent years.

The Taliban today

The Taliban have always had complex internal arrangements and as they expanded after 2003, their arrangements have become even more complex. The so-called Rasool Shura (whose real name is High Council of the Islamic Emirate) has essentially split away and maintains no relations with the official Taliban of the Islamic Emirate. It accounts for less than 10% of total Taliban manpower.[8] The official leadership of the Islamic Emirate is concentrated in the Quetta Shura, which is based in part in Karachi and in part in Quetta. At present the head of the Emirate, Haibatullah Akhund, is recognised as leader by the Quetta Shura, except a minority of dissidents led by Obeidullah Ishaqzai, cousin of Akhtar Mansur, by the Shura of the North, by the Miran Shah Shura (in practice coinciding with the Haqqani network) and by Peshawar Shura. The Mashhad Shura is in good terms with Haibatullah but it has not yet accepted to formally recognise him as leader and to submit to his full authority.[9]

In practice, the Miran Shah Shura and the Shura of the North still maintain a considerable degree of autonomy and negotiate deals and agreements with other groups of insurgents (among else) without even reporting them to Quetta. Hence in this paper it will be necessary to discuss the relationship with the Islamic State of each of the Taliban’s Shuras. To talk of ‘the Taliban’ without any differentiation would be too much of a simplification.

The Mashhad Shura accounts for less than 10% of the Taliban’s manpower, but the Miran Shah Shura accounts for another 15% and the Shura of the north for about the same. The dissidents of the Quetta Shura, led by Obeidullah, account for another 10% or so. So these Taliban actors are not insignificant ones.[10]

Taken as a whole, the Taliban of the Islamic Emirate operate almost everywhere in Afghanistan nowadays, but its different components are often regionally focused:

The Shura of the North is mostly active in the north-east, around Kabul and in the east;the Mashhad Shura is mostly concentrated in the west;the Peshawar Shura operates in the east and around Kabul;the Miran Shah Shura mostly in the south-east and in the south;the Quetta Shura is mostly active in the south and in the north-west, but has some presence everywhere.[11]

It should be borne in mind that the Taliban are still many times the size of IS-K, easily 15 times as big if not more. This of course has implications in terms of how the Taliban have been viewing IS-K (initially clearly underestimating it), and also of how Taliban defeats at the hand of IS-K resonated among the Taliban’s rank-and-file (they were quite humiliating). In general, the inability of the Taliban to contain, if not to wipe out, a much smaller organisation like IS-K , in fact exposes a range of Taliban failures and inefficiencies, as well as internal divisions.

IS-K/Taliban relations in 2014-16

During 2014, the nascent IS-K established cordial relations with at least the Peshawar Shura (then autonomous from the Quetta Shura) and the Miran Shah Shura, trying to present itself as just another jihadist actor in the crowded Afghan-Pakistani environment. The Quetta Shura was from the beginning suspicious of IS-K’s intent given the proclamation of the Caliphate and the implicit challenge for Mullah Omar’s status as ‘Leader of the Faithful’. Only the Taliban of the Mashhad Office (not yet recognised then as a Shura) were inevitably opposed to all that IS-K represented since they were hosts of the Iranian Pasdaran. As IS-K started headhunting Taliban commanders from all Shuras any goodwill quickly evaporated. By early 2015, all the Taliban’s main shuras were turning very critical of IS-K, and the first few clashes with the forces of the Shuras of Quetta and Peshawar were beginning to take place and by the summer there was an was open war in Nangarhar, a province that since became the main epicentre of the Taliban/IS-K confrontation.

In reality, during 2015 already some components of the Taliban were working out arrangements with the Islamic State, first and foremost the Haqqani network (Miran Shah Shura). After tension in late 2014 to early 2015 over IS-K attempts to attract Haqqani network commanders, the Haqqanis avoided confronting IS-K, simply demanding that it stay out of their regional stronghold of Loya Paktia. Elsewhere, there were always numerous commanders of the Taliban who had relations with IS-K, or simply wanted to stay out of the fight. At one point in late 2015 even the leader of the Quetta Shura, Akhtar Mohammad Mansur,[13] briefly allied with IS-K against its enemy Mansur Dadullah.

During 2016, the Quetta Shura leadership was consistent in its opposition to the Taliban, but the new Northern Shura, which split from the Peshawar Shura at the end of 2015, quickly reached ceasefire agreements with IS-K in the north-east. The Haqqanis again had a period of tension with IS-K after the Haqqani district military leader of Zazai (Paktia) defected to IS-K with its men. The crisis was resolved through negotiations, without armed clashes.

The so-called Rasool Shura (High Council of the Islamic Emirate), which split from the Quetta Shura in November 2015, established cordial relations with IS-K from the autumn of 2016 onwards, once its relationship with the Iranian Pasdaran ended. Rasool Shura and IS-K cooperated on the ground for several months, but the relationship deteriorated in early 2017, for reasons that are unclear but might be related to the Rasool Shura’s desire to negotiate a settlement with the Afghan government.[14]

During 2016, in any case no component of the Taliban conceived the idea of an alliance with or collaborating with IS-K; the intra-Taliban debate was about open war, mutual tolerance and formal ceasefires.

IS-K’s criticism of the Taliban had an impact within the ranks of the latter for at least two reasons. One was the humiliating revelation of Mullah Omar’s death having been kept hidden for 2 years. The other was the bitter internal conflicts that were shaking the organisation. Throughout 2014-16, IS-K has been attracting thousands of Taliban commanders, fighters and cadres, who had been losing faith in their leadership. Among the most senior Taliban to switch sides in 2014-16 were Azizullah Haqqani, head of the Haqqanis’ Fedayi Commission (in charge of complex and suicide attacks), and Mohibullah, one of the deputies of the Peshawar Shura.

IS-K/Taliban relations in 2017

During 2017, IS-K continued to attract Taliban defectors. Among the most noteworthy ‘acquisitions’ were Habibullah (aka Abdul Rahman), formerly one of the heavyweight of the Peshawar Shura, who brought several hundreds men with him. Shahmahmood another senior member of the Peshawar Shura, and several other smaller commanders and their men making about 600 also joined IS-K (F). There were also some further defections from TTP and its various splinter groups.[15] However, a Haqqani source rather sympathetic to IS-K considered that the split of IS-K has harmed its jihadist credibility and is reducing the attraction of the organisation towards disgruntled Taliban. As the source said, ‘they are thinking that Daesh will also become like the Taliban’, that is permanently divided internally in rival groups. This source does not believe that realistically the split within IS-K can be healed and even fears that a further disintegration of the organisation along national lines might be possible.[16] While the source contacted in the IS-K (F) faction denied that the split might be a problem, the source in IS-K (M) admitted that because of the split IS-K is losing prestige among the Taliban and that recruitment of Taliban into either IS-K faction has slowed down. Significantly both sources in the IS-K factions admit that the situation in Iraq and Syria affects them negatively, as it destroy the aura of invincibility they were relying on. The two sources also agree that funding to IS-K is not for now a problem, with donors in the Arab Gulf keeping the supply up.[17]

As of October 2017, IS-K (F) admitted having agreements and alliances with various groups of Taliban in Logar, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Kunar, Nuristan. Mostly these alliances were negotiated locally, and as far as alliances are concerned mostly with the Haqqani network. After the Zabul agreement signed in April 2017, two more province-wise agreements were reportedly signed in September 2017 in Wardak and Ghazni. A source in the Haqqani network indicated that there are also alliances with IS-K in Zazai (Paktia), Azra (Logar), Daychopan (Zabul), Kajaki (Helmand), Nawa (Ghazni), Jaghatu and Nerkh (Wardak).[18]

However the trend in October was towards higher-level negotiations. Haibatullah, the leader of the Taliban, opened negotiations with IS-K (F), while the Miran Shah Shura was already negotiating with them for some time. In October 2017, Haibatullah’s representatives negotiated with IS-K (F) a ceasefire. Initially IS-K (F)’s requests were rejected as too onerous – IS-K (F) wanted exclusive control of Nangarhar, Kunar, Zabul, and Sar-i Pul provinces. Eventually the Quetta Shura managed to reach a ceasefire agreement with IS-K (F) on 18 October, whose terms were the following:

Taliban and IS-K (F) maintain taxation rights over the areas under their control at the time of the agreement;

Prisoners will be released by both sides;

Taliban and IS-K (F) recognise each other’s agreements with companies and businessmen, granting them access and immunity.

Some Taliban fronts in eastern Afghanistan, despite being liked to the Quetta Shura, rejected the terms of the agreement and continued fighting IS-K (F), particularly in Nangarhar, endangering the whole agreement. Even within the Quetta Shura there are major sources of tension over the agreement with IS-K (F): heavyweights like Gul Agha Ishaqzai, Mullah Shireen, Ibrahim Sadar, Mullah Yakub, Abdul Majeed have all criticised Haibatullah on this point.[19] At the time of writing the agreement was still standing (see Figure 1).[20]

The improved relations between IS-K (F) and the Pakistani security services helped improve relations with the Taliban too; both Taliban and IS-K (F) sources confirm that the Pakistani ISI has been mediating between the two groups and encouraging them to reach an agreement.[21]

While Haibatullah negotiated a ceasefire, joint operations between Haqqani and IS-K (F) have been carried out in Zabul, Janikhel, Baraki Barak and Azra. Cooperation between Haqqani network and IS-K also extends to Kabul city; according to a source, all IS-K attacks in Kabul have been performed with Haqqani support. This might only mean that ‘defectors’ from the Haqqani network to IS-K played a key role in carrying out the attacks, but the source also claimed that the Haqqani network has been asked by its Arab Gulf donors to perform attacks against Shi’a targets in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the despatch of volunteers to Syria.[22]

Haqqani sources insist that many of the commanders who switched from Haqqani to IS-K did so with the approval of Serajuddin Haqqani himself, for the purpose of creating a pro-Haqqani lobby inside IS-K. According to the source the Haqqani commanders who joined IS-K played an important role in moderating the group’s stance and in improving its skills in dealing with local communities. The same source acknowledged that Saudi donors to the Haqqani network push for collaboration with IS-K. Khorasan is one of the few areas where Saudi donors reportedly continue to support IS. Such claims of benign Haqqani influence over IS-K might well be inflated, and represent instead an attempt to dismiss the importance of large-scale defections from Haqqani network to IS-K. Indeed these very commanders have in some case prevaricated against the Haqqani networks, occupying portions of its territory without authorisation. Despite repeated warnings to stay out of Loya Paktia, the Haqqanis’s traditional turf, IS-K (F) has gradually established a presence in Zazai and Dand-i Patan (Paktia), Janikhel, Showak and Barmal (Paktika), Baraki and Azra (Logar), Sabari (Khost). The Haqqanis do not hide the fact that they are irritated by this presence and threaten to cut off all relations with IS-K if these forces will not be withdrawn. It remains nonetheless quite probable that former Haqqani commanders now in IS-K might maintain some kind of relationship with their former leader, or with other members of the Haqqani network.[23]

The Haqqani network has maintained close relations with both IS-K factions after they split. An internal source indicates that the Haqqani networks feels closer to the IS-K (M) faction because of its own longstanding close relations with Central Asian jihadists, but in practice most cooperation has taken place with IS-K (F) for geographic reasons. Within the Haqqani network there is some opposition to an alliance with IS-K, including within the Haqqani family itself. However, according to an internal source the large majority of the rank and file is in favour of collaboration.[24]

Al-Qaida, which has given up on trying to find an accommodation with IS-K and went back on the offensive against it in recent months in Kunar, is lobbying the Taliban against making deals with IS-K. This has caused friction between Al-Qaida and Taliban, including a traditional ally of Al-Qaida like the Haqqani network, which has refused to bow to Al-Qaida’s pressure.[25]

The IS-K (M) group by contrast is not trying to negotiate at all with the Quetta Shura, rejects the IS-K (F)/Quetta Shura agreement and continues to fight it, particularly in north-western Afghanistan. Moawiya accuses the Quetta Shura of atrocities committed against Central Asian jihadists and their families in 2016. However IS-K (M) has close relations with the Haqqanis, who were not involved in those atrocities and in fact bitterly criticised them.[26] IS-K (M) also maintains its ceasefires with the Northern Shura of the Taliban in the north-east, despite tensions arising from its attacks on Quetta Shura Taliban in the region and its capture of some Northern Shura sources of revenue.[27]

In general IS-K (F) does not seem to believe that a comprehensive long-term ceasefire with the Taliban as a whole will ever be feasible. IS-K (F) continues to see Iran and its Afghan allies as its primary enemy; as long as important Taliban components and leaders will continue entertaining close relations with Iran (and Russia), IS-K (F) will be inclined to fight them, not least because of the pressure from its donors in the Arab Gulf. [28]

Conclusion

IS-K is past its peak in Afghanistan, if not in terms of military capabilities, certainly in terms of jihadist image. Its internal rivalries are now exposed, at a time when its myth of invincibility is also collapsing following a string of defeats in Iraq and Syria. IS-K sources admitted that the situation in Syria and Iraq was complicating their task of attracting new recruits from among the ranks of the Taliban, as well as from other jihadist organisations. Sources among the Taliban, even when sympathetic to IS-K, went farther and pointed out how IS-K’s new pragmatism and internal divisions were making it look too much like the Taliban.

At the same time IS-K had demonstrated sufficient resilience under attack from multiple sources (Taliban, Afghan security forces, local militias and US forces) to legitimise itself as an insurgent organisation with staying power in Afghanistan at least. As such many Taliban leaders and commanders see little point in locking their organisation in a conflict with IS-K, which could well last forever. At no point in 2015-17 did the Taliban come close to achieving decisive victories against IS-K: any tactical success turned out to be short lived. Even in western Afghanistan, where groups of Taliban engaged in fighting against IS-K were enjoying direct support from the Iranian Pasdaran, IS-K could not be eradicated.

At the same time it could make sense for the leadership of IS-K, or at least its majority, to normalise relations with other jihadist organisations and particularly the Taliban, with at least one of the regional powers (Pakistan), abandon its ambitions of hegemonizing the jihadist universe and accept a more modest role as just another jihadist organisation operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Paradoxically the apparently incipient collapse of the Caliphate in the Middle East makes IS-K a less threatening presence in Afghanistan and therefore a more credible partner for the Taliban in some co-existence agreement. The Taliban’s leadership will remain under pressure from Iran and Russia to maintain an aggressive stance against IS-K, but this appears less and less sustainable politically for the Taliban, regardless of who will be the leader. More and more for the Taliban the priority is scoring high in the battlefield against Kabul’s forces, and re-establishing their credibility as the ascendant power in Afghanistan. This is probably one of the reasons why Haibatullah had to reluctantly accept to negotiate with IS-K in autumn 2017, despite having repeatedly declared his commitment to crushing it in the past.

The other reason for Haibatullah’s shift is regional politics. A more pragmatic IS-K leadership managed to find a modus vivendi with the Pakistani authorities, which in turn, started putting pressure on the Taliban leadership to follow suit. The ‘normalisation’ of IS-K breaks the united front of regional powers and most insurgent organisations against it, paving the way for more tactical behaviour on all sides.

Whether or not the IS-K (F)/Taliban agreement can hold will, therefore, depend on a number of issues. Iranians and Russians might tolerate Haibatullah’s dealings with the group, if they think that these would result in its gradual distancing from the IS leadership. The ability of Taliban and IS-K (F) to agree on spheres of influence and on a freeze of whatever territorial control they might have is an essential aspect of the durability of the agreement. If the two groups will continue competing to attract each other’s members (so far it has been IS-K doing that), take each other’s territory and control each other’s sources of revenue, the deal will not last long. Previous ceasefire agreements do not bode well in this regard, as IS-K showed a tendency to break them, particularly once its external sources of funding started shrinking and it came under pressure to raise more revenue within Khorasan.

FIGURE 1: Relations between Islamic State and Taliban in Afghanistan, 2017

[1] For more details and sources see A. Giustozzi, The Islamic State in Khorasan, London ; Hurst, forthcoming 2018.

[2] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017.

[3] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017; Interview with commander of IS-K (M), Baghlan, October 2017.

[4] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017.

[5] Interview with commander of IS-K (M), Baghlan, October 2017.

[6] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017; Interview with commander of IS-K (M), Baghlan, October 2017; Interview with IS-K (M) commander in Baghlan, October 2017; Interview with IS-K senior commander in Nangarhar, January 2017.

[7] See A. Giustozzi, Islamic state in Khorasan, cit.

[8] Interview with provincial-level cadre of the Rasool Shura, October 2017.

[9] Sources in the Quetta Shura, contacted in August and September 2017.

[10] Sources in the Quetta, Northern, Miran Shah and Mashhad shuras, contacted throughout 2017.

[11] Ibid.

[12] This section is based on A. Giustozzi, The Islamic State in Khorasan, London : Hurst, forthcoming 2018.

[13] Mansur was in charge from July 2015 until his killing in May 2016; Mawlavi Haibatullah Akhund replaced him within days of his death.

[14] Interviews with members of the Rasool Shura December 2016 and October 2017.

[15] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017.

[16] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017.

[17] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017; Interview with commander of IS-K (M), Baghlan, October 2017.

[18] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017.

[19] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017; source in Miran Shah Shura, contacted October 2017.

[20] Source in the Quetta Shura, contacted November 2017.

[21] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017; Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017; source in the Quetta Shura, contacted in October 2017.

[22] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017.

[23] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017.

[24] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017.

[25] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017.

[26] Interview with advisor to Serajuddin Haqqani, October 2017.

[27] Interview with IS-K (M) commander in Baghlan, October 2017; interview with senior commander of Northern Shura, February 2017; source in Northern Shura, July 2017.

[28] Interview with IS-K (F) commander in Achin, Nangarhar, October 2017.

President Donald Trump’s belated Afghanistan policy review and reformulation[os1] unveiled last month at Fort Myer had three unique characteristics: One, while expressing “frustration” with “the longest war”, Trump pledged to “win” because American “security interests” demand it; Two, the strategy went beyond Afghanistan and embodied regional security concerns, namely explicit U.S. irritation with Pakistani duplicity; and three, it set new parameters in terms of American expenditure and expectations; namely that Afghans help break the current military stalemate and “take ownership of their future”. He stressed on “real reform” and “real progress” within the Afghan system.In terms of content and messaging, no other American leader in the past has spoken out so forthrightly about Afghanistan’s core challenge, as well as the geo-political and national security complexities inherent to the greater South-Central Asia region.Nonetheless, the President’s speech skimpily alluded to, but did not go far enough on two requisite accessories to the main strategic thrust: 1. The need for revitalized American diplomacy to assure buy-in from U.S. allies, and support – to the extent possible - from key international stakeholders, and 2. assuring Afghan political legitimacy and stability, resulting in sustainable progress.

Reactions

As expected, the speech received immediate knee-jerk reactions from partisan and special interest quarters. Some cynically described the policy as “recycled[os2] ” and the conflict as “an endless war[os3] ”, while other commentators saw merit in the candid nature of the policy[os4] recalibration.In Pakistan, prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said it is “unfair” to blame his country for troubles in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Pakistani pro-Taliban groups issued a call for “Jihad[os5] ” and warned that the Pakistani army would not take any action against the Haqqani network, a Taliban-affiliated outfit classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S.In Afghanistan, the mood was generally welcoming and supportive. While the Taliban[os6] and former president Hamid Karzai opposed[os7] the new U.S. policy (for different reasons), the Afghan unity government praised[os8] the pronouncement and pledged to work with America on shared goals as part of the new way forward.

New Toolkit

The military component, where Afghan security forces are trained, advised, assisted and equipped by the U.S. & NATO, forms the core tenant of the new strategy. It is expected to break the stalemated[os9] situation that has evolved over the last four years as the Taliban strategy shifted from containment to territorial control in 2012, allowing them to expand their footprint into 40[os10] % of the Afghan countryside, albeit influencing no more than 10% of the population.

To achieve their initial goals, Trump favored “a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.” In other words, no more timelines, as unnecessary caveats and restrictions will be lifted to allow commanders on the ground to make better use of the following conventional enablers and tools:

1. Additional special forces to be used in counter-terrorism operations, with the intent to double the number of Afghan units by 2019.

2. Close air support and reliance on targeted bombings where necessary

3. Use of heavier ground artillery to dislodge Taliban militiamen from their hideouts

4. Increase the use of local para-military units (a controversial decision that has backfired in the past).

5. Embedding of U.S. advisors and coordinators within combat battalions.

However, given lessons learned and past practices, the rate and measure for success will also depend on the following factors:

1. Afghan leadership and force morale

2. Equipment/weapons’ effectiveness

2. Intelligence gathering and coordination

3. Better training and oversight of police and para-military units

4. Assuring local and popular support

5. Making every effort to avoid civilian losses

6. Fighting corruption and assuring professionalism for key positions

7. Targeting enemy finance and funding networks.

The Pakistan Angle

The most important game-changer, however, concerns Pakistani action and U.S. reaction. Pointing to past monetary handouts, and the threats posed by safe havens and nuclear weapons, Trump warned “Pakistan has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.”

The Financial Times reported last week that after the recent freezing of $255m in military aid to Islamabad, Washington is now “eyeing an escalating series of threats, which include cutting some civilian aid, conducting unilateral drone strikes on Pakistani soil and imposing travel bans on suspect officers of the ISI, the country’s intelligence agency.”

Since the announcement, Pakistan has unleashed a diplomatic and public relations campaign to defend its position and convince other key players to counter or derail U.S. efforts.

It was reported on Sunday that following consultation with regional powers, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister is calling on the U.S. administration to hold talks with the Taliban. Deflecting allegations of Pakistani collusion with the Taliban, the minister, as part of a new narrative, pointed to Russia and Iran, and said “peace talks with the Taliban could be arranged if Washington works with countries in the region that have influence over the militant group.”

The reaction from Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Ankara and other capitals thus far has been mixed, or not fully fleshed out yet.

Two Vital Accessories

Given regional fluctuations, rising suspicions, and previous claims made by Russian and Iranian authorities that Daesh/Islamic State-type cells have emerged in the AfPak region, American diplomacy can play a critical role in distilling and clarifying policy objectives as an accessory to the military strategy being implemented.All indications point to the so-called IS cells[ - being manned mainly by former Pakistani Taliban factions and foreign militants driven into Afghanistan by security sweeps in Pakistan’s tribal areas since 2014 - as having no symbiotic relationship to Daesh-Central in the Middle East.

In some cases, there have been instances of cooperation between Afghan Taliban and some of the IS cells inside Afghanistan, as seen during a joint attack that left more than 50 civilians killed in the Northern Mirza Olang region in August.

Appointing a seasoned diplomat with United Nations backing to engage in shuttle diplomacy between key capitals, will help provide clarity, dispel misunderstandings and, at some level, could lead to cooperation on the way forward in Afghanistan.

The other accessory to implementing a successful strategy is assuring Afghan political legitimacy and stability. The controversies and allegations of fraud surrounding two previous presidential elections, held in 2009 and 2014, continue to plague Afghan politics and fan political elite mistrust.

The return of a former factional leader, Gulbudin Hekmatyar, who has engaged in provocative and incendiary commentary, has further exacerbated inter-ethnic relations.

Former president Karzai, active on the sidelines, harbors a desire to make a political comeback of sorts with the help of a financially well-endowed patronage network.

A political accord signed by Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, and endorsed by the international community in 2014, which paved the way for the formation of the current unity government at the end of a highly contested and irregular election process, has been stonewalled by pro-centralization political cliques that oppose holding a Constitutional Loya Jirga to consider necessary amendments, and engage in substantive reforms of the electoral system.

In his speech in August, Trump put Afghan leaders on notice when he said: “America will work with the Afghan government as long as we see determination and progress. However, our commitment is not unlimited, and our support is not a blank check.”

It seems that the warning has not fallen on deaf ears. Recent signs of dialogue[os18] between political rivals are indicative of a willingness to mend rifts and create functioning coalitions before the kickoff of the 2018-19 electoral season.

Whether parliamentary elections slated for 2018, and presidential elections for 2019, will or can be held, is an open question, and will also, to some extent, depend on progress with the new American strategy.

On the non-existent political dialogue front, after 12 years of failed (and at times deceitful) attempts to hold talks, prospects for dialogue are currently dim as the military option has entered the execution phase.

Trump signaled to the strategic sequencing, and said “after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban.”

After years of violence and bloodshed, Afghans still hold on to a ray of hope, but overall the public has lost trust in costly and dubious initiatives that have not amounted to any tangible results on the reconciliation front, while the Taliban and their backers have used deceptive tactics mixed with terror-like measures to gain strategic advantage.

Implementation Matters

More than a month after the new policy was framed and announced, all eyes are now on the new strategic toolkit, its components, and on implementation and execution.

Overall, Afghans have welcomed the change in tone and direction, and hope that renewed efforts will help overcome the stagnant status quo. However, past experience has made them wary of the implementation phase. They hope for an integrated approach that makes good use of the diplomatic and political accessories needed to bolster the military effort.

There will also be a need to urge allies and donors to maintain and deliver on development and reconstruction aid pledges to make sure that the Afghan economy does not go belly up at this critical juncture.

As others within NATO and the donor community decide on how to respond and adjust their own policy, it is important to make good use of all available levers and tools to assure a denouement that can finally bring peace and security to a part of the world that yearns for, and deserves, better prospects.

Omar SAMAD is CEO of Silkroad Consulting LLC, former Senior Advisor to Afghanistan’s Chief Executive and a former Afghan Ambassador to France and Canada.

How the deal came about

Although the on-going negotiations between the Afghan authorities and the leadership of the illegal wing of Hizb-i Islami were only announced to the public in March 2016, in reality President Ghani was already in touch with Hekmatyar during the electoral campaign of 2014. Sources in Hekmatyar’s party hint that Ghani’s team sought Hekmatyar’s support for Ghani’s campaign in exchange for a promise to seriously discuss reconciliation if Ghani was to be elected president. Hekmatyar in fact had been seeking reconciliation with Kabul for several years, but never managed to finalise a deal with President Karzai. Within Hizb-i Islami now there is some bitterness against Karzai, whom they accuse of having deliberately delayed reconciliation before 2014. Karzai is accused of having seen Hekmatyar as a potential rival for the leadership of Afghanistan’s Pashtuns. Sources closer to Karzai on the other hand accuse Hekmatyar of having made excessive demands in terms of appointments to positions of power.

Whatever the case, in contrast to Karzai, the embattled Ghani had good reasons for following through on his promise to seriously discuss reconciliation with Hizb-i Islami: he needed a success story given the lacklustre performance of the NUG and the deteriorating security situation in the country; he needed potential new allies (once he decided to run for a second term) and could see some advantage in the potential emergence of another large party to counter-balance the power of Jamiat-i Islami. The prospect of reconciling Hizb-i Islami was seen positively by at least two of Ghani’s international allies: United States and Saudi Arabia.

By the time negotiations were made public, they were already fairly advanced. Hekmatyar’s June 2016 ‘withdrawal’ from negotiations was probably more theatre than anything else. Although it took several more months to sign the deal and then implement it, the problem was not between Ghani and Hekmatyar, but was related to the opposition or the doubts of some components of the NUG to the deal, particularly Jamiat-i Islami that fought against Hekmatyar’s group in the 1980s and 1990s.

The deal behind the curtain

The agreement formally signed between Hizb-i Islami and the Afghan authorities in September 2016 was widely circulated. Its content appears rather unremarkable given Hekmatyar’s notoriety. There is not much in it to discuss: the removal of sanctions on Hekmatyar, full amnesty for all its members, the acceptance of the Constitution by the party, the dissolution of the party’s armed organisation and its recognition as a legal organisation fully entitled to participate in the legal process. The text importantly does not mention any power sharing with Hizb-i Islami.

Although critics have commented that the agreement gave a lot to Hizb-i Islami, in fact one wonders reading the agreement why Hekmatyar signed it. One explanation is that Hizb-i Islami had been facing financial difficulties for years and was struggling to maintain its organisation. Indeed the contribution of Hizb-i Islami to the overall insurgency in Afghanistan had been declining for years and by 2016 was negligible. While financial difficulties are certainly a factor in the reconciliation, Hizbi sources say that the official agreement was supported by another, undisclosed agreement according to which Hizb-i Islami would support Ghani in the forthcoming presidential elections, that it would receive appointments to positions of power (ministers, governors, ambassadors…) and that it would receive substantial financial support from a foreign third party (Saudi Arabia). The undisclosed agreement, if true, would explain why the deal actually took place and why it became so controversial.

More than reconciliation

Although the exact content of the undisclosed agreement, if it really exists, is unknown, it is a commonly held suspicion in Afghanistan that the official agreement is not the whole story. There have been clear signs that Hekmatyar has taken President Ghani’s side during his June-July diatribe with Jamiat-i Islami and some other components of the NUG. This suggests that a political alliance between Ghani and Hekmatyar is really in the cards. Rumours of substantial Saudi funding to accrue to Hizb-i Islami in the near future are also widespread.

Parties and groups like Jamiat-i Islami fear that what is going on is much more than reconciliation. They fear the emergence of a new coalition centered around Ghani in the forthcoming elections, incorporating a reunified Hizb-i Islami (the legal Arghandiwal wing and the formerly illegal Hekmatyar wing), which could well become the dominant political force in the country. The fact that Hizb-i Islami’s armed groups have not been disbanded or disarmed also raises fears among Hekmatyar’s rivals of an intent to turn the party’s armed wing into yet another semi-legal militia, competing with those of Jamiat-I Islami, Junbesh-I Milli and other groups. Indeed Hekmatyar hinted that he might deploy his men in the street against demonstrators affiliated to Jamiat and other groups in June.

Underpinning the fears of Jamiat-i Islami and other groups are the already cited rumours of the Saudi authorities undersigning the reconciliation agreement and being ready to bankroll Hizb-i Islami’s transformation into a Hamas-style political machine. The talks are of a large madrasa and of an Islamic University with branches in the provinces to be built by the Saudis for Hekmatyar’s party, as well as of the Saudis picking up the party’s bills. While external funding for Afghanistan’s political parties is nothing new, the rumours and admissions made by party members in off-the-record interviews suggest that a qualitative change might be about to occur, if Saudi funding were to flow at rates never seen before. Whether or not this will really happen remains to be seen, but it would make sense. Hekmatyar has been adopting a strongly anti-Iranian and even anti-Shi’a rhetoric in recent years, which might be a sign of him courting Saudi funding. The Saudi in all likelihood would like to develop political proxies in Afghanistan to counter widespread Iranian influence and have been diplomatically active in sponsoring the negotiations between Hekmatyar and Kabul.

The Hizb-i Islami cadres contacted were all confident that the party would score high in the parliamentary elections (initially due in 2015 and postponed to 2018 for now). If that was to look increasingly likely in the coming months, the fears of the rival parties would of course only strengthen.

Missed opportunities

When the negotiations over Hekmatyar reconciliation deal were going on, there was much talk about the potential reconciliation spin offs that might occur. Indeed within the Taliban’s ranks there was interest for the deal, although it was also assumed that the implementation would be problematic. Sources within the Afghan government indicate that a small delegation from the Taliban’s Rasool Shura arrived in Kabul in the summer of 2016 to discuss possible reconciliation, but eventually left having made little progress. Several groups of former Hizb-i Islami Taliban in eastern Afghanistan also watched the negotiations with Hekmatyar carefully, and re-established communication channels with Hekmatyar himself. They hoped to be able to exploit the reconciliation deal in order to obtain some kind of luxury reconciliation for themselves, at a time when they were running short of funds due to changing alignments within the Taliban and between some Taliban components and the Taliban’s international sponsors. However, since the autumn of 2016 most of these groups seem to have lost interest in this matter and have drifted in different directions. Until the Hekmatyar deal is implemented full steam, with a display of wealth and status capable of impressing people who have been fighting for long years, from the point of view of the latter the deal is not tested yet. The current security situation, with the control of the Afghan government being slowly but steadily eroded by the Taliban, also provides little encouragement for prospective reconciliations. Political instability in Kabul is another factor discouraging Taliban interested in reconciliation from coming forward.

Likely that the peak of interest among insurgents for Hekmatyar-style reconciliation agreements is now well past. If the alleged Saudi funding for Hizb-i Islami started flowing in significant amounts, some interest might be revived, but there is certainly a sense of missed opportunities for the Afghan authorities, largely in part due to their internal divisions.

What’s next?

The implementation of the reconciliation deal between Hekmatyar and the Kabul authorities has been having and will have a negligible military impact, in terms of weakening the insurgency. Even at the peak of its military strength, around 2011-13, Hizb-i Islami had limited resources and little interest for waging an intensive jihad against anybody; about half of its energy was dissipated fighting competing insurgents like the Taliban. The only serious impact would be if Hizb-i Islami forces were turned into pro-government militias, fighting the Taliban with greater resources and in coordination with the Afghan security forces. But if that happen political instability would surely increase, and the risk of clashes with militias of rival parties would be high.

So far Ghani and Hekmatyar have shown determination to go ahead with the deal, despite its controversial character and Hekmatyar’s failure to fully meet the requirements for implementation. The fact that Hekmatyar took to Kabul hundreds of armed bodyguards, instead of the 40 that he should have, might be justified with concerns about his personal security, but certainly it also seems like a provocation towards his rivals, who despite being in some cases well entrenched in Kabul do not normally have that many armed men roaming around the capital. Hekmatyar’s hostile rhetoric towards Jamiat-i Islami also reinforces the feeling that he might be trying to rock the Afghan political boat and create political tension, perhaps in order to accelerate the demise of the NUG. This is not in President Ghani’s interest, but Hekmatyar seems to think that now Ghani is trapped within the deal, and would sacrifice too much political capital if he opted out because of Hekmatyar’s brinkmanship. Hekmatyar’s attitude creates political uncertainty in a context where there is already a lot of potential instability. It was probably to be expected that the renegotiation of the political settlement in Kabul and its extension to a new major player would shake the rusty boat of Afghan politics.

It is generally accepted by those who have interacted with the Taliban as enemies or friends that the movement has remarkable esprit du corps; even Taliban detainees are very rarely if ever willing to dissociate themselves from the movement. On the battlefield, the Taliban did not always have the reputation of being tactically very effective, but were always very cohesive. At the same time there is evidence that the Taliban are internally divided in ideological and tribal terms. How do they achieve battlefield cohesiveness then? This chapter contends that the processes presiding over the formation of the combat group or teams holds the explanation for this.

The Taliban’s approach to cohesion was not static. In fact, it could be argued that the Taliban experimented with multiple avenues for increasing their battlefield cohesion, not always successfully. The nature of the challenges confronted by the Taliban varied greatly during the conflict. In 2002-5, the Taliban mostly confronted ill-trained and badly organized Afghan security forces and militias; the Taliban did not need at this stage to invest considerable energy in strengthening their cohesion. Their modus operandi during this period is discussed in the first section of this paper (‘The early days’).

Things changed in 2006, as the Taliban started being confronted by much more powerful western military forces and the newly trained Afghan National Army also started appearing in Taliban-held areas more often. The Taliban reacted to the challenge in a number of ways, and one of these ways was trying to improve their battlefield cohesion. This process is discussed in the main section of this chapter (‘Innovation’).

This paper is based on extensive research that the author has carried out on the Taliban over the years and through multiple projects, but mostly as part of an Economic and Social Sciences Research Council-funded project, implemented through King’s College London (Department of War Studies). During the project, about 180 Taliban commanders, cadres and leaders from 12 different provinces distributed across all of Afghanistan’s region (Herat, Faryab, Baghlan, Nangarhar, Kandahar, Helmand, Ghazni, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Logar) were interviewed about a range of issues, including (but not only) the issues discussed below, related to military cohesion.

The early days

The Taliban were utterly defeated during Operation Enduring Freedom, in late 2001. The movement disintegrated, with most leaders and many cadres seeking refuge in Pakistan, and with most fighters and low-level cadres trying to melt away in their home villages, hoping to be forgotten by the dominators of Afghanistan. Indeed interim president Hamid Karzai offered an amnesty to all Taliban except the top level leaders. The new local political elite was however largely made up of Taliban rivals and enemies, who immediately set out to seek revenge against former Taliban living in their areas, dragging into this wave of repression US forces engaged in the hunt of Al-Qaida remnants. Combined with efforts by some remnants of Taliban and Al-Qaida to keep the fight against the US invaders and their Afghan allies going, this wave of repression and revenge taking gradually pushed many former Taliban towards re-mobilization. Part of the Emirate-era leadership hiding in Pakistan increasingly felt motivated to re-establish the movement and assert control over pockets of spontaneous Taliban resistance, which were appearing in various locations in Afghanistan and just across the Pakistani border.

Reorganizing the defeated and demoralized Taliban into a viable insurgency did not prove an easy task, particularly since the Taliban were fighting in part a different enemy from the one they had confronted in the 1990s: alongside the same militias, which had fought the Taliban in the 1990s, were now the US armed forces. The Taliban initially lacked the skills to organizes a sophisticated insurgency, able to survive the advanced technologies the Americans were throwing at them. In particular as the Taliban started making major inroads in southern Afghanistan in 2005-6, US and allied forces started increasing their commitment to the fight. Military pressure on the Taliban grew rapidly in 2006-2010, soon showing how their military tactics and organization were inadequate to face the new challenge.

A process of adaptation started within the Taliban, a trial and error process characterized by numerous and even bitter debates. Until 2007, Taliban political authority and decision making was concentrated in Quetta. From 2007 onwards, however, things started getting more complicated as first the Haqqani network in the south-east (the leadership was based in Mairan Shah, Waziristan) declared its autonomy vis-à-vis the central leadership based in Quetta (the so-called Quetta Shura) and then in 2008 a coalition of other Taliban networks in the east also did the same (the Peshawar Shura). Until 2015-16, therefore, the evolution of the Taliban’s military organization was following quite different paths in these three centers of power.

The original Taliban insurgents of 2003-7 largely relied on personal networking as a source of recruitment. It was the cadres of the movement, who were old Taliban from the times of the Emirate, who were personally recruiting in their environment: their villages, their tribes, and most importantly their madrasas (since all Taliban leaders had a madrasa education background). Once recruited, the new Taliban would be personally loyal to their commander and follow him throughout deployments and the ups and downs of the struggle. This is known as the ‘andiwal’ system. This relationship was often defined by personal, familial or tribal ties, as expressed by the term andiwal (‘friend’, also variously translated as ‘comrade’, ‘brother-in-arms’), used to describe this relationship of men personally linked to their commander.[1] The same type of relationship existed between commanders and the leaders of the large Taliban fronts:

First, i belong to Mullah Sattar, I joined Mullah Sattar. […] I accept mullah Sattar's word. We belong to Mullah Sattar first.[2]

The most charismatic commanders, such as Dadullah, Faruq, Ibrahim, Dr. Wasi and Baradar, had their own following and were solely responsible for them. Typically formations of 300-350 men would deploy for operations throughout the south and neighbouring provinces such as Farah, Nimruz, Ghazni.[3] In order to keep the andiwal system going beyond the death of a leader, typically a deceased commander would be replaced by a close relative:

The Taliban called me telling me my uncle was dead and to come and take his place. […] That is normal practise. the taliban leaders try to replace dead from the same family, otherwise they'll go for other people […] my uncle was in Janan's mahaz, i took his place when he died. Janan sends money, and we buy weapons from the people.[4]

Often Taliban commanders recruited relatives and fellow villagers:

At the time when I joined the Taliban, a member of my family, I won't say who, was a top commander of Taliban in Sayedabad district. He came to me and told me about the airstrikes and the attacks and he convinced me to join the Taliban. If someone doesn't know the Taliban, it's very difficult for them to join. If someone goes and says they want to join, he will be followed and thoroughly investigated for a long time before he's accepted.[5]

A consequence of this practice was that many non-madrasa educated villagers made it into the Taliban, particularly the local part-militias which were fighting around their village, and would hid their weapons away and merge back into the village when not called-up. In the early days of the Taliban insurgency, the Taliban relied mostly on these part-time forces, as they were not able to pay their men. It also represented an obstacle to the professionalization of the Taliban:

High ranking Taliban tell us to find fighters for our group and they pay for their logistics etc. When I find “Andiwal”, they are like friends with the group commander and while the group commander rotates he also takes his fighters with him, because the commander worked very hard to find like 20 or 30 fighters, they don’t leave their fighters behind. Commander with his fighters are like friends in the Taliban system and no one leave their friends behind, that’s why most of the commanders take their men with them when they rotate.[6]

The personal relationship between a commander and his fighters gave cohesion to the Taliban combat group. The death of the commander, or his disappearance, would either lead to the disintegration of the group or to somebody very close to him taking over, typically a brother or a son. The kin relationship would allow for the transfer of the personal link of loyalty. Similarly if a commander would switch between different Taliban networks, his men would normally follow him.

From the perspective of the Taliban’s leadership the system had its limitations, particularly when losses among the commanders began to quickly increase from 2007 onwards. The reliance on charismatic individuals for recruitment and leadership was therefore becoming a weakness, the more so as replacing losses with leaders of comparable quality was becoming more and more difficult.

Innovation

The Taliban had from the beginning of the insurgency quite strong group cohesion, thanks to the andiwal system. As their operations started becoming more complex, involving multiple groups, from 2008 that the idea of fomenting the creation of inter-group cohesion through training, discipline and indoctrination started gaining ground. The Taliban also started relying more and more on full-time forces, mostly recruited among Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The andiwal system had weaker roots (although by no means insignificant) among these Pakistan-based forces, forcing the Taliban to look at new ways to foster cohesion.

Discipline

Efforts to instil some discipline in the rank-and-file had been going one for some time, since the introduction of the first Layha (code of conduct) in 2006, whose authors were Mullah Baradar and Ustad Yaser.[7] The main thrust of the Layha was introducing rules of conduct which would apply to all the Taliban, instead of leaving the faculty of determining which rules applied to group commanders . A former commander in Musa Qala argued that the introduction of stiffer discipline was resented locally, as well connected local commanders had to give way to newcomers and even foreigners.[8] From 2009 the recently established Military Commission started a major tightening of the screws in terms of disciplining. It took charge of writing and overhauling the Layha in 2009 (the first edition had been written in Quetta); [9][10] the 2010 version was further amended to specify that judges were to try Taliban members accused of serious misconduct or criminal activities, including gratuitous or negligent use of deadly force against civilians. Arbitrary executions were also banned and spies were to be tried in the Taliban courts.[11]

There are different lines of thinking about the actual relevance of these decrees, with some observers arguing that the main purpose of the Layeha was propagandistic.[12] The Taliban certainly realised the propaganda value of the Layeha and in recent years have even posted it on their website. The 2006 version was passed on to a journalist by the then governor of Ghazni at the end of that year; while this was clearly a publicity stunt, it seems far fetched to argue that this was the sole or main purpose of the Layeha.[13] The 2009 version came to be known after copies were captured on the battlefield by ISAF troops.[14] That hardly suggests a primary propagandistic intent, where the primary aim would be to improve the Taliban’s image without substantial impact in the way the Taliban function.

Interviews conducted over the years with Taliban commanders suggest that the Layha was meant to be taken seriously by Taliban field commanders. The Layeha was widely circulated among Taliban field cadres (Military Commissioners and mid-level commanders) and among the minority of simple commanders who were literate. The Taliban cadres trained in Pakistan studied the Layha as part of their curriculum.[15] Another commander explained that when the Layha was first released in 2006, there were clear instructions that commanders should read it together with their fighters in order to familiarise them.[16] According to a commander in Wardak:

Just as the Afghan government has a constitution, so the Taleban have their rules in a small book, the Layha, which many commanders have.[17]

Johnson and Dupee also commented that in 2010 the Alikozai tribe members in Sangin expected Taliban shadow governance officials to adhere to the Layeha.[18] Two Taliban governors were reportedly removed from Sangin following allegations of brutal behaviour, against the rules of the Layeha.[19]

The main problem in getting the rank-and-file to follow the Layeha was the high illiteracy rate among the Taliban, including among the field commanders. The typical Talib fighter is an illiterate village youth, who then gets deployed in small groups around the villages, a situation where supervision by team leaders and commanders (who usually have a madrasa background) is difficult. In theory, all Taliban field commanders are supposed to be educated, but few of them are literate.[20] In October 2011 a commander in Imam Sahib stated that he was aware of the existence of the Layeha but refused to discuss its details, suggesting that he had at best a sketchy knowledge of it. Both the commanders from Wardak and Imam Sahib mentioned above were much better educated than the average for Taliban commanders. In addition the Taliban seem to have experienced difficulties in keeping their commanders focused on the Layeha all the time, and probably in adhering to its principles as well. A source among the Taliban in Peshawar indicated in October 2012 that there was dissatisfaction within the leadership because of the decreasing circulation of the Layeha, related partly to the loss of territorial control in many areas. While, as noted, the Taliban cadres trained in Pakistan have to study the Layeha as part of their curriculum, once caught in the fighting the Layeha is likely to fall down in their list of priorities.[21] Says a former commander of the Taliban:

The Amirul Momineen [Mullah Omar] has issued a clear order that even spies should be pardoned if they show remorse and pledge that they will not spy on the Taliban in future. But you see Taliban slaughter innocent Afghans every day on charges of spying.[22]

In sum, we might say that the Layha was widely circulated among Taliban leaders in the field (Military Commissioners and network senior commanders) and among the minority of literate group commanders and was an important if not the only medium for the leadership to convey to its fighting units what the movement’s strategic outlook and internal agenda were.

The role of implementing discipline among the fighters and the commanders in the field belongs to the Taliban’s senior military cadres known as Military Commissioners (after their introduction in 2007-2010) and to the Taliban judiciary. Cases are known of the Military Commission punishing unruly commanders.[23] The role of the Commission is thus described:

The Military Commission works at the provincial level. All Taliban officials including governor, district administrators, military commanders and judges are answerable to this commission which is a supreme body.[24]

Except in the south, where the Military Commission remained weaker, the new system would appear to have brought a better discipline among the Taliban. Infighting was dealt with most severely. In Baghlan in July 2012 there were clashes between the Sattar network and Jundullah, following an attempt of Sattar’s men to enter Jundullah’s territory. The Military Commission intervened to stop the fighting, investigate and threaten the two networks with disbandment if any such incident was to be repeated.[25]

Training

Another tool for the development of inter-group cohesion emerged as training. Group commanders were increasingly sent to attend training courses, which among other functions were probably meant to create a stronger sense of belonging to a large organization. In evenings, as fighters were resting, commanders were expected to read the Taliban’s code of conduct and discuss the aims and the ‘ideology’ of the movement. The fighters would attend prayers at mosques run by sympathetic mullahs; the Taliban over time started actually paying growing numbers of mullahs, making them even keener to preach in favour of jihad in their mosques. Taliban field commanders confirm the changing stress in 2011:

Training is very important. We spend most of our time training new Taliban. It wasn’t like this before, anyone could join without any proper training.[26]

It’s almost one year ago when our training system changed and now we are all focused a lot on getting training of IEDs, making of suicide vests, getting ready of suicide bombers and guerrilla fighting.[27]

The tactical training courses reportedly lasted 15-30 days[28] and took place every four months or so; it might therefore be that these were refresher course, meant to instil new tactics in the mind of the fighters.[29] In the south, where training had not been very popular, the new stress appeared to have been relatively welcomed. Among the Taliban of Helmand, for example, two thirds of those to whom the question was asked (26 out of 39) said that training is indeed important; in some cases they even stated that without such training the Taliban would not have survived as a military organisation. Only about 5% of those 39 dismissed the importance of training, with another 5% stressing that training was only important for new recruits and 23% dodging the question.[30] However, since training was strongly endorsed by the Taliban leadership, there might be a bias towards expressing support for the idea of training among these interviewees. Interestingly, according to the Taliban themselves training is usually imparted by foreigners:

Before there were foreign Taliban among almost every team, but now there are no foreign fighters with Taliban, because in these days the numbers of Taliban increased and there is no need for foreign Taliban, if in the future we feel need for their support, for sure we will ask them to help us. Now we need support of foreign trainers for our training, we asked their support, Pakistanis trainers sometimes come to our district and give us training. When we don’t need their training then we won’t invite them.[31]

What could the Taliban do without these foreigners? it is foreigners who give the Taliban weapons, advice, support. [32]

The foreign Taliban mostly stay with Afghan Taliban in the bases. They have responsibility to train and tell about the new tactics of the war, they are not regularly going to operations with Afghan fighters, unless there is heavy combat or attack from NATO troops. Then they participate in fights.[33]

The investment in terms of foreign trainers seems to have been a substantial one, with up to 15-20 ‘Punjabi’ trainers in some southern districts.[34] The various Taliban tactical groups were taking shifts in undergoing training:

We are in standby; very soon it is our turn to get training in new tactics. Now the trainers are in another village with another group of Taliban, when they have finished maybe they might be come to me to provide training.[35]

In sum, the training effort was deployed according to a central plan, although it faced resistance from the rank and file as other efforts of the new centralised leadership discussed above. However, in this case the resistance was not as deeply rooted and training seems to have been accepted to various degrees by a majority of the commanders.

Witness to the importance of training in the eyes of Taliban leader was also the fact that after 2010 the Taliban part-timers started being trained too, so that they would turn into more proficient guerrilla fighters against an increasingly resourceful enemy. Training camps started appearing well inside Afghan territory, in places such as Sangin and Nahr-i Seraj. While training continued to take place in Pakistani territory too, the purpose of the training camps inside Afghanistan appears to have been exactly to train part-timers, who could not be expected to spend time in Pakistan for training.[36]

Rotation

Part of the effort to impose the same rules to all the Taliban was the rotation of group commanders, which should have turned them into a kind of regular officers as opposed to what they had been until them, small charismatic leaders of a groups of personal followers (the ‘Andiwal’). The Taliban were for a period experimenting with forms of military ‘bureaucratization’, trying hard to impose rotation among their commanders, effectively turning them into a kind of officer corps, which would be at the disposal of the military leadership, and would not own the rank-and-file as in the Andiwal system. As rationalised by one commander:

They don't want Taliban fighters to become too powerful in one area and to start abusing the people.[37]

The experiment in rotation, which was probably meant to prepare the ground for greater centralization once the commanders and the rank-and-file had been separated and their links of personal loyalty weakened or dissolved, met great resistance and ultimately failed. The intensification of the targeting of Taliban commanders by ISAF from 2010 onwards contributed to this failure, but the commanders were always hostile to the idea of being rotated and in particular to the idea of doing so without their ‘andiwal’. By 2011 the rotation system was already being relaxed and then started being greatly reduced by 2012-13 already. First commanders were increasingly allowed to take their men with them, before the rotations were suspended altogether:[38]

All the Taliban who rotated like a year ago, they are stuck in their areas and somehow the rotation is blocked temporarily until Taliban make their plan. Now there is no rotation among the Taliban in Nahr-i-Seraj district [Helmand] and all the Taliban commanders who are active in here have been around for a while and we don’t have any new face among the Taliban commanders in Nahr-i-Seraj district.[39]

Command and control

Eventually the Taliban abandoned the idea of rotating most commanders. Instead they opted to create additional layers of command on top of the andiwal system. Originally the andiwal system extended to the whole structure of the Taliban – the shadow governors, who were the supreme military authority at the district and provincial level under the old system, were the most resourceful and powerful commanders. If rotated, they would take their men with them.[40]

The Haqqanis and the Peshawar Shura instead pioneered a system where military command was entrusted to cadres sent by the leadership and selected according to their ability to manage operations, a kind of insurgent meritocracy. The Haqqanis were the first to ‘professionalize’ the insurgency and effectively had layers of cadres in place already in the early phases of their insurgency. The Peshawar Shura only emerged as a significant player in the insurgency after 2007, and rolled out their ‘professional’ system between 2008 and 2009. These cadres were mostly posted away from their provinces of origins and rotated regularly. So while the andiwal system continued to exist and group commanders continued to ‘own’ their men, the new layers of command at the district and province level introduced an element of military professionalism, at the highest level of tactical operations, which was also the most vulnerable to enemy ‘kill and capture’ tactics. Completely replacing the ‘andiwal’ system proved counter-productive and perhaps even impossible, given the resistance generated. It was however decided to centralize recruitment, so that future generations of fighters would become accustomed to a new system of institutionalized insurgency from the start, and gradually replace the old andiwal system. Gradually all three main centers of Taliban power (Quetta, Miran Shah and Peshawar) established ‘recruitment commissions’, with a budget and dedicated staff to recruit bypassing the field commanders.[41]

Ideology

Some groups of Taliban may also have experimented with new forms of ideologization as a tool to produce cohesion. The ideology adopted was in this case ‘jihadism’, the idea that the jihad was not just about liberating Afghanistan from occupiers and an illegitimate government, but the liberation of all Muslims from oppression of any kind. Contact with other jihadist groups, hosted by the Taliban, favoured the spread of jihadist ideas, which however remain to date a minority view among the Taliban.

It is not clear in fact to what extent sections of the Taliban simply became ideologised as a side effect of their contact with other organisation and to what extent their leaders deliberately sought such contacts, in order to foster the ideologisation of their rank-and-file. It is worth to repeat here what noted above, that typically foreign volunteers were in charge of training. To the extent that these volunteers were genuine ones, they were presumably carriers of a strong ideological motivation.

It is also worth pointing out that different groups and segments of Taliban showed varying degrees of consistency in their relationship with jihadist groups such as Al-Qaida and its allies. The Haqqani network maintained such contacts throughout its existence, for example, showing perhaps more consistency than any other group of Taliban. Some groups of Taliban, like now deceased Taliban leader Akhtar Mansur’s, showed instead considerable pragmatism by accepting Al-Qaida support for a period and then diverging from Al-Qaida when the opportunity to negotiate with the Kabul government arose.[42]

Selective recruitment

Another practice that helped the Taliban achieve military cohesion was selective recruitment. In the early years of the insurgency, the Taliban would focus recruitment on former members of the Islamic Emirate before its overthrow. Then they focused on recruiting in madrasas, particularly Pakistani ones. Even today the large majority of the Taliban cadres comes from a madrasa background. The madrasa experience offered a solid ideological background and at the same time instilled a strong sense of discipline and duty, who made the recruits ideally suited for service in an insurgent movement. The relatively homogeneous curricula taught in these madrasas help the Taliban achieving cohesion.[43]

As the Taliban expanded their ranks, they had to increasingly recruit fighters among common villagers. Even in this case they tended to target young mosque going villagers, usually relying on village mullahs to select and attract them. This shared background or religious practice contributes also to provide a degree of military cohesion. After 2010 the Taliban also started recruiting extensively in high schools, mainly because of the need for educated members to handle clerical tasks and sophisticated weaponry and communications. Taliban commanders commented in interviews that recruits from high schools were necessary to fulfil the new roles, but could not match the motivation and cohesiveness of the madrasa recruits. The core of the Taliban fighting force, particularly the full time, mobile element, continued nonetheless to be recruited largely in the madrasas of Pakistan.[44]

Conclusion

Throughout their insurgency efforts up to mid-2016, the Taliban kept relying on group solidarity for military cohesion. There were efforts to create greater cohesion beyond the group-level (the Taliban’s basic combat unit), but these were disrupted by contrasts within the leadership, internal divisions and by a changing operating environment. The military organization of the Taliban has been in constant flux after 2008 and has become increasingly fragmented, making it difficult to evaluate what impact these changes might have had on military cohesion. In any case by mid-2016 the Taliban were still much more cohesive at the group level, than at higher levels of military organization.

Nonetheless by 2016 all the Taliban factions or segments had developed within their military structure a component with a stronger command and control structure (mostly known as ‘military commission’), which resulted in something like the creation of an officer corps. Pockets of inter-group military cohesion emerged within each of the main Taliban centers of power, but as of mid-2016 they had not yet spread to the Taliban as a whole. The 2015-16 crisis of the Peshawar Shura (which had been one of the main promoter of ‘professionalization’) in fact resulted in a roll back of professionalization and in weakening military cohesion in eastern Afghanistan (where the Peshawar Shura operates). This at a time when the Haqqanis, the other main source of professionalization and of efforts to increase military cohesion, were making well-funded efforts to expand their influence eastwards, through the creation of several new fronts. Other late efforts to foster military cohesion included in in spring 2016 the formation of highly paid (and selectively recruited) ‘Red Banner’ commando forces in the south, characterized by a particularly high esprit du corps (fostered also by the adoption of the own symbolism, the ‘red banner’).

A major side effect of the Taliban’s efforts to develop group cohesion was the creation of esprit du corps among the Taliban’s full-time, mobile forces, whose members increasingly came to see themselves as a military elite, separated and superior to the society they were claiming to represent and defend. Arguably a process of autonomization of the Taliban as a military organization is on-going, with the political leadership gradually losing influence over its military, which tends more and more to see war as an end in itself.

[1] Personal communication with several field commanders between 2011 and 2013; Tom Coghlan, ‘The Taliban in Helmand’, in Giustozzi (ed.), Decoding the New Taliban, London : Hurst, 2009.

[2] Interview with two Taliban commanders from Helmand, March 2012.

[3] Interview with former member of the Rehbari shura, September 2014.

[4] Interview with Taliban commander from Kandahar, Daman district, July 2011.

[5] Interview Taliban commander in Sayedabad, Wardak, December 2011.

[6] Interview with Taliban commander from Panjwai, Kandahar, December 2011.

[7] See on the Layha: Kate Clark, ‘The Layha: Calling the Taleban to Account’, Kabul/Berlin: AAN, 2011; Thomas Johnson and Matt Dupee, ‘Analysing the new Taleban Code of Conduct (Layeha): an assessment of changing perspectives and strategies of the Afghan Taleban’, Central Asian Survey, vol. 31 issue 1, 2012, 77-91.

[8] Interview with former Taliban commander, Musa Qala, Helmand province, July 2011.

[9] Taliban source in the Peshawar Shura, contacted September 2012.

[10] Communication with Taliban cadre in Peshawar, August 2012.

[11] Taleban’s Layha, 2010.

[12] See Kate Clark, ‘The Layeha: Calling the Taliban to Account’, Kabul/Berlin: AAN, 2011.

[13] Sami Yousafzai and Urs Gehriger, ‘The new Taliban codex’, Die Weltwoche, 16 November 2006.

[14] Thomas H. Johnson, ‘Analyzing the Taliban code of conduct: reinventing the Layeha’, Monterrey : Naval Postgraduate School, 2009.

[15] See Kate Clark, ‘The Layha: calling the Talban to account’, Berlin : AAN, 2011.

[16] Interview with Taliban group commander in Wardak, October 2011.

[17] Interview with Taliban commander in Wardak, September 2011

[18] Thomas H. Johnson and Matthew C. Dupee, ‘Analysing the new Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha): an assessment of changing perspectives and strategies of the Afghan Taliban’, Central Asian Survey, vol. 31 issue 1, 2012, 77-91 78.

[19] Mike Williams, ‘How the British presence in Sangin restored trust in government’, Guardian, 20th September 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/20/british-forces-in-sangin, retrieved 14th March 2013.

[20] Interview with Taliban group commander in Wardak, October 2011.

[21] Taliban cadre in Peshawar, contacted October 2012.

[22] Interview with Former Taliban commander, Musa Qala, Helmand, July 2011.

[23] For the case of two commanders in Wardak, see Anand Gopal, ‘The battle for Afghanistan : Militancy and conflict in Kandahar’, New America Foundation, 2010, p. 23.

[24] Interview with Taliban judge in Badghis, autumn 2011.

[25] Interview with Taliban Commander, north-eastern Afghanistan, September 2012.

[26] Interview with Taliban commander in Nahr-e Seraj, Helmand, summer 2011.

[27] Interview with Taliban commander, Marjah, Helmand, 2011.

[28] Interview Taliban commander, Kajaki, Helmand, summer 2011.

[29] Interview with Taliban commander, Garmser, summer 2011..

[30] Interviews carried out in April-July 2012.

[31] Interview with Taliban commander, Nawzad, Helmand, summer 2011.

[32] Interview with Taliban commander, Helmand, December 2011.

[33] Interview with Taliban commander, Sangin, summer 2011.

[34] Interview with Taliban commander, Musa Qala, summer 2011.

[35] Interview with Taliban commander, Sangin, summer 2011.

[36] Taliban sources in Helmand, contacted in autumn 2011.

[37] Interview with Taliban commander in Helmand, December 2011.

[38] Interviews with Taliban commanders in Helmand, 2011-12.

[39] Interview with Taliban commander, Nahr-i-Seraj, Helmand, May 2012.

[40] Interviews with Taliban commander in Helmand, 2011 and throughout Afghanistan, 2012.

[41] See C. Franco and A. Giustozzi, ‘Revolution in the counter-revolution’, Central Asian Affairs, 3, 2016.

[42] Taliban sources in Miran Shah and in Peshawar, contacted in various occasions in 2012-16; Al-Qaida sources in Afghanistan, contacted in late 2015 and early 2016.

[43] Interviews with Taliban cadres working in the different Recruitment Commissions (Peshawar, Miran Shah, Quetta and Mashhad), spring and summer 2015.

[44] Interviews with Taliban commanders in Wardak, summer 2014.

Few people in late 2001 would have predicted that two US administrations later Afghanistan would have still figured as a major unresolved foreign policy issue for the US government. Although Afghanistan has dropped dramatically as a priority for America, both Afghanistan’s country outlook and the Afghan US foreign policy priority appear in a much worse shape today. However unpleasant this sight might be (and it is indeed), can the Trump Administration simply walk away from it? Despite the rhetoric used by candidate Trump during his electoral campaign, and his verbal opposition to ‘nation-building’, it might well be that the consequences of walking away might be even more negative and unpleasant than staying put, not only for Afghanistan but also for the Trump Administration and for America’s foreign policy. But on the other hand, can the US stay in Afghanistan forever, seemingly without making much progress in consolidating a friendly government there?

In fact during the first two months or so of the Trump Administration, the prospect of a complete, sudden American cut-off appears to be receding. None of the main figures in the security apparatus of the Administration are in favour of abandoning Afghanistan.

But arguably the Trump Administration cannot afford to do business as usual in Afghanistan either. This is not just because it would not look good, after all the rhetoric against the shortcomings of the Obama Administration, to follow exactly the same path. It is also clear that the current eroding stalemate, with Afghan security forces losing more and more control, is not sustainable indefinitely. It does not seem too likely to be leading to a negotiated settlement either. It could lead to several more years of indecisive conflict, or it could lead to defeat.

Something has to be done; but what? This paper reviews the debates in the US and highlights the options and the opportunities and risk implicit in each of them. We start however with a short survey of where the ‘Afghanistan project’ of America is at now.

When the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community earlier this year, Afghanistan earned this assessment: “Political cohesion will remain a challenge for Kabul as the National Unity Government will confront larger and more divisive issues later in 2016, including the implementation of election reforms, long-delayed parliamentary elections, and a potential change by a Loya Jirga that might fundamentally alter Afghanistan’s constitutional order.”

At the time, the leaders of the National Unity Government and their senior officials disagreed with the prognosis of impending divisiveness. In contrast, they emphasized the likely challenges they would face as centering around threats from the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS. The void of regional cooperation, particularly Pakistan’s inaction, brings the Taliban leaders to the negotiating table and denying them sanctuary in Pakistan.

Yet the rising tension between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah that was recently rendered embarrassingly public suggests that Afghanistan is indeed confronting a looming crisis of division. The frustrations of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah became public after Abdullah went on criticizing Ashraf Ghani in a press conference for not meeting him in the past three months, and calling the president unfit for the job. In response, to Abdullah’s criticism Ashraf Ghani’s office issued a statement called Abdullah’s comments irresponsible and not in line with the standard and spirit of governance.

The political crisis between the leaders of the National Unity Government comes at a time when Taliban are gaining momentum in strategic parts of Afghanistan. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are losing a key battleground. They are in full retreat from key strategic areas such as southern Helmand province. The presence of the Taliban around Lashkar Gah, in some places as close as only four or five kilometers from the provincial capital, suggest they intend to encircle the city similar to the siege of Kunduz last September, using the adjacent districts as a launching pad.

These moves show plainly the Taliban’s ambition to capture an important provincial capital. If the Taliban managed to capture Lashgar Gah, it would have incalculable political and security consequences for the Government in Kabul, and to the allied efforts of the international community, in particular the United States. Similarly, key districts in Kunduz, Baghlan and Takhar provinces fell into the hands of the Taliban.

Since the beginning of the year, the Afghan National Army has faced a dramatic casualty rate in the battlefield. Army recruitment has reached its lowest point to date and desertion has risen to an all time highest. These events are ultimately attributed to the weak leadership and lack of political will of the National Unity Government to implement desperately needed reforms.

There are also indications of growing ethnic polarization in the northern provinces of Afghanistan as a sizeable number of the former warlords are scheming ways to remobilize and re-arm their followers against the Taliban if the political and security situation deteriorates further. If such trends manifest, Afghanistan will face a heightened political and military fragmentation as the means of violence is decentralized in the hands of competitive rearmament by different groups, with their diverse agendas.

Another serious political threat facing the National Unity Government is former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who has been engaged in ceaseless politicking with influential figures and groups from around the country. It is speculated that the hive of intrigues buzzing behind the walls of Karzai’s fortress next door to the presidential palace are aimed at manipulating a take over of an expected upcoming Loya Jirga (“grand council”) mandated to decide upon changing the Constitution, one of the provisions of the formation of the Unity Government. If Karzai has control, whether direct or indirect, over the outcome of the Loya Jirga, he could contrive to dissolve the NUG and establish a provisional government, headed by himself. This has served as an excuse for the NUG leaders to delay the Loya Jirga. Yet, these very delays are emboldening Karzai and leading to further deterioration of political legitimacy ultimately more harmful than Karzai’s meddling.

If any or all of these processes are allowed to continue unhindered—a re-armament by warlord militias, a territory grab by the Taliban, or further delay of the promises of electoral and constitutional reform of the Unity Government—it would drastically intensify the conflict, militarize the society even further and sabotage the precarious progress in strengthening the rule of law. There will be a deepening of the crisis of political legitimacy. Under these fragile circumstances, Afghanistan cannot afford any of those outcomes.

Afghanistan has long been a playground for shortsighted leaders who sold the future of the Afghan people in exchange for expediency, for their own gratification or glory, for power, or simply, for money. Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah must break this pattern, by putting aside their differences, pettiness and egos. Instead, they must face up to the security crisis encircling the country, and the cracks in the ship that have started to leak as a result of inattention to the promises made at the outset of their discordant ascent to the palace. Now is the time to lay the foundation anew. It is time to deliver Afghans a reformed political structure, elections and security. It is time to actually become a unity government.

Ali Mohammad Ali is an independent researcher and analyst based in Washington D.C. Ali has served as Senior Advisor to the National Security Council of Afghanistan on issues of counterterrorism and intelligence.

More than two years have elapsed since February 2014, when the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) published a report on the ANA entitled “The Afghan National Army: Sustainability Challenges beyond Financial Aspects.” During this period the missions of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) ended, and the Afghan security forces faced their first fighting season without the support of foreign combat troops (although limited air support has been available on a few occasions). It is time, therefore, to update that assessment of the ANA in light of its performance during the past year.

One 2015 was by all accounts a difficult year for the ANA. At the beginning of the fighting season in April, the Taliban managed to penetrate the defences of Kunduz city and briefly occupy part of it before being pushed out toward the suburbs. The following months saw a standoff as the Taliban retained control of the suburb of Gor Tepa and of several district centres around Kunduz. Finally, in September, the Taliban managed to take Kunduz city, forcing the ANA to counterattack and fight for two weeks to retain control. It is widely believed that only the deployment of United States (US) Special Forces and US air force assets allowed the ANA to eventually push the Taliban out of the city. The fall of Kunduz produced major shock waves in Afghanistan and beyond, as the fighting entered an urban area for the first time. Kunduz, near the border with Tajikistan, is far away from Taliban supply lines that are based in Pakistan and have to cross several Afghan provinces. Kunduz was once a stronghold of the anti-Taliban opposition, and its capture must be considered a major logistical achievement for the Taliban.

From February 2015 onward, the Taliban and the ANA fought over the mountain districts in the north of Helmand Province, where the positions held by government forces gradually eroded. In October, the offensive was renewed, and for the first time since 2008 the Taliban came close to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Also in October, the security forces ceded ground in neighbouring Uruzgan province, and a Taliban offensive in Ghazni and Zabul cut off the southern highway for about ten days, for the first time since the start of the war. Throughout the country many roads became insecure, particularly for government officials, and dozens of district centres fell into Taliban hands, though most of them remained that way only for short periods of time.

As the end of the fighting season approached, the Taliban were able to keep fighting throughout November, another unusual development. The mood of optimism that could be sensed in Kabul in the summer, in the wake of news of a struggle of succession within the Taliban, was replaced by doomsday expectations and panic. More than ever, the question was whether the ANA would be able to contain the insurgency.1

The February 2014 AREU report focused on the nonfinancial sustainability of the ANA, looking in particular at organisational resilience in the face of adversity. A number of benchmarks were identified within two broad categories:

• The mobilisation and management of human resources;

The quality of rank-and-file recruitment, relative to the composition of Afghan society:

◦ The degree of dependence on external advice and services provided by foreign military forces;

◦ The production and management of skilled manpower for the task of providing combat support: indirect fire, close air support, improvised explosive devices (IED) countermeasures, etc.;

◦ The production and management of manpower with the skills needed to provide logistical support and maintain units on the ground (the so-called “combat service support”).

• The extent of political interference and its disruptive effects on command and control:

◦ The extent of meritocracy within the ANA;

◦ The solidity of the chain of command;

◦ Factionalism and ethnicism.

The methodology adopted for this update consisted of nine free-flowing but structured interviews with MoD and ANA officers, supplemented by contacts with foreign diplomatic personnel. The authors also collated and utilised material available in the public domain (articles, broadcast transcripts and released and leaked documents). Even less official documentation and data was available than for the 2014 study, as the MoD has tightened policies concerning the release of data.

This update follows the structure of the February 2014 AREU report, except that it adds a section (Section 7), which discusses two aspects of the ANA’s current status that have emerged as major weaknesses: morale and leadership.

The educational sector is a very important aspect of state-building. As schools are a primary vehicle for conveying national and civic education to the youth, education is a very political subject. Arguably, studying education in Afghanistan from a political science and sociological perspective has been neglected.

One key assumption of donors in Afghanistan is that the quantitative growth in the availability of state education is always a positive indicator and that the number of students enrolling in high schools is an unmistakably positive sign.1 However, is this always the case? The literature abounds in other cases in which the numerical rise of youth in education, not matched by an improvement in the quality of education and/or growth in educational opportunities, leads to youth radicalisation and political instability.2 There is anecdotal evidence that the lack of employment prospects and the dissatisfaction about the functioning of the Afghan educational system are driving frustrated high school youth toward extremist groups.

In 2010, an AREU study investigated university students and their political orientation.3 This current project instead focuses on state-imparted secondary education. The companion policy brief to this study, “The Politicisation of Afghanistan’s High Schools,” summarises the findings of the survey of high schools in ten provinces of Afghanistan. While this report draws from those findings, it additionally tries to explain the patterns identified in the survey through the material gathered in a series of interviews. The qualitative interviews sought to gather information relative to the following questions:

How aware are student activists of the political debates going on in Afghanistan and how do they position themselves within these debates?

What factors drive recruitment to political groups?

What are the implications of political activism among students?

The interviews focused on upper secondary schools, where political engagement is more likely than in lower secondary. The existing literature on this topic is very limited.4

The present report is organised into five main sections. After outlining the methodology, the first section, entitled “The Ministry of Education’s Approach to Politics in the Classroom,” discusses in general terms the impact of the ban on political activity in high schools. The next section focuses on the activists of pro-government parties and groups, discussing in detail the patterns of recruitment, aims, activities, and views. Two similar sections follow to discuss the anti-government activists of legal and illegal organisations, respectively. The fifth section, “Are High School Students Becoming Radicalised?,” draws together evidence of on-going radicalisation.