5
LAST Friday’s outbreak of violence in Kabul, which claimed dozens of lives, is believed to be linked to a power struggle among the Afghan Taliban in the wake of the earlier disclosure that Mullah Omar has been dead for at least two years.
It was followed on Monday by a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport, suggesting there could be worse to come, with the Taliban apparently keen to demonstrate that they remain a potent force in Omar’s absence.
They were in no rush to pick a successor, though, until knowledge of his death became public, and it’s very likely a substantial segment of the force was itself unaware of being formally leaderless. Resentment over being kept in the dark may well have fed into what looks like a power struggle, with challenges emerging to Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s ascendancy.
The mujahideen rebellion in Afghanistan sowed the seeds for much of what has transpired thereafter.
In practical terms, one immediate consequence was the suspension of the Pakistan-brokered negotiations in Murree between the Afghan government and the Taliban. A settlement of any kind was an extremely long shot, but at least the two sides were talking.
Now the talks are off for the time being, violence has returned with a vengeance, and Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has pointed the finger of blame towards Pakistan, claiming that is where terrorists came from. That’s not an unusual charge, but this time it comes from someone who has made an effort to mend fences with Islamabad.
The creation of the Taliban and their conquest of Kabul 21 years or so ago was viewed with pride in Pakistan as a considerable military success, and at least a section of the khaki establishment had no intention of abandoning its Afghan assets despite the post-9/11 exigencies. Its possible role in formulating a strategy for the period that began with the departure of most Western forces is inevitably unclear, but there are legitimate questions to be asked and it’s hardly illogical for suspicions to arise.
One obvious question is how key figures in the Pakistan intelligence hierarchy could possibly have been unaware of Omar’s demise — even if he didn’t, as Afghan intelligence sources claim, die in a Karachi hospital. And if it was a calculated conspiracy of silence, were any other interested parties — such as the CIA, for instance — complicit in it?
Similar questions arose, of course, after Osama bin Laden was hunted down in his home near the Kakul military academy outside Abbottabad more than four years ago, and they are yet to be convincingly answered. It appears, meanwhile, that even Al Qaeda’s leadership was unaware of Omar’s fate, given that Ayman al-Zawahiri re-pledged allegiance to him just last year.
But then again, who knows whether Zawahiri himself is alive? After all, not long after the Omar newsflash, it was reported that Jalaluddin Haqqani has also been dead for a year. His son Sirajuddin is purportedly one of Mansour’s deputies. The Haqqanis are believed to have been particularly dear to the Pakistanis, but there are contradictory reports about where Mansour stands in this respect.
The latter’s belligerent statements belie his reputation as a relatively moderate Talib — although that doesn’t mean very much in the context of violent extremism. But differences of opinion do matter and could have a significant impact on determining the future of Afghanistan.
Although even its modern roots go back a long way, the upsurge in Islamist extremism can be traced back to a series of unfortunate events in the late 1970s: General Ziaul Haq’s military coup in Pakistan, the communist takeover in Kabul (which was followed less than two years later by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), and the advent of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime in Tehran.
The well-funded mujahideen rebellion in Afghanistan sowed the seeds for much of what has transpired thereafter, including Taliban rule (and subsequent insurgency, which inevitably spilled over into Pakistan), and the role played across the Middle East (and beyond) by returnees from the Afghan jihad. The US played a primary role in propelling that jihad, and then was surprised — even hurt — by the blowback.
It stupidly waded back into the miasma and compounded its folly by invading Iraq, helping to create the conditions that facilitated the emergence of Daesh or the self-styled Islamic State (IS). Last Saturday marked the first anniversary of its anti-IS intervention, and there’s little to show for it thus far beyond a mounting death toll.
There have been reports in recent months of small groups of Taliban drifting into IS, which has already displaced Al Qaeda as the go-to one-stop-shop for fulfilling ‘jihadist’ fantasies; disarray among the former followers of Mullah Omar can only facilitate its inroads into Afghanistan and, sooner or later, Pakistan.
There is certainly no cause to mourn Omar’s demise, but nor is there any obvious reason to assume that his absence opens up pathways to peace.
Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2015
On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play
