KABUL is on the brink and so is Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban’s spectacular blitzkrieg that saw them wrestle control of swathes of Afghanistan from the American-backed Ashraf Ghani administration to the Afghan capital of roughly 4.6 million people has spawned basically two major questions.

What next for Afghanistan and what caused the dramatic meltdown of the Afghan national defence forces that the Americans spent $83.9 billion to train and equip with modern weaponry till June 30, 2021, asked the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) in his quarterly report to the Congress issued in July.

The beleaguered President Ashraf Ghani has resigned and has left Afghanistan, leaving behind an uncertain administrative setup. The Taliban are waiting for peaceful transition of power, in their definition, transition of power to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

This “transition” government, which may not be interim, would then decide its composition that who is to invite to be part of the “inclusive government”. And herein lies the problem.

With Ashraf Ghani’s humiliating departure and Taliban’s dramatic gains at the battlefield and arrival at Kabul’s gates, the terms of negotiations would no longer be among equals. There is a clear victor and the victor will now decide the terms of an inclusive arrangement in the country.

Questions that loom large are about the nature of transition administration, cause of Afghan forces meltdown

And while it is evident that Taliban would not want to have it alone, it would be entirely up to them to decide who they are comfortable to work within the new dispensation, taking into account the ethnic composition of the country and giving representation to other segments of the society, including women.

Read: Longest war: Were America’s two decades in Afghanistan worth it?

This may leave out the ruling elite in Kabul, some old lot, former mujahedeen leaders and warlords who continued to be part of regime from Hamid Karzai to Ashraf Ghani. Taliban may make some exceptions but not at the risk of betraying their core principles and their rank and file.

But as Taliban write history by returning to Kabul as victors, the real challenge before them would be their transition from a military movement to a political one to manage and govern a new generation of urban, educated citizens, a vocal civil society, media and social media. They would be watched closely.

Fears still abound, given their strict and extreme enforcement of their interpretation of the Shariah laws particularly those concerning women and girls education, notwithstanding Taliban overdrive to burnish their new credentials of having learnt from their past mistakes and commit to grant women right to work and educate, albeit with hijabs and not necessarily burqas.

The second biggest challenge before the Taliban would be reining in their ‘international’ allies, Al Qaeda, the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement and others — between 12,000 and 15,000 according to Pakistani intelligence estimates – a commitment they made virtually at all international forums and the US and individual neighbouring states, Pakistan, China, Iran and the Central Asian republics included. How will the Taliban ensure that these groups with agendas of their own, do not pose a threat is a million dollar question.

From Pakistani perspective, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also said to be in the thousands, would be the most immediate cause of concern. They are in the areas controlled by the Afghan Taliban. A senior security official recently described the relationship between the two outfits as “two faces of the same coin”. What the Afghan Taliban will do with the TTP next would be one factor that would define their future relationship with their benefactors.

While the Afghan Taliban leadership ponders their next steps to honour their words with action on ground, researchers and historians would continue to work to resolve the one biggest puzzle in modern warfare. How did the Afghan Taliban, numbering just under 100,000, according to Pakistani intelligence estimates, achieve the remarkable victory without much violence and in most cases without even firing a bullet?

And most importantly, how and why the Afghan National Defence Forces of 300,000 including police and the air force “at least on paper”, according to SIGAR, simply melted away without putting up much or any resistance?

Battered by high casualty rate, frequent desertions, in fact at times the rate of desertion was higher than the rate of recruitment, and corruption involving claiming salaries of non-existent ghost soldiers, no one in the decision and policy-making circles in Kabul and the international allied forces knew its actual strength.

In fact, SIGAR in its report noted with “serious concern ……. the questionable accuracy of data on the actual strength of the force”.

Low on morale, issues concerning pays, lack of rotation owing to shortage of fighting men, reinforcement and supplies and absence of close air-cover that kept the Taliban at bay in the past, may have contributed to large-scale desertions.

But there may be yet another reason for the dramatic reversal of future for the Taliban. For months, according to a source familiar with the situation, while the Taliban engaged with the Kabul administration in Doha to find a political settlement, they quietly worked to engage their opponents back home, both at the tactical as well as the political level.

Sadruddin Ibrahim was their commander in charge for all territory to the north of Kabul, while Abdul Qayyum Zakir looked after southern Afghanistan. The real deal-breaker or maker however was an ethnic Tajik commander, Qari Fasihuddin, who successfully managed to win over his fellow Tajik, Uzbek and Hazaras to his side. Senior Taliban figures, the likes of Abdul Wakil Mutawakkil, are directly engaged to allay fears of sceptics.

Few people outside the Taliban circle knew that even those in the Ghani administration who were open and harsh critics of the Taliban had a back-channel communication with them. And amongst them were some leading figures, military as well as political, who had lost faith in their own president, they saw being too bureaucratic and isolated.

In the end, the Taliban pulled up a remarkable feat, staging a comeback without much bloodshed and in most cases as peacefully as it could have been, negating fears of many of a civil war breaking out in Afghanistan.

But dangers remain. Much however will depend on how the Afghan Taliban move towards an inclusive government, giving representation to ethnic and other groups. The Afghan constitution will most certainly be done away with but what system of governance under the rubric of “Islamic Emirate” Taliban will introduce may become a divisive and controversial issue. Also important will be the Taliban decision regarding the future of the ruling political elite and other influential figures.

The situation in Afghanistan remains fluid and potential of it plunging into a civil war remains out there. The Afghans aspirations of peace and normalcy largely hinge now on the acumen of the Taliban leadership. Afghanistan is at the crossroads, yet again.

Published in Dawn, August 16h, 2021