The strategy used by the Taliban to collapse the Afghan government

It took only a few days for the Taliban to conquer Afghanistan, sometimes occupying the main provincial capitals with just a few shots.

Much has been said about the military collapse of the Afghan army, but interviews with Taliban leaders, Afghan politicians, diplomats and other observers suggest that the Islamist movement set the stage for its victory long before the events of last week.

Ready for a tougher struggle to regain control of a country they ruled from 1996 to 2001, for months the insurgents cultivated relationships with local political and military officials and tribal elders. This, combined with the anticipated withdrawal of Western troops some twenty years after the start of America’s longest war, broke trust in the Kabul administration and encouraged people to defect. “The Taliban didn’t want to fight,” says Asfandyar Mir, a South Asian security analyst at Stanford University. “They wanted to provoke a political collapse.”

Towns and villages have collapsed like dominoes, even in the north of the country, where they are traditionally weaker, culminating in the capture of the capital Kabul on 15 August. A Taliban commander said that once government forces saw that the United States was actually leaving, the resistance crumbled. In just a week, all major cities in Afghanistan, from Kunduz in the north to Kandahar in the south, had fallen. “It does not mean that these Afghan commanders who surrendered to us have changed or become loyal: only that there were no more dollars,” he said, referring to the financial support the government and military received from the West for nearly two decades. “They surrendered like goats and sheep”.

When his fighters took control of the presidential palace, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the main architects of the victory as head of the Taliban political office in Doha, said it was an unrivaled triumph, which came in unexpectedly fast. “We didn’t expect this situation,” he said. Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban resident in Doha, said a large number of districts have been conquered through the kind of contacts that have a long tradition in Afghanistan, where inducing rivals to switch sides has always been a common tactic. “(We have had) direct talks with local security forces and also used the mediation of tribal elders and Muslim scholars,” he said. “In all of Afghanistan, not in a particular province or in a particular geographic location.”

After being kicked out of power in 2001, with the US-backed military campaign, the Taliban gradually reconstituted themselves, financing themselves with opium and illegal mining, generally avoiding large-scale confrontations as long as US air power he supported the Afghan army. Instead they focused on remote villages and isolated checkpoints, spreading fear to cities through suicide bombings. In the meantime, they have taken control of many provincial areas with a shadow form of government, establishing their own courts and tax systems. In the northern and western areas, where the Taliban movement, mainly of Pashtun ethnicity, was traditionally weaker, they moved to gain local support and conquer Tajiks, Uzbeks and other representatives of the ethnic mosaic of Afghanistan.

During the advance, Baradar managed to preserve a united front between the political leadership of the Taliban and fighters across the country, overcoming the sometimes conflicting interests on issues ranging from peace talks to sharing the proceeds of poppy cultivation.

“Our heads of security and other commissions all come from local ethnic groups,” explained Shaheen. “That is why we were able to take all the districts of those provinces through negotiations and talks. It is not the same situation as in the past ”.

A president on the run
Once US President Joe Biden confirmed the deal reached with the Taliban by the previous Washington administration, the long campaign in the provinces quickly paid off.

Despite the peace accords signed before the withdrawal, the US military and intelligence had clearly signaled that the Taliban had stepped up attacks on district capitals and were trying to block highways as they prepared to attack major cities.

In addition, a series of targeted killings of key Afghan security figures was launched “with the aim of weakening morale and undermining public confidence in the government,” a state department report said in July.

After taking over remote countryside areas, the Taliban secured border posts, putting an end to a crucial source of income for the government and the support of local clans, who traditionally withheld a portion of customs duties in exchange for their loyalty.

The strategy has fatally weakened the government of Ashraf Ghani, a Washington-backed Western-trained academic with little popular support outside of Kabul and poor relations even with some of his own commanders.

Once he fled the palace on August 15, his defense minister, General Bismillah Mohammadi, tweeted accusing him of “tying our hands behind his back and selling our country. Curses on Ghani and his gang ”.

As a Pashtun viewed with distrust by other ethnic groups, Ghani had relied on the support of the unruly leaders of the former Northern Alliance, whom the United States had recruited to defeat the Taliban in 2001. Among them were Atta Mohammad Noor, former governor of the province of Balkh, and the Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum. But the Taliban’s patient efforts also undermined the sponsorship system that kept these leaders in place, and they fled as well.

(Jibran Ahmad and Peshawar, Gibran Peshimam and Islamabad and Alasdair Pal and New Delhi)