Targeting the Taliban
The Curious Non-State of Afghanistan

Unless we are witnessing one of the most elaborate disinformation-based military feints in history, it is clear that the United States intends to begin its war against terrorism with some sort of military operations aimed not only at Usama bin Ladin's network but, apparently, at the Taliban regime in Afghanistan as well. Virtually no one expects a conventional ground war in Afghanistan, where British and Russian armies have been swallowed whole in the past. (On the "Afghanistan Syndrome", see this issue's Dossier, Part 2 of our series on "What Kind of War?".) The nature of the war itself is discussed in other parts of this issue. But the curious state of affairs which prevails in Afghanistan makes it useful to reflect on the nature of the regime being targeted.

The Taliban do not really fit the traditional definition of a state supporter of terrorism because, simply, they do not fit the traditional definition of a state, at least not as that term has been understood in the Western state system since the Peace of Westphalia. Modern Afghanistan's statehood evolved in part because it was the marchland between British India, Qajar Iran and an expanding Russia; it was a classic buffer state. Since 1979 Russian occupation, civil war, and internal chaos has produced what might either be called a failed state or an entity which has only some of the trappings of sovereignty.

Although the Taliban have some sort of control, or at least loose suzerainty, over about 90% of the country, they have never been recognized by more than three countries and are currently recognized by only one, Pakistan. (Saudi Arabia and the UAE have broken relations since September 11, though the Saudis had effectively frozen relations long before.) The Taliban call their entity the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The United Nations seat for Afghanistan is still held by the former government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, which calls itself the Islamic State of Afghanistan, and its fighters the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, though almost everyone else calls them the Northern Alliance.

But when one says that the Taliban control 90% of the country, that too is misleading. They can claim some sort of allegiance from that much of the country because local warlords have, in some form, pledged it to them. They clearly control Kandahar, Kabul and some other major cities, but the loyalty of others (Herat, Mazar-i Sharif) is in some question.

In fact, it is difficult to define exactly how Afghanistan under the Taliban is governed. There is a "Cabinet" in Kabul, but the country is not being run from Kabul, but from Kandahar. The only Cabinet departments that seem to function throughout the territory they control are said to be Interior (the internal security apparatus) and the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice, the country's notorious morals police. While there are other countries where the only ministries which really work are the security ministries, in the Taliban regions of Afghanistan this is particularly the case. And neither the "capital" in Kabul nor the "Cabinet" seem to have real power; it is the movement's Shura Council in Kandahar, and its strange "Amir al-Mu'minin", Mullah Mohammad ‘Umar (Profile, this issue), who seem to have all real power.

Any discussion of the Taliban's ability to constrain or arrest Usama bin Ladin — and the claim by the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan that Bin Ladin is "under our control" — brings up the question of who controls whom. There is some sort of link between ‘Umar and Bin Ladin: by some accounts ‘Umar's daughter is one of Bin Ladin's wives; by others, Bin Ladin's daughter is one of ‘Umar's, and it is possible that both are true (or both false, since the Taliban have denied the reports of a marital link). Clearly, ‘Umar has committed the Taliban to Bin Ladin's fate to a degree many of his fellow Taliban are said to resent. Bin Ladin arrived in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan in 1996; he of course had followers there from earlier days fighting the Soviets. At first in 1996 he lived in the area controlled by Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, but soon allied with the Taliban and may have helped fund their successful offensive which took Kabul that year. Arab and other non-Afghan followers have flocked to Afghanistan since his arrival, and have great power among the Taliban today. Some have even said that Bin Ladin himself is really the de facto Defense Minister of the Taliban government; he is, at any rate, probably responsible for most of the national revenues.

All of the above suggests that it may be less appropriate to think of the Taliban as a state supporter of terrorism but rather as a quasi-state which has been taken over as a wholly-owned subsidiary by a terrorist movement, Bin Ladin's.

It seems clear that the US intends, not so much to try to impose an alternative government on Afghanistan (which British and Russian invasions always failed in the long run to do), as to collapse, dissolve or otherwise remove the present quasi-government. While the US has not set removal of the Taliban as a specific goal, it seems to be implicit in the goals already stated, and if the Taliban are today essentially intertwined with Bin Ladin's movement, then it clearly would stand or fall with that movement.

Howe vulnerable are the Taliban? Most of their rhetoric has been in terms of defending Afghanistan against a conventional war, but clearly the US does not intend to fight on those terms. The Taliban may indeed be susceptible to fragmentation and collapse: they were built up out of a series of alliances and changes of sides by local authorities who welcomed a restoration of order, even order of a highly puritanical nature. Not all of those components share the particular vision of the Taliban or of Mullah ‘Umar. There are reports that some Taliban provincial leaders may be disillusioned with ‘Umar, and that could provide an opportunity to fracture and fragment the movement. Efforts by the former King (Profile, this issue) to summon a Loya Jirga or grand assembly to find a new government for the country also seek to find alternatives other than simply supporting the existing Northern Alliance, which includes some rather unsavory figures as well as some respectable ones. A broad-based alternative that is neither clearly a creature of the US nor ethnically based like the Northern Alliance might well win support from some local warlords currently in the Taliban camp. The apparent breach between the Taliban and the Pakistani government, if real, also undercuts the ability of the Taliban to hold the country together.

A "new kind of war" against the Taliban also raises another question: how do you know when you've won? The movement has never really operated out of the national capital: ‘Umar visited Kabul only once, right after the Taliban took it. So the "fall of Kabul" to anti-Taliban forces would not necessarily signal that the Taliban are defeated. (In fact, with new finances and US or Russian air cover, the Northern Alliance could quite possibly take Kabul again.) The Taliban control of Kandahar would certainly be one bellwether, though. If Kandahar were to go over to another faction, that would probably undercut Taliban authority everywhere, but their grip is also strongest there. But precisely because the Taliban are not a state or government in the conventional sense, their fall, if and when it comes, will be harder to define in a conventional sense.

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