Security forces affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forced gas stations to close in areas controlled by Turkish-backed factions and set up a temporary checkpoint there.
Well-informed sources told Al-Monitor that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s security apparatus has shut down several gas stations near the Ghazawiya crossing in the western countryside of Aleppo. The crossing separates the HTS-controlled areas in Idlib and the western countryside of Aleppo from and the areas controlled by the Sham Legion, a faction affiliated with the Free Syrian Army.
Les murs sont par endroit éventrés, le minaret criblé de balles et certains esprits toujours traumatisés, mais la vie reprend son cours dans la zaouïa al-Asmariya, le plus important sanctuaire soufi de Libye, partiellement détruit par des islamistes radicaux.
Une poignée d’élèves assis en cercle retranscrivent sur des tablettes en bois les versets coraniques dictés par leur enseignant. Dans une salle adjacente à la madrassa (école d’enseignement coranique), d’autres consultent quelques-uns des vieux manuscrits sur la théologie ou le droit musulman que compte la bibliothèque.
Afghanistan was the frontline of the United States declared war on terror twenty years ago. This led to the US invasion of the country after the September 11 terrorist attacks, where there was a search for Osama bin Laden, and other leaders of the Al-Qaeda movement. The Taliban were dislodged as punishment for providing safe haven for Al-Qaeda, leading to a twenty-year occupation in an experiment to bring a democratic society to a country where power was traditionally decentralized in the hands of tribal warlords.
The Afghanistan war and occupation cost the US a staggering US $2.25 trillion. The war resulted in the deaths of 66.000 Afghan military forces and police, 47,000 civilians, and 50,000 Taliban fighters. On the US side 7,400 solders, contractors, and allied security forces lost their lives.
Over the last few months, the Taliban was able to fill the void of withdrawing US and allied forces very easily, moving back into Kabul without the need to fight. The speed of this was so quick, US and allied personnel are being evacuated in scenes of panic at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul. Overnight, the country was renamed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA).
The US withdraw from Afghanistan has left a massive geo-political vacuum. Due to the perceived sudden nature of this event, although the withdrawal was staged over a long period of time, it’s now uncertain what exactly will happen, and which nations will be the winners and losers.
Is this a US withdrawal from Central Asia? Hardly, as the US didn’t project power from Afghanistan. US presence was primarily concerned with internal security. The US withdrawal has freed up resources and stopped a financial sink-hole. However, with no more physical presence in Afghanistan, other dynamics will occur, changing the regional balance of power.
China has the most to gain with its presence throughout Central Asia. China has a strategic partnership with Pakistan, and is developing one with Iran. China is also working with Russia under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which Iran is joining. With many Central and South Asian countries as members, this block could act as a buffer to US trade and diplomatic influence across the region.
China has a number of potential strategic interests it can now pursue with Afghanistan. China shares a 50km border with Afghanistan on the Eastern side of Afghanistan’s Badakhishan. This will allow direct air routes to both Kabul and Iran. There are currently no direct road or railway between China and Afghanistan, so the easiest route from China to Afghanistan will be through Pakistan, along the CPEC route, which is largely completed to Peshawar. This will also by-pass areas potentially controlled by the Northern Alliance.
The new land route to Iran will enhance China’s ability to trade with Iran and the Middle East, without relying on the sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf, patrolled by the Indian and US navies. China can increase its oil supply from Iran at discounted prices, and side-stepping US sanctions. In addition, the Taliban government in Kabul will provide China with the opportunity to mine rare earth metals, where China controls 80 percent of current world trade.
China is said to have agreement from the Taliban, that it will not assist the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uyghur organization that aims to establish an independent East Turkestan state, where China’s Xinjiang Province is today. China also sees that Afghanistan, as a location potentially nurturing extremist Islamic terrorist organizations may divert US and other western military resources away from containing China in other regions.
A stable Afghanistan is very much in China’s interest, and US withdrawal has given China a massive opportunity to extend its influence. China could also provide the new Taliban government an alternative source of funds, if IMF and World Bank funds are frozen.
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan will be weary of a Taliban government. Over the decades there have been numerous border clashes, and involvement by Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in the last two Chechen wars. There were Taliban offensives along the Tajikistan border last month, where over 2,000 Afghan troops were forced over the border, and residents of Badakhshan fled across the border. This led to Tajikistan president Emomali Rahman mobilizing troops and request Russian assistance. Former Soviet Central Asia is being bombarded with Islamic propaganda, where there is a growing following of Salafism in rural areas, and an estimated 5,000 militants spread around the region.
Any persecution of ethnic groups by the Taliban could lead to wider frictions. Tajiks would seek assistance from Tajikistan, and Russia, while the Uzbeks would turn to Uzbekistan, Turkey, and Russia. Iran has assisted Afghanistan’s Hazara Shiites fight against the Taliban, which has persecuted them.
The Central Asian states are a buffer between Afghanistan and Russia, where Russian President Putin has already offered the US, the use of bases within Central Asia for intelligence gathering. Any assistance for the Northern Alliance would have to come through these Central Asian nations.
The withdraw of the US may potentially increase Chinese influence in the region, a threat to Indian interests. The circumstances around the US withdraw comes at a time when the US is trying to get closer to India bilaterally and through the QUAD, and may slow up India’s warmth about closer relations in the short term.
For India, the Taliban in Kabul can be seen as a regional-political win for Pakistan. Pakistan was the home of many Taliban leaders for two decades after 9/11. The Pakistan army and ISI played a major role in the formation of the Taliban in 1994. However, its most likely the Taliban will not forget Pakistan’s cooperation with the US over the last two decades. The Taliban can also be seen as a nationalist Pashtun movement, where there is a Pakistan Taliban that was pushed over into Afghanistan by the Pakistan army. The Taliban, both Afghan and Pakistani aspire to create a Pashtun Islamic emirate.
This week, a spokesman for the Taliban, stated that they do not accept the Durand Line, a line drawn by the British back in 1893 to define the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Durand Line cut through lands occupied by the Pashtun people, who dominate the Taliban. Fifteen million Pashtuns live within Afghanistan, with a total population of 40 million, and 42 million Pashtuns live in Pakistan, which has a total population of 216 million. This is potentially and area of conflict within Pakistan if more militant and nationalistic Taliban pursue this issue, particularly if the Taliban splinters. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar spent 8 years in a Pakistani prison, a Pashtun who could be appointed appointed president of the IEA.
Europe is bracing itself for a new surge of Afghani immigrants. The BBC reported that Greece hastily constructed a 40 km fence on its border with Turkey to deter Afghani migrants. There is also an expectation that there will be an increase in illicit opiate supplies around the world, due to the US withdrawal.
The final US evacuation from Hamid Karzai International Airport cuts both ways in political perception. The mainstream media is portraying the haphazard evacuation as a major Biden administration failure, and Islamic extremist social media is using the scenes as inspirational jihadist propaganda. Malaysia’s Parti Se-Islam Malaysia (PAS), a member of the new Malaysian government sent a formal congratulatorily message to the Taliban for retaking power last week. However, the fact that the Taliban is giving the US and NATO allies free passage, points to a firm agreement and real-time exchanges in communication.
US long-term intentions towards the Taliban will be quickly assessed by observing how they deal with Amrullah Saleh and the Northern Alliance in future. Many former Afghan soldiers have made their way to the Panjshir Valley and remain loyal to self-declared Afghanistan president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was a former minister of defence.
Some analysts claim the Taliban at the higher command levels has matured over the last twenty years, seeing the necessity to work more diplomatically, where at the lower levels in the field, the field commanders are much more hardened in their beliefs and actions.
The Taliban is an ideology based on Shariah that many within Afghanistan accept, although 20 years of liberalism in Kabul has changed those who lived under the influence of the former government. This is why the US and NATO allies, nation building strategy failed, because western concepts of democracy were not seen as compatible with the Shariah, particularly in the provinces. The Taliban follow a moderate form of Hanafi Islam, which allows local customs. Many farmers are part-time Taliban rank and file, loyal to young local commanders, who now come from a more diverse tribal background, than the older generation of Pashtuns. These younger commanders were also living within Pakistan under US occupation and the corrupt Kabul government, so have a hard-line on those who cooperated with the former regime and foreign military forces.
Here lies danger that the Taliban leaders may not be able to control the field commanders, where the worst scenario would be splits, political instability, and fighting. Taliban authority will also depend upon how the various tribal warlords accept authority from Kabul. Opposition groups from the Northern Alliance, anti-Taliban warlords, and Islamic State may resist Taliban control, which may lead to civil war. There is already some competition between the Taliban and ISIS for control over parts of the Afghan drug trade.
Time will only tell whether the Taliban takes on the mantle of being a government, or continues to be an insurgent organization intent on exporting “Islamic liberation” outside the country. The Taliban has to decide whether to engage government to government, or go back to the days where they harboured and nurtured extremist organizations. A recent UN report claims Al-Qaeda is currently present in 15 Afghanistan provinces, along with Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) veteran fighters in Syria. There are also former Daesh or ISIS fighters who fought in Iraq and Syria scattered around the countryside. Afghanistan is also hosting Uyghurs in exile. Here lies the danger and opportunity for Afghanistan.
A lot will depend upon how many countries and international organizations recognize the Taliban government. If Europe, the US, and major international organizations don’t recognize the Taliban government, then the new government will be pushed into a corner. This is perhaps why the Taliban have reached out to former president Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader himself, to assist in forming a workable and acceptable government to the US and NATO allies. However, Russian assessments of the situation in Afghanistan are concerned with a disintegration of the new Afghan government.
The US will have to completely overhaul security, diplomatic, and trade strategies for the Central Asian Region, as this sub-hemisphere is about to undergo a shift with a kaleidoscope of new dynamics, which have to be reckoned with.
All eyes now turned on 6 important figures who will guide Taliban’s major decisions as group prepares to form government
Though the Taliban’s ultimate decision-making body is a 26-member leadership council, or Rahbari Shura, six figures stand out for their top positions in the insurgent group.
With the dramatic sweep of the Taliban across Afghanistan in the face of crumbling resistance from the Ashraf Ghani regime, the wheel of history has turned full circle.
In the end, the 180,000 Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, and a police force with 150,000 personnel, besides an air force and other security wings armed with technology and trained by the US and NATO, proved unequal to a motley force of Taliban.
Pakistan is establishing interfaith harmony councils at the local, provincial and national level to promote dialogue and resolve sectarian conflicts, Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, special representative of the prime minister on religious harmony, has revealed.
In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Ashrafi, who is also the chairman of Pakistan Ulema Council, a top body of religious scholars, said Prime Minister Imran Khan is striving for unity among Muslim countries.
US had asked to use its military bases in South Korea to house Afghan refugees, says Seoul
The Taliban said Afghanistan and South Korea can mutually benefit from the war-torn country’s untapped mineral fields as the group seeks to strengthen economic ties with the East Asian nation reputed for its electronics industry.
The Taliban stunned the world with the speed of their blitz through Afghanistan and capture of Kabul on August 15. As they surged to victory, the group tried to create an image of themselves as a more moderate “Taliban 2.0” – savvy on social media and keen for good diplomatic relations with other countries. But the profiles of the figures at the top of the Taliban’s hierarchy show their violent past is their violent present. FRANCE 24 looks at Afghanistan’s new rulers.
Atop a craggy mountain that has withstood foreign invaders for decades, anti-Taliban fighters fire a mounted heavy machine gun into a deep valley.
They are members of the National Resistance Front (NRF) — the most prominent Afghan opposition group to emerge since the Taliban captured Kabul nine days ago.
With militia fighters and former government soldiers in its ranks, the NRF has set up machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags in anticipation of a Taliban assault on their bastion, the Panjshir Valley.
Its fighters, many of them in military camouflage fatigues, patrol the area in US-made Humvees and technicals — pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on the back.
Many carry assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and walkie-talkies. Some pose on their vehicles with a dramatic background of snow-covered peaks in the valley, which begins around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Kabul.
“We are going to rub their faces in the ground,” said one fighter at a position in the Panjshir heights, listing past victories against the Taliban.
His comrades then raise their fists and chanted “Allah-u Akbar” (God is great).
The strategic valley — populated primarily by ethnic Tajiks — offers natural defence points, with narrow entrances in the shadow of high mountains.
“If Taliban warlords launch an assault, they will of course face staunch resistance from us,” Ahmad Massoud, one of the NRF leaders, said in a Washington Post op-ed last week.
He is the son of the late guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, revered for turning the Panjshir Valley into an anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban bastion.
The defensive preparations are familiar for Panjshir residents who saw Massoud thwart multiple Soviet assaults in the 1980s and Taliban attempts to take the area in the late 1990s.
An NRF spokesman told AFP on the weekend that it is ready to resist any Taliban aggression but wants to negotiate with the Islamists about an inclusive government.
Taliban siege –
The Taliban have also said they want to handle the situation peacefully, but they have bared their teeth by sending hundreds of fighters to the area.
Panjshir was surrounded from three sides, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Monday.
Former vice president Amrullah Saleh, who headed to the valley after the fall of Kabul, said a humanitarian disaster was brewing.
“Talibs aren’t allowing food & fuel to get into Andarab valley,” he tweeted, referring to an area under Taliban control that abuts Panjshir from the northwest.
“Thousands of women & children have fled to mountains.”
There have been scattered reports of clashes around Panjshir in recent days, with conflicting claims from both sides that have been impossible to independently verify.
The NRF has said it is ready for battle, but it remains unclear if the force has the supplies and equipment to withstand a long siege by the Taliban.
Ahmad Massoud said in his op-ed that they have arms and ammunition stores, as well as the weapons brought to Panjshir by former Afghan forces.
But he added that without help from the outside world, his fighters would not be able to withstand the Taliban’s siege for long.
“We know that our military forces and logistics will not be sufficient,” he wrote.
Elders from the Panjshir Valley have reportedly been speaking with Taliban officials in the Afghan capital, but there has been no breakthrough yet.
