The Taliban Is Still the Main Driver of Violence in Afghanistan

Two recent attacks by ISIS only obscure that the Taliban is attacking the Afghan government daily.

By
32

On Tuesday, a pair of monstrous terrorist attacks reminded the world that the war in Afghanistan rages on. In the Afghan capital of Kabul, gunmen stormed a bustling hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders. The jihadists killed at least two dozen people, including newborn babies and mothers in a nursery. Elsewhere, in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, a suicide bomber detonated himself at a funeral for a local police official. More than two dozen people were killed and numerous others wounded. The Islamic State’s Khorasan province (ISIS-K) quickly claimed responsibility for the latter bombing in Nangarhar. No party immediately accepted fault for the Kabul maternity ward shooting, though it is widely suspected that ISIS-K is behind that attack as well. 

The Taliban denied culpability for both attacks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad quickly seized upon the Taliban’s denial, portraying the group as a possible counterterrorism partner. 

“We note the Taliban have denied any responsibility and condemned both attacks as heinous,” Pompeo said in a statement. “The Taliban and the Afghan government should cooperate to bring the perpetrators to justice.” Khalilzad tweeted the same, claiming the Taliban and Afghan government should cooperate “against a common enemy that perpetrates” such barbarism.

Pompeo and Khalilzad are the main architects of the U.S.-Taliban withdrawal agreement, which was finalized on February 29 in Doha. The deal that was supposed to pave the way for a peace process has been a spectacular failure. There is no hint of peace more than two months after it was signed.

Create a free account
Access additional articles and newsletters for no cost, no credit card information needed. Continue ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
32
By
Comments (32)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Avatar photo
    Ethan Strongtower

    Feature request: It would be useful for articles on The Dispatch to have an automated text-to-speech function, as on Bloomberg Opinion, where each web page would have a “listen to article” button (along with rewind and advance 15-seconds buttons). I think that Bloomberg uses Amazon Polly as its back-end.

    Sorry for a placing a generic site-wide comment here, but I was not sure where else to post it.

    Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Logical

    The best option was to spend $5.99 Home Depot dead bolt on each cockpit door. Total cost < 10M$. Then just watch. An occassional missile gere or there. Nobody was going to attack us again. OBL shot his wad. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

    Instead, we spent $7T. Arrogance and Fox News (remember the 24/7 terror alert icons?) are the beginning of the decline of the empire. While we distracted ourselves for 15 years, China built up with our own IP.

    Collapse
  3. Lisa Burlingham

    Tragic

    Collapse
  4. Avatar photo
    Visibly

    And being stranded in Oxford, UK: Amazon just delivered me some salt liquorice. Feel alive again, even listening to Chris de Burgh...

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Visibly

      Now: Where have all the flowers gone?

      Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    CVS

    Maddening. More proof of the utter recklessness and foolishness of this so-called "agreement."

    As horrible as Obama's foreign policy was with regard to our enemies, Trump's is, at best, a mix of some very good (Iran, Venezuela) and abjectly horrible (Kurds, Afghanistan, North Korea), and decidedly mixed (China, Russia, Syria).

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Visibly

      I wrote some few hours ago (see below) about my view on reality (news) vs. Fiction. It is so difficult these days to follow the news.

      Collapse
  6. Avatar photo
    Visibly

    Despite being a news addict, I always find it incredibly hard to read hard news like this. I love to watch fiction, because it is not real. My partner finds that the violence and amorality too disturbing in such films/shows. He watches news that I cannot watch, because I find the violence and amorality too disturbing.

    Collapse
  7. WBS

    Thomas and his entire crew at the LWJ are very astute Afghan analysts.

    However, yet again, there is substantial evidence that Al Qaeda and the Taliban were not close allies prior to 9-11. UBL was already in Afghanistan prior to the Taliban solidifying control. He was invited by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Sayyaf. The Taliban are overwhelmingly focused on Afghanistan, while AQ is an international terrorist organization. Why are they allies/close now? Perhaps because we invaded (rightly) and have joined forces? Why don't the condemn them now? Why should they - they have all the momentum. Just because you don't condemn someone doesn't mean you share the same vision.

    Further, to say that those of us who don't agree with Thomas' argument are "Taliban apologists" is absolute hyperbolic nonsense. The Dispatch is better than that. One can disagree over this, but to label us with that moniker is beyond the pale. Barnett Rubin is a Taliban apologist? The writers at the Afghan Analyst Network are Taliban apologists?

    For those who are interested in another angle to this story, please check out "The Enemy We Created: the Myth of the Taliban and Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan" or "Al Qaeda in Afghanistan" or perhaps the new biography on Abdullah Azzam called "The Caravan."

    I've spent nearly my entire professional career fighting the Taliban: from Eastern Afghanistan to the deserts of Kandahar. I've spoken to scores of Taliban fighters: most of them were foot soldiers, but a few were mid-level commanders. The overwhelming majority did not care about Al Qaeda. They fought for various reasons. One of them being the predatory nature of the Afghan government, something Thomas doesn't mention in this article. The overwhelming majority of Afghans in southern and eastern Afghanistan are caught between two vices: the Taliban and a corrupt and inefficient government.

    Thomas isn't wrong that the Taliban is the main driver of violence. He's not wrong that the peace deal was built on sand. However, he himself is on shaky ground to dismiss any context between the two organizations.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      CVS

      "The overwhelming majority did not care about Al Qaeda."

      This is the classic fallacy Confederacy apologists make "Most Confederate troops weren't fighting for slavery, only the elite land owners even owned slaves!"

      That's true.

      It's also totally irrelevant. It was imbedded in the Confederate Constitution that slavery was an affirmative good, it was the leadership of the South's explicit reason for both seceding and fighting, and they said so repeatedly.

      Similarly what most Taliban fighters fought for is almost entirely irrelevant. It matters only what stance their leadership took, and why. You can debate the closeness of Al Qaeda and the Taliban till doomsday. Even assuming you're right (and I don't think you are) guess what? They refused to hand them over, and they refuse to denounce them now in any meaningful way. The rest is noise.

      Collapse
      1. WBS

        You would be right if the Taliban insurgency was as unified cohesive as the confederacy. It’s not. It never has been. Most “Taliban” fighters are simply local fighters grouped together for various political forces. Arguing against the notion that Al Qaeda and the Taliban have always been close allies doesn’t make you a Taliban apologist. I’m not defending the Taliban. I’m merely pointing out that there is considerable differences between the two groups.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          CVS

          You have not even attempted, however, to meaningfully establish what the MEANING of that fact is.

          Let's say you're right, something I'm not conceding, but let's say you are. What difference does it make? The difference between what you claim is the case and what Tom claims is the case, in terms of what it means concerning the US is, at best, marginal.

          The Taliban by any objective measure, are violent theocrats who dislike the west and are comfortable with terrorism. Even if, in theory, they don't have a specific interest in defending Al Qaeda, they will have less than zero interest in going after them, and are cut from the same cloth in terms of ideology and even eventual goals. And they've already shown they'll defend Al Qaeda. If there has been a meaningful change in that calculation between 2001 and now, there has been essentially zero evidence of it.

          Collapse
          1. WBS

            The meaning of what fact?

            I agree that this distinction isn’t incredibly important. However, there are numerous articles, books, reporting that underscore that the Taliban were not aware of the 9-11 attacks. There are numerous reports that there have been repeated fissures between the groups. UBL’s history In Afghanistan predate the Taliban.

            And while they are somewhat cut from the same cloth (I won’t bore you with the various religious differences), AQ has a transnational goal while the Taliban does not. And by the Taliban I referring to the Peshawar and Quetta Shura groups.

            Collapse
  8. PM

    Over the years, haven't we declared victory against the Taliban/al-Qaeda more than once? We're not going to nuke or systematically eliminate the population. We aren't going to go into Pakistan.

    We either know where the Taliban/al-Qaeda are or we do not. I don't deny that we know where some of the Taliban/al-Qaeda are.

    So the Taliban/al-Qaeda will continue. As we either won't or can't do what needs to be done, then the mission should be ended.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      CVS

      "Mowing the grass" isn't a particularly desirable method of taking care of problems. But it is often preferable to letting the problem grow exponentially.

      Yes, we should be sticking the screws to Pakistan on this. Undoubtedly. But for whatever reason, we're not doing so yet. Doesn't mean we should let the grass grow till it's a forrest. Means cutting it occasionally till we're ready to salt the earth is the least bad option.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Paul Reichardt

        Can you clarify what you mean by “mowing the grass”?
        There were more civilian deaths and casualties from coalition strikes in Afghanistan in 2018 than from Taliban. “Bombing the shit out of them” by the war-crimes enthusiast in the Oval Office didn’t seem to help bring the peace, as emotionally satisfying as I’m sure it was for him to give those orders. Obama surged to 150,000 troops in Afghanistan to stabilize the gains made then, it didn’t hold up. We spend upwards of $6B a year propping up the Afghan government and military—more aid than to any other country—and we didn’t even think enough of our investment to insist on including them in the talks. It’s safe to say that that hasn’t worked either.

        The only thing that would likely work is a 75-100 year commitment of boots-on-the-ground occupation akin to the British in India. If so, then that’s the case that should be made publicly for continued operations in Afghanistan. In fact, that was the case that should have been made in 2001 when all of these failures were more-or-less foreseeable.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          CVS

          "Mowing the grass" means managing a problem without solving it. i.e. keeping the Taliban from growing, and yeah, killing its leaders etc. when possible, but without destroying it.

          We've done this before. Frankly, while this is an extreme version, that's more-or-less what we've been doing in Korea for the past 70 years. Keeping a presence there and the Norks at bay is preferable to abandoning the mission.

          Collapse
        2. PM

          The democracy idea sounded good. But it's not happening the way it was advertised.

          We could kill a lot of people. We could drive everyone out by gunpoint. We're not going to do either of these.

          The argument seems to be that our leaving is going to lead to the destruction of America.

          If someone asked me, "How do you deal with your ant problem?" and my response was "Well I spend a million for each pellet." It's blindingly obvious a bad idea.

          Collapse
        3. Avatar photo
          Paul Reichardt

          Sorry bad numbers: the Afghanistan surge peak was 100,000, not 150,000.

          Collapse
      2. WBS

        Mowing the grass is one thing. Supporting the entire Afghan government is another. We're never going to stick it to Pakistan because of nukes. Moreover, our LOCs go through them.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          CVS

          The "because of nukes" thing re: Pakistan is the common refrain. But it's not meaningfully true. The only way that's true is if you actually think the ISI is suicidal. They have no more intention of launching nukes than the US does. And that won't change anytime soon.

          I hate to say it, but Obama was really the first President to get that Pakistan was not our friend in the post-Cold War era. They weren't even really our friends IN the Cold War era. They were simply a necessary tool. One we've paid a high price for utilizing.

          It wouldn't be that hard to coerce them in a variety of ways, economic, diplomatic, and quasi-military. We've barely tried and the only real risk we've taken is Obama going after Bin Laden in their territory and perhaps a few of Trump's actions re: aid.

          Collapse