In Afghanistan’s Collapse, a Win for Pakistan’s 20-Year Long Covert, Hybrid War

Pakistan’s role in raising, nurturing, promoting and providing shelter, safe havens, training and logistics for the Taliban is an open secret acknowledged by just about everyone other than Pakistan. To understand what future direction the Taliban is likely to take and prepare ourselves for it, it is useful to trace how the Taliban have changed from their origins in the madarsas and refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line between 1992-95 through its rule in Afghanistan from 1995-2001 ; to its relocation in Pakistan after they were driven out of Afghanistan by the US and Northern Alliance post 9/11 from 2002-21 when they regrouped as a radicalized insurgency using suicide and other forms of terrorism; to their new incarnation as a victorious force and new ‘government’ in Kabul in September 2021. This was accompanied by a radicalization of religious teachers and preachers in Pakistan and Afghanistan fusing Pakistani ‘neo-Deobandi’ Islam with Wahabism imported from Saudi Arabia to radicalize Afghans and prepare the ground for Islamism over what we may call ‘Afghaniyat’ or Afghan nationalism, symbolized today in the ‘war of flags’ and colours—the tri-coloured Afghan flag and colourful women’s dresses representing Afghanistan’s national diversity, and the black and white Taliban flag and black robes of Taliban women representing a puritanical uniformity. But easily, the most potent instrument in the armoury of the Pakistani ISI and the Taliban was its very sophisticated psychological operations using escalating levels of terrorism to wear down resistance among the Afghan people already tired of 40 years of foreign intervention, internecine fighting, repressive Taliban rule and Pakistani- Combined with this were intelligence operations and assassinations targeting those most capable of leading a resistance against the Taliban and Pakistan starting with Ahmad Shah Massoud himself two days before 9/11 but including such figures as former President of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Police Chief and later Governor of Kandahar, Gen. Abdul Raziq, doughty fighters like Mutalib Bek in Taloqan, Abdul Jabbar Qohraman in Helm and, and countless others, including unsuccessful attempts against one-time intelligence chiefs, Amrullah Saleh and Asadullah Khaled. If Taliban 2.0 was a radicalized insurgency that has accomplished its objective of taking over Afghanistan by terrorism and deceit, and if the new Taliban Cabinet with Guantanamo returnees and 17 designated terrorists many with known ties to the Al Qaeda is anything to go by, there is every likelihood that Taliban 3.0 will mark an ‘export’ and regionalization of the jihad with the Taliban providing a base for operations for a range of jihadi outfits of diverse persuasions from the Caucasus to Central Asia, Russia, China to South Asia including Pakistan, that have been fighting together in the trenches against the US and NATO and the ANDSF for the last 20 years.