A year after the fall of Kabul, key opposition commanders known to have held the Panchir Valley are still in exile in Tajikistan. Despite the population’s strong resentment towards the Taliban, the armed resistance is having great difficulty mobilizing.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, confirming the return to power of Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Muslim group, all eyes turned to the Panchir Valley, a historic symbol of resistance. Ahmad Shah Massoud, the late commander of this region northeast of Kabul, managed to repel the Soviets in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Ahmad Massoud had promised to resume armed struggle against the Islamists in power from Panchir.
But in September, the Taliban claimed victory there when the 32-year-old commander fled to neighboring Tajikistan with several other resistance figures. The goal of this retreat seemed to be to use Tajikistan as a base to confront the Taliban. A strategy that was not considered viable by many experts at the time.
Since then, the few journalists who had access to the Panchir have reported on several resistance-organized attacks on Taliban positions. According to local sources quoted by The Washington Post, “Attacks on Taliban positions are regular. Dozens of civilians have been killed while others have been detained in mass arrests.”
The Resistance in Disarray
Today the situation is very different from the panchir of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the armed struggle against the Taliban during their previous rule from 1996 to 2001.
“Ahmad Shah Massoud then maintained a stronghold from which he could resist. Today Panchir is occupied by the Taliban,” analyzes Omar Sadr, former assistant professor of political science at the American University of Afghanistan and senior researcher at the University of Afghanistan Pittsburgh.
“The resistance is in the mountains, they don’t control the villages or the roads. That makes the supply chains necessary for the fighting considerably more difficult.”
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Across Afghanistan, opposition is “very weak,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, policy officer at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Security, Strategy and Technology. “The opposition had difficulty mobilizing tribal support and conducting large-scale operations,” the researcher continues. “We expected them to launch attacks in the spring, but the Taliban managed to neutralize this threat. Today the resistance is even weaker than we expected.”
For Omar Sadr, the opposition commanders made a mistake by settling on the other side of the border: “The senior leaders are in Tajikistan while the middle fighters are in Panchir. Ahmad Massoud is a political leader, not really a military leader, and it would have been far better if he and other senior officials had joined the forces on the ground. It would have strengthened their legitimacy and boosted the morale of the troops.”
>> See our interview with Ali Maisam Nazary : For the National Resistance Front, the Panchir is not “in the hands of the Taliban”
The fable of the “Taliban 2.0”
When the Taliban took Kabul last year, the new rulers initially tried to distance themselves from the Islamist group’s brutal image. This more modern attitude quickly turned out to be pure propaganda and was met with strong resentment among the population.
“This story of ‘Taliban 2.0’ is obviously a fable: they introduced political and economic discrimination against non-Pashtuns, banned the education of girls and they practice extrajudicial executions,” stresses Omar Sadr.
“When they arrived, everyone wanted to end the conflict in Afghanistan. The Taliban had an opportunity to move toward an inclusive political deal that would have won community support. But they are fundamentalists, they never believed in the peace accords. They have only become more radical and repressive. People feel cheated,” concludes the researcher.
war fatigue
Despite this sense of resentment and disappointment, few Afghans today are taking up arms against power. “Despite suffering from the intensification of Taliban repression and the terrible economic situation, the Afghans are simply tired of the war,” explains Vanda Felbab-Brown.
For Afghanistan has already experienced four decades of bloody conflicts, which began with the invasion of the USSR in 1979 in support of the then communist government.
At least 1.8 million Afghans lost their lives during the ten-year Soviet occupation. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, Afghanistan experienced several civil wars. The Taliban seizure of power in 1996 then triggered a new cycle of confrontations, first with the Northern Alliance resistance fighters, then in 2001 the twenty-year United States entry into the war.
Having formed the backbone of resistance against the Taliban when they were in power in Kabul in the late 1990s, the northeastern provinces continued this struggle during the American intervention by providing the majority of Afghan Army forces. Despite these grueling decades of war and sacrifice, the opposition could not prevent the Taliban from returning to power.
For Omar Sadr, this situation explains the opposition’s loss of momentum in these historic bastions of resistance: “Baghlan and Badakhshan provinces provided the most soldiers for the republic’s army and they suffered the most casualties. Corpses came back every day. Today, many people wonder if it isn’t better to accept the power there and then, whoever it is.
>> To see our focus : In the valley of Panchir, the inhabitants are plunged into misery
Pakistan will “never” want to overthrow the Taliban
Over the four decades of conflict in the country, foreign powers have used Afghanistan to expand their influence. Neighboring Pakistan was the longtime protector of the Taliban, who were desperate to ensure the defeat of the US-backed republic in Kabul, which Islamabad saw as too close to its nemesis India.
But the Taliban have long been close to the jihadist group Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP, Taliban Movement of Pakistan), which wants to overthrow the Pakistani state.
“Pakistan expected the Taliban to help him reach a political settlement with the TTP so that it would not threaten the Pakistani government, and that plan has already failed,” said Weeda Mehran, co-director of the Center for Advanced International Studies. feast of the University of Exeter. “Pakistani authorities are very concerned that the Taliban have given Afghan passports to TTP members.”
According to the researcher, it is clear that certain elements of the Taliban are “acting increasingly independently of Pakistan,” forcing Pakistan to “reconsider its approach to the Taliban.”
However, Pakistan’s disappointment with the Taliban does not translate into support for the opposition. The Afghan resistance cannot rely on the foreign support it needs to succeed.
“Pakistan’s ultimate goal will never be to overthrow the Taliban government,” Omar Sadr said. “Pakistan will only make it more difficult for the Taliban to stay in power. Like other countries in the region, such as China, Pakistan views the Taliban as anti-American. And of course not as India’s ally like the Republic was. Even if Pakistan turns against the Taliban, it will not support the insurgency.”
This article was adapted from English, the original version can be found here.