Институт политических исследований при Фонде Т. Усубалиева

Nurdin Mambetov

Afghanistan remains a source of threat to neighbouring states, as was noted at the regional dialogue of national security advisers and secretaries of the Security Councils of China, Russia, Iran, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that took place in Dushanbe in late May 2022.

The rising trend of instability in Afghanistan, despite all the assurances of the Taliban government that it is in control, is not just the rise of the Afghan National Resistance Front (ANRF) in the Panjsher or the sabotage of ISIS, but possible underlying contradictions within the Taliban movement itself.

The FNSA military command said active operations against the Taliban were conducted in Badakhshan, Baghlan, Jawzjan, Kunduz and Panjsher provinces in April this year.

On the other hand, ISIS in Afghanistan, its Khorasan affiliate, has reinforced its position through terrorist attacks and intimidation in 2022, beginning with an attack in Herat on January 22 and continuing on to mosques where Shiites were gathering for prayers or festivities. On May 24, ISIS militants destroyed electricity transmission towers in Samangan province.

However, ISIS-Khorasan may also consider propaganda through social media or its news agency Amaq to be the most effective means of achieving its objectives. 

Analysis of the Arabic and Russian content of Amaq news agency, especially since February 2022, shows that ISIL-Khorasan is beginning to make extensive use of internal, including ethnic, tensions in Afghanistan, which emerged after the Taliban came to power in 2021.

According to media reports, the Taliban government has already stripped Uzbek of its official language status in September 2021, and under a law called the Basics, Pashto and Dari remain the sole official languages.

Moreover, in the North of the country, according to the journalist Abubakar Siddique of Radio Azadi, about 1000 people, mostly from the Uzbek and Turkmen communities, have been evicted by the Taliban from their own land. [1] 

Although Taliban deputy spokesman Inamullah Samangani, citing the police chief of Kush Tepe district, Jawzjan province, denied this information, ethnic tensions do appear to be present in the country.

On May 17, an ethnic Uzbek Taliban militant, Abdul Rahim, killed three Pashtun Taliban fighters at a military base in Gardab Jamili, Baghlan Province. The 8 Sobh newspaper, citing its sources in Afghanistan, reported that on June 5 armed clashes broke out in Bamyan province between the Hazara fighters and the Taliban’s elite special forces unit over an attempt to oust the province’s director of intelligence, Mehdi Mojahed, an ethnic Hazara.

The focus on ethnic issues in Amaq’s content is linked to ISIS-Khorasan’s attempts to find wider support among Afghanistan’s Uzbeks and Tajiks. This is also indicated by Amaq’s Uzbek-language reports, which criticize the traditional code of Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes, the Pashtunwali, and the dominance of ethnic Pashtuns in power structures. In addition, the Taliban’s power is seen in ISIS-Khorasan propaganda as apostates of the faith who collaborate with infidels — Russia, China, Iran and others. 

The ethnic issue in perspective could have far-reaching consequences not only for Afghanistan, where ISIS-Khorasan has few supporters among the Pashtuns, but especially for Central Asia, which is also populated by Uzbeks and Tajiks.

The ISIS-Khorasan terrorist threat is slowly but surely growing with the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, as indicated by the propaganda and terrorist attacks that will eventually transform into a regional threat to its neighbours should the instability in Afghanistan continue.

Particularly noteworthy in this regard was the assassination attempt on the Minister of Defence of the Taliban Government, Mullah Mohammad Yaqub, in Kabul in May this year at the ceremony marking the sixth anniversary of the Taliban leader Akhtar Mansoor’s death.

Two organisations, the Afghan National Resistance Front (ANRF) and ISIS-Khorasan, have both claimed responsibility for the terrorist act. 

On the other hand, Andrei Serenko, an expert on Afghanistan and Iran, sees the likelihood of internal conflict within the Taliban, between the factions of Mullah Yakub and Sirajuddin Haqqani, behind this assassination attempt. [2]  

In fact, members of the Haqqani Network were not present at the Istiklal Hotel in Kabul for the ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour when Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob was assassinated. However, the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan possesses suicide units, communications, training camps and an extensive network of informants. However, there is virtually no direct evidence that a Haqqani Network suicide bomber carried out the assassination attempt on Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob.

ISIL — Khorasan also has both a history of carrying out such actions, a series of bombings and attacks at Kabul airport in August 2021 during an evacuation in which, among others, 13 US servicemen were killed. [3] 

Despite attempts by the Taliban government to defeat and weaken ISIL-Khorasan cells after August 2021, the terrorist organisation retains its capacity and ability to fight militarily. According to Afghan news channel TOLO News, the Taliban destroyed a large cache of ISIL-Khorasan weapons and ammunition, fifty mortar shells, two rocket launchers, numerous rockets and ammunition in Parwan province June 7, 2022. Given that Parwan province borders Kabul, the centre of Taliban power, it is still too early to speak of eliminating the ISIL-Khorasan threat. The prospects of defeating ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan in the medium term are uncertain; everything will depend on the ability of the Taliban leadership not to slide into an infighting between rival factions of Mullah Mohammad Yaqub, who controls all the resources of the Ministry of Defense and Sirajuddin Haqqani, who runs the Ministry of Interior and Intelligence. In addition, judging from the combat map of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and the ISIS-Khorasan strikes, the Taliban do not have the capacity and expertise to conduct effective counter-terrorist operations, given that they have, for much of their existence, conducted guerrilla warfare against various factions and U.S. and NATO forces.

At the same time, the issue of neutralising the activities of the Afghan National Resistance Front (ANRF) raises ethnical concerns. Its sources report numerous war crimes against Tajik civilians in the provinces of Kapis, Parwan, Panjsher and Baghlan. 

According to unconfirmed reports from the Afghan National Resistance Front (ANRF), a detachment of Maulawi warlord Mehdi Mujahid in Sari Pul province has revolted as a result of conflict between Pashtun, Uzbek and Tajik Taliban groups in the north.

These internal processes in themselves are a great threat to the existence of Afghanistan as a whole and may in the long term lead to a disintegration along ethnic lines of Uzbek and Tajik state entities in the north, even without Western influence.

On the other hand, there are signs that centrifugal forces are beginning to form in Afghanistan and beyond, which are potential instruments of influence from foreign countries with their own geopolitical interests in the region.

In the southern provinces of Afghanistan, a Pashtun resistance organisation, the Afghanistan Liberation Movement, composed of former military personnel of the Ashraf Ghani government, has been formed.

Outside Afghanistan, a new political movement, Peace and Justice, headed by former Ghani chief of staff Mohammad Shakir Kargar, has been formed. 

However, there is a possibility that these organisations are disinformation or attempts to create the appearance of resistance to Taliban rule in Afghanistan. However, former Afghan special operations commander Lt. Gen. Farid Ahmadi has said that the United States and Europe are silent about war crimes by the Taliban across Afghanistan, particularly in Panjsher, Baghlan and Takhar, which could be interpreted as an effort to find financial and military support for creating a resistance to the Taliban.

Coupled with the Taliban’s inability to fully stabilise the country and adapt and develop in the new environment, the predominance of only one ethnic group in Afghanistan’s political elite will only reinforce separatism in the north and the position of ISIS-Khorasan, which displays itself as a supranational organisation. And in a worst-case scenario in Afghanistan, regional security in Central Asia would be under severe threat, above all in Tajikistan, where tensions remain in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and in Kyrgyzstan, with its persistent political instability.

Mambetov Nurdin, Deputy Director, Prudent Solutions think tank. 

[1] Abubakao Siddique, journalist, specialised in reporting on Afghanistan and Pakistan, author of The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

[2] Andrey Serenko, head of the Analytical Center of the Russian Society of Political Scientists, leading expert of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Afghanistan (CSA), journalist.

[3] The Amaq news agency’s telegram channel published a photo of a suicide bomber named Shahram Movahed who carried out an assassination attempt on Mullah Mohammad Yaqub.