‘Taliban’s internal conflicts are not about principles, but power’

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Since the withdrawal of US forces and the Taliban’s seizure of power in 2021, Afghanistan has been highly isolated internationally. This has been even more so since last January. The International Criminal Court in The Hague then issued arrest warrants against top Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and the president of the Afghan Supreme Court. The charge: crimes against humanity. The reason is the widespread discrimination against women and girls, whose rights have been drastically curtailed.

But in Afghanistan itself, the Taliban are also not in full control of the situation. Despite promises to restore security in the country, attacks still take place regularly. A suicide attack in Kabul last month, for example, left one dead and three injured. The perpetrator was shot by security agents just before he could reach his target, the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing. The attack has not yet been claimed by any group.

Moreover, renewed fighting recently took place on the Afghan-Pakistani border. In this, one Afghan security guard was killed and two others were injured. Pakistani mortar fire also wounded three Afghan journalists a few days later. Pakistan closed the border last month over a dispute over the construction of a new Afghan border post. The fighting left some 5,000 trucks carrying essential goods stranded at the border, adding to Afghanistan’s economic crisis.

Criticism of girls’ education ban

That the Taliban is not doing well is also evident from several internal disagreements that have increasingly surfaced in recent weeks. For instance, Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the deputy Taliban foreign minister, has fled to the United Arab Emirates. In a speech he delivered in Khost province in late January, he criticised the education ban for girls in Afghanistan. He stressed that both men and women should have access to education, referring to the time of the Prophet Mohammed.

Following these statements, Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada reportedly ordered that Stanikzai be banned from travelling and arrested. This allegedly forced Stanikzai to leave Afghanistan. Although Stanikzai claims to have travelled to Dubai for health reasons, his departure is believed to be related to an impending arrest after all.

Growing power struggle

The influential interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has also not set foot on Afghan soil for more than 40 days. Sirajuddin is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder and namesake of the so-called Haqqani network. That is an influential and notorious militant group within the Taliban with strong links to al-Qaeda. The network is held responsible for a series of suicide attacks on government buildings, hotels, embassies and military targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These have resulted in a total of thousands of casualties, both civilian and military.

Sirajuddin Haqqani reportedly met officials from the United Arab Emirates during a stay in Dubai and then went to Saudi Arabia for the umrah, the small pilgrimage to Mecca. This is remarkable, as some sources say Haqqani would have completed the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - as early as 2024. This suggests that his second trip may not be exclusively religious in nature.

The Taliban have not yet given a clear explanation for Stanikzai and Haqqani’s recent trips, nor about the growing divisions. Although their spokesman acknowledges the differences between them, he claims there are no internal divisions or conflict. Yet the increasing open criticism within the Taliban and the prolonged absence of key figures seem to indicate a growing power struggle within the group.

MO* asked three experts for their views on recent developments.

Taliban governance fails

Shahmahmood Miakhel, governor of Nangarhar province and then defence minister under former president Ashraf Ghani, has been following events in his homeland from the United States. ‘The Taliban has never been a homogeneous movement,’ he explains over the phone. ‘You should rather see the Taliban as an amalgamation of different groups, including the Haqqani network. There are also other extremist organisations, such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP, the Pakistani Taliban, ed.). In addition, criminal gangs and drug cartels also played a role in the fight against the former Afghan government. What connected them? Chaos that allowed them to gain influence and resources.’

Within the Taliban itself, Miakhel distinguishes three main factions: the group around Haibatullah Akhundzada in the southern city of Kandahar, the Haqqani network and the so-called Doha negotiators. These are the members of the Taliban who held peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in the Qatari capital in 2020. ‘Disagreements are growing between these factions, especially over the direction of the regime and the level of openness to the outside world,’ he says. ‘This disagreement is becoming more open.’

Miakhel is also critical of the Taliban’s administrative failures. In the past four years, he says, the organisation has done nothing substantial to strengthen the legitimacy of its regime, either nationally or internationally. ‘There has been no progress in governance, economic growth or international diplomacy,’ he explained. ‘This leaves the Taliban government in an isolated position, without formal recognition or broad support within Afghanistan, but also not outside.’

‘Taliban has not changed’

Former Afghan MP Shukria Barakzai is downright sceptical about the Taliban’s internal disagreements. According to her, these so-called disagreements do not change their policies. ‘The Taliban ministers all share the same ideology,’ she says from London, where she works as a journalist.

‘The internal conflicts are not about principles or ideology, but about power.’

Barakzai is talking specifically about Abbas Stanikzai who fled to Dubai. She doubts the sincerity of his criticism of the education ban on girls in Afghanistan. ‘When taking power in 2021, Stanikzai led Afghans to believe that the Taliban would have changed. But in practice, we never saw any of that,’ she stresses. According to her, not only Stanikzai but the entire negotiating delegation presented a misleading image of the Taliban during the 2020 peace talks, both to the international community and to the Afghan people.

‘The internal conflicts are not about principles or ideology, but about power,’ says Barakzai. ‘Who gets the most authority, the most money and the most important positions? As soon as certain members feel aggrieved, they start being critical. But that does not change the core of the movement.’

Ideological line becomes more compelling

According to Romain Malejacq, Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada is currently trying to strengthen his control over the Taliban. Malejacq is associate professor of the Centre for International Conflict Analysis & Management (CICAM) at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and author of the book Warlord Survival: the Delusion of State Building in Afghanistan.

He says this process of centralisation is leading to tensions, as there seems to be less and less room for dissent. ‘The ideological line of the movement is now more forcibly imposed on those who criticise it,’ Malejacq argues, ‘which explains Stanikzai’s departure abroad.’

But internal divisions within the Taliban are not new. ‘Tensions between the Haqqani faction and other currents within the movement have existed for some time. The Taliban has always tried not to do policy, because that automatically creates tensions. Now that it is forced to do policy, the internal divisions are surfacing more and becoming more visible.’

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