Insecurity has increased significantly throughout the country, civilian deaths have shot up, and the Afghan security forces are taking large, and potentially unsustainable, casualties as other ANSF deficiencies, including corruption that affects both unit performance and sustainment capacity, persist. Moreover, the Islamic State IS established itself in Afghanistan in , although it faces multiple and strong countervailing forces. Although borrowing its name from the Islamic State in the Middle East and proclaiming allegiance to it, the Islamic State in Afghanistan is not a Middle East export to the country.
Rather, it consists of several splinter groups and elements expelled from the Taliban, including some too brutal and too sectarian even for the mainstream Taliban. Eastern Nangarhar in particular has emerged as the strongest base of IS presence in Afghanistan. In other parts of the country, such as the north, foreign elements, including Uzbek and Pakistani militants, including factions of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan, relabeled themselves IS.
The Taliban has been better able to calibrate brutality and hide or excuse the violence it perpetrates against civilians. At times, the Taliban has even temporarily reduced violence and overly-restrictive edits to generate acceptance by local populations. The Taliban has also sponsored opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and the jobs and income it provides for ordinary Afghans, thus generating political capital.
IS in Afghanistan, on the other hand, has prohibited opium poppy cultivation both on grounds of ideological purity the strategic goal of ensuring that the only employment available to local men is as IS foot soldiers.
IS in Afghanistan has also drawn the attention of international actors, and the Taliban has been able to capitalize on being seen as a lesser threat by outside powers. Both countries have provided support to the Taliban in order to fight IS but also as part of their anti-American efforts.
Far more ominous, however, than the emergence of the Afghan version of IS for the stability of Afghanistan and the long-term success of counterterrorism efforts in the country is how fractious and polarized politics in Afghanistan remain. The National Unity Government created in the wake of the highly contested presidential elections of has not yet really found its feet. But it is particularly the predatory criminality — involving usurpation of land, taxes, and customs, generalized extortion, thuggish monopolistic domination of international contracts and local economic markets, and usurpation of international aid — that has even more severely undermined the stabilization and reconstruction efforts.
Combined with the capricious and rapacious rule by Afghan powerbrokers, the predatory criminality allows the Taliban, despite its brutality, to to present itself as a more predictable and less corrupt ruler and gives the insurgency critical traction and resilience. The persistence of militancy in Afghanistan and the resilience of terrorist groups operating there are the product of external sponsorship as well as weak, corrupt, and inadequate governance in Afghanistan.
Although nominally a strategic ally of the United States, Pakistan provided the Taliban and its affiliate branches, such as the vicious Haqqani group responsible for the most atrocious terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, including Kabul, with not only safe-havens after , but also direct military and intelligence support. Although receiving very large U. Afghanistan has repeatedly been a prime theater for Indian and Pakistani rivalries.
Fearing encirclement by India, Pakistan has been greatly reluctant to suppress Afghan militant groups using Pakistan for sanctuary — such as the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani networks and their insurgent and criminal activities, including many forms of smuggling.
Pakistan does not have anything approaching total control over the various militant groups that operate from its territory, including the Afghan Taliban.
Nor does it have adequate control of the border areas. At the same time, it cannot any longer unequivocally see the Afghan Taliban as an easily-controllable and straight-forward asset.
Pakistan cannot count on such outcomes. Its policies toward the militants, including its unwillingness for years to launch a military operation into North Warizistan to dislodge the Afghan Taliban there, despite years of intense U. And when the Pakistan military finally went into North Waziristan in , it allowed the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqanis to escape into Afghanistan, blaming the U.
Indeed, some anti-Pakistani militants also escaped into eastern Afghanistan where the writ of the Afghan state is particularly weak, establishing sanctuaries there. In fact, much of the Taliban resilience and growing capacity comes from outperforming the government and government-aligned powerbrokers on the ground in delivery of governance and in the suppression of predatory crime.
While Taliban governance is brutal and inadequate and not something most Afghans wish for, they often still find it more tolerable than the misgovernance, power abuse, capriciousness, corruption, and paralysis they face from the state and state-aligned authorities.
A factor that critically allows the Taliban to gain traction with Afghans has been the failure of the post-Taliban regime in Kabul to build up state capacity or deliver good governance and act against predatory criminality. The new state under former President Hamid Karzai failed not only to meet the expectations of the population for economic development and service delivery but also to maintain elemental security.
The current President Ashraf Ghani sought to bring efficiency and technocratic skills to governance, but in doing so reduced the numbers and layers of those having a stake in reform to a much narrower clique of supporters. Furthermore, the persistent inability to establish good governance, even in areas repeatedly cleared by ISAF and ANSF forces, has often made any security gains highly ephemeral.
IS-K could also ramp up violence, allowing it to distinguish itself as the more militant and unrelenting jihadi group in Afghanistan and attract young jihadis. In addition to their own insurgent capabilities, the Taliban have inherited the security institutions and military capabilities of the former Afghan government. With the Taliban consolidating control, IS-K may also face challenges in inducing civilian collaboration and favorable political alignments in parts of eastern Afghanistan, which remain the most favorable terrain for IS-K due to deep Salafi influence.
Until , U. This time they will have to act alone, at least in the near-term. Much will depend on how quickly the Taliban learn to police and if they can mount effective counterinsurgency operations. This is a difficult policy question for the U. On the one hand, IS-K has regional and transnational terrorism ambitions, due to which the U. And since the Taliban also see IS-K as an implacable foe, this creates a narrow alignment of interests between the United States and the Taliban.
On the other hand, the U. Any policy option must be mindful of these two competing U. Previous U. Press reporting suggests that the U. Haqqani is on the FBI's most wanted list and is a designated global terrorist as leader of the Haqqani network, known to have links to al-Qaeda. Taliban forces patrol at a runway a day after U. VIDEO Almost inevitable Afghanistan will become a platform for international terrorism.
Squawk Box Asia. The global terrorism threat is very 'multifaceted,' says former U. Street Signs Asia. Taliban members gather and make speeches in front of Herat governorate after the completion of the U. Preventing human rights violations is crucial, but documenting the human rights abuses is just as important to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Although at this stage it is not clear where and how the perpetrators are going to be held accountable, it is vital that the human rights violations and abuses are being documented. This does not only pertain to the recent violations after the announcement and withdrawal of the US and foreign forces, but also pertains to securing documentation that has been collected over the past two decades concerning human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
From the experience drawn from the conflict in Syria, it is crucial that relevant information is collected from the battlefield in a rule of law compliant manner — also referred to as battlefield evidence — which could serve as evidence before national courts or the International Criminal Court.
Several of the human right abuses could be prosecuted as terrorism crimes or when they meet the threshold as international crimes. In fact, the legitimate government of Afghanistan submitted a deferral request on 26 March to the International Criminal Court ICC on the basis that it has or is investigating the same crimes that come within the jurisdiction of the ICC, which its Prosecutor has indicated that it wishes to investigate.
Conclusions For centuries Afghanistan has resisted foreign rule, fending off occupation by Alexander the Great to the former Soviet Union to Russia, to British rule, and perhaps also the American troops. A more savvy Taliban may now be presenting itself as unified and moderate, capitalising on US fatigue after twenty years of occupation with little progress, but much like the Taliban of the late s and early s, the Taliban as it stands today has close ties to multiple terrorist groups, big and small, who operate within and across the border of Afghanistan to carry out terrorist attacks.
The coming weeks will be crucial to see whether the Taliban will honour the commitment to engage in an intra-Afghan dialogue and possibly emerge as a slightly more moderate group than in the past.
As a number of States contemplate whether or not to recognise the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, particularly the permanent Security Council members China and Russia, they must keep in mind the obligations they have under international law to prevent and supress terrorism and to implement sanctions on designated terrorist organisations. As UN Secretary General Guterres has emphasised, the only leverage the international community may have over the Taliban is their desire for international recognition, which must be used to insist on an inclusive government, respect for human rights, and the suppression of terrorism.
With credibility of the US and its NATO allies already diminished by the poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, the international community will further lose credibility if it only preaches about human rights but fails to act immediately to protect the lives and human rights of the Afghan people.
After twenty years, with the Afghan people , in particular women, pleading to not again be left at the mercy of the Taliban, now is not the time to turn a blind eye and walk away.
Allowing economic and political considerations to outweigh the imperative to address the increased risk of international terrorism under the Taliban will be a further blow to the counter-terrorism and the rule of law efforts that the international community has been pursuing for the last twenty years, and risks emboldening other terrorist groups across the globe.
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