By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
The Taliban is gaining currency outside of its traditional Pashtun base. This is troubling.
The recent fall of the northern Afghan city of the Kunduz to the Taliban–which has since been mostly recaptured by Afghan government forces–highlighted some disturbing trends in the security situation in that country. The two trends that stand out the most are related to each other: the rise of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan and the expansion of the movement beyond its ethnic Pashtun base in southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.
On Thursday, despite losing Kunduz, the Taliban allegedly captured the Warduj district of Badakhshan, according to Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan lawmaker. This is significant because Badakhshan is the one province of Afghanistan that was completely free of Taliban rule before 2001, being the stronghold of the Northern Alliance. The district in particular was the stronghold of the Jamiat-e Islami, led by the ethnic-Tajik, pre-Taliban President of Afghanistan from 1992-1996, Burhanuddin Rabbani. Yet, the rise of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan has been a long time in coming. After the departure of NATO forces from the area in 2013, the power of the Taliban began to grow in the north.
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