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| Image: Flickr User - ResoluteSupportMedia |
By Halimullah Kousary
Taliban-ISIS animosity will not stop the two groups from fighting the Afghan government and making territorial gains.
Afghanistan has achieved a measure of economic and social resuscitation since 2001. However, the Taliban insurgency continues to haunt the country, a situation now exacerbated by the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). A combination of factors, some internal and others external, are blamed for the current security landscape in Afghanistan. Major internal issues include ineffective governance and rampant corruption at various levels of government institutions, while external factors include Pakistan’s perpetual support for the Taliban and America’s apparent disregard for it. The poor governance has left the Afghan population disenchanted with their government, while the external failures enabled the fragmented remnants of the Taliban back in 2002 and 2003 to evolve an insurgent force now strong enough that it can bring a city such as Kunduz under its control in a span of 15 hours.
Thus, with the deadline for total withdrawal of 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan little more than a year away, Afghans are increasingly uncertain about the future of their country. In the north and south, the Taliban are able to conduct large-scale attacks, bringing Musa Qala and Kunduz under control. In the east, meanwhile, ISIS is gaining momentum, launching coordinated attacks on the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in Nangarhar province.
The fall of Kunduz to the Taliban and the growing activities of ISIS in Nangarhar reveal the inability of the ANSF to maintain the fight against Taliban-ISIS militancy in the long run, and negates the assumption that Taliban-ISIS animosity will weaken the two groups in their fight against the government. Last week, the United Nations issued a report claiming that ISIS is recruiting followers in 25 of the country’s 34 provinces. This is despite the fact that the domineering and exclusive agenda of ISIS, which seeks to create a transnational Islamic caliphate, has emerged as a dividing rather than unifying factor in Afghanistan. ISIS has challenged Taliban nationalist Jihad, while the Taliban in responsehas not only rejected ISIS but even begun to fight it.
Read the full story at The Diplomat