translated from Persian

The Taliban’s Political and Ideological Agenda Has Not Changed

The Taliban should be understood not merely as a foreign-backed instrument or bargaining actor, but as a rooted ideological and political force with its own agenda for remaking Afghan society.

فرامین طالبان تاکتیک چانه‌زنی نیست؛ تلاش برای مهندسی اجتماعی است

Zan Times · By یونس نگاه · 6 December 2024 · read the original in Persian →

Three decades have passed since the day the Taliban first made headlines. Historians regard October 1994 as the beginning of this group’s serious presence on Afghanistan’s political stage. That month, a group unknown to most of our people took the border district of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province from jihadi commanders and declared that its mission was to fight evil and corruption. They entered the scene under the relatively modest name of the “Islamic Movement of the Taliban,” which seemed to suggest that they had no ambition to form a state, and that their main mission was to establish order and security and prepare the ground for the formation of a nationwide government. Some analysts in those years claimed that the Taliban were in contact with Zahir Shah and were preparing the way for his return. Others said the Taliban were road pavers for Pakistan’s intelligence services and had no political program of their own.

Less than two years after taking control of Spin Boldak, in September 1996, the Taliban took Kabul, without much of their enigmatic quality having faded. When they came to Kabul, the capital’s masses, tormented by civil war, welcomed the group’s fighters with applause, flowers, and cries of Allahu akbar, while thousands of political figures inside the country and abroad stirred themselves into motion to establish a relationship with the Taliban and secure a share in the formation of the future government. Most political circles, especially those who had studied in the West and at prestigious universities, viewed the Taliban as a force without a political program and incapable of forming an administration, and wanted to pursue their own political agendas by joining them.

Even if we assume that the Taliban had no political agenda for forming a government in Spin Boldak, by the time they reached Kabul, after two years of war and politics, they had acquired one. By declaring an Islamic Emirate and implementing policies for which no similar model could be found in the region, they delivered a second political shock to Afghanistan’s politicians and disappointed many of their supporters and propagandists.

During the five years of Taliban emirate rule, the group’s conduct toward education, freedom, the media, governance, and, in general, its view of society and politics was so abnormal and so contrary to the expectations especially of urban and educated strata that, when America and its allies invaded, no serious resistance was mounted in defense of the Taliban Emirate, and most active political forces welcomed its fall.

After that, the political file of the Taliban was closed in the minds of non-Taliban politicians, and the Taliban Emirate was imagined to have been a temporary deviation from the normal course of contemporary Afghan politics, a phase of an intelligence project that, even if repeated, would be very different. Writers who wrote about the Taliban paid little attention to the historical roots and social foundations of the group’s formation. Few thought about the environment in which the Talib had been nurtured, or the possibility that he might rise again. Yet within a few years the Taliban returned to the field, and by 2006 had established themselves as a challenging force. Americans now acknowledge that in 2007 they entered into negotiations with the Taliban and recognized them as a decisive political force in Afghanistan’s future.

The Taliban’s political opponents inside the country, however, would not stop denying the Taliban. Since Afghanistan’s political groups, unfortunately, had become project-driven during the years of war and jihad and had been unable to establish reciprocal and organic contact with their environment and society, their denial was not grounded in facts or research. During the twenty years of the Islamic Republic, much news, many statements, and many reports were produced, but we did not read a book or journal from any political organization or group that helped us understand Afghan society and its challenges, including the danger of extremism and Talibanism. The Taliban’s relationship with tens of thousands of madrasas spread across the region like a spider’s web was not taken seriously. No one issued scholarly warnings about the danger posed by the daily increase of poverty and instability in strengthening extremist groups, including the Taliban. Little was said about the role of the wandering money flowing through military and civilian projects, or about the danger of collusion between the Taliban and traffickers. The Taliban, however, gradually and increasingly caught their opponents by surprise, and little by little transformed from a fugitive insurgent bombing group into a claimant to sovereignty and a negotiating party. Instead of acknowledging the existence of the Taliban and the political and social factors that generate Talibanism, the Islamic Republic’s government and anti-Taliban political groups continued to content themselves with superficial propaganda reactions. For example, in response to efforts by the Americans and their allies to contact and negotiate with the Taliban, the Afghan government expelled Michael Semple, deputy to the European Union’s special representative, and Mervyn Patterson, a senior official in the UN office in Afghanistan, from the country on December 27, 2007. But the Taliban’s contacts with foreigners did not cease; rather, after a few years, they acquired an official office in Qatar. The opening of the Taliban’s official office in Qatar produced another shock among Taliban opponents. In June 2013, Afghan political circles were preoccupied with quarrels over the raising of the Taliban flag in Qatar, and Hamid Karzai felt victorious because he had managed to compel the Obama administration to have the Taliban flag taken down from the wall of the group’s office in Qatar.

مخالفان سیاسی طالبان در داخل کشور اما دست از انکار طالبان بر نمیداشتند. از آنجایی که گروههای سیاسی افغانستان متاسفانه در جریان جنگوجهاد پروژهزده شده و نتوانسته بودند با محیط و اجتماع تماس متقابل و ارگانیک برقرار کنند، انکارشان استوار بر فاکت و تحقیق نبود. در بیست سال دوره جمهوری اسلامی بسیار خبر و اعلامیه و گزارش تولید شد، ولی از هیچ سازمان و گروه سیاسی کتاب و مجلهای نخواندیم که به شناخت جامعه افغانستان و چالشهایش از جمله خطر افراطیت و طالبانیزم کمک کند. رابطه طالبان با دهها هزار مدرسهای که چون تار جولا در سراسر منطقه گسترده بود، جدی گرفته نمیشد. کسی درمورد خطر افزایش روزافزون فقر و بیثباتی در تقویت گروههای تندرو، از جمله طالبان، هشدار محققانه نمیداد. از سهم پولهای سرگردانی که در پروژههای نظامی و غیرنظامی جریان داشت، و خطر همدستی طالبان و قاچاقبران چندان صحبت نمیشد. طالبان ولی به تدریج و بیشتر از پیش مخالفان خود را غافلگیر میکرد و کمکم از گروه شورشی بمگذار و فراری به مدعی حاکمیت و طرف مذاکره بدل شد. دولت جمهوری اسلامی و گروههای سیاسی مخالف طالبان بهجای اقرار به وجود طالبان و عوامل سیاسی-اجتماعی طالبزا، همچنان به واکنشهای تبلیغاتی و سرسری اکتفا میکردند. مثلاً دولت افغانستان در برابر تلاش امریکاییها و متحدانش بهخاطر تماس و مذاکره با طالبان به تاریخ ۲۷ دسامبر ۲۰۰۷ مایکل سمپل معاون نماینده ویژه اتحادیه اروپا و مروین پترسون یکی از کارمندان ارشد دفتر سازمان ملل در افغانستان را از کشور اخراج کرد، اما تماسهای طالبان با خارجیهای قطع نشد، بلکه بعد از چند سال صاحب دفتر رسمی در قطر گردید. گشایش دفتر رسمی طالبان در قطر شوک دیگری در میان مخالفان طالبان بود. در ماه جون ۲۰۱۳، محافل سیاسی افغانستان مشغول مشاجره برسر افراشتهشدن بیرق طالبان در قطر شده بود و حامد کرزی از آنکه توانسته بود دولت اوباما را وادار سازد تا پرچم طالبان را از روی دیوار دفتر آن گروه در قطر پایین کند، احساس پیروزی میکرد.

To avoid prolonging the discussion, we will not go into what happened after the opening of the Taliban office in Qatar, and I invite you instead to think about the Doha Agreement, the “intra-Afghan negotiations,” and the competition among political figures to establish contact with the Taliban on the eve of the Islamic Republic’s collapse. But before turning to the shocks the Taliban have delivered, during the three years and several months of their new emirate, to the perceptions of Afghanistan’s politicians and non-Taliban society, it is worth recalling the Battle of Marjah as one of the most important stages in the Taliban’s return. In February 2010, foreign and Afghan forces launched a “joint operation” against the Taliban in the districts of Nad Ali and Marjah, in which, for the first time, the Taliban fought for days face to face against thousands of foreign and domestic forces on a broad front. Although the Battle of Marjah was presented in the media as a campaign to suppress the Taliban, it left a new image of the Taliban in the public mind and astonished many people. After that, Taliban rule over parts of the country became normalized, and on the eve of the Republic’s fall the dispute was over which side held the greater share of the country’s territory. The Taliban claimed that, apart from Kabul and several large cities and a number of provincial and district centers, the rest of the country was either under their control or within their range; the government rejected this claim. But we all knew that the Taliban had imposed their parallel emirate over vast parts of the country, controlled or threatened trade and transit routes, maintained field courts, and collected ushr and taxes from every corner of the country.

برای جلوگیری از طولانیشدن سخن، به آنچه بعد از گشودن دفتر طالبان در قطر گذشت نمیپردازیم، و از شما دعوت میکنم که به توافقنامه دوحه، «مذاکرات بینالافغانی» و رقابت سیاسیها در تماس با طالبان در آستانه سقوط جمهوری اسلامی بیندیشید. ولی خوب است که قبل از پرداختن به شوکهایی که طالبان در سهسال و چند ماه امارت تازهشان بر برداشتهای سیاستمداران و جامعه غیرطالبانی افغانستان وارد کرده، از جنگ مارجه چون یکی از مهمترین مراحل برگشت طالبان یاد کنیم. در ماه فبروری ۲۰۱۰ نیروهای خارجی و افغان «عملیات مشترک» را در ولسوالیهای نادعلی و مارجه علیه طالبان راه انداختند که در آن برای اولینبار گروه طالبان روزها در برابر هزاران نیروی خارجی و داخلی روبهرو و در یک جبهه وسیع جنگیدند. جنگ مارجه اگرچه در رسانهها چون کمپاین سرکوب طالبان تبلیغ میشد، اما تصویر تازهای از طالبان در اذهان عامه بهجا گذاشت و خیلیها را متحیر ساخت. پس از آن حاکمیت طالبان بر بخشهایی از کشور نورمال گردید و در آستانه سقوط جمهوریت دعوا برسر این بود که کدام طرف بیشترین بخش خاک کشور را در اختیار دارد. طالبان مدعی بودند که غیر از کابل و چند شهر کلان و تعدادی از مراکز ولایات و ولسوالیها، باقی کشور را در کنترل و یا در تیررس دارند، اما دولت این ادعا را رد میکرد. همه اما میدانستیم که طالبان امارت موازیاش را بر بخشهای وسیع کشور حاکم ساخته، راههای تجارت و ترانزیت را کنترل یا تهدید میکند، محاکم صحرایی دارد و از گوشه و کنار کشور عشر و مالیات جمع میکند.

The Taliban’s political and ideological agenda has not changed.آجندای سیاسی و ایدیولوژیک طالبان تغییر نکرده است

Through a campaign of terror and an insistence on policies founded on exclusion, discrimination, and assassination, the Taliban step by step tightened the ring around the people and their political opponents. In the months leading up to the collapse, alongside contacts with local notables and political operators, the Taliban treated with horrific brutality that part of society regarded as their intellectual opponents, including media workers and civil activists. In one case, they slaughtered a journalist with stones in the city of Kabul, and almost every day there was news from across the country, especially from Kabul, of assassinations and threats against those strata who wanted a non-Taliban life. Educated women and girls, and women’s places of work and education, were systematically targeted. Despite all this, a group of political operators were busy propagating the “changed Taliban,” a propaganda effort that, unfortunately, foreigners also supported.

The Taliban, however, never announced that they would abandon the emirate policies of their previous period in power. They insisted that they would once again impose on the country the “Islamic Emirate” that had been driven from power by force. In the Doha Agreement too, they refused to be called the Taliban group or movement, and signed the agreement under the name “Islamic Emirate.” Of course, some members of the Taliban negotiating delegation, in conversations with the media and with members of the Islamic Republic’s delegation, said vague things about changes in Taliban policy, including in the areas of women’s education and work.

After the administration of the entire country fell into Taliban hands, a people trapped and with no choice expected that some of their basic rights, including work and education, would be preserved. They rested this hope on two raw possibilities. One was that the Taliban had obtained power in agreement with foreigners, and that perhaps one of the conditions included in the hidden annexes to the Doha Agreement and in the West’s support for the Taliban Emirate was to avoid excluding women from education and work. People, and even politicians, imagined that this time the Taliban would deal more gently with women. The second was that it was thought that after years of war and politics, and especially after years of negotiation with foreigners and their political opponents, the Taliban had realized that without relative flexibility and without tolerating some basic rights and freedoms for women, minorities, and opponents, they would face serious challenges and resistance. It was therefore imagined that the compulsion of the age and the change in the environment had forced the Taliban to retreat from medieval policies.

The Taliban leaders, however, never spoke of change or flexibility. The only thing they did was declare an amnesty conditional on obedience. The essential point in the amnesty was acceptance of the Emirate and obedience to Taliban rules and decrees, which they have named “sharia.” Politically heedless people also propagated this deception as a pretext for manufacturing the false hope of a “changed Taliban,” so that at the beginning of the Taliban’s seizure of power, a long line of educated people and political operators, whose own lives and families’ lives are non-Taliban, joined the ranks of Taliban supporters and propagandists and busied themselves justifying Mullah Hibatullah’s decrees. Mullah Hibatullah and the Taliban leaders, through decrees, speeches, gatherings, maneuvers, and, most importantly, through the implementation of Taliban policies, insisted that they were building a purely Taliban emirate, training suicide battalions, constructing jihadi madrasas, and raising a jihadi generation; that providing livelihoods is not the Taliban’s work and people should ask God for it; that worldly freedom has no value and true freedom lies in obedience to the Commander of the Faithful; and that the Taliban, under no kind of internal or external pressure, would abandon the creation of an Islamic Emirate. Yet opponents and a portion of the general public did not believe that the Taliban were serious in saying these things. Some Taliban opponents are still busy deceiving themselves. Some still say these decrees are not from the Taliban, but that some colonel or general of the ISI is issuing orders under Mullah Hibatullah’s name in order to destroy Afghanistan. We still hear very shrewd people say, “Mullah Hibatullah is suspicious! Perhaps no such mullah exists at all.” They are not prepared to believe in the political and doctrinal existence of the Talib, or in the affliction that has been nurtured in madrasas for decades.

رهبران طالبان اما هرگز از تغییر و انعطاف سخن نگفتند. تنها کاری که آنان کردند اعلام عفو به شرط اطاعت بود. نکته اساسی در عفو، پذیرش امارت و اطاعت از مقررات و فرامین طالبانی بود که نامش را «شریعت» گذاشتهاند. این فریب را نیز غافلان سیاسی چون بهانهای برای خلق امید کاذب «تغییر طالبان» تبلیغ کردند، چنانکه در آغاز قدرتگیری طالبان صف طولانی از تحصیلکردگان و سیاستپیشههایی که خود و خانوادههایشان زندگی غیرطالبانی دارند، به جمع حامیان و مبلغان طالبان پیوستند و به توجیه فرامین ملاهبتالله مشغول شدند. ملاهبت الله و رهبران طالبان با فرامین، سخنرانیها، تجمعات، مانورها و مهمتر از همه با اعمال سیاستهای طالبانی تاکید داشتند که امارت سچه طالبانی میسازند، کندک انتحاری تربیه میکنند، مدارس جهادی اعمار میکنند و نسل جهادی تربیه میکنند، تهیه روزی کار طالبان نیست و مردم باید آن را از خدا بخواهند، آزادی دنیوی ارزش ندارد و آزادی واقعی در اطاعت از امیرالمومین است، و طالبان زیر هیچگونه فشار داخلی و خارجی دست از ایجاد امارت اسلامی بر نخواهد داشت. ولی مخالفان و بخشی از توده مردم باور نمیکردند که طالبان در بیان این چیزها جدیاند. بخشی از مخالفان طالب، هنوز مشغول خودفریبیاند. عدهای هنوز میگویند این فرامین از طالبان نیست، بلکه کدام دگروال یا جنرال آیاسآی زیر نام ملاهبت الله برای تخریب افغانستان فرمان صادر میکند. هنوز از زبان آدمهای بسیار هوشیار میشنویم که «ملاهبت الله مشکوک است! شاید اصلاً چنین ملایی وجود نداشته باشد.» آنان حاضر نیستند که وجود سیاسی و عقیدتی طالب، و آفتی را که دهها سال در مدارس پرورده شده باور کنند.

Some insist that the Taliban have “taken hostage” women’s rights and freedoms in order to gain political concessions and bargain over recognition. They do not accept that the Taliban have doctrinal and political ideals and are trying to engineer society in order to realize them. For this reason, when girls were barred from attending university in the first year of Taliban rule, many expected the restriction to be temporary. Later, when secondary and high schools were closed to girls, a large number of our compatriots pinned their hopes on the suffix “until further notice” and expected that schools would soon reopen. Until very recently, those “hopeful” for a change in the Taliban were calling on opponents to show restraint and saying that this policy was temporary. They pointed to the health institutes that remained open and cited the presence of women in some Taliban offices as proof that the Taliban supposedly had no doctrinal opposition to women’s work and education, and had adopted this policy for bargaining purposes or because of “internal problems.” They argued, and perhaps still believe, that if the Taliban become assured of recognition for their emirate, and certain that their government will not be challenged, then they will again, and gradually, open the doors of education, work, and even freedom.

Thirty years of Taliban presence in the political arena, and three years of the group’s new emirate under the relative light of media and communications, have placed enough evidence at our disposal to believe that the Taliban are a force with an agenda, pursuing the creation of an “ideal” society, and that the roots of the group’s decrees must be sought not only in intelligence agencies, political deals, and the backwardness of Afghan society, but also in the group’s own mechanism of existence and intellectual roots. At the very least, we should now believe that the Taliban’s political agenda has not changed, and that they possess an intellectual framework for the emirate they claim. Denying the existence of the Taliban as a fundamentalist and ideological current with an agenda, and placing excessive emphasis on hidden factors and foreign support, or reducing them to a mere plaything of intelligence games, is of no use.

Overemphasizing external factors is deceptive.برجستهکردن بیشازحد عوامل خارجی فریبنده است

To understand any phenomenon, we need to study it from at least three directions: first, the environment in which the phenomenon takes shape; second, the factors that help it grow and endure; and third, more important than the first two, the nature and workings of the phenomenon itself. Instead of the Talib, let us take the plague of coronavirus as an example. The debate over how coronavirus emerged and what role governments played in its spread and control still continues. But to save themselves from the evil of coronavirus, people did not content themselves with understanding the factors that produced and spread it; biologists and physicians rolled up their sleeves, placed coronavirus under the microscope, and studied its existence as a living and deadly phenomenon. At the same time, people across the world studied the environment that allowed coronavirus to persist and spread, and took measures to control it.

The Talib must be treated in the same way. It is important to know how the intelligence services of Pakistan and other countries played a role in creating the Taliban’s initial organization, and how, later, Afghanistan’s chaotic and backward environment prepared the ground for Taliban influence. It is also necessary to grasp the reality that America and its allies are now giving the Taliban money and concessions, and that Russia, China, Iran, Qatar, and Pakistan are each trying to use the Taliban instrument for political and economic purposes. Afghanistan’s political and cultural fissures have also helped the Taliban grow, and thousands of non-Taliban people have cooperated with the Taliban for fleeting interests and personal gain. But amid all this, the existence of the Taliban must not be forgotten, nor should the recognition of the Talib’s “physiology” slip from memory. The mission of Afghanistan’s non-Taliban media, politicians, and researchers does not end with expressions of astonishment and reports on the group’s catastrophic policies. Even expressions of revulsion and declarations of resistance against the Taliban do not complete the mission of anti-Taliban forces. We must acknowledge the existence of the Taliban as a rooted political and intellectual affliction, possessed of interests and independent ideals, and tell one another that what the Taliban do and the policies they implement are not tactics, instruments of pressure, or even merely products of ignorance and dependency; rather, behind these policies stands a current with a program, one that harbors the dream of social engineering in Afghanistan and beyond. If we do not do this, the Taliban will continue to astonish us, and again and again we will be shocked by the difference between the Talib we hold in our minds and the one who is busy destroying and laying waste to society.

با طالب نیز باید همینگونه رفتار شود. دانستن اینکه استخبارات پاکستان و دیگر کشورها چگونه در ایجاد تشکیلات اولیه طالبان نقش بازی کردند و بعداً چگونه محیط آشوبزده و عقبمانده افغانستان زمینهساز نفوذ طالبان شد، مهم است. درک این واقعیت نیز لازم است که امریکا و متحداناش اکنون به طالبان پول و امتیاز میدهند، روسیه و چین و ایران و قطر و پاکستان هرکدام میکوشند از ابزار طالب برای اهداف سیاسی و اقتصادی استفاده کنند. درزهای سیاسی و فرهنگی در افغانستان نیز به رشد طالبان کمک کرده و هزاران انسان غیرطالب برای منافع گذرا و سودهای شخصی با طالبان همکاری کردهاند. اما، در این میان وجود طالبان باید فراموش نشود، و شناخت «فیزیولوژی» طالب از یاد نرود. ماموریت رسانهها، سیاستمداران و محققان غیرطالب افغانستان با بیان حیرت و گزارش سیاستهای فاجعهبار آن گروه تمام نمیشود. حتی با اظهار بیزاری و اعلام مقاومت علیه طالبان نیز ماموریت نیروهای ضد طالب تکمیل نمیشود. باید به وجود طالبان چون آفت سیاسی و فکری ریشهدار و صاحب منافع و ایدهآلهای مستقل اعتراف کنیم، و بههمدیگر بگوییم که آنچه طالبان انجام میدهند و سیاستهایی که اعمال میکنند تاکتیک و ابزار فشار و یا حتی از سر نفهمی و وابستگی صرف نیست، بلکه پشت این سیاستها جریانی با برنامه ایستاده و خیال مهندسی اجتماعی افغانستان و فراتر از آن را بهسر دارند. اگر این کار را نکنیم، طالبان پس از این نیز ما را به حیرت خواهد انداخت و بارها از تفاوتی که بین طالبی که در ذهن داریم و آنی که در اجتماع مشغول تخریب و بربادی است، شوکه خواهیم شد.