Andernorts... Edition Afghanistan

Serious Black, Mittwoch, 11. August 2021, 09:54 (vor 1203 Tagen) @ Serious Black

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In Badakhshan, Takhar, and Ghazni, the Taliban have issued fatwas banning the movement of women without a burqa, diktats to the effect that girls above the age of 12 and widows may be taken by Taliban fighters. A fresh influx of foreign soldiers with allegiance to banned organizations such as al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have begun operating under the Taliban umbrella. The ETIM and IMU have been critical to the Taliban’s strategy of capturing territories once under the control of the Northern Alliance. Shia Hazaras from north-central Afghanistan have begun fleeing the Sunni Taliban’s persecution. Thousands of refugees have already arrived as far away as Greece.

Yet the Taliban may not find it so easy to move forward, despite their relatively quick gains against central government forces. A relatively new Shia organization, sponsored by Iran, has its own proxy militia in Afghanistan. The Fatemiyoun Brigade is largely composed of Iranian veterans from the conflict in Syria, Afghan Shias who sought refuge in Iran, and other Shia tribes such as the Hazaras. In 2019, the US designated the Syrian Fatemiyoun a terrorist organization. This estimated 30,000-strong brigade is now actively resisting Taliban forces in areas adjacent to Iran.

Older warlords, including the septuagenarian veteran of the anti-Soviet resistance Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former Balkh Province Governor Mohammed Atta Noor, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammed Ismail Khan, and others have begun seeking arms and funds to resist the Taliban advance. Though momentarily beaten, men like Dostum, Noor and Ismail Khan are known survivors. They may retreat, but they are apt to live to fight another day. Within Afghanistan, the specter of another long and bloody civil war looms again. Its spillover threatens many in the region.

The immediate neighbors—Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Russia— would seem to have placed their bets on the Taliban. But the Taliban can scarcely be assured of real support from any of these countries, given their ability to destabilize all of these regimes using hardcore religion as propaganda.

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https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/the-disaster-in-afghanistan