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  • Arab News, May 19, 2018: Why Is The Taliban So Strong?

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    The Taliban were able to briefly take over parts of Farah city, highlighting their growing strength across Afghanistan. While the insurgency has faced losses over 17 years of war, it now controls or contests over 40% of Afghan districts due to several factors. Internally, Afghan security forces remain overburdened and lack critical capabilities like air power. Externally, the Taliban receives support from Pakistan and benefits from the drug trade, using profits to finance operations. As long as external sanctuaries exist in places like Pakistan, the Taliban will not be defeated. The US also lacks a clear strategy for achieving realistic objectives against the Taliban.

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    The Taliban were able to briefly take over parts of Farah city, highlighting their growing strength across Afghanistan. While the insurgency has faced losses over 17 years of war, it now controls or contests over 40% of Afghan districts due to several factors. Internally, Afghan security forces remain overburdened and lack critical capabilities like air power. Externally, the Taliban receives support from Pakistan and benefits from the drug trade, using profits to finance operations. As long as external sanctuaries exist in places like Pakistan, the Taliban will not be defeated. The US also lacks a clear strategy for achieving realistic objectives against the Taliban.

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    26 views2 pages

    Arab News, May 19, 2018: Why Is The Taliban So Strong?

    Uploaded by

    Rehan Abdullah
    The Taliban were able to briefly take over parts of Farah city, highlighting their growing strength across Afghanistan. While the insurgency has faced losses over 17 years of war, it now controls or contests over 40% of Afghan districts due to several factors. Internally, Afghan security forces remain overburdened and lack critical capabilities like air power. Externally, the Taliban receives support from Pakistan and benefits from the drug trade, using profits to finance operations. As long as external sanctuaries exist in places like Pakistan, the Taliban will not be defeated. The US also lacks a clear strategy for achieving realistic objectives against the Taliban.

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    Arab News, May 19, 2018

    Why is the Taliban so strong?


    Michael Kugelman

    This past week, the Taliban entered the city of Farah, the capital of a province by the same name
    located in western Afghanistan. For a brief period, it took over several government buildings
    before being pushed out by Afghan ground forces and US airstrikes.

    The offensive marked one of the relatively few times in the nearly 17-year war that the Taliban
    managed to seize areas in major urban spaces. It also highlighted the great reach of the
    insurgency.

    Once limited to the Taliban’s traditional bastions in the east and south, it has now spread to
    western areas such as Farah, as well as to the country’s northern reaches. The Taliban now
    controls more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since US forces entered the country in
    October 2001. The Taliban has arguably never been stronger.

    At first glance, this is perplexing. By some measures, the insurgency is a spent force. It has been
    hit hard on the battlefield for nearly 20 years. It has experienced a rapid series of leadership
    changes, which has exacerbated an ongoing trend of fracturing and factionalism within the ranks.

    Yet the reality on the ground amplifies just how powerful the Taliban has become. According to
    the most credible estimates, the group now controls or contests 40-50 percent of Afghanistan’s
    nearly 400 districts. Additionally, casualty figures for Afghan security forces and civilians have
    broken new records, attesting to the intensity of the fighting.

    So why is the Taliban so strong? The answers lies in factors and conditions both inside and outside
    Afghanistan. Inside the country, security forces are beleaguered and overburdened.

    Though the US-led training mission has strengthened the capacities of Afghan police and soldiers
    in recent years, they continue to struggle to lead counterinsurgency efforts from the front — the
    position they have been in since the foreign combat war ended at the end of 2014.

    Their most glaring struggles lie in air power (a notable deficiency, given the strong role that
    airstrikes play in counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan) and intelligence collection.

    The external factors that explain its strength revolve around the outside support enjoyed by the
    insurgency. Pakistan’s largesse is well-known: The leaders of the Taliban and the Haqqani
    Network, which stages some of the most brutal and sophisticated attacks in Afghanistan, continue
    to find refuge in Pakistan.

    Additionally, local policing is a mess. The national government in Kabul has outsourced security
    responsibilities in many rural communities to pro-government militias that often fail to protect
    local populations. The Taliban has exploited this dynamic and projected itself as a better security
    provider, thereby winning over local populations in rural spaces, and enabling the insurgents to
    gain a foothold.
    Furthermore, drug production is breaking new records in Afghanistan, and this benefits the
    Taliban’s bottom line in a big way. The opium trade accounts for a large portion of the group’s
    finances.

    The external factors that explain its strength revolve around the outside support enjoyed by the
    insurgency. Pakistan’s largesse is well-known: The leaders of the Taliban and the Haqqani
    Network, which stages some of the most brutal and sophisticated attacks in Afghanistan, continue
    to find refuge in Pakistan.

    Iran has provided more modest levels of support to the Taliban, including small arms shipments
    and — according to officials in western Afghanistan, near the Iran border — training to some
    Taliban units.

    Now that the Trump administration has pulled out of the nuclear deal, worsening an already-
    fraught US-Iranian relationship, Tehran will have a strong incentive to ramp up such support to
    the Taliban. Furthermore, according to US military officials, Russia may now be providing military
    support to the Taliban as well.

    There is a basic truth about insurgencies: So long as they can count on external support — and
    especially external sanctuaries — they will not die. The FARC rebels in Colombia, for example,
    enjoyed safe havens in neighboring Venezuela. And they remained a formidable fighting force for
    more than five decades.

    Finally, there is the US and its inability to craft a strategy capable of taming the Taliban. In the
    early days of the war, America had two clearly articulated goals in Afghanistan: Destroy the
    sanctuaries used by Al-Qaeda leaders to help plan the 9/11 attacks, and remove their Taliban
    hosts from power. Both objectives were achieved in relatively short order.

    Ever since then, however, Washington has struggled to articulate a plan for tackling the Taliban
    threat — one with clearly stated and realistically achievable means and ends. Without a clearly
    articulated plan, it is very hard to succeed.

    The Taliban’s continued strength undercuts the very essence of the Trump administration’s
    Afghanistan strategy. The White House’s goal is to increase battlefield pressure on the Taliban so
    that it finally agrees to stop fighting, and to start a peace process with Kabul. Unfortunately, the
    Taliban’s battlefield successes give it little incentive to stop fighting.

    The takeaway? What the Taliban did in Farah is bound to happen again — many times, and in
    many different places around a country unlikely to see the end of its interminable war anytime
    soon.

    Michael Kugelman is deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at
    the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Twitter: @michaelkugelman

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