Afghanistan: The warlords who will decide whether civil war is likely

 The Taliban will be on uncertain ground as they declare legitimacy, but no pretender to Afghanistan’s troubled throne is likely to offer a national alternative

Unsurprisingly, the Taliban’s rapid takeover of power across Afghanistan has prompted headlines about a renewed “civil war”. This is misleading, however. “Civil war” implies a situation where an insurgent movement is taking on a ruling government. But in 2001, it was not just the US-backed Northern Alliance that removed the Taliban from Kabul – other local commanders and political leaders were challenging their authority too. And in 2021, the Taliban swept to power by offering local groups incentives to cooperate or persuading them to stand aside. Now that the Taliban try to establish a government and ruling institutions, it is possible that these groups may resist being co-opted. They may bristle at a lack of autonomy, or see political and economic benefit in opposition to the new system in Kabul.

Yet none of these groups has the national reach of the Taliban. And unlike 2001, none has outside support to do more than to hold on to their patch of Afghanistan. So for the foreseeable future, Afghanistan continues in its limbo. The Taliban will be on uncertain ground as they declare legitimacy, but no pretender to Afghanistan’s troubled throne is likely to offer a national alternative.

Islamic State Khorasan

Paradoxically, as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) has garnered attention for its mass killings outside Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26, it has only exposed that, while it is a deadly irritant, it is not yet a threat to the Taliban’s power.With an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 members, ISIS-K is still a local faction in eastern Afghanistan, mainly in Nangahar and Kunar provinces on the Pakistan border. It may hope to build capacity through recruitment, exploiting the publicity of its high-profile attacks. But in contrast to the much larger Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, its capacity is for attacks on specific civilian sites rather than directly confronting national security forces or the political system as a whole. There is as yet no evidence that it has the institutional presence in villages that sustained the Taliban between 2001 and 2021. Nor are Pakistani services likely to risk their links with the Taliban by offering sustenance to a rival…