EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — Three years ago today, Taliban forces marched into Kabul, as American forces were leaving Afghanistan, and a U.S.-backed government collapsed. The moment marked a stunning and humiliating end to the two-decade American mission that was born in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the return to power of an extremist group that first ruled Afghanistan in the years prior to the September 11 attacks. Those years of Taliban rule were marked by some of the world’s most draconian policies towards women and education, and the sheltering of Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants who planned the September 11 terror.
U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and quickly ousted the Taliban from power. Nearly twenty years later, when the Americans announced their plans to leave, the Taliban began a rout of Afghan cities that culminated in the capture of Kabul on August 15, 2021.
Yesterday, Cipher Brief reporter Hollie McKay looked at the jihadist groups that have resurfaced in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return. Today, we examine Taliban rule over the last three years with the help of Hassan Abbas, a scholar of the region and author of The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan After the Americans Left, which comes out in paperback next week.
Abbas, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, says this iteration of the Taliban – what he calls Taliban 3.0 – has had both predictable failures and some successes that he and other experts did not foresee. Abbas is also among those who believe that greater western engagement with the Taliban rulers is in the interest of the U.S. and its allies.
Abbas spoke with Cipher Brief managing editor Tom Nagorski.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: You've written an epilogue to the new edition of your book, a kind of report card on how the Taliban is faring, three years after it recaptured power. You write that “it has been a long and short three years” since the fall of Kabul. Tell us what you mean by that.
Abbas: I mean that it's been long for the people of Afghanistan – especially women, children, and other ordinary people for whom things have gone from bad to worse. Things were not in great shape before, under the Ashraf Ghani government. But now, especially with everything blocked out for women – no opportunities, no jobs, no colleges, no schools – they are going through a very terrible phase. So for many people in Afghanistan, it's been a long three years.
It's short for us, those of us who are observing from outside. When I was recently asked to write opinion pieces and do various interviews for the anniversary, I said to myself, This has been three years? They went by so fast.
The Cipher Brief: You’ve also said that many things have happened in those three years that you didn’t expect. What are some examples?
Abbas: We are surprised by how the Taliban are establishing themselves. I remember having many conversations (in 2021) where people were thinking, They will last six months. They cannot govern. And the opposition within Afghanistan will create challenges. But today, the Taliban are not going anywhere, whether we like them or not. We in the West may be sick and tired of the battle and all the “war on terror” years, but for the Taliban, I would say they are totally focused on what they want to do with Afghanistan.
The Cipher Brief: You give – not high marks, but higher-than-expected marks to the Taliban for some aspects of governance. How is it that a regime of fighters and extremists have merited those good marks?
Abbas: I'll start with an anecdote from a friend who has helped me conduct interviews with the Taliban. He recently went to Afghanistan and met the interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani.
This guy who's on the FBI’s terrorist list, still, and who was involved in a suicide bombing campaign against Western forces — now if you ask him, Haqqani’s first priority is, what is he going to do about 70,000 to 80,000 foot soldiers who he's trying to accommodate into the security forces? He cannot accommodate them all, because so many of the former security officials, the police and the military guys who had left Kabul, have now returned. They are back and they want to be employed, they want their salaries, and some of them had to be accommodated because the Taliban had said, We'll forgive everyone.
We know the Taliban are targeting some of the folks from the previous administration, but in many cases, they have allowed ordinary people back in the government positions.
The challenge now is that the U.S. money which was taking care of those salaries is no longer there. The Taliban have to provide them salaries, and those 70,000-80,000 Taliban foot soldiers have to be accommodated within these services. So Haqqani is concerned about creating employment opportunities.
Meanwhile, no one was expecting the Taliban to be talking about revenue generation. Now, World Bank officials give them high marks in terms of revenue collection. They have established good controls on the borders with Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia as well, generating revenues. And unlike the first Taliban government before 2001, this time around they have come up with an official budget, telling them where the gaps are. Their currency, on the books at least, is doing better than Pakistan's currency when it comes to its exchange rate with U.S. dollars.
Also, this time around, they were able to benefit from some of the infrastructure that we built in Afghanistan. Most of that was never destroyed. Kabul was not burned. The Taliban walked into those offices, tried to hire the people who were trained already, made their own middle-ranking leaders the managers. I think that was one reason they did well, because they're benefiting from the structure that was built by the West.
I call this Taliban 3.0. Taliban 1.0 was the initial movement, and then from 2001 to 2021, the 2.0 version, they ran a very successful insurgency. So the needs were different. They had sanctuary in Pakistan, in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal areas, in the Pashtun heartland, as well as in Quetta. Some of their leaders were there. And we thought that they were totally focused on fighting Afghan forces and fighting the Western forces.
But apparently they were thinking through some of these governance issues as well.
Some of them who were outside Afghanistan, who had more access to Pakistan, the UAE, Iran, and in Qatar, they went to school. Their kids were getting educated, and some of them are now back. They are educated and they have been given policymaking roles. We thought it would be quite a while before they transitioned from a fighting force into a government or administration, but they are progressing.
That said, they are not really succeeding in any great ways because there's such poverty. And there are other security crises. The ISK (Islamic State Khorasan) is conducting many attacks. So it's not a rosy picture in that sense, but they are doing far better in governance than what we initially assumed.
We project them as these cavemen, lazy or extremist, uneducated, uncouth. To some extent it’s true. But for instance, their public relations team and their media teams, their spokespersons speak English, one in an Australian or New Zealand accent. Some are very articulate.
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk about security – domestic security and the broader terrorism threat. You say in your latest edition of the book that from a law and order standpoint, things are better for the citizenry. A cynic looking from a distance would say, Of course it's better, because these are brutal thugs. Is that the right way to read it?
Abbas: That’s not totally off the mark. This is of course the group which was made of insurgents and extremists, and the way they have operated, everyone is scared of them.
But there are two things people are giving them credit for. Better law and order, which means that their rudimentary justice system is also working. The Taliban received a lot of support in the rural areas, because people there were saying that the previous governments were not delivering justice. The Taliban have these mobile justice teams, not always very effective or very accurate, but nonetheless people know that if a theft has taken place, there's a property dispute, the teams will get to the scene in 24 hours.
They are also being given credit for a drop in corruption. The Western-style infrastructure that was built was often run by local people who were corrupt or who were making money.
So I think these are the factors which have helped the Taliban.
The Cipher Brief: There have been reports that many terrorist groups have found safe haven in Afghanistan again. Can you assess that threat?
Abbas: There’s truth to this. We are hearing about a number of people from Al Qaeda going in, and other militant groups as well. However, there's one big difference today. The earlier rule of the Taliban – Taliban 1.0 – they lacked infrastructure, and a law enforcement infrastructure of their own. Kabul was a new world to them. They had grown up during the Afghan jihad years, from the 1980s to 2001.
This time around, while the militants and extremist groups are still there, it's not like the previous era, when those who were given sanctuary were free to do whatever they wanted, as Al Qaeda did. This time around, the various Taliban leaders may have a group that they favor, but each has been made responsible for those groups – meaning that whoever were your friends during the insurgency years, and whoever you are allowing to be back there, you will be held responsible if they cross a red line.
The Taliban made a commitment to the U.S. in Doha (in 2020), after the U.S. told them, You are going to be responsible if there's ever a terror attack in Europe or against the homeland in the U.S. that originates from Afghanistan.
The U.S. still has the missile capability to police this. There's no need for sending ground troops, boots on the ground. The question is how successful the Taliban will be in monitoring these groups on their own.
The Cipher Brief: Let's come back to the issue of women under the Taliban. It seems not only terrible for young girls and for the women themselves, but in this day and age, when you talk about successful governance and the success of any nation, you cannot have a successful economy and a nation when half the population is disenfranchised.
Abbas: This is the truth. And the change has been especially dramatic in the urban areas of Afghanistan, where women were not only going to colleges and schools, but were getting employed as well. Then, for the first year or so (after the 2021 fall of the government), the Taliban just stopped them from going to school and college. Those who were employed, they were still receiving their salaries, but now they have said, no more salaries either.
I have heard from many Taliban officials that a majority, 70 to 80, some would say even 90 percent of them, want girls to go to school, but that they are under pressure from the Kandahari group, and from Hibatullah (Akhundzada), the Taliban’s supreme leader, who is based in Kandahar. He is a cleric, and he's surrounded by clerics, and he's more ideological, whereas the ministers in Kabul are far more pragmatic – also bigoted, but pragmatic when it comes to policy. And there is a huge difference, and a constant battle going on.
I have also started hearing from many Western friends, from the UN and others who have been going into Afghanistan, that this big debate between Kandahar and Kabul is not going to be resolved if Kandahar is seen as coming under pressure to make a change.
There’s a long history of leaders in Afghanistan who did what the West told them to do, and were overthrown. So for them, this is seen not merely as women's rights. It is also seen as getting subjugated in the public eye among the people there. If they say that girls will start going to school, for example, ISK will say, Look, the Taliban are doing these things that the West likes.
So the advice that many people from Kabul are giving is that when Western officials come in, please remove this issue from the top of the list. Don't mix these things up. We have a security concern – we don't want IS-K to be powerful in that area again. That is separate from women's rights and those issues.
And one more point. The West, and especially the United States, are in a more challenging situation with all that's happening in the Middle East. Our strong case about human rights is going to be challenged in a different way now, by people who say that wherever it suits us, we make the case for greater rights, and when it doesn’t, we don’t. I may be convinced by what the U.S. says about women’s rights and other human rights, but for others this is sometimes seen as hypocrisy. So that makes our case a little weaker.
The Cipher Brief: You have said that some engagement with the Taliban, whatever is at the top of the agenda, would be a good thing. There are those who look at the rights record and the runup to the September 11 attacks and say, under no circumstances should the U.S. have any engagement with the Taliban. What is the case for U.S. engagement?
Abbas: This is very important. China and the region are actively engaged with them. As are several Central Asian states – Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. They have huge issues with them over water distribution, but the Central Asians are still talking to them.
They're also partly scared – they think that if they're not cooperating with the Taliban, there might be a Talibanization in their countries. And they are trying to benefit from trade opportunities that are coming their way as well, between South Asia and Central Asia.
India is engaging with them as well. I saw a picture of India’s top diplomat sitting with Mr. (Amir Khan) Muttaki, the Taliban Foreign Minister.
So the region is working with them. China is working with them primarily because some extremists with Chinese roots are still in Afghanistan. And China is very concerned that they'll go back and that they will support militancy or insurgency in China as well. The region is engaged with them because of trade and because of security.
And the security issue is our big concern as well. We cannot afford to have the Islamic State resurrect itself, and that's happening in some ways already. So our case for engagement is, number one, security related.
Secondly, we spent so much (on Afghanistan) that it has benefited even the Taliban in terms of equipment, in terms of trade. So for us to be totally absent, I cannot see how that argument goes. Yes, we are saying no diplomatic recognition, and that our ambassador is not going to be landing in Kabul with full fanfare, but we are already meeting them secretly. Actually that is no secret anymore. It is on a State Department website. It was on the CIA website. Our second-in-command from the CIA went and met their guys. In fact, the Taliban intelligence chief lost a bit of credibility because he's seen as talking to Americans too much. There's some belief that there has been signal intelligence sharing as well.
So I would argue for more engagement, and for continued engagement through Doha, through the UN, and other circles. It is in our security interest to be talking to them more. That's the case.
Who’s Reading this? More than 500K of the most influential national security experts in the world. Need full access to what the Experts are reading?
It’s not just for the President anymore. Cipher Brief Subscriber+Members have access to their own Open Source Daily Brief, keeping you up to date on global events impacting national security. It pays to be a Subscriber+Member.
