Three years ago, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. Presently, the country faces a dilemma between a regime transformation or a new civil war, political scientist and expert on Afghanistan and the Middle East Andrei Serenko discusses in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper).

The restoration of the Taliban regime after 20 years of Western presence on Afghan soil became possible thanks to a behind-the-scenes deal brokered by Pakistani intelligence services between Washington and the leaders of key Taliban factions.

Also, due to the American support, the Taliban were able to hold on to power in the devastated country for three years. However, presently the situation in Afghanistan has reached a strategic impasse, the way out of which will be either the transformation of the Taliban regime or a new civil war.

Of course, the restoration of the Taliban regime and its retention in power over the past three years are the main achievement of the Taliban. None of this would have happened if the leaders of the most successful terrorist group in the region had not gained the United States as an ally.

It is the Americans who have been openly opposing any attempts to overthrow the Taliban regime by force in recent years, jeopardising the activities of the Afghan resistance movement. It is Washington that sends the Taliban weekly financial aid in the amount of 40-80 million dollars in cash, enabling the dictatorship of the "fierce mullahs" to avoid bankruptcy and the collapse of the economic system.

An external beneficiary?

The Taliban do not take this with ingratitude. Despite the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan three years ago, presently the authorities of this country remain one of America's most reliable allies in the region. Yes, at the level of public rhetoric of the Taliban, their regime looks blatantly anti-American, but in fact, the Taliban methodically fulfills all the terms of the deal concluded in Doha in February 2020, protecting US interests in the area of national security. Over the past three years, terrorist attacks on citizens of Russia, China, Pakistan, and Iran have been committed in Taliban Afghanistan, and border areas of almost all of Afghanistan's neighboring countries have been shelled. However, there has not been a single attack on American citizens.

Under the cover of the Taliban dictatorship in Afghanistan, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS, a terrorist organization banned in Russia) has been gaining strength for three years. IS operatives use the Taliban "emirate" as their rear base and a stage airfield to plan and carry out terrorist attacks in other countries, such as Iran, Russia, the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, and European countries.

Like al-Qaeda militants (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), terrorists associated with the Afghan branch of IS avoid attacks on American citizens and any US organizations in the region. Americans could not even dream of such a level of security before the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan.

The internal crisis is growing

However, even though the Taliban have been doing well in their relations with the United States for three years now, the issues inside Afghanistan were only getting worse. A quarter of the population (about 7 million people) fled the country and are now in forced exile. The flow of Afghans wishing to leave their homeland, according to Taliban officials themselves, is not drying up: everyone who has money or the opportunity to get a visa to any country is fleeing.

 

The social and economic crisis inside Afghanistan is growing, and interethnic and interreligious contradictions are intensifying. More than 20 million Afghan women are deprived of basic political rights. Within the Taliban itself, fragmentation is creeping in, with conflicts gaining strength between various factions of the Taliban, which are vying for control over income from the drug production, smuggling, and corruption. The property gap between ordinary Taliban and the new Taliban aristocracy, which is rapidly enriching itself in every possible way, is growing. According to Afghan businessmen, today they can only dream of the level of corruption of the republican era: various levies under the Taliban have increased several times and continue to increase, killing motivation to develop national entrepreneurship.

The current situation in Afghanistan is a strategic dead end, and it is very difficult to preserve status quo, despite the efforts of the Americans to prevent the political and economic bankruptcy of the Taliban regime. 

Three years after returning to power, the Taliban are faced with a choice: either begin a controlled transformation of their administrative and political system towards greater openness and internal legitimacy (including through real equality for women and political representation of non-Pashtun ethno-religious groups) or face the inevitability of a new civil war in Afghanistan.

This could have the most serious consequences not only for the Afghans, but also for the countries of the region. Unfortunately, there is no prospect of attempts to transform the Taliban regime yet.