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Very rough and incomplete sketch of a few of the issues which might be raised concerning the homogeneity of the "Taliban".
"Taliban" military forces, that is to say forces which might be expected to support the maintenance of Taliban control over areas of Afghanistan, are drawn from the products of the Madrassas, Islamic religious schools, who are generally Pakistani or Afghani, and generally follow a Taliban (Hanafi) line, or from existing Mojahaddin companies, whose commanders threw in their lot with the Taliban either for reasons of finance, personal safety, ideology oe pragmatism, or post-purge survivors of the old Communist Afghanistan military - most but not all of these of these from the Pashtun nationalist element, a small number of volunteers from the Arab nations, who generally share a Sunni ideology and believe themselves to be serving the cause of Islam, and a larger number of Pakistani volunteers, connected by ties of religion, tribal loyalty, Pashtun nationalism et alia. Al-Qaeda and other training bases hold other volunteers and irregular forces - the Harkat-al-Jehad al-Islami, and the Harkat-al-Mojahaddin, along with splinter groups. All of these could notionally be described as "Taliban forces".
The former Mojahaddin fighters are primarily made up of largely Pashtun or (to a far lesser degree) Tajik veterans of the wars against Russia, and of "Afghans" - so called because they are not Afghans (who says three decades of war damages your sense of humour?) - hired zealot guns brought in through the Pakistani secret services with CIA cash to fight the Russians, who have subsequently stuck around. Plus the new generation of younger men, some trained in Mojahaddin camps, who may or may not have religious loyalties to the Hanafi Sunni Pashtun axes, or may be career military, or conscripts, or see the Taliban as an alternative to the warlords.
Taliban armour is theoretically grouped into
an amoured brigade, but this is broken up to supplement infantry more often than not, and has no strong brigade-level command. It is theoretically under the control of the Kabul Army Corps. Outside Kabul, the dividional structure breaks down completely. Military power is strongest in Kabul and Herat, with sizable garrisons in Jalalabad, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. If an attack is to be made, a task force is thrown together according to what can be agreed upon and organised between the local administrators, who are "Taliban" but may or may not be religious scholars - "Taliban". Commanders of task forces are established through geography, size fo contribution and other factors on a case-by-case basis. There are different schools of thought within the Taliban, and within the broader "Taliban" forces a diversity of interest and concept which allows for the kinds of shifts in allegiance which delivered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban in the first place.
Add to this undisclosed numbers of mercenaries, military and technical advisers, Pakistani intelligence workers who probably should have gotten the Hell out of Dodge, and so on.
To minimise frictions, soldiers are generally segregated by race, district and tribe.
This confederation - the "Taliban" - is supervised notionally by the "Taliban". More precisely, by the Shura, which is notionally composed of the 30 most senior Taliban but has apparently opened its doors to the more powerful local potentates in the "Taliban"-controlled regions - who may be Pashtun, who may be Sunni, who may be sympathetic to the Hanafi project. At the core of the Shura is a group of eight talibs, with a power base leaning towards Kandahar. Then, of course, there's bin Laden, whom the Mojahaddin respect for his support, whom the Talibs respect for his financial backing, and who may or may not be Mullah Omar's father-in-law. Mullah Omar is referred to as the Emir of the Taliban, but isn't.
These factors are all ambiguous and subject to change, of course. Nobody knows what's goign on half the time...
In terms of structure and communciations it is quite a different proposition to, say, the US Senate.
Just a thought. |
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