How does this fire consume players?
By Nurullah Valizadeh, special analyst for "Sangar"
Mr. Amrullah Saleh has stated that the Taliban is a proxy group of the US. This statement is true and not new. The seeds of the Taliban were sown at the very beginning in the embrace of Pakistan and the West (USA and UK). But for the politicians of the resistance movement, in my opinion, it is very important not to view the identity of the Taliban as a single element. The Taliban is a hybrid entity. A combination of national, regional, and global plans and ideas. It is necessary to consider all the dimensions and angles of this construction.
The Taliban is ideologically composed of three "isms": Pashtunism, Islamism, and imperialism. If we do not take these elements into account when understanding the Taliban, we will make a mistake. This question can also be expressed in another way. The Taliban is a project that has three main beneficiaries: the Pashtuns, Pakistan, and the Western powers (US-UK).
However, over time, the beneficiaries may change direction, and their interests may require them to use the project differently or refuse to participate in it at all. Because the Taliban is essentially a project and a plan to create instability, destruction, and chaos. The likelihood that they will harm the beneficiaries is high. In a sense, one can say that the Taliban is fire, and using it to achieve specific goals is like playing with fire. Playing with fire is always dangerous, and there is a possibility of injury to the player.
As the experience of the past 30 years has shown, the Taliban has harmed all three beneficiaries. For example, for the Pashtuns, using the Taliban as a tool to achieve Pashtunist agendas is not without harm. The use of the Taliban by Pashtunism has resulted in the name of Pashtuns being tarnished by terror, suicide bombings, and explosions. Hatred against Pashtuns is spreading and deepening in the Afghan multi-ethnic community. Enmity and mistrust against Pashtuns are increasing. In short, the Taliban has destroyed everything that Pashtuns could use as soft power. The Taliban has reached a point where Pashtuns now have only one option to achieve their ethnic goals: hard power, anger, and violence.
The use of the Taliban has also brought Islamism into disrepute. The inhumane and anti-female actions of the Taliban have discredited Islam as a whole in the eyes of the world. Even in Afghanistan, where people are deeply religious and have popular religiosity, the return of the Taliban to power and their terrorist activities have created many doubts about faith and religious views. This is a serious blow to political Islam and the faith of the people. Islamists (Islamists here are those who believe that political work can be done based on religious beliefs and methods, and that a religious and Islamic government can be created) find it very difficult to defend the Islamist project and compete with other ideologies.
For the US, using the Taliban card has also not been very pleasant. Their support for the Taliban has become one of the most vocal claims and narratives on which US and Western hegemony is built, discredited, and incredibly unthinkable. The Americans claim globally that they are fighting for democracy and human rights values, and saving oppressed peoples from tyranny. Under this slogan, the US has waged wars and campaigns worldwide for decades. Now, the obvious support for the Taliban makes no one believe in the American pro-democracy and human rights slogans. At least, this is the case in Afghanistan. However, since the US is geographically distant from Afghanistan and is a world power, it has the ability and capacity to protect itself from the harms that come from using the Taliban project. However, the other two previous "isms" were corrupted by the Taliban, and it will be difficult for them to compensate.
Since we have mentioned Pakistan as a beneficiary of the Taliban project, it is necessary to clarify that Pakistan, due to its geopolitical interests, has always acted as the peshmerga of Western imperialism in the region. This means that Pakistan's interests largely coincide with those of the West. In other words, the Pakistanis have always had the opportunity to get a share of the budget of Western programs. They have skillfully used the three "isms" that make up the Taliban. An example from the period before the emergence of the Taliban is the Mujahideen, whom the Pakistanis were able to use to achieve their goals. Pakistan appropriated a significant portion of Western aid to the Mujahideen. From Pakistan's point of view, the Taliban was created for the same jihadist purposes, and Pakistan expected the same benefits from this group. However, the situation has developed in such a way that Pakistan suffers from its own actions.
Now, as can be seen, the Taliban has also harmed Pakistan. Of course, the harmfulness of the Taliban to Pakistan does not stem from the anti-Pakistan intentions of the Taliban but rather from their terrorist nature and propaganda. What we said about the Taliban being a fire is applicable in this case. This fire has now consumed its master. The Pakistani Taliban were inspired by the Afghan Taliban and have become a major headache for Pakistan today. It is like when a rocket is thrown, the flames rising from the rocket launcher burn the person standing behind the shooter.
Anyway, the purpose of writing this note was to make the politicians who claim to be fighting the Taliban aware of the fact that they should be precise in their identification of the Taliban. Neglecting any of the elements that make up the Taliban is harmful. Mr. Saleh, as far as I understand, has denied the ethnic element of the Taliban. Such denial of any root or factor, whatever it may be, is harmful and misleading. Here, of course, the goal is not to incite ethnic hatred, but to correctly define and identify the enemy you are fighting. Reducing the Taliban to an insurgent group affiliated with Pakistan or a proxy of a particular country and neglecting the roots and internal ideological, social, and cultural contexts of its formation will harm us as well as those who are following us in our political space.
