Afghanistan: the era of pragmatism and the mistake of believing in “moderate jihadism”

In recent weeks, information has emerged from intelligence agencies of the United States and its Sunni Gulf allies regarding the fall of Kabul and 98% of Afghanistan to the Taliban which indicates that Pakistani military intelligence has failed. not ignored the events which favored the return of the jihadist organization to power. According to Western diplomats who treat these agency reports with discretion, the coalition that established the government of the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan is made up of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the dreaded Haqqani network, the three most common terrorist groups. dangerous in recent years. decades in Central Asia. In this sense, a common strategy is emerging in the offices of European agencies and in Washington with Sunni governments in the Gulf to deal with the spread of jihadist extremism and the risk of regional terrorism.

Many believe that the course of action in responding to the terrorist scourge is to work with the Islamic Emirate itself to control and remove a danger which, in the end, could outweigh the consequences of the takeover by the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Other Western officials believe they are supporting terrorist groups to fight and neutralize jihadists in the Afghan emirate, although it does not seem like a good idea to fight terrorists with terrorists, for some, to stop the arm of the state. Islamic based in the province of Khorasan (known as ISIS-K for its acronym in English) is an option that is not ruled out as a US strategy and while it may seem like a surreal position, the question is not excluded by Washington.

The choice is real because it is technically correct to say that the Taliban was never included by the United States on the list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). However, it is also true that The Taliban continue to be linked to Al Qaeda through tribal agreements, family clans, ideology and command structure, as well as the Haqqani network, The latter two groups are formally included in the list of the FTO, which makes manifest and public the association of the Taliban with elements unionized as terrorist organizations. Therefore, it goes without saying that the Taliban should also be considered a terrorist organization when putting together the items to be classified as such. These are: a) he returned to power by systematically resorting to violence against the legal forces of the Afghan government and against innocent civilians; (b) carried out suicide bombings killing civilians indiscriminately; and c) it broke with the country’s legal and regulatory system by establishing Sharia law with which it violated the civil, political and human rights of Afghans.

However, The Biden administration’s message is ambiguous when it refers to the Taliban, whom it sees as an enemy of the ISIS-K terrorist group and believes it can use it to contain them. However, this flies in the face of what was stated in recent statements by General Frank McKenzie to the Voice of America network, where the head of the United States Central Command He said he had no information that the Taliban was doing anything beneficial for their own people or that they had expressed concern about the actions of ISIS-K. Since we left Afghanistan, they have not spoken to us and have not shown a firm strategy in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.McKenzie said.

So far, Washington has not commented on the political will of the Taliban regarding a strategy of confrontation with ISIS-K, nor publicly on the massacre of more than 200 people perpetrated by ISIS-K at the Kabul airport in Kabul. in late August – days before the final US withdrawal – when a suicide bomber managed to break through the Taliban’s security ring and detonate explosives on his body, killing innocent civilians. This element was a damning test of the Taliban’s resolve not to arrest the suicide bomber and to avoid the loss of human life.

On the other hand, according to information gathered by intelligence agencies in neighboring countries, ISIS-K has carried out more than a dozen attacks in the past week, although these incidents have been denied by the Taliban government. Regarding these attacks, Washington considers that the Islamic State carried out these terrorist coups d’état by using well-organized networks, established in Afghan territory and of which the Taliban are fully aware of the existence. Yet the interpretation of President Biden’s advisers is that there is little the Taliban government can do to neutralize these networks. On the subject, a recent article, expert Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, was very clear ahead of the positions of the West by conceptualizing as serious mistake the qualification and division of the jihadist movement into “moderates” (the Taliban) with which Washington and its partners can conclude agreements and the extremists of the IS-K as the only real enemy in Afghanistan. According to the expert, the barbarism of the Islamic State for Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gave rise to an international coalition to wage war on it, while the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda (known as de Jabhat al-Nosra) extended its control over the territory quietly and suffered only a few targeted attacks, Vidino rightly noted.

The Syrian lesson has been observed recently and the same in Afghanistan. Also in Africa, Al Qaeda terrorist networks have taken a similar stance in their war against French forces that support regional governments, in which case the jihadists canceled their plans to attack Paris in exchange for not be disturbed on the territory. his rule.

The strategy of the satellite groups that revolve around the jihadist ideology of Al-Qaida is based on “war weariness” on the part of the West. They know that the United States and its allies want to leave the region, that they have no interest in their soldiers losing their lives there, and that they no longer want to spend more money defending distant places. which they currently consider of little strategic value. , then they ask for support or liberated zones in their areas and in return they propose not to attack the Western countries.

President Biden’s administration appears to be banking on the pragmatism of realpolitik by allowing these terrorist organizations to rule their cities in exchange for not disturbing or attacking their cities. Washington and Brussels hope that it will be the terrorist groups themselves who hold out and neutralize the groups they see as a threat. After all, Washington believes the Islamic State for Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its affiliate ISIS-K are enemies to Muslims themselves as well. In return, the only license that jihadists deemed “moderate” will have will be to denounce the United States and any European country that supports Israel and the Muslim governments that the jihadists call apostates with their propaganda.

Apparently, the “moderate” terrorists chosen as partners by the West have become pragmatic and open political actors in making deals that allow Washington and NATO to leave the region without negative consequences. This direction which the West intends to give to the situation can entail a high cost in the medium term because it is difficult for the terrorist threat to be contained with a strategy such as that envisaged. However, Most Western leaders are unwilling to defend the need for overseas deployments, and “moderate” jihadists are seizing the opportunity. However, it is impossible to imagine Al-Qaeda or the Taliban as American collaborators and partners, none of these groups are puppets who obediently abandon the postulates to impose the holy war which is in their ideological DNA.

If the West believes that by entrusting the jihadists – whom it describes as “moderate” – to govern spaces which it considers ungovernable, then it will fall into its own trap by leaning towards a form of pragmatism which will not lead to success. in the fight against terrorism. On the contrary, at some point they will endure this decision on their own soil and give up fundamental elements of their own culture. The paradigm of “moderate Islamists” versus jihadist Islamists is deadly dangerous and will not mean the end of terrorism. Believing that there is a “moderate jihadism” with which to negotiate militancy presents no chance of success and leads nowhere. History has clearly and irrefutably demonstrated this.

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