Infight Between Taliban and Haqqani – Govt Formation Stalled

Original Article was posted on 04 Sep 2021.

The situation in Kabul is becoming very interesting day by day. The terrorist turned diplomats of the Taliban is finding it very difficult to form a government even after the US departure. One of the reasons is Panjshir. But that is not the only one. There are far more serious and worrying factors that are not allowing the Taliban to form a government.

Fighting war is relatively easy but what comes after that, like forming a government or running a government, is very tough. Rather, I’ll say, these two dimensions do not go well when handled by the same people. The latest chaos started 02 days ago. There was news in the media, that the Taliban has postponed the government formation. This was the fourth time they did so. The reason behind this is not good for the Taliban.

We all know that the Taliban is not the only player in Afghanistan. The Haqqani network is another big player. They fought the war against the Afghan government and the US, jointly. It has now come to light that the Taliban and the Haqqani network disagree on power-sharing. For the last 18 days, these two players were discussing the power distribution of the Afghan-Taliban government. But they couldn’t agree with each other.

There was a big fight between the Haqqani network and Taliban founder Mullah Omar’s son, Mullah Yakub. Not only that, the two big leaders of the Haqqani Network, Anas Haqqani and Khalil Haqqani had a heated argument with Mulla Yakub and Mulla Baradar, who is said to be taking over as the President of Afghanistan, over two major issues.

The first one is the post of the Defence Minister of Afghanistan. The Defence Minister will be the leader of the Taliban terrorists, Haqqani terrorists, the Afghan Army personnel who have surrendered to the Taliban during the fall of Kabul and other Afghan fighters as well. So, in simple words, the Defence Minister will be the most powerful minister of the government. And that is the reason why the Haqqanis want it and the Talibanis don’t. Talibanis do not want the Haqqanis to be empowered with the defence ministry as this can lead to a Haqqani revolt against the Taliban. Taliban fears that the Haqqani may use the terrorist commanders against them and throw them out of power.

The second point of disagreement is Wealth Sharing. During the insurgency, especially after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban has looted a huge amount of wealth. They have collected huge donations too from different ethnic leaders of Afghanistan. Now, the Haqqani Network want a big chunk of that wealth to be shared with them. Mullah Baradar and Mullah Yakub do not want to give a single penny to the Haqqanis.

This became so intense that ISI Chief Gen Hamid Faiz visited to be a mediator in solving the issue. But that effort also has failed and no solution could be found till now.

This may turn into serious infights in future. Panjshir, food scarcity, scarcity of skilled professionals, absence of international recognition, empty foreign reserve are a few other issues the terrorist turned diplomats are facing. How they pull off will be a test of version 2.0 avatar of the Taliban.