![]()
The incipient polycentrism of the Taliban insurgency was evident from its early days (2002–4), when the Taliban started parallel re-organising efforts in different locations. The strength of these efforts varied from mere tens of men to several thousand, and initially these operations were largely independent of each other, to the extent that the Taliban insurgency might well have become completely fragmented if no overall command system had been established. Several centres of Taliban re-mobilisation in fact never linked up to the others. Even when links began to be forged in earnest in 2003–4, the emerging Taliban leadership in Quetta was a coalition of commanders, each with his own personal following, who then mostly co-opted other lesser or local leaders, each bringing his own constituency and maintaining control over it.
1.1 Disarray 2001–2
The fall of the Taliban was swift and brutal. Following 11 September 2001, Taliban forces were obliterated in a lightning war prosecuted by American special forces and their Afghan allies, supported by an armada of warplanes. Mullah Cable, a Taliban commander renowned for his toughness, recalls what it was like to be under US bombardment early in the war: ‘My teeth shook, my bones shook, everything inside me shook.’ After witnessing his comrades being decimated by the bombing, Cable gathered the rest of his men and told them to go home, before himself deserting.1 In total, the US Air Force and Navy dropped 18,000 bombs in their air campaign, of which 10,000 were precision munitions. Nobody knows the exact numbers of Taliban killed but according one estimate between 8,000 and 12,000 perished.2 By this count, up to 20 per cent of Taliban fighters had been eliminated by early 2002, the Taliban Emirate had ceased to exist as a physical entity, and its leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had fled to Pakistan.
Although there were claims in 2001–2 that the Taliban had staged a tactical retreat in the face of Operation Enduring Freedom and were waiting to strike back at the first opportunity, it is now clear beyond any doubt that the Taliban had indeed been completely routed by November 2001. Two members of the Taliban recalled their feelings at that time when interviewed by Pakistani journalist Sami Yousufzai:
Realizing the danger, I immediately sent my wife and children to Pakistan. The entire government started to fall apart. I never thought the Taliban would collapse so quickly and cruelly under U.S. bombs. Everyone began trying to save themselves and their families. When the bombing began, I changed out of my usual white mullah’s garb, put on an old brown shalwar kameez, and headed for Pakistan. I crossed the mountains on foot, and at the top I turned around and said: ‘God bless you, Afghanistan. I’ll never come back to you under our Islamic regime.’3
When the bombing started, I was commanding some 400 fighters on the front lines near Mazar-e Sharif. The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. Bodies were dismembered. Dazed fighters were bleeding from the ears and nose from the bombs’ concussions. We couldn’t bury the dead. Our reinforcements died in their trenches. I couldn’t bring myself to surrender, so I retreated with a few of my men in the confusion. […] Our Islamic Emirate had collapsed with less than 40 days of resistance—I couldn’t accept that. Allah would let us rise again, I thought, because of all the blood we had spilled for Islam.4
The ‘tactical retreat’ narrative was propagated by the Taliban themselves, who in 2002 were issuing communiques from Mullah Omar announcing the imminent return of the Islamic Emirate. Many in the Afghan security forces endorsed this narrative (‘the Taliban are lurking out there’) in order to legitimise their own wars of revenge. The narrative was actually supported by some lingering fighting in 2002–3, involving Taliban remnants, while some violent incidents that took place throughout 2002 or early 2003 were also attributed to the Taliban, with little evidence. In reality the Taliban were dispersed and in complete disarray. Even in areas where there had been no fighting during the American-led onslaught on the Emirate, Taliban leaders fled to Pakistan after negotiations with local elders.5
It was midway through 2002 before they started reconnecting with each other in their Pakistani exile. One source, who would become one the Taliban’s main leaders after 2002, explained:
After the Taliban’s defeat, we did not see each other till 2002. Some of our leaders when to Karachi, some went to Quetta and some went to Waziristan. In 2003 we started sending messages to each other and visiting each other. […] From 2001 till 2002 I did not have any positions, I was talking with others about politics. We were separated, we were not together. We were writing to one another, we did not call because the situation was not good that time.6
The Taliban were considered a spent force even by their former patrons. Until 2003 the Pakistani security services at best ignored the Taliban, and in some cases even handed them over to the Americans, as in the case of Mullah Zaeef. According to one of the leaders:
The main problem we were facing was that there were restrictions [imposed] on us by the Pakistanis. We were afraid at that time; we thought that if we got caught, we would be given to the Americans. Indeed, they arrested some at that time and handed them over to the Americans. We were not able to start the jihad against the Americans – if we organised any meeting and went out, we would be arrested.7
Living underground and dispersed around Pakistan made it very difficult for the Taliban to even start planning a comeback, let alone implement it. The leaders lacked any experience in working underground – even the jihad of the 1980s had not really been an ‘underground’ movement for those who had been involved. Re-mobilising old members and recruiting new volunteers was difficult in the absence of a visible, ‘over-the-ground’ presence. They needed safe meeting places for their leaders to meet, discuss, plan and manage, and these were lacking.
Most importantly, there were very few funding sources at this point, and no supplies were being delivered. The first fundraising efforts by the dispersed leadership in 2002 and early 2003 only managed to attract very modest amounts from some sympathetic Afghan businessmen and a few Arab donors. Efforts to raise Islamic taxes – Zakat and Ushr – also produced little. In addition, tribal elders were almost unanimously opposed to any notion of the Taliban starting a new war and denied them support and facilitation.8
The weak prospects of a Taliban resurgence reportedly pushed some of the leaders (or even all according to one source) to consider trying to join the political process in Kabul, meeting in November 2002 in Pakistan to discuss this possibility, with follow up meetings reportedly taking place until 2004. Opposition from within the movement and indifference in Kabul prevented this initiative from taking off.9 One of the lessons the Taliban seem to have learnt from this experience is that negotiating from a position of weakness would lead nowhere. But how were they going to gather the strength they needed?
1.2 The Taliban regroup 2002–7: The local Taliban fronts
Early activities in the south
From 2002 onwards, various Taliban groups deeper inside Afghanistan started low-scale underground operations, independently of any input from the leaders hiding in Pakistan. Usually these early insurgents organised themselves in groups and mahazes (‘fronts’, see ‘The early military system’ below and ‘Some terminology’ in the Introduction), gathering numbers between tens and a few hundred. The early Taliban insurgents in the south relied on local facilitators and sympathisers, mostly mullahs, to gather intelligence and recruit more supporters.10
We would meet every week with the mullah. We would talk about the situation, especially about the government and the foreign forces. We had long discussions and the mullah would try to convince us to fight against these people.11
In Pakistan, a number of Taliban leaders would try to mobilise their personal contacts within the remnants of the movement, both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.12
In 2003-4 we were visiting and arranging some meetings but we were very fearful.13
‘Gul Agha [a senior Taliban figure] called me one day,’ recalled one former Taliban commander. ‘He told me that this is the time to do jihad. He invited me to Quetta so that we could discuss our options.’14
Initially the response was muted and the ranks of the Taliban were thin. Mostly these first few underground groups were involved in propaganda and recruitment activities. Their initial activites were focused on re-organising, recruiting and securing funding and supplies. It was not without risk because provocateurs from the Afghan security services were also actively posing as recruiters and trying to enlist disgruntled Taliban. The most visible element of Taliban activities, by 2003 were the targeted assassinations, particularly against pro-government clerics, and the campaign of intimidation through night letters, urging people not to collaborate with the ‘invaders’.15
My father’s former student returned as promised a week later. I decided to join him. I helped assassinate those people who had continued their contacts with the government and the Americans. I didn’t want to kill, but I was determined to bring back our Islamic regime and get rid of the Americans and the traitors allied with them.16
The main hub of Taliban activities in Kandahar province was in the rugged and remote district of Shah Wali Kot.17 In Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province several Taliban networks operated from the beginning, organised around a number of prominent Taliban leaders. Mullah Faruq, for example, commanded one of the largest networks in the south and started his first operations against the Americans from Maruf District. During that time he was reportedly in command of 1,200 people in Kandahar province, including non-combatants.18 In other parts of the south, different Taliban leaders were mobilising their own forces. According to a local elder in the Nahr-i Seraj district of Helmand:
at the beginning when the Taliban came we didn’t know to which ‘party’ or ‘network’ they belonged, because they would appear at the night threatening government staff. Then after two or three months when they appeared during the day and we saw them, we learned that they belonged to Akhtar Mansur.19
The local groups of Taliban often started coalescing together into ‘fronts’; coalitions of groups under the leadership of some relatively senior Taliban figure, who would use his experience to teach them how to fight, mobilise some resources on the basis of his personal contacts, and perhaps link up with other groups of Taliban active in the region and beyond. These low-level activities started in various pockets throughout the south, including Ghazni province (which the Taliban consider to be part of the south). Before the arrival of the Quetta Shura, the jihad in Ghazni was led by three local commanders: Mullah Fulad, active in Qarabagh and Muqur, Commander Daud, active in Jaghatu, and Mawlavi Wassiq, active in Gilan and Nawa; each reportedly had 80–140 men.20 In Ghazni the pattern was dissimilar to Helmand and Kandahar in one respect: the large Taliban networks already taking shape in the south (such as Faruq’s and Mansur’s mentioned above) in 2002–3 did not have any local equivalent.21
What local villagers at that time referred to as ‘major Taliban operations’ look today quite minor considering what happened afterwards. One of the first such ‘major operations’ in the south was the capture of Nishan village in Kandahar province. There was no government presence there, and the whole operation was focused upon interrogating the inhabitants to find government collaborators:
I remember, I was going to my cousin’s wedding. I...
