Brian M Downing
Not long ago it was thought that in the event of a Taliban victory, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara would put up spirited resistance in northern and central redoubts. American generals warned the conflict might shift from the ANA against the Taliban to northern warlords against the Taliban.
Northerners had fielded strong mujahideen forces during the Russian war and continued the fight against combined Taliban, al Qaeda, and Pakistani forces. The Panjshir region north of Kabul was a renowned redoubt in both conflicts. So fierce was the resistance there that Soviet generals wanted to recognize Panjshir’s independence and shift troops elsewhere. Politicians in Kabul and Moscow nixed the idea.
Tajiks in Panjshir have long been concerned by Kabul’s incompetence and Pakistan’s support to the Taliban. They’ve been stockpiling weaponry and forming the nucleus of a militia – unfortunately only the nucleus. Amrullah Saleh, a former mujahideen soldier and a Tajik leader today, traveled to Washington in 2010 to warn of looming disaster. He was ignored. Washington’s faith in its development vision and in Pakistan’s fidelity were not to be questioned. Washington continued to cut checks for corrupt politicians and duplicitous generals.
When Kabul fell last month, Saleh and Ahmed Massoud, son of the charismatic and formidable Tajik commander of the 80s and 90s, vowed to continue the fight. The Taliban hoisted their flags across Panjshir in a few days.
Kabul’s collapse
The Tajiks may have been as blindsided by the sudden disintegration of the Afghan army and state as Washington was. Saleh and Massoud expected gradual Taliban gains and ANA solidification around Kabul. That would give time for Tajik and other northern soldiers to make for redoubts governed by Massoud, Ismail Khan, and Abdul Dostum.
Groups of several hundred soldiers, many from the same battalion, might well have seen the futility of defending Kabul and headed for better-led units in the north. They already had military training and many were reliable fighters. They never trusted their Pashtun commanders. They’d gotten their positions through corruption, not proven competence in the field. Early flights to the north, especially by weary special forces units, may have figured in the army’s collapse.
The new soldiers could have been integrated into battalions where unit cohesion and trust in leaders of their own ethnicity could have been established. Small-unit cohesion is critical in war. The Taliban had it, so did Pashtun mujahideen bands. They were all Pashtun. ANA recruits brought hostility to those outside their ethnic group and service under inept, venal Pashtun officers did nothing to change that.
Potential allies
Saleh and Massoud were not the only northerners bracing for a Taliban victory. Ismail Khan, a veteran Tajik mujahideen commander in Herat, had a sizable armed retinue. Abdul Dostum, an Uzbek mujahideen leader from a region between Herat and Panjshir, returned from exile to rally his militia late last summer. However, the Taliban swept into Herat and took Khan prisoner. Dostum saw collapse all around and lit out. Panjshir was alone.
Foreign support
Northerners, when fighting the Taliban before 2001, received support from Iran, Russia, India, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. That’s no longer the case. India, though opposed to the Taliban’s chief ally, Pakistan, isn’t positioned to help. The other former supporters are eager to benefit from China’s development of Afghanistan and all Central Asia. It’s a new common market and all roads lead to Beijing.
Taliban missteps toward Tajiks and Hazaras may one day anger Iran. Tehran has cultural ties with the former and religious ones with the latter. The Taliban, a Sunni fundamentalist movement, is certainly capable of incurring Tehran’s wrath. They are ideologically in line with Saudi Wahhabism and aligned with Pakistan whose schools and military are indebted to Riyadh. Everyone in Iran recalls the Taliban’s 1998 massacre at their Mazar-e-Sharif consulate. For now the Tajik-Hazara plight is of little interest to the mullahs and generals.
The northern resistance must work without redoubts or foreign support, deepen public discontent with Taliban rule, and attack in small groups. They are shadowy guerrillas in the hills and mountains of the north, trying to coalesce other guerrilla cells comprising angry former ANA soldiers. There are tens of thousands of them. They are in contact with fellow veterans, experienced in low-level fighting, and eager to regain honor and exact revenge. And now it’s the Taliban that operates in the open.
© 2021 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.