Title: Factoring Ethnicity in Taliban’s Quest for Legitimacy: An Anthropological Rewiring of the Power Structure

Introduction

Security, stability, and prosperity in Afghanistan are essential for the region’s economy. The large-scale economic initiatives that run through Afghanistan, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline, render Afghanistan of great regional importance. While Afghanistan has increasingly become critical for global trade, the Taliban government continues to face domestic and foreign threats that limit economic investment. To ensure domestic security and thereby promote regional security, strengthening the recently established Taliban’s interim government is essential. Therefore, the Taliban must legitimize its authority in Kabul.

To become a legitimate government and contribute to Afghanistan’s growth, the Taliban must win over Afghans and foreign nations many of which have been hesitant to accept the Taliban as a legitimate authority. With legitimacy will likely come several advantages such as unfreezing Afghan foreign finances, several international organizations’ lifting sanctions on the Taliban, lifting travel ban on  Taliban ministers, and membership in regional and international intergovernmental organizations. Indeed, gaining legitimacy is key to the stability of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and thereby the overall growth of Afghanistan as a nation.

Identifying the Taliban’s Legitimacy Crisis

Following the breakdown of the previous power-sharing agreement, the Taliban leadership ousted the Ghani government in August 2021. The secret negotiations under the Doha Accord favored and appealed to the Taliban, allowing the Taliban to control Kabul’s Presidential Palace and form an interim government. One significant problem with the current Taliban regime lies in its faulty power structure. Even though the Taliban has managed to reclaim governmental authority, it continues to encounter significant opposition at home and globally. Operating in isolation without gaining the trust of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan, the Taliban interim government repeats its past mistakes.

Afghanistan’s ethnic landscape includes Pashtuns (42 percent), Tajiks (27 percent), Hazaras (9 percent), Uzbeks (9 percent), Aimak (4 percent), Turks (3 percent), and Baloch (2 percent). Out of this diverse population of 41 million, Pashtuns predominantly serve in the Taliban government while the other groups remain underrepresented and marginalized. Political and cultural divisions in Afghanistan have grown recently due to such underrepresentation and disengagement. The convergence of these ethnically distinctive, historically segregated, and geographically scattered populations is nonetheless important for the Taliban’s efforts to gain political legitimacy and present a unified front as one nation-state.

The absence of nationalism prevents the unification of Afghanistan. A bifurcation of Afghanistan’s political powerhouse (Kabul) and ideological powerhouse (Kandahar) presents a quandary. Local warlords, who do not cooperate with Kabul, hold a much greater influence in the peripheral areas. As a result, Afghans living in peripheral areas often look to their warlords to solve public issues instead of seeking governmental assistance. The persistent tribal-non-tribal and urban-rural differences also amplify this disconnect; much of the peripheral population does not associate with the urbanized Kabul and the current Taliban regime.

Rewiring the Power Structure–Anthropological Insights to Gain Legitimacy

To gain national validation, the Taliban must adopt a power-sharing arrangement that is both more politically and ideologically accommodating. Seats in the national Parliament should be extended to warlords representing diverse ethnic minorities through a governance model aimed at ensuring representational justice in Afghanistan. Utilizing representative models such as proportional representation can effectively integrate ethnic minorities into mainstream political discourse and encourage warlords to take on the responsibility of nation-building. However, the Taliban should only agree to power-sharing within the national Parliament if these ethnic minority warlords are loyal to the Taliban’s rule and accept the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hebatullah Akhundzada.

Diversity is a reality in Afghanistan, but inclusion is an option for the Taliban. Several ethnic groups must be represented in the national Parliament to guarantee Afghanistan’s peace and security. The Tajiks, Hazaras, Aimaks, Uzbeks, and Turks, who are particularly tenacious insurgents battling for their territory, must all have a voice in the Taliban government. Current tensions between these groups make Afghanistan susceptible to foreign influence and cause incessant ethnic conflicts. As these groups control the borderlands demarcating Afghanistan’s international boundaries, their involvement in the national government becomes cardinal. The Taliban must include ethnic leaders such as the exiled Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum, National Resistance Front leader Ahmad Massoud, Tajik’s strongman Atta Muhammad Nur, Hazaras overlord Abdul Khani Alipur, and former Herat Province governor Ismail Khan.

Promoting ethnic inclusion is crucial to prevent conflicts with foreign powers. Dostum’s spokesperson in Ankara, Turkey recently announced the creation of a High Council of National Resistance comprising forty political figures who oppose the Taliban’s interim Pashtun-dominated government formation. The council seeks to address Afghanistan’s issues through diplomatic discussions. However, the council also deems armed resistance against the Taliban justified until they embrace inclusivity in governance. The Taliban must acknowledge that governing and ruling without international support is not sustainable, as it could lead to a recurrence of civil war in Afghanistan with outside agitators empowering politically subversive movements. Drawing from historical lessons, it becomes apparent how the West readily engaged with various ethnic minority leaders during the Global War on Terrorism to dismantle the Taliban’s first regime in 2001. From this, the Taliban ought to acknowledge that sustainable governance is not solely attainable through coercion and intimidation but instead through the involvement of diverse ethnic groups. The Taliban government should embrace ethnic diversity, recognizing that inclusivity forms the bedrock for peace, stability, and prosperity in Afghanistan. Moreover, inclusivity is essential for fortifying the government against external influences that may seek to exploit disgruntled minorities to destabilize and overthrow the Taliban regime again.

Managing ethnic diversity could help the Taliban strengthen their grasp over political institutions, gain social acceptance, and secure domestic political legitimacy. The Taliban must assiduously adopt a cultural relativist perspective that encourages diversity to unify Afghanistan. As a concept, cultural relativism emerges from the understanding that different groups maintain unique beliefs, customs, religions, languages, histories, and geographies. Cultural relativism encourages the acceptance of cultural differences and discourages ethnocentric bias. By adopting cultural relativism and considering the preferences of different ethnic groups, the Taliban could unite outlying warlords under a single Afghan national identity.

In managing cultural diversity, India offers a strong solution. India has displayed the success of democratic constitutional provisions that provide representation for ethnic minorities in the central and provincial governments. For instance, seats in national and provincial legislatures are specifically reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, recognizing and affirming their active participation in the process of nation-building. Such minority engagement in nation-building processes fosters a sense of Indian nationalism. Following a similar route, the Taliban can reduce ethnic contestations and divisions between the state and the people. The Taliban must, therefore, give minority ethnicities, particularly those living near the borders, a voice in the Taliban’s government. For Afghanistan to be stable, peaceful, and prosperous, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Aimaks, Turks, and Balochs should all be equitably represented in the national administration. To restore order, political reorientation is necessary.

Without these adjustments, influential Afghan leaders like Amrullah Saleh, Ahmed Massoud, and Rashid Dostum who have found refuge in Iran, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as well as the High Council of National Resistance could unite with Afghan ethnic minorities against the Taliban. This coalition has the potential to escalate internal tensions and present a formidable challenge to the Taliban’s authority.

Conclusion

Afghanistan is a heterogeneous society with multiple ethnic fissures that have run deep for decades. The dominance of warlords in the borderlands continues to cause political divisions in Afghanistan. Ethnically diverse geographical pockets are emerging as potential hotspots for insurgency that could confront and depose the Taliban, destabilizing the region once again. The Taliban must integrate ethnic minorities instead of promoting Pashtun nationalism as currently propagated by the Taliban regime. Their failure to include minorities in political governance renders the Taliban politically vulnerable and unable to control all of Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, the Taliban has advanced Afghanistan’s economic and diplomatic prowess, but their archaic and oppressive tactics against minorities continue to jeopardize their legitimacy. Currently, allegiance to the local warlords is more desirable for rural people than supporting the central government in Kabul.

To foster a common national identity, the Taliban must adopt a revised power-sharing arrangement for the current interim government of the Taliban. To maintain its political authority, the Taliban must identify the prevailing ethnic cracks and integrate minorities into political institutions. An equitable distribution of political power among ethnic communities would allow the voiceless minority to be heard and the Taliban to gain legitimacy. The Taliban should govern based on pluralism, cultural relativism, and proportionate power sharing to gain domestic and international approval and recognition. Above all, reconciling ethnic, tribal-non-tribal, and urban-rural differences would help build a strong Afghan national identity.

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Amit Kumar is a doctoral candidate at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, in Pilani, India. His area of specialization is China-Afghanistan relations. He is an Adjunct Researcher at The MirYam Institute in New York. He also works for The Defence Horizon Journal in Austria as an Associate Editor.

Aayushi Malhotra is a doctoral candidate at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, in Pilani, India. She works in the interdisciplinary areas of Anthropology and Development Studies.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons