Taliban Taps Former Gitmo Detainee to Crush Afghan Resistance

Afghanistan’s Taliban government tapped a former Guantanamo Bay detainee to lead the group’s campaign to counter a resistance movement in the country’s Panjshir Province, a spokesman announced yesterday according to MENAFN.

That commander, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, will be in charge of snuffing out resistance efforts in Panjshir and part of Baghlan province. After the Taliban’s return to power in the country last year, resistance forces led by Ahmed Massoud’s National Resistance Front (NRF) continued their fight.

In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a few U.S. lawmakers called on the Biden administration to assist Massoud’s forces, but those calls have mostly gone unanswered. Massoud has since fled Afghanistan and is reportedly leading the fight from Tajikistan.

Zakir’s case is particularly interesting, as he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2001 until 2007 when the U.S. transferred him to the custody of the Afghan government. He was released the following year.

Although the Panjshir resistance claimed to have captured some Taliban fighters, they reportedly control little territory and are waging an insurgency against the government. The Washington Post reported from the province earlier this year:

Taliban officials flatly deny there is any violence in the area, even though thousands of the group’s forces are visible across the valley. “Everything here is fine,” insisted Nasrullah Malikzada, the Taliban’s local information director in Panjshir. “There is no fighting at all.”

Yet residents say assaults on Taliban positions are a regular occurrence, and dozens of people have been killed, with some civilians imprisoned in sweeping arrests. Those residents spoke on the condition of anonymity or used only one name for fear of reprisals.

The clashes in Panjshir are unlikely to pose an imminent threat to the Taliban’s control of the province or the country, but the violent resistance here punctures key narratives propping up the movement’s claim to legitimacy: that its rule has brought peace to Afghanistan and that its fighters are capable of maintaining security.