The Key Challenges The Taliban Face In Badakhshan – Analysis

Key Takeaways:
On the Taliban’s fifth anniversary in power, the author says fighting has intensified in Badakhshan: NRF (Ahmad Massoud), AFF (Gen. Yasin Zia), smaller local groups, and a brief revolt by former commander Juma Khan Fateh.
The province matters because it is Tajik-majority, mineral-rich, and borders Tajikistan, Pakistan, and China via the Wakhan; attacks near Zebak, Kuran wa Munjan, and Faizabad sit on routes toward Panjshir and Central Asia.
Coffey warns UN-noted militant activity there plus little outside contact with anti-Taliban groups could spread instability; he urges engagement with NRF/AFF and an inclusive settlement so Afghanistan does not slide back toward 1990s fragmentation.
The Taliban this month marked the fifth anniversary of its return to power with a military parade in Kabul and other celebrations. But a few hundred kilometers northeast of the capital there was little for them to celebrate.

Over the summer, they have been confronting mounting security problems in the remote province of Badakhshan. Here, armed anti-Taliban resistance groups — such as the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Northern Alliance commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and the Afghanistan Freedom Front, led by the former Afghan Army chief of general staff, Gen. Yasin Zia — have been targeting Taliban positions.

Adding to the Taliban’s troubles has been the emergence of smaller, local resistance groups such as Sipahiyan-i-Mihan (Homeland Guards), as well as the temporary, but chaotic, defection of former Taliban commander Juma Khan Fateh. After weeks of fighting against the group, Fateh eventually surrendered but not before the Taliban was forced to deploy hundreds of fighters from elsewhere in the country to Badakhshan.

To understand why this matters, it is necessary to understand Badakhshan’s importance at both the local and geopolitical levels.

It is one of Afghanistan’s most remote provinces. The Pamir Mountains dominate much of the landscape, making it among the country’s most mountainous and unforgiving regions. The province is geographically large and has an estimated population of about 1 million people. It is also home to many of Afghanistan’s famous blue lapis lazuli rock deposits, as well as gold mines.

The population is predominantly ethnic Tajik, although the province is also home to smaller Pamiri ethnic and linguistic communities, along with pockets of Uzbeks, Pashtuns and Kyrgyz. Transportation infrastructure is limited and relatively few roads can be used year-round.

As a result, Badakhshan’s mountains, valleys and the limited routes connecting them have an importance that goes well beyond geography; these routes are also economic and political lifelines and, in times of conflict, crucial lines of communication and movement.

Badakhshan also occupies a unique position on the country’s map. To the north it borders Tajikistan, the Central Asian country that has been perhaps the most concerned about the Taliban’s return to power and the most sympathetic to Afghanistan’s ethnic Tajik population.

To the southeast is Pakistan. Relations between Islamabad and the Taliban have deteriorated sharply over the former’s accusation that the latter was sheltering the Pakistani Taliban, which has carried out attacks against Pakistani military and government targets. These tensions have already resulted in armed clashes along the border.

And to the east, through the Wakhan Corridor, Badakhshan contains Afghanistan’s only border with China. Even people unfamiliar with Afghan geography often recognize the Wakhan as the narrow “finger” extending eastward from the rest of the country.

In recent weeks, both the National Resistance Front and Afghanistan Freedom Front have intensified activity across the province. Attacks have taken place around the city of Zebak, where several important valleys and roads converge, granting the area strategic importance as a gateway to the Wakhan Corridor, and in Kuran wa Munjan District, which provides important routes toward neighboring provinces, including Panjshir, which is NRF leader Ahmad Massoud’s ancestral home and another center of anti-Taliban resistance. The NRF also claimed responsibility for the assassination this month of the Taliban mayor of Faizabad, Badakhshan’s provincial capital.

Badakhshan might feel remote and distant to policymakers in Washington, Brussels and other capitals. But there are two reasons why events in its isolated valleys and villages matter far beyond the Pamirs.

The first is geography. Because it borders Tajikistan, Pakistan and China, Badakhshan sits at the intersection of Central and South Asia. The Taliban’s confrontation with armed opposition groups there is unfolding against an already complicated regional backdrop.

The US, China and Russia are all competing for influence across the broader region. India and Pakistan remain bitter rivals. Meanwhile, ties between India and the Taliban have grown at the same time relations between Pakistan and the Taliban have deteriorated and, on occasion, turned violent.

Recent history has repeatedly demonstrated that instability in Afghanistan rarely remains confined within the country’s borders. Understanding what is happening in Badakhshan — and how developments there could affect neighboring states — is therefore important for any serious regional strategy.

The second concern is the perennial threat of transnational terrorism. A recent UN report warned that “the terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan remained largely unchanged.” It also stated that the ability of numerous terrorist groups to operate there represented an enduring threat to neighboring countries, particularly in Central Asia.

The same report also raised specific concerns about terrorist activity in Badakhshan, particularly in the Wakhan Corridor.

Yet there is remarkably little understanding of, or engagement with, the armed opposition to the Taliban. As international policymakers formulate their approach to Afghanistan, the aspirations, motives, capabilities and political objectives of one side in the conflict remain largely unknown.

That makes little sense. If the international community is willing to engage with the Taliban as Afghanistan’s de facto rulers, there is no reason it cannot also establish contacts with organizations such as the NRF and AFF.

Nor should the international community assume that the country’s present political order is permanent. Since the Taliban returned to power, Afghan opposition figures have repeatedly called for a comprehensive political settlement that would produce a more inclusive government representing the country’s different ethnic, religious and political communities. The Taliban has shown little interest in such an arrangement.

If this continues, Afghanistan could gradually slide back toward the kind of armed conflict and political fragmentation that characterized the civil war of the 1990s. The developments now taking place in Badakhshan might represent an early stage of such a process.

Five years after the Taliban takeover, much of the international community remains focused on Iran, Gaza and Ukraine. Understandably so. But events in remote villages tucked into the isolated valleys of a distant Afghan province might yet produce geopolitical consequences that few policymakers are currently anticipating.