How Afghan Taliban keep winning battles
The US and allied forces, much like the erstwhile USSR, have become a victim of the asymmetric warfare that the hills and difficult terrain of Afghanistan facilitate. While for the intervening forces the Afghan theater provided a limited-war scenario linked with certain political outcomes, it presented a total-war scenario for the insurgents, who considered the war as the determinant of the very question of their survival.
Afghan Taliban have proved former US diplomat and politician Henry Kissinger's maxim, "The guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the conventional army loses if it does not win."
The continuing stalemate in the Afghan war implies that the Taliban are winning the battle. The insurgent group has only had to conduct a protracted war of attrition and wait out the American will to stay in Afghanistan. The tactical advantages of the asymmetric war also allowed the Taliban to respond effectively to predictable attacks by leaving the area under aerial and artillery bombardment and come back after the pro-government forces had returned to their bases. On the other hand, the insurgents' unpredictable offensives dampened the patience of the government forces.
Apart from the advantages of geography and the tactics of asymmetric warfare, Afghanistan has witnessed gradual erosion of support for the government forces backed by the US and allied forces and swelling of the support base of the insurgents for reasons such as civilian casualties, unemployment and corruption. Each year civilian casualties caused by pro-government forces kept increasing. Figures released by one of the latest UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reports covering the period from January 1 to September 30 ascribed 2,348 civilian casualties (1,149 killed and 1,199 injured) to pro-government forces, a 26% increase from the same period in 2018.
Meanwhile as the progress of liberal democracy failed to have much impact beyond Kabul, the Taliban movement was strengthened by strategies such as tapping into nationalist feelings and creation of employment opportunities by running a shadow economy - production and trade of opium.
Most Pashtuns live in the countryside and have remained susceptible to the Taliban's narrative of fighting against foreign occupation, as the group's appeals were able to tap into Pashtun conservatism, which is embedded in the notions of national honor and pride and defending the country from foreign occupation at any costs. The insurgent group in its attempts to evoke the age-old Afghan pride in the country's honor and independence among the rural masses revived and instilled the memories as to how their efforts and struggle won their country the much-prized independence against the British Empire in the 19th century and against the Soviets in the 20th century. Oral poetry, stories and songs became the insurgent group's mode of communication in transmitting such messages to rural people who are largely illiterate.
The Taliban's support base among the Pashtuns runs deeper than their actual number in Afghanistan. While about 40% of the Afghans are Pashtuns, Pakistan is home to more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. The Durand Line separates the Pashtuns of these two countries and those on the Pakistani side of the border have looked upon and assisted the Taliban's insurgency as a legitimate struggle for independence from foreign occupation.
The Afghan Army was dominated by ethnic groups from northern Afghanistan and encountered formidable obstacles in fighting insurgency in southern Afghanistan - the stronghold of the Taliban. Soldiers not only needed to communicate through interpreters hired for the Americans, the historical rifts between the ethnic groups in the north and south led to them to be looked upon as outsiders by local residents. Drives to include Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan through enhanced quotas did not succeed.
However, long years of foreign intervention and endemic unemployment have helped the Taliban expand their base. A new generation of local commanders from ethnic groups of northern Afghanistan has been attracted by the Taliban's offers of jobs and have joined the movement despite historical animosities. For instance, many Taliban fighters in Badakhshan province are now drawn from the Tajik ethnic group. This apart, a perception of triumph that the insurgent group has generated among fighters of other ethnic groups also induces them to join the Taliban movement.
It needs to be recalled how the long years of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan gradually strengthened a perception among the troops drawn from the non-Russian Soviet republics that the people they were fighting against were more similar to them (shared common identities) than the Russians. The Afghan war accentuated ethnic unrest within the Soviet army and went a long way in discrediting it. The reliability of Central Asian soldiers began to be questioned and they were often removed from active combat duties in Afghanistan.
Thus it is not far-fetched to believe that the Afghans would appreciate each other's identity more if a sense of occupation by foreign powers were generated with the collapse of the economy accompanied by rising levels of unemployment and corruption.