What does the Taliban stand for?

The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan has been celebrated by many Islamist extremist groups, but not Islamic State.

Instead Isis “basically called the Taliban a stooge of the US” and said it “was handed Afghanistan on a silver platter” by the American government, a BBC expert on extremist messaging, Mina Al-Lami, told NPR.

Nor is it only a war of words, said The Guardian foreign correspondent Jason Burke: “fierce battles” have broken out between the Taliban and local Isis affiliates in Afghanistan.

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And days after rolling into Kabul, the Taliban claimed to have taken the former head of Islamic State in South Asia from an Afghan prison and executed him “on the spot”, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The latest

Two months after the Taliban seized power after the US and Nato’s chaotic withdrawal, “the new Islamist rulers in Kabul are threatened by an insurgency launched by Islamic State-Khorasan Province”, better known as Isis-K, said the Financial Times.

The offshoot group has detonated bombs at Kabul airport and two Shia mosques, killing hundreds, and has attacked Taliban convoys.

Its “hardline stance has proved attractive to disgruntled Taliban fighters” who are “dismayed at the new regime’s reluctance to impose tougher restrictions on women and its diplomatic overtures to countries such as the US, China and Russia”, the paper added.

Some US trained former soldiers and intelligence officers have also turned to Isis as “the only force currently challenging the country’s new rulers”, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The number of new recruits is “relatively small”, the paper said, but has furnished Isis with “critical expertise in intelligence gathering and warfare techniques, potentially strengthening the extremist organisation’s ability to contest Taliban supremacy”.

Lines of division

Both Isis and the Taliban practice extreme variations of Sunni Islam, and seek to rule through an authoritarian regime under strict sharia law. Though the two are united in their use of violence to enforce their regimes, what differentiates the extremist groups from one another – as well as others such as al-Qa'eda – essentially comes down to “major strategic differences”, Burke said.

Though “almost all” violent Islamist extremist groups have welcomed the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the unfolding events have “revealed the deep faultlines that have weakened the jihadist movement in the past decade”, said Burke.

The most significant difference between Isis and the Taliban is in their ideological interpretations and enforcements of sharia law. One aspect that experts, such as journalist Mah-Rukh Ali, point to is the group's interpretations of how to treat women under Islamic law. In a 2015 paper published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Ali highlighted that Isis sexualises women as objects in a way the Taliban does not.

Additionally, “Isis considers Shia Muslim heretics”, the BBC's Al-Lami continued. Shia civilians are considered “legitimate targets” by Isis, whereas they are not by the Taliban. The difference in views is shown in Isis's description of the Taliban as “apostates”.

Groups including the Taliban, who have “shown greater pragmatism in recent years”, stand in stark contrast to those, like Isis, “who believe in unmitigated violence, extreme commitment to doctrinal purity and apocalyptic predictions”, Burke summarised.

History of their fallout

Isis, which was formed in 1999, began recruiting Taliban defectors in 2015, after establishing the ISKP in Afghanistan.

The two forces went to war later that year, after the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour asked his Isis counterpart Abu Bakr al Baghdadi to stop recruiting former Taliban fighters. He had called for the two groups to unite under the Taliban’s leadership in order to achieve a common goal of ruling by sharia law.

Isis and the Taliban fought each other again in 2017, in the Jowzjan province of Afghanistan. Violence continued until the ISKP was “almost entirely eradicated” by US and Afghan forces in 2019, The Independent explained.

The Taliban signed a peace deal with Donald Trump’s administration in February 2020 which, as well as agreeing to the withdrawal of US troops within 14 months, allowed for some continued violence, though at a reduced level.

Isis has criticised the Taliban for working with Western governments and organisations, and its latest statement indicates that the group considers that the Taliban is willing to collaborate with the West.

A growing threat

In the first quarter of 2021, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan recorded 77 attacks that were claimed by or attributed to ISKP. Burke has described the faction as “perhaps the ugliest character in the Star Wars bar for extremists that Afghanistan has become” in The Guardian.

A separate UN report published in June revealed that between 8,000 and 10,000 fighters from Central Asia, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Pakistan and the Xinjiang region of China have entered Afghanistan in recent months. These fighters are mostly affiliated with either the Taliban, al-Qaeada or Isis.

With scenes of chaos at Kabul airport as thousands of people tried to flee the country, an Isis-K suicide bomber carried out an attack that claimed the lives of more than 180 people, including Afghan civilians and US service members.

The militants have so far “carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year”, The New York Times said, with US military intelligence suggesting that “threats from the group include a bomb-laden truck, suicide bombers infiltrating the crowd outside Hamid Karzai International Airport and mortar strikes against the airfield”.

The group has recently “shown signs it is expanding its footprint” beyond the east of the country, primarily Nangarhar where it maintains a “strong presence”, and nearer to Kabul, The Guardian noted.