By Dr. Yaqub Ibrahimi
The establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) was the Taliban’s first effort to transform into a state structure in the midst of the Afghan civil war. However, the effort met with no ultimate success. After capturing Kabul in September 1996, the Taliban formed the IEA which was based on a two-track governance system, a political-military leadership council called the Supreme Council in Kandahar and an executive bureau called the Council of Ministers in Kabul. While capable of capturing territory, the IEA failed to achieve the minimum ‘state making’ criterion which consists of eliminating the internal enemy, attaining the legitimacy to be ‘the sole source of the right to use violence,’ and, acquiring the necessary means of governance. The IEA’s institutional fragility and its functional failure were the outcome of its reliance and investment on war, its insurgent characteristic, and its lack of resources and administrative capacity. Essentially, the IEA lacked all three elements of statehood (i.e. legitimacy, authority, and capacity).
Concerning legitimacy, the IEA lacked both internal and international legitimacy. Internally, in response to the absence of a ‘rational-legal’ source for its legitimation, the IEA resorted to base its claim of legitimacy on a traditional source of accreditation, Islam. To match Islam to its style of conduct, the IEA adopted a particular form of Islamic interpretation, Deobandism, which follows a Salafist doctrine with the inflexibility to accept ijtihad – the use of reason to create innovations in response to new circumstances and requirements. In Afghanistan, for centuries Islam has served as a source of legitimacy and jurisprudence, however, the Taliban’s version of Islam and its coercive enforcement approach was not welcomed by the people. Apart from some exceptions, the society at large, including the rural religious communities, did not readily follow the Taliban’s Islamism. In addition to its poor internal legitimacy, the IEA also lacked external legitimacy in the sense that the international community did not officially recognize its sovereignty in Afghanistan. Only three countries, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates extended their official recognition but the latter two soon downgraded it. Therefore, from its emergence in September 1996 until its collapse in December 2001, the Taliban significantly invested in diplomatic activities to convince the international community to recognize the IEA’s sovereignty in Afghanistan but failed.
Concerning authority, unlike traditional authoritarian regimes that lack legitimacy but enjoy authority, the IEA lacked effective authority. The IEA invested massively on ‘war-making’ with the purpose of ‘state making’. However, it did enjoy the sufficient war machine to eliminate its internal rival and acquire the means of building a state that could provide protection and welfare to its clients. The IEA’s security force was organized as a traditional tribal militia force, rather than an army structure that is able to respond to internal threats, control borders, and provide a governed and secure space to the population living in the country. The IEA’s security and military weakness made it heavily dependent on foreign fighters and the military support received from Pakistan and the Arab jihadists. Data shows that between 1994 and 1999 over 80,000 Pakistanis fought along with the Taliban which included ISI field officers, Pakistani Frontier Corps, regular Pakistani armed forces personnel and madrasa students. Pakistan was not the only country whose nationals joined and supported the Taliban, militarily. Thousands of Arab, African, and East Asian and Central Asian Muslim jihadists fought for the Taliban. Most of those fighters were organized, equipped, and trained by al-Qaeda. Integration of the 055 Brigade of al-Qaeda, which included around 2000 trained soldiers, into the Taliban force is a concrete example of the Taliban’s reliance on foreign fighters, particularly al-Qaeda. Considering the Taliban’s shortage of resources to cover the cost of war, its poorly developed armed forces, the IEA’s unfamiliarity with modern ways of warfare and control, and the quickly changing nature of war in Afghanistan, it is not evident if the Taliban could exercise an effective authority soon.
Concerning capacity, the IEA lacked both the resources and the manpower required for modern governance. More concretely, the IEA’s capacity was affected by its very small economy and the low administrative capability for acquiring resources and providing basic services. The IEA’s regular source of revenue produced some 40% of its costs and, therefore, its economy largely depended on three unofficial sources of revenue: drug, Pakistan, and bin Laden which provided a remarkable share of the Taliban’s costs, particularly the costs of war. Moreover, the IEA lacked the administrative capability to run a state. Almost all IEA’s authorities were armed mullahs and madrasa students with nearly no administrative knowledge or expertise. Almost all cabinet ministers, deputies, and provincial governors were mullahs roughly with a madrasa education who simultaneously acted as military commanders. For example, the Health Minister, Mullah Mohammed Abbas, served as a Taliban commander in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat in 1997 until he returned to his job as the Minister six months later. Likewise, the Governor of the State Bank, Mullah Ehsanullah Ehsan, commanded an elite force of some 1,000 Kandahari Taliban, and the Governor of Herat, Mullah Abdul Razaq, led military offensives all over the country. As a result, even if Afghanistan’s state institutions were not destroyed through the course of the civil war, the Taliban did not have the administrative capacity to maintain and administer them properly.
Overall, the IEA attempted to materialize ‘state-making’ through ‘war-making,’ an endeavor that was reasonably doomed to failure in a country like Afghanistan. It never acquired the necessary material and human resources, and institutions to form a state and lacked all three elements of statehood including legitimacy, authority, and capacity.
Note: This is an abstract of an article with the same title by the author published in Small Wars and Insurgencies.
The paper was first published in Routledge Taylor & Francis Group on 17 August 2017
Dr. Yaqub Ibrahimi is a political science lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa and a senior research fellow at the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies.
Academicians and Officials interested to publish their academic pieces on this page, please approach us through: opinions@aiss.af
The article does not reflect the official opinion of the AISS.