KHAAMA PRESS - Thu Aug 13 2015, 8:54 am

The Taliban carried out many deadly remarkably vicious attacks in Kabul in recent days which claimed many innocent lives. These attacks may be an apparent attempt by the Taliban leaders to portray unity, boost the morale of the cadres and to show that the jihad against government forces and their foreign backers continues despite internal chaos. The Taliban has been in turmoil since it confirmed that its leader Mullah Omar, long hidden from the public eye, was dead. The death of Mullah Omar takes away the main centre of gravity in the jihadi movement that competes with Islamic State it’s now rival. Taliban since its inception enjoyed monopoly of being only jihadist group but now it faces a tough competition from Islamic State. Many analysts believes Mullah Omar’s death poses an existential crisis for the Afghan Taliban potentially presaging a splintering of the movement as the Islamic State group gains a toehold among insurgents enthralled by its battlefield prowess. The group has suffered a string of recent defections to Islamic State, with some insurgents voicing disaffection with the current new leader Mullah Mansor which is not at all as charismatic like- Mullah Omar. So now Taliban is feeling unsecured in lack of unifying leader like Omar. So to unify the movement and cadres these deadly attacks were carried out in Afghan capital….

Now the Taliban can see a potential cost associated with the slow collapse of the Afghan government and the country. Gradualism begets disorder, a power vacuum and internal Taliban strife. In other words, the longer it takes for the Ghani government to fall, the greater the chances for Islamic State to undermine the Taliban. The Taliban want to avoid a situation in which, having won their long war against the U.S. and its Afghan regime, they have to fight another civil war against an Islamic State offshoot for control of the country. Hence new Taliban leadership wants to project themselves hard on the battlefield and negotiate with the position of strength in the peace talks. But Taliban has to rethink about this strategy as with so much civilians casualties’ Afghan government will be in intense pressure from the civil society to stop all peace talks with the group and announced a full-fledged military operation against Taliban. In that scenario equations for Taliban will change drastically.