Afghanistan: the dangerous rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State

The evolution of the Afghan situation highlights a competition within Islamic terrorism, which can concretely undermine all efforts to stabilize the country. The progressive separation of the United States, determined, especially with the Trump presidency, a different tactic for the protection of the Kabul government, focused almost exclusively on the military option, which preferred to favor the operations of the air force with bombings, which often even hit civilians. The choice of military response has greatly reduced humanitarian interventions, which aimed to accredit the central government and its foreign allies with the local population. This contributed to a decrease in trust and consensus among the Kabul authorities, which encouraged the growing inclusion of the Taliban as a political subject. The intention of the Taliban is to become a recognized political force within the process of national pacification, thanks also to the tribal component, whose relevance should be the basis for accreditation in negotiations with the government. However, while on the one hand, several Afghan political sectors said they were in favor of a solution that could include the Taliban groups at the negotiating table, the offers made were considered insufficient, partly because of the US opposition, an orientation already taken with the Obama presidency . The strategy of the Taliban groups has thus become that of missing the perception of the legitimacy of the central government, creating instability with attacks, which were initially targeted against military or government installations and that did not involve civilians. At the same time, however, the entry of militiamen of the Islamic State from the Pakistani provinces bordering the Afghan country, has created an unprecedented situation, which has the result of changing the terrorist modes of the Taliban. The objectives of the men of the caliphate, at least for the moment, do not seem to have a clear political horizon or comparable to the ambitions of the Taliban, the perception is that they intend to make Afghanistan a sort of training camp where to collect the militiamen who fled from the territory where the sovereignty of the Islamic State was exercised and, at the same time, that of recruiting the most radicalized Afghans. Unlike the Taliban, the caliphate seems to have focused its attention on the capital Kabul, with attacks typical of terrorism that were carried out, for example in Iraq, before the assertion of the Islamic State and which resumed after the military defeat of the caliphate. These are particularly violent acts of terrorism, often practiced by kamikaze, which affect places frequented by the local population or foreigners and which must have a great media coverage. To compete on this ground the Taliban had to adapt to these terrorist techniques to contain the media rise of the caliphate militias in the country; the Islamic State has identified a part of the population, the most radical, which does not agree with the intention of the Taliban to become an official political subject and therefore, although among all the possible distinctions, collaborate with a government that bases the its existence thanks to external intervention. From an international point of view the entry of the caliphate in Afghanistan has a very dangerous value: if, on the one hand, it seems impossible to repeat what happened in Syria and in Iraq, thanks to the presence of the Taliban, there is the concrete possibility that some parts of the country, the most remote and least controlled, can become a basis of Islamic fundamentalism in which to rebuild those ambitions of sovereignty or, however, that become the center from which to send terrorism throughout the world. The proximity to Pakistan, whose secret services are frivolously suspected of being linked to Islamic radicalism, fuels this fear. For a normalization of the Afghan country, necessary for regional stability, this antagonism must be exploited, trying to integrate the Taliban movement, starting from its less extremist and more reasonable components, into the administration of the country: but this is very difficult because the necessary condition is that those who are identified as a foreign occupation force leave the national territory. This scares the part of the population that is against the fundamentalism and does not guarantee the survival of the country, the only solution, unfortunately not fast, is the reopening of negotiations that have as a starting point more concessions to the Taliban and the research of common contact points. Meanwhile, the main activity of the Afghan armed forces of its allies will be to try to stop as many attacks as possible.