The dogmatic Taliban group, in addition to brutal killings and inhumane acts, has always sought ethnic dominance and superiority in Afghanistan. Time has proved that the Taliban will never succumb to the legitimate demands of the people of Afghanistan.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is a crucial development. It can be costly and painful, especially for the religious and ideological forces of their own selves. The power-hungry group entered the arena with religious or political agendas, but after seizing power, the group faces the harsh realities of governance, economics, and diplomacy there has been no progress made in diplomatic interaction with the world.
The world has so far bypassed the Taliban through local and international NGOs in interaction with the people of Afghanistan. A single penny is not being spent via the Taliban’s address, which is red light to the Taliban that the world will never accept a group of terrorist to rule a population of around 45 million people on the bases of vague religious arguments which are more of particularities of a tribal custom rather than religious matters.
The Taliban, in decades of military operations, have established themselves as an inflexible force against change. But power is transformative in any case, and if it does not lead to internal transformation, it will inevitably impose formal changes on the ruling group. The group seeks to preserve its nature by oppressing opposition groups, and to keep satisfied the deceived and traditional ranks that stood behind it during the war and violence. But it is not possible to maintain the satisfaction of those “supporters” for a long time, because now a great nation with all its shortcomings and strengths has fallen into the control of the Taliban and the Taliban will be certainly the group to change not the people and time. The Taliban, who before the fall of Kabul and the re-declaration of the “Emirate” were a united group, are now embroiled in intense internal strife. Disagreements that have deepened in recent years. Differences such as being from Eastern provinces and Kandahar, from North and South, being Shiite and Sunni, Persian and Pashto, urban and rural will all be the challenges that Taliban has to fight back with.
One of the reasons behind Taliban’s fast forward power acknowledgment is the entry of different forces, ethnicities and strata into its ranks. Influential and opportunistic actors have covered themselves under the umbrella of Taliban. “No matter if you are illiterate or a criminal, as long as you do not oppose us and look like us, you are well treated,” this is the philosophy of being a good Talib. Given the fact, we usually encounter with a strange name like Mawlawi Mehdi – a Taliban commander who is from the Hazara ethnic and has recently boycotted the Taliban rank. Strange enough, part of the Hazara community stands with the fraudulent Shiite Mawlawi and supports him in the Taliban’s internal strife.
The good Taliban and the bad Taliban have been discussed in the past as well. Pakistan calls the Afghan Taliban as good and the Pakistani Taliban bad Taliban. Similarly, the Afghan government used to call some characters within the Taliban as good and moderate and others bad. Now there are the good Hazara Taliban, the good Tajik Taliban, the good Uzbek Taliban, the good Pashtun Taliban and many other “good” labels. Even the liberal forces of Afghanistan’s society categorize the Taliban into good and bad. There are those who consider strengthening the moderate Taliban as a matter of need for survival, having turned a blind eye and saying we should work with that part of the Taliban.
The Taliban in power are no longer just a dogmatic group, but also a political and administrative faction into which many leaders, whether they like it or not, will enter. But this medieval and petrified faction does not accommodate the Afghan people. Finding a suitable place for political and cultural tendencies, diverse ethnic groups and strata in the ranks of the Taliban is a futile effort and a costly mistake. The race to join the Taliban will never provide ground for coexistence and tolerance of acceptance in Afghanistan. If the Taliban are supposed to show a capacity to tolerate Afghanistan’s diversity, it will soon explode from within and by their own formations and ranks. Because the people of Afghanistan will have no place in such ethnic dominated so-called government, except in a democratic and law-abiding government.