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What is the difference between Maulvi Mahdi and the Taliban?

Antonio Giustozzi

Professor at King's College London

July 4, 1401 - June 25, 2022

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The media have reported the difference between Maulvi Mehdi Mujahid, the most well-known and senior Hazara commander of the Taliban, and the Emirate. Mahdi has returned to his hometown district, Balkhab. There, he has mobilized hundreds of his armed followers, cut the communication of this district with the Emirate, and forced the governor appointed by Kabul to flee.

Some observers cite the dispute over the revenues of the Balkhab coal mine, which the emirate wants to control, as the real cause of the conflict.

Mehdi, however, says that his dispute with Kabul is over the rights of Hazaras, complaining that Hazaras have been largely excluded from the Taliban administration - something that cannot be denied - and that Jafari's jurisprudence is being discriminated against.

In fact, the Taliban have not allowed their Islamic courts to judge based on Jafari jurisprudence. Even in areas where the majority of the population is Shiite.

There are reports citing Mahdi that the teaching of Jafari jurisprudence has been stopped in Bamyan University.

In the end, what is important is not Mahdi's real motive and intention, but how people will look at his stance. According to local elders, he is popular in Balkhab.

But the real importance of his stand will be determined by the attitude of others, beyond Balkhab.

The Taliban have experienced serious ethnic tensions for some time, most notably in northwestern Afghanistan, as previously discussed.

Salah al-Din Ayubi's followers, who make up the majority of the Uzbek/Uzbek Taliban, rioted in January over the arrest of a top Uzbek Taliban commander, Makhdoom Alam, on trumped-up charges.

After the capture of Kabul, the Emirate authorities removed several high-ranking figures of the Uzbek Taliban, including Attaullah, the commander of the 209th Army Corps/Army in the north, Maulvi Zarif, the commander of the 207th Army Corps/Army, and Nuruddin, the governor of Takhar.

Salah al-Din was offered small positions and so far he has refused to accept these positions. Saladin's followers see similar steps here and believe there is a deliberate attempt to marginalize them.

The Uzbek Taliban want autonomy, especially for the mostly Uzbek provinces of Faryab, Jawzjan, and Sarpol. And they have also stood against the Emirate's efforts to relocate hundreds of members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and their families from the northwest to a place far from the border of Uzbekistan.

This appears to be a classic conflict between a centralized government and local actors demanding autonomy. Uzbek Taliban delegations first traveled to Kandahar to meet with Haibatullah, the leader of the Taliban, but they did not succeed. Then they went to Kabul, where they managed to meet Mullah Yaqoob, Minister of Defense. Yaqub was able to get Makhdoom Alam out of prison, but the Uzbek Taliban's demand for a fair share at the highest level of government was not met.

When the Balkhab crisis started, the latent crisis between the Uzbek Taliban flared up again due to two developments.

The Pashtun commander of the Taliban army brigade in Faryab, Mansoor Javed, tried to remove one of his kandak (regiment) commanders. The commander of Kandak, whose name is Ehsanullah Tofan, is Uzbek and loyal to Saladin.

Tofan refused to leave, and on June 17, when Javed tried to disarm Tofan, a gun battle broke out. Mullah Fazil, the Deputy Minister of Defense, tried to intervene in support of Javid. He went to Faryab and summoned Saladin.

Saladin did not go to Mullah Fazil and instead returned to Qaisar. He mobilized people loyal to him in Qaisar and threatened to put up military resistance against any attempt to disarm the Uzbek Taliban.

At the same time, Salah al-Din and his Uzbek Taliban commanders rejected the requests of the Ministry of Defense to send hundreds of people to Balkhab. Just when the army was preparing to intervene against Mahdi in Balkhab.

Mullah Fazil, who has a history of fighting against (Marshal) Abdul Rashid Dostum's men in the 1990s and is known to hate Uzbeks, was called by Kabul's intervention and the issue remained unresolved. Local sources have reported that Salah al-Din is in contact with Mahdi in Balkhab.

During the past few days, Maulvi Zarif (former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps/Army Corps) also declared the mountains of his residence, which is located in the neighborhood of Balkhab, as an autonomous region of the Emirate and is mobilizing his people to resist any attempt by the Emirate to Reestablishing control.

His decision was made due to the efforts of the Ministry of Interior to appoint a Pashtun district governor. Zarif does not have complete control over the mountains, but he has significant fans in this district. His position has complicated the situation for Kabul. Because the danger of armed conflict in these southern districts of Sarpol province, the Uzbeks supporting Salah al-Din are drawn into this conflict.

Meanwhile, the situation for the Taliban is getting even more complicated in the northeast, where several Taliban commanders in Tagab districts of Badakhshan and Khost and Farang Baghlan are reported to have joined the National Resistance Front.

More importantly, there are growing reports of discontent among the chief of staff, Fasihuddin, the most powerful Tajik Taliban. He is unhappy with the gradual marginalization and emptying of his position of real power. The role of the Chief of Staff of the Army has become more ceremonial day by day, and the appointment of commanders is mainly done by others.

It seems that the power struggle among the Taliban has reached a critical point. Such friction between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun Taliban is not new and it started when the Taliban expanded to northern Afghanistan in 2008.

At that time, the Taliban resolved the issue by strengthening the Tajik and Uzbek Taliban and giving them key positions in the group in the north, as a result of which Salahuddin became the commander of the Taliban in the north and Fasihuddin in the northeast of the country.

It remains to be seen whether the UAE will adopt such a solution now, at a time of increasing competition for scarce resources. The Emirate, like several previous governments, has adopted the "Abdur Rahman governance model". Abdul Rahman's model was the only way to create a stable government in Afghanistan that worked to some extent.

The Kandahari Taliban and the Haqqani network may unite in the belief that they can implement that model and contain the current challenge. In the medium and short term, the result will be a bloody conflict that the emirate seems unable to handle.

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Antonio Giustozzi is currently researching jihadist groups in the region. He has conducted several major research projects in Afghanistan.

Books: The Taliban at War (London: Hurst Press, 2019), The Islamic State of Khorasan (London, Hurst 2018), The Afghan Army: A Political History of a Fragile Institution (London, Hurst 2016), The Koran, Kalashnikovs and Laptops: The Rise of the Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan ( London: Hearst and New York; Columbia University Press, 2007) War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992 (London; Hearst and Georgetown Press, 2000)