On July 30, the Taliban confirmed the death of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, rumors of whose demise had circulated for years. The acknowledgement has enormous implications for possible peace in Afghanistan, as the Taliban and government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on July 7 had held initial peace talks in Islamabad. The first fallout from Omar’s demise has been the postponement at Taliban request of a second round of negotiations that had been scheduled to begin in Murree, Pakistan on July 31.
The uncertainty surrounding Omar’s death has injected into Afghanistan’s strategic environment has made post-Soviet neighboring nations Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan nervous about the future. Between them they share a 1,240 mile border with Afghanistan.
The Afghan border with Tajikistan is mountainous and poorly demarcated and accounts for more than half of that distance, at 750 miles and contains four major crossing points – all river bridges. Since 2002 the Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN) built three new bridge border crossings across the Panj River, along with a fourth “Afghanistan-Tajikistan Bridge” across the Panj built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2008 to provide an alternative entry point for Northern Distribution Network (NDN) logistical support for ISAF forces.
Afghanistan’s border with Turkmenistan is 460 miles long and contains one major crossing point. Uzbekistan shares 85 miles of border with Afghanistan, with the one major crossing point being the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge across the Amu Darya, built by the Soviet Army in 1982 at the Uzbek town of Termez. Afghanistan’s frontiers with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan consist largely of deserts.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been battling the government of Islam Karimov for nearly two decades, and the IMU has been growing from strength to strength in Afghanistan. Two months ago Kabul-based Center for Conflict and Peace Studies researcher Hekmatullah Azamy after numerous conversations with Afghan officials estimated the number of IMU fighters now fighting in Afghanistan at 5,000-7,000. Beginning in autumn 2014, Afghan officials increasingly saw the IMU as behind fierce battles and increased violence in Afghanistan’s northern Zabul, Baghlan, Kunduz, Badakhshan, Takhar, Faryab, Jowzjan and Badghis provinces; the latter six border Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
The IMU’s long-term alliance with the Taliban is now assisting the militants to develop sanctuaries in northern Afghanistan. Most ominously, Azamy notes that over the past several years the IMU has become an umbrella organization for Jundallah, Junad al-Khalifa, Jamaat Ansarullah and the Islamic Jihad Union, which support its goal of destabilizing Central Asian governments starting with Uzbekistan eventually to replace them with an Islamic regime.
The presence of foreign extremists is complicating the Afghan government’s attempts to pursue peace talks with the Taliban. On July 16 Afghan national security adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar said, “The killer, extremist and terrorist groups in our country come from different countries. From al-Qaeda to the so-called Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Ansarullah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and all others pursue goals outside and beyond Afghanistan. If they have one thing in common, that is a mutually beneficial relation and a mutually dependent coexistence with the domestic terrorist groups. If we are able to separate the domestic groups from them, particularly through the peace program, the foreign terrorist groups will not have the ability to continue the war.”
On July 22 Kunduz Governor Mohammad Omar Safi admitted that besides the Taliban and IMU, IS, Pakistani Jundullah and other militant groups now operate in his province, which shares a frontier with Tajikistan. The same day that Safi spoke the Afghan Defense Ministry’s spokesman Dawlat Waziri stated that four out of every 10 armed insurgents are foreign militants, who include Uzbeks, Pakistanis, Chinese Uyghurs, Chechens, Tajiks, and Arabs fighting in different Afghan provinces.
In an extremely ominous development for post-Soviet Central Asia, two months ago a group of Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan, claiming to be from the IMU, posted an Internet video of members beheading an Afghan soldier before announcing that it was pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). In making the announcement Sadulla Urgenji said that the IMU no longer viewed Taliban leader Mullah Omar as leader since he had not been seen since October 2001 and consequently, “according to Shari’a,” Omar can no longer be regarded as “Amir al-Mu’minin (“Commander of the faithful”).” Because of this Urgenji said that the IMU was recognizing the authority of IS leader Hamid Dawud Mohamed Khalil al Zawi, also known as Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi. In May 2010 the Shura Council of the Islamic State of Iraq confirmed al-Baghdadi as successor to Abu Umar al-Baghdadi and granted him the title “Amir al-Mu’minin.”
On June 29 IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani said, “The Shura of the Islamic State met and discussed this issue (of the caliphate) … The Islamic State decided to establish an Islamic Caliphate and to designate a Caliph for the state of the Muslims,” designating al-Baghdadi, who took the name Caliph Ibrahim, as the “leader for Muslims everywhere.” If Urgenji’s assertions prove accurate, then the IMU has affiliated itself with the most powerful extremist Islamic faction in the world today, one that claims obligatory theological sovereignty over every true Muslim.
Omar’s death, which the Taliban by their own admission hid for more than two years has given the Taliban credibility issues, and will undoubtedly lead more foreign militants to follow Urgenji’s example and switch allegiance to the IS. This in turn will further complicate Afghan President Afraf Ghani’s attempts to mediate a political peace settlement with the Taliban. Further complicating the picture, Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, has not received the title “Amir al-Mu’minin,” but rather, the lower “Supreme Leader.” Mansour was Mullah Omar’s deputy.
In contrast, members of the Taliban swore a religious oath of loyalty to Omar, giving him a kind of authority that no other Afghan leader had. Heightening fears of factionalism, the Quetta Shura and a number of Taliban commanders have rejected Mansour as leader, claiming they had not been consulted. Worse for Mansour’s credibility, a senior member of the Quetta Shura told the Afghan media that Mansour is a Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) appointment. “The late Mullah Omar had selected someone else as his possible successor,” he continued, but did not give details.
According to Pakistani media reports, Taliban military head Abdul Qayoum Zakir, Quetta Shura member Mullah Habibullahand Sayed Tayib Agha, head of Taliban’s political office in Qatar are among the senior Taliban members that are opposed to Mansour’s appointment.
Some Pakistani media reports suggest that Omar’s son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoub, was himself hoping to succeed his father – a move that was reportedly opposed by some members of the council.
Seeking to avoid factionalism, over the weekend, the Taliban released a thirty-minute long audio tape of Mansour calling on Taliban members to stand united and warning that those who try to exploit the Taliban’s current power vacuum power will face severe punishment.
Will the IS use the current political paralysis in the Taliban to further their recruitment? Will Central Asian militants feel Omar’s death and the deception surrounding it free them from their oaths of loyalty, freeing them to pursue their original goals in their post-Soviet homelands? Will Afghanistan sink further into chaos, and will the unrest in its northern border provinces wash into post-Soviet Central Asia?
These are all questions for which Ashgabat, Tashkent and Dushanbe nervously await answers.
