Mullah Omar and Al-Qaida: Things fall apart?

By Mehlaqa Samdani

President Obama has often referred to the Taliban and Al-Qaida as having ‘common cause’ and that a Taliban victory would once again allow Al-Qaida to find safe haven in Afghanistan.  His Defense Secretary told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Taliban ruled areas could in short order become once again sanctuary for al-Qaeda” and Admiral Mike Mullen emphasized that to assume that the “the Taliban would not at least tolerate the presence of al-Qaeda on Afghan soil is to ignore both the recent past and the evidence we see every day of collusion between these factions on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border”. 
 
To justify the surge, it has been important for administration officials to assert the ever-growing linkages between Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan .  And yet there is evidence to suggest there is growing divergence between the Taliban led by Mullah Omar and Al-Qaida, with respect to agendas, ideologies and tactics. 
 
For some time now, it seems that Mullah Omar’s faction has become increasingly nationalist in its goals and has distanced itself from the global Islamic agenda that characterizes Al-Qaida and its affiliates.  This was noticed by senior Al-Qaida officials as early as 2005 when Ayman Al-Zawahiri in a letter to a fellow Islamist “lamented that after the U.S.-led invasion, Taliban members retreated to their tribes and villages and showed little attachment to the global Islamist struggle (and) unfavorably compared that behavior to Arab Sunni resistance to U.S. attacks on the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Al-Ramadi”
 
Then in March of last year, Mullah Salam Zaeif, a Taliban spokesperson in Afghanistan responded to criticism by Al-Qaida sympathizers and said: "The conflict in Afghanistan doesn’t mean [the Taliban] has to confront the world," Zaief continues. "Afghans are very tired of war. They want their homeland. They want peace in their country. They want independence. Whether they are Taliban or other Afghans, I don’t think either wants to confront the entire international community. The Taliban doesn’t want to rule the world."

This is mostly consistent with Mullah Omar’s September statement on the occasion of Eid ul Fitr where he expressed his desire to maintain good relations with Afghanistan ’s neighbors and assured western governments that Afghanistan would no longer be used as a staging ground for international terrorism.  He also reached out to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization soon after “despite the fact that at least three of its member states ( China , Tajikistan and Uzbekistan ) are the targets of armed resistance by jihadi allies of al-Qaeda.

All this has prompted sharp criticism and concern from Al-Qaida sympathizers, leading one prominent Salafi ideologue, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, to lash out against the “dangerous utterances” of the Taliban amir, pointing out that they were of the same order as Hamas leader Khaled Mashal’s statement that the Chechen struggle is a Russian “internal matter.”

Differences have also emerged with regard to strategy.  While Al-Qaida has increasingly targeted civilians and caused mass casualties, Mullah Omar’s military committee recently came up with a manual for followers “calling on them to protect the population and avoid civilian casualties”.  There is also some indication that unlike their behaviour in the late 1990s (under the influence of Al-Qaida) when they massacred Shiite Hazaras, the Taliban seem now willing to “respects all different Islamic schools and branches without any discrimination" as expressed by political Taliban leader Agha Shahi in an interview. 
 
These developments are even more worrying for the Al-Qaida leadership given the shift in power dynamics between Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan .  According to US officials there are no more than a hundred Al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan and this has led to “a weakened al-Qaeda relying increasingly on the emboldened Taliban for protection and the manpower to carry out deadly attacks”.   However, with “Omar's growing confidence that his group can operate on its own, without al-Qaeda as its patron”, one wonders how likely it is that the Afghan amir would offer protection to Al-Qaida a second time around. 

 Flikr photo by the U.S. Army used under a Creative Commons license.