Hosting al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and allowing him to plan from Afghan soil for the 9/11 attacks was a mistake the Taliban paid for with the loss of power and which have matured for two years. decades.
The attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers “were the pretext that served the United States to invade our country,” he acknowledged in 2011 in statements to EFE what had been the last foreign minister of the Taliban regime , Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil.
“Bin Laden has given us a severe headache”, Admitia.
A decade later the Taliban have regained government and wanted to make it clear to the international community that they have learned the lesson of twenty years ago; they say they are not looking for enemies and intend to maintain “good relations with everyone.”
Unlike other Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda itself and the Islamic State, the Taliban have not attacked the West.
But his ideology remains rooted in jihad, which demands to lead the holy war wherever the infidel is.
And in the territory under his control sharia or Islamic law subjects the believer to a severe, if not brutal, code of conduct.
Pakistan, China and Russia In that order
“If the Taliban had not supported Bin Laden they would not have been detected by global radar,” stresses analyst Uday Bashkar, director of the Society for Political Studies, a think tank specializing in security issues in South Asia.
The expert believes that they have learned from the price they paid in 2001, but only from the point of view of political pragmatism.
“They now make much better use of technology, communication and diplomacy, especially in their dealings with the US,” he asserts.
Bashkar warns, however, that his ideology “is the same.”
He predicts that his new rise to power had a strong impact not only on the South Asian region, to which Afghanistan belongs; also in the Middle East and Central Asia, with which the country shares borders and where crucial interests are at stake.
“They need regional recognition and in this sense their agenda includes first Pakistan – where they arose in the nineties and which has traditionally served as a base and refuge – and then China and Russia, for this order, ”he points out.
Iran and Saudi Arabia as models
Eva Borreguero, a professor of political science at the Complutense University of Madrid, also thinks that the Taliban “have learned their lesson” and that “for the sake of survival they will try to avoid conflicts with the great powers”.
He predicts that their strategy will lead them to show a temperate face in the short term but that in the medium and long term “it will be necessary to see how events unfold, because they are of another generation but their ideological foundation remains the same.”
“They will try to show a new image in front of the outside in the cities, under the scrutiny of the western media, but we will not know what will happen in the most remote rural areas,” he says.
Borreguero cites the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as possible models for the new Taliban regime.
Both Shiite Iran and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia have established theocratic governments whose rigor and systematic violation of human rights has not deprived them of a place in the community of nations or of recognition in the international order.
The new Taliban regime can, in turn, serve as a model for radical groups in Africa, “especially in the siege of power.”
The academic notes that, in any case, the Taliban “will try to achieve the highest degree of orthodoxy that will allow them to survive.”
Not Obama, not Trump, not Biden; Bush
Part of the debate this week has focused on the responsibility of successive US presidents for the political, military and diplomatic failure of the Taliban’s return to Kabul.
Barack Obama has been blamed for initiating U.S. military retreat, Donald Trump for negotiating the withdrawal, and Joe Biden for rushing the U.S. Army out of the Afghan eve.
It was, however, the predecessor of all of them, George W. Bush, who ordered the military invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, and in circumstances that some have questioned.
In a statement to EFE, the former head of Taliban diplomacy Muttawakil denied in 2011 “outright” that he had warned the Bush administration in advance that Al Qaeda was organizing an airstrike on the United States.
This was stated then by the Uzbek Islamist leader and Taliban ally Yohir Yo’Idosh; whether this version was true or not – and whether the warning was transmitted or not – the attacks were carried out, and consequently, the American invasion of the South Asian country. EFE