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Longing for Jihad, Former Taliban Fighters Join Militants’ War in Pakistan ByJARA News MediaPosted on August 14, 2023
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As a child studying in a madrasa in Afghanistan, Mohammad Khalid Tahir
dreamed of waging jihad. By the time he was a teenager, he had joined
the Taliban and celebrated when they seized power from the U.S.-backed government two years ago.
But the high from that victory did not last. Reassigned as a soldier in
the capital, he frequently complained that he was bored and longed to
return to his life’s purpose, according to his family.
So this spring, he did — but across the border in Pakistan.
“Our only expectation is to be martyred,” Mr. Tahir says in a video of
him en route to Pakistan that was viewed by The New York Times. About a
month later, he was killed by Pakistani security forces, his relatives said.
As a generation of fighters raised in war now finds itself stuck in a
country at peace, hundredsof young Taliban soldiers have crossed
illegally into Pakistan to battle alongside an insurgent group,
according to Taliban members, local leaders and security analysts.
Like Mr. Tahir, many say they are determined to continue waging jihad — wherever in the world it takes them.
The exodus has renewed longstanding fears about violent extremism
spilling out of Afghanistan under the Taliban and destabilizing
neighboring countries or one day reaching Western targets. Countries
from Russia and China to the United States and Iran have all raised
alarms about the possible resurgence in Afghanistan of terrorist groups,
like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, with more global ambitions.
Taliban leadership has publicly condemned the outflow of fighters. The
men, who acknowledge that they have gone to Pakistan without official permission, have joined a militant group known as Tehrik-i-Taliban
Pakistan, or T.T.P., which seeks to impose strict Islamist rule.
But whether Afghanistan’s government stems the tide will signal to the
rest of the world its ability and willingness to contain extremist
groups within its borders.
“If you look at how the Taliban are enabling the T.T.P., restraining but housing various elements of Al Qaeda, protecting and shielding the
alphabet soup of Central Asian militant organizations — all of this challenges the idea that the Taliban are serious about not allowing
Afghanistan to be a safe haven of international terrorism,” said
Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace,
a federal government institution.
In Pakistan, the young men have already helped fuel a return of militant violence this year, worsening tensions between the two governments.
Pakistani authorities have accused Afghan officials of sheltering terror
groups and turning a blind eye to their soldiers joining the groups,
which Taliban officials deny.
Last week, an Islamic State affiliate long based in Afghanistan carried
out a suicide blast in Pakistan that killed around 60 people. The
bombing added to a mounting death toll from similar attacks by the
T.T.P. that have grown more frequent since the Afghan Taliban came to power.
Over the past year, the T.T.P. has carried out at least 123 attacks
across Pakistan — about double the number it claimed in the year before
the Taliban seized power, according to the Islamabad-based Pak Institute
for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence.
It’s unclear exactly how many Afghans have crossed the border to join
the T.T.P. or other groups, but it is a small minority of the tens of
thousands of former Taliban fighters.
“Young men seeking thrill and adventure is common everywhere; from
Americas, to Europe to Asia, Africa and elsewhere,” said Abdul Qahar
Balkhi, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “This adventurism does not reflect common trends or public opinion, rather
they are anomalies.”
Those who go are driven by yearslong religious education in Taliban-run madrasas that extol the ideals of global jihad and martyrdom, they and
their relatives say. Others are bored in their new peacetime roles as
soldiers or police officers charged with mundane tasks like manning
checkpoints and doing routine security sweeps.
Many are also invigorated by the collapse of the Western-backed
government in Afghanistan.
“Peace and security have been secured in our country, so now we need to
fight in other countries and secure the rights of other Muslims,” a
Taliban member named Wahdat said one recent evening while he drank tea alongside a handful of his colleagues in Kabul.
“It’s more important to go there and continue our jihad there than to
stay in our country,” his friend, Malang added. Mr. Wahdat and Mr.
Malang, both 22 and now police officers, preferred to go only by their
last names because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Both men grew up in Wardak Province, a stretch of central Afghanistan
that harbored deep support for the Taliban, where decades of war
transformed the young generation. Schools run by the Taliban cropped up
across the province. Boys aspired to wage jihad rather than labor on
their family’s farms.
“Our village had been known for producing engineers and doctors before
the wars,” said Abdulbari Wasil Sardar, 38, a resident of Wardak whose 17-year-old nephew, Muhammad Idrees Suhaib, was killed in Pakistan this
spring fighting for the T.T.P.
“Now the young generation are only interested in doing jihad,” Mr.
Sardar added.
Like many boys in their village, Mr. Wahdat and Mr. Malang joined the
Taliban as teenagers and disappeared into mountainside hide-outs from
where they staged hit-and-run attacks on Western and Afghan government
forces. They celebrated each successful operation against the so-called infidels. They lionized their friends who died as martyrs.
But when the Taliban seized power in 2021, Mr. Wahdat and Mr. Malang
were reassigned to police units in Kabul, where they spent their days
sitting around their outpost, restless to go to the mountains.
When five of their friends went to Pakistan this spring to return to
jihad, both men brimmed with jealousy. Pulling out his phone, Mr. Malang
opened a video showing a group of men walking across the border, scarfs
wrapped tightly around their heads to protect them from the dust.
“We have friends there who even carried out suicide attacks,” Mr. Wahdat said, staring at his friend’s phone. Both men say they will go to
Pakistan in the coming months to join the T.T.P.
Pakistan officials have implored the Taliban to crack down on border
crossings. On Sunday, Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Syed Asim Munir,
implied that his country would use force if Afghanistan failed to act,
citing concerns over “sanctuaries” militants had on Afghan soil.
Pakistan, he said, “will spare no effort to dismantle terrorist networks
and protect its citizens at all costs.”
In response, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban administration spokesman,
denied those accusations and said that “the territory of Afghanistan
will not be used against the security of any country.”
The Taliban’s acting minister of defense, Mawlawi Mohammad Yaqoub, also warned former Talib fighters against launching attacks outside of
Afghanistan in a speech.
Still, it is unclear if or how the government will enforce that mandate
— and whether it will deter young Talibs from leaving the country to fight.
The enlistments have already helped invigorated the T.T.P., an ally of
the Taliban movement in Afghanistan that seeks to expel the Pakistan
government from the country’s border areas.
The group was all but stamped out nearly a decade ago. But over the past
two years, it has roared back to life. Hundreds of T.T.P. fighters were
freed from Afghan prisons during the Taliban takeover and armed
themselves with American military equipment once provided to the
U.S.-backed Afghan government, according to Pakistani authorities and
videos published by the T.T.P.
In recent months, the T.T.P. has also begun systematically recruiting
Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan, according to Taliban members and
security analysts. Now, anyone interested in joining its ranks is
instructed to link up with other recruits and T.T.P. fighters in eastern Afghanistan who know how to cross the border illegally.
In Kabul, Mr. Wahdat and Mr. Malang expressed a sense of duty unfilled
after coming of combat age just as the war they trained for came to an end.
Now, they said, they were determined not to let their dreams of
martyrdom pass them by. “Everywhere that Muslims are in trouble we must
help them,” Mr. Malang said. “Like Palestine and Myanmar.”
Mr. Wahdat added: “Even America.”
Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting.
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