The Taliban’s harder task to turn conquest into control

Winning power in Afghanistan was the easy part. Holding it together is the Taliban’s real challenge.

Since establishing their second regime, the Taliban has confounded one of the most common predictions about its future: that military victory would quickly give way to fragmentation. Rival power bases, competing personalities and regional interests have repeatedly surfaced, yet Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and his inner circle have so far contained those tensions while extending their authority.

That matters well beyond Afghanistan. A Taliban leadership that succeeds in consolidating power nationwide will become far more consequential for governments and investors alike, potentially reshaping strategic calculations in Beijing, Islamabad, Tehran, Moscow and New Delhi.

The Taliban is now attempting to establish centralised political control in regions where power has long rested with local strongmen and patronage networks without triggering the kind of internal conflict that has historically fractured Afghan politics.

The latest flashpoint in this drive towards centralisation is in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Badakhshan, where a drawn-out struggle over local power, critical minerals and competing external interests came close to erupting into armed conflict. The crisis came to a head in early July, when a powerful local commander was detained (Opens in new window) by the Taliban and released only after a public pledge of loyalty. A confrontation that could have spilled into civil war was averted, at least for now.

Badakhshan borders China, Pakistan and Tajikistan, and contains some of Afghanistan’s richest mineral deposits, including gold, lead, zinc and gemstones. The province has become a growing focus as the Taliban seeks to expand mining (Opens in new window) and supporting infrastructure, attract foreign investment, and turn Afghanistan’s resource riches into the foundation of political and economic power.

This has intensified local grievances (Opens in new window). Clashes have erupted over the displacement of poppy farmers, the expansion of mining concessions onto agricultural land, diversion of water to mining sites, unequal distribution of revenues, and the growing presence of Chinese (Opens in new window)nationals. These disputes have coalesced into a broader struggle for control of the province itself.

At its centre are local Tajik strongman Juma Khan Fateh and Haji Bashir Noorzai, one of the Supreme Leader’s most influential political allies and the Taliban’s principal economic strategist. Their struggle has been presented as a dispute over lucrative gold and gemstone mines. It also illustrates how the Taliban is attempting to neutralise and replace local power structures with central control.

Mining has provided the catalyst, but it is not the cause. In the years leading up to the collapse (Opens in new window) of the Afghan republic in August 2021, the remit of the Western-backed government was undermined by corruption, weak institutions and its own inability to govern beyond the major cities. The vacuum was filled by commanders, businessmen and criminal enterprises (Opens in new window), who often worked together to establish systems of authority independent of Kabul.

Five years later, the Taliban leadership is attempting to reclaim control over the country’s principal sources of wealth: drugs and mining. In Badakhshan, that has collided with entrenched local interests, like Juma Khan Fateh, with deep roots, armed followers and little incentive to surrender quietly.

The German sociologist Max Weber argued (Opens in new window) a century ago that the defining characteristic of a state is its claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In Afghanistan, where authority has been shared, bargained and contested, control of customs posts, opium, mines and trade routes has often been the real measure of power.

The Taliban’s first task after victory was to establish (Opens in new window) a monopoly over force by disarming the population, eliminating opposition and bringing armed groups under its control. The next step has been to tighten its grip on the sources of revenue. Badakhshan is where those ambitions have collided most visibly. Asserting a single chain of command over a province dominated by entrenched local interests would mark a significant advance in the Taliban’s plans to build a centralised state.

More centralised governance could change the way neighbouring countries pursue their interests in Afghanistan. China wants stability (Opens in new window) on its western frontier and secure conditions for mining and infrastructure investment. Iran is steadily deepening its engagement with the Taliban leadership while eyeing economic opportunities. Pakistan has long relied on relationships with local Taliban commanders to protect its interests.

Much of the reporting on post-republic Afghanistan has focused on the possibility (Opens in new window) that the Taliban would buckle beneath internal rivalries, particularly the tensions (Opens in new window) surrounding Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who remains the group’s most plausible alternative leader. Those divisions were real, at times acute, and are still unresolved. But they have been managed without the predicted rupture.

Badakhshan shows a similar approach is being applied beyond the Taliban’s own ranks. The immediate crisis appears to have been defused, but it is unlikely to be the last region where local patronage collides with the drive for centralised control.

How the Taliban manages those confrontations will reveal whether Afghanistan is entering another cycle of fragmented rule or the most centralised political order the country has seen in many decades.