The Taliban’s Worst Nightmare

The success in Afghanistan of the anti-Taliban insurgent movement called the National Resistance Front is getting noticed in the press. The Wall Street Journal has an important front page story on how the Taliban is stepping up the search for Afghans who once were allied with America. The Taliban is concerned over the “rise” of the National Resistance Front. Sky News and NPR have also had reports on the Front’s progress.Is President Biden paying attention? If not, he could soon be if the NRF keeps at it. We understand that both sides in this fight are making bold claims that are impossible to verify from a distance. Then again, too, there’s no way to verify by direct observation the existence of a black hole. All we can do is observe the behavior of objects around it. If there weren’t a danger gathering in Panjshir, why would the Taliban be on the chase?The idea animating the Taliban, the Journal reports, is to keep members of Afghanistan’s “elite forces” once allied with America from going over to the NRF, which the Journal calls “an opposition group that has taken root in the northeast.” Bear in mind that the northeast is the region that birthed the Northern Alliance and gave us Ahmad Shah Massoud, the anti-Soviet fighter known as the Lion of Panjshir, whose son, Ahmad Massoud, now leads the NRF. The NRF says it welcomes the press attention, tracing it to “successes in the battlefield,” its head of foreign affairs, Ali Nazary, tells us. It also reflects a disillusionment with the Taliban in Western foreign policy circles, in which many were hoping that the Taliban might change its spots. The “Taliban’s cooperation and assistance to international terrorism” turns out to be ingrained in the regime’s character, Mr. Nazary says, “and everyone has given up on them changing.”That top Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had taken up a comfortable residence at Kabul with the apparent blessing of the Taliban was a wake-up call for many in the West — even for Mr. Biden and his camarilla. The news led them to drop their plan to send to Kabul $3.5 billion in Afghan central bank funds currently sitting at the New York Fed. The implausible aim was to aid the suffering Afghanis without bolstering the Taliban.If Mr. Biden and his aforementioned camarilla have begun to grasp the nature of the Taliban, there is hope that they will stop ignoring, or even disparaging, the NRF. The insurgent group offers proof that “there is still a democratic alternative” to the Taliban, Mr. Nazary insists. One factor holding the NRF back is a lack of foreign aid. Yet as our Caroline McCaughey reports, there has been “little appetite” in the administration for such a move.“Mr. Nazary is making his case anyway,” Ms. McCaughey notes, explaining that the group sees itself embroiled not in “a civil war, but a continuation of the global war on terror.” He contends that the Taliban’s ability to threaten the West — and America — now exceeds its capacities before America liberated Afghanistan some 20 years ago: “Terrorism today in Afghanistan is much stronger than it was in 2001, before 9/11.”No doubt what the Taliban fears is the decentralized democratic republic for which the NRF stands. Writing in Foreign Affairs last week, Mr. Nazary calls its dream “a political system that would better represent all ethnic groups and ensure equal rights for all citizens regardless of their race, religion, and gender.” And their optimistic spirit. “Without support,” Mr. Nazary tells us, “we will continue fighting against terrorism, but it will take a much longer time.”

The Taliban’s Worst Nightmare

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