Journalist Anand Gopal has observed that “the role of dispute resolution in Pashtun society cannot be emphasized enough… In post-2001 Kandahar, the Taliban’s judicial services became one of the key advantages that the movement had over the state.”

It is worthy of note that the Taliban are heavily Pashtun tribe, and many of the immediate post-2001 leadership in Kabul were from other ethnic groups.

Anatol Lieven, also a journalist but a proud Orwell Prize-winning journalist, a British author, and a policy analyst has also observed that “the Taliban is a monolithically Pashtun force.

It has gathered a good deal of support among other ethnicities by appealing to religious conservatism, but its leadership is still overwhelmingly Pashtun, and seen as such by most of the other tribes.”

The degree to which tribal and clan loyalty controls Afghan society cannot be over-emphasised. The country is tribal; the inhabitants owe their allegiance to their tribe, village, and province.

Any governing body seeking to override the clan/tribe level without engaging the “high-power” tribal group (Pashtun) will surely face a roadblock.

Even when Afghanistan was nominally united, the central government pretty much had a hand-off policy with respect to the tribes. These clans do not share the spirit of nationhood and thus, will go every length to oppose the same.

Ethnicity known as qawm in Afghanistan is not only defined by a common cultural or genetic group but also by tribes, families and geographic regions. In many instances, an Afghan will proudly and primarily identify himself as a “Pashtun” or a “Tajik, but as a member of the “Zadran tribe” or an inhabitant of the “Panjshir” valley.

Afghanistan is a country with many tribal groupings with each group searching for every available opportunity to rise to the acme of the country’s governance structure. Despite the complexity of the governance of the country, the people within the local tribal lineages see it as a normal power rivalry.

The Pashtuns, Hazaras, kafirs, Tajiks, Uzbeks and many other smaller tribes all jostle for power. Records show, that the Pashtuns, or Pushtuns, makeup approximately 44% of the population of Afghanistan and represent the ethnic majority. Legends say that they are the descendants of Afghana, grandson of King Saul.

With the Pashtuns known for being proud of leading battlefronts regardless of how weak they could be in terms of technological warfare, their motivation is not any other thing but to establish an Islamic State of Afghanistan and rule same in line with their extreme Islamic tenets that has no place in true Islam. That is why most battlefields and leadership rivalry always involve the Pashtuns.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, who founded Taliban in 1994, was a Pashtun by tribe – and most of those who came after him are Pashtuns, leading the Islamic fundamentalist ideology.

The likes of Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, (a Pashtun from Kandahar) Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (Durani tribe of ethnic Pashtun), Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob (Pashtun from Hotak clan), Sirajuddin Haqqani (Pashtun, Zadran clan), Mullah Abdul Hakeem (Pashtun from Ishaqzai clan), Mall Khan (Pashtun, Zadran clan), Sher Mohammad Abhas  (Pashtun, Stanekzai clan) etc. this presupposes that, the Pashtun tribe (with Pashto being their language) constitutes the fundamentalist insurgents in Afghanistan.

The Pashtuns have fought almost every war in the country. The 1800s British battle (Anglo-Afghan War) saw the Pashtuns leading the war front.

The Soviet-Afghan War which ultimately drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan was led by the Pashtuns. And the current war in Afghanistan has the US and the Taliban (with the leadership of the Taliban being Pashtun).

Pashtuns has a lot of categorizations and sub-categorizations. This tribe claim lineage to King Saul of Israel. The Pashtun’s of west Afghanistan are called the Durranis, the Pashtun in Pakistan, and we have the Shinwaris, a Pashtun in Jalalabad vicinity. 

The majority of Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims with the exception of the Bangash tribe in Pakistan, which are Shi’a.

At this stage, it is crystal clear to argue that the rivalry in Afghanistan is a tribal-religious war purely dominated by the Pashtun tribe influenced by their fundamentalist ideology of creating an Islamic state.

This tribe firmly holds to their religious ideology of extreme Islamic Fundamentalism as a way of governance. So, considering how big the tribe is and how situated they are at various points, in and out of Afghanistan, it will be hard to kill off their ideology using bombs and guns.

It may be easy to overwhelm a weak opposition, but it is difficult to comprehend the opponent's next move. Thus, the situation the world finds herself in Afghanistan.

The world is fighting with students of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the founder of Taliban. All those after him are students of his ideology. The word Taliban comes from Talib, “student” in Arabic.

However, the Taliban can be stopped by Afghans who want freedom, who want to put their own destiny in their hands, who don’t want anybody to tell them how to worship God.

Only freedom-loving Afghans can defeat the Taliban, but they need long-term support. So it’s up to the Afghans, not the US or anyone else.

It is an open truth that the Taliban have a presence in Pakistan, but that doesn’t mean that the US should pursue those that are in Pakistan just because they are Taliban, unless they are actively attempting to harm the US.

As to why the official government military didn’t have a plan in place before the withdrawal of the US forces should not be a surprise to all those privy to the developments since 2001.

The Afghan government was expecting the new US administration to reverse the decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.

The Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani never envisaged US troops leaving the country and he never had any plan of either fighting to sustain democracy or go into alliance with the Taliban. Ashraf’s failure was anticipated!

The beautiful thing about politicians is that they aren’t involved in military strategy, they provide an expectation and the military works on a means to accomplish the expectation.

The Afghan military led by President Ghani wasn’t made up of volunteers eager to serve their country, as most Afghans don’t view themselves as part of a singular state - a consequence of colonial consolidation of the many different ethnic, tribal and small kingdoms of the region.

Contact the author, Abdul-Razak Lukman via email; abdulrazaklukman6@gmail.com.