The curse of the Arg Palace

There is a bitter irony to the splits in the leadership of the Afghan Taliban. Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, the close aide to the movement’s founder Mullah Omar, took power this summer after it was announced that Omar was dead. Other Taliban leaders were unhappy that they had not been consulted. That unhappiness turned to rage when it was discovered that Omar had been dead for two years and Mansoor had kept this secret while he attempted to consolidate his control over the movement while pretending to be acting on the orders of the dead leader. A group led by Mullah Mohammad Rasool has broken away. The government of Ashraf Ghani may briefly have rubbed its hands with glee, expecting the Taliban to damage itself with vicious infighting. But although there has so far been a minor civil war, each side has taken to demonstrating its strength and legitimacy by instead launching attacks on the Afghan army. Thus the Taliban forces under Mansoor’s control have mounted an assault in Helmand Province, the success of which may have surprised the Taliban as much as it has dismayed the government in Kabul. Much of the province has been overrun and the key town of Sangin appears to have been taken, though some government sources are insisting that the Afghan troops and police are clinging on to a few positions there. Either way, this is clearly a disaster for Afghan security forces who until now have proven themselves tough and resilient in the face of Taliban attacks. It would seem that one reason for the debacle is that yet again, the authorities in Kabul have neglected the defense of Helmand Province, one of the prime growing areas for opium poppies.  Although when they were in power, the Taliban said that they would crack down on narcotics, they never did so. Thus a regime which laid claim to such high principles in fact funded itself as a major supplier to the international drugs trade.  The eagerness to maintain its income from narcotics that deal death to addicts around the world would explain why Mansoor is anxious to bring the cultivation areas back under control before the planting season begins. He will also have been equally concerned to stop his rival Rasool from laying his hands on the drugs income. For this reason alone, it is inexplicable that President Ghani did not appreciate the overwhelming strategic importance of Helmand Province and ensure that adequate forces were deployed to fend off what was a highly predictable Taliban assault. Perhaps Ghani, like his predecessor Hamid Karzai, has become a prisoner of the presidential Arg Palace. Karzai found that the ramparts of the historic citadel were not the only thing that cut him off from the realities of his country. He was also surrounded by walls of advice from courtiers who told him what they thought he wanted to hear. Tribal elders passed through tight palace security for endless meetings at which they came to realize that Karzai was not in control of the levers of government. Indeed the country lacked an effective civil service and the former president’s attempts to create one ended largely in failure. Highly paid foreign consultants and NATO commanders ran his country in their interests, not Afghanistan’s. Now the foreigners have gone but the Arg Palace remains a prison for Karzai’s successor, in whom such great hopes were placed. Helmand Province and the beleaguered army in Sangin were hidden from Ghani’s view, with the inevitable disastrous consequences.