Not all is well inside the Taliban

Lakshmi Venugopal Menon

On August 21, a strict public morality law was issued in Afghanistan. The 114-page document outlining the legislation contains provisions that cover transportation, media, music, public spaces and personal conduct. Among its most restrictive provisions are a ban on music and on women singing or reading aloud in public.

The announcement of the law provoked widespread condemnation internationally and raised questions about the direction in which the Taliban government is taking Afghanistan given past promises to ease restrictions on women.

The law also caused a lot of unease in Afghanistan, even if opposition was not voiced publicly. This has prompted the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, to call for the group’s members to avoid division and embrace unity.

While the public morality legislation makes clear that the Taliban is pressing ahead with ultra-conservative policies in the face of international criticism, it also reflects growing tensions within its leadership.

Kandahar vs Kabul

In the lead-up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021, some Taliban officials sought to persuade the international community that a Taliban 2.0 had emerged, which held more moderate views on governance compared with the old guard’s highly conservative and stringent approach.

This new guard spoke the language of international diplomacy and made clear its desire to scrap more conservative policies to attract international support and secure legitimacy for the new Taliban government.

The formation of the interim cabinet, however, showed the first signs that the old guard was not ceding power. Promises of an inclusive government were not fulfilled, and some members of the old guard were given key roles, including Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the Taliban’s founders who was appointed prime minister; Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was appointed as his deputy; and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of another Taliban founder, Mullah Omar, who was made defence minister.

As the interim government took on the uneasy task of steering the country away from collapse, Akhundzada established his residence in Kandahar as another seat of power, declaring himself in charge of political, military and religious affairs.

Over the past two years Akhundzada has made clear he does not intend to step back from his hardline positions. In March 2022, on his order, girls and women were banned from attending secondary school and university.

He has also sought to concentrate power in his own hands and further tighten the old guard’s grip on the government. He ordered a number of cabinet reshuffles in which his loyalists were appointed.

In September 2022, Education Minister Noorullah Munir was replaced by Maulvi Habibullah Agha, one of the figures closest to the supreme leader. In May this year, Health Minister Qalandar Ebad, a trained doctor and the only technocrat in the Taliban government, was replaced by Noor Jalal, a hardline cleric and former deputy interior minister.

While Akhundzada appears in control, signs of growing internal divisions have surfaced. In February 2023, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani implicitly criticised him, saying, “Monopolising power and hurting the reputation of the entire system are not to our benefit. … The situation cannot be tolerated.”

In his Eid al-Fitr message this year, the interior minister again hinted at internal troubles. He called on the Taliban to avoid creating divisions with the Afghan people.

Akhundzada, for his part, urged Taliban officials during Eid to set aside their differences and serve the country properly. He has repeated this call for unity frequently, most recently during a rare trip to northern Afghanistan, in which he met with local leaders.

Dissent and silencing

The public morality law codifies rules that the Taliban promoted before but did not fully enforce. Now, the law empowers the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to monitor, censure and punish any Afghan citizen found in violation of it.

The announcement of this legislation demonstrates that the old guard of the Taliban led by the supreme leader have an upper hand in directing policy. This is yet another sign that the Taliban 2.0 is not a more “moderate” version of the group that ruled in Afghanistan in the 1990s.