Diplomatic Relations with the Taliban and Their Risks for National Security
Diplomatic relations with the Taliban and their risks for national security, as reported by Iran Gate, Mohammad Daoud Muzammil, known as Mullah Daoud Muzammil, the Taliban governor of Balkh province in Afghanistan, who was killed last week in an explosion in his office, is considered one of the highest-ranking Taliban officials to have been assassinated since the group’s return to power in Afghanistan.
According to the Taliban government, his assassination occurred a day after his meeting with senior Kabul officials who had traveled to Balkh province to discuss a major irrigation project in northern Afghanistan. The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Taliban governor’s office in Balkh province.
The involvement of ISIS in this explosion comes while Muzammil, since beginning his mission as the Taliban governor in Balkh in October this year, was coordinating the fight against ISIS militants in the region.
However, Muzammil was engaged in fighting ISIS even before his mission in Balkh. After the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, he became the governor of Nangarhar in the east of the country and began confronting ISIS in that region.
The Return of ISIS
In the summer of 2021, while the Taliban managed to rule over all of Afghanistan again after 20 years, the Khorasan branch of the Islamic State ISIS or ISIS-K had been active in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent for several years and seems unwilling to recognize the Taliban government or come to terms with it.
It could be said that the most significant internal enemy of the Taliban in Afghanistan now is their own religious Islamist brethren. This branch of ISIS gradually formed over less than a year. Initially, between July and October 2014, groups like the Caliphate Movement in Pakistan, the Tawhid Brigade in Afghanistan, and the Islamic Brigade in Khorasan joined ISIS, and later the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan announced its support for ISIS.
Then in October 2014, six Taliban leaders pledged allegiance to ISIS, including Abu Omar Maqbool, known as Shahidullah Shahid, the spokesperson for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, who was immediately removed from his position. At that time, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, claimed the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and the Levant, and allegiance to him was fundamentally in conflict with the proximity of the Pakistani Taliban to the Afghan Taliban leader.
However, on January 10, 2015, ten commanders from the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban publicly pledged their allegiance to ISIS, and by the end of that month, the Islamic State officially announced the creation of its Khorasan branch.
Both the Taliban and ISIS are among the extremist Islamist militant groups that have emerged based on fundamentalist Islamic ideology. However, ISIS fights for the establishment of a global caliphate, whereas the Afghan Taliban seeks its own specific governance in Afghanistan, and for this reason, they consider themselves different and separate even from the Pakistani Taliban, which is at war with the Pakistani army.
The Pakistani army, which is regularly targeted by Pakistani Taliban forces, has good relations with the Afghan Taliban and is accused of assisting this group. However, despite the assistance the Afghan Taliban has received from the Pakistani army and even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it has not yet been able to overcome ISIS-K in Afghanistan.
In fact, ISIS-K has spoiled the Taliban’s enjoyment after regaining power in Afghanistan. The Taliban government, which promised to establish security throughout Afghanistan, has not yet been able to prevent terrorist attacks in the country, which are often claimed by ISIS. Moreover, higher-ranking officials of the Afghan government are being killed in attacks claimed by ISIS-K.
However, ISIS in Afghanistan has not only targeted the Taliban government, including its personnel and governmental institutions, but also foreign citizens and religious minorities are among the other targets of ISIS-K’s terrorist attacks, from a suicide bombing against American forces at Kabul airport to attacks on Sikh temples and Shia sites.
Although ISIS has become a security challenge for the Taliban in Afghanistan, it has provided the Kabul government with the opportunity and pretext to present itself as a more moderate and reasonable group compared to ISIS in a region that is the birthplace of jihadist armed movements.
Muzammil’s Dispute with the Taliban and His Proximity to the IRGC
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government’s spokesperson, tweeted after Muzammil’s assassination that he was killed by the enemies of Islam. However, reports published before and after Muzammil’s assassination indicate that he had disagreements with the Taliban leaders in Kabul and had been somewhat sidelined. These disagreements were so significant that when the news of his assassination was published, the Afghan news website 8 Sobh reported under the headline ‘The Assassination of Daoud Muzammil: Internal Tension or ISIS Attack,’ suggesting the possibility of his assassination due to internal Taliban tensions.
In fact, Muzammil’s disagreements with other Taliban leaders relate to the Taliban’s connection with the Islamic Republic. According to the report, the Haqqani network, for various reasons including having connections with foreign intelligence services, does not want Iran-supporting figures to be present in the Taliban group’s cabinet. Friction within extremist Islamist groups, like other parties and groups, also exists, and for this reason, occasional splits occur within them.
Reports of internal conflicts within the Afghan Taliban have also increased, especially after this group regained power in the country, and since the very first day of seizing the presidential palace in Kabul, numerous unconfirmed reports about confrontations between the pragmatic and hardline factions of the Taliban have been published.
Before the Taliban regained power, Muzammil was accused of being close to the Islamic Republic and collaborating with security and intelligence agencies, especially the Quds Force of the IRGC. In 2015, when Muzammil was the deputy governor of Helmand, an Iranian documentary filmmaker close to the IRGC produced a documentary about the Taliban, in which this Taliban commander was also interviewed. The documentary ‘Alone Among the Taliban’ by Mohsen Eslami Zadeh had no other goal than to cleanse the image and record of this extremist group and justify its terrorism against America and its Western allies.
The producer of this documentary was also the Mithaq Cultural Center, which according to its website seeks to promote the ideology of the Islamic Republic in foreign countries and transfer experiences in the field of propaganda in the Islamic world. This center has included the organization of the first ideological camps to the war zones of Iran during the war with Iraq in the early 1990s, which later became known as Rahian Noor, in its record.
Eslami Zadeh himself said in December 2016 about this documentary to Iranian media that the viewer should doubt their beliefs about the Taliban after watching this documentary. We must take the Taliban seriously.
Muzammil’s Role in Drug Trafficking to Iran
While in the same documentary ‘Alone Among the Taliban’ it is said and shown that the Taliban do nothing but fight or cultivate poppies and traffic drugs, the 8 Sobh report states that Muzammil, when he was the deputy governor of Taliban in Farah, near the Iranian border, was responsible for drug trafficking to Iran.
The director of ‘Alone Among the Taliban,’ even after making this documentary, defended the Taliban’s involvement in drug trafficking and, citing the words of the Taliban themselves, said that because this group has no money, it is forced to cultivate drugs. Mullah Daoud Muzammil was also considered close to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the former Taliban leader, but a year after making this documentary, the US eliminated Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in a drone strike on his way back from Iran to Pakistan.
The Islamic Republic, which was an enemy of the Taliban before the US invasion of Afghanistan and in the early years after it, gradually, in line with its anti-American policy and portraying the Afghan government as incapable of maintaining stability in this country, turned to sheltering and equipping the Taliban. The connection of the Islamic Republic with Muzammil was also important because he was appointed to lead the Taliban’s Quetta Shura military commission in early 2017.
However, in October 2018, the US Treasury Department sanctioned a group of individuals involved in financing the Taliban and Iranian agents for such terrorism financing, with Mohammad Daoud Muzammil being one of them. This US action was very influential in internationally exposing his name as a liaison between the Taliban and the Islamic Republic, yet the Islamic Republic continues its close relations with Muzammil.
In addition to possible secret meetings and encounters, Majid Sadeghi Dolatabadi, the acting consul of the Islamic Republic in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, met with him last year when Muzammil was the governor of Nangarhar. In November this year, shortly after Muzammil’s appointment as the governor of Balkh, Hassan Mortazavi, the deputy ambassador of the Islamic Republic in Kabul, went to Mazar-i-Sharif, the center of Balkh province, and met with this Taliban commander. In this meeting, the Islamic Republic official stated that the Islamic Republic is ready for trade and economic relations with Balkh.
Iran’s Influence on the Taliban and Its Effects
Although the death of Mullah Daoud Muzammil, according to ISIS itself, was the work of this group, it has implications beyond the ISIS-Taliban conflict. The absence of an element like Muzammil within the Taliban not only changes the balance of power within the Taliban but also somewhat affects the influence of the Islamic Republic within this group. Moreover, this assassination acts as a wake-up call for the Islamic Republic to the fragility and difficulty of relying on semi-mafia groups, where the law is not the ruler but influential individuals determine the group’s law, and with the elimination of any of these individuals, the group’s path is subject to change.
However, it is far-fetched to think that Muzammil’s assassination will deter Tehran’s ideological government from its resolve to approach the Taliban. The Islamic Republic still verbally states that it does not recognize the current Kabul government, but by handing over the Afghan embassy in Tehran to the Taliban, it has embarked on a diplomatic gamble with this group and intends to start a new era in Tehran’s relations with the Taliban.
