The Taliban's Real Enemy Is the Taliban

 

Juma Khan Fateh's rebellion grabs the headlines. The deeper threat is a government that has never earned its people's consent.

Juma Khan Fateh is not the Taliban's real problem. The regime is. For the past month, Fateh, a former Taliban commander from Badakhshan, has dominated headlines after breaking with the group. A farmer, warlord, and opportunist, he took to the mountains and is said to command hundreds of fighters. His refusal of the deputy governor post in southern Zabul Province — he chose to go home instead — has been read by anti-Taliban observers as a major security threat, the start of a political earthquake in the non-Pashtun north that could, in time, bring the regime down.

In a country with five decades of war behind it, anything is possible. But I don't believe Juma Khan is the greatest threat to this regime. The greater threat comes from the Taliban's own hands. Their policies are weakening the foundation of their rule the way rainwater seeps into a ceiling: unnoticed for a long time, until the collapse comes, and comes suddenly.

Start with Juma Khan himself. He's one of those warlords who joins a regime and turns on it the moment his ambitions go unmet. His break isn't ideological — it isn't about the Taliban's legitimacy, or women's education, or Afghans' civic rights. By most accounts, it's a dispute over his cut of his province's mineral wealth, and he's been accused of profiting from ransom along the way. That makes him not a man of the people but an opportunist chasing personal wealth, which is one reason Ahmad Massoud's resistance and other anti-Taliban movements haven't touched him. Without a broader political vision, he isn't the man who topples this regime.

Say his case is closed, then — defeated, or pushed off the stage. Should the Taliban celebrate? I don't think so. As Pogo put it, "We have found the enemy, and it is us." That fits the Taliban well. They're cutting the branch they sit on.

What they're cutting is their own legitimacy — the root any regime stands on — and the root is already rotting. A recent survey found roughly 75 percent of respondents dissatisfied with the Taliban; some who identified as lower-ranking members of the movement pointed to corruption, nepotism, and favoritism in appointments. Zawia News ran the survey, drawing on some 1.7 million responses. That's not a fringe complaint. That's a country telling its rulers something, whether they're listening or not.

Which brings me to Nizam al-Mulk, the Islamic scholar whose advice to rulers has shaped political thought for centuries. In the Nizamnama (Siyasatnama), he wrote that a kingdom's prosperity rests on justice, because injustice ruins ruler and people alike. Military victory can hand a movement power. It cannot hand that movement legitimacy. A government that rules without justice, without inclusion, without the support of its own people may control the state — but it is cutting away at the roots that keep it standing.

So here is my advice to the Taliban: you have ruled this country under the banner of Islam, claiming your authority comes from a higher mandate rather than the consent of the governed. But no government earns legitimacy by imposing its own way of life on the majority while denying them their basic rights. A government exists to serve its people, not to turn them into subjects with no voice. It cannot deprive half the population of a say in their country's future, or the freedom to speak without fear of the religious police. A system that denies justice and representation cannot claim real legitimacy — no matter how many guns it holds.

If Taliban leaders have any sense, they'll see that stability doesn't come from removing men like Juma Khan. It comes from building a system rooted in legitimacy, justice, and the trust of the people. Nizam al-Mulk's lesson is timeless: justice is the bedrock of sovereignty, injustice the swiftest road to ruin. The Taliban can dismiss Juma Khan as a minor irritant. They cannot dismiss this arithmetic. They are sawing through the trunk of their own legitimacy — and when it finally gives way, the collapse will be entirely of their own making.