Bin Laden’s death could free up the Taliban to distance itself from al-Qaeda, as U.S. military officials have argued, and allow the group to pursue negotiations with the United States. At the same time, the Taliban could take inspiration from bin Laden’s killing and double down on a fight that appears closer to a conclusion as U.S. officials argue for a speedier American withdrawal after the al-Qaeda chief’s death.
In public statements since bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Navy SEALs, the Taliban has showed no sign of a willingness to abandon its al-Qaeda partners. “The Afghans will not forget the sacrifices and struggle of Sheik Osama, this great patron of Islam,” one statement said.
But many have cast doubt on what actual benefit al-Qaeda brought to the Taliban, particularly in recent years. The number of al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has consistently been estimated at 100 or fewer. There is a larger al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan, but still far fewer than the tens of thousands of Taliban fighters who operate on both sides of the border.
Stark differences
Although al-Qaeda and the Taliban have a common enemy in the United States, their differences remain stark. U.S. military officials say the vast majority of Taliban fighters operate a short distance from their homes — and are focused primarily on local grievances, rather than international terrorism.
“The Taliban have a whole different agenda. They’re concerned about what’s going on in their valley or their district or their province,” said Col. Joseph Felter, who was the head of Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency advisory team in Kabul and is now with Stanford University. “With bin Laden, there was a sense of connection to the broader jihadi movement. With him gone, the equilibrium will kind of default back.”
The current generation of young Taliban fighters, many of them boys when the Taliban government fell in late 2001, do not have “a memory of this close relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda that some of the older generation saw,” Felter said. “The current 19-year-old Taliban doesn’t have any real connection to al-Qaeda.”
The scope of al-Qaeda’s support for the Taliban or other local insurgent groups in Afghanistan is difficult to assess. Al-Qaeda has run training camps, provided technical expertise and has had the ability to attract fighters from across the broader Muslim world. But the amount of money al-Qaeda could have funneled to the Taliban — a CIA estimate in 2009 put the annual figure at $106 million — is probably outmatched by other sources such as extortion, kidnapping, opium trafficking, and the timber and gem trades.
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