Can Terrorist Organizations be transformed into Legal Governments?

Right after the 9/11 terrorist attack in the USA, the global view about terrorism was totally changed. Many countries and organisations (like the UN) declared a joint fight against terrorism. In-line with this, the Taliban was removed from Afghanistan by the NATO forces within two months. However, the Taliban didn’t go very far and settled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) region (former FATA) and moved their headquarters from Kandahar (Afghanistan) to Quetta (Pakistan).

At that time, the KP region was mainly controlled by the Al-Qaeda (AQ), Pakistani Taliban, Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban. The Pakistan army and Government preferred to live in an agreed way with all these terrorist organisations without having a fight. They even did business together. Such as, all transportation firms which carry containers from Karachi port to Afghanistan have to go through the KP region. Therefore, they had to pay taxes to these terrorist organisations based in the KP region. The trucks which carried goods for NATO forces or UN organizations also had to make such payments too. This is still the case, and any truck that goes through the KP region has to make a payment to these terrorist organisations. Therefore, even today, part of the money of the UN goes to these terrorist groups in Pakistan. By the way, the Taliban in Afghanistan is still a UN terrorist organisation. But, the UN works with the Taliban, and therefore, part of UN funding also goes to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

In 2014, the Pakistan army decided to remove all terrorist groups from its territory with the encouragement of NATO. They did some progress as well. However, on 16 December 2014, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attacked a Public Army school in Peshawar town located in KP and killed 132 students and 10 teachers. This caused a large trauma in the Pakistan Arm members and their families. The TTP clearly gave the message that if the Pakistan Army operation continues, then TPP would target family members (especially children) of Pakistan Army staff. Right after this tragic incident, the Pakistan Government stopped the operation. Since then, TTP and all other terrorist organisations have lived in KP, and there has been a kind of peace agreement between these groups and the Pakistan Government.

Back in Afghanistan, NATO declared a new democratic Government under the presidency of Hamid Karzai in 2002. Things were going well until 2005. I was in Afghanistan and was able to travel the entire country without serious security threats. However, the Taliban was not very far from Afghanistan, and they were re-grouping and increasing their resources with the income they generated from the taxation of vehicles, drug trafficking and opium poppy farmers. As for 2006, they again increased their attacks in Afghanistan. They didn’t target only the Afghan army or NATO soldiers but Afghan civilians, too. The Taliban killed thousands of people between 2006 and 15 August 2021 (the day the Taliban took over the Afghan Government).

As time passed, the NATO forces lost their interest in Afghanistan because the cost of military expenses in Afghanistan became a heavy burden for the NATO members, especially for the US Government. At the same time, the socio-ethnic dynamics of the country were very complicated, and none of the implemented strategies to unify the country and establish an efficient government mechanism worked out. Such as, Afghanistan became the number one heroin producer and exporter at the global level. The Taliban was encouraging and even forcing the farmers to grow opium poppy. The international community and Afghan Government didn’t manage to stop the drug production in the country at all. In the end , the country turned into a narco-state in which the corruption was extremely high, even at the government senior levels. The Government Anti-Corruption Organisation was also involved in corruption.

The US Government, UN Security members, EU countries and Afghan Government agreed that they don’t want to continue their support forever in Afghanistan. In other words, they all decided that they couldn't win the war against these terrorist groups and, therefore, it was agreed to integrate the Taliban into the Governance of Afghanistan.

In line with this, in October 2018, the US and Taliban representatives met in Doha (Qatar) for the first time to discuss the peace negotiations in Afghanistan. The peace talks continued until August 2021. It was somehow agreed that the Taliban would take part in Government management. However, this developed in a different way, and the Taliban took over the entire Afghanistan without any resistance neither from the Afghan Army or NATO forces.

In the early days of the Taliban Government in Afghanistan, all NATO countries, the EU and the UN were very optimistic, and they believed that the Taliban had changed. The honeymoon didn’t take long as the Taliban banned girls' education and adopted many bans on women (such as women didn’t allowed to work and etc). On October 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “ The Taliban didn’t keep their promises” . So, somehow, he said that the Taliban cheated the UN.

The Taliban is still ruling the country without following the Doha agreements and removed Afghan women from entire social life. Many ministers are listed as a terrorist by the UN Security Council. But despite this, the UN, US, UK, China, Russia and many EU and Gulf countries somehow work together with the Taliban. The Taliban managed to decrease the opium poppy cultivation in the country by hoping that UN member states would recognize their regime. But it hasn’t happened yet. As a result, the situation between Taliban and International actors somehow stacked due to the resistance of the Taliban to removing bans on girls and women in Afghanistan. Some Taliban leaders believe to be integrated with the world, but the radical ones are stronger for the time being. The Haqqani group is especially not in favour of removing these bans.

Overall, the terrorism within the borders of Afghanistan finished. But, Afghanistan became a terrorist producer centre for the world. Almost all terrorist groups, including IS, are freely doing whatever they want in Afghanistan. They recruit young people, wash their brains and raise them as fighters and suicide bombers. The number of religious schools has increased sharply in the country. This means all the countries, especially neighbours of Afghanistan, will have to increase the security at their border and security controls within the country as radical Islamic groups always want to enlarge as part of their jihadist doctrine. In recent years, the IS has organised attacks in several different EU countries and Russia. All these terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. Thus, the new strategy for integrating the terrorist groups into the Government mechanisms hasn’t worked in Afghanistan so far. Can it work from now on? Unfortunately, It does not look promising.

We are currently witnessing another version of what happened in Afghanistan in Syria. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is listed as a terrorist organization by the UN, and many countries, took control of the Syrian Government without any resistance by the Syrian Army and its supporters (Iran and Russia) on 8 December 2024. We don’t know if there is any written agreement between all the international actors involved in this event. However, we know that without any consensus between the main countries involved in Syria , HTS would not be able to capture the entire Syrian army with their limited military forces. Therefore, it is very likely that some commanders within the Syrian Army (like what happened in Afghanistan) were also involved in this agreement.

Now, all the actors involved in Syria are making a great effort to create revolutionists from the leader of HTS, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa (known as Julani ). If you carefully examine Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa's new style, compare his photos with the young version of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, you will see the similarities (dressing, beard style, etc.). So, the question is, can a person who was called a Radical Islamic terrorist until recently be a revolutionist leader and build democracy and rule the country by respecting all minorities, human rights, women's rights and equity, ethnic groups, etc.? It is important to know that Syria is a mosaic of many cultures, ethnic groups and religions. Therefore, it is not very easy to find an agreed government model between all these groups in Syria. Furthermore, given the lessons learned from Afghanistan, the HTS leader will be under the pressure of many radical persons and groups. It is a fact that HTS is a very heterogeneous group and includes many people with different nationalities. Therefore, it is not easy to create a Syrian Nationalism within HTS. Thus, it is challenging for HTS to create a new model based on Syrian Nationalism.

So, the main international actors and countries are trying once again to integrate a terrorist organisation into the governance of a country for the second time in Syria. There are a lot of lessons learned From the Afghanistan experience. If the same mistakes are repeated, then Syria will be another paradise country for all the terrorist and criminal organizations and will produce and export terrorism/security threats to other countries (especially its neighbours and Europe). As it is , it seems that there is no strong consensus between the countries and groups involved in removing the Assad regime in Syria. It seems that the first and most important issue was removing Assad and Iranian-supported groups from the country. There was no plan for the government model, integration of all ethnic groups and government regime (Sharia or Secular system or etc) . The HTS will rule the country through its cabinet until March 2024. So, there is only 2-3 months to develop a new regime model/system which all groups in Syria will accept. This is extremely challenging. If the negotiations fail, the country will endure even more difficult days and become a crime centre. So, Syria is at the edge.