The chronic failure of governance and unyielding attachment to regressive values notwithstanding, the Taliban’s hold over Afghanistan appears to be consolidated. Initial hopes that the Taliban 2.0 would be a different species have been belied. Even the anticipation that a contestation between the moderates or dissenters and the hardliners within the group would weaken it and possibly force it to revisit its policies has also not materialized. 

To an outsider, it appears that the divergent factions within the former insurgent group are choosing cohesion over discord. However, internally, the consolidation is the product of an iron-hand policy of dissent management. 

The supreme leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada, has made only three public appearances since the Taliban took power in August 2021. His reclusive existence, disrupted mostly to dispel doubts about his health, has not stopped him from building Kandahar as the real power center of the regime, protected by a 40,000-strong military force comprising of loyalists, which was allegedly created by spending 60 billion Afghanis. In October 2023, Akhundzada appointed Abdul Ahad Talib, the former governor of Helmand and the former commander of the Taliban suicide squad, as his “Special Forces Commander.”

The enormous power enjoyed by Akhundzada has been inversely proportional to the influence of the moderates and dissenters within the Taliban, who have been systematically sidelined. For instance, in September 2022, Akhundzada ousted the acting education minister, Noorullah Munir, who was replaced by the head of Kandahar’s provincial council, Maulvi Habibullah Agha. Munir himself represented the old school and was known for public statements dismissing the importance of higher education. But his apparent support for opening school to girls did not go down well with the top leadership. Kandahar-born Agha, on the other hand, is known to lack formal education himself, although he functioned as a judge in the first Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001. Agha began his tenure by announcing, “Open criticism of the Islamic Emirate officials is forbidden.”

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