PEACEW RKS

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND 

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF 

THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Michael Semple

[ [
Cover photo: Mullah Omar’s bunker near his palace 

in Kandahar on December 13, 2001, in Kandahar 

(City), Afghanistan Documents (Photo by Patrick 

Aventurier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The views expressed in this report are those of 

the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect 

the views of the United States Institute of Peace.

United States Institute of Peace

2301 Constitution Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20037

Phone: 202.457.1700

Fax: 202.429.6063

E-mail: usip_requests@usip.org

Web: www.usip.org

Peaceworks No. 102. First published 2014.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-274-4

© 2014 by the United States Institute of Peace

About the Report

The withdrawal of NATO troops in 2014 means that a 

new Afghan government will need to develop a strategy 

to confront the Taliban’s campaign. Commissioned by the 

United States Institute of Peace (USIP) as part of its ongoing commitment to conflict resolution in Afghanistan, 

this report offers insights into the movement’s doctrine, 

organization, and rhetoric and is intended to inform 

efforts to end the Taliban violence. 

About the Author

Michael Semple, a peace practitioner and scholar 

who focuses on Afghanistan and Pakistan, is currently 

visiting professor at the Institute for the Study of Conflict 

Transformation and Social Justice, Queen’s University 

Belfast. He previously worked as a political officer for 

the United Nations mission and deputy to the European 

Union Special Representative for Afghanistan. From 2009 

to 2013, he was a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s 

Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
PEACEWORKS • DECEMBER 2014 • NO. 102

CONTENTS

Introduction ... 5

Evolution of the Rhetoric ... 6

Internal Organization ... 9

Suicide Operations ... 12

Movement Membership and Structures ... 17

Toward a Rhetoric of Peace? ... 25

Conclusions ... 29

[Taliban rhetoric and the ideology and political ideas it 

expresses have been instrumental in enabling the 

movement to maintain high levels of violence despite the 

major shifts in the political context over the years.]

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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Summary

■ The Taliban movement commands the loyalty of thousands of Afghans and applies resources 

and men to the pursuit of political objectives, guided by doctrine and inspired by rhetoric.

■ Taliban rhetoric consists of religious and historical references, narratives of recent events, 

and guidance for Taliban sympathizers.

■ The rhetoric asserts that the Taliban are engaged in a righteous jihad aimed at establishing 

a divinely ordered Islamic system in Afghanistan.

■ Taliban doctrine focuses on internal affairs and in particular on maintaining cohesiveness. 

The Taliban are ruthless in enforcing their doctrine of obedience to the amir, or leader.

■ The movement has retained a narrow social base, and its power is concentrated in the 

hands of mullahs from the Kandahari Pashtun tribes.

■ Any project to build a plural Afghanistan is likely to include an appeal to the Taliban or 

the constituency they have mobilized.

■ The Taliban’s own attempts to regain power rest on a negation of pluralism, rejection of a 

popular mandate, and assertion of the divine right vested in their Islamic emirate.

■ A Taliban rhetoric of peace would require addressing the position of the Taliban’s amir, 

peace as a desirable state, the need for cohesiveness and unity in support of peace, celebration of the withdrawal of foreign troops, Islamic credentials of the government in Kabul, 

protection of those who sacrificed for the Taliban, peace as conclusion of the jihad, and the 

new role for the Taliban’s cadres.

■ After 2014, the Taliban leadership is vulnerable to a hard-line challenge arguing that the 

political system in Kabul is irredeemably compromised by its collaboration with unbelievers.

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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Introduction

For two decades, the Afghan Taliban movement has invested effort and resources into making 

and projecting the case that its cause is just and requires the use of violence. No other conflict 

actor in Afghanistan has sustained an organized armed struggle for as long. Taliban rhetoric 

and the ideology and political ideas it expresses have been instrumental in enabling the movement to maintain high levels of violence despite the major shifts in the political context over 

the years. Rhetoric has had an impact at individual, institutional, and societal levels. The Taliban case for violence has provided motivation and reassurance to individual Afghans recruited 

into the movement, giving them a moral cover for the violent actions they commit. The case 

for violence has been at the core of the Taliban’s collective raison d’etre.

Is it possible for the Taliban to be pro-peace? One of the challenges in transforming a 

conflict is accommodating what the different sides say about each other, the conflict, and the 

past. Agreement among Afghans about the causes and rights and wrongs of the post-2001 

conflict is likely to be elusive. One of the peacemaking challenges would be for Taliban and 

anti-Taliban to find ways to accommodate the markedly different ways in which they have represented the political process to their constituencies. What would a Taliban rhetoric of peace 

look like and what challenges would the Taliban face in embracing it?

This analysis, which focuses on both Taliban organizational structure and the rhetoric used 

to justify their conflict with other Afghan political actors, is intended to alert other stakeholders 

to the kind of messages they would be likely to encounter from the Taliban in any peace process.

A Talib veteran interviewed for this study reflected on the legitimacy of Taliban violence 

based on his experience of eighteen years with the Taliban campaign.1

 He reprised many of the 

themes addressed here. He went to Afghanistan in 1996, he explained, as a young madrassah

(traditional seminary) student from Pakistan and so was very much an outsider when he listened to Afghan Taliban accounts of how they cleared the roadside checkposts of corrupt mujahideen commanders. He affirmed the Afghan Taliban’s original case, namely, that they had 

been idealistic and that there had been no alternative to violence in the 1990s. He was deeply 

critical, however, of the path the jihad had taken. He took comfort in the knowledge that in 

his tours of duty he had not killed anyone himself. But he was disturbed by the violence he 

witnessed and considered barbaric, the extreme violence and desecration of bodies conducted 

by some of his former comrades in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

He elaborated on his dilemma. Authority in the Taliban movements, both Pakistani and 

Afghan, rested with amirs (commanding officers or leaders), who expected unquestioning obedience but whose knowledge of Islam was imperfect. He, meanwhile, was from a well-known 

religious family and had graduated from the madrassah as a fully qualified mawlvi (preacher). 

He was thus loath to bow to the less educated amirs. At the same time, he still considered himself a Talib and would not break with the movement or with its ethos of obedience. On the one 

hand, he felt a sense of loyalty to comrades and realized that the movement still enjoyed support in the clerical circles that formed his peer group. On the other hand, he knew he could not 

safely express his doubts openly—some in the Taliban would not tolerate any dissent. Finally, 

he expressed a deep yearning for peace in the region. He claimed that despite all the sensitivities associated with teaching in a conflict zone, he always taught his madrassah students that 

God’s real mission for them was to achieve peace.

In a nutshell, is it possible for the Taliban to be pro-peace? What would a Taliban rhetoric 

of peace look like, and what challenges would the Taliban face in embracing it?
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After twenty years of involvement in conflict, the simplest summary of the Taliban collective identity would be armed mullahs—fighting priests. Both elements, the martial and 

the religious, are significant. As an organization of clerics, it claims a certain morality that lay 

people do not have; it also has a sense of exclusivity, restricted to a priestly order. As an armed 

movement, its methods rely on physical force. But beyond the identity issue, the Taliban have 

used their rhetoric to claim legitimacy as a quasi-state actor using proportionate and justified 

violence. Throughout twenty years of fighting, the Taliban have been at pains to distinguish 

the violence they use from the illegitimate violence of criminals or rebels. The Taliban have 

designed their case to appeal not only to those who may be inclined to join the movement but 

also to broader society. The Taliban case for jihad seeks to persuade Afghans as a whole to accept the authority of the movement and to support it in ways that would be inconceivable for 

a mere armed criminal gang.

If eventually the Taliban movement is to engage in conflict transformation, and to end 

its involvement in violence, then those leading or supporting the transformation must take 

account of the mobilization of the past twenty years, much of which will have to be reversed. 

The importance of a Taliban “in-house” case for peace is that Taliban rhetoric has been very 

effective in undermining the credibility of mainstream Afghan media within constituencies 

sympathetic to the Taliban. Taliban members and supporters are largely insulated from the 

rhetoric and arguments routinely deployed by their enemies or external parties. If the Taliban 

as a movement is to move away from violence toward political reconciliation, then the justification for the transition must be made by influential figures within the movement, who in turn 

must build the case consistent with the movement’s ideology and heritage.

Evolution of the Rhetoric

The Afghan Taliban have been engaged in violent conflict since the emergence of the movement in 1994. The propagation and legitimization of this armed struggle has been a principal 

function of the movement’s rhetoric throughout its development. At the heart of any appeal to 

support the Taliban has been an invitation to participate in or support this struggle. However, 

the Taliban’s rhetorical defense of the use of violence has evolved along with developments in 

the movement and in the political context. 

The Taliban’s armed campaign has passed through four stages and is on the cusp of a fifth 

in terms of the configuration of the warring parties and their relative strengths. The first phase, 

from 1994 to 1996, was the emergent Taliban. During that time, the movement progressed 

from a new armed faction in an arena dominated by many established factions to a formidable 

group taking control of the national capital, Kabul. They started by fighting individual former 

mujahideen commanders and their armed groups but moved on to fighting against the Islamic 

State of Afghanistan, the fractious government formed by the mujahideen in the wake of the 

collapse of the Communist government. 

The second phase, from 1996 to 2001, was the ascendant Taliban. During this period, 

the movement established its Islamic emirate as the de facto administration across most of 

Afghanistan and fought against the remnants of the mujahideen forces, by then styled as the 

resistance. In the first two phases, the Taliban fought exclusively against Afghan forces, though 

on the Taliban side an international brigade was integrated within the mostly Afghan movement and Pakistan offered assistance, both official and covert. 
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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

The third phase, from 2002 to 2006, was the emergent insurgency in reaction to the establishment of the post-2001 Afghan government supported increasingly by international forces. 

After the rapid defeat of the Taliban army and collapse of their government in late 2001, small 

armed groups of Taliban fought international forces and the new Kabul government, mostly in 

the south and east of the country. 

The fourth phase, from 2007 to 2014, was the national insurgency, during which the Taliban sought to expand their influence beyond its traditional power bases in the south and east. 

The alignment of forces was the same as in the third phase. The Taliban, however, though still 

militarily far weaker than the government spread military operations to all regions of the country and operated a parallel administration. 

The conflict is currently moving toward a fifth phase, in which the Taliban are fighting 

against the Kabul government with severely reduced direct involvement of the international 

military forces. As a means of testing the shifting balance of force, during the second half of 

2014, the Taliban military started launching attacks with larger groups of fighters, attempting 

to seize territory in each region of the country.

Themes

During the first Taliban period, the main theme was the need to combat the moral corruption 

of the former mujahideen commanders in control of Kandahar. As ambitions expanded, the 

rhetoric targeted the former mujahideen generally rather than just the Kandahar commanders. 

It began by demanding the disarmament of the Kandahari commanders and rapidly progressed to demanding the disarmament of all factions engaged in the civil war. The rhetorical 

defense of this first phase rested on a critique that the jihad against the Soviet occupation had 

been betrayed. Those who called themselves mujahideen had shed their legitimacy by engaging in arbitrary taxation and extortion and by enabling an environment of chronic insecurity, 

sexual violence, general oppression of the civilian population, and violent power struggles. This 

justified resorting to arms to remove the mujahideen and restore order.

During the ascendant phase, the case for jihad rested on the idea of establishing the authority of the new political vehicle, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). The Taliban 

built up the idea of the emirate from 1996 onward, when they orchestrated a gathering of 

sympathetic ulema (Muslim scholars, plural of alim) to proclaim the movement’s leader as amir 

ul momineen (commander of the faithful).2

 With Mullah Omar as amir and the movement in 

control of most of the territory, Taliban rhetoric demanded that all other forces in the country 

submit to their authority. Resistance, it claimed, was tantamount to defying Islam. Until the 

abrupt collapse of the Taliban in the face of the U.S. intervention, Taliban rhetoric depicted 

its forces as battling corrupt former mujahideen for defying divinely sanctioned authority and 

obstructing the Taliban’s mission of establishing an Islamic system in the country.

The 2001 U.S. intervention inevitably provoked a change in the Taliban rhetoric. As it 

became clear that the United States would invade, the Taliban again convened sympathetic 

ulema and obtained a declaration from them calling for armed resistance to the foreign invaders and their local partners on the grounds that they were committing aggression against a 

Muslim country and challenging an Islamic system. Thus, late 2001 marked the key turning 

point in the Taliban rhetoric: a shift from excoriating wayward Afghans to a struggle that 

primarily identified a foreign enemy. There was, however, an element of continuity in that the 
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PEACEWORKS 102

Taliban still proclaimed their fight a jihad, which it was incumbent on all Afghan Muslims to 

support, and highlighted the corruption of the foreigners’ local partners, who were of course 

largely the Taliban’s old enemies from the 1990s.

The initial rationale for fighting against U.S. and foreign forces was existential. As the insurgency continued, Taliban rhetoric acquired a set of grievances, including complaints of cruel 

and oppressive behavior of U.S. forces against civilians and opposition forces in Afghanistan, as 

well as complaints of U.S. aggression and abuses against Muslims in other theaters of what the 

U.S. government had declared a global war on terror. By the time of the national-level insurgency, the Taliban still claimed to be fighting primarily against foreign forces but also expanded 

their denunciation of what they described as a puppet regime and all collaborators with the 

foreign forces. The rhetoric in this period also clearly sought to appropriate the terminology of 

the jihad, depicting the Taliban’s partisans as the only remaining true mujahideen. The Taliban 

reinforced this by developing the narrative that the parties and commanders left over from the 

war against the Soviets surrendered the last of their moral authority by propping up the foreign 

occupation after 2001.

Contemporary Rhetoric

The impending withdrawal of NATO combat forces in 2014 has clearly transformed one key 

aspect of the conflict. Taliban rhetoric, however, still projects themes that have accumulated 

over the various phases and shows no sign that the movement has yet reworked its message. 

Its four major themes are national sovereignty, military strength, the sacredness of the Taliban’s 

jihad, and the authority of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate.3 Critics of the Taliban reject all the 

main elements of the Taliban rhetoric, accusing the insurgency of undermining sovereignty by 

depending on Pakistani assistance and of practising terrorism rather than legitimate warfare.

Under the national sovereignty theme, the Taliban assert themselves as the only true protectors of Afghan sovereignty. They refer to Afghanistan’s history of successful resistance to foreign 

aggressors and claim that they alone are upholding this tradition. They assert that the primary 

conflict under way is that of resistance to American aggression. The Kabul-based political system is portrayed as an imposition of America, which represents American interests in violation 

of Afghan sovereignty. They claim that all that is imported from the West is counter to Afghan 

traditions. Those who participate in the Kabul-based political system or in Western-style political and cultural activities are therefore puppets and slaves who have shed their Afghan identity.

Under the military theme, the Taliban project their fighters as belonging to a strong and 

organized military force. They proclaim, and often exaggerate, military successes over both 

Afghan and foreign enemies. They assert that use of military force is necessary because it is the 

only way to thwart the enemies’ designs. Finally, they claim that Taliban victory is inevitable.

Under the theme of sacred jihad, the Taliban assert that their use of violence constitutes a 

legitimate jihad and Taliban fighters are the true mujahideen, maintaining the legacy of martyrs 

to previous Afghan conflicts. Active participation in, or support of, this jihad is obligatory for 

Afghan Muslims and failure to comply is a rejection of Islam. Conversely, collaboration with the 

Kabul government is tantamount to siding with the foreign unbelievers and thus also a rejection of Islam. The Taliban’s mujahideen are “rightly guided” and subject to the Islamic rules for 

conduct of a just war.

Under the theme of the Islamic emirate, Taliban rhetoric asserts that decrees and orders 

issued by the movement and its officials have the authority of Islam. Mullah Omar is still described as the amir ul momineen, and officials of the Islamic emirate serve under his authority. 

Taliban rhetoric still 

projects themes that have 

accumulated over the 

various phases and shows 

no sign that the movement 

has yet reworked its 

message. Its four major 

themes are national 

sovereignty, military 

strength, the sacredness of 

the Taliban’s jihad, and the 

authority of the Taliban’s 

Islamic Emirate.
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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Afghans should accept the Islamic shariat, and the only way to do this is to submit to the 

authority of the emirate. Essentially, Taliban rhetoric asserts that the movement is the final 

authority in determining what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior in Islam.

Implications 

Taliban rhetoric on the eve of the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan is uncompromising and warlike. It presents the case for the continuation of the armed struggle and 

focuses on the foreigners as the primary enemy and on Afghan “puppets” as a secondary one. 

But this constitutes a case for the continuation of war against the puppets alone, after withdrawal, regardless of the plausibility of the depiction of the regime as a puppet. The rhetoric 

implies that all those associated with the Kabul regime are enemies of Islam unless they submit 

to the Islamic emirate. The rhetoric thus includes an absolute rejection of any notion of the 

Kabul authorities enjoying democratic legitimacy, both because the system was imposed on 

Afghanistan by foreigners and because the institutions and means adopted for acquiring a 

mandate are inherently un-Islamic.

The uncompromising themes of jihad in Taliban rhetoric leave few obvious loopholes to 

rationalize compromise of the movement to a negotiated settlement, even after international 

troop withdrawal. In recent Eid addresses attributed to Mullah Omar and other political pronouncements, the Taliban have claimed that they do not seek a monopoly of power and instead 

want an “Afghan inclusive government.” 4

 However, the Taliban have neither elaborated on 

these ideas nor have they sought seriously to find common ground with other Afghan parties. 

Thus, the rhetoric remains one of war, and the Taliban have failed to use the period running up 

to withdrawal to prepare a public case for compromise. The primary reason given by the Taliban 

for rejecting the legitimacy of the 2004 constitution and successive parliamentary and presidential elections is that these have taken place under the foreign yoke, which prevents Afghans from 

exercising free choice. Mass citizen participation in the political process during the April 2014 

presidential and provincial council elections, combined with international troop withdrawal, 

strain the credibility of Taliban rhetoric, which depends on the notion of Kabul politics being 

subservient to foreigners.

Internal Organization

Afghanistan has a rich heritage of political organization. Some 292 parties, associations, and 

alliances were documented in the most comprehensive analysis of political groupings during 

earlier phases of conflict in a 1997 study by Fida Yunas.5 Most of these entities have left little 

trace in public life and were unremarkable in terms of their political ideas or approaches to organizing. The Afghan Taliban movement is distinctive. The Taliban’s demands for enforcement 

of shariat and removal of foreign troops, however, are unexceptional in Afghan political history. 

What sets the Taliban apart from the other 291 entities profiled by Yunas is its approach to 

organization. The Taliban have evolved an organizational culture that has enabled the movement to survive for twenty years seemingly immune to the hazards of patronage politics, which 

have weakened and divided other Islamist organizations’ pursuit of their goals.

The main elements of the culture that have contributed to the movement’s coherence and 

that collectively make the Taliban significantly different from other Afghan organizations are 

reverence for the leader, centralization, denial of personal responsibility, conformism or suppression of dissent, religiosity, insecurity of tenure, resistance to permanent hierarchy, blurring 

of civil-military distinctions, a spartan ethos, cliquishness, and rejection of tribalism.

Taliban rhetoric on the 

eve of the withdrawal 

of international forces 

from Afghanistan is 

uncompromising and 

warlike. It presents the 

case for the continuation 

of the armed struggle and 

focuses on the foreigners 

as the primary enemy and 

on Afghan “puppets” as a 

secondary one.
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PEACEWORKS 102

Any careful observer of the Taliban can find multiple examples of each of these aspects of 

the organizational culture expressed in the ways that the Taliban conduct their business internally rather than merely in the way they present themselves externally. Some elements, such 

as the religiosity or cliquishness, can be traced to the mores of the madrassahs from which the 

Taliban emerged. However, the culture also has a doctrinal basis.

Taliban culture draws on the Koran, the traditions of the Prophet, and early Islamic history 

to guide the leadership and the base of the movement. Thus, an early tract, Islami Adalat (Islamic 

Justice), provides shariat-based guidance for Taliban administrators and judges in dealing with 

the populace and promoting good and suppressing evil.6 A later tract, De Mujahid Toorah—

De Jihad Shari Misalay (shariat teaching on jihad),7 draws on similar sources to guide decisionmaking around the conflict, such as how to make or break truces and how to distribute booty. 

Between 2009 and 2013, the Taliban’s Cultural Commission circulated successive editions of 

Guidance to the Mujahideen, generally known as the Lahya.

8

 It contains a sprinkling of Koranic 

quotations but is more concise and prescriptive than the more detailed doctrinal works. The 

Lahya affirms the core doctrine of obedience to the amir but otherwise focuses on the proper 

behavior of mujahideen and guides their dealings with the population and with the enemy.

A tract by Mufti Rasheed distinctively provides a shariat basis for the internal workings 

of the movement—the relationship between amir and mujahid.9 This tract is the main item 

in the Taliban canon that illuminates the movement’s internal affairs, and it is of enduring 

significance because the ideas laid out by Rasheed still provide a good explanation of the way 

the leadership runs the movement.

A Pakistani Islamist scholar and mentor of the Taliban leadership, Mufti Rasheed published “Obedience to the Amir” 10 in Urdu in 2000 after touring Afghanistan with the Taliban. 

As an illustration of the significance of this text, the Taliban had it translated into Pashto and 

Farsi; Mullah Omar personally dispensed it to visitors to his office, advising them to look to it 

for guidance on how to operate within the movement.

At the time of writing the piece, Mufti Rasheed headed the Rasheed Trust. Operating from 

a campus in Karachi, the organization was involved in religious education and welfare activities. 

During the Taliban’s period in power between 1996 and 2001, it emerged as one of the principal 

conduits for Pakistani assistance to the Taliban movement, including support to the Taliban 

military. It continued in this role until after the collapse of the Taliban government, when the 

relationship was marred by disputes over the control of the proceeds of fund-raising and assets 

that the Taliban hid from the sanctions regime imposed by the United Nations.11

Officials serving under Mufti Rasheed had access to the Taliban leadership, including 

Mullah Omar, and sought to advise him on the challenges of building the Islamic state and 

resisting what they saw as the threat from the West to this statebuilding project. Even after 

the collapse of the Taliban government, as the leadership reestablished itself in Pakistan, senior 

Taliban figures maintained their relations with the Rasheed Trust and the successors to Mufti 

Rasheed. Among the ideational influences on the Taliban, Mufti Rasheed and his deputies 

stand out for the coherence of the ideas offered, the successful leveraging of these ideas by 

combining them with a financial relationship, and the persistence of the relationship through 

the different periods of the Taliban’s development.

Doctrine of Obedience

“Obedience to the Amir” is simultaneously a practical handbook with advice on how to run 

the Taliban movement and a messianic hagiography lauding the Taliban and their leaders, who 
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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

are credited for their commitment toward implementing sharia at the cost of relations with 

the world’s imperialist powers. But Mufti Rasheed’s core message, and the one most relevant 

in explaining the Taliban’s coherence, is that the Taliban’s success depends on all members of 

the movement maintaining unity and their obedience to the amir through the command chain 

leading up to the supreme leader, Amir ul Momineen Mullah Omar. Members are to suspend 

their individual judgment and temperament for the sake of this obedience. Rasheed essentially 

argued that God and the amir knew better why the Taliban had to do things that individual 

members of the movement might not fathom. The rationale for this submission to the will of 

the leadership was divine purpose: The member must trust that God works through the person 

of the amir, and so obedience to the amir is equated with obedience to the Prophet and to 

God. Helping maintain the movement’s cohesiveness is equivalent to staying within the fold 

of Islam, something that would be a fundamental value for everyone in the communities where 

the Taliban have recruited.

In terms of internal organizational structure, Rasheed referred to some of the key elements 

that have characterized the movement, though the structure he envisaged was elegantly simple. 

Supreme and God-given authority rested with the amir ul momineen. Rasheed envisaged the 

leadership of the movement to consist of a college of amirs, so that each member was attached 

to and owed complete obedience to his personal amir. In this way, the notion of divine authority resting in the supreme leader was delegated through a command structure.

Rasheed proposed that sound leadership decisionmaking depended on the availability of good 

advice. He envisaged the shura (representative assembly) as a council of the grandees of the movement, although he had little to say about its size or appointment. His legal opinion, based on his 

own reading of the hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Mohammad), was that the shura’s role should 

be strictly advisory. The amir should make his decisions after considering the advice which alerted 

him to all possible perspectives on the matter in hand. But decision-making authority should rest 

unambiguously with the amir, and in the case of a disagreement between the shura and amir, the 

former should maintain its position of obedience, in the same way as this was incumbent on ordinary members of the movement. The obligation to show unquestioning obedience ends only when 

the amir issues orders counter to the shariat or is engaged in rebellion.

Other Organizing Principles

Rasheed provided an Islamic basis to a range of the practices that over the years became consolidated as part of the way the Taliban conducted their affairs. He rationalized the rotation of 

civilian personel to the military fronts, especially those normally responsible for running offices 

or stewarding resources. Through the rotation, he hoped to avoid the emergence of a gap between the combatants and noncombatants in the movement and to imbue the office managers 

with some of the spirit and morale of the armed ranks. They should perpetually be reminded 

that the movement was engaged in violence simply as part of a jihad. As well as the rotations 

to the front line, Mufti Rasheed called for appointments and transfers to be for appropriate 

periods, by which he implied that the tenure in civilian or military commands in the movement 

should be relatively short. He specified the purpose of the rapid turnover—to prevent office 

bearers from entertaining the illusion that the post belonged to them by right and that the 

movement was somehow dependent on them.12

Rasheed also provided a rationale for the spartan element of the Taliban organizational culture, 

calling on the leadership to avoid allowing privilege to attach to office, to ensure that no post is 

so comfortable that others should covet it, and to discourage personal ambition and lust for ofHelping maintain the 

movement’s cohesiveness 

is equivalent to staying 

within the fold of Islam, 

something that would 

be a fundamental value 

for everyone in the 

communities where the 

Taliban have recruited.
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PEACEWORKS 102

fice within the movement. The architects of the Taliban movement were aware that to advocate 

this submission of personal entitlement and ambition to the leader for the sake of the greater 

good, they were pushing contrary to well-established tendencies in the culture of Afghan public 

life. In this sense of lauding public simplicity, the Taliban have deliberately cultivated an antiestablishment culture, which harks back to traditional Pashtun tribal ideas of egalitarianism. Historically, Afghanistan was characterized by a court culture that emulated the pomp of the Ottoman or Moghal empires, and in modern times anyone aspiring to join the governmental elite felt 

obliged to indulge in fancy clothes, cars, and furniture. This culture of ostentatious wealth encouraged faction leaders and public officials, both during the civil war of the 1990s and after 2001, to 

resort to corruption and plunder of public resources. In contrast, Taliban propaganda has projected 

an image of simplicity and claimed moral superiority over ostentatious rivals.

Implications

The core ideas of the organizational culture that Rasheed projects in the manual can be traced 

to the Deobandi madrassah movement and its tradition of Sunni puritan reformism. Most 

madrassahs in Pakistan are part of this Deobandi movement, which in turn traces its roots to 

the Dar ul Uloom Deoband in Uttar Pradesh. The intellectual foundations of the Deobandi 

madrassahs are, first, Sunni-Hanafi jurisprudence and, second, political-historical ideas of the 

struggle to construct both an Islamic state and anticolonialism, inspired by Shah Waliullah 

(1703–1762) and Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831).

The important difference between the Taliban and the Afghan mujahideen who preceded 

them was not just the corruption and brigandry the Taliban challenged in Kandahar. Rather, 

it was the cohesiveness the Taliban maintained while claiming to implement an ideal Islamic 

system unpolluted by Western political ideas and the compromises the mujahideen had made.

Suicide Operations

One striking feature of the Taliban’s violence has been the reliance on one of the most extreme 

combat tactics—suicide bombing. Afghan combatants refrained from this tactic during the 

Soviet occupation and civil war. The first suicide bombing in recent times occurred on September 9, 2001, when two al-Qaeda activists blew themselves up to assassinate Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood. In the early stages of the insurgency, suicide attacks were 

rare—an average of one per year between 2001 and 2004. After this period, they became an 

integral part of the Taliban campaign, twenty-five attacks in 2005 and more than a hundred 

per year thereafter. The advent of suicide bombing in Afghanistan followed its adoption in 

the Iraqi insurgency after 2003.13 However, the Taliban rapidly developed an infrastructure 

to train suicide bombers, plan and execute the attacks, and generate the propaganda material 

drawing on them. Until 2014, much of that infrastructure was located in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency. In military terms, the suicide operations became the Taliban’s preferred strategic weapon, controlled and deployed by the military leadership against its targets of choice. In 

cultural terms, the suicide operations became part of a cult of militarism. The explosives-filled 

waistcoat, known as a suicide jacket, came to symbolize an elite cadre of Muslim warriors, 

those who had been trained to conduct suicide operations.

Filmed profiles of suicide attackers, which have now become a standard component in 

Afghan Taliban multimedia propaganda materials, are assembled from several components. 

These include the martyr’s statement, the valedictory read by a narrator, the collage of premartyrdom shots of the martyr, the footage of the operation, and taranas (ballads), selected to 
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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

reinforce the martyrdom theme. Some of the profiles are packaged as stand-alone pieces and 

others are nested within longer videos that treat other components of the jihad or a propagandist commentary on the political context.

Their assertions should be seen in the context of the broader debate on the morality of 

suicide attacks. Islamist critics argue that suicide attacks violate the prohibition on taking one’s 

own life. They also argue that brainwashing would-be suicide bombers during training suspends 

their conscience or faculty of evaluating whether their orders and targets are shariat compliant. 

In the Afghan context, the critics point to the ulema’s and the mujahideen’s refraining from 

suicide operations during the just jihad against the Soviets. Apologists invoke the Koranic verses 

promising God’s blessings for those martyred during jihad and assert that suicide operations are 

necessitated in an asymmetric confrontation. Most of the rhetoric in the videos is devoted to the 

religious case. Each component of the fidayeen (those who sacrifice) profiles marshals multiple 

reasons asserting that their violence enjoys divine sanction.14 The rhetoric in the videos expects 

the audience to accept that the fidayeen are counted among those who have died in the course 

of fighting jihad and so self-evidently must be accepted as divinely blessed martyrs.

To understand how the Taliban both explain and leverage their suicide and fidayeen campaign, we analyzed seven propaganda videos for this report. Each used an Islamic emirate brand 

and included suicide attacker profiles. Together, these videos profiled some twenty-seven suicide 

bombers. Although each video focuses on a different suicide operation, several themes are common to them, and the videos give the impression of belonging to a uniform corpus of work.15

Personal Profiles

All of the profiles highlight the personal qualities of the martyrs. The videos deliberately project the fidayeen as role models by showing that they conform to a type of ideal Afghan male. 

The longest list of qualities, which were invoked in different combinations for all profiles, were 

religious. The martyrs were described as God-fearing and pious.

Most of the profiles use video clips to portray the fidayeen as warriors. They do weapons 

training and physical fitness and hang around with other fighters, sometimes dressed in combat fatigues with white headbands inscribed with Koranic verses. But the narratives ascribe 

rather fewer warrior-like qualities than religious ones. The most common warrior-like quality 

is simply brave. Otherwise they refer to the men as heros or experienced mujahid.

In terms of temperament and morality, the qualities mentioned in the narratives include 

happy, clever, modest, unselfish, young, and properly educated. With pathos, one of them says 

simply, “I had a beautiful life.”

Some of the narratives clearly set out to establish the social standing of the fidayeen, in 

part to counter reports that they carry out these operations from a sense of desperation, in 

response to brainwashing, or even while drugged (one makes the point that the operation he 

has trained for would be impossible to undertake if one were not fully conscious). For example, 

in one, the fidayeen states that he has no personal problems: “No financial problem, no disease, 

and no family quarrels.” About another, the narrative says that he had plenty of property and 

even himself paid for the vehicle which was used in his fidai operation. Others are described 

simply as honorable. Through these qualities, the narratives assert the fidayeen’s social respectability, thus implying that they are from the mainstream, able to exercise free will, and worthy 

of emulation.

The profiles tackle the issue of the martyrs’ responsibility to their families. They portray the 

fidayeen speaking respectfully of their parents or other family members, as would be expected 
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in a society that values filial obedience. None of the fidayeen addresses himself to his own offspring, though some profiles indicate that they do have children. Several state that they are in 

the fidayeen camp of their own free will and as part of their duty to God. However, none says 

that he has his parent’s permission to participate. Instead, they provide advice or even excuses 

for their families, with phrases such as “You should feel happy and show patience,” “Do not 

worry about me,” “I am here as a reward from God,” or even “You should support the mujahideen.” They also articulate the classic jihadi rationale for the family by promising them that 

a martyr in heaven can intercede for seventy family members or that the martyr will plead for 

his family on the Day of Judgment. In this narrative of fidayeen filial obedience, the Taliban 

rhetoric transposes Afghans’ worldly social values, according to which a son should work hard 

so as to be able to look after his parents, to the supernatural and promises that the fidayeen will 

care for their families in the afterlife.

Going beyond the personal attributes of the profiled fidayeen, themes within the substantive narratives can be grouped into four areas. First, the fidayeen and their narrators present the 

religious argument. Second are the references to and messages for “the foreigners.” Third are 

the references to and messages for the non-Taliban Afghans. Fourth is the battle narrative, the 

references to the operation which the fidayeen undertake.

Rationalizing Extreme Violence

The religious case as presented in the fidayeen profiles is unsophisticated and mainly nontextual. All the fidayeen invoke religion in explaining what they are doing, but none really speaks 

like a scholar or relies on the scriptures in anything more than a casual way. They invoke religion more by citing “self-evident” formulae and making references to commonly held beliefs. 

The Koranic verse most commonly invoked was ayat 111 of sura Al Tawba, which refers to the 

believer’s covenant with Allah, according to which they have a place in heaven but must be prepared to fight and die for Allah. In most of the videos, at least one of the fidayeen personalizes 

this covenant, asserting that he must stage a fidayeen attack because all Muslims are a party to 

the bargain with God that obliges them to fight.

The fidayeen talk of the merit of jihad in general and martyrdom in particular. They cite the 

formal Taliban case for the post-2001 conflict—jihad is rendered an obligation by the invasion. 

The rhetoric frequently uses the term isteshadi, or one seeking martyrdom, rather than the more 

common shaheed, a martyr. This is a nuance designed to emphasize the desire for martyrdom 

(which would be meritorious) as opposed to an intention to commit suicide (which would be 

reprehensible). On martyrdom, they say that it is a divine blessing and a passport to eternity. 

One cites a hadith that on the Day of Judgment, God will laugh with the martyr who fought 

on the front line. Another expresses the obligation to jihad: “All those born in the Muslim 

religion, have the kalma, and so must bleed for their religion until the unbelievers leave.” One 

commentary celebrates the failure of the government to come up with a decisive repudiation 

of fidayeen attacks.

The references to jihad, martyrdom, and the divine covenant were remarkably divorced 

from any concrete reality. Even claims that defense of religion from a threat required martyrdom lacked examples of threats that the men had suffered personally. The fidayeen claim 

instead that “The Koran has been defiled while Muslims sleep,” “They insulted our Koran and 

Prophet,” “Religion can only be protected by our flesh and blood,” “Allah will reward us for 

protecting our religion,” and “We must seek revenge for the burning of the Koran.”

All the fidayeen invoke 

religion in explaining what 

they are doing, but none 

really speaks like a scholar 

or relies on the scriptures 

in anything more than a 

casual way. 
USIP.ORG 15

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Identifying Enemies

The fidayeen profiles include multiple references to foreign forces, whether expressed as grievances about their actions, rhetorical messages addressed to them, expression of intentions about 

them, observations about them, or even comparisons with them. Many of these references are 

intricately linked with the religious case because the latter draws on the idea that jihad is 

rendered obligatory by a non-Muslim intervention. However the suicide profiles rarely use 

the term foreigner explicitly. Most of the references in the profiles to the enemy are expressed 

as nonbelievers (kuffar). The context then makes it clear that the epithet is primarily intended 

for the foreigners present in Afghanistan, embracing both the military and civilian. In speech, 

often the fidayeen talk in turns about us and them or you in such a way that the audience is left 

to understand the us and them identities from the context. The us can be mujahideen, Afghans, 

or Muslims in general. The them is elastic to indicate foreign military forces in Afghanistan, 

all enemies of the mujahideen, or all Westerners. Indeed, this point about the vague definition of enemy is significant. The references to foreigners, under the heading of nonbelievers, 

do not make a civil-military distinction, and all are encompassed in the rhetorical grievances 

and threats.

The fidayeen profiles are compact. Each man is portrayed through a compilation of video 

clips in which he articulates fragmentary thoughts, slogans, and messages. Some of the profiles 

are nested within multimedia products that include more developed narratives of the Cultural 

Commission. The more elaborate narratives place their story of Afghanistan into a telling of 

the global war on terror story, replete with footage of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the 

9/11 attacks. Whereas the individual fidayeen talks in very vague terms about the grievances of 

Muslims around the world, the Cultural Commission editors are able to complement this by 

drawing on a large collection of video clips garnered from satellite television. This small sample 

of fidayeen profiles included minimal reference to Afghan history, despite that history being 

replete with examples of successful opposition to invaders.

The profiles analyzed for this study were remarkably lacking in any reference to the real-life 

experience of the fidayeen themselves. Even the issue of prison conditions was hardly touched 

on. There was a single reference to the suffering of Muslims in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, 

and Pul-i-Charki but no clear statement from any of the fidayeen of having been fired up by 

personal experience in any of these places. Instead, the profiles seem to recycle images and ideas 

from the political-religious narrative the Cultural Commission has developed across its wider 

portfolio of publications and materials.

A handful of references point to more specific and recent political issues. For example, one 

commentary cites polling in western countries showing public hostility to the Afghan war. 

Another criticizes the Bilateral Security Agreement as futile, equivalent to selling the country 

into slavery and a source of instability in the region.16 Another says that the invaders now want 

dialogue with the mujahideen, which is an obvious sign of how weak the invaders are. Another 

dismisses the elections as drama. The fidayeen narrative draws on the idea of “the other” by 

juxtaposing the merit and strength of the mujahideen versus the inevitable eventual defeat of 

the nonbelievers or Americans.

In contrast to the fidayeen’s apparent fascination with the foreign or nonbeliever enemy, 

they have remarkably little to say about non-Taliban Afghans. Even though some of the attacks were directed solely at Afghan targets, the profiles make no obvious effort to construct a 

The fidayeen narrative 

draws on the idea of “the 

other” by juxtaposing the 

merit and strength of the 

mujahideen versus the 

inevitable eventual defeat 

of the nonbelievers 

or Americans.
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PEACEWORKS 102

picture of the domestic enemy or even to explain why they are fighting against fellow Afghans. 

Most of the references to the Afghans are exhortatory, in which the fidayeen appeal to them 

for cooperation against the “true enemy,” the foreign nonbelievers. They appeal to Afghans as 

potential allies rather than actual enemies. Within this appeal, the two main themes are a call 

to end their state of indifference or passivity and to end collaboration.

Other Observations

The final cluster of themes addressed in the profiles concern the operations the fidayeen are 

involved in. For the most part, the propagandists communicate their operations using video 

footage taken by observers who accompany the fidayeen, supplemented by scenes which they 

have recorded from satellite and cable television. Many of these images convey the destructive 

power of the truck bombs sometimes deployed. The fidayeen speak only briefly. In one attack 

conducted by suicide bomber Mawlvi Abdul Rashid, which media reported as killing four 

police, the narrator claims that one hundred security personnel were killed or injured. Another 

commentary describes how the fidayeen completed a complex attack by launching himself 

against the Quick Reaction Force and causing heavy casualties. Both examples illustrate how 

the fidayeen profiles acknowledge that these operations are used against Afghan targets, despite the focus in their narratives about grievances against non-Afghans.

Implications of the Profiles

The theme that runs consistently through the videos and their component parts is the assertion 

that the Taliban’s violence—in particular the suicide campaign—is legitimate. This legitimacy 

is asserted by association rather than by argument, however. Visually and in their diction, the 

propagandists invoke symbols and role models that they expect an Afghan audience to identify with moral rectitude and merit. They make little effort to articulate concrete grievances, 

and the suicide bombers themselves barely go beyond clichés when they explain why they are 

undertaking their operations. Even in the choice of associations invoked in the productions are 

predominantly religious. In this branch of the Taliban propaganda, young men wage jihad, embrace martyrdom, defend religion against unbelievers, and pursue promises of heaven. The suicide program propagandists instrumentalize religion far more than they do either national or 

tribal values. Furthermore, the videos clearly honor the suicide bombers for struggling against 

outsiders and unbelievers and downplay the fight against fellow Afghans. In the use of imagery 

and terminology, the videos are internationalist in depicting Afghan suicide bombers as part of 

armed resistance against generalized Western oppression of Muslims.

The rhetoric the propagandists of the fidayeen program have deployed can contribute to 

our political understanding of the Taliban. First, their repeated identification of the enemy as 

unbelievers rather than as invaders suggests a Taliban departure from the conventional distinction between the civil and the military in international humanitarian law. Declaring war 

on unbelievers can rationalize the killing of non-Afghan civilians as well as of foreign military. Second, the internationalist spirit of the videos suggests a convergence of Taliban and alQaeda narratives, insofar as Taliban previously focused on Afghanistan-specific grievances and 

actions. Perhaps most significantly, the lack of effort to rationalize the Taliban’s violence against 

fellow Afghans illustrates how the Taliban have failed to build their public case for continuation of the war beyond the international troop withdrawal. It is partisans of the Haqqani 

Network who harvest raw footage from the suicide operations and produce their propaganda 

Even though some of the 

attacks were directed 

solely at Afghan targets, 

the profiles make no 

obvious effort to construct 

a picture of the domestic 

enemy or even to explain 

why they are fighting 

against fellow Afghans.
USIP.ORG 17

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

materials in what they call a jihadi video studio with its in-house graphic logo. However, the 

propagandists also use the insignia of, and thus invoke the authority of, the Cultural Commission, an official organ of the Taliban. Thus, primarily the Haqqani Network and secondarily the 

Taliban movement as a whole are implicated in this dilution of the civil-military distinction, 

the embracing of jihadi internationalism, and the failure to articulate a case for the “postoccupation” insurgency.

Movement Membership and Structures

Evaluating the role of supreme leader Mullah Omar and profiles of the upper and middle tiers 

of the leadership sheds light on the place of the Taliban movement within Afghan society. The 

power of rhetoric to mobilize depends in large part on the authority of those who articulate 

it. Despite the Taliban strategy of obscuring identities, other Afghans assess the appeal to violence on the basis of the credentials and social status of the movement’s leaders and commanders. But causality works the other way also, in that the social status of the movement depends 

on the profile of the cadres it manages to mobilize into the insurgency.

Since its early days, the Taliban movement has been characterized as having emerged from 

the madrassahs and thus as a clerical movement. The clergy have a long history of involvement 

in Afghan politics.17 However, the rhetoric of the post-2001 phase of the conflict has addressed 

an issue of fundamental national importance, alleged foreign occupation, and has a potential 

appeal well beyond the clergy. In profiling the Taliban leadership twenty years after the formation of the movement, it is necessary to understand the relationship with the madrassahs and 

standing in the clergy and to examine the extent to which the Taliban movement has grown 

beyond its original base.

This profile, which is derived from data provided by movement veterans, starts with the supreme leader, drawing on his words and an interpretation of his significance in the latest stage 

of the insurgency, and then looks at the next two tiers of leadership, those with overall national 

responsibility and those with provincial responsibility.

The Supreme Leader

Mullah Omar remains the Taliban supreme leader and the source of all authority in the movement. However, he has played a symbolic role in the post-2001 struggle rather than an active 

one. He has made no public appearances since exiting Kandahar in December 2001. In effect, 

the Taliban has become a movement run by deputies. Although Mullah Omar, when active 

and accessible, did not designate a deputy, the published Lahya now calls for obedience to the 

imam and naib imam, or leader and deputy leader. The title imam is intended to be understood 

as the head of a Muslim community. In using this term for Mullah Omar, the authors of the 

Lahya try to project him as having a broad civil and military leadership role. Those who are, 

to an extent, accessible to the rest of the movement and involved in ongoing decision making, 

can be considered the functional leadership of the movement. The functional leadership of the 

Taliban have continued to draw on Mullah Omar as a fundamental source for their claim to 

legitimacy. Their association with Omar underpins their claim to be an Islamic movement with 

a divinely ordained mission.

The first way in which the leadership has maintained the Mullah Omar “brand” has simply 

been through insisting that he remain the leader. Communiques, briefings to meetings, and 

media items simply refer to Mullah Omar as the amir ul momineen and leader of the Taliban 
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movement. The most important way in which the leadership have used Mullah Omar as a 

vehicle for rhetoric has been through the twice annual Eid messages. These political tracts have 

become the main set piece communications for the movement and consist of a commentary 

on the state of the conflict interspersed with religious references, plus statements of Taliban 

intentions and other strategic messages. However, the willingness or ability of the functional 

leadership to put into the public domain any evidence that what is being broadcast is actually 

the word of Mullah Omar has diminished over time.

For a period, until about 2009, the leader occasionally made audio recordings to give an 

authoritative stamp to important decisions which had to be communicated within the movement. These circulated in Taliban circles. One of the last of these such recordings addressed the 

status of an errant military commander, Mullah Mansoor Dadaullah, who, in late 2007, Mullah Omar denounced as a rebel for operating outside the command chain.18 Since then, Mullah Omar’s deputy, Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, has claimed to have received messages from 

the supreme leader but has shared little tangible evidence to authenticate such communication. 

The Cultural Commission has circulated audio recordings of the leader’s Eid messages, but the 

voice is that of an actor. The leadership has thus not produced proof that Mullah Omar has any 

involvement in scripting the messages read in his name. Instead, the Cultural Commission has 

circulated archive recordings of Mullah Omar that date from before his period of seclusion. 

The Mullah Omar of the archive recordings is a spiritual figure, useful in asserting divine sanction, but offers no practical political or military guidance. In later years, the Taliban’s Cultural 

Commission published a stream of political and military commentary in Mullah Omar’s name 

but has never been able to authenticate the authorship.

The Core Leadership

The current national-level leadership of the Taliban movement looks very much like the leadership that formed around Mullah Omar in the early years of the movement, except that the 

veterans are twenty years older. The national leadership is predominantly madrassah-educated 

clerics from those Pashtun tribes settled in the greater Kandahar area. All members of the 

leadership are veterans of the pre-2001 conflict, and most joined the movement in its first 

phase, before the 1996 capture of Kabul—a remarkable degree of continuity. Neither has the 

new generation of fighters found a place in the national leadership nor have the Taliban made 

any obvious effort to broaden the movement’s base. This continuity of the social and political 

character of the leadership has been maintained despite the rapid turnover of personnel in 

many of the top positions.

The formal leadership structure of the Taliban movement consists of the deputy leader, 

other executive officers, a leadership council or shura, and twelve specialist commissions, including the Military Commission; the Political Commission; the Economic Commission; the 

commissions for education, prisoners’ affairs, martyrs, and disabled; and the Council of Ulema. 

The most important of these commissions, the military, has a subsidiary in Peshawar to manage the affairs of the eastern province. The leadership culture also has an element of informality. 

Veteran accounts suggest that membership of the leadership council is more fluid than would 

be the case in a classic politburo, and a cadre of senior figures have a degree of access to decision 

making without formally belonging to any shura.

Neither has the new 

generation of fighters 

found a place in the 

national leadership nor 

have the Taliban made any 

obvious effort to broaden 

the movement’s base. 
USIP.ORG 19

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Mufti Rasheed’s organizational doctrine provides a possible explanation for the rather 

tenuous appearance of the shura. He stressed the shura’s purely advisory role and that decision 

making remains ultimately in the hands of the amir. Thus, shura decisions are nonbinding and 

the precise composition matters less than it would were the shura to make a binding decision. 

Taliban veterans’ representation of leadership decision making suggests that the handful of 

men with executive responsibility in the leadership exercise their discretion over the issues 

to take to consultation. They then summon their peers from the national leadership for this 

consultation. Over time, a consensus has formed among these peers over who is eligible to 

be involved in consultation. Insofar as there are ever any meetings that conform to the title 

Rehbari shura (leadership council), there are occasional meetings of a relatively stable group of 

a dozen or so senior figure who convene to consider sensitive issues. But the peer group with 

occasional input into decision making is rather larger and less stable in composition.

In contrast to the flexible understanding and representation of the Taliban’s leadership 

councils, those who hold the senior-most executive positions are well known. For example, 

Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, who served as civil aviation minister and head of the Air Force 

in the IEA government, is now the senior deputy to the amir ul momineen and thus acting 

leader of the movement. Similarly, Qayyum Zakir, a former military commander who spent a 

spell as a detainee in Guantanamo, was the deputy to the amir ul momineen with responsibility 

for military affairs until his resignation and replacement in April 2014. Likewise, Amir Khan 

Motaqi, the IEA-era education minister, serves as chair of the Cultural Commission.

Together, the heads and members of the national level specialist commissions and the 

peer group members considered eligible to participate in shura consultations can be thought 

of as the top tier or national leadership. However, the element of uncertainty over who holds 

the executive positions at any time or who is eligible to advise the leadership through shuras 

means that there is no single agreed upon list of the Taliban national leadership—even among 

the Taliban. This study used lists provided by two Taliban veterans of those Taliban who have 

influence at national level. One of them provided a narrowly defined list (twenty-one names) 

and the other a broadly defined one (fifty names). As an additional cross-check, the researcher 

prepared a more conventional list of national leadership, according to function (heads of commissions and reported members of the small shura). Most names on this list in any case appear 

on either of the other lists and therefore are not tabulated separately. As a basis for comment on 

the leadership characteristics, short profiles of the Taliban on the different lists were prepared 

based on information from key informants. These profiles were then used to populate the frequency tables.

To profile the second tier of leadership, the study focused on the Taliban’s shadow provincial governors. The list of governors also is in a state of perpetual flux because of transfers and 

the impact of detentions and killings. The study used a shadow governor list published by the 

United Nations, making some minor corrections, as a fixed reference point (see table 1).
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Table 1. Leadership, National and Mid-Level

UNSC Shadow 29 Taliban 21 Taliban 50

Madrassah background 22 21 50

Pre-2001 service with emirate 21 21 49

Origin in greater Kandahar 7 20 38

Ethnic Pashtun 22 20 47

Experience of detention post-2001 3 7 8

Highest post before 2001

Minister 1 9 9

Governor 0 1 7

Provincial police chief 0 0 6

Aide 0 3 3

Senior military commander 7 6 9

Junior military commander 10 0 11

Other position 2 2 5

Total 20 21 50

Province of origin

Kandahar 3 9 28

Helmand 4 6 5

Uruzgan 0 3 3

Zabul 0 2 2

Others 21 1 11

Total 28 21 49

Tribe or ethnicity

Ishaqzai 0 5 7

Nurzai 1 0 12

Alizai 1 4 4

Alakozai 0 1 1

Achakzai 0 4 1

Popalzai 2 1 3

Tokhi 2 2 1

Suleimankhel 0 0 4

Taraki 0 1 2

Kakar 0 0 3

Other Pashtun 16 2 9

Tajik 1 0 1

Pashai 1 0 1

Other 5 1 0

Total 29 21 49

Detention experience

Guantanamo 0 2 3

Bagram 0 0 0

Afghan prison 0 0 1

Pakistani prison 3 5 4

Total 3 7 8
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RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Madrassah Connections

The Taliban’s national-level leadership is still the exclusive preserve of madrassah-educated 

clerics. This common background for the leadership helps the Taliban operate as a closed network. Individual Taliban in the course of their educational careers migrated between multiple 

madrassahs, seeing opportunities to study under particular teachers, or simply opting to study 

successive courses, or dauras, in different institutions. Thus, even before entering the Taliban 

movement, many young men from the madrassahs had associated with large numbers of peers 

and teachers in the religious institutions. Some members of the Taliban leadership have completed their dastarbandi, the madrassah graduation in which they ceremonially don a turban 

and become a mawlvi or qualified cleric. Others pursued their madrassah studies to a higher 

level, receiving additional qualifications in Islamic jurisprudence and thus can be considered 

part of the ulema, the senior clergy. Most senior Taliban, however, are only partly qualified. The 

simplest explanation is that the young men joined the jihad while studying in their madrassahs and stayed with the movement rather than returning to graduate. The term mullah is used 

rather flexibly in Afghanistan to denote someone who has had some religious training without 

specifying how much. The Taliban remains a movement of mullahs rather than of mawlvis—

madrassah dropouts rather than madrassah graduates.

Part of the corporate culture that has developed in the madrassahs of Afghanistan and 

Pakistan is a sense of the other, in that those who have entered the madrassahs consider that 

they have received instruction in divine knowledge, which is inherently superior to the knowledge gained in worldly educational institutions. Society is thus bifurcated between those who 

belong to the madrassahs and that world of knowledge and those who exist beyond it and have 

only imperfect religious knowledge. The Taliban’s status as a body of men trained in the madrassahs has implications for their jus in bello in that they can claim that their men are equipped 

with an understanding of the mechanics of righteous jihad. However, the preponderance of 

dropouts explains the legitimizing strategies the leadership has pursued. They remain vulnerable to the challenge that they are simply not qualified to make pronouncements on doctrinal 

issues. Therefore, at key points in the movement’s development, such as the elevation of Mullah 

Omar to the title of amir ul momineen or at the start of the U.S. intervention, the leadership 

has summoned sympathetic ulema and tried to get them to issue helpful pronouncements. 

Likewise, the Taliban have maintained their own Ulema Commission, made up of senior clerKey Observations

Provincial governors

■ predominantly studied in a madrassah (22 of 26) 

■ served in the pre-2001 IEA (21 of 27)

■ predominantly Pashtun (22 of 29)

■ a minority from greater Kandahar (7 of 28)

■ predominantly served in the military (17 of 20)

Leadership inner circle

■ all studied in a madrassah and served the IEA before 2001 (21)

■ all but one Pashtuns from greater Kandahar (20 of 21)

■ a minority detained at some period after 2001 (7 of 21)

■ a balance of military-civilian experience (6 mainly military and 15 mainly civilian of 21)
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ics who are not part of the functional leadership, to provide judgments and religious sanction 

for executive decision making.

There is some dilution of the monopoly of the madrassahs in the second tier of leadership. 

A minority of governors have not been educated in a madrassah or studied there so briefly as 

to render any claim to be a mullah tenuous. A veteran described the leadership’s priorities in 

appointing people to the provincial positions: They seek lieutenants who have proven ability 

to lead military formations, because of the requirements of the armed conflict, and they want 

people who can be trusted to be loyal, something evidenced by having worked with members 

of the leadership. Although the majority of Taliban walis, or provincial governors, are still former madrassah students, for the sake of loyalty or military organizing ability, the leadership is 

prepared to look beyond its preferred pool of peers. For example, the erstwhile Taliban shadow 

governor of Paktika, “Mawlvi” Sangeen, was primarily a field commander from a family loyal 

to Jalaluddin Haqqani. He spent much less time in a madrassah than would justify the title 

he rather grandly assumed, of mawlvi. However, the Taliban national leadership, after 2001, 

depended upon mobilizing the old jihad-era network of Jalaluddin to provide a base for operations in Waziristan and the greater Paktia area. The certification by Jalaluddin and his family 

that Sangeen could lead armed men in Waziristan and greater Paktia was therefore enough to 

qualify Sangeen as a governor, despite his minimal religious education.

Similarly, the movement is still in the hands of veterans of the pre-2001 period. All Taliban 

who featured on either the short or long leadership list produced through informant interviews 

were active in the movement before the U.S. intervention. Despite all the attrition, a large 

chunk of the 1996–2001 cabinet still helps run the movement. The deputy and acting head of 

the movement served in the cabinet (as civil aviation minister), and the functional leadership 

also includes former ministers for education, mines and industry, communications, finance, 

public works, labour and social welfare, interior, foreign affairs, and justice. Even if many of 

these figures brought few relevant qualifications to their old ministries and served there relatively briefly, their continued presence in the leadership underlines the Taliban’s aspiration to 

national power. One strand of the Taliban’s legitimizing narrative for their campaign is that 

international intervention removed a legitimate, indeed divinely ordained, Islamic regime. The 

armed struggle, they argue, is therefore required to restore it. The presence of nine or more 

former cabinet level members of that deposed regime in the current leadership bolsters the 

Taliban’s claim to be fighting to restore the pre-2001 order.

The wider definition of national leadership includes a cluster of men who served as provincial governors before 2001. The role of the military in the leadership is another feature made 

clear by the profiling. The men who today serve as shadow governors were before 2001 predominantly formation commanders, police chiefs, deputies to top Taliban commanders, or simply leaders of small groups of fighters. Insofar as there has been any generational transition 

in the leadership, through the induction of younger men who played no role in the pre-2001 

movement, it has happened at the second tier of leadership or below. This limited generational 

turnover has not markedly altered the social or clerical profile of the movement. The leadership 

has also established a pattern of making appointments within families that have a long association with the movement. Thus, younger brothers and sons of Taliban veterans have entered the 

ranks of the leadership.

In terms of place of origin and ethnicity, the national leadership remains a Pashtun movement 

dominated by the tribes of Kandahar. All but one of the narrowly defined national leadership list 

were Pashto speakers from the greater Kandahar area. Four-fifths of the Taliban in the top fifty list 
USIP.ORG 23

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

are Pashto-speaking Kandaharis. The acting head of the movement and all his top aides are from 

the greater Kandahar area and belong to the Durrani branch of the Pashtun tribes.

The issue of imbalances in tribal representation within the Taliban leadership does not just 

relate to the disproportionate presence of Kandahari Pashtuns. The national leadership has 

acquired a clannish quality because of the significant over-representation of the Ishaqzai tribe. 

Since the elevation of Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor as acting leader, Ishaqzais from his home 

area of Band e Timur, in Maiwand district, Kandahar, have received several senior appointments. Both the Taliban director of finance, Gul Agha, and his senior adviser, Samad Sanai, are 

Ishaqzais. The Taliban have neither invested in developing a national leadership that Afghans 

might consider representative nor systematically patronized the strongest tribes.19

The pattern of ethnicity and origin in the second-tier leadership differs from that in the 

national leadership. Among the provincial governors is a majority of Pashtuns—twenty-two 

of the twenty-nine profiled. Of them, Kandahari Pashtuns are a minority. In that part of the 

leadership that interacts with the population, then, the Taliban pragmatically tends to appoint 

officials from an ethnic group present in the given province.

Shared Detention Experience

Since 2001, the experience of detention has emerged as an element of common experience 

within the Taliban leadership. A significant minority of Taliban leaders—one-third of the 

narrowly defined leadership group—have spent time in jail at some stage since 2001 before 

rejoining the insurgency. These include several of the movement’s senior-most military officials, such as Qayyum Zakir, Saddar Ibrahim, Allauddin Agha, and Rauf Khadim. Among the 

national leaders, most of those who have been in jail have been imprisoned by the Pakistan 

authorities rather than by Afghan or U.S. counterparts. This is in large part a simple consequence of the leadership’s reluctance to stray into Afghanistan. On the other hand, only three 

of the twenty-nine provincial governors profiled were detained in Pakistan. However, this 

figure probably underestimates the true proportion of governors who have spent time in jail.

To extend the analysis of the detention experience to the third tier of leadership, the field 

commanders, a table was prepared showing detention experience, Taliban service, and religious 

education for the peers of a veteran of the movement who was released after a long stint in 

Bagram (see table 1). The results can be considered exploratory because they relate to a small, 

twenty-person sample of this tier of the leadership or of the prisoners in Bagram. They were 

revealing nonetheless.

The peers profiled were all men who were active in the insurgency as field commanders 

at the time of their detention. The majority had received religious education in madrassahs, a 

slightly higher percentage having finished their studies than among the national leadership. 

At least four of the peers used their period of incarceration in Bagram to advance their religious studies. Taliban functionaries, aware of the potential for their authority to be questioned 

because many of them were madrassah dropouts, have sought opportunities for “mid-career 

training” to complete their religious qualifications. Upon release, all of them found positions of 

responsibility within the Taliban structures. One served for a period as a provincial governor, 

but otherwise they operated at a slightly lower level—four, for example, were uluswals. More 

than a third resumed their activities as military field commanders or military trainers.

This profiling covers only one small peer group among the vast number of Taliban who 

have passed through Bagram and other jails in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, the ease 

with which released detainees reintegrated into the Taliban movement and took positions of 

The Taliban have neither 

invested in developing a 

national leadership that 

Afghans might consider 

representative nor 

systematically patronized 

the strongest tribes.
24 USIP.ORG

PEACEWORKS 102

responsibility, despite measures the Afghan intelligence service takes to retrain men after their 

release, suggests that former prisoners should be considered an important group within the 

field command. Accounts of life in Bagram and Afghan prisons suggest that prisoners use 

their association to imbibe and inculcate a sense of participation in the struggle against foreign 

influence and a corrupt, un-Islamic regime. This constitutes evidence of the emergence within 

the Taliban field command and its supervisory structures of a cadre of armed clerics who share 

the experience of struggle while in detention.

Implications

The most concise description of the social base of the Taliban movement when it emerged in 

1994 would have been as a movement led by armed clergy recruited from the tribes of Kandahar. Two decades later, the leadership of the movement retains its essential clerical character 

despite the massive changes in political context and the nature of the conflict in which it is 

engaged. The ethnic composition is somewhat more complex. Kandahari Pashtuns still dominate the top leadership circles, and the presence of Ishaqzai in top slots is disproportionate. 

However, the movement has been to some extent successful in mobilizing clerical networks 

beyond greater Kandahar and from non-Pashtun groups. These non-Pashtun clerics have been 

admitted to the second and third tiers of leadership but are marginal within the top tier. Overall, the Taliban movement has been remarkably resistant to any notion of broadening its social base beyond the clergy. It continues to function as a sort of Afghan Islamist vanguardist 

movement—a closed group that claims a divine mission to transform Afghan society without 

the need for a popular mandate.

The clerical nature of the Taliban movement has endured despite more than a decade of 

mobilizing Afghans around a nationalistic opposition to the presence of foreign troops rather 

than the agenda of shariat implementation, which the Taliban pursued while in power. This 

trajectory contrasts with that of post-2001 Kabul politics, where, in discourse and praxis, the 

Karzai regime focused on balancing the access of different ethnic groups to power and opportunities. The absence of any form of popular mandate is one reason the movement has 

continued to depend on its supreme leader Mullah Omar as the basis of its claim to legitimacy, 

despite his inability to communicate with the movement he nominally heads.

The Taliban movement has been remarkably successful in coping with the challenges of an 

invisible leader. However, the position of the supreme leader includes vulnerabilities. Although 

the leadership has generally succeeded in passing off its pronouncements as the word of Mullah Omar, they have limited ability to defend against any challenges to the authenticity of such 

material. As a result, they must exercise some discretion in what they attribute. The Taliban 

doctrine also makes no provision for a leadership succession; if the leadership ever tried to 

replace Mullah Omar, its members would be hard-pressed to attribute the same degree of legitimacy for the successor as they have for the original amir ul momineen. Similarly, the rather 

modest religious scholarly credentials of the leadership means that it continues to depend on 

external validation by more qualified elements of the unarmed clergy. Conversely, the leadership faces a perpetual risk of challenge from more qualified and respected ulema than it has 

been able to deploy in arguments regarding the jihad, particularly as contextual developments 

such as the completion of the transition process and the gradual withdrawal of international 

troops increase the resonance of clerical critiques of a resort to violence.

The Taliban’s cliquish approach to leadership also indicates the potential for a hard-line 

challenge from within the armed ranks of the insurgency. The leadership has tolerated no open 
USIP.ORG 25

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

politics within the movement and done little to accommodate non-Kandaharis in decisionmaking structures. Those involved in the middle tiers of the movement have increasing shared 

experience of armed insurgency and detention. Both are settings well known for their opportunities for radicalization. The risk is high that radical enthusiasts for broadening the jihad could 

capitalize on the leadership’s narrow base and organize within the Taliban’s ranks.

Toward a Rhetoric of Peace?

As illustrated, the Taliban movement has in 2014 remained strategically committed to sustaining the insurgency despite the impending withdrawal of foreign troops. Although its rhetoric 

highlights the movement’s confrontation with foreign military forces, the reality in recent years 

is that the Taliban leadership has increasingly pitted its forces against Afghan forces defending 

the government in Kabul. The Taliban decision to fight on through the withdrawal period suggests that the most likely outcome after 2014, at least initially, is a continuation of the conflict. 

Discussion with Taliban veterans indicates that the leadership is far from monolithic in terms 

of commitment to open-ended conflict. Hard-liners, encouraged rather than deterred by the 

departure of foreign forces, advocate sustaining the fight until military victory over the Kabul 

government is achieved. But the movement’s functional leadership also includes senior moderates who claim to favor an early negotiated end to the conflict, even if they have had little 

tangible impact on Taliban strategy. Taliban politics, for now, take place within the logic of a 

movement dedicated to armed struggle.

Any leaders or members of the Taliban movement who eventually seek to transform the 

conflict and end the Taliban’s jihad will face a significant challenge in legitimizing such a 

move and mobilizing support for it. Part of the challenge would be to articulate a Taliban 

rhetoric of peace that did not invalidate the case for jihad that has prevailed for the past 

two decades. A general cessation of violence would result if the functional leadership of the 

movement called a ceasefire associated with a political process. In this case, the leadership 

would likely seek to use a rhetoric of peace to justify its move and convince the Taliban base 

to stay with it, maintaining unity of the movement. A divided movement could result if the 

functional leadership tried to sustain the armed struggle but Taliban pragmatists, in an organized fashion, pushed for an end to the conflict. In this case, the rhetoric of peace would 

be articulated by Taliban pragmatists acting as a forward bloc struggling for control of the 

direction of the movement. A further possible scenario would result if Taliban pragmatists 

sought unofficially to de-escalate the conflict rather than challenge the functional leadership, 

which continued to support the jihad. In this case, Taliban pragmatists would avoid openly 

articulating a rhetoric of peace, although they might deploy the arguments locally while trying to subvert the leadership-mandated war effort. The Taliban leadership is likely to find it 

increasingly difficult to sustain the hitherto impressive cohesiveness of the movement in the 

face of a serious peace process, whether it chooses to embrace that process or not.

Thus a Taliban rhetoric of peace would be used either by a leadership trying to maintain the 

unity of the movement going into a peace process or by a faction of pragmatists trying to carry 

as much of the movement as possible into a peace process. The rhetoric of peace would in either 

case be presented to the movement’s base to demonstrate that exiting the conflict was not only 

consistent with the Taliban core ideology and history of struggle but also the optimal course of 

action in the circumstances. The critical contradiction would not be between the Taliban and 

their erstwhile enemies but instead between those Taliban embracing peace and those seeking 

to sustain the armed campaign regardless.

The Taliban leadership is 

likely to find it increasingly 

difficult to sustain the 

hitherto impressive 

cohesiveness of the 

movement in the face of 

a serious peace process, 

whether it chooses to 

embrace that process or not.
26 USIP.ORG

PEACEWORKS 102

The analysis of a possible Taliban rhetoric of peace is intended to alert other stakeholders 

to the kind of rhetoric they would be likely to encounter from the Taliban in any peace process. 

One of the challenges in transforming a conflict is accommodating what the different sides 

say about each other, the conflict, and the past. Agreement among Afghans about the causes 

and rights and wrongs of the post-2001 conflict is likely to be elusive. One of the challenges in 

peacemaking would therefore be for Taliban and anti-Taliban to find ways of accommodating 

the very different ways in which they represented the political process to their constituencies.

Taliban advocates of peace can be expected to construct their rhetoric by drawing on the 

movement’s core ideology, history of struggle, or prior rhetoric to show that these are compatible with conflict exit. The Taliban has already begun marshalling arguments to provide a 

cover for new departures. In June 2013, Taliban leadership published a declaration justifying 

its opening of a representative office in Doha with the clear purpose of being receptive to peace 

proposals if not to actually engage in a peace process. The declaration was a rhetorical device 

calculated to fulfil requirements of the host, Qatar, as well as the United States, which had 

pushed for the office to be opened, and finally to legitimize the Taliban’s engagement with the 

Afghan government and the United States. Also during 2013, former Taliban finance minister 

and Quetta shura political committee chair Mohtasim Agha Jan gave a series of media interviews and press releases in which he articulated the case for the Taliban to exit the conflict.20 In 

so doing, he positioned himself as the highest profile Taliban pragmatist—someone prepared 

to advocate political action to pursue objectives rather than relying exclusively on violent jihad. 

The Doha declaration is an example of a minimalist approach to peace rhetoric, whereas the 

Mohtasim interventions are much more far-reaching in terms of the peacemaking program 

he advocates. As an example of an earlier attempt at peace rhetoric, when senior Taliban figure 

Abdul Wahid (alias Rais Baghran) exited the insurgency in 2005, his first act was to conduct a 

television interview in which he gave a rhetorical defense of his move.21

Based on these declarations, as well as consistent elements in Taliban rhetoric over the 

past two decades, eight issues are likely to feature in any Taliban rhetoric of peace, whether 

articulated by leadership and pragmatists alike in a general cessation or by pragmatists acting 

as a forward bloc.

Position of the amir

The Taliban peace advocates’ preferred position will be that the amir has endorsed the move to 

peace. This would mimic the established practice from the post-2001 struggle of invoking the 

name of the amir, backed up with whatever proof they can muster that the decision was authentically his. If the advocates were to sustain their claim that the amir had ordered the peace 

process, the weight of twenty years of preaching obedience to the amir would count heavily in 

their favor. If they are confident that no one with better access to Mullah Omar can convincingly refute them, the architects of the peace rhetoric will assert that the amir has endorsed the 

process and that obedience is therefore obligatory. Any faction seeking to fight on would be 

forced into open defiance of the amir, something that would put them in the position of rebelling against the authority of the movement, undermining the main source of legitimacy—not 

to mention cohesion and durability—of the post-2001 insurgency.

An alternative rhetorical approach would be for the Taliban to revisit the conditions for 

exercise of the authority of the amir. In extremis, a peace rhetoric could argue that Mullah 

Omar no longer fulfils the criteria for an Islamic amir because of his inaccessibility to the 

faithful. A rhetorical attempt to legitimize the peace process without the authority of the amir 
USIP.ORG 27

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

would likely invoke shariat arguments on the basis that Taliban doctrine obliges obedience to 

the amir only as long as he complies with shariat. Shariat arguments available to justify a peace 

rhetoric include the idea that peace served the common good of the Muslim ummah, or the 

idea that force is illegitimate when a peaceful option exists.

Peace as a desirable state

When Taliban veterans discuss the prospects for peace, their most common opening observation is that peace is a natural and desirable state in human society and is the ultimate goal of 

all Taliban endeavours. Such a claim, essentially the idealist case, is likely to feature large in the 

Taliban peace rhetoric even if the process itself involves much realpolitik. Such rhetoric would 

claim that the Taliban had achieved that for which they had struggled. The affirmation of peace 

as a desirable state, in the context of a process that safeguarded Taliban objectives and interests, 

would delegitimize any dissident attempts to sustain their violence.

Cohesiveness and need for unity in peace

Taliban peace rhetoric is likely to invoke the movement’s core doctrinal element and enduring 

political priority: the idea of maintaining the unity of the movement at all costs. The peace 

rhetoric would proclaim that compliance with the terms of any agreement is binding on all 

partisans of the movement and would seek to apply to the process of achieving peace the doctrine that proved effective in the armed struggle.

A forward bloc advocating peace could still appeal to Taliban unity even while being opposed by a functional leadership seeking to sustain the war. In this case, the rhetoric would 

depict the warmongers as ill-advisedly splitting the movement. However, peace advocates 

would be at pains to assert their credentials as loyal members of the movement acting with due 

consultation. The rhetoric would distinguish the forward bloc both from the rump war mongers and from previous Taliban figures who accommodated Kabul and were disowned by the 

movement as turncoats. We already have an example of this in Mohtasim’s public positioning. 

However, to have a tangible impact on the course of the conflict, a forward bloc would need to 

garner greater support in the movement than Mohtasim had done.

Foreign troops

Taliban peace rhetoric would have to provide a rationale to the base as to how participation in a 

peace process affirmed the Taliban’s struggle against foreign occupation. The most obvious way 

would be to assert that the withdrawal of NATO troops in 2014 amounted to an end of the 

occupation, which the Taliban had demanded. The rhetoric could claim that the NATO decision to withdraw was prompted by the Taliban’s resistance and that Taliban participation in the 

peace process was necessary to ensure a complete withdrawal and to allow the Taliban to set 

terms for future security arrangements. Should the leadership take a political decision to pull 

back from a violent post-NATO power struggle inside Afghanistan, the rhetoricians should 

find no difficulty in claiming consistency between the decade-long fight against NATO and 

entering a peace process as NATO forces withdrew. The peace rhetoric could build on previous 

Taliban claims that peace would come after the foreigners left, even if those claims had been 

disingenuous at the time.

Taliban peace rhetoric 

would have to provide a 

rationale to the base as 

to how participation in a 

peace process affirmed the 

Taliban’s struggle against 

foreign occupation. 
28 USIP.ORG

PEACEWORKS 102

Government fulfilling criterion of an Islamic government

If a peace process entails a Taliban accommodation with the Kabul government, the peace 

rhetoric can be expected to include a declaration that the government has Islamic credentials, 

which would in turn allow the peace rhetoric to assert continuity with the Taliban’s declared 

mission, in all stages of its struggle, for supremacy of the shariat. Such a proclamation would 

allow the Taliban leadership to reimagine the movement’s quest for an Islamic system and to 

accept that the government had some role in Islamizing society rather than to claim a Taliban 

monopoly over the process. Such a device would be important in reconciling the Taliban’s 

impulse toward radical Islamist reform with the idea of constitutionalism. Taliban antipathy to 

demands that they embrace the Afghan constitution has been based not so much in objection 

to specific clauses but in the belief in a fundamental contradiction between the constitution 

and shariat. Similarly, a Taliban declaration that the government was Islamic would provide 

another basis for delegitimizing further violence against it. Those holding back from the peace 

process would be declared rebels for defying the authority of an Islamic government. It is not 

clear which practical measures would suffice for Taliban rhetoricians to accept a Kabul government as Islamic. However, the Afghan Taliban movement has twenty years of cohabitation 

with the Pakistan political system, which is based on a democratic constitution. This provides a 

precedent suggesting that the movement’s requirements need not be too onerous.

Affirmation and protection of the interests of those who have sacrificed for the Taliban

Those who sacrificed for the movement, including the martyrs, disabled, prisoners, and their 

dependents, would feature prominently in the rhetoric of peace, mirroring the way in which 

Taliban rhetoricians have long invoked them to legitimize the jihad. First, the rhetoric would 

reaffirm their bona fides as martyrs who sacrificed in a righteous cause. Second, the leadership 

would be bound to claim that the move to peace advanced the cause for which the martyrs 

sacrificed. Third, the rhetoric would claim tangible benefits from peace for those who had sacrificed or their dependents. The Taliban leadership has been under pressure during the insurgency to maintain its internal legitimacy by providing financial compensation to dependents 

and pursuing the release of detainees. A leadership trying to justify the decision to embrace a 

peace process will claim that the decision is made in the best interest of the movement’s large 

pool of martyrs, disabled, and prisoners.

Affirmation and logical conclusion of the jihad

During the manoeuvring of the Taliban leadership over the opening of a representative office 

in Qatar in the summer of 2013, they carefully refrained from any declaration or commitment 

that either suggested a weakening of their commitment to the idea of jihad or even that any 

element of their campaign fell short of the requirements for a legitimate jihad. Leadership 

would face similar imperatives in building the case for a full-fledged peace process. Prior Taliban rhetoric elevates jihad to the position of a hallowed institution, the significance of which 

for Islam globally extends far beyond the political calculations around the fighting on any one 

national front. A Taliban rhetoric of peace would present the case that this move upheld the 

commitment to jihad, which in no sense could any Taliban rhetoric be expected to renounce. 

The most obvious ways in which rhetoric could achieve this would be to establish that the 

Taliban had achieved the goals of the current phase of the jihad. The alternative would be to 

depict the peace process as a continuation of the struggle through nonviolent means. To build 
USIP.ORG 29

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

this argument, the Taliban would need access to ample Islamic discourse on the nature of jihad 

and its armed and unarmed variants. The key point is that it should be anticipated that the 

Taliban would affirm the general legitimacy of jihad to defend Muslim interests. They would 

assert that their campaign had constituted legitimate jihad but argue that any further violence 

during or against the peace process was no longer rightful jihad.

A new role for the armed mullahs of the Taliban

Taliban rhetoric during the war clearly laid out a role for the movement’s base of fighterclerics. Participation in the jihad has become an integral part of the career or lifestyle for 

two generations of madrassah-trained clerics. To find resonance with the movement’s base, a 

rhetoric of peace would have to lay out a new postconflict role for armed mullahs. Articulating a role that engages their self-image as moral guardians and defenders of the religion, but 

is tenable in peacetime conditions, will be an entirely different challenge from previous efforts 

at reintegration of so-called layman combatants. Building on the idea that the time for armed 

jihad has passed, the leadership can be expected to appeal to the movement’s base to safeguard 

the values of the jihad by peacefully promoting the religion. Given the long association of the 

Taliban movement with the madrassah networks, the leadership will likely advocate a return to 

the madrassahs, encouraging the erstwhile armed mullahs to use madrassahs in Afghanistan as 

their base for their new peaceful role.

Conclusions

Throughout the Taliban’s two-decade existence, its leadership has deployed a specific rhetoric 

to claim legitimacy and to persuade people to support its jihad. The means for disseminating 

the rhetoric have varied—from Mullah Omar’s broadcasting speeches in the 1990s over a 

military radio network to the websites, Twitter feeds, and glossy magazines of today. The core 

of the rhetoric communicated over these new media, however, shows continuity. This rhetoric 

consists of religious and historical references, narratives of recent events, and guidance for 

Taliban sympathizers.

The first conclusion to be drawn from this investigation of the Taliban rhetoric of armed 

struggle is that the movement deserves to be taken seriously as a political-religious organization. Twenty years after the launch of the movement, the Taliban continue to command the 

loyalty of thousands of Afghans and to apply resources and men to the pursuit of political 

objectives, guided by doctrine and inspired by the rhetoric analyzed in this study. For those who 

have submitted to the authority of the Islamic emirate, it constitutes not so much a parallel 

administration as a primary source of legitimacy and legality, one that has displaced the state 

in their imagination. The Taliban case for violence does not just provide a moral-legal case for 

adherents to resort to violence; it sanctions punishment of those who fail to support the jihad. 

The Taliban movement’s accumulated rhetorical and ideological framework has helped render 

the movement arguably the most effective organization in Afghan public life.22 In large part, 

this framework compensates for the Taliban’s inferior firepower relative to the Afghan National 

Security Forces. The centrality of the rhetoric and ideology of jihad in the Taliban’s imagination 

also renders inadequate any explanations of insurgent motivation that stress criminality, greed, 

or proxy relationships with regional powers or that depict factions outside central control.

Taliban rhetoric has evolved through the two decades of involvement in conflict during 

which the movement has faced Afghan enemies, then foreign enemies and a combination of 
30 USIP.ORG

PEACEWORKS 102

both. A constant in the rhetoric, however, has been the Taliban assertion that its members are 

engaged in a righteous jihad aimed at the establishment of a divinely ordered Islamic system 

in Afghanistan. The centrality of this assertion to the case the Taliban have built up means that 

rhetoricians tasked to explain the movement’s future directions will be bound to retain this appeal to jihad. The departure of foreign military forces from Afghanistan should not be expected 

to render the Taliban any less of a jihadi organization.

One of the reasons for the Taliban’s effectiveness as an organization is the focus of the movement’s doctrine on internal affairs and in particular on maintaining cohesiveness. Although during their period in power the Taliban experimented with realization of a Sunni-Hanifi Islamic 

state, the rhetoric considered here devotes little attention to the issue of the end state of the war. 

In contrast, the Taliban are ruthless in enforcing their doctrine of obedience to the amir. Many 

of the distinctive aspects of the movement’s behavior can be explained with reference to a coherent body of doctrine. The resulting discipline and cohesiveness help explain the movement’s 

ability to sustain its struggle, avoid splits, and deter dissidents or unauthorized peacemakers.

Although this rhetoric and doctrine have helped build a disciplined movement, linking its 

leadership cadres in Pakistan and fighters in Afghanistan, the movement has retained a narrow social base. The Taliban is not a mass movement and cannot even be considered a national 

movement because power is concentrated in the hands of mullahs from the Kandahari Pashtun tribes, who have built limited alliances with clerical networks from other regions and tribal 

groups. The traditional authority of the clergy in Afghanistan, in particular in the Pashtun 

south and rural areas of other regions, means that Taliban rhetoric has some resonance. Thus, 

any project to build a plural Afghanistan is likely to include an appeal to the Taliban or the 

constituency they have mobilized. However, because their social base is so narrow, the Taliban’s 

attempts to regain power rest on a negation of pluralism, rejection of the idea of a popular 

mandate, and assertion of the divine right vested in their Islamic emirate.

Ultimately, however, the Taliban operate in the real world and, in pursuing their politicalmilitary strategy beyond rhetoric, will be obliged to factor in availability of resources, the attitude of regional patrons, the military balance, and the willingness of their forces to continue 

the fight. Nonetheless, the rhetorical edifice the movement has constructed around the armed 

struggle will affect the ability of the leadership to move toward compromise and transformation of the conflict. If either the leadership as a whole tries to take the movement out of the 

war or, in a more likely scenario, if Taliban pragmatists challenge the leadership’s attempts 

to fight on, then they will require a Taliban rhetoric of peace. This will build on the case that 

the movement has articulated over the years but also demonstrate that the Taliban’s mission 

now requires compromise and peaceful means. The actions of Taliban peacemakers, and the 

outcome of their efforts, will depend on their ability to make their rhetoric for peace resonate 

with the movement.

Whether those who endeavour to transform the Taliban campaign do so from a position 

of controlling the leadership council or as a forward bloc, some part of the movement can be 

expected to launch a rhetorical case for fighting on beyond the transition. The new rhetoric 

of armed struggle will claim that the political system in Kabul is irredeemably compromised 

by its collaboration with unbelievers. The role of the Taliban movement will be shaped by a 

contest over how to imagine and depict the role of Taliban in a future Afghanistan. Taliban 

rhetoric is due to evolve further.

The actions of Taliban 

peacemakers, and the 

outcome of their efforts, 

will depend on their ability 

to make their rhetoric for 

peace resonate with 

the movement.
USIP.ORG 31

RHETORIC, IDEOLOGY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT

Notes

1. Interview with Pakistani religious scholar who served with Afghan Taliban, January 2014.

2. This title is adopted by the original Muslim caliphs and can be interpreted as indicating the Taliban’s pretensions to claim the allegiance of all Muslims. It invokes the idea of both military command and religious 

authority and is evocative of the glories of the early Muslim conquests. The controversy around it was revived 

in 2014 when the head of militant group Islamic State declared himself caliph and thus implicitly rejected 

the notion that Mullah Omar was commander of the faithful. The word amir used by itself indicates commander and the Taliban think in terms of a hierarchy of amirs exercising authority under the commander of 

the faithful.

3. For two recent detailed statements of the Taliban public position, see Political Office of the Islamic Emirate 

of Afghanistan, “Position of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on the Foreign Troops Pull Out, the 

Afghan Issue and Reconciliation in the Country” (Kyoto, June 2012); “Text of speech by Islamic Emirate of 

Afghanistan to research conference in France,” December 24, 2012, http://shahamat-english.com/index.

php/paighamoona/28777-text-of-speech-enunciated-by-islamic-emirate-of-afghanistan-at-research-conference-in-france. This position is updated in twice annual Eid messages attributed to Taliban leader Mullah 

Omar.

4. See, for example, “Message of Felicitation of Amir-ul-Momineen on the Auspicious Eve of Eid-ul-fitr,” July 

25, 2014, http://shahamat-english.com/index.php/paighamoona/47579. 

5. Fida Yunas, Afghanistan: Political Parties, Groups and Movements and Mujahideen Alliances and Governments, 

1879–1997 (Peshawar, 1997).

6. Nuruddin Turabi, “Islami adalat,” Ulema Commission of the Ministry of Justice, Islami Emirate of 

Afghanistan, Kabul, 2000.

7. Mawlvi Abdul Haleem Ahmadi, “Da mujahid toorah,” Cultural Commission, Islamic Emirate of 

Afghanistan, 2013 (Taliban instructional book circulated in Peshawar).

8. Secretariat of the IEA, “Da mujahideeno lapara lahya,” Quetta, 2009 [soft copy circulated by email]; “Da 

mujahideeno lapara lahya,” Cultural Commission of the IEA, Quetta, 2013 [hard copy circulated as 

pamphlet].

9. Mufti Rasheed Ahmad, “Taliban mujahideen lashkar nabavi, ahkam alhia – ita’at ameer” (Karachi: Rasheed 

Trust, 2000).

10. Rasheed’s use of the term amir refers both to the supreme commander (amir ul momineen) and to lieutenants 

lower in the command chain.

11. UN Security Council resolutions 1267 in the year 1999 and 1333 a year later sanctioned the Taliban movement and al-Qaeda. Thereafter the Taliban circumvented an asset freeze by asking associates to hold money 

on their behalf. 

12. Abdulkader Sinno attributes the success of the Taliban movement to superior organization relative to other 

civil war actors. He notes frequent rotation of officials as one aspect of Taliban’s effective centralization. 

Abdulkader Sinno, Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 

2008), 222–53.

13. The first serious study of suicide bombings in Afghanistan was published by the UN Assistance Mission in 

Afghanistan (UNAMA) in 2007: UNAMA, “Suicide attacks in Afghanistan 2001–2007,” September 2007.

14. Adopted among Islamists to signify those fighters who have been trained to conduct suicide operations. For 

Koranic references in Middle Eastern jihadi rhetoric, see Jeffry Halverson, Bennett Furlow, and Steven 

Corman, “How Islamist Extremists Quote the Qur’an,” Center for Strategic Communication, Report no. 

1202 (Phoenix: Arizona State University, July 9, 2012); for a case study of Afghan Islamist rhetoric, see 

Florian Broschk, “Inciting the Believers to Fight: A Closer Look at the Rhetoric of the Afghan Jihad,” 

Afghanistan Analysts Network, Briefing Paper no. 01/2011 (Kabul: Afghan Analysts Network, 2011).

15. The videos analyzed were “Ghazi caravan 9” (Manbeh al Jihad), “Badri Lashkat 1” (Manbeh al Jihad), 

“Fateh Caravan” (Manbeh al Jihad), “Ghazi” (Alemara jihadi studio),”Koodakyan tsok di?” (Alemara jihadi 

studio), “Badri Lashkat 4” (Manbeh al Jihad), “Fateh Caravan” (Al Hijrat). All claimed to have been produced under the authority of the IEA Cultural Commission. The Manbeh al Jihad label is used by propagandists of the Haqqani Network, which operates as part of the IEA and runs military operations mainly in 

southeast Afghanistan and suicide operations around Kabul.

16. Proposed agreement between Afghanistan and the United States establishing the status of U.S. forces stationed in Afghanistan after 2014.

17. Episodic mobilisations conducted by charismatic ulema. Barnett Rubin, “The Fragmentation of Afghanistan” 

(Lahore: Vanguard, 1996), 44.

18. Audio recording acquired in Quetta and confirmed by Taliban veterans as Mullah Omar’s voice.

19. The Durrani branch of the Pashtuns, which dominates greater Kandahar, comprises seven main tribes, 

within which the Ishaqzais were originally ranked sixth by population. Ludwig Adamec, Historical 

Dictionary of Afghanistan (New Delhi: Manas, 2006), 90.
32 USIP.ORG

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20. See, for example, Mohtasim Agha Jan, interview, May 2013, http://pashto.talkforpeace.org/?p=702.

21. Abdul Wahid argued in an interview that Mullah Omar had in December 2001 authorized him and other 

leaders to approach Hamid Karzai and hand Kandahar over to him. This mounted to Mullah Omar’s 

relinquishing the leadership that released Abdul Wahid from his oath to Omar.

22. The Taliban are effective as an organization in the sense that funds received are spent according to organizational objectives, the leadership is able to enforce appointments and transfers, and the base and middle 

level of the organization tend to comply with leadership directives.
 5

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan 

institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to 

help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote postconflict 

peacebuilding, and increase conflict-management tools, capacity, and 

intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering 

others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Chairman of the Board: Steven J. Hadley

Vice Chairman: George E. Moose

Acting President: William B. Taylor

Chief Financial Officer: Michael Graham

Board of Directors

Stephen J. Hadley, (Chair), Principal, RiceHadleyGates, LLC, Washington, 

D.C.• George E. Moose (Vice Chair), Adjunct Professor of Practice, The 

George Washington University, Washington, D.C. • Judy Ansley, Former 

Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor under 

George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. • Eric Edelman, Hertog Distinguished 

Practitioner in Residence, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced 

International Studies, Washington, D.C. • Joseph Eldridge, University 

Chaplain and Senior Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, School of International 

Service, American University • Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. 

Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Washington, D.C. • Ikram 

U. Khan, President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC, Las Vegas, Nev. • 

Stephen D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International 

Relations, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif. • John A. Lancaster, 

Former Executive Director, International Council on Independent Living, 

Potsdam, N.Y. • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason 

University, Fairfax, Va. • J. Robinson West, Chairman, PFC Energy, 

Washington, D.C. • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President, Leadership 

Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Washington, D.C.

Members Ex Officio

John Kerry, Secretary of State • Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense 

• Gregg F. Martin, Major General, U.S. Army; President, National 

Defense University • William B. Taylor, Acting President, 

United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)
2 Looking for Justice

Between 2001 and 2014, the United States invested heavily in 

assisting a democratic political system focused on Kabul. 

Since 2005, the Afghan government, supported by the 

United States, has launched a series of initiatives to persuade 

fighters from the main insurgent movement it faces, the Taliban, to accept its authority and to renounce violence. The 

withdrawal of NATO troops in 2014 in a context of ongoing 

insurgency means that a new Afghan government will have to 

develop a strategy to confront the Taliban’s campaign. This 

report offers insights into the movement’s doctrine, organization, and rhetoric and is intended to inform ongoing efforts to 

end Taliban violence in the country. 

Related Links 

■ Getting It Right in Afghanistan edited by Moeed Yusuf, Scott Smith, and 

Colin Cookman (USIP, 2013)

■ The Taliban and the 2014 Elections in Afghanistan by Antonio Giustozzi 

(Peaceworks, April 2014)

■ Reintegrating Armed Groups in Afghanistan: Lessons from the Past by Deedee 

Derksen (Peace Brief, March 2014)

■ The Taliban’s View of the 2014 Elections by Michael Semple (Peace Brief, 

January 2014)

■ Dangerous Liaisons with the Afghan Taliban by Matt Waldman (Special 

Report, October 2010)

PEACEWORKS • DECEMBER 2014 • NO. 102

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