Mullah Mohammad Omar, often simply called Mullah Omar, was the supreme commander and spiritual leader of the Taliban from 1996 to 2013, though confirmation of his death came just late last month. The news broke amid Pakistan-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which Omar supposedly endorsed in a mid-July Eid message from his grave.
The Taliban leader was renowned for keeping the lid on an otherwise unwieldy organization. As Vali Nasr noted in 2012, “There is no legitimacy to a Taliban decision without him… He is the Ho Chi Minh of the war.” Unsurprisingly, then, news of his death has sparked a power struggle within the Taliban among potential heirs, each with varying commitments to peace. Omar’s deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was chosen to succeed him by the Taliban’s seven-member supreme council and is generally seen as pro-peace process. Omar’s son Yaqoob — who may have been assassinated recently by Mansour — is usually described as more likely to continue the bloodshed. The big question is whether Omar’s death and the resultant power struggle are good or bad for the peace process.
A recent article in the New York Times describes the post-Mullah Omar environment as propitious, offering a “real possibility for achieving that old, elusive dream: a compromise with ‘moderate’ Taliban backed by the regional powers, one that would isolate the hard-liners and their allies among the international terrorists based in Afghanistan.” Similarly, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani claims that “the ground for the Afghan peace talks is more solid now than before.”
My research, however, predicts the opposite — the Taliban’s new leadership deficit lowers the chances of a politically successful peace process. In a recent study with Phil Potter and a forthcoming piece with Jochen Mierau, my co-authors and I find that leadership deficits promote terrorism by empowering lower-level members of the organization, who have stronger incentives to harm civilians. There is an inverse relationship between the position of members within the organizational hierarchy and their motivation to attack civilians. Lower-level members may try to rise within the group by committing atrocities against civilians; such organizational ladder-climbing is well documented in gangs but is also quite common in militant groups — just ask Jihadi John. More junior members also have less access to organizational resources than the leadership, giving them an incentive to strike softer targets. Established leaders also tend to have more experience in asymmetric conflict, so they are more apt than unseasoned members to understand the political risks of indiscriminate violence in the first place.
Under Omar, the Taliban leadership indeed advised the rank and file against harming civilians because of the potential costs to the organization. Although the Taliban has killed thousands of Afghan civilians, mainly with suicide attacks, improvised explosive devices and assassinations, these actions have been in direct defiance of the leadership’s injunctions to safeguard the population. Omar would emphasize in public statements: “The mujahedeen have to take every step to protect the lives and wealth of ordinary people.” It is tempting to dismiss this position as mere propaganda, but the leadership’s proscription against harming civilians has been at the core of its codes of conduct, or Layeha, since the first set issued to Taliban members in 2006. Rule 21 of that Layeha stated, “Anyone who has killed civilians during the Jihad may not be accepted into the Taliban movement.” In the 2009 Layeha, Rule 41 reminds foot-soldiers to “avoid civilian casualties,” Rule 48 bans “Cutting noses, lips, and ears off people”; and Rule 59 mandates that “The Mujahidin must have a good relationship with all the tribal community and with the local people.” In the 2010 Layeha, Rule 57 decrees, “In carrying out martyrdom operations, take great efforts to avoid casualties among the common people”; Rule 65 enjoins mujahedin to “be careful with regard to the lives of the common people and their property”; and the back cover stresses that “Taking care of public property and the lives and property of the people is considered one of the main responsibilities of a mujahed.”
The Code of Conduct is not lacking in enforcement mechanisms. When high-level commanders were found guilty of civilian targeting, they were sometimes sent directly to Omar for punishment under sharia law. The Code also educates foot soldiers about targeting practices, removes transgressors from the ranks and deters potential offenders from punishing civilians. A United Nations report concluded that Omar thus reduced “casualties among the common people” by “implementing guidance in the Layeha to target military objects more carefully.” Taliban leaders have also restrained the rank and file from committing indiscriminate violence by providing hands-on targeting training intended to spare civilians and steer them away from crossfire.
Omar was clearly no angel, but he likely had a moderating effect on the Taliban.
Without a strong leader guiding the organization, we can expect an increase in Taliban attacks against the population, which — as my studies and those of other scholars suggest — are notorious for derailing peace processes. Already this week, Taliban fighters have resumed targeting the population.
Max Abrahms is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and a member at the Council on Foreign Relations.