The Twilight Zone of Afghanistan
As forces pledged to Ahmad Massoud continue to bleed the Taliban of assets, willpower, and manpower, there appears to be a great amount of areas for Massoud to navigate. He has around 20,000 troops closely allied to him or pledged to him, but there appears to be thousands more working in virtually every other part of Afghanistan. The Taliban have at least fifty thousand troops either associated with their factions or directly under Haqqani-Pakistan command. They are able to hold major cities, but Massoud keeps picking off village after village to give himself breathing room while he continues to wage his war of attrition against the Taliban using Guerilla tactics and strategies.
Pakistan loves to play with fire in that they send plenty of supplies and weapons and train so many forces associated with the Taliban, along with sending their own special forces to provide organizational power to the Taliban while giving them cover fire; this they do while they also face the danger of blowback from these fanatics not being satisfied with the ambiguity of Pakistani radical Islamism and start aiming for the religious hypocrites in Pakistan. But Pakistan keeps supporting Taliban associates in order that they continue to destabilize competitors to Pakistan.
Tajikistan faces the reality that Taliban associates along their border are under the command of Tajikistani political dissenters seeking to overturn the regime in Tajikistan. The Taliban are relying upon these Tajik associates to keep Badakshan and Takhar under Taliban fealty and prevent Massoud’s predominantly Tajik fighters from having multiple supply lines through those provinces to Tajikistan, a country protecting members of the constitutional Afghan government, many of them ethnically Tajik. Tajikistan has also reportedly been ensuring that the regions under Massoud control have access to emergency supplies to keep them from dying in Taliban sieges. Other reports say Tajikistan has been funneling weapons to Massoud. This is at a time when Russia has been sending troops and weapons to Tajikistan, meaning that it’s quite plausible that Russia has been supporting Massoud.
Russia has been conducting war games on the Afghan border in preparation to defeat terror operations there. This has occurred at the same time that Tajikistan has been mustering over a hundred thousand of their own troops and deploying tens of thousands to the border. Tensions between Tajikistan and Pakistan must be palpable. This risks regional conflict.
The Islamic State has also been carrying out attacks across the country and has over ten thousand troops of their own. They threaten the Taliban, which means that the Taliban cannot concentrate their forces upon Massoud. This represents blowback already against Pakistan, as the Islamic State is not leashed to any power in the region and they don’t listen to seemingly anyone.
Thus there is a standoff between factions, and the Taliban has been increasingly isolated, with Qatar and the UAE withdrawing their support and world powers like Russia and Iran, not to mention more liberal ones, refusing to grant them legitimacy and denouncing their actions. I predict Massoud continues to gain followers and international support while bleeding the Taliban of resources until there are clear lines of Balkanization, at which point the Taliban will be on the ropes and regional and international players will place their own demands on the Taliban.