A paper titled “The main pillars of the Taliban Ideology” written by Abd al-Wahhab al-Kabuli was published in Taliban’ Arabic magazine “al-Smood” over five issues of 44, 46, 47, 48 and 49 in 2009 and 2010.
While not many Taliban’s issued documents cover its ideology available for outside researchers, the paper “the main pillars of the Taliban Ideology” presents its ideology systematically as well as comprehensively, therefore the paper should be regarded as an important document.
Name of author of the paper “al-Kabuli” implies that he was from Kabul and therefore Afghan. But what if the author of “The main pillars of the Taliban Ideology” was turned out to be a foreigner, an Iraqi high rank member of Al-Qaida associated organization.
There are some unnatural points to assume that the author is Afghan. (1) the paper uses the term of third person “they” when evaluating Taliban’s action and ideology. (2) In the beginning, the author explained how he reached his understanding of Taliban’s ideology as saying “I will present the key points and main headlines of this ideology, which I drew from the reality and positions of the Movement towards the various events and developments“ (3) the term “Taliban ” was frequently used even in the title of the paper in issue 44, despite that the term “Taliban” is not claimed by themselves. The term “Taliban” was frequently used in other articles in “al-Smood” were contributed by Arab authors. This is because we commonly understand that the term “Taliban” is a proper noun in Arab countries as well as in the West.
Hence, some searches were made and it is found out that the author was likely Maysar Ali Musa Abdallah al-Junuri known as Abu Mariya al-Qahtani, an Iraqi high rank member of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which split from Jabhat al-Nusrah in 2016. A number of papers in the name of Abu Maria al-Qahatani were published on the website, which is believed to be established by the followers of Abu Maria al-Qahatani. “The main pillars of the Taliban Ideology” was in the list of al-Qahtani’s paper.
The 2001 attacks on the United States (“9/11”) by al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan led to the military intervention by the United States in the same year. A military attack on not only al-Qaeda but also the Taliban which governs Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Taliban administration and the 20-year-old war in the country. While the relationship between the Taliban and global jihadism organizations such as al-Qaeda is one of the key subjects in the second Taliban administration, should the likely fact finding above be interpreted that Taliban ideology is still heavily influenced by global jihadism ideology as the paper was published in the name of Islamic Emirates (Taliban). Some other articles contributed by Arab global Jihadist in “al-Smood” appear to support and coincide with such interpretation.