RASC News Agency: A rare moment of internal dissent has surfaced within the Taliban’s tightly controlled power structure. Salahuddin Salar, a senior intelligence official at the Taliban-run Ministry of Defense and one of the few high-ranking Tajik figures within the group, recently issued a veiled but pointed critique of the regime’s ethnic bias and exclusionary practices. In a Facebook post that has since stirred widespread debate, Salar wrote: “A house with an incompetent master collapses not from its walls, but from within.” Although cryptic on the surface, the message has been widely interpreted as a public expression of disillusionment with the Taliban’s entrenched Pashtun supremacy particularly its marginalization of non-Pashtun officials and the systemic injustices faced by residents of Tajik-majority provinces such as Badakhshan.
Salar, a native of Badakhshan, has long been regarded by observers as a silent critic of the Taliban’s internal hierarchy. Civil society activists and political analysts from the region argue that his latest remarks reflect growing unrest among non-Pashtun Taliban members, who are reportedly sidelined, underutilized, and routinely excluded from meaningful decision-making roles. The post has triggered significant responses among activists and local leaders in the northeast, many of whom interpret it as an indictment of the Taliban’s de facto Kandahari elite an inner circle that exercises disproportionate control over the group’s political, military, and financial resources. These activists note that Salar has repeatedly raised concerns about the looting of Badakhshan’s mineral wealth by Pashtun commanders, as well as the widespread injustice inflicted upon non-Pashtun communities.
Media and civil society voices argue that ethnic Tajiks and other non-Pashtuns within the Taliban operate under systemic constraints, often relegated to symbolic or peripheral roles, while critical positions of authority remain firmly in the grip of Pashtun hardliners. Numerous credible reports have documented discriminatory practices and condescending treatment by Pashtun officials towards their non-Pashtun counterparts especially in the group’s northern deployment zones. These practices are not only deepening intra-group resentment but also raising alarm over the Taliban’s long-term ability to maintain even a veneer of unity. “This regime may present itself as ideologically unified, but in reality, it is fractured along deeply ethnic lines,” said a regional political analyst who requested anonymity due to security concerns.
Salahuddin Salar is believed to have played a key role in the Taliban’s 2021 offensives in northern and northeastern Afghanistan. Yet, like many non-Pashtun Taliban figures, he appears to have been gradually sidelined following the group’s seizure of power. Observers note that non-Pashtun commanders have been systematically demoted, reassigned to remote postings, or even threatened with violence by Pashtun factions seeking to consolidate their dominance. In a further sign of ethnic cleansing within the group’s own ranks, recent reports confirm that Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, has ordered a 20 percent reduction in bureaucratic staffing a purge that has disproportionately affected non-Pashtuns, particularly Tajiks. This move has triggered fresh waves of anxiety among ethnic minority members of the regime, many of whom now fear that their political futures are being deliberately curtailed.
These developments are giving rise to fundamental questions about the Taliban’s capacity to maintain internal cohesion. Analysts warn that if the regime continues to ignore ethnic grievances, it may face internal fractures that threaten its already fragile hold on power. “The Taliban’s ethnic exclusionism is a time bomb,” said one former intelligence official. “It may have served to cement power in the short term, but in the long run, it’s a formula for implosion.” Despite its claims of national unity and Islamic solidarity, the Taliban regime is visibly cracking under the weight of its internal contradictions chief among them a toxic blend of Pashtun tribal dominance, ethnic exclusion, and internal mistrust. As these tensions simmer within the ranks, the illusion of cohesion is quickly giving way to a growing perception of a regime on the brink of its own internal undoing.
