Will the blast outside the Kabul airport on the eve of American withdrawal prove to be a warning shot to the Taliban or a case of an isolated attempt to take advantage of a chaotic security environment? Be that as it may, one thing is certain—it won’t be long before the Taliban faces an ongoing paradox like every previous government in Afghanistan—in order to have a strong state, Afghanistan needs a weak center. This hard realization is something that since the late 1970s, each successive group running the country has been unable to come to terms with. There’s no reason to think that the Taliban will be any different this time around and therein lies a fundamental weakness for the new dispensation in Kabul.

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