Several reports of friction in the Taliban leadership raised questions over the group's cohesion since it announced an interim government earlier this month, but analysts say, the Taliban is more united today since the fall of its regime in 2001.
Despite reports of division among the group, the Taliban is more united today since the fall of its regime in 2001 and is unlikely to split up in the coming years, former Afghan officials, sources within the group and analysts say.
Since the Taliban took over the capital Kabul last month, reports of intra-party conflict emerged in the public sphere, purportedly fueled by the "political-military divide" and the non-inclusive interim government that is objected by the group's moderate leaders.
Several reports have provided details of physical altercation earlier this month between the leaders of moderate and hard-line camps: one led by Mullah Baradar, the Taliban government's newly appointed deputy prime minister; and the other by Khalil ul Rahman Haqqani, Afghanistan's new refugees minister and leader of the Taliban's Haqqani Network faction.
If these reports of internal tensions are accurate, such deep-seated disharmony may intensify in the coming weeks especially when the group is trying to gain international legitimacy and tackle domestic crisis, including the threat posed by Daesh, also known as the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K).
With that being said, reports of the Taliban infighting should not be exaggerated either.
Like many other political organisations, there will be multiple power bases within the Taliban movement, which would compete for positions and privileges, but that has rarely ever translated to the emergence of fissures within the movement, analysts and experts say, adding that movement and its top leadership value unity above all considerations.
"The Taliban are the most unified organization in Afghanistan. There has never been a significant split in the organization. There are many differences and rivalries that are seized on by their opponents as evidence that the Taliban are divided, but they have never been divided in practice. The CIA spent $1 bn trying to split the Taliban and failed," Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official and an academic involved in peace talks with the Taliban who is now a non-resident fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University, told TRT World.