LAHORE: Seven years down the road since the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the US-led Allied Forces, the American military might, from daisy-cutter bombs to high-tech arms, has apparently failed to smoke out the Taliban militia which is gradually extending its area of control in most parts of the war torn country, thus compelling President Karzai to appeal to the fugitive Taliban ameer Mullah Omar “to return home under guarantees of safety to help bring peace to Afghanistan”.
In an exclusive interview to Geo television channel at his presidential palace on September 30, Karzai said: “Through Geo, I propose Mullah Mohammad Omar to get back to Afghanistan. I will be wholly and solely responsible for his security and I shall be answerable to the whole of the world on his behalf”. Hamid Karzai went on to state that he can engage in negotiations to give the NATO-ISAF forces safe passage out of Afghanistan, clearly indicating his frustration and the fact that the US-led war on terror has reached the tipping point in Afghanistan. In fact, the year 2008 has been declared the bloodiest so far in Afghanistan for the NATO and AISAF since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. However, Karzai’s offer of peace talks was rejected by a Taliban spokesman the very next day on October 1, saying there would be no negotiations until foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.
Even a cursory glance at the present day Afghanistan clearly indicates that the Taliban militia, backed by a new breed of volunteers from Pakistan, is reuniting and expanding its area of operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan, which were their former stronghold. Kai Eide, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, conceded at a news conference in Kabul on October 6 that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily and success is only possible through political means, including dialogue between all relevant parties. CNN.com reported the same day that Taliban leaders are holding Saudi-brokered talks with Afghan government to end the country’s bloody conflict.
Despite the fall of the Taliban regime in October 2001, the US-led Forces have apparently failed to uproot the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan who are gaining strength with every passing day are regrouping and reorganizing their resistance movement. The resurgence of the Taliban fighters, who had melted into the countryside after the invasion of Afghanistan, has even surprised the American military strategists as the insurgency is getting bloodier and deadly and costing the US-led Forces heavily, mainly in terms of human lives. Bloody suicide attacks, ambushes, roadside bombs and brazen assaults on the NATO and the ISAF troops in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan have almost become a daily norm by the Taliban militia which has already fixed the 2010 summer deadline for a complete takeover of the war torn country.
The command and control structure of the Taliban militia is also intact, even though they had lost some top military commanders like Mullah Dadullah Akhund and Mullah Akhtar Osmani. The fugitive Taliban chief is alive and fully functional and has been sending instructions to his field commanders from his hideout through audio-tapes, letters and verbal messages. It has been seven years since Mullah Mohammad Omar, vanished into the trackless terrain outside Kandahar, with the American intelligence agencies repeatedly claiming that one of the Most Wanted fugitive, who has a $10 million FBI bounty on his head, is guiding his forces while hiding somewhere in Quetta, the capital of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan.
The American intelligence agencies believe Mullah Omar, whose friendship with the world’s most wanted man – Osama bin Laden – brought his country almost complete isolation, continues to supply high-level guidance to his fighters, but is not involved in the day-to-day operations of the Taliban militia, a role largely played by his several military commanders. Omar, the self-styled ‘Commander of the Faithful’, used to head the Taliban government which once controlled 90 percent of the Afghan territory. Despite being a former ruler of Afghanistan and his current high status as one of the Most Wanted FBI terrorists, little is known about his personal life. Even before his government was overthrown and he was forced into hiding, Omar had been a reclusive figure. His refusal to give up bin Laden was the main motivation for the US-led strike on Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
While attacking Afghanistan in October 2001, the Bush administration’s stated objective was to eliminate the Taliban militia, get hold of Osama bin Laden-led al-Qaeda members and establish a regime in Kabul that would be protected by the Northern Alliance in particular. However, seven years later, as the Bush era is coming to its fag end, it has failed to achieve any of these targets, especially the uprooting of the Taliban. Before the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan actively supported the Taliban regime, mainly because many of its leading lights were products of the Pakistani madrassas system and had close links with the country’s intelligence establishment.
Even though General Musharraf had formally renounced support for the Taliban when he threw in his lot with Washington under American pressure, the action against the Taliban and their supporters remained half-hearted at best, partly because of the fact that many within the Pakistan establishment had ideological affinity with the Taliban. Even today, many in the Pakistani establishment plead drawing moderate Taliban into the mainstream political process in Afghanistan to defuse the escalating Taliban-led unrest in the country. On September 25, NWFP Governor Owais Ghani stressed that the US should talk to Mullah Omar in order to negotiate peace in Afghanistan.
Urging the US to talk to militant commanders in Afghanistan to establish peace, Owais Ghani said: “They have to talk to Mullah Mohammad Omar, certainly – not maybe, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Jalaluddin Haqqani group. The West must accept that the Mullah is a political reality. The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all the political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the Afghan political dispensation,” said Governor NWFP in an interview with a London based newspaper.
Since the fall of the Taliban regime, the US military operations in Afghanistan have passed through three phases. In the first phase, the government set up of the Taliban, having its administrative headquarters in Kabul and its religious headquarters in Kandahar, was replaced by a provisional government headed by Hamid Karzai, an educated Pashtun enjoying confidence of the American and other Western countries. In the second phase, the training and other terrorist infrastructure of al-Qaeda and Taliban in southern and eastern Afghanistan were destroyed through aerial and ground military action. In the third phase, efforts were made to restore law and order and governance in the rural areas liberated from the control of the jehadi forces and to build the infrastructure of a liberal democracy in the country in the form of a constitution paving the way for free and fair elections.
However, seven years later, it appears that the Taliban militia has once again regrouped itself in Afghanistan, mostly along the Pak-Afghan border areas. The social, geographical and political characteristics of the whole of this tribal belt favour the Taliban fighters, and it is almost impossible for the Pakistani, US and Afghan authorities to counter the Taliban in this specific region. The guerilla war in Afghanistan has actually taken shape since October 2002. Before that, between October 7, 2001 and December 2001, heavy US precision bombing had coerced the Taliban to leave their controlling positions and disperse to places where they could find a shelter.
Mullah Omar’s decision of retreat from Kabul and Kandahar forced most of his commanders to hide themselves in the Pakistani tribal areas. Ordinary Taliban foot soldiers easily melted into the civilian Afghan population. Several disposed of their black turbans from Pakhool and joined the new Afghan administration. Many chose to go back to their tribes and resumed a routine life as ordinary citizens. However, the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating since the beginning of 2005, with the Karzai administration apparently losing control even on Kabul.
Increasing numbers of better trained and better equipped Taliban cadres have stepped up their hit-and-run operations into southern and eastern Afghanistan in order to demoralise the army and police force. Their deadly attacks have been focused on members of the Afghan army, police, government departments and the foreign aid workers. They have avoided direct confrontations with the US-led Allied Forces, lest they pursue them into Pakistani territory. The Taliban fighters seem better organized and their fighting skills have improved, a fact conceded by the NATO forces during briefings to their high command. The Taliban military tactics have apparently undergone changes in keeping with the times. Now they make frequent use of suicide bombers to breach the tougher security measures adopted by the US-led coalition forces based in Afghanistan.
The Taliban-led insurgency at present is largely restricted to seven provinces, all straddling Pakistan’s north-western frontiers which explain why Pakistan gets the blame for the heightened level of Taliban insurgency along its borders. There are several factors for the resurgence of the Taliban. First of all, the Taliban had ample time since their ouster seven years ago to regroup, reorganize and re-establish. Every year they have got stronger and every spring they start with a renewed vigour. Over the years, the Taliban have also been able to improve on their tactics and strategy on how to deal with an adversary that is high-tech and is equipped with air-power. As al-Qaeda’s experience in Iraq has proven handy and lethal, there is a dramatic increase in the number of casualties among the foreign troops and the Afghan National Army.
Compared with 2001, the Taliban militia is obviously better financed and better-trained as its chief patron, al-Qaeda, continues to get a major part of its funding from private donors in the Gulf and the Middle East, although some reports say a proportion of that funding comes from private Pakistani and Afghan sources. The reinvigorated insurgency is also linked to the Taliban’s strategy of unsettling the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) even before their full deployment in the strife-torn South. There is an argument that the Americans repeated the mistake in Iraq they made in Afghanistan – not securing potential trouble spots. They should have been aware that the stretch from the south to the east of Afghanistan had been a Taliban stronghold and could re-emerge as a sanctuary.
To top it all, many analysts believe that the US moved its assets to Iraq just when they needed them the most in Afghanistan, with the result that the insurgency has not only created a sense of insecurity among the people, who now look up to the Taliban. It is also believed that the Taliban owe their resurgence to the lack of government presence and writ in the Afghan areas they operate in. At the same time, the Afghan National Police is believed to be under-equipped and poorly paid and its presence is thin in most parts of Afghanistan. More than anything else, this has emboldened the Taliban and given them the freedom to operate and hit targets at will. Under these circumstances, Kabul keeps urging Islamabad to do more to help overcome the rising insurgency in Afghanistan. And many of the western analysts believe that the anxiety of the Karzai administration is not entirely misplaced since much of what is happening along Afghanistan’s border area with Pakistan is seen as a result of the Pakistani militants’ crossing over from this side of the border.
Though the United States has already lost over 800 soldiers since launching the Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime, there is a growing concern among the NATO-member countries with troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO force about the renaissance of the Taliban militia. With the Taliban proving increasingly difficult to defeat militarily, and with the Western coalition reluctant to negotiate with any Taliban or al-Qaeda radicals, the Karzai administration is fast losing control and authority in Afghanistan. The calculation of the pro-Taliban elements is that the United States and Western powers will eventually lose patience in Afghanistan and return, in desperation, to the earlier franchise arrangement, restoring Pakistan and its Taliban proxies to influence over Afghanistan. And their calculations have not proved wrong so far.
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* Lahore