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US shooting in the dark in
Afghanistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Despite the best efforts of its
military and intelligence apparatus and political
manipulation in Pakistan, in the year and a half since
the demise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the
United States and its allies have failed to break the
Taliban and al-Qaeda in that country. Indeed, the
resistance movement in Afghanistan has fully
re-organized itself, even setting up offices, and
official claims to the contrary, US forces are fighting
in the dark.
In an audio tape sent to the
Pakistan daily The News, which is accepted as authentic,
the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, urges Muslims to
step up their jihad against the US and other coalition
occupation forces in Afghanistan. Omar issued the tape
from his hiding place in Afghanistan, the daily
reported, quoting Taliban spokesman Mohammad Mukhtar
Mujahid. Omar has named a 10-member leadership council
to organize the resistance against the US-led foreign
troops in Afghanistan.
"Mullah Omar called upon
the Taliban to offer sacrifices for evicting the
American and allied soldiers from Afghanistan and
fighting the puppet regime of [Afghan President] Hamid
Karzai," Mujahid said. The 10 men identified by Omar as
members of the Rahbari Shura (leadership council)
include former Taliban military commanders, most of whom
are veterans of the Afghan struggle against the Soviet
occupation of 1979-1989. Taliban military commander
Jalaluddin Haqqani is on the council, which is made up
of commanders hailing from Kandahar, Helmand and other
southwestern provinces where the Taliban originally
emerged in 1994, Omar said. Two of the council members,
Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, a confidante of Mullah Omar and
the one-legged former intelligence chief Mullah
Dadullah, are also names that appear on the Afghan
government's wanted list that was given by Karzai to
Pakistani authorities during his visit in April.
Investigations carried out by Asia Times Online
reveal the following:
The resistance movement has
been named Saiful Muslameen (Sword of Muslims), as
reported by Asia Times Online - Al-Qaeda's deadly seeds bear fruit, May
20.
The central office is located in Asadabad, near the
Pakistani border, while several training camps have been
established in Parachinar and Miran Shah (both in
Pakistan)and other places. These are mobile camps that
can be moved quickly according to required needs.
The main military committee is headed by Mullah
Omar, supported by his commanders, including Mullah
Dadullah and Ahktar Usmani.
Under the Saiful Muslameen, Afghanistan has been
divided into five operational zones.
The zone commanders include famed Pashtun warlord
Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, leader of the Hizb-i-Islami, in
Kunhar, Jalalabad, Kabul, Logar and Gazni. Khost and
Paktia and Paktika are under the command of Maulana
Jalaludin Haqqani, while Gardez is under the control of
Mullah Saifullah Mansoor. The appointments of two more
war zone commanders had not been made at the time this
article was written. These zones include Kandahar,
Urugzan and Zabul.
These is also another force
in play. An organization called the Khuddamul Furqan
(Servants of the Holy Koran)was established soon after
the Taliban retreated without offering more than token
resistance in the face of advancing Northern Alliance
troops in early 2002, largely on the advice of some
former officials of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI).
The Khuddamul Furqan's
leadership was based in the Pakistani border town of
Peshawar and they announced their separation from the
Taliban over Mullah Omar's policy to harbor Osama bin
Laden. Pakistani elements then helped them to contact
the new Afghan government with a view to being inducted
into the provisional administration in Kabul, but
Northern Alliance members would have none of it, and the
leaders of the organization have been biding their time
ever since. Now, though, they have thrown in their lot
with the resistance movement, and they have established
their own pocket of resistance.
Recent
large-scale US operations in Afghanistan, backed by
Pakistani troops in Pakistan's tribal areas, have failed
to produce any significant results other than provoke
controversy in the tribal areas, where the country's
regular army has not ventured for 100 years.
This is despite the arrests of several key
people in the terror networks, whom it was claimed would
be able to point the US troops in the right direction
for more arrests, including those of Mullah Omar and bin
Laden. On Thursday, Karzai, during a trip to Poland, was
quoted as saying, "We believe that if Osama is alive,
and if he is around this region of ours, he should
probably be there on the border between Afghanistan and
Pakistan."
Asia Times Online has accessed
confidential interrogation reports concerning the
arrests of Khalid bin al-Attash, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad
al-Balochi and his nephew Ammar al-Balochi.
Khalid bin al-Attash
Arrested on April 29 in Balochistan, al-Attash
is regarded as the biggest-ever catch in the present
"war on terrorism" campaign as a hardcore al-Qaeda
member. He was a suspect in the attack on the US naval
ship USS Cole at Aden in October, 2000. The one-legged
fighter was caught by Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau
(IB) without any foreign or other local assistance.
According to one of his interrogators, Khalid was kept
for five days in the provincial headquarters of IB in
Karachi. He is said to have very strong nerves. On the
first day of his interrogation, he offered a Rs 2
billion (US$36 million) bribe if they released him and
five accomplices, saying that he could deliver the money
in a week.
When presented before a team of
interrogators, he categorically said, "I will not speak
anything and you cannot force anything from me. My
brothers, do not hand over me to our enemies the
Americans, it would be a shameful thing for all Muslims,
instead, I request you to shoot me. I assure you nobody
can take any statement from me." After five days, his
boast was still true and he refused to give a statement.
He was then handed over to a joint team of the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)and the ISI. Again,
he refused to speak. He was then "questioned" alone by
the ISI, without avail. He was recently moved to
Afghanistan, from where he will be taken to the US
detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Khalid Shaikh Muhammad
al-Balochi
The supposed operations chief of
bin Laden, he was presented in Rawalpindi on March 2 and
handed over to US officials. He spoke a little after
being forcibly deprived of sleep for several nights
(this tactic had failed with al-Attash), but he only
admitted that he had met bin Laden in the border areas
of Pakistan and Afghanistan about nine months
previously. He gave no information that could be acted
on.
Ammar al-Balochi
Ammar was
arrested on April 29 in Karachi. He spoke about his
interaction with several Arab and Pakistani fighters and
how Khalid Shaikh Mohammad used him as a messenger. He
gave a lot of information, much of it inconsequential,
although the FBI and the ISI did make several more
arrests as a result.
The hard truth is that US
intelligence simply does not really know what is going
on in the Taliban and al-Qaeda camps. This is evidenced
by the countless raids that have been launched in recent
times, none of which have resulted in the capture of
anyone in Afghanistan.
In an effort to find a
breakthrough, US authorities recently made two
initiatives involving the Taliban. (See US turns to the Taliban, June 14) In the
first, they tried to establish a new Taliban leadership
through Mullah Ghous and other Taliban leaders who were
expelled during Taliban rule from 1996-2001. This failed
virtually before it was born. A second attempt was then
made to forge contacts with "real" Taliban, with the
idea being that they provide any acceptable leadership
(ie, not Mullah Omar) to take a significant part in the
running of the country so that peace could be
established. This, too was rejected.
Another
attempt to give Afghan clerics an important role in
power politics is in the US cards in Afghanistan, but
like the other attempts, this, too, looks like another
shot in the dark.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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