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The face of Afghanistan's
resistance
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
CHAMAN/SPIN BOLDAK,
Pakistan-Afghanistan border - The significant increase
in the number and nature of attacks on US targets, as
well as on the Afghan administration, provides 
indisputable evidence that the Taliban are back with a
vengeance, especially in the south of the country. It is
now as clear as broad daylight that neither an
indigenous force nor a foreign force (not even one with
massive bombers ruling the skies) can control the
resistance movement.
On the face of it, the
Taliban are the most isolated guerrilla fighters in the
world, with no moral or material help from outside the
country. However, there is an intriguing world within
Afghanistan and Pakistan that supports and facilitates
the struggle against foreign troops.
Across a
broad swath of Afghanistan in the south and southeast
Taliban-led guerrilla operations are the order of the
day. Their attacks initially targeted US bases and
convoys, but now the Afghan administration is in the
firing line. The reason for this is to frighten as many
local Afghans as possible into laying down their
weapons, thereby leaving the battlefield clear for
Taliban militia to take on US-led forces in the rugged
mountainous terrain of the region.
This target
has already very much been achieved in the southern
Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan, including Zabul and
Hilmand, beside Urugzan, which is nearing the point
where the US-backed Afghan administration will be forced
to flee.
Whether it is the house of the brother
of interim leader Hamid Karzai or well-guarded
ceremonies for independence day, nothing now appears
beyond the range of the Taliban, and they are making
life particularly difficult for the Afghan
administration in Kandahar, the former Taliban
stronghold in the south.
Nevertheless, the
Afghan government still presents a defiant face.
Speaking to Asia Times Online, Khalid Khan, a
deputy secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
speaking in a telephone interview, said that some of the
claims being made by the Taliban (such as the attack on
the house of Karzai's brother) were simply "propaganda
stunts".
"We have not heard of any bomb blasts
for a long time. These are false stories that the house
of Ahmed Karzai was attacked in Kandahar. I assure you,
that except for ordinary incidents, the Taliban cannot
dare to continue their operations. They are finished.
"Similarly, I have never heard of Mr Hikmatyar's
[former Afghan prime minister Gulbbudin Hikmatyar]
Hizb-e-Islami being in Kandahar for a long time. I think
that most of his close confidants are still in Iran,"
says Khan, referring to the country in which Hikmatyar,
a renowned warlord and focal point of the present
resistance movement, lived in exile for some years.
However, despite the official viewpoint,
different sources witness daily clashes between the
Afghan militia and Taliban fighters. These sources
include officials and workers of international aid
agencies, local Pakistani welfare organizations and
traders based in the Pakistani Chaman area who move
daily between Kandahar and Chaman,
"I visit
Kandahar three to four times in a month. The Afghan
authorities are really worried about the increasing
guerrilla activities of renegade forces and they blame
the Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami for the attacks," said an
aid worker associated with the Edhi Welfare Trust,
Chaman office. Edhi is one of Pakistan's largest
non-government organizations.
To appreciate
this, it is necessary to understand the geographical
dynamics of the area.
The Pakistan-Afghanistan
border in the Chaman area is very complicated. It lies
in Balochistan province, of which Quetta is the capital.
Chaman city, which is less than 100 kilometers from
Kandahar across the border, comprises mostly shops and
markets (it is perhaps the largest market of smuggled
and stolen goods in the region, with merchandise flowing
from Karachi port in Pakistan, Port Abbas in Iran and
even from Europe via Russia). The bulk of the population
lives in surrounding villages, which are densely
populated.
And because of local disrespect for
the "artificial" border separating Pashtun areas, many
of the villages are located both in Pakistan and in
Afghanistan. One house even has its courtyard in
Afghanistan, and its rooms in Pakistan.
Even
electricity flows into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and
the local people generally refer to themselves as
"Afghans" regardless of their official Pakistani or
Afghan origins. Ethnically, they come from the same
Pashtun stock, split into two major tribes, the Noor Zai
and the Achakzai.
Two examples of people from
the area illustrate the meaningless of the border. Hafiz
Hamdullah is a provincial minister in the Balochistan
government, but he hails from the Afghan part of the
divide. He received a religious education in Pakistan
and became a member of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam
Fazalur Rahman group, which is how he came to be a
minister. Mullah Abdul Razzak, meanwhile, lives in the
Pakistani part of the divide, but he took part in the
early years of the Taliban movement, rising to minister
defense in the Taliban regime.
These
geographical realities play into the hands of the
Taliban because neither the Afghan government nor the
Pakistani government can stop the flow of people (let
alone smuggled goods and electricity) from
criss-crossing the border. This is why when the two
governments a few months ago attempted to restrict
movement by imposing visas, the ban became a laughing
stock on the both sides of the border.
As
mentioned, the Taliban receives scant outside support,
which raises some pertinent questions in light of the
escalation of resistance:
Thousands of Taliban were said to have been killed
during the US invasion of late 2001 and onwards,
thousands others were arrested. How, then, has the
Taliban managed to regroup?
How can people from such a poverty-stricken nation
continue to fight for such a long time?
From where do the guerrillas attack, and where do
they take sanctuary?
In an effort to answer
these questions, Asia Times Online tried to track down
Mullah Razzak, who now lives in Kili Jalaluddin, on the
Pakistani side of the border near Chaman, and who is
often seen in the area.
However, on this
occasion he could not be traced. But another Taliban did
come forward when he heard that a journalist had come
from Karachi to get first-hand information on the
Taliban.
Azmatullah is tall, slim, down-to-earth
and soft-spoken, in his mid-twenties, and at first
glance he does not look anything like a guerrilla
fighter. He is a first cousin of Mullah Razzak's, and
his lieutenant in the resistance movement. Our meeting
point was the Chaman Press Club, where the two of us sat
in a corner and chatted for about one hour.
ATol: The Taliban's army was
destroyed during the US invasion. It is a matter of
record that thousands were killed and thousands were
arrested. How has the Taliban managed to regroup? I
spoke to local officials of the Pashtun Nationalist
Party (Paktoonkha Awami Party) and also Afghan
officials, who say that news concerning the reemergence
of the Taliban is fiction, fabricated by Pakistani
intelligence agencies. What do you have to say?
Azmatullah: The Taliban are very
much alive and everywhere. I tell you a fact, that even
in the provinces of Zabul, Hilmand and Urugzan, the old
machinery is very much working that was in operation
during the Taliban period. In our land, everybody is
Taliban, and from them new teams can be drawn.
ATol: OK! If I accept your
argument, then what is the point of the Taliban
attacking these provinces and districts?
Azmatullah: (He unfolds a piece of
a paper) This is a pamphlet we have distributed all over
Afghanistan, asking officials not to cooperate with
US-backed Afghan officials. It does work. You saw that
we captured Zabul and several place in Hilmand, and the
officials and soldiers just left their places without a
fight. There were skirmishes only when reinforcements
were sent from Kandahar and US planes bombed the areas.
ATol: This is what you say. Here
in Chaman I have met several Kandaharis who say that
they have not seen the Taliban for a long time.
Azamtullah: You please go to
Kandahar and visit the minister for television and radio
who was very recently admitted to a local hospital. His
name is Saadat. You know why he was beaten up? The local
TV station televised an English-language movie. As a
reaction, a commander of the Afghan militia, Mohammed
Naeem, entered his office and beat him like a dog until
he apologized and said that he would never televise an
English movie again. Now tell me, who are these people
among them [the militia], Taliban or non-Taliban?
Similarly, who attacked Hamid Karzai when he was
in Kandahar? Was it their own militia or not? My friend,
Afghans cannot tolerate foreign occupation. It is not
just a compulsion that we bear, it as a matter of
strategy, we have retained our presence among them
[Afghan militia].
ATol: But how can a
poverty-stricken nation fight? I think even if the
Taliban are fighting, it is a temporary phenomena and
with the passage of time the struggle will die down.
Azmatullah: (With a smile) Who says we
are poor? You should go to the kilis [villages].
Everybody has refrigerators, wagons, cars and trucks.
ATol: What is the source of the
Taliban's financing? Where do you get your money to
fight?
Azamtullah: (Again with a
deep smile) From US dollars from the US authorities!
ATol: How?
Azmatullah: You know that they
distribute dollars to the tribal chiefs, local
administrators and other concerned people for welfare
projects. What is your opinion of where it goes? Not
every penny, but most goes into Taliban pockets to
refuel their struggle.
ATol: I
wonder, after you attack, you melt away, where do you
go? Because I have visited the border areas, and the
district headquarters of Zabul and Hilmand are very far
away from the border.
Azmatullah:
I tell you, we belong to our people. We do not
come from the skies. We belong to this land. It is
simple that we go out of our homes to attack them, and
when we are chased we simply go back to our homes and
our people simply say that "we don't know any Talib".
This is the area where we have not seen any strangers.
Thus we are protected.
ATol: Who
are the main commanders in the southern region?
Azmatullah: Mullah Akhtar Usmani,
Mullah Ubaidullah and Mullah Abdul Rauf.
ATol: How many fighters does each
one have?
Azmatullah: This is not
the way we do it, that everybody has separate fighters.
Here in the southern region, including Urugzan,
Kandahar, Hilmand and Zabul, we have declared Hilmand as
the center of resistance. We have about 2,000 fighters.
When a commander decides to attack any place, he
contacts these fighters scattered in different places
and attacks. After the attack, everybody disperses to
different positions.
ATol: Are
there Arab fighters still among you?
Azmatullah: Very few. Most of them
were killed when the Taliban retreated. The only ones
left are those who have been living in Afghanistan for
20 years or so. They know Afghanistan and Pashtu. So
after the Taliban retreated, the newcomers were accosted
by the Afghan militia, and if they failed to speak
Pashtu, and spoke Arabic, they were killed. Those who
know Pashtu survived by showing that they were local
Afghans. Now most of them are with us. But they are few
in number.
ATol: Where is Osama
bin Laden? Does he speak Pashtu?
Azmatullah: Bin Laden can
understand Pashtu, but cannot speak it well. Even our
senior leaders do not know where he is.
ATol: I think he is dead.
Azmatullah: No! He is alive
because through his representative his letters are
delivered, which shows that he is healthy, but we do not
know where he is and how he is surviving.
ATol: Why have the Taliban failed
to kill many US soldiers in Afghanistan?
Azmatullah: They hide the facts.
Every day, there are US casualties in Afghanistan.
ATol: How come? You attack with
your AK-47 guns or rocket launchers. These are not
effective weapons these days. You cannot use heavy
weapons in guerrilla warfare.
Azmatullah:
(Azmatullah mentions the name of a weapon in
Pashtu which is not immediately identifiable, but the
way he describes it makes it sound like a missile with a
range of about 50 kilometers, fired by a one-barreled
gun.) We operate it with an ordinary battery as used in
cars. In a group of, for example 10 people, two carry
guns, two persons carry a battery and the rest carry two
missiles each. An attack takes 10 to 15 minutes, and we
take position a few kilometer from a target in the
mountains. After the attack, we take our missile pad and
run away.
ATol: What is the role
of Gulbbudin Hikmatyar and his Hizb-e-Islami in the
resistance?
Azmatullah: After a
meeting with Taliban officials, Engineer Saheb [as
Gulbbudin is popularly known) agreed for a full
coordinated movement to kick out the occupation forces
from Afghanistan. Engineer Saheb is a professor [meaning
he has a Western-style education] and his commanders are
also professors, so they have better tactics to use
against the US, and thus the resistance movement has
been going on very successfully since they joined us.
ATol: Why you are fighting for the
Taliban and how much you are paid?
Azmatullah: My friend, except of
this cloth I am wearing, I receive nothing in return for
fighting for the Taliban. I fight because of Allah, the
Almightily, and all of us Taliban are inspired by the
same theme. On both sides of the divide
[Afghanistan-Pakistan border], people are with the
Taliban. So when the Afghan militia chases me, I come to
this side of the divide. Here people keep me at their
homes, feed me and take care of me.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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