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The fall and rise of the Taliban
By B Raman
Summary
Since August last, the
situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating.
Increasing numbers of better-trained, better-equipped
and better-led Taliban cadres operating from sanctuaries
in Pakistan have stepped up their hit-and-run raids into
southern and eastern Afghanistan in order to demoralize
the newly-raised army and police of the Hamid Karzai
government in the hope of thereby inducing large-scale
desertions.
Their attacks have been focussed on
members of the new Afghan army, police and other
government departments and foreign aid workers. They
have avoided direct confrontations with US forces, lest
they pursue them into Pakistani territory. As a result,
while there have been nearly 400 Afghan government and
civilian fatal casualties, the number of fatal American
casualties has been only four.
The Taliban has
also set up a well-run psychological warfare (psywar)
apparatus in Pakistan, which is used to add to the
anti-US anger in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. While
the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has been
operating jointly with the revived Taliban from
Pakistani sanctuaries, the survivors of the al-Qaeda and
the Pakistani components of Osama bin Laden's
International Islamic Front (IIF) have been focussing on
harassing US troops in Iraq through well-motivated
jihadis infiltrated into Iraq through Iran and Saudi
Arabia.
The Pakistan-based jihadi terrorists,
owing allegiance to bin Laden through the IIF, calculate
that if they maintain a low but sustained level of
violence in Afghanistan and Iraq without unduly
provoking the Americans into massive retaliation, battle
fatigue will set in and force the US government to
recall its boys home before the campaign for the next
year's presidential elections picks up momentum.
Though the US has been saying that it is
prepared for a longish stay, whatever be the cost in
terms of funds and casualties, in both countries, the
jihadis view this as mere bravado and have convinced
themselves that the closer the elections, the weaker
will be the US will to continue the fighting. The US's
continued reluctance to act against Pakistan and make it
pay a prohibitive price for helping the jihadi
terrorists is coming in the way of an effective
counter-terrorism strategy. Encouraged by this US
reluctance, the Pervez Musharraf regime continues to
keep the jihadi terrorists alive and active in the hope
of using them to retrieve lost Pakistani influence in
Afghanistan, and to achieve its strategic objective of
forcing a change in the status quo in India's Jammu and
Kashmir state.
Text of the paper
October 7 marked the second anniversary of the
launching of what was code-named by the US as Operation
Enduring Freedom. This name was given to the operation
launched in Afghan territory against the Taliban,
al-Qaeda and the IIF, which was formed by bin Laden in
1998 in association with 13 jihadi terrorist
organizations of the world, of whom five are presently
from Pakistan.
The fact that the Taliban was
fathered in 1994, when Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan's
prime minister, by the Pakistani Ministry of the
Interior and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is
well known, and details relating to its birth and the
subsequent spread of its control over 90 percent of
Afghan territory, including Kabul, do not need
recapitulation.
Similarly, the fact that
initially the US had blessed the creation of the Taliban
in the hope of thereby restoring order and internal
security in Afghanistan and thus facilitating the
project of Unocal, a US oil company, for the
construction of oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan
to Pakistan through Afghan territory is equally well
known.
However, not so well known until recently
is the role of the ISI and the Pakistan army in
fathering even al-Qaeda in the hope of using it for
furthering Pakistan's strategic objectives in relation
to Afghanistan and India. This has been brought out in
an assessment prepared in the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) of the Pentagon on September 24, 2001,
hardly 13 days after al-Qaeda's terrorist strikes of
September 11 in US territory, which has been
declassified recently by the US government, reportedly
in response to an application under the Freedom of
Information Act.
Many other documents of the DIA and
the US State Department relating to Afghanistan have
also been simultaneously declassified, and these are
available for perusal at the National Security
Archives.
The declassified DIA document
of September 24, 2001, carried the following damning
account of Pakistan's role as the real host of bin Laden
and his al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It said: "Bin Laden's
al-Qaeda network was able to expand under the safe
sanctuary extended by Taliban following Pakistan
directives. If there is any doubt on that issue,
consider the location of bin Laden's camp targeted by US
cruise missiles [in August 1998], Zahawa. Positioned on
the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was
built by Pakistani contractors, funded by Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence directorate and protected
under the patronage of a local and influential Jadran
tribal leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani. However, the real
host in that facility was the Pakistani ISI. If this was
later to become bin Laden's base, then serious questions
are raised by the early relationship between bin Laden
and Pakistan's ISI."
It described Jalaluddin
Haqqani as "the Jadran tribal leader most exploited by
ISI during the Soviet-Afghan war to facilitate the
introduction of Arab mercenaries " and the Taliban as
"the handy cloak woven by Pakistan to shroud their
progress".
Thus, as the Pentagon was making
preparations for launching Operation Enduring Freedom,
it was known even to its own experts in its intelligence
community that the Pakistan army and its ISI were the
creators and sponsors of not only the Taliban, but also
of al-Qaeda, which emerged as the most dreaded jihadi
terrorist organization of the world after bin Laden
shifted from the Sudan to Jalalabad in Afghanistan in
1996, from where he subsequently moved to Kandahar.
Despite this, the US chose to rely on the
Pakistan army and the ISI for logistics and intelligence
support in its operation to wipe out the Taliban,
al-Qaeda and the IIF. The army and President General
Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military dictator, who had
sponsored and used jihadi terrorism in an attempt to
achieve Pakistan's strategic objectives against India
(destabilizing India and annexing Jammu and Kashmir) and
Afghanistan (strategic depth), were sought to be
projected as the US's stalwart ally in the "war against
terrorism" and rewarded for their ostensible cooperation
through the resumption of generous economic and military
assistance, which had remained curtailed since the
Pressler Amendment was invoked against Pakistan in 1990
for clandestinely developing a military nuclear
capability and further cut after the Chagai nuclear
tests of 1998 and the overthrow of the elected
government headed by Nawaz Sharif, the then prime
minister, by the army in October, 1999.
Why did
the US choose to rely on the sponsor of jihadi terrorism
in its attempt to vanquish it? There have been many
answers to this question. None of them is totally
satisfactory by itself, but all of them together give
some indication of the thinking in Washington DC, which
influenced the decision. Among such possible reasons
mentioned by analysts, one could cite the
following:
The need for rear bases for the US armed forces in
Pakistani territory from which they could operate in
Afghan territory.
The need for objective allies in the Pashtun
community in the tribal belt on both sides of the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border in its operations to
eliminate Osama bin Laden and other leaders of al-Qaeda.
The need for intelligence support from the ISI
because of the poor human intelligence (humnit) assets
of the US intelligence community.
The fear of a Talibanization of Pakistan should the
military be forced to go to the barracks and its role
weakened. The army was wrongly perceived by the US not
as the sponsor of the jihadi forces, but as the bulwark
in countering the spread of their influence.
The belief that only the army would be able to
prevent Pakistan's nuclear and missile assets from
falling into the hands of the jihadi terrorists.
The US perception of Musharraf as a force for
stability in Pakistan and as a Muslim with a modern
outlook who genuinely wanted to curb the fundamentalist
forces in Pakistan.
Why did Musharraf choose to
support the US in its attempts to neutralize the
offspring of his own army and the ISI, thereby
abandoning instruments which they had built up since
1994 for achieving what they looked on as a strategic
depth in Afghanistan and strengthening Pakistan's hold
over that country? Musharraf, in his telecast to his
people in early October, 2001, cited two reasons for his
volte face, namely, the importance of
safeguarding Pakistan's strategic assets, by which he
meant its nuclear and missile capability, and the need
to maintain its capability for achieving its strategic
objective on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) against India.
In other words, he chose to abandon temporarily
the gains which the Pakistan army had made in
Afghanistan since 1994 through the Taliban and al-Qaeda
in order to protect Pakistan's nuclear and missile
assets from any possible attempts at their
neutralization by the US and to retain the army's
ability to force a change in the status quo in J&K
through the sponsorship of jihadi terrorism. While thus
abandoning at least temporarily the gains on the ground
in Afghanistan, he took care to protect the instruments
with which these gains had been made in the hope of
using them again in future to retrieve the ground lost
by Pakistan in Afghanistan.
Phase I:
The Taliban
Since it was launched on October 7,
2001, the US military operations in Afghanistan have
passed through three phases. In the first phase, the
government set up by the Taliban with its administrative
headquarters in Kabul and its religious headquarters in
Kandahar was replaced by a provisional government headed
by Hamid Karzai, an Indian-educated Pashtun enjoying the
confidence of the US and other Western countries.
In the second phase, the training and other
terrorist infrastructure of al-Qaeda and other
components of the IIF in southern and eastern
Afghanistan were destroyed through aerial and ground
action. In the third phase, efforts were initiated to
restore law and order and governance in the rural areas
liberated from the control of the jihadi terrorist
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 by next year.
Even though the undoubted success of the US-led
coalition in the first phase was projected as due to the
prowess of the US armed forces, it was largely due to
the motivation and fighting capability of the forces of
the Northern Alliance, which had been abandoned by the
US and Pakistan after 1994 in favor of the Taliban. If
India, Russia and Iran had not stood by the side of the
late Ahmed Shah Masoud and his Northern Alliance and
helped it in whatever way they could, it is doubtful
whether the post-Taliban Afghanistan would have had at
its disposal the hard core of an army and an
administration, which represented the positive aspects
of Islam and sought to give it a modern outlook, instead
of taking Afghanistan back to the Middle Ages, as the
Pakistan and the US-supported Taliban sought to do.
It was short-sighted on the part of the US not
to have recognized openly and handsomely the role of the
Northern Alliance in helping in the liberation of the
Afghan state and society from the stranglehold of the
Taliban and its Medieval mullahs. Not only that. In
response to the sensitivities of Musharraf, who was
afraid and continues to be so that the Northern Alliance
favored the restoration of the historic friendly ties
between Afghanistan and India, the US has at every stage
tried to limit the influence of the leaders of the
Northern Alliance on the grounds that they are
non-Pashtuns, and hence would not enjoy the total
confidence of the Pashtuns.
The attempts at
state and administration re-building and to set up an
all-ethnic army have also been influenced by an anxiety
to restrict the influence of the Northern Alliance in
the name of giving the Pashtuns their due share. The
over-attention to the sensitivities of Musharraf and his
anxiety to prevent the restoration of the historic ties
of friendship between India and Afghanistan has also
been responsible for the US action in having India
excluded from any meaningful role in the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whose command and
control have since been taken over by the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), and in training the new
Afghan army.
If, in spite of the unhelpful
attitude of the US and the obstructive policies of the
Musharraf regime, relations between India and
Afghanistan have continued to develop in various fields,
this has been largely due to the feelings of good will
nursed by the Northern Alliance and Hamid Karzai himself
towards India.
While Pakistan reconciled itself
to the temporary loss of its ground influence in
Afghanistan, it took care to give shelter to the leaders
and cadres of the Taliban in its territory in the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan, and
to help them re-group, re-train and re-arm in order to
facilitate a comeback by the pro-Pakistan forces one
day. Apart from a few individuals without any major
importance, such as Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former
Taliban foreign minister, the former ambassador of the
Taliban in Islamabad etc, who were handed over by
Pakistan to the US forces for interrogation, it avoided
arresting and handing over any Taliban leader, including
leader Mullah Omar, of importance to the US. (Muttawakil
has reportedly now been released from US custody).
The US calculation that its uncritical support
to the Musharraf regime would prevent any Talibanization
of Pakistan has already proved wrong. The coalition of
six fundamentalist, pro-Taliban and pro-bin Laden
parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) managed
to come to power in the NWFP on its own strength after
the elections of October of last year. And it is part of
the ruling coalition in Balochistan in association with
the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam).
Never before in the parliamentary history of
Pakistan have the fundamentalist parties done as well in
any elections as they did in those of last year. This
was only partly due to the anti-US anger in the Pashtun
belt because of the US action against the Taliban and
alleged excesses by US forces against the local people.
It was considerably due to Musharraf's own action in
facilitating the victory of the fundamentalists by
withdrawing pending cases under the anti-terrorism act
against the candidates of the fundamentalist parties in
order to enable them to contest the elections, while he
refused to withdraw even cases relating to white collar
crimes against mainstream leaders such as former
premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif; by recognizing
the certificates in Islamic studies issued by the
madrassas (religious schools) as equivalent to
university degrees to enable the fundamentalist
candidates to circumvent the electoral provision that
only graduates could contest the elections; and by
engineering splits in the mainstream political parties
critical of him in order to weaken them.
Musharraf's calculation in facilitating the
fundamentalist victory was two-fold. First, to convey a
message to the US that if it continued to press him to
act against the jihadi terrorists operating against
India, there was a danger of the fundamentalist
influence spreading to the rest of the country, and
second, to use the fundamentalist control of the key
provinces in the tribal belt as an alibi for explaining
his inability to stop the flow of local support to the
Taliban and al-Qaeda.
After the fundamentalist
coalition came to power in the NWFP and Balochistan, the
Taliban started openly re-grouping, re-recruiting and
re-arming in the local madrassas, without any
action being taken against them by either the provincial
or the federal authorities. The provincial authorities
did not act because of their openly-expressed sympathy
for the Taliban. The federal authorities headed by
Musharraf pleaded helplessness, ostensibly on the ground
that policing and action against suspected terrorist
elements was a provincial subject over which the federal
government had little control in a "democratic set-up".
Starting from December last year, the re-grouped
Taliban began indulging in hit-and-run raids from
sanctuaries in the NWFP, Balochistan and the
Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on US and
Afghan military patrols deployed in Afghan territory
across the border with Pakistan. One such raid in the
last week of December, 2002, led to a clash between the
South Waziristan Scouts, a para-military unit of
Pakistan, and a US patrol, which called for an air
strike on a madrassa in Pakistani territory in
which the assailants had taken shelter after attacking
the US troops.
This incident led to considerable
anger among junior and middle-level officers of the US
troops deployed in the area over the complicity of the
Pakistani para-military forces with the Taliban raiders,
and they started demanding that they should be allowed
to exercise their right of hot pursuit into Pakistani
territory during their operations against the Taliban
dregs based in sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. With
great difficulty, the Pentagon and the State Department
cooled the anger of their field officers and discouraged
their talk of hot pursuit, lest such actions destabilize
Musharraf.
Despite Pakistani assurances to act
firmly against the Taliban raiders, such incidents
continued to take place, but the numbers of the Taliban
raiding parties were small and they mostly used small
arms and ammunition. Moreover, they concentrated their
attacks mostly on the Afghan members of the newly-raised
Army, the police, other Government workers and aid
workers of non-governmental organizations and avoided
direct confrontations with US forces.
However,
since August last, the frequency, magnitude, gravity and
range of their attacks have increased manifold. They
often now operate in large groups numbering dozens, if
not hundreds, very often move in motorized units, which
give them greater mobility and an element of surprise,
and have demonstrated an ability to move far deep into
Afghan territory, even up to the outskirts of Kabul, and
return to their sanctuaries in Pakistan unintercepted by
the Afghan and American forces.
As before, they
continue to avoid direct confrontation with the American
and other Western troops and have been directing their
attacks mainly on Afghan government targets. Their
objective is to demoralize the Afghan security forces
and induce desertions in order to weaken their ability
to maintain order and internal security and to convince
the people that the newly-raised security forces will
not be able to protect them.
The seriousness of
the deteriorating situation in southern and eastern
Afghanistan is evident from a dispatch dated October 8,
sent by Ahmed Rashid, a well-known Pakistani expert on
the Taliban, from Kandahar to some Western newspapers
and from a media briefing in Kabul by the Bush
administration's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay
Khalilzad, who has been designated as the new US
ambassador to Afghanistan, a nomination yet to be
confirmed by the Senate.
Ahmed Rashid said in
his despatch: "The Taliban army is mobilizing in
Pakistan for an attack into Afghanistan before the start
of winter. Up to 2,500 fighters are in Balochistan
province preparing to cross the border on motorcycles
and attack United States and Afghan government forces,
according to Western and Afghan intelligence officials.
"The Taliban have virtually taken over several
suburbs of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, and are
being supported by Pakistani religious parties, the drug
mafia and al-Qaeda. There is also reportedly increasing
support from the Pakistani authorities - a claim denied
in Islamabad. They now plan to harry US forces in
Kandahar, where residents feel increasingly under siege,
and Zabul. Since August, Taliban attacks have killed
almost 400 Afghan soldiers, aid workers and civilians.
Four US soldiers have also died. 'We have the American
forces and the puppet regime of [President Hamid] Karzai
on the run. They will collapse soon', said a Taliban
mullah in Pushtunabad bazaar [of Quetta]. The Taliban
have bought hotels, shops and houses, forcing many
frightened local residents to leave. Vehicle dealers say
the Taliban have bought 900 motorcycles in the past
three months in the Quetta region and another 250 in
Loralai. Motorcycle guerrillas roam Afghanistan's rural
areas attacking aid agency vehicles and isolated police
posts. For communications, they are importing hundreds
of satellite telephones from the Arab Gulf states,
because those bought in Pakistan are closely monitored
by America's Central Intelligence Agency. Arms and
ammunition are dumped inside Afghanistan. Their funding
comes from the drugs trade and al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden
is still in hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border.
"The Taliban are also deeply involved in
the heroin trade which last year generated 717 million
sterling in Afghanistan - a sum equal to the amount
spent on reconstruction aid for the country. Logistical
support for the Taliban is available from the hardline
mullahs of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) - a partner
in the ruling coalition that governs Balochistan. In
recent weeks, President Karzai has appealed to JUI
mullahs and the Pakistan army to stop the Taliban from
organizing in Quetta, but that has only infuriated the
JUI. 'The Afghan government and Karzai are the stooges
of America and every Muslim and every Afghan knows
this', said Maulana Hafiz Hussain Sharodi, Balochistan's
Information Minister. 'Only the Taliban can constitute
the real government in Afghanistan'.
"According
to President Karzai, the headquarters for Taliban
planning is the Shaldara madrassa in Quetta run
by Maulana Nur Mohammed, who is a JUI member of
parliament. 'We are proud that the Taliban are made and
helped here', said Maulana Abdul Qadir, the deputy to
Nur Mohammed. 'Our job is to make sure that the whole
Pakistani nation supports the Taliban'. Hundreds of
Pakistani Taliban are joining their Afghan brothers,
although Pakistan denies that its citizens are involved.
"US officials are perturbed at the extent of
Pakistani help to the Taliban and Congress has become
increasingly critical. However, the White House is still
reluctant to criticize President Pervez Musharraf
because of America's desperate need to enlist Pakistani
troops for Iraq. Yousuf Pashtun, the governor of
Kandahar province, says Pakistan has allowed the Taliban
to establish six training camps in Balochistan. He
accused the Pakistani authorities of 'wanting to push
the Taliban into another big battle with government
forces', fearing that in the next phase 'the Taliban
will start urban terrorism'."
Addressing a press
conference at Kabul on October 7, Zalmay Khalilzad made
the following points: The Taliban and al-Qaeda might be
planning "larger" or "more spectacular attacks" in
Afghanistan as part of a campaign against the
reconstruction process. "We have seen a surge in
activity in recent weeks, but we also see signs that the
response has been quite effective, and I think in
desperation they may try, or there are indications that
they may try, to do something to get a lot of
attention."
The resurgent Taliban presented a
serious threat across the south and east of the country,
not least on the main north-south highway between Kabul
and Kandahar, a priority project supported by both
President George W Bush and Karzai. The first priority
was for the government in Pakistan to stop border
crossings and stop providing sanctuary to the Taliban
and al-Qaeda members. "Pakistan cannot become a
sanctuary for Taliban and al-Qaeda people who want to
attack Afghanistan," he said. "There has to be a
decrease, and at best an end, to cross-border attacks by
Taliban and al-Qaeda people from Pakistan. I welcome the
recent actions by the Pakistani government, but we would
like to see more, in fact, a lot more."
The
Taliban had exploited a power vacuum in many southern
districts where the central government, because of a
lack of funds and personnel, has failed to make its
presence felt. A significant part of the US$1.2 billion
that the administration has requested for Afghanistan
for the coming year will go toward expanding the central
government's presence in the provinces.
The
Taliban's morale and fighting capability have been
bolstered by the reinforcements from the Hizb-e- Islami
(HEI) headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former favorite
mujahideen of Pakistan before it created the Taliban in
1994. After the Taliban captured Kabul in September
1996, Gulbuddin and his senior associates took shelter
in Iranian territory adjoining Pakistan's Balochistan,
and their men were sent back to their respective
villages in the Pashtun belt of Pakistan and Afghanistan
to resume their normal avocation.
The government
of Iran kept Gulbuddin and his associates under strict
control and saw to it that they did not indulge in any
terrorist activities, but after September 11, under US
pressure, it forced them to leave Iranian territory.
They crossed over into Balochistan, where they were
welcomed by the ISI and the dregs of the Taliban.
Gulbuddin has since managed to remobilize his trained
men from their villages and has played an active role in
helping the Taliban to retrain and rearm its cadres.
Since August last, the Taliban officials based
in Pakistan have built up a propaganda and psywar
machinery to whip up hatred of the US, not only among
the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also among
the Muslims of the Gulf and West Asia. They have been
using Aljazeera and other Arab TV channels for
disseminating their propaganda material, prepared with
the assistance of serving and retired officers of the
ISI.
In a Kabul-datelined report dated October
16, the Associated Press gave the following details of
such activities: "The Taliban have launched an
unprecedented campaign to win money and support from
Muslim militants outside Afghanistan (news - web sites)
amid a resurgence by the group marked by roadside
killings, ambushes and public statements boasting of
their successes. After remaining relatively quiet for
months, a bevy of Taliban spokesmen have been turning up
on Arab TV and the Pakistani media, and a handful have
started making direct phone calls to the international
press, including the Associated Press. The calls have
increased in step with a bolder, bloodier insurgency
that has shaken faith in the Washington-backed Afghan
government's ability to assert its control, and the US
military's resolve at crushing the rebels.
"Omar
Samad, the Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the
Taliban are using the media blitz to try to get their
message out to hardliners in neighboring Pakistan who
share their strict brand of Islam. 'I think it is all
part of a more organized effort', he told the Associated
Press. 'They have lost much of their ability to be a
real threat to the whole process of change here, but
they unfortunately still have substantial support among
influential groups in Pakistan with money and access to
arms and manpower'. 'Most of today's Taliban fighters
are not the same young men as those who fought with the
militia during the US-led bombing campaign in 2001',
Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said recently. They
are new recruits, many drawn from the poor religious
madrassas of neighboring Pakistan.
"Jalali told AP during a recent interview that
several recently captured Taliban said they came to
Afghanistan on the instructions of hardline Pakistani
clerics, who convinced them it was every Muslim's duty
to fight jihad, or holy war, against the Americans and
their Afghan surrogates. One of the men said he was paid
$55 in Pakistan to come and fight. With Taliban leader
Mullah Omar and other top figures in hiding, captured or
killed, a crop of front men - some new, some old names
from the regime's heyday in power - has gone into high
gear. Sometimes their claims sound outlandish: that the
Taliban killed 10 US soldiers in fighting in September
in southern Zabul province. The Americans say one
special operations soldier died in a fall during a
combat operation there. The militia also calls to take
credit for recent attacks or to warn of bloody
repercussions for those who collaborate with the
international community. A fax sent to AP in September
claimed the Taliban were behind a wave of recent
killings of employees of international aid groups -
often referred to as non-governmental organizations, or
NGOs.
"Aid workers have been pulled from their
cars and executed in southern Ghazni, Helmand and Zabul
provinces in recent months. 'Our government has always
respected the people who are working in NGOs that really
want to build Afghanistan', read the Taliban statement.
'But there is another kind of NGO which only uses the
name NGO but is actually working and spying for the
United States. We advise Taliban all over the country to
attack them and extradite them from Afghanistan'.
"A purported Taliban spokesman who calls himself
Mullah Hedayatollah Akhund appeared on the Arabic
television channel Aljazeera two weeks ago threatening
resistance to the US-backed government of Afghan
President Hamid Karzai. Another, Mohammed Hanif, claimed
responsibility for the recent assassination of an Afghan
official in southern Kandahar province in a phone call
to The News, Pakistan's largest English-language daily.
"The Taliban have also used the media to manage
its image. One of the main Taliban spokesmen, Sayed
Hamid Agha, faxed a signed letter to AP in late
September to deny a widely-circulated report that
Taliban fighters had threatened to disfigure Afghans who
listen to music or men who shave their beards.
"It is impossible to independently confirm the
credentials of the men claiming to be Taliban spokesmen.
Some professed Taliban spokesmen are quite openly
operating from Pakistan. Attiqullah Azizi, the former
Taliban information minister in the eastern Afghan
province of Nangarhar, has met with journalists in
Pakistan. Calls and faxes from at least two purported
Taliban spokesmen appear to come from the southwestern
Pakistani province of Balochistan. Samad said the
Taliban are using neighboring Pakistan as a center of
its new PR campaign, and the presence of at least some
spokesmen there is of growing concern. 'Almost all of
them are across the border', said Samad. 'We know very
well that if the authorities across the border wanted to
put an end to this, they could. There is nothing to stop
them from shutting them down'.
Phase
II: al-Qaeda and the IIF
After disposing of
the Taliban setup, the US turned its attention to
neutralizing the setups of al-Qaeda and the IIF in
Afghan territory. The IIF, which largely consists of
five Pakistani components - the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
(HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and
the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)- plus some
elements from the Central Asian Republics (CARS)and
Southeast Asia (SEA) and a large number of Arab
nationals of Chechen ancestry, was much easier to handle
than the highly-motivated and do-or-die Arabs of the
al-Qaeda.
In the IIF, Pakistani nationals
(30,000 plus) constitute the largest number, followed by
Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry who did not
constitute a single, composite organization, but used to
operate in Afghanistan as members and mentors of the
Taliban and the Pakistani organizations. Those from the
CARs and SEA were much smaller in number and their
presence in Afghanistan did not make much difference to
the ground situation.
The liberation of Kabul by
the Northern Alliance, with the help of the American air
power, and the subsequent outburst of anti-Pakistan
anger in Kabul and other cities of the north, led to the
hasty withdrawal into Pakistan of the dregs of the
Pakistani components and their Arab associates of
Chechen ancestry. Similarly, the jihadis from SEA and
the CARs withdrew into Pakistan helter-skelter. While
those from SEA managed to find their way back to their
countries of origin via Bangladesh, where they were
transported by a ship belonging to Dawood Ibrahim, the
Indian mafia-cum-terrorist leader reported to be living
in Pakistani passport under a different name, those from
the CARs, many of whom had married Pashtun women,
managed to disperse themselves in the villages of the
FATA.
Only the Arabs of al-Qaeda led by bin
Laden stayed put in southern and eastern Afghanistan for
some weeks and put up some resistance to the Americans.
After the unsuccessful operation at Tora Bora, where the
Americans managed to surround al-Qaeda dregs, including
bin Laden, for some days, the latter managed to escape
into the FATA, from where they dispersed themselves in
small groups in the main cities of Pakistan.
When the US started the second phase of the
operations against al-Qaeda and the IIF, it sought the
help of the Pakistan army to seal the border with
Afghanistan to prevent the dregs from escaping into
Pakistan. It similarly sought the help of the Northern
Alliance to prevent their escape into the CARs. While
the Northern Alliance effectively sealed the escape
routes to the CARs, the Pakistan army, while ostensibly
sealing the escape routes into Pakistan, let the
terrorists, including bin Laden, slip into the tribal
belt on the Pakistan side.
It is significant
that since post September 11 there has been no major
flare-up of terrorism in the CARs, due to the effective
sealing by the Northern Alliance, the action of the
Pakistan army and the ISI in letting the terrorists
escape into Pakistan and from there to other countries
has led to a flareup of terrorism in India, Indonesia,
Kenya, Yemen, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
The
return of the Pakistani components of the IIF to
Pakistan led to a series of terrorist attacks on Western
nationals and local Christians in Karachi, Islamabad,
Bhawalpur, Murree and on the Karakoram Highway. All
these attacks were carried out by members of the
Pakistani components of the IIF. There was no
involvement of al-Qaeda, which used the Pakistani
components for having reprisal attacks on Western
nationals and Christians organized. However, some Arab
nationals of Chechen ancestry and Yemeni-Balochis (of
mixed Yemeni-Balochi parentage), who had joined the
Pakistani organizations, were involved. For example,
there was a Yemeni-Balochi involvement in the kidnapping
and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in
Karachi in January last year.
Initially,
Musharraf took the stand that bin Laden must be dead,
but after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the
alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist strikes
in the US, and his interrogation, Musharraf changed his
spin and admitted that he was probably alive and hiding
in the tribal belt. As an excuse for the inability of
the Pakistan army to deal effectively with the
sanctuaries of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and their
cross-border raids into Afghanistan, Musharraf has been
claiming that all these dregs have taken shelter in
inaccessible areas of the FATA where no British or
Pakistani soldier has gone before.
As he does in
the case of cross-border terrorism into India, Musharraf
has been using the same arguments to deny Pakistani
culpability in the cross-border terrorism into
Afghanistan. He has been claiming that the Pakistan army
is too small and ill-equipped to effectively seal the
border, and asks if the US with its better equipment and
other technical resources is not able to prevent the
infiltration into Afghan territory, how can it blame the
ill-equipped Pakistan army for not being able to stop
it.
Musharraf's claims that all the dregs of
al-Qaeda and the Taliban are hiding in the inaccessible
areas of the tribal belt are not correct. All the major
arrests of important leaders of the al-Qaeda have so far
been made from the major urban centers of Pakistan
outside the tribal belt. For example, Abu Zubaidah,
projected as the then No 3 of al-Qaeda, was arrested in
March last year from the house of a functionary of the
LET in Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab; Ramzi Binalshibh
was arrested from a flat in Karachi belonging to Dawood
Ibrahim in September last year; Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,
who was also living in the same flat, managed to escape
to Quetta, from where he went to Rawalpindi, where he
was caught in the house of a women's wing leader of the
Jamaat-e-Islami, which is now a member of the ruling
coalition in the NWFP and Balochistan; and Waleed bin
Attash, the principal suspect in the case relating to
the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole at Aden in
October 2000, was caught in Karachi in April last. Many
minor functionaries of al-Qaeda were also arrested in
Karachi.
In an article in the prestigious Dawn
(May 10) of Karachi, Afrasiab Khattak, the highly
respected Pashtun leader, has ridiculed Musharraf's
contention that the dregs of al-Qaeda were operating
from inaccessible mountainous areas in the tribal belt.
After pointing out the various arrests made in Karachi
and other places, he wrote: "It is true that many
al-Qaeda followers were arrested in the tribal agencies
at a time when they were fleeing out of Afghanistan
after the US military operations in Tora Bora, Zhawar
and Shahikot. They entered the tribal area because that
is the only available route from the afore-mentioned
places for crossing over into Pakistan and moving
towards safer places. But, there is no question of the
numerous al-Qaeda fugitives hiding in the tribal area.
There are very solid reasons for that.
"Some
proclaimed offenders from the settled districts do take
refuge in the tribal area, but it is done publicly and
in many cases before a jirga or tribal assembly.
The newcomer is introduced to everybody and the clan or
family giving refuge to the person stands responsible
for his conduct as long as he lives there. It is also
important to know that there are no houses for rent in
the area. Everyone lives along with their kith and kin
in a fortress like house that has to be defended by the
residents.
"In the case of Osama bin Laden,
there are additional reasons to believe that he could
not have remained in the tribal area, even if he had
been initially there. He cannot be unaware of the news
about his possible presence in the area being widely
publicized. In all probability, he would have left the
area to hide in the big cities that are far safer. It is
well known to everyone that the US Army is quite active
along the border with a lot of aerial surveillance and
electronic monitoring. Osama cannot be such a fool as to
hang out in such close vicinity of US forces, knowing
fully well that they will have little hesitation in
crossing the border to get him.
"In view of the
past record of the present government, it is safer to
assume that it is making an effort to hide behind the
so-called inaccessibility of the tribal area for the
failure of its security apparatus in nabbing the most
wanted fugitives. The myth of no-man's land and the wild
north-west comes quite handy as a spin and as a
diversion when the government fails to muster the
required political will for taking the bull of terrorism
right by the horns."
Since April last, there
have been reports from police sources in Pakistan that
in view of the splintering of al-Qaeda after Operation
Tora Bora and the disruption of its command and control,
bin Laden and his No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri are no longer
able to coordinate the activities of the various groups
taking shelter in different cities of Pakistan and
elsewhere. They say that as a result, the LET is now
playing the leadership and coordinator's role in the IIF
and organizing operations on behalf of al-Qaeda, not
only in Pakistan, but also in the Gulf and West Asia,
including Iraq.
Speaking at a panel discussion
on terrorism in the Indian sub-continent, organized by
the US-India Political Action Committee and the US-India
Institute for Strategic Policy at Washington DC on July
16, I made the following quantitative assessment of the
terrorist infrastructure in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
region, which continues to threaten the world:
Al-Qaeda: About 400 survivors of
the 500-strong hardcore of al-Qaeda had crossed over
into Pakistan from Afghanistan giving a slip to the US
security forces in the beginning of last year. Of these,
about 75 are estimated to have since moved over to Yemen
and Saudi Arabia and 30 are estimated to have crossed
over into Iran via Pakistan's Balochistan. Of the
remaining, about 75 took shelter in Karachi and 220 in
Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP),
Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA), and the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK).
Of the 75 who took shelter in Karachi, about 50
are still holed up in various hideouts there with the
assistance of their Pakistani sympathizers and the mafia
gang led by Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted by the Indian
authorities for prosecution in connection with the
Mumbai (Bombay) blasts of March,1993, a precursor of
mass-casualty or catastrophic terrorism. Pakistan claims
to have arrested and handed over about 400 al-Qaeda
members to the US. It is not clear how many of them were
hardcore members, how many just sympathizers and how
many Arab residents of Pakistan, who were merely
suspected of being associated with al-Qaeda.
The Taliban: About 5,000 survivors
of the Taliban, including its Amir Mullah Mohammad Omar
and other senior leaders, out of the pre-October 7,
2001, strength of 20,000 of the militia. Out of this,
about 5,000 are estimated to have perished during the US
air strikes and 10,000 to have dispersed to their
respective villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The
5,000, who have taken shelter in Pakistan, have been
operating against the US and allied troops in
Afghanistan from their safe havens in the NWFP and
Balochistan, in concert with the Hizb-e-Islami (HEI) of
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the survivors of the Uzbeck and
Chechen components of the IIF.
The survivors of
the Pakistani components of the IIF: Before October 7,
2001, the five Pakistani components of the IIF - namely,
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad al
Islami (HUJI), the LET, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and
the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) - had a total estimated
strength of about 35,000 members deployed in Afghanistan
to help the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their fight against
the Northern Alliance (NA). Of these, about 30,000, who
managed to survive the US air strikes, crossed over into
Pakistan and moved over to Karachi, Pakistani Punjab and
the POK.
Others: The survivors of
the Uzbeck and Chechen components of the IIF: About 300
have been operating from the FATA. The survivors of the
Southeast Asian component: About 200, who had originally
crossed over into Pakistan, have since gone back to
their respective countries. The HEI: About 400 of its
cadres have been operating against the Afghan and allied
troops in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in the NWFP and
Balochistan.
I also gave the following
qualitative assessment: "Presuming he is alive, bin
Laden is a relentlessly hunted fugitive and his powers
of coordination, command and control have been
considerably weakened and his ability to communicate
with his followers dispersed in Pakistan and elsewhere
has been impaired. The responsibility for the
coordination, command and control of the terrorists
operating against the US and other allied troops in
Afghanistan has been taken over by Gulbuddin. Though
there have been very few fatal casualties suffered by
the allied and Afghan forces, the persistence of the hit
and run attacks, with some of them taking place even in
Kabul, the capital, speak disturbingly of the unimpaired
morale of the dregs and the local support enjoyed by
them.
The responsibility for the coordination,
command and control of the terrorist operations in
Pakistan itself against American and other Western
targets and in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and other
parts of India against Indian targets has been taken
over by the LET due to the damage suffered by the HUM
and the LEJ after the arrest of many of their cadres by
the Pakistani authorities following the terrorist
incidents of last year in Karachi and Islamabad. There
has been no evidence of the involvement of any of the
Arab survivors of al-Qaeda in the incidents in
Afghanistan, except in one near Kandahar, in which a
Yemeni transporting explosives, along with some Taliban
cadres, was reported to have been killed in an
accidental explosion.
Similarly, there has been
no evidence of the involvement of any of the Arab
survivors of al-Qaeda in the incidents inside Pakistan
itself. Those were carried out mainly by the survivors
of the Pakistani components of the IIF. Some
Yemeni-Balochis were involved, but they participated as
members of the Pakistani components and not of al-Qaeda.
Of all the terrorist strikes which have taken place
after September 11 ( in J&K, New Delhi, Gandhinagar
and Mumbai in India, Bali in Indonesia, Mombassa in
Kenya, Moscow and Chechnya in Russia, Yemen, Riyadh in
Saudi Arabia and Casablanca in Morocco), the direct
involvement of the Arab survivors of al-Qaeda is
suspected only in the Riyadh incident. It is assessed
that the remaining strikes were carried out by the
Pakistani components of bin Laden's IIF in India and by
local elements operating autonomously in other
countries, with the surviving al-Qaeda leadership itself
playing very little leadership role.
The
al-Qaeda survivors scattered in Pakistan have been
focussing on training fresh recruits of the Pakistani
components of the IIF in their training camps in Punjab,
the NWFP, Balochistan and the POK and guiding them in
their operations, without actually participating in
them. Of the Pakistani components, the LET's
infrastructure in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia has remained
largely intact and it is playing an increasingly active
role as the standard-bearer of the IIF. It has also been
in the forefront of the moves to spread the jihad to
Iraq and to intensify it there. The presence of these
elements in Pakistani territory and their activities
from there continue to pose a serious threat not only to
Indian nationals and interests, but also to the
nationals and interests of the US and other members of
the international community. While Pakistan's
military-intelligence establishment has definitely
helped the US intelligence community in some of its
operations against leading al-Qaeda survivors in
Pakistan, it has avoided action against the survivors of
the Taliban, the Uzbeck and Chechen components, the HEI
and the Pakistani components.
In its
calculation, it would need the Taliban, the HEI and the
Uzbeck and Chechen elements for retrieving the ground
lost by it in Afghanistan and the Pakistani components
to keep the Indian security forces bleeding. These
elements have, at the same time, an agenda extending
beyond Afghanistan and India, which includes
intensifying the jihad against the US not only in Iraq,
but also wherever possible, including in US territory,
as evidenced by the arrest of the LET cell in the US.
The successes of the US intelligence community in its
hunt for the survivors of al-Qaeda have thus far been
limited to the non-tribal areas of Pakistan such as
Punjab and Sindh. There has been hardly any success in
the tribal belt and in the POK. This has been partly due
to the complicity of the local administration with the
survivors and partly due to the iron curtain imposed by
the military-intelligence establishment in these areas
to conceal the continued existence of the terrorist
infrastructure there, which is meant to serve Pakistan's
strategic objectives against India and the Northern
Alliance in Afghanistan.
The main focus of the
UN Security Council's resolution No 1373 was on the need
for and urgency of effective action against terrorist
funding and sanctuaries. While there has been some
action against funding, even if not totally effective,
there has been practically no action against the
sanctuaries. Presently, the jihadi terrorist groups
operating against India, the US, Israel, the Southeast
Asian countries and elsewhere in the region have almost
all been using sanctuaries in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Iran and Syria. The concerns of the international
community relating to the nuclearization of terrorism
also arise from the possible dangers of weapons of mass
destruction and related technology getting into the
hands of jihadi terrorists from the already declared or
yet to be declared state-sponsors of international
terrorism. Unless effective action is taken to end these
sanctuaries and to make these states accountable for
their actions, there will be no respite from terrorism
in the Indian sub-continent, the US, Israel and other
affected regions.
These assessments remain valid
today. While there is so far no major evidence of the
involvement of al-Qaeda and the Pakistani components of
the IIF in the worsening situation in Afghanistan, these
elements have been gravitating towards Iraq via Iran or
Saudi Arabia in order to harass the US forces there.
There have been widely conflicting estimates of the
number who are already involved in acts of terrorism
against the US troops and their Iraqi collaborators,
varying between about 200 (Pakistani police sources) and
about 1,000 (Israeli sources). I am inclined to accept
the lower estimate of 200.
Most of those who
have gone to Iraq from Pakistan are Yemeni-Balochis and
Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry and have been
operating in Iraq under the umbrella of the HUM and the
LET. This number does not include the sacked Iraqi
soldiers and Ba'ath Party members, who have been
operating independently. New charity organizations in
Pakistan such as the al-Akhtar Trust, founded by the
JEM, have been funding the terrorists not only in
Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. The US
Treasury Department has since ordered the freezing of
its bank accounts on October 16.
The jihadi
terrorists have been saying that the US is at their
mercy, with one leg caught in Afghanistan and the other
in Iraq and that they should not miss this opportunity
to teach it a lesson.
Flow of funds to
terrorists
Despite the action taken by many
countries under the UN Security Council Resolution No
1373 to freeze bank accounts, which are suspected to be
used for funding terrorism, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and
the IIF have not been short of funds. The production of
heroin has again emerged as an important source of funds
for the terrorist organizations operating from the
Afghanistan-Pakistan region. There has been a steep
increase in the production of opium and heroin in
southern and eastern Afghanistan. In their hunt for the
dregs of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the US security
forces have been using Afghan warlords of the pre-1992
vintage and narcotics smugglers because of their good
knowledge of the topography of the area. It has been
alleged that at the request of the US intelligence
agencies and security forces, many narcotics barons,
undergoing imprisonment in Pakistan, were released in
order to use their services; and action against opium
producers and heroin smugglers was given low priority.
This has contributed to the increase in the production
and smuggling of heroin and in the availability of funds
for the terrorist dregs.
The last year has also
seen a tremendous increase in the remittance of funds
from overseas bank accounts to accounts in Pakistan. The
total remittances during this period were estimated at
$4 billion. The Pakistani authorities attributed this
increase to the fact that Pakistanis living abroad have
started using normal banking channels for their
remittances due to fears that the use of the informal
hawala channels as in the past might attract the
suspicion of the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI). Even if this explanation is true, it could
account for the transfer of only about $1.5 billion from
overseas accounts to accounts in Pakistan.
Following suspicion that the steep increase in
the remittances flowing into Pakistan might be due to
the transfer of the money held overseas by the so-called
Saudi charity organizations associated with terrorism to
accounts in Pakistan and the use of new accounts in
Pakistan by organizations based in Saudi Arabia for
funding terrorism, the FBI is reported to be closely
monitoring all remittances of over $1,000 to accounts in
Pakistan. The Washington correspondent of the News, the
Pakistani daily newspaper, has reported (October 1) that
the Pakistani authorities have agreed to a request from
the US to report to the FBI details of all such
remittances.
The action taken by the Pakistani
authorities against all suspected bank accounts in
Pakistan continues to be an eye-wash. It is alleged that
in many instances the holders of the suspected accounts
were alerted beforehand of the impending freezing of
their accounts in order to enable them either to
transfer the bulk of the balance to other accounts under
different names or to withdraw them. As a result, many
frozen accounts of even well-known terrorists had paltry
balances at the time of freezing.
On June 14,
Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's Finance Minister, placed on the
table of the National Assembly a statement giving
details of the accounts frozen by the authorities. In
the statement figured three accounts in Peshawar banks
held in the name of bin Laden and one in the name of
Ayman al-Zawahiri (name of the branch not given). Of the
three accounts of bin Laden, two were joint accounts
held by him along with others and one was an account
only in his name. The three bin Laden accounts,
according to the statement, had balances of only $306,
$342 and $1,585 and the account of al-Zawahiri had a
balance of $5 only.
The statement contained a
remark that the account of al-Zawahiri had remained
dormant since 1993. There were no such remarks in
respect of the accounts of bin Laden. Hence, they are
presumed to have been active. The statement remained
silent as to what were the various deposits made in the
accounts and withdrawn or transferred from them before
they were frozen, who were the beneficiaries etc.
Phase IV: Governance and
reconstruction
The influence and authority
enjoyed by President Hamid Karzai himself and the
members of his council of ministers in the Pashtun areas
of southern and eastern Afghanistan continue to be very
limited. The warlords initially inducted by the US to
help its forces in their hunt for the dregs of al-Qaeda
and the Taliban have become a law unto themselves,
showing reluctance to obey the orders of the central
government in Kabul and to share the tax revenue
collected by them with the central tax authorities.
The situation has been rendered more difficult
by the action of the Iranian authorities in maintaining
independent channels of communications with Ismail Khan,
the ruler of Herat, and often routing their economic
assistance directly to him instead of through the
central government in Kabul. Of late, Hamid Karzai has
been trying to be more assertive and to curtail the
powers of the regional heads of administration and
enforce fiscal discipline on them.
The present
government in Kabul is far from being accepted by the
Pashtuns as adequately representing their interests.
Having failed thus far in its efforts to find Pashtun
political leaders, who would be acceptable to their
community and at the same time be attentive to the
interests of the West, the US is alleged to be once
again attracted by Musharraf's idea of seeking the
cooperation of what Musharraf describes as moderate
Taliban. Before the Northern Alliance liberated Kabul,
Musharraf had floated such an idea to prevent its entry
into Kabul, but the US did not accept it at the time.
It is said that frustrated with its inability to
restore normalcy, the US might now be tempted to give a
try to the earlier discarded idea of Musharraf. As a
result of the prevailing confusion, the progress towards
the drafting of a constitution and the holding of
elections is expected to be slow and may not be
completed by next year.
Having resisted thus far
suggestions for giving the ISAF a role outside Kabul in
order to supplement the efforts of the US-led teams to
restore law and order and to promote economic
development, the US has now accepted that the NATO-led
ISAF could be allowed to operate outside Kabul, and an
enabling resolution in this regard has also been passed
by the UN Security Council. At the same time, officials
associated with the NATO command and control mechanism
in Kabul have clarified that the expanded role of the
ISAF would be restricted to maintenance of law and order
and economic and social development and would not relate
to counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism in southern
and eastern Afghanistan, which would continue to be
handled by the US command in the area.
Conclusion
Since August last, the
situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating.
Increasing numbers of better-trained, better-equipped
and better-led Taliban cadres operating from sanctuaries
in Pakistan have stepped up their hit and run raids into
southern and eastern Afghanistan in order to demoralize
the newly-raised army and police of the Hamid Karzai
government in the hope of thereby inducing large-scale
desertions.
Their attacks have been focussed on
members of the new Afghan army, police and other
government departments and foreign aid workers. They
have avoided direct confrontations with the US forces,
lest they pursue them into Pakistani territory. As a
result, while there have been nearly 400 Afghan
government and civilian fatal casualties, the number of
fatal American casualties has been only four.
The Taliban has also set up a well-run
psychological warfare (psywar) machinery in Pakistan,
which is used to add to the anti-US anger in Pakistan as
well as Afghanistan. While the Hizb-e-Islami of
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has been operating jointly with the
revived Taliban from Pakistani sanctuaries, the
survivors of al-Qaeda and the Pakistani components of
the International Islamic Front (IIF) have been
focussing on harassing the US troops in Iraq through
well-motivated jihadis infiltrated into Iraq through
Iran or Saudi Arabia.
The Pakistan-based jihadi
terrorists owing allegiance to bin Laden through the IIF
have been calculating that if they maintain a low, but
sustained level of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq
without unduly provoking the Americans into massive
retaliation, battle fatigue would set in and force the
US government to recall its boys home before the
campaign for the next year's presidential elections
picks up momentum.
Though the US has been saying
that it is prepared for a longish stay, whatever be the
cost in terms of funds and casualties, in both
countries, the jihadis view this as mere bravado and
have convinced themselves that the closer the elections,
the weaker will be the US will to continue the fighting.
The US's continued reluctance to act against
Pakistan and make it pay a prohibitive price for helping
the jihadi terrorists is coming in the way of an
effective counter-terrorism strategy. Encouraged by this
US reluctance, the Pervez Musharraf regime continues to
keep the jihadi terrorists alive and active in the hope
of using them to retrieve the lost Pakistani influence
in Afghanistan and achieve its strategic objective of
forcing a change in the status quo in India's Jammu and
Kashmir.
B Raman is Additional
Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of
India, and presently director, Institute For Topical
Studies, Chennai; former member of the National Security
Advisory Board of the Government of India. E-Mail:
corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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