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On the job with a Taliban
recruiter
By Massoud Ansari
KILLA ABDULLA, Pakistan - Abdul Zahir's day
starts with morning visits to a number of mosques in the
Pakistani border area with Afghanistan, where the
faithful gather for the first of their five daily prayer
sessions. And once his morning session is over, he goes
to some of the many madrassas (religious
schools) in the area, or shows up at social gatherings, such
as weddings, if there are any taking place.
Abdul
is unflagging in his rounds because he has an
almost missionary zeal: to find recruits for jihad - or
holy war - waged by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Himself blinded
in one eye from action in Afghanistan, Abdul tells
prospective recruits: "You might fight at the front
line, or you might stand guard at night. You can cook
for other Islamic warriors, or you can be a male nurse.
Or you can give the fighters money or grain - everything
is welcome because the jihad has started."
On Abdul's most
recent foray into Afghanistan he was accompanied by
14 youths from the remote Pakistani tribal areas in
Killa Abdullah district in northern Balochistan province, whom he
had rallied to the cause to fight against
the "foreign invaders". Since his return he has another six lined
up, all of whom are ready to cross the porous
border. He took the last batch to a post in Zabul
province, but he has no idea where the fresh recruits
will go.
"I have already sent a message to
Taliban commanders to seek instructions," Abdul says,
"We will go wherever our services are needed." In recent
months the Taliban have become more brazen and open in
their operations, and they are known to be within
relatively easy contact by wireless sets or by satellite
phones. "The Taliban also have radios and regularly
listens to the BBC's Pashtu service to keep themselves
abreast of the situation in the Muslim world, especially
in Iraq."
Abdul says that he had been itching to
join the Afghan jihad ever since the Taliban were driven
from power in December 2001. But his Taliban superiors
only told him in July that the jihad had resumed. "I had
always thought of fighting Americans because they are
the real enemies of Islam and when I realized that they
were next door, I took up the gauntlet to prepare all
Muslims to go and fight them."
As reported in
Asia Times Online in recent months, the Taliban have
regrouped, rearmed and upped the ante in their battle
against US-led forces in the country, as well as against
the newly-instituted Afghan Army, forcing international
aid organizations to limit their operations and raising
doubts about the viability of plans to hold national
elections next year.
Afghan leaders
have consistently accusing Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of giving direct support to the
allies of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and
the Taliban, charges that the Pakistani government has
denied.
"We are
with the [Hamid] Karzai government and
we have nothing to do with Taliban," Pakistani Information
Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said, believing
that Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror"
is known to everyone. "The world should stop suspecting
us and should understand that we simply cannot arrest
every black-turbaned person, and it would be ridiculous
if someone expected us to do that."
The
Pakistan government's claims apart, independent politicians
in Balochistan province said that it would be
simply impossible for the Taliban to operate freely
on Pakistani soil unless they had some guarantees from
the powers-that-be. Says Haji Sardar Lashkari, a
former provincial minister in Balochistan: "How is it
possible for senior Taliban leaders and the likes of
Mullah Dadullah and other most-wanted Taliban remnants to come
to Pakistan quite often, convince students at the
religious schools openly or even to attend social
gatherings like weddings, without the knowledge of the
ISI and other secret agencies?"
Lashkari said
that without finances, the Taliban couldn't fight. "It
is quite obvious that there is someone who is not only
financing them, but also encouraging them to fight, but
I cannot say whether these agencies are operating on
their own or have the blessings of [President] General
[Pervez] Musharraf."
Indeed, on a visit to the
border areas and Quetta, the capital of Balochistan
province, one witnesses hundreds of Taliban in their
unique black robes, black turbans and long beards. They
reside in mosques, madrassas and
in nearby villages or refugee camps, seemingly with
the full support of the ruling provincial party
and militant groups. In many of the mosques in
the surrounding satellite town of Pashtunabad or Nawakili,
the clergy openly incite people through mosque loudspeakers and
ask them to sign up for jihad.
"In every
madrassa in Balochistan there are one or two
Taliban recruiters," says a local politician in Quetta,
requesting not to be identified. "If you want to sign on
for jihad, the easiest thing is to stay at one of these
madrassas and someone will for
sure contact you. These recruiters keep a vigil on your
activities, and once they realize that you are a genuine
fighter, they will certainly talk to you and put you in
touch with the Taliban commanders."
So
the madrassas, from where the Taliban originally
emerged, are once again serving as a means of their
revival. Even Karzai recently lashed out at the
Pakistani religious clergy for their support of Taliban
resurgents. Karzai in particular mentioned the Shaldara
madrassa in Quetta, run by the
Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI)-backed member of the
National Assembly, Maulana Noor Mohammed, and called it
a headquarters of the Taliban.
Sitting cross-legged, with two flags, one used by the Taliban
as their "country" flag and the other by the
JUI, flying outside his office on Najamuddin Road in
Quetta, Noor says that when it comes to sympathies for
the Taliban, they are known to everyone. "We are
pro-Taliban and totally against the Pakistan
government's policy supporting the US war in
Afghanistan," says Noor, who believes that bin Laden is
an innocent Muslim who is "unnecessarily maligned" by
Jews as a pretext to fight against Muslims.
Flanked by a few Taliban, Noor says
that people in Afghanistan welcomed the Taliban when
they took over in 1996 "and they still welcome them". He
points out that the Taliban now have control of 13
districts alone in Zabul province, "while people in
other areas are waiting for their call". He believes
that "the puppet government of Karzai will soon fall
like a house of cards because it has failed to provide
peace in Afghanistan".
And peace there certainly
is not, as daily reports of clashes illustrate, and the
writ of the Karzai government barely extends beyond the
capital Kabul. Abul, the Taliban recruiter, says that it
is easy to move around the country. "Afghanistan is a
second home for people living in these border areas," he
says. "They don't have - or need - any passports or
other travel documents."
Abdul explains that the
last batch of 14 youths that he escorted to Afghanistan
claimed that they were Afghan refugees who had been
living in Pakistan but were now returning home. "We
crossed the border at the regular check posts, but we
could have sneaked into Afghanistan through non-formal
routes and nobody on earth would have known about these
journeys."
This is how the Taliban guerrillas
initially operated, by taking sanctuary in Pakistan for
forays into Afghanistan, as the border is impossible to
monitor. But as they have been more successful, they
have been able to establish more permanent bases within
the country, and tend now to use Pakistan only for
emergencies - or to round up more recruits.
Abdul, a Pakistani Pashtun farmer by profession,
recalls that on his last trip he took his recruits to a
militant camp near Zabul, where Taliban commanders gave
them weapons. "They had huge deposits of weapons, both
sakeel [heavy] and safeef [light]," he
says. They were then told that whichever weapon they
managed to master, they could take. Abdul grabbed an
AK-47 rifle for himself, while he also assisted his
comrades in carrying bags of bullets and grenades
whenever they had to go to a battle.
Abdul says
that he spent 40 days with his jihadis in Afghanistan,
during which they had at least one major combat with an
Afghan army patrol in the mountains of Zabul province.
He then returned to Pakistan in mid-October "to regain
some energy". "It is not easy to live in the mountains.
You are at the verge of death every now and then. You
survive only on plain bread, or at the most, yogurt
milk," he says. "At the same time, you walk for miles
every day on foot, it's very tiring."
Not that
Abdul can put his feet up. He has been tasked to round
up more youths, for the battle continues until "we
completely flush out the Americans and their proteges
from Afghanistan. The Americans have robbed us of our
right to live and now we are using our right to die."
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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policies.)
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