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Pakistan loses ground in
Afghanistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - As the Taliban prepare for a crucial
phase of their struggle against foreign troops in
Afghanistan, a prelude for the final "spring offensive",
the resistance movement has lost its support from
Pakistan's establishment, under pressure from the United
States.
The
resistance, meanwhile, under a new commander, is
regrouping in the remote Khyber 
Agency
region of Pakistan, using the infrastructure of people
and fortifications laid by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
several years ago.
Asia Times Online has learned
from insiders within the security administration of
President General Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad that
strategists have bowed to pressure from Washington, and
will end all covert support for the resistance in
Afghanistan.
Up to now, Pakistan has aided some
commanders in Afghanistan belonging to the Hizb-i-Islami
Afghanistan (HIA) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the veteran
mujahideen leader now largely responsible for
orchestrating the Afghan resistance.
Pakistan's
purpose was not so much to damage US interests, but to
establish a counter-force to the growing pro-India
presence along the Afghani border areas with Pakistan.
Pakistan's support, though limited, did, nevertheless,
work against the interests of the US. As a result, US
intelligence tracked HIA recruiting offices in Pakistani
cities such as Karachi and Peshawar, and pointed to
various locations in Pakistan where HIA volunteers were
being given training, money and arms. And for example,
legendary Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani ( who
joined the Taliban and became a minister and who is now
the main force behind the resistance in Khost and
Paktia) visited Miran Shah in Pakistan several times,
but authorities turned a blind eye.
Confronted
with this, and coming at a time of revelations of some
Pakistani scientists being accused of nuclear
proliferation to Iran, among other countries, Islamabad
had little option but to pledge to pull out all of its
operators and their proxy networks from Afghanistan.
Musharraf, did, however, apparently manage to
extract a concession from the US that coalition troops
would increase their presence in Afghanistan in areas
where warlords are hand-in-glove with the Indian
establishment. For example, Pakistan wants more
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in
Jalalabad and Kandahar, where warlords associated with
the anti-Pakistan former Shura-i-Nazaar and the Northern
Alliance are active. The US leads a 12,000-person force
in Afghanistan.
Carry on in the Khyber
These developments come as the Taliban step up their
struggle to include more suicide attacks. Asia Times
Online was first publication to report this strategy (Taliban raise the stakes - Oct
30, 2003). These attacks are the prelude to a broader
struggle that will start in spring in which the Taliban
will attempt to retake the major cities in Afghanistan
that they held before being ousted by the US in late
2001.
One British soldier of the ISAF was killed
on Wednesday morning and three of his comrades wounded
in a car bomb attack on an eastern Kabul highway. The
attack occurred just a day after a Canadian peacekeeper
lost his life and three others were injured in a suicide
bomb attack in southern Kabul area. About 10 civilians,
including a French aid worker, were also wounded in the
two attacks.
In the latest unrest, an explosion
near an ammunition dump in southern Afghanistan on
Thursday killed seven US soldiers and wounded three
other soldiers and an interpreter. The US Army central
command said that the soldiers were working near an arms
cache in the southern province of Ghazni. The cause of
the blast is unclear.
For some time the US has
focused on South Waziristan Agency in Pakistan as a
hotbed of the resistance, where guerrillas hide and
receive support from the local population between raids
in Afghanistan. As a result, at US instigation, the
Pakistan army has undertaken a number of missions to the
region, but to date without major success in tracking
down resistance ringleaders.
Now, though, it
emerges that the real center of resistance action is the
remote Khyber Agency in North West Frontier Province.
Two mountainous areas here, Tera and Moro, which lie on
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, have no roads and the
local population is almost 100 percent behind bin Laden
and the Taliban. Some years ago, bin Laden had a network
of tunnels and underground bunkers built here, which the
resistance is now using as hideaways and for the storage
of supplies and ammunition as a source of most supply
lines into Afghanistan.
Obviously, this region
is known to both the US and Pakistani authorities - the
problem is dealing with it. Clearly, the US cannot
utilize its massive air strength in Pakistan as it did
in ousting the Taliban from Kabul. And due to the
terrain - and the completely hostile population - the
Pakistani army is in no position to make an offensive of
any significance. The use of helicopters would also be
hazardous as they would have to fly low in the valleys,
opening themselves up for ground-to-air missile attacks.
According to Taliban sources, the resistance for
the spring offensive is now under the command of Mullah
Sabir Momin of Orugzan province. The battle lines are
drawn.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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