A rush to the Taliban's
call By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The Taliban's spring offensive
is in full swing, with almost daily attacks,
including suicide bombings, in Afghanistan. More
than 200 people, including 14 American soldiers,
have lost their lives in the Taliban-led
insurgency this year.
This toll - and the
damage caused - is small in relation to the
insurgency in Iraq, though the techniques applied
have been modeled on those used by the Iraqi
resistance. What the Afghan resistance lacks in
expertise and sophistication, though, it is making
up in numbers - to a scale not seen since the
Taliban were driven from power in 2001.
Thousands of new volunteers are pouring
into the mountainous regions on the border between
Pakistan and Afghanistan to
combat Pakistani troops on
the one side and US-led allied forces on the other
side. The volunteers include local Waziristanis
from the North and South Waziristan tribal areas,
Afghans and a small number Central Asian fighters.
The vast majority, though, come from North West
Frontier Province, Punjab and Karachi.
And
in a significant development, many of these
fighters would normally have joined in the
struggle against Indian-administered Kashmir.
Thousands of jihadis who had fought
alongside the Taliban against the Northern
Alliance in Afghanistan before the US-led invasion
of the country in 2001 subsequently joined with
the the banned Jaish-i-Mohammed and Harkatul
Mujahideen to fight in Kashmir. However, with
India fencing the borders in Kashmir and the
United States applying considerable pressure on
Islamabad to stop the infiltration into
Indian-administered Kashmir, the flow of jihadis
has dried to a trickle, leaving them sitting idle.
The Taliban's recruitment drive for this
summer's offensive, which started last year,
targeted these jihadis, and many were persuaded to
join the Taliban in North and South Waziristan.
Apart from those belonging to the Jaish-i-Mohammed
and Harkatul Mujahideen, fighters associated with
the Lashkar-i-Toiba have also joined the Taliban
in their thousands.
The Taliban have also
targeted underground militias that sprang up in
Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan, with a total of about 50,000
fighters, many of whom received training in
Afghanistan under the Taliban. These groups range
from 20-2,000 people in each.
The
battle from The Base (al-Qaeda) Whether
the Taliban inflict major losses on coalition
forces this year or not, the International Islamic
Front of Osama bin Laden has unleashed a battle
from its new base - the "Islamic state of
Waziristan" in North Waziristan (see The Taliban's bloody foothold in
Pakistan, Asia Times Online, February
8).
The strategy is to expand this base
further, to the provinces of Paktia, Khost,
Helmand and Zabul in Afghanistan. In many villages
of these provinces, as in North Waziristan, the
Taliban have paralyzed the writ of the Afghan
state and have formed their own administrations,
which include a Taliban judiciary, police and
system of taxes.
Although the Taliban have
reached the Pakistani districts of Dera Ismail
Khan and Tank, and shut down music centers, a
decision to take over full control of these
districts in North West Frontier Province has not
yet been made.
In Taliban-controlled
areas, neither tribal chiefs nor clerics have any
say. Similarly, the six-party religious-political
alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, has lost
its influence. This much has been admitted by the
Pakistani minister of interior.
On-the-ground contacts from North
Waziristan tell Asia Times Online that as many as
27,000 fighters have grouped in the area. A new
command has been formed, with all prominent faces
being sent into the background. The new field
commander is little-known, an Afghan named Maulana
Sagheen Khan Zadran, 41. Of the fighters, about
3,500 are from Pakistani Punjab and Karachi and
more than 10,000 from various districts of North
West Frontier Province, while the rest are either
local tribals or Afghan refugees.
The
field commander of the Taliban in South Waziristan
is Baitullah Mehsud. Though the exact figures for
fighters in South Waziristan are not known, they
are believed to run in the many thousands.
"This is the tip of the iceberg as
thousands of mujahideen are waiting for the call.
They are located in all seven tribal agencies and
the rest of Pakistan. In addition to that,
thousands of Taliban are still in Afghanistan, and
once the Taliban movement gets momentum, they will
be regrouped in their respective districts, like
the Taliban are organized in North and South
Waziristan, in the districts of Paktia, Khost,
Helmand and Zabul," a contact said.
Asia
Times Online has contacted top Pakistani
officials, ranging from those in the Ministry of
Information to the Ministry of Interior, the armed
forces and the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas, informing them of this article and
requesting interviews. None chose to respond.
A twist in the 'war on terror' Since the attacks on the US on September 11,
2001, the US-led "war on terror" has been through
many phases. The indications are that another
major change is happening.
A key policy
the Americans devised was to shut down war
theaters, be they in the Middle East, South Asia
or Africa, as they were perceived as breeding
grounds for terror. Thus, after invading
Afghanistan and Iraq, the US put considerable
diplomatic muscle into twisting Pakistan's arm to
ban all private militias, initiate dialogue with
India and clamp down on militancy emanating from
the Pakistan-administered side of Kashmir, as well
as abandon Islamist leaders in Kashmir.
The results of this, however, have not
been what the Americans wanted, for while a lot of
the heat might have been taken out of the Kashmir
struggle, the focus has shifted to Waziristan and
Afghanistan.
Khalid Khawaja is a retired
squadron leader in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF)
and belonged to the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) in the 1980s. He wrote a critical letter to
the late general Zia ul-Haq, calling him a
hypocrite. Zia ordered his dismissal from the ISI
and forced his retirement from the PAF. Khalid
went straight to Afghanistan in 1987 and fought
alongside the mujahideen against the Soviets.
While in Afghanistan he developed close
and friendly ties with bin Laden. Khawaja's name
resurfaced after the abduction and murder of US
reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Asia Times
Online asked Khawaja why people were giving up
fighting in Kashmir and instead going to
Waziristan.
"The feelings of
disgruntlement among mujahideen emerged soon after
September 11. Even a person like Maulana Fazl
Rehman Khalil [chief of the Harkatul Mujahideen]
once asked me in a private meeting why the
mujahideen should [continue to] fight for the
Kashmiri cause.
"The way the situation
evolved in Pakistan after September 11, there was
just no rationale for people to fight in Kashmir,
simply because whatever Indian forces were doing
in Kashmir against the Muslim population,
Pakistani forces did even worse against Muslims in
Pakistan," Khawaja said.
"Jihad is fought
not for the sake of land. Jihad is fought when
there is a question of faith and the enemy are
attacking the faith. After September 11, the
Americans attacked our faith. We fought against
Soviet Russia for the same reason. Now the
Americans have replaced Soviet Russia.
"Now when faith is under attack there is
no difference of caste and creed. The
collaborators are equally punishable, be it
Pakistan or any other country. This is a global
rule of mujahideen which is substantiated by clear
religious decrees, be it Iraq, Afghanistan or
Pakistan. After all, when [US President George W]
Bush can say that you are with us or against us,
what harm if the mujahideen make the same claims?"
Khawaja said.
Saleem Hashmi, a spokesman
for the largest indigenous Kashmiri liberation
movement, the Hizbul Mujahideen, told Asia Times
Online that with regard to the HM's strategic
manpower, it is targeted at Indian-administered
Kashmir.
Nevertheless, the situation on
the ground tells a different story, and it is
clear that that the Taliban have acquired a new
and reliable supply of volunteers to feed the
movement for many more spring offensives.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau
Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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