Fighting talk from Osama and the
Taliban By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The latest Osama bin Laden
message on Sunday coincides with the deadliest
phase of the spring offensive in Afghanistan,
which began on Friday when the Taliban-led
insurgency launched fighters in various provinces
under a unified strategy.
In an audio tape
allegedly of bin Laden broadcast on Sunday by
Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite television
network based in Qatar, the al-Qaeda leader
accused average Westerners "of supporting a war on
Islam" and urged his followers to go to Sudan -
his former base - to fight a proposed United
Nations peacekeeping force. Some 300,000 African
villagers have been
killed in Darfur in attacks
by Arab fighters backed by Khartoum.
The
Taliban offensive involved a number of groups
ranging from 100-200 fighters each launched
simultaneously in about two dozen places along the
porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan,
with the main focus on the Nooristan, Ghazni,
Khost, Paktia and Paktika regions.
Contacts of Asia Times Online claim that
the attacks will continue on a daily basis
involving many hundreds of Taliban entering
Afghanistan. The fighters are primed to carry out
not only hit-and-run operations, as in the past,
but also to engage in sustained battles from bases
they will establish with the consent of the local
population.
In their most successful
attack, a roadside bomb on Saturday killed four
Canadian soldiers traveling in an armored vehicle
in a convoy in Gomboth, a village about 40
kilometers north of Kandahar, a former Taliban
stronghold. US firms as well as pro-government
clerics were also targeted. On Monday, three
Taliban fighters and one policeman died in a gun
battle between Taliban fighters and security
forces in the province of Ghazni.
Over the
past year, the Taliban have steadily cemented
their support among the general population,
capitalizing on inflammatory issues such as the
alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by US
interrogators, brothels in Kabul, the burning of a
Taliban body, and cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammed. This has brought unanimity among
different tribes to support the anti-US movement
and paved the way for the Taliban to pitch
sustained battles in open areas against US-led
forces.
The overall objective of the
Taliban is that by winter they will have taken
control of most of rural Afghanistan.
The strategy The latest Taliban
strategy could be defined as a "netwar", as in the
operations of networks, but the leadership sitting
in the mountains would outline the strategy as
being identical to that of the mujahideen against
the Soviets in 1988, when, for the first time, the
mujahideen gained complete control over the areas
along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and over
villages around the major cities.
At this
point, almost 10 years after the Soviet invasion,
the mujahideen were able to wage pitched and
sustained battles from their bunkers, and
crucially they had a stream of fresh recruits to
tap, as well as money and arms.
In terms
of personnel, it is estimated that in the North
and South Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan the
Taliban have enough supporters to draw on to fight
for a year - about 40,000 men. In North Waziristan
alone there are about 27,000.
There are
indications of an equally strong presence of
Taliban fighters in the other five tribal
agencies, beside various other districts in
Pakistan.
In a figure often quoted by
Pakistani intelligence, as many as 500,000 men
visited Afghanistan during the Taliban rule from
1996-2001. Most of them received military
training, while all of them had ideological
inspiration. About 50,000 of these people are
believed to be still active as members of jihadi
organizations. Obviously, this is a large pool
from which the Taliban could draw.
In the
early to mid-1990s, Pakistan's madrassas
(seminaries) were the major source of foot
soldiers in the Taliban-led movement, which
triumphed over bickering mujahideen factions and
seized power. This was done with the tacit
approval of the Pakistani establishment.
Under US pressure, as Pakistan sides with
the United States in the "war on terror", a number
of checks and balances have been placed on the
madrassas. However, there remains a zeal
among religiously motivated youths, especially
from Punjab's rural areas, to join hands with the
Taliban-led resistance. They know very well where
to go and whom to contact to get into Afghanistan.
The five years of Taliban rule was a major
inspirational force for these youths, and now
there is no need, as in the past, for the
Pakistani establishment to encourage them to
strengthen the Taliban - the Taliban's ideology
itself is a strong motivating force.
At
the same time, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have
focused on sharpening the divide between the West
and Islam - as in bin Laden's latest tape, where
he reminds the Muslim world that by withdrawing
funds from the Hamas-led government in Palestine,
the West is showing its grudge against Islam in
general. In this way, al-Qaeda attracts both human
and material resources for its war against the
West.
In terms of the Taliban-led
insurgency, its financial sources remain highly
secretive. It is believed to be supported by
various dubious sources, including the opium
trade, yet observers point out that to finance an
operation of the present scale for several months
could only be done by states.
This is a
universal law of resistance movements: once they
gain a certain critical mass, they generate more
support from regional players. The Taliban are
fast approaching that position.
Syed
Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia
Times Online. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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