Pakistan reaches into
Afghanistan By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
PASHTUN HEARTLAND, Pakistan and
Afghanistan - The Taliban-led rebellion in April
marking the beginning of the spring offensive
against Kabul, oriented with Iraq's skillful urban
guerrilla war, has been so strong that there is
even talk in Kabul of the Taliban returning "any
time soon".
While the Taliban obviously
take all the credit for the stiff fight they are
giving foreign forces in the country, an
underlying feature of the resistance can't be
ignored: neighboring countries, especially
Pakistan, never have, and never will, sit idly by
to allow
events
to take their natural course.
Asia Times
Online investigations on the ground in Afghanistan
and Pakistan reveal that much spade work has
already been done to help craft an insurgency that
best suits Pakistan's national interests.
Talks like the Taliban ... Qari
Mohammed Yousuf is a purported spokesman of the
Taliban. He roams around the Chaman and Quetta
regions in Pakistan's Balochistan province, where
he readily meets with the media and hands out
views on the Taliban. He has a local
mobile-telephone number and is responsive to
correspondents' calls to give his version of
Taliban events.
Yet prominent Taliban
commanders and affiliates who pledge their
allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar
noticeably keep their distance from Qari Yousuf.
"Why are his [Qari Yousuf's] calls not
traced and why is he not arrested? If I tried to
cross the border and go to Quetta I would be
immediately arrested," Raza Bacha, a newly famed
Taliban commander active in Helmand province in
Afghanistan, told Asia Times Online.
The
story of Mullah Obaidullah, a purported Taliban
commander at Spin Boldek in Afghanistan, is as
curious as that of Qari Yousuf. Obaidullah appears
to have a relatively small command, with most of
his forces made up of young men from Afghan
refugee camps in Pakistan. They are each paid
about Rs10,000 (US$167) to take part in operations
running for a maximum of one month. Yet, as with
Qari Yousuf, the Taliban openly distance
themselves from Mullah Obaidullah.
The
Taliban leadership is known to be wary about the
mushroom growth of such "independent" commanders
all over Afghanistan, and is taking rapid steps to
reorganize its cadre. Taliban circles are
convinced that the Pakistani establishment is
again actively pushing its agenda.
"They
never take directives from the Taliban's
leadership. Rather, they receive their
instructions [and money] from the Pakistani
establishment," commented Raza Bacha on the
various commanders active in southwestern
Afghanistan.
People such as Raza Bacha
believe this is a direct bid by Islamabad to
establish its influence in the Pashtun heartlands
of Afghanistan - but this time not through the
Taliban but through a new force that will be 100%
under Pakistan's control.
Pakistan
supported the Taliban movement that took over
Kabul in 1996 as it wanted to see the end of
destabilizing warlordism, beside establish a very
Pakistan-friendly government.
British
intelligence, while agreeing that Pakistan is
meddling, sees the country's involvement in
Afghanistan somewhat differently. Last week, the
day Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf
arrived in London for talks, a leaked memo linked
to Britain's Security Intelligence Service accused
his spies of "supporting terrorism and extremism".
The Defense Ministry document, obtained by
the British Broadcasting Corp, said the West had
turned a blind eye toward "the indirect protection
of al-Qaeda and promotion of terrorism" by
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. The memo
called for dismantling the ISI and ending army
rule. The army, led by Musharraf, is "indirectly
supporting the Taliban through the ISI", it said.
Musharraf and his aides rejected that accusation,
though it is a fact that the ISI initially helped
create the Taliban.
Looks like the
Taliban ... The ISI's main concern at the
time was to counter the Northern Alliance and
India's hand in Afghanistan, rather than any
obsession with the Taliban and its hardline
interpretation of Islam.
Soon after the
Taliban's retreat from Kabul and Kandahar in 2001,
ISI officials tracked a few harmless clerics to
Peshawar, Pakistan. They were associated with the
Taliban regime as minor central or provincial
ministers and had never been a part of the
Taliban's fighting corps. In Pakistan, they were
simply looking for food and shelter.
The
ISI gathered them into a group called the Jamiatul
Khudamul Koran and they all rejected Mullah Omar's
policy of harboring Osama bin Laden and his
jihadist training camps. They received training in
Parachanar, a town near the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border in North-West Frontier Province, from where
they launched operations into Afghanistan against
foreign forces. They were pure ISI proxies, and
never a part of the Taliban. Nevertheless, most of
them eventually left the organization and did join
the Taliban as true members.
Similarly,
Jaishul Muslim was launched by the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the ISI to break
Mullah Omar's iron grip over the Taliban. Jaishul
Muslim established a network in Afghanistan.
However, many of those who had been given a lot of
money and training then broke ranks and melted
into the Taliban.
Similarly, a group of
"good" Taliban was pioneered jointly by the ISI
and the CIA in Quetta, with members mostly drawn
from towns in the Chaman-Spin Boldek area. A team
of former Taliban leaders led by one Mullah Abdul
Razzaq, for the first time, negotiated with the US
on "any terms" that would bring about a truce.
Without Mullah Omar, though, the initiative was
doomed from the start.
Many independent
observers have given their view of the situation
in Afghanistan. An international think-tank, the
Senlis Council, which has covered Afghanistan
extensively, asserted that the Taliban regained
control of the southern half of the country
largely because of misguided international
counter-narcotics and military policies that are
losing hearts and minds.
This is true in
part. Southwestern Afghanistan is largely beyond
the writ of the Kabul administration, there should
be no two opinions on that. But not all of the
success can be attributed to the Taliban alone.
In visiting kilis (villages) from
Chaman to Spin Boldek and from Zhob to Zabul, this
correspondent saw night messages posted on walls
and in mosques asking people to stand up against
foreign forces. The addressees in all the messages
were the "mujahideen".
"Yes, all former
mujahideen are now active," said Said Rasool, a
cleric in the Afghan province of Zabul and a
member of Hekmatyar's group. "They command their
small groups and their activities are sporadic
[and] isolated and do not have any coordination
with any bigger command structure, like the
Taliban or the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. They are stand-alone - they
carry out actions and then go back to their
places. This is in fact a mass mutiny against
foreign forces."
It is worth repeating
that developments in Afghanistan are very much in
line with the historic traditions of Afghan
society (although the order of events changes).
This growth of small warlords and commanders, as
happened against the Soviets, is an example.
In 1979, when Soviet forces entered
Afghanistan, the mujahideen were divided into 28
groups. When Pakistani and Iranian intelligence
overtly became involved in Afghan operations, the
28 groups were reduced to 13, of which seven were
pro-Iranian and headquartered in Tehran and six
were pro-Pakistan and headquartered in Peshawar
and Quetta.
Afghanistan is at the point
now that, apart from the Taliban, independent
commanders have emerged. Nearly two centuries ago,
they were sufficiently organized to drive out the
Soviets.
Now, in their new struggle
against foreign forces, they could evolve into a
separate movement fueled by Iran or Pakistan, or
both, or turn into an independent movement.
Alternatively, as in the recent past, they could
melt into the Taliban.
Whichever way it
develops, this force will have an important
bearing on Afghanistan's future - and, as
important, its neighboring countries.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia
Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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