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3 Taliban line up the heavy
artillery By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - The battle lines have
been drawn on the Afghan chessboard for what is
likely to be a decisive confrontation between
foreign forces and the Taliban-led tribal
resistance. Both sides have fine-tuned their
strategies, have engaged their pawns, and are
poised for action.
The Taliban's efforts
are focused on next spring, after the harsh winter
weather eases, while North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
(NATO) forces aim to "nip
this evil in the bud", using the province of
Kandahar as their strategic base.
From
there, they want to contain and encircle the
Taliban in their bases all over southwestern
Afghanistan, according to a source familiar with
NATO who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition
of anonymity.
Central to this plan is the
use of air power, even though the Taliban have
come down from the mountains and entrenched
themselves in civilian populations in carefully
chosen pockets. They also have a headquarters in
the rugged mountains of Baghran Valley in Helmand
province.
To date, the Taliban have mostly
engaged their pawns against NATO, with key leaders
based safely in the tribal belt between Pakistan
and Afghanistan. Once the final push starts,
though, they will move to the fringes of the
southwestern Pashtun heartland, Baghran, in
preparation for the removal of President Hamid
Karzai's administration in Kabul.
However,
NATO spokesman Mark Laity does not agree with this
assessment. "Their [Taliban] intent was to hold
the Panjwayee [district of Kandahar province] as a
necessary part of their plan to encircle or take
Kandahar city. In Helmand [province] they
certainly intended to take Sangin, Musa Qala and
Nowzad in the north and Garmsir in the south, with
the desire to disrupt and isolate Lashkhar Gah
[the capital of Helmand province]. In all of these
respects, they failed," Laity told Asia Times
Online.
The fact remains, though, that
while Taliban and NATO forces have confronted each
other in various districts, there has been no
serious Taliban move for a mass mobilization - as
stated, all of the top Taliban commanders are
tucked away in the border area with Pakistan, or
even in that country.
Maulana Jalaluddin
Haqqani, head of the Taliban's military operations
in Afghanistan, is in the Pakistani tribal area of
North Waziristan - a virtually independent region
in Taliban hands. The one-legged former Taliban
intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah is also in
Pakistani territory, shuttling between South
Waziristan tribal area and border areas near
Pakistan's Balochistan province and southwestern
Afghanistan.
Haqqani and Dadullah, on the
instructions of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, are
talking to tribespeople in southwestern and
southeastern Afghanistan to smooth the path for
the Taliban taking control. The Taliban are
pledging to share everything with the tribes,
including land, power and resources.
This
process is still ongoing and, according to people
close to the Taliban, once it is completed the
Taliban will call for a full mobilization of
troops and Mullah Omar will go to Baghran to
command them personally in the push to Kandahar
and ultimately Kabul.
Legendary former
Afghan premier and mujahideen Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
who operates near the Pakistani side of the Afghan
Kunar Valley, has become involved in his own
agenda, causing a bone of contention between the
Taliban and Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan
(HIA). Hekmatyar has been considered an important
player in the Taliban-led insurgency.
Hekmatyar has steadily regrouped his men,
from within Parliament to the mountain vastness of
Afghanistan. Most of the bureaucracy in
southeastern Afghanistan, including Paktia,
Paktika, Khost, Kunar, Nanaghar, Logar and Ghazni,
is dominated by former HIA members who remain in
contact with Hekmatyar.
At the same time,
Hekmatyar has successfully rallied his guerrillas
around Jalalabad, Khost, Kunar and Paktia.
However, Hekmatyar's ties with such people as Gul
Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar, and
previous association with Karzai stop him adopting
an all-out offensive. (Hekmatyar has on several
occasions been wooed by Karzai to help break the
Afghan deadlock.)
It appears that
Hekmatyar, well aware that in the eventuality of
an armed national uprising or Taliban victory he
will play second fiddle to Mullah Omar, is
jockeying to be in a position to help foreign
forces achieve a safe exit from Afghanistan, in
return for which he would want the leading
political role.
In these circumstances,
once an uprising began, Hekmatyar would be in a
straight race with Mullah Omar to reach Kabul and
seize control of it.
In the beginning
there was Baghran Once all issues between
tribal leaders and the Taliban have been hammered
out, Mullah Omar will move to Baghran, the
northernmost district in Helmand province. It is
the last Pashtun-speaking district in the
southwest before one gets to the neighboring
Persian-speaking western provinces, such as Ghor.
Baghran has always been an important hub
for the Taliban, serving as a rallying point to
mend differences between Tajik commanders and
pro-Taliban Pashtun commanders.
After the
fall of the Taliban in 2001, Baghran remained one
of the few strongholds of the Taliban and all top
commanders, including
