Taliban welcome back an old
friend By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Like a voice from the grave,
legendary Afghan mujahideen leader Jalaluddin
Haqqani has emerged from years of silence to
boldly launch the Taliban-led spring offensive in
Afghanistan, at the same time burying any doubts
of a split between his coalition of resistance
groups and Mullah Omar's Taliban.
In a
video message released last week and which is only
now coming into wider circulation, Haqqani,
speaking in his trademark low-pitched voice and
with his hair dyed red with henna, called on the
people of Afghanistan "to stand up against the
US-led forces in Afghanistan and drive them out".
The release of the message by Haqqani, who
has a bounty on his
head
as one of the US's most-wanted men, coincides with
an important North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) meeting in Bucharest, Romania, this weekend
at which the divided alliance
will try to hammer
out a more coherent strategy in the war in
Afghanistan which many analysts believe it is
losing.
As Haqqani speaks on the video, he
is accompanied by a background song which pledges
his allegiance to Mullah Omar, laying to rest any
doubts that he has set himself up as a rival to
the mainstream Taliban.
Along with his son
Sirajuddin, Jalaluddin Haqqani has built up a
well-organized group, known as the Haqqani
Network, with roots in Pakistan's tribal areas,
that, now firmly allied with Mullah Omar, will
pose a dangerous challenge to the coalition forces
in Afghanistan.
Haqqani soundly dismissed
any notion - as touted by senior NATO officials -
that the Taliban were weakened and might forego
their spring offensive. "All 37 allies [in NATO]
will be humiliated and driven out of Afghanistan -
jihad is compulsory and will continue until the
end of time; we are without resources, but we have
the support of God."
Haqqani said the
Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan had come
up with new plans to fight against NATO, but these
did not have any room for reconciliation. "We are
geared for war," Haqqani stated.
"[President George W] Bush and his allies
have decided to kill us or arrest us - they
consider us as weak and think of themselves as all
powerful. They think we have no place left in the
world to survive - they think we are destined
either to die or to be captured ... they think
they are wealthy nations, with their money and
with half of the world behind them.
"They
think they can enslave poor Afghans - bomb us with
their planes and gunship helicopters - they think
they have everything and we are voiceless - the
media are with them and they belittle our
resistance. We kill 80 and they report two or one.
I promise the Afghan nation that soon we will be
victorious," said Haqqani.
The long speech
by the Pashtun leader, who made his name fighting
against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s
and remains the most-respected tribal figure in
southeastern Afghanistan, is the most
sophisticated yet of the Taliban's presentations
to Pashtun people.
Copies of Haqqani's
speech have spread all over eastern Afghanistan
and are available in various formats, including on
cassette tape and through cell phone downloads.
After being silent for so long, and having been
reported dead on numerous occasions, the impact of
people listening to Haqqani is immense and will
undoubtedly work as a galvanizing force among
Pashtuns.
This especially as NATO has in
recent months worked hard to portray the Taliban
as a spent force consisting of a bunch of naive
young lads with no credible leader left.
"They projected the rumor that Jalaluddin
Haqqani had died in Dubai [in the United Arab
Emirates]. I am neither a shopkeeper nor a trader
that I would travel to Dubai. Neither am I a
politician who roams all around the world ... the
Americans thought that with their developed
technology they could plant the news of my death
in the media. But now the media are realizing
their lies to demoralize the mujahideen," Haqqani
said.
A graphic part of Haqqani's video
shows a suicide operation carried out by a
Turk-German named Cuneyt Ciftci, also known as
Saad Abu Furkan. He is seen in the video blowing
himself up in a delivery truck near a US base in
the Sabari district of Khost province in
Afghanistan on March 3. According to Western press
reports, two soldiers with the NATO-led
International Security Assistance Force and two
Afghan workers were killed and six others wounded.
But the video claims the killing of 63 people.
The
Taliban's new battle The inclusion in
the video of this suicide attack - one of dozens
that has taken place in the country in recent
years - is important as it shows an unprecedented
level of planning and organization not normally
associated with the Taliban.
Footage shows
a professionally drawn map, like an architect's,
of a compound of the Sabari district headquarters.
There is detail of the boundary walls, the
protective inner walls, entry points, rooms,
backyard and front portions of the newly built
structure. Clearly the Taliban had contacts among
the laborers or contractors. There are pictures of
Taliban guerrillas sitting around the map
discussing their plan to launch the suicide bomber
in an explosive-laden vehicle.
This is a
far cry from usual grainy Afghan videos of
ambushes on military convoys in the mountains.
Haqqani's video is reminiscent of those made by
the Iraqi resistance in 2004-05, when operations
were meticulously planned by former officers of
Saddam Hussein's army and executed with precision.
In the many years since being ousted in
2001, the Taliban have had numerous ups and downs,
from the successful spring offensive of 2006 to
the failed mass uprising of 2007. Now, the Taliban
have adopted a policy of preserving their strength
by only hitting specific targets, rather than
waste their resources in multiple direct
confrontations with NATO forces.
The
Taliban have also opened up a new front based in
Khyber Agency in Pakistan just across the border
from Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, as NATO has
beefed up its presence in the traditional Taliban
strongholds of Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Kunar
provinces.
Last week, NATO announced the
opening of an intelligence center near the Torkham
border post, at the crossroad of Khyber Agency and
Nangarhar province. But it was not able to thwart
the biggest-ever guerrilla operation against a US
base in the province a few days later. More than
200 Taliban participated in an overnight
hit-and-run operation. Taliban sources claimed the
killing of 70 US soldiers, but there was no
confirmation of that figure from NATO or any other
independent source.
According to the
video, the Taliban will use as much foreign
expertise as possible, as well as tapping into
tribal elders and their supporters. This means
that mainstream Taliban commanders like Mullah
Beradar from southwestern Afghanistan and
commanders who are allied with the Taliban but who
keep their own identities, like Anwarul Haq
Mujahahid from Nangarhar and Uzbek and Arab
commanders, will join hands for a coherent overall
strategy. This of course includes Haqqani and his
considerable following.
A relatively new
string in the Taliban's bow is the reliance on
thousands of Pakistani and other jihadis put out
of "work" since the struggle in Kashmir
de-escalated. They are well trained, and as they
did in Indian-administered Kashmir and other parts
of India, they can be expected to target key
infrastructure and high-profile targets, such as
government buildings.
This year's suicide
attack by the Haqqani Network on the Serina Hotel
in Kabul, in which several people, including
foreigners, were killed, and the attack in Khost
on March 3 shown in the video, indicate one key
direction in which the Taliban-led insurgency is
headed.
Syed Saleem
Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan
Bureau Chief. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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will try to hammer
out a more coherent strategy in the war in
Afghanistan which many analysts believe it is
losing. 
