Push comes to shove in
Afghanistan By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - In what has been
described as "a good public relations exercise",
Prince William, second in line to the British
throne, has visited Afghanistan to meet British
troops in Kandahar province.
The brief
unannounced trip is indeed headline-grabbing, but
it cannot disguise the fact that the Western
coalition has a monumental battle on its hands
against the Taliban-led insurgency, and the first
round has already begun.
Surprise
Taliban attacks from the northern Afghan province of Kapisa
(the Tagab Valley) to the southern Helmand
districts and from Kunar to Nangarhar provinces
have conclusively engaged the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) in its
biggest
operations since the deployment
of its forces in Afghanistan in 2001.
In a telling development,
several hundred US Marines this week
engaged the Taliban in Helmand province
near Garmser, the farthest south American troops
have operated in that province.
The
Taliban rule the countryside here all the way to
the Pakistan border. The assault on Garmser was
the first offensive by the 2,300 marines who
arrived from the United States this month to
bolster mainly British forces in the area.
This trend of deploying additional troops
in direct confrontations is expected to continue,
even at the risk of higher casualties, in
provinces such as Nangarhar, Ghazni, Kunar,
Helmand and Kandahar, where the Taliban have
established strongholds.
This follows a
recent NATO summit at which the member countries
agreed to reconcile their differences over
Afghanistan and commit more troops, especially to
the south, where previously many NATO members were
not prepared to send troops.
A new generation of
warriors The Taliban anticipated this
"surge" a la the policy of troop reinforcements in
Iraq and adjusted accordingly.
Having had
several key commanders killed by NATO forces last
year, the Taliban's fight has been supplemented by
a new generation of warriors who are the sons of
war legends dating to the resistance to the Soviet
occupation in the 1980s. These leaders have
autonomous command, but are allied with the
Taliban.
Local warlords in northeastern
Kapisa province belonging to veteran Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami have already started
guerrilla operations against NATO troops. New
commanders have emerged, though, including Anwar
ul-Haq Mujahid in eastern Nangarhar province and
Sirajuddin Haqqani in Ghazni, Kunar, Paktia,
Paktika and Khost area. Kabul, too, as happened on
Sunday, will come under increased attack - there
was another shootout with militants in the capital
on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a group
belonging to Anwar ul-Haq carried out a suicide
attack on a pro-government tribal jirga
(council) in the Khogiani district of Nangarhar
province. Khogiani is the native town of Anwar
ul-Haq's late father and mujahideen leader against
the Soviets, Moulvi Younus Khalis. Khalis had
announced his decision to battle against NATO
forces in 2005, but he died a year later and his
son has now taken over command. His main
stronghold is the Tora Bora mountains and
Khogiani. His group says it will spread the
insurgency to the provincial capital of Jalalabad
this year.
Sirajuddin Haqqani's network
has already blown the starting whistle for the
spring offensive with the brazen attack on the
Afghan national day parade in Kabul on Sunday.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is the son of famed mujahideen
commander against the Soviets, Maualana Jalaluddin
Haqqani.
Consolidation in the tribal
areas Pakistani Taliban commander
Baitullah Mehsud, based in the South Waziristan
tribal area, has ended peace talks with the
Islamabad government, just a week after ordering a
ceasefire against security forces. A spokesman for
Mehsud is reported to have said the talks broke
down because the government refused to withdraw
troops from the tribal areas, the strategic
backyard of the Taliban's insurgency in
Afghanistan.
Under a well-orchestrated
program, the Taliban "switched off" their attacks
on politically vulnerable Pakistan this month and
they patiently allowed the Western-sponsored game
of carrots and sticks involving tribal peace
accords to play out, even letting anti-Taliban
politicians into their region. For the Taliban, it
was just a matter of buying time until the end of
April to put the finishing touches to their spring
campaign in Afghanistan.
For the past few
weeks, the Taliban have been flexing their muscles
against "vice" in Mohmand Agency and in Bajaur
Agency. They have executed robbers and rescued two
abducted Sikhs from gangs of criminals who were
demanding ransom for their release. The abductors
were then executed. Importantly, the Taliban have
established parallel administrations which have
undermined moves by secular political parties to
activate local tribal networks against the
Taliban.
In North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul
Bahadur, a Taliban commander, supported the tribal
security forces (Khasadar) on the issue of their
salary and negotiated on their behalf with the
political agent representing the central
government.
Tribal elders, the Pakistani
security forces and the political parties watched
these developments with some surprise, compounded
when the the Taliban suddenly set a deadline for
the withdrawal of security forces from the area,
and then announced the suspension of peace accords
signed only a few days earlier.
The timing
of this suspension coincides with talks between
the dominant party in the ruling government
coalition, the Pakistan People's Party, and
another key party, the Pakistan Muslim League
Nawaz group (PML-N), in Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates.
These talks broke down on the
issue of the judiciary: the PML-N wants judges
dismissed last year by President Pervez Musharraf
restored. It says if it does not get its way, it
will pull its members from the cabinet.
The Taliban sense that political
uncertainty in the capital will render the
government incapable of pursuing military options
in the tribal areas.
The young chief
minister of North-West Frontier Province, Amir
Haider Khan Hotti, who used his family's rapport
with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to muster
support behind the peace accords, besides the
British Foreign Office, appealed in a state of
shock with the Taliban not to take hasty
decisions.
But the peace agreements and
their breach are a part of the Taliban's broader
regional designs.
From February to April,
under the garb of various ceasefires, the Taliban
have solidified their supply lines from Pakistan
into Afghanistan. Hundreds of fresh recruits have
been able to pass unimpeded from the cities to the
tribal areas, where they received brief training
before being launched into battle.
Hand-in-hand with the suspension of the
peace accords, the Taliban are stepping up
pressure on the government to withdraw all troops
from the tribal areas. If this happens, and it is
possible, the Taliban will have a free hand to
expand their training camps for fresh recruits.
US President George W Bush could not have
summed up the situation better. In comments on
Tuesday, he admitted the United States faced a
"long struggle" in Afghanistan against a "very
resilient enemy" intent on bringing the Taliban
back to power.
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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engaged the Taliban in Helmand province
near Garmser, the farthest south American troops
have operated in that province. 
