Archive for the 'Taliban' Category

In Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province we discussed the beginnings of the Operation Azada Wosa (“Stay Free” in the local Pashto language) by the U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province.  The operation is going forward with success without serious Marines Corps casualties thus far.

The Taliban aren’t giving up without a fight. In groups of three and four, they open fire at the Marines with assault rifles or rockets, then flee. Sometimes they attempt infantry maneuvers, trying to draw the Marines in one direction with a feint, then attacking from another direction. “They were tactically sound,” Moder says. “It shows that they’ve done it before, that they might have been trained.”

Moder estimates his men have killed 30 Taliban fighters. Maj. Tom Clinton, executive officer of the Marines’ infantry battalion, could not confirm Taliban casualties, but he says the Marines are getting reports that wounded Afghan men are seeking medical treatment in Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah.

So far, U.S. casualties have been relatively light. Through Thursday afternoon, no Marines had been killed in the operation, although two died last month when a roadside bomb hit their supply convoy.

Six Marines had been injured, none critically: One was shot in the foot, perhaps accidentally; one suffered a concussion from a Taliban rocket or mortar attack; one was bitten by a dog; one fell from a roof and broke an ankle; two broke their legs; and two more sprained their ankles.

The nagging injuries and intense heat are sometimes a more immediate threat than the enemy itself, troops say. “Imagine carrying 75 to 120 pounds of gear and playing a football game where each quarter lasts three hours,” says 1st Lt. Mark Matzke, 21, of Arlington, Va.

Keeping them supplied with water, ready-to-eat meals and ammunition is a full-time operation. From Camp Dwyer, a handpicked team of two dozen Marines runs convoys to infantrymen in the field.

“We wanted to be called ‘The Nomads’ but they gave us ‘Wagon Wheel’ ” instead, says Gunnery Sgt. Javier Duarte, 34, of Miami. Before every convoy, Duarte usually gives the Wagon Wheel team a profanity-laden pep talk, then introduces the chaplain for a prayer.

The convoy heads outside Camp Dwyer’s concertina wire and into the desert on the way to the Marines fighting on the outskirts of Garmser. Along the way, they pass Afghans working in the fields, harvesting the poppy that could be turned into heroin and sold in Europe and the United States.

Back at Camp Dwyer, a special team of combat surgeons, doctors, nurses and medics plays cards and lounges in scarce shade, relieved that light casualties mean their skills haven’t been needed. Some of the doctors have trained in emergency rooms in Los Angeles and Baltimore, treating victims of gangland shootings.

The picture below is taken from DVIDS.  Click for high resolution version of the photograph.

Marines with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO – International Security Assistance Force conduct operations in Garmsir District, Helmand province, Afghanistan.

We recently discussed the first combat engagement of the Marines in Afghanistan, involving a town named Garmser.  The Marines are fully prepared and will push the operation through to success.  However, false doctrine dies hard in war, and the problems associated with the Afghanistan campaign become clearer with passing time and attention.  The Canadians are concerned about the recent addition of the Marines.

Bush has come to shove in southern Afghanistan (Editorial note: This is a pitiful pun – TCJ). The U.S. commander-in-chief has sent in the marines.

It’s reported that this has made NATO forces operating there uneasy.

It’s not that the Canadians and British and the rest of them don’t appreciate the extra manpower the 3,500 U.S. marines will provide, or the extra aircraft and light armoured vehicles they’ve brought.

But the other NATO forces have been told they have to learn to operate in what’s called “the American way” alongside the marines, and they’re not quite sure how this is going to make the job of winning hearts and minds any easier when the Americans have left in seven months when their “mini-surge” is over …

The United Nations envoy, Kai Eide, has just warned that everything won in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was overthrown seven years ago is in danger of being lost because of the fragmented international approach to securing and rebuilding the country and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The president himself had to be hustled away from the scene of an attack by insurgents near his palace in Kabul on Sunday while all those Afghan soldiers ran for cover.

And in the eastern part of the country yesterday, 19 members of a poppy-eradication team under NATO guard were killed in an attack.

Gen. Dan McNeill is the U.S. army officer who commands NATO troops in Afghanistan, and it’s he who says things must be done there, now, the American way.

Specifically, he wants the Canadians and other forces to deploy their soldiers for longer periods, make more effort to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies and get more involved in reconstruction and humanitarian work.

The marines are under McNeill’s direct command and seem to have the same gung-ho approach that they exhibited in Iraq, where many of them served. McNeill himself has said they’re in the southern part of the country to “stir things up.”

In March last year, about 100 marines, it was reported, were sent packing for responding to an ambush using “Iraq rules” that violated the less violent rules of engagement that were supposed to be in place in Afghanistan.

It looks as if the Afghan war, at least for the next seven months, is to be played by Iraq rules, which don’t seem to have endeared a lot of people in that country to the American invaders.

Restoring security and rebuilding a country is a long, slow process. First, a region has to be cleared of insurgent fighters, then it has to be held to provide the security under which the third stage, rebuilding, can take place.

The marines might be in Afghanistan long enough to rout the insurgents where they are concentrated.

They might even be able to stop or reduce the traffic in fighters, arms, opium and money.

But when they have gone, someone else is going to have to hold what they’ve gained and someone else is going to carry on with the rebuilding.

When the marine mini-surge was announced in January, a Pentagon spokesman said it was to be “a one-time deal — that’s it.”

Maybe we should hope it’s not. Maybe we should hope that the Americans will be persuaded — if only because their allies aren’t up to the job — to stay long enough to finish what, after all, they started.

The Captain’s Journal has been critical of General McNeill, but we appreciate his sentiments and applaud his perspective with the deployment of the Marines.  He has a tough row to hoe because of the strategic differences within the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Canadians seem to assume that they couldn’t adopt a posture like the U.S. Marines on the one hand (such that they would be rather lost without the Marines in place), but on the other hand, seem to criticize the Marine posture as if it somehow cannot be successful because of failing to win hearts and minds (which begs the question why the Canadians want the Marines to stay?).  The Canadian narrative is so confused and contradictory that it brings into question just what the Canadians themselves would propose.

That question is also recently answered for us.  The Canadians want to talk to the Taliban.

Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban for the first time, military and diplomatic officials say, as Canada softens its ban on speaking with the insurgents.

After years of rejecting any contact with the insurgents, Canadian officials say those involved with the mission are now rethinking the policy in hopes of helping peace efforts led by the Afghan government.

The Canadian work on political solutions follows two separate tracks: tactical discussions at a local level in Kandahar, and strategic talks through the Kabul government and its allies. Neither type of negotiation appears to have made progress so far, though efforts are still in the early stages.

The Afghanistan campaign has faltered and proceeded haltingly when negotiations are pursued with the Taliban, most recently when the British used this approach in Musa Qala.  What affect has this approach had on the recent Pakistani negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban?  In this instance, Baitullah Mehsud has used the stand down in combat operations to his advantage.

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.

It should be pointed out again just who the U.S. engaged in negotiations in the Anbar province.  The peace accord involved the tribes and muktars, not the more religiously motivated al Qaeda or Ansar al Sunna fighters.  Again it bears repeating: negotiations were never engaged with al Qaeda.  Not a single time.  Negotiations with the Taliban will not redound to success in the campaign any more than they would have with al Qaeda.  Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan doesn’t refer to the Taliban.  It refers to everyone but the Taliban.

It should also be remembered that between the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only province where major combat operations have ceased and the enemy has been vanquished is the Anbar Province where the Marines were assigned.

Even if confused by the more aggressive posture of the Marines, the Canadians appear to be concerned not about the fate of the Taliban, but of themselves.  The Marines might have a long term Afghanistan presence in their future.  A one-time seven month deployment may not be nearly enough.

In The Taliban and Distributed Operations we pointed to evolving tactics of Taliban fighters, saying:

This tactic of forcing decision-making down within the organization, dispatching smaller, self-sufficient groups of fighters, and maintaining looser communication is perfectly adapted to the Afghanistan countryside, which is less about MOUT (military operations on urban terrain) than in Iraq.  This guerrilla approach to warfare requires aggressive offensive operations to root them out in their hiding places.  It also requires that U.S. forces participate in the chase.  Fire and melt-away must become less attractive to the Taliban.

It is partially for this reason The Captain’s Journal has claimed that there would be a so-called spring offensive by the Taliban (which U.S. Army intelligence and command in Afghanistan has repeatedly denied that this offensive would occur).  When NATO speaks of a spring offensive, they are talking tactical maneuvers and larger scale kinetic fights.  When we speak of a spring offensive, we are talking about guerrilla tactics – small teams, fire and melt away, etc.

Antonio Giustozzi is a research fellow at the London School of Economics who has studied the evolution of the Taliban since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, and he recently reiterated the same points that we made.

“Today, the Taliban are essentially a guerrilla movement, whereas in the 1990s — even in the early days of 1994 or 1995 — they were never something like that,” Giustozzi says. “Even when they were fighting for power, they were not using these guerrilla tactics. They were more like an army moving along the highways and trying to occupy the provincial centers. In that sense, the main difference is the way they operate. It is not so easy to say what their actual aims are.” 

But he says that, too, might change.

“Essentially, they say what they want is just to get the foreigners out of the country,” Giustozzi explains. “But even in the early days, they were claiming that their main aim was to pacify the country and bring back law and order — not to become a kind of government which would stay in power indefinitely, which, of course, proved not to be correct once they actually took Kabul.”

As for ordinary Taliban foot soldiers, recent research suggests that the Taliban has been recruiting a younger generation of Afghans to carry out suicide attacks and to fight within its rank and file.

Working for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Christine Fair last year studied the phenomenon of suicide bombings across Afghanistan. Her work led to important conclusions not only about suicide bombers, but also about the emergence of this new generation of Taliban fighters.

“The important big picture is Afghans like to tell you that this is a Pakistani phenomenon,” Fair says. “As we all know, there is Pakistani involvement. There is recruitment across the border. In the tribal areas, madrasahs figure prominently. But even if Pakistan went away, you still have a largely Afghan-driven insurgency.”

Fair describes the situation as a “cross-border phenomenon,” and says that “the insurgency is not going to be resolved if you think that the problem stops either at one side or the other of the Afghan border.”

Distributed operations include the use of suicide bombers, which we the Taliban have begun to see as their “smart bomb.”  While some of the ISAF generals have ridiculed the notion of an increase in Taliban violence, the top general in Afghanistan, Maj.Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, has gone on record saying that he expects increased insurgent activity.

Schloesser says violence “may well reach a higher level than it did in 2007,” now seen as the bloodiest year since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. The United Nations says more than 8,000 people, mostly rebels, died in insurgency-related violence last year.

Schloesser says the rebels are no military match for NATO forces.

Instead, they are increasingly directing attacks against civilians and Afghan police and security forces protecting development projects.

“They are going for what is an easier target,” said Schloesser, who heads the 101st Airborne Division. He took up his command in Afghanistan on April 10.

With the indigenous insurgency and the fact that deployment of Taliban fighters is likely complete, focus on the border may miss the point.  Force projection is needed inside Afghanistan, and the guerrilla fighters must be chased in order to create the security for the creation of infrastructure.

In Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan we set out the intended strategy of attacking NATO supply lines through the Khyber pass.  This Al Jazeera video does a fairly good job of laying out the strategy and summarizing the importance of this plan to date.

This strategy is, according to an Asia Times report, in tatters, and according to a Globe and Mail report, meeting resistance.  The Asia Times report is lengthy but gives us a glimpse into the treachery involved  along the Khyner pass from a trader named Namdar, who apparently sold the Taliban out for $150 000 right around the time of the March 20 attack on 40 gasoline tankers.

Unlike in previous Taliban attacks in the area, local paramilitary forces chased the Taliban after this incident. The Taliban retaliated and five soldiers were killed, but then their ammunition ran out and they surrendered the two workers and tried to flee, but they were blocked.

The Taliban called in reinforcements, but so did the paramilitary troops, and a stalemate was reached. Eventually, the Taliban managed to capture a local political agent (representing the central government) and they used him as a hostage to allow their escape.

They retreated to their various safe houses, but to their horror, paramilitary troops were waiting for them and scores were arrested, and their arms caches seized. A number of Taliban did, however, manage to escape once word got out of what was happening.

The only person aware of the safe houses was Namdar, their supposed protector: they had been sold out.

Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdarbroke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, including Ustad Yasir, should surrender or face a “massacre”, as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Namdar said that he had the full weight of the security forces behind him, and he did not fear any suicide attack.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban immediately called an emergency shura in North Waziristan to review the situation. Al-Qaeda’s investigations revealed that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence had got to Namdarand paid him $150,000 in local currency.

The immediate result is that Taliban operations in Khyber Agency have been cut off. This in itself is a major setback, as the attacks on supply lines had hit a raw NATO nerve.

In the broader context, Namdar’s betrayal vividly illustrates the dangers of traitors within the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The fear is that the various peace deals being signed now between the Islamabad government and selected tribal leaders could lead to a whole new batch of betrayals.

Namdar is a pawn, and the real power according to the Globe and Mail report is a tribal leader who owns a local army of fighters.

An Islamist warlord whose fighters are overrunning Pakistan’s famous Khyber Pass area may now be the only force stopping the Taliban from swooping in to cut off this key supply route for NATO in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, said in an interview that he has rebuffed an offer from Pakistan’s Taliban to join them. Although he voiced his disdain for the United States, his independence is likely to be significant for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Khyber agency is a 2,500-square-kilometre district that is part of Pakistan’s tribal belt, and truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through it daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last week, fighting between Mr. Bagh’s men and a pocket of resistance around the town of Jamrut closed the Pak-Afghan highway for several days.

Mr. Bagh’s stronghold, the market town of Bara, is a 30-minute drive from the city-centre of the provincial capital, Peshawar. An escort of his heavily armed followers is needed to reach his fortified compound in the surrounding countryside.

“I’m not the ruler of Khyber, I’m the servant,” said Mr. Bagh, who had an unexpectedly gentle manner, as he relaxed with his Kalashnikov-toting men, drinking tea. “My aim is to finish all social evils.”

There have been repeated entreaties to combine forces from the Pakistani Taliban, who run other parts of the country’s wild northwestern border terrain, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A traditional jirga, a meeting of elders, was held between Lashkar-i-Islam and the Taliban about 40 days ago.

“I told them that what I am doing is enough. It is the right direction. There is no need to join you,” he said.

“The Taliban consists of religious scholars. We are fighters for Islam – laypeople. We don’t have any religious figures in our organization.”

However, he said that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was “wrong” and that U.S. soldiers must leave.

Our assessment is that this is a mixed blessing.  First, Asia Times can give good information, but tends towards exaggeration, and it isn’t likely that the whole strategy of attacking NATO supply lines is in tatters.  Second, before beginning the dances of jubilation over the failure of the Taliban approach, remember that Mangal Bagh is no friend of the U.S.  It is likely that the battles in this area are just beginning.  The Taliban have not typically been inclined to give up after the first battle.

Continued CIA pressure must be brought to bear in this region, in addition to UAV strikes when known Taliban are observed.  This force must be balanced against the need to prevent targeting Mangal’s fighters, even if he is unfriendly to NATO efforts.  For now, at least, he must be considered a friend, even if a tenuous and potentially treacherous one at that.

Prior:

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

The Khyber Pass

Major Niel Smith of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center linked a magnificent study in a Small Wars Journal discussion thread, entitled The Taliban: An Organizational Analysis.  There are many very important observations in this study, and The Captain’s Journal will be drawing lessons from this document in the coming weeks.  However, even great studies can be wrong at points.

On page 65 there is an organizational diagram of the Taliban, showing Mullah Muhammad Omar as being at the head of the “organization,” with Baitullah Mehsud as being somewhere down in the chain of command.  This view of things is dated and doesn’t comport with the more recent evolution of the Taliban.

Baitullah Mehsud is indeed at the head of a conglomeration of Taliban tribes known as Tehrik-i-Taliban.  But Mehsud has a Pakistan-centric focus which angered Mullah Omar and others within the loose Taliban organization.  Baitullah Mehsud is the most powerful man in Waziristan.  Essentially, he is the government.  He should be seen more as an organizational equivalent to Omar, even if ideologically the same.

The earlier reports of Mullah Omar “sacking” Baitullah Mehsud amounted to Omar testing his power, or at least, incorrectly presuming upon his power.  He found out that in fact he didn’t have the authority to pull off such a move, and rather than have an ugly and embarrassing split in the Taliban, an agreement was reached to save face and keep the groups closely aligned and cooperative.

The spokesman denied media reports that the Taliban had expelled Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.

“Baitullah is a Pakistani and we as the Afghan Taliban have nothing to do with his appointment or his expulsion. We did not appoint him and we have not expelled him,” he said.

A spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud has already denied the expulsion report in a Hong Kong magazine and said that the militant leader continued to be the amir of Tehrik-Taliban Pakistan.

“He has not been expelled and he continues to be the amir of Pakistani Taliban,” Baitullah’s spokesman Maulavi Omar said.

The Asia Times Online in a report last week claimed that the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had removed Baitullah from the leadership of the Taliban movement for fighting in Pakistan at the expense of ‘Jihad’ in Afghanistan.

“We have no concern with anybody joining or leaving the Taliban movement in Pakistan. Ours is an Afghan movement and we as a matter of policy do not support militant activity in Pakistan,” the Taliban spokesman said.

“Had he been an Afghan we would have expelled him the same way we expelled Mansoor Dadullah for disobeying the orders of Mullah Omar. But Baitullah is a Pakistani Talib and whatever he does is his decision. We have nothing to do with it,” Mr Mujahid maintained.

“We have nothing to do with anybody’s appointment or expulsion in the Pakistani Taliban movement,” he insisted.

Baitullah, who has been accused of plotting the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto, told Al Jazeera in an interview that he had taken baya’h (oath of allegiance) to Mullah Muhammad Omar and obeyed his orders.

But the Taliban spokesman said the oath of allegiance did not mean that Pakistani militants were under direct operational control of Mullah Omar.

“There are mujahideen in Iraq who have taken baya’h to Mullah Omar and there are mujahideen in Saudi Arabia who have taken baya’h to him. So taking baya’h does not mean that Mullah Omar has direct operational control over them,” the spokesman said.

There are two lessons.  First, the Taliban cannot be neatly grouped in boxes on an organizational chart.  The structure is too fluid and amorphous to be amenable to Western ideas of charts.  Second, even the best analyses can be dated, even if still useful.

The Times gives us an update on the British plan to scale back violence against the Taliban.

BRITISH troops are to scale back attacks on the Taliban after killing 7,000 insurgents in two years of conflict, defence sources said last week …

The paratroopers’ commanders hope they can cut the deaths, which they fear are a boost for the Taliban when fighters recruited from the local population are killed, as the dead insurgent’s family then feels a debt of honour to take up arms against British soldiers.

The resultant fighting raises the profile of the Taliban and enhances their reputation in the local community.

“We aim to scale back our response to incidents to avoid getting sucked into a cycle of violence among local tribesmen,” said one officer. “This way we aim to continue the process of reducing the Taliban’s influence in Helmand.”

The army hopes that the reduction in violence will enable the Department for International Development and its American counterpart USAID to accelerate reconstruction work. British commanders have expressed frustration at the limited amount of development and the reluctance of DfID to become involved.

However, US marines and British special forces will continue attacks on high-level Taliban leaders crossing the border from Pakistan.

More than 1,000 American troops from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit will take control of the border between Helmand and Pakistan later this month. They will concentrate on providing the firepower to kill Taliban leaders as they cross the border from their base in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The US marines will work with the British Special Forces Support Group and Special Boat Service commandos who are tracking Taliban crossing the border. They will use the firepower of their M1A1 Abrams tanks and AH-1W Cobra helicopter gunships to launch a frontal assault on the hardliners.

Ah yes, The Captain’s Journal knows it by its smell: the deep magic of counterinsurgency at its best.  Fascination with special forces operators, high value targets, and personalities and leaders, along with the philosophy of “giving stuff to the people.”  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  There’s just one problem.  The plan is all confused and won’t work.

As readers know, we have been strong proponents of giving stuff to people as part of the concerned citizens program in Iraq.  But – and this is the important point – the British plan bifurcates this approach from strong military operations against the enemy, an error that wasn’t made in Iraq.  Consider, for example, that the British plan in Basra was similar to the one being espoused above, with military operations being second in importance (or even suppressed due to the notion that for every indigenous insurgent killed, two more grow up in his place).

Also consider that the Marines in Anbar could have argued this way given the heavy indigenous participation in the insurgency along with some lesser number of foreigners.  But the Marines neither argued nor behaved this way.  The indigenous population witnessed strong military action in Anbaragainst their own blood, and grew weary of this just as much as foreign jihadist violence against them.  This is another critical point that bears repeating.  The Marines won in Anbar, and the British lost in Basra.  The British plan being espoused for Afghanistan is roughly the same as was implemented in Basra, and diametrically opposed to the nature of operations in Anbar.

Another problem with this approach is that it presupposes that the Afghani Taliban need the leadership of Pakistani Taliban, or al Qaeda, in order to function.  While the border region is certainly problematic, the British will soon find that most of the insurgents within Afghanistan are indigenous Afghanis, and that reduced violence against them leads to a strengthened Taliban.

In Our Deal with Mullah Abdul Salaam we discussed the mid-level commander Taliban defector who first promised fighters against the Taliban and then holed himself up in a room and screamed for help from the British and U.S. when the battle for Musa Qala started.  The whole “talk with the moderates” thing didn’t work out very well.

 But this tactic will not go away, it seems.  There are recent reports that talks are still ongoing.

The country’s most powerful opposition group announced last week that they have been engaging in peace talks with the Taliban. The move signals both the growing divisions within the Afghan government and the increasing possibility that elements of the insurgent group could be drawn into the political process, say analysts.

If successful, officials argue that the talks will change the way the United States deals with Afghanistan, by forcing Washington to contend with the opposition.

Representatives of the United National Front – an assemblage of ministers, members of parliament, and warlords led by former Northern Alliance commanders – say they have held secret talks with the Taliban for at least five months.

“Leaders of some Taliban sections contacted us,” says Front spokesman Sayyid Agha Hussein Fazel Sancharaki, “saying, ‘We are both Muslims, we are both Afghans, and we are both not satisfied with the government’s performance.’ ”

The government, which has had a series of secret talks with the “moderate Taliban” since 2003, has in contrast taken a different approach to negotiations. It insists that the Taliban must first surrender completely – disavow armed insurrection and accept the foreign presence.

Of course, the Taliban will not surrender their weapons and stand down.  The idea of talks has been pursued recently by local Afghanis to no avail.

“At first, we negotiate. Otherwise the fight is the only way we can solve the problem. It’s the second best way,” Haji Hashem, chairman of Zabul provincial council, told Canwest News in an exclusive interview from the capital of remote and impoverished Zabul province that borders Pakistan.

“I don’t like to hear about death,” Mr. Hashem said. “Sometimes NATO has to fight.”

Mr. Hashem’s comments came after a weekend in which a major offensive by coalition and Afghan forces left several dozen Taliban fighters dead in neighbouring Uruzgan province. Here in Zabul, nestled between Canada’s base in Kandahar province and the border with Pakistan, the local Afghan police also killed four Taliban insurgents on the weekend.

“If they stand against the government, we should get rid of them,” Mr. Hashem said. “I am hopeful we will have good police.”

Zabul ranks a close fourth behind Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan as the most violent of Afghanistan’s southern provinces. But its proximity to the Pakistan border, where al-Qaeda and Taliban militants regroup and re-energize to launch attacks in the south on coalition troops, poses an additional security threat.

As he sipped tea, Mr. Hashem recalled for the first time the clandestine negotiations that took place in December.

Elders and local politicians here tell of repeated abductions, especially of schoolteachers and local mullahs, threats, intimidation and mutilation of local people. All of this has continued in a desperately poor, illiterate region that has traditionally relied on opium farming.

So Mr. Hashem said local elders felt they had little to lose by reaching out to the Taliban. “We had a jirga of peace and security and it was the decision of the jirga to talk to those guys.”

But they did not tell U.S. authorities, which have jurisdiction over this region and have pumped more than $140-million in aid into the province. Nor did they tell their own government. “We just brought the result (of the negotiation) to the governor,” Mr. Hashem said.

They arranged a meeting in Sharizifat, a remote rural region.

“We asked them, don’t burn our schools, don’t bother those doing construction, don’t torture or kill,” he recalled.

But the message that came back from the four Taliban commanders sent to talk was firm.

“We got orders from Pakistan. We got orders to burn reconstruction projects,” he recalled.

Talks with the Taliban will not redound to any good for Afghanistan or the counterinsurgency campaign.  When pondering strategy and counterinsurgency doctrine, it is best to give up believing in myths and face reality.

Prior: Talking with the Enemy

To read the reports of the results of the recent visit of Deputy Secretary of States John D. Negroponte to Pakistan (along with US Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher), one might be tempted to think that all was well with U.S. -Pakistani relations.  But the reception was described as cold, and many in Pakistan saw the visit not only as ham-handed pressure, but panic over the Pakistani turn away from the U.S.-led global war on terror.  In Misinterpreting the Pakistani Elections we discussed the common (and incorrect) narrative that the recent elections saw the rejection of the Islamists in Pakistan (in reality the rejection was of the old guard’s ability to govern rather than the views of the Taliban).  In Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror we discussed the turn away from U.S. interests by many in Pakistan.  The blame, they say, rests with the U.S.

Some senior Pakistani military leaders say that the U.S. failure in Afghanistan has shifted the war to Pakistan.  In order to remedy the situation, tribal leaders in Pakistan want the jirga system.

Elders of the Khyber Tribal Agency on Wednesday urged the US administration to stop seeking military solution to militancy in the tribal areas and suggested adopting traditional means of Jirga to end the resistance. A group of 11 tribal elders led by Malik Darya Khan met US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher in Landikotal Cantonment. They told the US officials that the centuries-old Jirga system was still effective in the tribal territory, which provided remedy for every trouble, including the scourge of terrorism.

In other words, the tribal leaders want to negotiate.  Key Pakistani leaders have gone further, saying that we ought to review what the word terror means.  But as we have discussed in Baitullah Mehsud Ready for Talks with Pakistan, the preconditions for peace involve a complete disengagement with the U.S. war on terror.  In case this point has been missed, the Taliban have recently made it clear again.

Welcoming the offer of negotiations by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, representatives of Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Bajaur — shown brandishing lethal weapons on the TV channels — have told Islamabad what it has to do if it wants no trouble from them. TTP leaders, including Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, Maulvi Sher Bahadar, Dr Muhammad Ismail, and party spokesman Maulvi Omar, said they were ready for talks with the government if Pakistan were “to give up its pro-US stance first”. (Some newspapers reported it as “sever ties with the US”.)

The TTP warriors also demanded implementation of sharia law and the jirga system for their territory “according to tribal traditions”, assuming that sharia law was not in force in the rest of Pakistan. They added, however, that “jihad against America would continue in Afghanistan”, but that they were ready “to end their activities and improve law and order in Pakistan if the government showed flexibility”. The atmosphere in the TTP gathering in Inayat Killay in Bajaur was very upbeat after feeling the winds of change blowing in Islamabad.

The situation could not be clearer.  Pakistan is turning hard left away from the long war, and the administration is right to be worried.  However, we could have told the State Department that a visit by diplomats would have no affect (the State Department ought to be reading The Captain’s Journal).  The lack of timeliness in the campaign in Afghanistan has placed this administration – and will place the next administration – in the hard position of having to take unilateral action in the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan, even in violation of Pakistani sovereignty.  Al Qaeda and the Taliban currently have almost unmitigated freedom in this area, and there is a cold wind blowing that will probably make this situation worse before it gets better.

John Rutherford of NBC News gives us an account from wounded in Afghanistan that is important in light of the NATO and U.S. claim among Army senior leadership that the campaign is advancing unabated in Afghanistan.

Two soldiers receiving Purple Hearts at Walter Reed Army Medical Center called Afghanistan a “forgotten war” being fought with not enough troops, supplies or support from the American people.

Army Spc. Jesse Murphree, 20, of Westminister, Colo., lost both legs to a roadside bomb on Dec. 27 in northeastern Afghanistan.

“Every day we were getting shot at,” he said in an interview after receiving his Purple Heart on Friday. “And you hear about other people in Iraq, they got shot at a couple of times. We’re like, we’ve been shot at every day.

“You start thinking you’re fighting a forgotten war, like no one’s paying attention. I went home on R&R before I got hurt and people were coming up to me, they’re like, at least you’re not in Iraq and stuff, and I was looking at them, and I was like, what? And they’d say, you don’t do, they called it battle, they’re like, you don’t do battle anymore? And I’m like, are you kidding me? Like, yeah, I do,” Spc.  Murphree said.

“I know the area our unit’s at is definitely hot and definitely feels they’re forgotten about, like the people think that Afghanistan is really not a big deal or nothing’s really going on. We still got people that are dying, we still got people that are getting hurt.”

Army Pfc. Justin Kalenits, 24, of Geneva, Ohio, who was wounded in a Nov. 9 ambush in the Waygol Valley of Afghanistan, echoed Spc. Murphree’s sentiments.

“It’s a battle,” he said. “There’s not enough troops there. Need a lot of troops. Our unit’s stretched really, really thin. There’s not enough stuff. We’re doing a lot of fighting over there. We’re getting hurt. It’s not good. So, I’d like to see it end. Definitely.”

This call for an increase in force size coheres exactly with the thrust of The Captain’s Journal over the last several months.  But there is also an indication that the Taliban have learned from their mistakes of the past.  The large size kinetic engagements are apparently a thing of the past given the kill ratio (advantage U.S.).  Instead, they are focusing on distributed operations.  Haji Hashem, chairman of Zabul provincial council, describes their tactics:

Most of the fighters are foreign, Mr. Hashem explained. “They are Chechen, Arab, Punjab from Pakistan.”

Mr. Hashem said the Taliban insurgency operates in cells of 10 to 15 that stay in radio contact across the countryside.

The tactic of suicide bombing also fits neatly into this category.  According to recent report, the Taliban are using suicide bombs as their equivalent of air power.  As a standoff weapon (except for a single fighter), it is unmatched.  Says one Taliban fighter, “It is good to be used against the non-Muslims, because they are not afraid of fighting for five days against us but they are afraid of one bomber.”

This tactic of forcing decision-making down within the organization, dispatching smaller, self-sufficient groups of fighters, and maintaining looser communication is perfectly adapted to the Afghanistan countryside, which is less about MOUT (military operations on urban terrain) than in Iraq.  This guerrilla approach to warfare requires aggressive offensive operations to root them out in their hiding places.  It also requires that U.S. forces participate in the chase.  Fire and melt-away must become less attractive to the Taliban.

Baitullah Mehsud in the commander of Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan, but the Pakistani Taliban is a factious organization.

Though members of militant Islamic groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and other jihadis have almost the same anti-United States and pro-al-Qaeda worldview, they are not especially disciplined when it comes to organizational matters. Difficulty in this area explains the existence of so many extremist factions operating under different leaders and commanders who sometimes express conflicting opinions on domestic and international issues.

The formation of an umbrella organization, Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (Movement of Pakistani Taliban, or TTP) on December 14, 2007, was meant to bring the different Taliban groups operating in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) into one formation and improve their coordination (The News International [Islamabad], December 15, 2007). Its spokesman, Maulvi Omar, a shadowy figure using a fake name, claimed that 27 Taliban factions operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were part of the movement. Nobody was surprised when Baitullah Mehsud, amir of the Taliban in the territory populated by the Mehsud Pashtun tribe in South Waziristan, was named as leader of the TTP. He was the most powerful among the Pakistani Taliban commanders and it was natural that he would lead the organization.

The tribal nature of some of the Taliban groups soon became evident when militants in North Waziristan warned the Mehsud-led Taliban in neighboring South Waziristan not to launch attacks against the Pakistan Army in their part of the tribal region (The News International, January 30). The warning came from Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the amir of the Taliban in North Waziristan, despite the fact that he was earlier named deputy to Mehsud in the Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan. Association with the TTP and being its deputy leader did not mean much when it came to the territorial and tribal limits of each Taliban group and commander. Hafiz Gul Bahadur was particularly furious when Mehsud’s men started firing rockets into the army’s camp at Razmak, a town in North Waziristan, during the recent fighting between the military and the Mehsud-commanded militants.

Regardless of the lack of an overall command structure that forces coherence in policy or strategy, the one thing that will not be allowed within the Taliban is any action that could be seen as unfaithfulness to the cause.  Two al-Qaeda leaders in the north of Pakistan have called on their supporters to wage a new Jihad against security forces and seize control of Islamabad.  In a recent video, Takfiri militants Qadri Tahir Yaldeshiv and Abdul Khaliq Haqqani called for urgent action against the Pakistani armed forces to avenge the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation in 2007.

“Jihad is compulsory in Pakistan as it is compulsory in Afghanistan,” Tahir said in the video message.

Sitting on a chair reading notes from a laptop computer flanked by a black flag, Tahir talked about the need for strict Sharia law in Pakistan.

“Pakistan came into being on the name of Islam, therefore Islam should be enforced in the country,” he said in the video …

Tahir Yaldeshiv, the chief of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and the chief of Uzbek militants in North Waziristan, called for a Jihad against Pakistani forces.

Abdul Khaliq Haqqani also urged the people to fight against Pakistani forces.

The video also shows what are said to be images of a government offensive in the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan in October 2007, including footage of dead soldiers and destroyed vehicles. It also shows graphic footage of a man slitting the throat of a Pakistani soldier.

There were also reports that Haji Nazeer, a local Pakistani Taliban commander in favour of reconciliation with Pakistani government was seriously wounded in the conflict.

“Haji Nazeer has now sent a message of reconciliation to our camp but it is not possible now. He has to face the music for what he has done in the past.”

Facing “the music” for supporting the Pakistani government means that the statistical mortality tables no longer apply to Nazeer.  Negotiations with Pakistan will occur only at the highest levels, and in this case, it means Baitullah Mehsud.

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud has said that he is ready for talks with the new government if it stops President Musharraf’s war on terror in tribal areas.

The Taliban do not want hostile relations with the new government and are ready for talks with political parties for a lasting peace in the NWFP and the tribal region, Baitullahs spokesman Maulvi Umar told journalists on phone from an undisclosed location.

Baitullah’s men had earlier this month declared a ceasefire in South Waziristan where elections were postponed because of clashes.

According to the Dawn, Maulvi Umar expressed the hope that the new government would not follow the flawed policies of President Musharraf and would respect the peoples mandate.

We are ready for negotiations with the new government if it doesn’t re-impose a war on us. If it (new government) continues with the policies of President Musharraf we will resume our activities, he warned.

He welcomed the victory of opposition parties in the elections and said they had won because of sacrifices rendered by the local Taliban.

But notice the ultimatum Mehsud gives.  Policy will change and the global war on terror will stand down in the NWFP of Pakistan, or there will be no end to the Taliban war on Pakistan.  In reality, the Taliban will not stop until Pakistan is a fundamentalist Islamic state much like Afghanistan before 9/11, but Mehsud is negotiating, dishonestly so, from a position of strength.  He is a high level Taliban commander.  No middle level Taliban commander will break with senior leadership without his life being in danger.