Archive for the 'Taliban' Category

We have already discussed how settlement with the Anbari tribes was different than the British strategy of talking with the Taliban, so we won’t reiterate that here.  But the debate has not gone away and talking with the Taliban continues to be a wrench in the strategy toolbox.

The newly appointed governor of Helmand province has vowed to hold face-to-face meetings with Taliban fighters as part of a new strategy to quell the insurgency raging in Afghanistan’s poppy belt.

Gulab Mangal takes up what is perhaps one of the toughest jobs in Afghanistan next week when he will fly to a province that is both the country’s most violent and its biggest opium producer.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the wellregarded former governor of Laghman province said one of his first tasks would be to set up traditional Afghan jirgas – councils or meetings – with “second and third-tier” fighters. He said he hoped to prove to insurgents, and to ordinary Afghans, that only the government could deliver schools, roads and social services.

So who are these tier one, two and three fighters and for what do they fight?

Second and third-tier fighters tend to be either hired guns who fight for pay or bored youths who have drifted into fighting and have been alienated from local government because of corrupt officials.

Tier-one Taliban, the movement’s ideological hard core, which has been heavily influenced by al-Qaeda, are generally considered to be irreconcilable.

The Taliban have been around at least as long as al Qaeda and were in no need of influence to become militant Islamists.  As for these second and third-tier fighters, they are bored teenagers or criminals who are nothing more than hired guns.  So the new governor of the Helmand province wishes to convince criminals and bored teenagers to relinquish their participation in the Taliban because the government can build better schools and roads?  Seriously?

The sad part about this is that this strategy will cost lives and time, neither of which can be spared.  If we were to listen to at least one British aid (former aid to Blair), the situation would get even worse.

Western governments should talk to Islamist extremists including Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to end violence, one of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s closest aides said in comments published Saturday.

“It’s very difficult for democratic governments to do — talk to a terrorist movement that’s killing your people,” Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell he told The Guardian in an interview.

“(But) if I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban and I would want to find a channel to Al-Qaeda.”

This must be the same al Qaeda and Taliban (Baitullah Mehsud) who said that “We want to eradicate Britain and America, and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York, and London.”  In this case, the British government should dispatch Powell with haste into the North West Frontier Province to find Mehsud and strike up talks with him.  Make sure his insurance is paid up before he goes.

When U.S. intelligence analysts were claiming that a Taliban offensive in Afghanistan would not occur due to focus on Pakistan, The Captain’s Journal laid out the case for dual Taliban campaigns (one focusing on Pakistan and the other on Afghanistan), and pointed out that the spring “offensive” would be waged differently than in direct, head-to-head kinetic engagements with U.S. forces.  The influx of foreign jihadists into the tribal areas of Pakistan (particularly the NWFP and FATA) has brought fighters into the cultural milieu that, unlike the older Taliban fighters, have no moral inhibitions regarding suicide tactics.

The chart to the left is a simple strategic organizational chart that shows the logical connections between the direction of the Pakistani Taliban (e.g., lead by Baitullah Mehsud and others) and the Afghani Taliban (e.g., lead by Mohammed Omar).  The strategy is multifaceted with dual fronts, but the campaign has as its centerpiece the interdiction of NATO supply lines.  The campaign will involve guerrilla tactics (combat from the shadows), insurgent tactics (governance and winning hearts and minds), and the use of terror tactics such as suicide bombers.

 We had previous indication that NATO supply lines were both important and vulnerable.  Mehsud’s forces have already shown that they can be effective against these critical routes.  Now, the Asia Times has information that both exonerates our analysis and gives new detail to the strategic plans.

After more than six years, coalition forces in Afghanistan are preparing for an all-out offensive against the Taliban centered on their safe havens straddling the border with Pakistan.

This, allied with intensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization and US operations already this year, has led to much speculation on whether the Taliban will launch their annual spring offensive, with even senior NATO officials suggesting the Taliban will instead bunker down in a war of attrition, much as they did during a rough phase in 2004.

This will not be the case, according to Asia Times Online’s interaction with Taliban guerrillas over the past few weeks. But instead of taking on foreign forces in direct battle in the traditional hot spots, the Taliban plan to open new fronts as they are aware they cannot win head-on against the might of the US-led war machine.

The efforts of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and its 47,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations will focus on specific areas that include the Bajaur and Mohmand tribal agencies in Pakistan, as well as South and North Waziristan in that country, and Nooristan, Kunar, Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces in Afghanistan. The ISAF is complemented by the separate US-led coalition of about 20,000, the majority being US soldiers. This does not include a contingent of 3,600 US Marine Corps who this week started arriving in southern Afghanistan. They will work under the command of the ISAF.

For their part, the Taliban, according to Asia Times Online contacts, will open new fronts in Khyber Agency in Pakistan and Nangarhar province in east Afghanistan and its capital Jalalabad.

This move follows a meeting of important Taliban commanders of Pakistani and Afghan origin held for the first time in the Tera Valley bordering the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan. (Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders famously evaded US-led forces in the Tora Bora soon after the invasion in 2001.)

Pakistan’s Khyber Agency has never been a part of the Taliban’s domain. The majority of the population there follows the Brelvi school of thought, which is bitterly opposed to the hardline Taliban and the Salafi brand of Islam. The adjacent Afghan province of Nangarhar has also been a relatively peaceful area.

Conversely, the historic belt starting from Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province and running through Khyber Agency to Nangarhar is NATO’s life line – 80% of its supplies pass through it. From Nangarhar, the capital Kabul is only six hours away by road.

Over the past year, the Taliban have worked hard at winning over the population in this region and have installed a new commander, Ustad Yasir, to open up the front in Nangarhar.

The Taliban (both Pakistan and Afghanistan) have come together with al Qaeda and settled on a centerpiece for the campaign, i.e., the interdiction of NATO supply lines through the NWFP and onward towards Kabul.  The tactics involve “winning the population,” which although not delineated in the Asia Times report, probably involve the disbursement of money among other things.  While this tactic is successful it will be continued, but in the event of its failure, the Taliban will likely revert to terror tactics beginning with the tribal elders and then the balance of the population.

This area on the Afghanistan side of the border is already problematic.  As we discussed in Taking the High Ground in Afghanistan, in Eastern Afghanistan North of the Khyber pass, the 173rd combat team has daily clashes with insurgents, but lack the forces to take the high ground.  Insurgents rarely attack US fighters unless and until they have managed to position themselves at a higher altitude than their foe. “I would say that 95% of the time they hit us from the high ground – when our backs are turned,” says Tanner Stichter, a soldier serving in the Korengal Outpost. “We have a very difficult time finding these foreign fighters – as they remain hidden” … “The US forces, along with the Afghan army and police, need to go on the offensive now – before the weather breaks,” insists police chief, Haji Mohammed Jusef. “This time of year is the best time for us to take the high ground and deny it to the enemy.”

The Afghan Taliban no longer become involved in direct head-to-head engagements with the U.S. forces, but remain hidden in some of the same caves they used to drive the Soviet Army from Afghanistan.  Rather than conventional or even necessarily insurgent tactics, the capability to remain hidden is more guerrilla style combat.  In addition to the guerrilla tactics, the Afghan Taliban have mixed the tactics of terror and technology to the battle space, including standoff weapons such as IEDs and suicide bombers, differentiating this campaign from classical insurgency campaigns of the past (except for Iraq, where it took many more forces to be successful).

In Pakistan the picture is much the same but slightly different in areas given the boldness with which they are able to operate.

MANSEHRA, Pakistan (AP) — Long-haired gunmen burst into the white stone building and killed four charity workers helping earthquake victims, then wrecked the office with grenades and set it on fire. Police came, but did not intervene.

In a tactic reminiscent of neighboring Afghanistan, Islamic militants are attacking aid groups in the Pakistan’s volatile northwest, and local authorities appear incapable — or unwilling — to stop them.

The threat has forced several foreign agencies to scale back assistance to survivors of the October 2005 earthquake that killed at least 78,000 people and left 3 million homeless — risking the region’s recovery from the worst natural disaster in the country’s history.

The Feb. 25 attack on employees of Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children, was the worst in a series of threats and assaults on aid workers in the northern mountains where Taliban-style militants have expanded their reach in the past year.

Nearly a month later, menacing letters are still being sent to aid organizations. Although all four victims in Mansehra were Pakistani men, Islamic extremists despise the aid groups because they employ women and work for women’s rights.

Local officials in Mansehra, who spoke on condition they not be identified for fear of retaliation, said letters from extremists distributed March 13 and 14 also warned schools to make sure girls are covered from head to toe and to avoid coeducation.

The militants also may be trying to discredit Pakistan’s central government, and to enforce a radical religious agenda in a conservative region where jihadist-linked groups were themselves a source of aid after the quake.

But this direct kinetic engagement of the population doesn’t prevent the Taliban and al Qaeda from also being involved in the use of terror tactics in an effort to destabilize the government.

Rawalpindi, Mar 21 (ANI): The Pakistan Government has directed law-enforcement agencies to strengthen security to counter expected bomb attacks in Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore, Kohat and Multan. According to the intelligence reports, eight to 10 teenage suicide bombers have been sent from South Waziristan to target sensitive installations and security forces in different areas.

The suicide bombers sent by a Taliban leader, may crash an explosive-laden vehicle, either car or motorcycle, into their targets, the intelligence report said.The expected targets of bombers are Western diplomats, stock exchanges in Lahore and Islamabad, police rest-houses and clubs, Jamia Al-Muntazir of Model Town, Lahore, CSD stores, cinemas in Rawalpindi Cantt, Chaklala Airbase, Naval Headquarters in Islamabad and army welfare shops in Multan, Lahore and Kohat Cantonment according to the report.  Security agencies have already been put on high alert across the country to foil any subversive activity. (ANI)

Rawalpindi is the home of the headquarters of the Pakistan Army, and the Taliban are aiming to strike right into the heart of their enemy.  The use of suicide bombs wouldn’t be a deviation from a strategy they have already proven they are willing to employ.  As of March 11, 2008, there had already been sixteen suicide attacks in Pakistan this year.

There has been speculation about whether there will be a so-called spring offensive in 2008.  The Taliban and al Qaeda have settled on a strategy; their fighters have the high ground in Afghanistan North of the Khyber pass due to lack of NATO forces; teenage suicide bombers have been dispatched to the very heart of the Pakistan Army headquarters; and they are attempting to win hearts and minds in the area of the NATO supply routes.  There is no question when the spring offensive will occur.  It has already started, and while the desire might be for direct kinetic engagements in order to preserve the typical 10:1 kill ratio, the campaign will be harder than that.  It will be a war of insurgents, guerrillas and irregular warfare.  The only question will be whether there will be enough NATO forces to secure the population, kill the enemy and win the campaign.

Prior:

Baitullah Mehsud: The Most Powerful Man in Waziristan

Taliban Campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda

Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise

Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror

Everyone Thought the Taliban Would Not Fight!

NATO Intransigence in Afghanistan

Tribal Region of Pakistan a Dual Threat

More on Suicide Bomber Kill Ratio

Taking the High Ground in Afghanistan

Al Qaeda finds it difficult to emplace IEDs because of the population (which points them out to U.S. forces) and UAVs operating discretely above.  Further, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, direct kinetic engagements are being avoided.  The kill ratio which has been maintained throughout both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom is approximately 10:1.  This has caused huge losses for al Qaeda (and the Taliban in Afghanistan), and they have largely transitioned to a tactic which is much more surreptitious and difficult to stop: the suicide bomb.  Eight U.S. soldiers died Monday due to this tactic.

A man walked up to a group of American soldiers on foot patrol in an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad on Monday and detonated the explosives-filled vest he was wearing, killing five soldiers and wounding three others and an Iraqi interpreter who accompanied them.

In eastern Diyala Province, north of the capital, three more American soldiers and an interpreter were also killed Monday when they were attacked with an improvised bomb, according to the military, which did not release any more details.

Another soldier was wounded in the blast.

The suicide bombing in Baghdad was the deadliest single attack on American soldiers in the capital since the height of the troop buildup here last summer. Nine Iraqi civilians were also wounded in the blast, according to officials at Yarmuk Hospital, where the victims were taken.

Reports from Iraqi witnesses suggest that the soldiers may have let down their guard because of the relative quiet of the last few months, leaving the safety of their Humvees and chatting with residents and shopkeepers.

Hours later, a car bomb exploded outside a hotel in the northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, killing two people and wounding 30 in the first significant attack in that city in several years.

Noncombatants have also been targeted with the violence in other parts of Iraq.

A roadside bomb has killed at least 16 people travelling on a bus in southern Iraq, reports say.  At least 22 people were also wounded in the attack.

The civilian passenger bus was travelling on the Basra-Nasiriya road some 80km (50 miles) south of Nasiriya, police said.

The attack came a day after eight US soldiers and an interpreter were killed in two separate incidents, the US military said.

One attack took place in Diyala province, killing three soldiers and an interpreter, while five other soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Baghdad.

As if consistent with swarm theory, al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan have also directed their efforts away from direct kinetic engagements and are using the same tactic of suicide bombs.

A new United Nations report says insurgent and terrorist violence in Afghanistan sharply increased last year, with more than 8,000 conflict-related deaths …

His report also highlights the way the conflict has changed from a conventional war between western forces and the Taliban to an insurgency using suicide attacks, assassinations, abductions and roadside bombings.

Pakistan has recently seen its share of the same thing.  On Tuesday, Lahore suffered another suicide attack.

Suicide attackers detonated two huge truck bombs in Pakistan Tuesday, killing 26 people, partly demolishing a police building and deepening a security crisis facing the new government.

Another 175 people were wounded in the attacks in the eastern city of Lahore, which came just minutes apart in the morning rush-hour and left rescue workers scrambling through rubble in a bid to find survivors.

It is ultimately ineffective to fight these tactics within the battlespace itself.  By the time the suicide weapon (the ordnance and the human) has made its way to the population it is too late to stop it.  There is no incentive to stop these tactics on the part of the jihadists, because they can directly reverse the kill ratio to their own advantage.  These tactics have to be fought at their proximate birthplace, which in this case is Iran and Syria for Iraq, and Iran and Pakistan (NWFP and FATA) for Afghanistan.

The stream of jihadists has to be dried up.  The enemy has adapted his tactics to reverse the kill ratio in the battlespace.  Without adaptation by U.S. forces, we cannot long sustain this reversal of effectiveness.  The hard choices must be made about black operations against known facilitators and handlers in Syria, air strikes against training camps in Iran, strikes into the NWFP and FATA areas of Pakistan, and other options that should be available to stem the flow of global fighters.  It’s a matter of winning or losing the campaigns.

The Pakistani military leadership recently weighed in supporting Musharraf.

With Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s allies routed in last month’s parliamentary elections and civil society led by lawyers aggressively calling for his dismissal and trial for his actions in the “war on terror” over the past eight years, Musharraf has received a boost with the top military brass putting their weight behind the presidency.

Faced with rising militancy, the military did not have much option but to close ranks and back the US push to tackle Taliban and al-Qaeda militants head-on.

At a Corps Commanders conference in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday, army chief Lieutenant General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani rejected suggestions of “distancing of the army from the president”, adding that “any kind of schism, at any level” wouldn’t be in the national interest, according to a statement

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami party and a leader of the All Parties Democratic Movement, called the Corps Commanders’ proclamation “disappointing”. In a statement released to the national press, he said the move was an intervention by the military in politics.

The Corps Commanders’ meeting took place soon after Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Armed Forces, had met in Pakistan with top military leaders, as well as with Musharraf.

The Pakistani brass knows that the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan has become an ad hoc sovereign state that threatens both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The generals might be the only glue that both holds Pakistan together and continues to support the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.  However, this support may be irrelevant, as Musharraf’s political opponents may be on the verge of a coalition which would remove him from power.

Pakistan’s two largest political parties — which won last month’s national elections — sealed a power-sharing deal yesterday, raising doubts about President Musharraf’s political future.

The accord between Asif Ali Zardari, the de facto leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and widower of the murdered former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) led by Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister, cleared the way for the formation of an anti-Musharraf government.

“We feel that the country is on the verge of making history,” said Mr Zardari. “This was also the desire of Benazir Bhutto and we also intend to stick to the road to democracy; we are aware of the problems that the country is facing.”

Mr Sharif said that his party would be part of a federal coalition led by the PPP, which is expected to name its prime ministerial candidate this week. The PPP has won 120 seats in the new 342-seat National Assembly, and the Muslim League 90, bringing them close to the two-thirds majority required to strip Mr Musharraf of his powers to dismiss Parliament. The Assembly is expected to meet in ten days’ time.

Mr Zardari said that he had nothing personal against the President but Mr Sharif suggested that he had no future once the new government was formed. “I do not think we have recognised Musharraf’s existence; we consider him an unconstitutional and illegal president and would not like our sacrifices that we made during the last eight years to go down the drain,” said Mr Sharif, who was ousted by Mr Musharraf in a military coup in 1999.

This power move will play directly into the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda.  We’ve previously discussed the nature of the Pakistani elections, and how they weren’t the rejection of the Islamic parties and sharia law that they have been made out to be.  Rather, the elections were a rejection of [a] Musharraf, and [b] the inability of the moderate Islamists to govern.  The Taliban and other extremists didn’t participate because democracy runs directly contrary to their ideology. The Pashtun have rejected the global war on terror, and the Taliban are using this lever in their public relations efforts.

KHAR, March 9: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Maulana Faqir Mohammad has said that the United States is the “number one terrorist” and the entire Muslim Ummah, in particular Pakistan, has been suffering because of its hegemonic policies.

Addressing a gathering in Bajaur Agency’s Aanayat Kalley area, the Maulana said that Pakistan had been turned into a battlefield because of President Pervez Musharraf’s pro-US policies.

“Waging jihad (holy war) against the US and its allies is an obligation of every Muslim, irrespective of state boundaries,” he said.

“Pakistan is our country. We love it. Osama bin Laden and Mulla Omar are also sincere to Pakistan and its people and they don’t want war with them,” he said.

“Bush is our enemy number one and till his defeat everywhere in the world, we will continue our war.”He said the “Taliban have every right to attack troops and installations” because of Pakistani rulers’ anti-Mujahideen policy.

He told the gathering that no person would be pardoned for “spying for the US forces”.

The Taliban leader warned the Afghan refugees in Bajaur “to leave their jobs in the Afghan government or vacate the area”.

Musharraf has only the generals in his corner, and this won’t be enough.  As for the boast that no person will be pardoned for spying for the U.S. forces, the Taliban recently proved once again their willingness and capability to conduct terror operations to be true to their threats.

Taliban militants have shot dead a spy chief in southeastern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday. The district intelligence chief Habib Khan was kidnapped from his house by unidentified gunmen, late on Sunday.

His body was found in Dwa Manda district in the morning, local officils confirmed. Purported Taliban spokesman Zabeehullah Mujahid said their men were responsible for killing the district intelligence chief.

The killing of government officials, especially those working with police, Afghan national army and intelligence agencies, is rampant in the southern and southeastern parts of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Admiral Fallon again declared that there would be no spring offensive in Afghanistan.

The top military commander in the Mideast said Wednesday that he does not expect Taliban forces in Afghanistan to launch a spring offensive this year. If anything, he said, he sees the momentum continuing to swing in the direction of coalition forces.

“The spring offensive is going to be by our people, as they move out and take advantage of the situation that they helped create through their good works there in the fall of last year,” Adm. William Fallon told the House Armed Services Committee.

While the Taliban continue to recruit jihadists to come to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops.

The leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan has urged more Muslims to join and finance the group’s war there, saying Western troops are close to defeat.

“Your brothers in Afghanistan are waiting for you and longing to (welcome) you,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said in an audio recording posted on an Islamist Web site.

“The time for reaping the fruit of victory and empowerment has come … The infidel enemy has been badly wounded at the hands of your brothers and is close to its demise so assist your brothers to slaughter him,” added the militant leader, speaking with an Egyptian-sounding accent.

As long as NATO and U.S. command doesn’t get in the way of the campaign or relegate them merely to a training role, 3200 Marines should have a great opportunity to kill the enemy this summer.

The News from Pakistan recently carried a commentary on the threat that the Taliban pose to the stability and future of Pakistan.  In part it states:

The sudden rise of the “Pakistani Taliban” initially puzzled the Afghan Taliban. It could be true that the Afghan Taliban initially saw this as a welcome development that would help the cause of resisting the invaders in Afghanistan and leverage the Musharraf administration’s pro-US policies. But the Afghan Taliban grew suspicious when the self-styled Pakistani Taliban, awash with money and weapons, turned their guns on Pakistan. In January, Mullah Omar withdrew recognition from Baitulah Mehsud.

To stop Afghanistan from turning into a permanent base for anti-Pakistan destabilisation activities, Pakistani officials will have to think out of the box. This will not be possible without the help of the Afghan Taliban.

The best idea to emerge is for Islamabad to declare neutrality in the war in Afghanistan. According to this idea, Pakistan could talk to both the Taliban and the Karzai administration while maintaining equal distance from both. Islamabad already has a working relationship with Kabul but will need to restore the lost relationship with the Taliban. If the Pakistani broker can establish its credentials as a neutral party, there can be hope for brokering peace between Kabul and its local enemies …

With the newly elected federal parliament preparing to take over in the next few days, hopes are growing that Pakistan’s Afghan policy will finally be freed from US blunders in Afghanistan.

One can sense in this commentary the loss of Pakistani confidence that the U.S. can win the COIN campaign.  Consider what this commentary recommended.  First of all, the notion that Mullah Omar withdrew recognition from Baitullah Mehsud is exaggerated, and we pointed out that the Afghani Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar has split with the Pakistani Taliban, but refused to condemn them and also denied that Mehsud was expelled.  We also discussed the fact that there are two distinct lines of Taliban now, and that the Pakistani Taliban are of a different generation, with different tools and weapons, different views (more willing to conduct suicide missions), and just as radical in their beliefs.

But the Pakistani mind now fears the Pakistani Taliban.  At first the Taliban (i.e., the Afghani Taliban) were free to roam about FATA and NWFP as a safe haven from their operations in Afghanistan.  But the truce with the Taliban brought foreigners into the region who now target the Pakistani regime.  The tribal regions are like an independent state that now threatens both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The Afghani Taliban cross into Pakistan for safe haven, and when being pursued by the Pakistani Army, Baitullah Mehsud crosses into Afghanistan to avoid capture.

This fear is driving at least this commentator to recommend trying to leverage this split by siding with the Afghani Taliban in a war on the Pakistani Taliban, while at the same time declaring neutrality in the Afghani COIN campaign being waged by the U.S.  This strategy will fail, as Mullah Omar will have no interest in siding with the Pakistani regime to attack a brother jihadist like Mehsud.  If nothing else, this would deplete his own forces from the fight in Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar still has his eye on the prize.  In a recent interview on an Arabic-language Web site, a Taliban commander threatened to increase attacks on Kabul — not only through suicide bombings, but by targeting roads in the north and east in a bid to cut off the capital.

Prior:

U.S. Intelligence Failures: Dual Taliban Campaigns

Taliban Continue Fronts in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Concerning Killing Bad Guys and Sacking Worthless Officers

Resurrgence of Taliban and al Qaeda

The Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise

Misinterpreting the Pakistani Elections

Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror

Everyone Thought the Taliban Would Not Fight!

NATO Intransigence in Afghanistan

In the town of Darra Adam Khel in the NWFP of Pakistan, the Taliban attacked a tribal meeting.

DARRA ADAMKHEL/ PESHAWAR, March 2: A powerful blast hit a tribal peace jirga near the Zarghunkhel checkpost in Darra Adamkhel on Sunday, killing at least 42 people and wounding another 58.

The jirga of Zarghunkhel, Akhurwal, Sheraki, Bostikhel and Toor Chapper tribes had been convened to discuss the formation of a Lashkar to drive militants out of the area, sources said.

It was not clear if the blast was the work of a suicide bomber, but local officials said that a teenager had detonated explosives just after the meeting had ended.

A severed head was found at the site and the officials believed it was that of the bomber. Some people identified the teenager as a youth from the Sheraki area of Darra, a hub of militants.

Security forces, it may be mentioned, launched an operation against militants in Darra Adamkhel in January in which scores of security personnel and militants have been killed.

Izat Khan, a tribesman injured in the explosion, told Dawn at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar that the blast took place when the tribal elders were finalising modalities for raising the tribal force.

“I fell and became unconscious just as I was about to leave the meeting,” Mr Khan recalled. He pointed out that no official of the political administration or the army was there and said he had doubts about the official statement that the blast had been caused by a suicide attack.

This is the fourth explosion during the past three days in the NWFP and Fata. On Friday, an explosion killed three police personnel and a blast in Swat during the funeral of one of the slain police personnel killed 46 people. A suicide bomber hit a vehicle of Levies Force in Bajaur tribal region on Saturday and killed two people and wounded 24 others.

The jirga was attended by over 1,000 tribesmen. It had started at about 9am and ended at two hours later after unanimously deciding to form a Lashkar and calling upon the army to withdraw troops from the area. The meeting also sanctioned action against militants, who were attacking people in the name of Islam.

Tribal elder Haji Gul Rahim said most of the people attending the jirga had dispersed and about 200 people were discussing measures for security on the Indus Highway.

Witnesses said that the blast site was littered with human flesh and severed limbs. They said that the blast was so intense that it caused severe burn injuries.

Maulana Sabir Afridi, convener of the jirga, Haji Zar Khan, Haji Nazer, Haji Jamal Hussain, Malik Mohammad Nawaz and Haji Khan Mohammad Din were among the dead.

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that recent attacks have disrupted an expected post-election calm.

In four separate incidents over the weekend, suicide bombers struck large gatherings in Pakistan, shattering a fragile sense of optimism that has prevailed since national elections on Feb. 18.

The hope has been that those elections, by empowering Pakistan’s moderate, secular parties, could help stem Pakistan’s rising tide of extremism, which has left about 500 people dead this year. But for the last week, the elections have not brought a much needed sense of calm and euphoria.

But in what seems to be a stepped-up effort to sow chaos and fear, suicide bombers struck on Friday in Lakki Marwat, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, killing a district superintendent of police, CNN reports. The following day, militants struck again during that police official’s funeral in Swat Valley – where the Army is still battling Taliban militants – killing 46 people. On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeted the vehicle of a security official in Bajaur Agency, a Taliban enclave near the border of Afghanistan, killing 21 people, the Associated Press reports.

Perhaps the inept analysts in the MSM expected a post-election calm due to empowering secular parties in Pakistan, but readers of The Captain’s Journal knew better.  In Misinterpreting the Pakistani Elections, we summarized the elections thusly: “The less ideologically driven voter abandoned the Islamist party, but then, he never voted for that party for the purposes of institution of sharia law anyway.  He voted for jobs, sewers, electricity, water supply and good governance several years ago and got none of what he voted for. Hence, he overthrew the clerics this time around.  The die-hards joined the Taliban.  There are various colors and stripes of jihadists the world over, from Salafism to Wahhabism, from the purist Sunni radicals in Saudi Arabia to the Shi’a Mullahs and their followers in Iran.  But one common element among them all is the utter rejection of democracy.  Democracy is deemed to be directly contrary to Islam, and the Taliban, al Qaeda and their sympathizers and advocates sat out the election.  They had no stake in it.”

The voters rejected two things: (1) Musharraf’s administration, and (2) the more moderate Islamicists (i.e., the ones who failed at administrating a state, but who also never saw Sharia law as being implemented through violence.  The religious extremists didn’t vote or run for office.  As to the future of Pakistan, we have consistently pointed out that there are two Taliban fronts; one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.  There has been a resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda (with the new focus on suicide missions as we pointed out), and because the Pashtun have rejected the concept of a global war on terror, U.S. and Pakistani forces find unfriendly human terrain in the NWFP and FATA, and not just due to Taliban presence.  When the people do not support the campaign, the campaign finds the way hard and toiling.

The U.S. expects for there to be continued kinetic operations against the Taliban, and Musharraf soldiers on in implementing operations against them.  At some point it is likely that these operations will devolve into talks with the Taliban because the Army, the regional tribes, and the population in general will not support continued kinetic operations.  How long Musharraf can continue to press these operations without toppling his regime remains an open question.

The real news here is not that there is continuing Taliban violence, but that The Captain’s Journal laid out the correct scenario for you before it happened.  You should continue to read TCJ for cutting edge analysis.

Several days ago I noted that the Taliban were worried about the technological advantages the U.S. could leverage against them, but at the time I thought, “don’t they understand – surely they won’t carry through with this ridiculous threat?”

The Taliban threatened Monday to attack mobile phone facilities in Afghanistan, alleging that the technology was being used at night to pin-point the Islamic rebels’ hideouts.

Zabihullah Mujahed, a rebel spokesman, said that several phone companies had been given three days to respond to militants’ demands that they cut night time operations or face attacks, notably on antennas erected across the country.

“The invading forces are using mobile phones for military purposes,” Mujahed told AFP, referring to about 60,000 foreign personnel deployed in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban militants who are waging a deadly insurgency.

“Usually during the nights the mobile phones are being used to spy on the Taliban to track down their footpaths. Here we ask the (mobile) companies to halt their operations from five o’clock in the evening to seven in the morning,” he said.

With 700 million dollars of investment, the burgeoning communications industry is one of the biggest development projects in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

According to the country’s telecommunications ministry, over five million Afghans are currently using mobile phones, provided by five mainly foreign companies.

“The Taliban themselves are using mobile phone for communications,” he said.

No phone company can stay in business by intentionally shutting down their service, so it was an impossible set of conditions to meet.  Nevertheless, the Taliban have carried through with their threat.

Taliban militants blew up a telecommunications tower Friday in southern Afghanistan following a warning to phone companies to shut down the towers at night or face attack.

The militants fear U.S. and other foreign troops are using mobile phone signals to track insurgents and launch attacks against them. A Taliban spokesman on Monday said militants would blow up towers across Afghanistan if the companies did not switch off their signals overnight.

Insurgents made good on that threat Friday, destroying a tower along the main highway in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, said Niaz Mohammad Serhadi, the top district official.

Phone companies moved into remote areas of Afghanistan after talks with tribal elders, who asked for the towers to be built, said Abdul Hadi Hadi, spokesman for the Telecommunications Ministry.

“When they destroy any tower, it shows direct enmity to the people of that area. I don’t think the destruction of the towers has any direct effect on the government. It is the people who suffer,” he said.

Thousands of customers will be affected by the tower attack, Serhadi said. Police have increased security around other phone towers, he said.

Communications experts say the U.S. military has the ability, using satellites and other means, to pick up cell phone signals without the phone company’s help. Cell phones periodically send signals to the network even when they are not making calls.

The frequent cell phone pings to locate towers are well known, but this leads to the inevitable question, “why wouldn’t they just turn their cell phones off?”

Use of the mobile networks for intelligence is an obvious step which is well-nigh certain to have been taken, just as governments have done in every country. And it’s well known that masts can be used to locate a phone which is powered up.

What’s less clear is why the Taliban have chosen to demand a shutdown of mast signals at night. Even the most paranoid phone-security advisers would normally suggest taking the battery out of one’s phone, rather than menacing local cell operators unless they went off the air. (The idea of removing the battery is to guard against someone having modified the phone to switch itself on without the owner’s knowledge.)

It could be that the Taliban want to operate their own networks, of course. Micro/pico/femtocell equipment is widely available, and there’s said to be a strong tradition in wild and woolly rural Afghanistan of unregulated, private wireless comms. It might be that guerrilla commanders merely want to clear other operators off the spectrum so that they can use it themselves.

Even so, Western military or spook electronic-intelligence units will still be able to intercept, identify, locate and track active mobile phones in an area of interest, even if they are communicating (or meant to be communicating) only with Taliban-controlled cells. The reported threats still don’t make a huge amount of sense in terms of the reasons given.

Another possibility is that the Taliban simply want to deny ordinary Afghans phone service at night, perhaps to stop people reporting on militia movements and/or prevent them phoning for help if attacked. Or it might be that the Taliban – the Taliban press office, anyway – simply isn’t up on the technical issues.

The later seems most likely.  If it weren’t for the disruption in phone coverage and the potential for harm to humans, the thought of the Taliban wasting ordnance on cell phone towers when they could simply power down their phones at night would bring a smile to my face.  In addition to creating a disruption in their own cell phone service, this version of “winning hearts and minds” is sure to be a bomb – so to speak.

A spokesman for the Taliban has now officially weighed in on relations with the new political parties in power in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Taliban fighters have threatened to step up their bloody campaign against the country’s security forces unless the new government abandons its support for the US-led war on terror.

On Sunday, the group welcomed the victory of opposition parties in last week’s election and called on them to drop the pro-American policies of President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally.

“We want peace, but if they impose war on us, we will not spare them,” said Maulvi Omer, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban.

“We don’t want political parties to repeat the mistake which Musharraf committed and follow a path dictated by the US” …

In another worrying sign for Washington, the PPP has called for an end to military operations against insurgents in Baluchistan, a southwestern province where the Afghan government believes the leadership of the Afghan Taliban may be hiding.

But as part of the same communication, the Taliban issued their threats, they offered peace talks.

Maulvi Umar, spokesman for the Islamic militant Tehrik-e-Taliban, said his group welcomed the victory of anti-Musharraf parties and was anxious to talk with them about ways to bring peace to northwestern tribal areas, where U.S. officials believe Osama bin Laden himself may be hiding.

“We hope after the government comes into power, they will not make the mistake of continuing the existing policies and will bring peace to the people of tribal areas,” the spokesman told The Associated Press by telephone Sunday. “We want peace and are looking for dialogue with those who got elected.”

Deebow at Blackfive believes that this means incursions across the Pakistani border to chase insurgents.  Sadly, I disagree.  NATO lacks strategic vision in the Afghanistan campaign, leading us in part to the situation in which we find ourselves.  The campaign has focused on transition teams, training Afghan troops, force protection, road construction, and every conceivable thing other than offensive operations against the Taliban.  This isn’t to deny that there are brave troops in theater who have fought and won battles.  It is to assert, though, that had they been allowed to do this unimpeded, the campaign would be far better for it.

As for Pakistan, talking with the Taliban is what led them to this point.  My prediction is that there will be more of the same and a continuing resurgence of the Taliban both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, unless 3200 Marines are allowed to hunt and kill the enemy.

Prior:

Concerning Killing Bad Guys and Sacking Worthless Officers

Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror

Main stream media reports almost across the board are gushing at the rejection of Islamism that allegedly dominated the recent Pakistani elections.  There are too many such reports to enumerate here, but one extreme example will suffice from McClatchy.

Pakistani voters have handed Islamist political parties a massive defeat, virtually eliminating them from regional parliaments.

The election Monday is likely to have a wide-ranging effect on efforts to rein in growing Taliban and al-Qaida influence in Pakistan’s North West Frontier province.

In 2002, fundamentalist religious parties, some openly sympathetic to the Taliban, won 12 percent of the national vote. That was enough to form a regional government in the province that borders Afghanistan. It also allowed the parties to become part of the ruling coalition in Baluchistan, another province, and to hold 57 seats in the 342-member national Parliament.

But unofficial results of Monday’s vote indicate that religious parties won only five seats in the national Parliament. In North West Frontier province, where the country’s Islamic insurgency is strongest, religious parties won just nine seats in the 96-seat provincial assembly. In 2002, they won 67.

“This is a sea change,” said Khalid Aziz, a political analyst based in the province’s capital, Peshawar. “The people have rejected the much-hyped Islamic nation concept.”

This is strong analysis – “sea change,” and “massive defeat.”  Yet this doesn’t even qualify as good surface level cursory analysis.  In order to understand what the Pakistani voters rejected and what they didn’t, it is important to go backwards in time to understand what is being called the “next generation Taliban” by the smarter analysts.  For this we must turn to Nicholas Schmidle.  His most extensive commentary and analysis from his time spent in Pakistan is entitled Next-Gen Taliban in the New York Times Magazine (a small portion of this important analysis is included below).

Efforts at democratic integration by parties like the J.U.I. have now been overshadowed by the violence of their antidemocratic Islamist colleagues – a network of younger Taliban fighting on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, jihadis pledging loyalty to Al Qaeda and any number of freelancing militants. Disrupting and discrediting democracy may, of course, be the point. The Bhutto assassination could well make moderation impossible, as Islamist radicals savor their disruptive power – and enraged mainstream parties threaten the stability of the government itself …

In Quetta, Maulvi Noor Muhammad, who is 62, sat on the madrassa’s cold concrete floor wrapped in a wool blanket as he leafed through a newspaper. Speaking in Pashto through an interpreter, he said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the J.U.I. chief, had visited three times in the previous few weeks to persuade him to enter the election. Muhammad claimed to have refused each time because he believed the J.U.I. had drifted from its core mission: to lead an aggressive Islamization campaign and provide political support to what he referred to as the mujahedeen, a term for Muslim fighters that can shift in meaning depending on who is speaking. “Participating in this election would amount to treason against the mujahedeen,” he said. I asked about the others in the party who had decided to run for office. Muhammad shook his head in disappointment and explained how, following the government operation against the Red Mosque rebels in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city, in July, President Musharraf put religious leaders under tremendous pressure. “Musharraf threatened to raid several madrassas,” Muhammad said. “The political mullahs got scared.”

Maulana Fazlur Rehman is exactly the sort of “political mullah” whom Muhammad portrayed as running scared. In the past year, the J.U.I. chief has tried to disassociate himself from the new generation of Taliban wreaking havoc not only across the border in Afghanistan, as they have for years, but also increasingly in Pakistan. At the same time, Rehman has been trying to persuade foreign ambassadors and establishment politicians here that he is the only one capable of dealing with those same Taliban. (Rehman told me that he never offered Muhammad a chance to enter the election; he even added that the J.U.I. had already expelled the Taliban guru “on disciplinary grounds.” ) In the process, some Islamists maintain that Rehman has sold them out. Last April, a rocket whistled over the sugarcane fields that separate Rehman’s house from the main road before crashing into the veranda of his brother’s home next door. A few months later, Pakistani intelligence agencies discovered a hit list, drafted by the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, with Rehman’s name on it.

“The religious forces are very divided right now,” I was told by Abdul Hakim Akbari, a childhood friend of Rehman’s and lifelong member of the J.U.I. I met Akbari in Dera Ismail Khan, Rehman’s hometown, which is situated in the North-West Frontier Province. According to this past summer’s U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, approved by all 16 official intelligence agencies, Al Qaeda has regrouped in the Tribal Areas adjoining the province and may be planning an attack on the American homeland. “Everyone is afraid,” Akbari told me. “These mujahedeen don’t respect anyone anymore. They don’t even listen to each other. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is a moderate. He wants dialogue. But the Taliban see him as a hurdle to their ambitions. ”

Rehman doesn’t pretend to be a liberal; he wants to see Pakistan become a truly Islamic state. But the moral vigilantism and the proliferation of Taliban-inspired militias along the border with Afghanistan is not how he saw it happening. The emergence of Taliban-inspired groups in Pakistan has placed immense strain on the country’s Islamist community, a strain that may only increase with the assassination of Bhutto. As the rocket attack on Rehman’s house illustrates, the militant jihadis have even lashed out against the same Islamist parties who have coddled them in the past.

The next generation Taliban, unlike their predecessors in the tribal region who also want total Islamism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, completely reject democratic means to accomplish such change.  They are also more savvy technically and have no theological baggage regarding reluctance to suicide missions.  The Taliban in Afghanistan are learning from the jihadists across the globe who have travelled to Pakistan to fight, and suicide missions in Afghanistan are increasing, and increasingly carried out by Afghanis themselves.

More recently, Schmidle weighed in on what the vote from the North-West Frontier Province means.

Does this mean the end of Islamism in Pakistan? Not quite. In fact, while the defeat of Musharraf’s political allies in the PML (Q) signals a new political leadership in Islamabad, the defeat of the MMA could also signal a new political and religious leadership in the troubled areas along the border with Afghanistan. In the North West Frontier Province, where the MMA formed the provincial government last term, the Islamists’ vote bank was a combination of die-hards who desired the creation of an Islamic state and those less ideologically driven who were attracted to the MMA’s promises of justice, economic renewal, and security. This time around, the latter voted for the Awami National Party. The former, such as Iqbal Khan of the Swat Valley, joined the Taliban.

Note well Schmidle’s analysis.  The less ideologically driven voter abandoned the Islamist party, but then, he never voted for that party for the purposes of institution of sharia law anyway.  He voted for jobs, sewers, electricity, water supply and good governance several years ago and got none of what he voted for. Hence, he overthrew the clerics this time around.  The die-hards joined the Taliban.  There are various colors and stripes of jihadists the world over, from Salafism to Wahhabism, from the purist Sunni radicals in Saudi Arabia to the Shi’a Mullahs and their followers in Iran.  But one common element among them all is the utter rejection of democracy.  Democracy is deemed to be directly contrary to Islam, and the Taliban, al Qaeda and their sympathizers and advocates sat out the election.  They had no stake in it.

So what will be the likely outcome of the Pakistani elections?  No military action against the Taliban, just more talk, based on sentiment expressed just prior to the election.

“We must sit with [the Taleban], we must talk to them, we are from the same origin, we are from the same people, we’ve got the same language.”

Mardan candidates also believe a democratic, civilian government would have more legitimacy to negotiate with the Taleban than one led by a former general, like President Musharraf.

That has yet to be proven, says Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on the Taleban.

“I don’t think they have a strategy to deal with this,” he says.

“All are saying that if they’re in power they will negotiate with the Taleban, the extremists. That policy has been tried by Mr Musharraf. So I think the same policy will continue: military operations, peace accords, ceasefires, I think this trend will continue.”

The situation is even more shaky than that.  Combined U.S.-Pakistani operations were planned in the tribal region prior to the election and are now cancelled.  Further, the U.S. finds herself in the position of needing Pakistan more than she needs the U.S.

“Americans cannot do anything if we stop the operations in tribal areas. If they stop military aid, they are welcome to do so. We don’t need military aid. All we need is economic aid and they just cannot afford to stop it. Why? Because all NATO supply lines pass through Pakistan and if they stop economic aid, Pakistan can stop supply lines which would end their regional war on terror theater once and for all. This is the biggest crime of Musharraf – that he could not understand the strategic value of Pakistan in the region and could not exploit it.”

There are strategically difficult and tenuous times ahead for Pakistan-U.S.-Afghanistan relations.  The existence and strength of the Taliban and al Qaeda and the future of the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan hangs in the balance.  Whatever the future holds, the Pakistani voters have not rejected Islamism.  They have rejected lack of jobs and financial security because leaders of the Madrasah didn’t know what they were doing when they tried to govern a society.  Islamism has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  Making up fairy tales about what they meant when they cast their vote doesn’t help the counterinsurgency campaign in this troubled region of the world.

Michael Semple is the one who coordinated the turnover of Musa Qala to Mullah Abdul Salaam.  Salaam is the erstwhile mid-level Taliban ‘commander’ who promised to field military forces (from among the tribes) to battle the Taliban, and who then retreated to his domicile and screamed for help when the battle between British / U.S. forces and the Taliban started.  This same Michael Semple believes that we can persuade the Taliban to show good form and play nice.

Two-thirds of the Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan can be persuaded to abandon violence, according to a British aid worker expelled from the country for opening talks with some of those allied to the militant group.

Michael Semple, a UN official arrested by the Afghan government on Christmas Day last year, said he was confident that most Taliban-linked insurgents could be absorbed into Afghanistan’s reconciliation process.

In his first interview with a British news organisation since he was forced to leave Afghanistan by the government of President Hamid Karzai, Semple defended his role in talking to elements linked to the Taliban. Until 2003 he had been a senior political adviser to the British embassy in Kabul.

Semple told the Guardian that he and the EU official Mervyn Patterson, who was also expelled, were victims of local politics. He said a local leader in Helmand province falsely blamed them for talking to what he described as “one of the irreconcilables” in the conflict. They had, he said, opened no such channel to al-Qaida-linked Taliban.

“There is a critical difference between what is discreet and what is covert,” Semple said. “What we were doing was simply discreet because that was what was required. But it was totally in line with official policy to bring people in from the cold.”

Describing the process of wooing Taliban-linked elements away from the insurgency, he cited the example of a leader in Helmand named Mullah Mamuk, whose regional enemies told western forces in 2001 that he was a terrorist, leading to his appearing on a most wanted poster.

“So naturally Mamuk goes to the Taliban to feel safe and takes those men he commands who are loyal to him with him, shows Taliban commanders the poster and says ‘It looks like I am now with you,’ Semple said.

“The authorities simply got the wrong guy and drove him into the Taliban’s hands. Now he is currently fighting against the British in Helmand but in my opinion local leaders like Mamuk can be won back over again.” Semple advocated creating a “network of patronage” to lure men like Mamuk away from the Taliban.

“It’s worth remembering there are an awful lot of Mullah Mamuks out there who can easily switch sides away from the Taliban and that is why I firmly believe that with good management you could break two-thirds of the insurgents away from those irreconcilables,” he said. He added that some of those arrested and taken to Guantánamo Bay during the early period of the US-led invasion had switched sides to the Karzai government.

“Take Haji Naeem Kochi, someone I have known for a very long time in Afghanistan. After 9/11 and the invasion he ended up doing time in Guantánamo Bay,” Semple said.

“When he came back … I met up with him. The first thing I asked him was did he learn any English and he replied: ‘Yes, but all I learned was sit up and sit down from the American guards.’ Yet despite doing time in Guantánamo he is now a member of the peace commission aimed at reconciling all Afghans.”

Semple described the controversy that led to his expulsion as “totally manufactured” by a local political leader jealously guarding resources given to him by the central government. This leader feared for his power base if ex-insurgents and former Taliban were brought into the peace process, Semple said.

“We were victims of local politics initially and being seen to take on the foreigners – in this case us – is seen as very popular in many places in Afghanistan. We were soft targets and the whole thing was spun well by him.”

He drew a comparison between what he and Patterson were seeking to achieve in Helmand and what the US had done in Anbar province in Iraq, where American forces opened talks with Sunni insurgents which resulted in setbacks for al-Qaida.

Michael Semple is stolid, and his reduction of the Anbar campaign to persuading the Sunnis to play nice is absurd and doesn’t even rise to the level of a childlike understanding of what happened in Anbar.  Semple should have fought alongside the Marines in 2004 – 2007 when they lost men to IEDs, snipers rounds, and RPGs, while continuing to force contact with the enemy until the enemy was persuaded that the choice for them was to play nice or die at the hands of the Marines.

To see the Anbar narrative as a few special forces operations against high value targets and talky-talk with the enemy is utterly to mistake the Anbar narrative.  For all of his evil, Osama bin Laden is strategically brilliant, and understood the value the population places on being the stronger horse: ” … when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”  Relentless kinetic operations and patient counterinsurgency won Anbar, and the notion of a tribal chief one day waking up and “flipping” sides is foolish nonsense.  Even Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha had to have his smuggling lines cut and dismembered by specially designed kinetic operations before he would “see the light” and decide that it was better to side with the U.S.  In Anbar, the Marines were the stronger horse.

Semple is ignoring other differences between some of the Sunni insurgency in Anbar (i.e., the indigenous fighters) and the Taliban and al Qaeda.  That is, the fighters in the Afghanistan / Pakistan theater fight more for religious persuasion than did the indigenous Sunnis in Anbar (the Taliban are more like al Qaeda in Anbar who had to be defeated militarily).  Semple’s plan is nothing more than a simpleton’s (or shyster’s) “get rich quick” scheme for counterinsurgency.  No troops, no fighting, no kinetic operations, no force projection, no public commitment, and no hard decisions.  Just talk and persuasion.  You may as well go purchase snake oil from the local street peddler.  Michael Semple is weaving fairy tales and daydreaming of butterflies and pretty flowers.  Meanwhile, if one of Mullah Omar’s men finds Michael Semple in the countryside somewhere in Afghanistan, they would be happy to slice him open from throat to belly.  Such is the difference between Semple and the Taliban.  Semple doesn’t understand this – but the Taliban do.