Archive for the 'Taliban' Category

From AP:

A man who was freed from Guantanamo after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.

Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press.

Qayyum’s key aid in plotting attacks on Afghan and international forces is another former Guantanamo prisoner, said the Afghan intelligence officials as well as a former Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akundzada. Abdul Rauf, who told his U.S. interrogators that he had only loose connections to the Taliban, spent time in an Afghan jail before being freed last year.

He rejoined the Taliban, they said. Akundzada said he warned the authorities against releasing both him and Qayyum.

Like Qayyum, Rauf is from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. During the Taliban’s rule, which ended in 2001, Rauf was a corps commander in the western province of Herat and in the Afghan capital, Kabul, said Akhundzada.

The intelligence officials were interviewed in Helmand, where the Taliban control several districts, and spoke on condition of anonymity lest they attract the militia’s attention.

They said Qayyum was given charge of the military campaign in the south about 14 months ago, soon after his release from the Afghan jail to which he had been transferred from Guantanamo. That includes managing the battle for the town of Marjah, where NATO troops are flushing out remaining militants.

Qayyum, whose Taliban nom de guerre is Qayyum Zakir, is thought to be running operations from the Pakistani border city of Quetta. A Pakistani newspaper report that he was recently arrested was denied by Abdul Razik, a former governor of Kajaki, Qayyum’s home district, which is under extensive Taliban control.

One of the intelligence officials also questioned the report. He said a house Qayyum was in was raided about two weeks ago and three assistants were arrested but he escaped. A week ago he was seen in Pishin, a Pakistani border town about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Quetta, the official said.

“He’s smart and he is brutal,” said Abdul Razik. “He will withdraw his soldiers to fight another day,” he said, referring to the Marjah campaign.

Qayyum, who is about 36 years old, is close to the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. He has been tipped as a candidate to replace the militia’s second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was among several Taliban leaders arrested recently in Pakistan.

So much for the notion of harmless, innocuous prisoners at Guantanamo.  Also, so much for the silly notion that in arresting Mullah Baradar the Pakistanis and CIA took out one of the prime prospects for reconciliation – as if the Quetta Shura would ever reconcile anyway.  If Baradar was so anxious to reconcile, had the approval of Mullah Omar, and had the ear of the Karzai government, then replacing him with a hard core, brutal commander would be inconsistent and illogical.

The serious Taliban will not reconcile, and Guantanamo wasn’t such a bad idea after all, was it?  As it turns out, Guantanamo has some very bad actors, and releasing them is a worse idea than having a potential recruiting ploy for the enemy.  Pity – such a quick, bleak and remarkable end to what was from the beginning very misguided strategic ideas.

Pakistan has supported a robust U.S. drone campaign against the Pakistan Taliban, or Tehrik-i-Taliban, because they see them at least somewhat as an existential threat.  The Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar is a different story.  The leadership is primarily in Pakistan, at first in Quetta and eventually scattered as necessary to avoid detection.  There has been no drone campaign against them because the Pakistani leadership and Army has a quaint but wrongheaded notion of using them (throughout Afghanistan and Kashmir) as a counterbalance against what they view as Indian hegemony.  That is, until recently.

Their top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was recently captured in the port city of Karachi.  There is a bit of intrigue surrounding his capture, including the highly plausible hypothesis that Pakistan wants a place at the bargaining table if and when the Taliban ask for negotiations.  Whatever the reason(s), they are still salient, as half of the Quetta Shura has now been arrested in Pakistan.

Plain clothed police move a Pakistan Taliban commander from the Bajaur region through the halls of the Police Crime Investigation Department on Feb. 17.   Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

Pakistan has arrested nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban’s leadership in recent days, Pakistani officials told the Monitor Wednesday, dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement.

In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended in the past week, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Western and Pakistani media had previously reported the arrest of three of the 15, but this is the first confirmation of the wider scale of the Pakistan crackdown on the Taliban leadership, something the US has sought.

“This really hurts the Taliban in the short run,” says Wahid Muzjda, a former Taliban official turned political analyst, based in Kabul. Whether it will have an effect in the long run will depend on what kind of new leaders take the reins, he says.

News of the sweep emerged over the past week, with reports that Pakistani authorities had netted Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s second in command, as well as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a prominent commander in charge of insurgent operations in eastern Afghanistan, and Mullah Muhammad Younis.

Pakistan has also captured several other Afghan members of the leadership council, called the Quetta Shura, two officials with the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau, and a United Nations official in Kabul told the Monitor.

These include: Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir, who oversees the movement’s military affairs, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada, and Mullah Abdul Raouf.

At least two Taliban shadow provincial governors, who are part of the movement’s parallel government in Afghanistan, have also been captured.

A Taliban spokesman denied the arrests, saying that they were meant to hide the difficulties that United States and NATO forces were having in Afghanistan.

Our favorite Taliban propagandist working for the Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad, tells us that the importance of these high value target (HVT) hits may be exaggerated.

Taliban sources tell Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity that the appointment will be largely symbolic and primarily for coordination purposes as Taliban leader Mullah Omar, following difficulties in recent years, has decentralized the Taliban’s command structure. The idea is to give commanders in the field greater flexibility and allow for the possibility that should even Mullah Omar be seized or killed, the resistance would continue to function …

“Mansoor’s appointment is very likely, but so far there has been no confirmed decision,” a mid-ranking Taliban official told Asia Times Online. “However, the position of supreme commander is now ceremonial and for the purposes of coordination. In the new setup, military operations have been completely decentralized and are in the hands of local commanders who have been given broad policies. It is up to them to sort out their own tactics,” the Talib said.

“For this reason, Mullah Baradar’s arrest did not have much effect on military operations, including at Marjah [the ongoing major offensive against the Taliban in Helmand province] where the Taliban continue to provide tough resistance to the occupation forces. And whoever is appointed [supreme commander], it won’t make much difference on military operations.”

We’ll see how much operations are affected.  The Taliban have a HVT campaign of their own, so switching sides is problematic.  I have been on the forefront with denials that the HVT campaign is useful enough to justify its effort and expense.  But neither should we deny the usefulness of taking out half of the Taliban Shura.

Either way, it won’t end the insurgency in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and it certainly will not end the globalist intentions of the Tehrik-i-Taliban.  Since different brands of the Taliban swim in the same waters and cross pollinate ideas, something so simple as a HVT campaign won’t end the war in spite of its usefulness.

Of the recent capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Dana Perino and Bill Burck observed:

Today, the Times is reporting that the real story behind Baradar’s capture is that Pakistan wanted to gain a place at the table in negotiations between the U.S. and Karzai and the Taliban.

Specifically, Baradar, it turns out, was one of Karzai’s main contacts with the Taliban for years, and he was at the center of efforts to negotiate a peace with the Taliban. Pakistan was frustrated at being excluded from the talks, so it snatched up Baradar to gain an advantage.

The Times quotes an unnamed American intelligence official: “I know that our people had been in touch with people around [Baradar] and were negotiating with him. So it doesn’t make sense why we bite the hand that is feeding us. And now the Taliban will have no reason to negotiate with us; they will not believe anything we will offer or say.” If this is true, then the capture of Baradar is not exactly what it first appeared. And if Baradar was as central to Karzai’s and America’s efforts to negotiate with the Taliban as the article suggests, then there appears to be significant costs to the capture. Perhaps it was even unhelpful to Karzai and the U.S.

Does capturing Baradar really further U.S. strategy? (Perhaps the administration did not view him as a valuable contact and thought he would be more useful in custody and subject to interrogation.) Or does it actually harm U.S. strategy? Was it forced on the Obama administration by the Pakistanis? If so, does the administration’s triumphant tone reflect its true feelings about the importance of capturing Baradar, or is it a smokescreen?

The fact that the New York Times, not known for its strength of objectivity in covering the Obama administration, is reporting this suggests to us that there’s a better-than-even chance that the administration is trying to turn a lemon into lemonade.

So this analysis relies on the notion that this is more Pakistani duplicity.  Ralph Peters, on the other hand, sees the world with much more intrigue (I must quote at length).

The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar — the Taliban’s equivalent of Gen. Stan McChrystal — by Pakistani agents and CIA operatives is a big win.

Subordinate only to Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s CEO, Baradar ran the Taliban’s military operations in Afghanistan. Responsible for the upgrade in insurgent tactics — fighting smart, rather than just fighting — he also created the Taliban’s hearts-and-minds campaign.

For two weeks, he’s been under interrogation by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency. The CIA’s also involved in the questioning on some level — but the ISI always holds back some chips.

The grab won’t affect the ongoing fight for Marjah in Afghanistan, but the loss of Baradar’s operational savvy could degrade future Taliban operations. And if he sings — as we’re told he’s doing — it could be the biggest anti-Taliban bonanza since 2001.

Or maybe not. While it’s excellent news that Baradar’s been nabbed, his capture in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, raises questions Washington yearns to ignore:

* Why did the ISI and its overseers agree to bust him now? They’ve known his whereabouts for years — intermittently, if not consistently — just as they monitor the movements of most insurgent bigwigs.

* Did the Pakistanis act at last because the CIA cornered them into it? Or is this a deeper tale of rivalries, betrayals and Pakistan’s long-term ambitions? Perhaps Baradar was too effective a commander for Islamabad’s plans — or too independent for the ISI.

Reportedly, Baradar had been defying commands from Mullah Omar, who the ISI has backed for almost 20 years. Was this the intel equivalent of a gangland hit?

And what role did the other insurgent groups play? Pledged to cooperate with the Taliban, the savage Haqqani network based in North Waziristan is protective of its turf. Was Baradar’s growing power a threat to Maulavi Jalajuddin Haqqani and his bloodthirsty son, Sirajuddin? Did they rat him out?

Then there’s the Hezb-e-Islam, the durable mujaheddin outfit of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a ruthless survivor of decades of Afghan conflict. He spent years fighting the Taliban (and just about everybody else), but has cooperated with the Taliban in the wake of 9/11 on the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Behind his displays of Muslim piety, Hekmatyar’s an opportunist out for Hekmatyar. He’s also the figure the ISI is most confident it can control (the Taliban’s become annoyingly independent). The Pakistanis may foresee a deal between Hekmatyar and President Hamid Karzai, which would get the Americans out — then leave the hapless Karzai dangling from a lamp post like Najibullah, Moscow’s last man in Kabul.

To make that work, the Taliban would have to be under control: still a menace to Americans, but manageable for Pakistan, once our troops and NATO’s go home (the Obama administration would leap at the chance to recognize “Afghan reconciliation”).

This is a crime-family power struggle — “The Godfather,” AfPak style. The ISI may have pretended to roll over for us on Baradar, when Pakistan’s generals wanted him out of the picture, anyway. If he turns stoolie (angered by his betrayal) and the ISI finally does move against the Taliban, it signals they’ve tipped decisively toward Hekmatyar.

This is a lot of complex intrigue, but a cursory review of my advocacy shows that not only have I not supported “negotiations” with the Taliban, I have not supported the same with Hekmatyar.  It may take a long time for the truth to be told concerning this capture and surrounding events – or, we may never know the complete truth.  Either way, I still don’t buy into the notion of the high value of high value targets.

I see all of this mainly as a momentarily intriguing distraction.  We might get some good intelligence for a while, at least until his knowledge base becomes dated and useless.  The Pakistani ISI (and some Army) is duplicitous, regardless of whether Peters’ account is correct.  Hekmatyar is trouble, and negotiations with him will come to no good end.  Anyone in Mullah Omar’s circle cannot be trusted, and negotiations with his shura will come to no good end.

If the sum total of Baradar’s capture is to end these juvenile and ill-conceived negotiations with the Taliban and ensure that they don’t trust us, then so much the better.  As I said before, I’m in the school which advocates killing the enemy in large numbers.

Prior:

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Captured

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has been captured.

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials …

American officials believe that besides running the Taliban’s military operations, Mullah Baradar runs the group’s leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because its leaders for years have been thought to be hiding near Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan.

One of the more intriguing elements of this report is where he has been detained: Karachi.  I can be counted among that group who believes that the Quetta Shura is based in Quetta.  But the theory has been floated for a while now that Mullah Omar was in Karachi, and now his second in command has been detained there.

This follows on soon after logistics attacks occurred in Karachi, not too long after attacks directly against Christians, shootouts between the Taliban and Pakistani police, and about a year and a half after I noted the Talibanization of Karachi.  This is yet another data point arguing for the importance of focus on Karachi, the port city through which the vast majority of logistics flows to Afghanistan.

The other interesting thing about this detainment is that it is of a Taliban leader in Pakistan, not a Tehrik-i-Taliban, or Pak-Taliban.  This is actually a good sign from Pakistan.

From Reuters:

KABUL, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai could invite militants to attend a “Loya Jirga”, or grand council meeting, aiming to seek peace and reconciliation with the Taliban, a spokesman said on Sunday.

The plans signal a more public effort to engage with militants during Karzai’s second term as leader, measures that Washington has encouraged in its counter-insurgency strategy.

Afghanistan’s constitution recognises the Loya Jirga — Pashtu for grand assembly — as “the highest manifestation of the will of the people of Afghanistan”.

Karzai announced plans for a Loya Jirga in his inauguration speech last week, describing it as a measure to promote peace but giving few details.

Under the Afghan constitution, a Loya Jirga made up of parliamentarians and chiefs of district and provincial councils can amend the constitution, impeach the president and “decide on issues related to independence, national sovereignty, territorial integrity as well as supreme national interests”.

The rare, colourful mass gatherings of elders have played crucial roles over the course of Afghan history.

Two have been held since the fall of the Taliban in 2001: one that named Karzai interim leader and a second that adopted the constitution. A third gathering of tribal chiefs from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, was held in Kabul in 2007 to smooth over relations between the two countries.

The giant marquee tent where those assemblies were held is still standing in a Kabul field.

Hamid Elmi, a spokesman for Karzai, said the assembly envisioned by the president would not be the “Constitutional Loya Jirga” described formally under Afghan law but a “Traditional Loya Jirga”, which could have a different make-up of notables.

“The meaning of the traditional Loya Jirga is how to bring about peace and how to invite the Taliban and opposition in Afghanistan,” he said. “They are not coming to talk about the cabinet and the administration. They are coming to bring security and peace.”

Security and peace.  The Taliban who uses children in combat roles– Karzai is asking them for security and peace.  While the temperament of the people is important, much too much can be made of will of the population in the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency.  The U.S. Marine Corps campaign in Anbar encountered a people (i.e., the Sunnis) who had been disenfranchised because of the regime change in Iraq.  The will of the people was the very last thing the Marines had in their corner.

The so-called Sons of Iraq (or concerned citizens) were eager to side with the Marines in the security of Fallujah in 2007 because, quite simply, they were weary of fighting the Marines.  Karzai is attempting to settle with the Taliban not because they are weary of fighting us, but because we are weary of fighting them.  Or at least, weary of not being allowed to fight them.  That’s the difference in the campaigns – or at least, one big one.

Pakistan’s military offensive against the Taliban in Swat has not produced the desired effect, as commander Maulana Fazlullah and many of his fighters have escaped the region (Fazlullah is in Afghanistan).  Much the same thing is happening with the Taliban in Waziristan as a result of the Pakistani offensive there.

On Tuesday, the military escorted journalists on a tour of the area, where it closely restricts access, showing piles of things they had seized, including weapons, bombs, photos and even a long, curly wig. “It all started from here,” said Brig. Muhammed Shafiq, the commander here. “This is the most important town in South Waziristan.”

But lasting success has been elusive, tempered by an agile enemy that has moved easily from one part of the tribal areas to the next — and even deeper into Pakistan — virtually every time it has been challenged.

American analysts expressed surprise at the relatively light fighting and light Pakistani Army casualties — seven soldiers in five days in Sararogha — supporting their suspicions that the Taliban fighters from the local Mehsud tribe and the foreign fighters who are their allies, including a large contingent of Uzbeks, have headed north or deeper into the mountains. In comparison, 51 Americans were killed in eight days of fighting in Falluja, Iraq, in 2004.

“That’s what bothers me,” an American intelligence officer said. “Where are they?”

The Pakistani military says it has learned from past failures in a region where it lost hundreds in fighting before. It spent weeks bombing the area before its 30,000 troops entered. It struck alliances with neighboring tribes.

But the pending campaign was no secret, allowing time for local people and militants to escape, similar to what happens during American operations in Afghanistan.

“They are fleeing in all directions,” said a senior Pakistani security official, who did not want to be identified while discussing national security issues. “The Uzbeks are fleeing to Afghanistan and the north, and the Mehsuds are fleeing to any possible place they can think of.”

Rather than fight the Pakistan military in a conventional operation, the Pakistan Taliban have declared a guerrilla operation against them.  The proliferation of bombs and terrorist attacks against Pakistanis and their own infrastructure, combined with an almost pathological preoccupation with India and a host of other conspiracy theories, almost surely contributes to the troubling (and pathetically amusing if not so serious) results of a recent poll of Pakistanis.

A majority of Pakistanis see the United States as a greater threat to their country than traditional arch-rival India or the dreaded Taliban, a new opinion poll has revealed.

According to Gallup Pakistan’s poll, 59% of more than 2,700 people surveyed across the country consider the US a threat. “Eighteen percent believe India is the threat while 11% say the Taliban are a threat,” said Gallup Pakistan chairman Ijaz Shafi Gillani. He said the survey findings show that some of the most vocal anti-Taliban groups were equally opposed to the US. Some Pakistanis believe that if the US is committed to eradicating militancy, it should try to solve the Kashmir issue to help Islamabad move its troops from the eastern border with India to fight the Taliban in the northwest.

The poll group said Pakistanis were suspicious that Washington was working to control Islamabad’s strategic assets. “Earlier, anti-Americanism was confined to supporters of right-wing groups. But over the years, young, educated Pakistanis, left activists, people you’d normally expect to be pro-American modernists have turned against America,” said columnist Sohail Qalandar.

The trouble doesn’t stop there.  There are serious internal political challenges soon to be faced within Pakistan and its Army.

Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders are tangling in a series of political confrontations that could lead to a constitutional crisis or worse after the New Year, officials in both Islamabad and Washington tell NBC News.

With the tenor and volume of debate rising over America’s commitment to Afghanistan, that struggle is complicating U.S. strategy to stabilize the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

It’s not only that dozens are dying every week in suicide bombings or that there are concerns that the Pakistani military will not be able to hold the territory it has won in hard-fought battles in South Waziristan. The more profound issue, say Pakistani and U.S. officials, is the fate of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is engaged in a seemingly never-ending battles with the country’s powerful military and intelligence establishments.

On Nov. 2, legislators opposed to Zardari, along with the military and intelligence community, thwarted an attempt by his Pakistani People’s Party to hammer through an extension of the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

The innocuously named law, pushed through at the behest of the U.S. in 2007, froze criminal prosecutions against Zardari, his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, and their allies … on Nov. 2, other parties in the PPP-led coalition, along with the parliamentary opposition and the military, thwarted Zardari. Analysts in Pakistan and the U.S. say there is no chance the NRO will be renewed by the deadline, and in fact, Prime Minister Yusef Reza Gilani said this week it’s dead.

One potential issue is whether Zardari has presidential immunity for any crimes committed before he was elected. He may have it for his time in office, but it’s uncertain that he does for any crimes alleged before he assumed office … U.S. officials are said to be alarmed by the development.

The Army figures significantly in this power struggle, in that the campaign against the Taliban will recede in importance and a refocus on India will occur if a power shift occurs.  Zardari has driven the campaign against the Taliban, and without him the Army likely won’t continue the operations – at least, not to the same extent.

At the same time that Pakistan is undergoing internal turmoil, the salient American question is why we are focused on Afghanistan when the danger is in Pakistan.  Strange question indeed, when pressure from either side of the imaginary thing called the Durand line causes the Taliban to flee to the opposite side.  Even raising the question about Afghanistan is tantamount to telling Pakistan, already crumbling, that their best military efforts against the Taliban will be met with nothing on the Afghan side when the Taliban relocate.

With Pakistan in deep trouble, we are telling them that they are the key to defeating the globalists and in the same breath that we intend to abandon them to that very enemy.  Pakistan is crumbling within and harbors neurotic conspiracy theories about the threat America poses, while America is planning to place even more pressure on them to perform because we are searching for an exit strategy from Afghanistan.  These are not good days for Pakistan.

From Dawn:

PESHAWAR: Maulana Fazlullah, one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, has told the BBC that he has escaped to Afghanistan and is planning new attacks on Pakistani forces.

Fazlullah was said by officials to have been wounded or killed in July, during the operation in Swat.

‘I have reached Afghanistan safely,’ he told BBC Urdu. ‘We are soon going to launch full-fledged punitive raids against the army in Swat.’

The BBC reporter in Peshawar who spoke to the Taliban leader said the voice was recognisably Fazlullah’s — he has a very distinct way of pronouncing words. ‘I have spoken to him on several occasions and met him twice.’

Fazlullah was calling from an Afghan number and sounded in good spirits when he called on Monday.

He issued a warning to the North-West Frontier Province’s Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain and said his fate would be like that of Najibullah, the Afghan president who was captured and hanged by Taliban in 1996.

Recall that when examining the issue of focus on Afghanistan versus Pakistan I observed:

The conversation on Pakistan versus Afghanistan presupposes that the Durand Line means anything, and that the Taliban and al Qaeda respect an imaginary boundary cut through the middle of the Hindu Kush.  It doesn’t and they don’t.  If our engagement of Pakistan is to mean anything, we must understand that they are taking their cue from us, and that our campaign is pressing the radicals from the Afghanistan side while their campaign is pressing them from the Pakistani side.

Advocating disengagement from Afghanistan is tantamount to suggesting that one front against the enemy would be better than two, and that one nation involved in the struggle would be better than two (assuming that Pakistan would keep up the fight in our total absence, an assumption for which I see no basis).  It’s tantamount to suggesting that it’s better to give the Taliban and al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan as Pakistan presses them from their side, or that it’s better to give them safe haven in Pakistan while we press them from our side.  Both suggestions are preposterous.

This isn’t about nation-states and imaginary boundaries.  When we think this way we do err in that we superimpose a Western model on a region of the world where it doesn’t apply.  This is about a transnational insurgency, and it’s never better to give the enemy more land, more latitude, more space, more people, more money, and more safety.  Any arguments to this effect are mistaken at a very fundamental level.

It’s an inconvenient truth, that the demarcation of countries doesn’t mean anything to the extremists.  The objection (to the campaign for Afghanistan) that we should focus on Pakistan where the hard line Taliban and AQ are located is a canard, and the escape of Fazlullah demonstrates it all over again.  The best way to pressure  the extremists is to do it from the Afghan side, avoiding the messy interference in a sovereign nation (Pakistan) while also ensuring them that we are serious about our commitment.

This informative 60 Minutes video documentary on IEDs in Afghanistan is worthwhile viewing.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

But except for the increased sophistication of IEDs in Iraq as opposed to Afghanistan (or said another way, the more basic and simple IEDs in Afghanistan), this documentary could have been made in Iraq in 2005 – 2006 if urban terrain was substituted for rural.

Defeating IEDs will require force projection, chasing and killing the insurgents, and dismantling his networks.  No amount of technology will win the asymmetric fight against IEDs.  The fight against IEDs cannot be separated from the fight against the Taliban, as if enough technology will neutralize Taliban weapons while the Taliban are still active.

In Connection Between the Taliban and al Qaeda we discussed the first hand account by David Rohdes of the New York Times after he was kidnapped by the Afghan Taliban, transported to Pakistan, spent time among both Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, and then finally escaped some seven months later.  His experience, coupled with data we had previously cataloged and analyzed, is convincing and compelling evidence of the hardened and more extremist theological alignment of the Taliban, and thus of their alignment with transnational insurgents and global actors such as al Qaeda.

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

But questions remain.  There are some (not identified in this article) that have weighed in saying that Rohdes is merely offering perspective or speculation, not facts.  There are others who have gone on record with analyses (parsing the Taliban into many different factions) that seems at the outset to cast doubt on Rohdes’ observations, at least, in a normative sense.  Myra MacDonald, for instance, outlines the main insurgent groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and weighs in questioning whether some of them share the global aspirations as al Qaeda.  In this same analysis she links Vahid Brown writing for Jihadica who even questions whether the Taliban and al Qaeda may be diametrically opposed.

Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban and al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders have been issuing some very mixed messages of late, and the online jihadi community is in an uproar, with some calling these developments “the beginning of the end of relations” between the two movements.  Beginning with a statement from Mullah Omar in September, the Afghan Taliban’s Quetta-based leadership has been emphasizing the “nationalist” character of their movement, and has sent several communications to Afghanistan’s neighbors expressing an intent to establish positive international relations.  In what are increasingly being viewed by the forums as direct rejoinders to these sentiments, recent messages from al-Qa’ida have pointedly rejected the “national” model of revolutionary Islamism and reiterated calls for jihad against Afghanistan’s neighbors, especially Pakistan and China.  However interpreted, these conflicting signals raise serious questions about the notion of an al-Qa’ida-Taliban merger.

We covered the al Qaeda rejection of the nationalistic model for jihad in The Globalization of Jihad in Palestine, and there is no question that the infighting between insurgent groups can become deadly.  It’s this supposed rift between factions of the insurgency that the U.S. administration wants to exploit.

… the Obama administration has indicated that it intends to make a fresh attempt to engage more moderate Taliban groups in talks with the Afghan government – in a determined effort to woo at least some of them away from the fighting that is claiming increasing numbers of American and other Nato forces’ lives.

Mullah Mutawakkil, once a confidant of the one-eyed Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was held at a US base in Kandahar in 2002 after he gave himself up to American troops.

Now he is being politely wooed by a stream of senior US officials who make discreet visits to his villa, which is guarded by armed police, to hear his thoughts on what the Taliban mood is like and whether any of its leaders are ready for talks.

A soft-spoken and intelligent man who was one of the Taliban regime’s youngest ministers, Mullah Mutawakkil is cautious about what can be achieved, but even so his thinking is music to tired Western ears.

He believes that the Taliban would split from what he called their al-Qaeda “war allies” if a deal was within reach. Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph in the guest room of his Kabul home, he insisted that a settlement to end the war was possible – and that it would be the West’s best chance of stopping terrorists from turning Afghanistan back into their base again.

“If the Taliban fight on and finally became Afghanistan’s government with the help of al-Qaeda, it would then be very difficult to separate them,” he warned.

But there is, he says, another option. Taliban leaders are looking for guarantees of their personal safety from the US, and a removal of the “bounties” placed on the head of their top commanders. They also want a programme for the release of prisoners held at the notorious Bagram US air base in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay.

In return, he says, the Taliban would promise not to allow Afghanistan to be used to plan attacks on America – the original reason for American invervention (sic), and the overriding aim of US policy in the region.

A Morton’s Fork to be sure.  Settle with Taliban who might bring back al Qaeda safe haven, or send more troops in what may prove to be an increasingly unpopular war.  But perhaps not.  Perhaps the choice is clearer.  Commenter Amm Sam at Jihadica offers a clear and unvarnished view of the debates between the globalists and the nationalists.

The Taliban’s statements of late have to be understood in the context of the US debate on what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. Mullah Omar is trying to influence the debate by signaling to the Obama Administration that they aren’t a threat – but should we take Mullah Omar’s word for it? Of course not. If you look at the discourse of the Taliban, from spokesmen and commanders to the footsoldiers quoted in David Rhodes’ excellent 5-part NYT series, you see that the Taliban as a semi-coherent movement has drifted into the global jihadist perspective over the last several years. They are still primarily focused on the region, but less so now than ever.

Only now do we see this shift from Omar in the heat of Washington deliberations on Afghanistan.

In fact, the Haqqani group, the Taliban who held foreign al Qaeda fighters in such high esteem in the Rohdes account with the New York Times, is operationally allied with Mullah Omar who is said to be ready to jettison al Qaeda’s presence after a return to power.

Most violence in the province has been linked to the Haqqani network, which operates out of havens on both sides of the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border and has taken responsibility for dozens of attacks around Afghanistan.

The group was founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who made his name as a leader of the Islamist uprising against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. More recently, the militants introduced the use of suicide bombings to Afghanistan.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, said his fighters didn’t want to capture heavily populated areas because the operations would likely result in significant casualties among insurgents and civilians. Still, he made clear his group had no intention of abandoning its focus on Khost. “Every now and then we want to carry out coordinated group attacks,” he said.

An American military official who recently served in eastern Afghanistan said the U.S. had intercepted communications suggesting the Haqqani leadership was closely coordinating its activities in Khost with Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s leader, who is believed to be in Pakistan. “It’s a division of labor, with each group focusing on a different part of Afghanistan,” the official said.

The official said some U.S. intelligence officers suspect that the Haqqani leadership had offered to conquer Khost in exchange for a promise from Mullah Omar that the family would be allowed to rule large swaths of eastern Afghanistan if the armed group eventually retook control of the country.

And it’s now believed that the Taliban and / or al Qaeda are helping the Gaza insurgents to fabricate much more sophisticated bombs for use in their terrorist efforts.  The battles between certain factions of the Taliban and al Qaeda must be seen as internecine spats – as intramural struggles.  They don’t represent a terminus.  They are quite public debates over strategy and tactics rather than policy and doctrine.  It’s important not to conflate one with the other.  Believing that any faction of the Taliban would actually risk their lives to battle al Qaeda because of the former’s focus on the region and the focus of the later on the globe is not only unwise, it is profoundly bad logic.

As for David Rohdes, everything and everyone else takes second place (or less) to direct, first hand knowledge to someone who has been there and seen these things first hand.  Rohdes is now in the position of being a subject matter expert – perhaps the foremost and most knowledgeable one in the world.  Rejection of his analysis because it creates discomfort for one strategic option (i.e., separating the “good” Taliban from the bad) is paramount to rejection of the preeminent scholar in the field of study.  From his time with the Taliban, Rohdes has earned the equivalent of a Doctorate in Jihadist Islamic studies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Finally, the fact that certain jihadi web sites may be “abuzz” with emotion over a coming split between the Taliban and al Qaeda simply isn’t important.  It’s as irrelevant and insignificant as the silly and gross exaggerations of U.S. and NATO casualties inflicted by the Taliban at the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Voice of Jihad).

David Rohde with The New York Times was kidnapped months ago by the Afghan Taliban while attempting to gain an interview with a Taliban commander.  He is writing about his first hand experiences in The New York Times in what may be the most compelling reading I have done in months.  I highly recommend that you set aside some time and study his account.

There is much to be learned from David, but one thing in particular has stuck out in his articles thus far.

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

[ … ]

The trip confirmed suspicions I had harbored for years as a reporter. The Haqqanis oversaw a sprawling Taliban mini-state in the tribal areas with the de facto acquiescence of the Pakistani military. The Haqqanis were so confident of their control of the area that they took me — a person they considered to be an extraordinarily valuable hostage — on a three-hour drive in broad daylight to shoot a scene for a video outdoors.

Throughout North Waziristan, Taliban policemen patrolled the streets, and Taliban road crews carried out construction projects. The Haqqani network’s commanders and foreign militants freely strolled the bazaars of Miram Shah and other towns. Young Afghan and Pakistani Taliban members revered the foreign fighters, who taught them how to make bombs.

[ …]

After about 15 minutes, the guards returned to the car and led me back to the house. The missiles had struck two cars, killing a total of seven Arab militants and local Taliban fighters. I felt a small measure of relief that no civilians had been killed. But I knew we were still in grave danger.

Baitullah Mehsud’s threats against Washington and London may or may not have been bluster, but there is no doubt that they would have eventually attempted to pull off an attack directly in the homeland.  As I have previously noted:

… they have evolved into a much more radical organization than the original Taliban bent on global engagement, what Nicholas Schmidle calls the Next-Gen Taliban. The TTP shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!”  There is no distinction.  A Pakistan interior ministry official has even said that the TTP and al Qaeda are one and the same.

We have known about the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) for some time, but what we learn from David Rohde’s report is that the TTP swims freely among the Afghan Taliban, and vice versa.  And so does al Qaeda.  They swim freely among both groups of Taliban, and are even revered by them.

If anyone has been harboring secret hopes that the Taliban (Pakistan or Afghan) would reject the presence of al Qaeda if they returned to power, those hopes should be forthwith abandoned.  David Rohde has given us a clear enough picture to reach this conclusion with certainty.