Archive for the 'Tehrik-i-Taliban' Category

Having made a forecast and allowing the dust to settle on the scene in Swat, The Captain’s Journal is turning back full circle to see how all of this is shaking out for Afghanistan.

It is understood the North West Frontier Province government has agreed an amnesty for Taliban fighters, including those who have bombed girls’ schools and video shops and beheaded opponents.

It also follows a shake-up in the Taliban alliance led by Baitullah Mehsud. He has announced a new umbrella group, the Shura Ittehadul Mujahideen, which includes two senior militant commanders who had until now been regarded as ‘pro-Pakistan government’ Taliban.

According to one militant source in Bajaur, Baitullah Mehsud had recently received a message from the Taliban’s ‘supreme leader’, Mullah Omar, calling on him to stop attacks on the Pakistan Army and reminding him that Nato forces in Afghanistan were their real enemy.

And our forecast?

Implementation of Sharia law is only part of the deal.  The Pakistani Army will leave.  The institutions set up by the Taliban are now formalized and official, recognized by the Pakistani government.  Given the proximity of Swat to Afghanistan, safe haven for the Taliban doesn’t even begin to explain the depths of the problem.  The problem goes not only to territory and terrain, but preoccupation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP).

Although not exclusively, the TTP has primarily been disposed with fights inside of the North West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas.  They are now no longer occupied with fights with the Pakistani Army.

These fighters are now free to engage U.S. troops, and thus has Pakistan traded off its “security” for that of Afghanistan.  And the campaign in Afghanistan has just gotten a little harder.

So if this report is accurate, we find out the impetus for the combination of the Tehrik-i-Taliban with other Taliban commanders as well as the “settlement” with Pakistan.  Mullah Omar rebuked the TTP for attention on Pakistan, and reminded them that infidels were just across the border.

This is new information, but as for the forecast concerning the new attention on Afghanistan, you heard it here first.

Pakistan’s Tehrik-i-Taliban, led by Baitullah Mehsud, have released an important statement.

NORTH WAZIRISTAN – Bringing an end to their internal rifts, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders have renamed their group as Shura Ittehadul Mujahideen with the purpose of striving for the supremacy of Islam and crushing infidels.

The three leading militant groups calling themselves as Taliban have circulated a single-page Urdu pamphlet in different parts of Waziristan, which confirmed that they had got united according to the wishes of Mujahideen leaders like Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden.

The three leaders Hafiz Gul Bahadar, Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Nazir have confirmed the establishment of Shura Ittehadul Mujahideen with certain objectives. The pamphlet said the target of the Shura Ittehadul Mujahideen was to get Mujahideen united at a single platform for Jihad and stop those who were violating and crossing the limits. It said that TTP had decided to shun differences and join hands with one another. It added the TTP supported Mullah Muhammad Omar and Osama bin Laden’s struggle against Obama, Zardari and Karzai administrations.

A number of Quranic verses have been referred in the pamphlet, stressing upon Muslims to get united and join hands against non-believers.

Another account gives us reason to pause concerning the evolution of this organization.

The announcement described Mulla Omar and Osama bin Laden as their leader. They vowed to continue the Jihad for the enforcement of Sharia in the region.

It further said that it was yet unclear whether Tehrik Taliban has been finished.

Besides, Taliban leaders belonging to Bajaur, Swat and Mohmand Agency were not invited.

It’s difficult to know – and maybe premature to speculate – about why other commanders weren’t invited.  The most probable reason is that the Tehrik-i-Talban included everyone in the meeting who mattered to the highest leadership.  Baitullah Mehsud and his closest commanders were there, and Baitullah is completely in charge of the TTP.  His enemies, far and near, should beware.  Inclusion of others would have been pointless.

More important to this pronouncement is that there now seems to be a formal recognition of the globalist intentions of the Tehrik-i-Taliban, and a statement that the infighting between factions would come to an end, or at least, so says the highest leaders.

We have noted this globalist aspect of the TTP before.

In some places they aim to enforce strict sharia law. In others, the Taliban want to establish bases from which to work in support of the resistance against foreign forces in Afghanistan.

In yet other areas, the purpose is simply to create chaos and anarchy so that militants can engage the Pakistani armed forces and deter them from supporting the global “war on terror”.

However, the ultimate mission of the groups is steadily harmonizing, that is, to support the regional war and then the global war against Western hegemony; this is the concept driving the neo-Taliban.

The Captain’s Journal will be watching this development.  More time is needed fully to understand the implications of the pronouncement by the TTP.

Syed Saleem Shahzad writing for the Asia Times gives us an important perspective on the Taliban victory in Swat where Sharia law was instituted and a truce called.

In Malakand, which includes the Swat area, the militants are a part of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban and the vanguard of the Taliban’s cause in the region against Western occupation forces in Afghanistan and their ally – Pakistan. They have established their own writ with a parallel system that includes courts, police and even a electric power-distribution network and road construction, and all this is now official in the eyes of Islamabad.

All intelligence indicated that further concentration on military operations in Swat could lead to an expansion of the war theater into Pakistan’s non-Pashtun cities, such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The security forces were already stretched and even faced rebellions.

These combined factors culminated in Monday’s peace agreement, which is a major defeat for Washington as well as Pakistan, and it could also lead to a major setback for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan come spring when hordes of better-trained fighters from Swat pour into Afghanistan …

The developments in Malakand division coincide with the arrival in Afghanistan of close to 3,000 American soldiers as part of an extra 30,000 to boost the already 30,000 US troops in the country. The new contingent will be deployed in Logar province to secure violent provinces near the capital Kabul. Petraeus must now be thinking of how many more troops he will need to confront the additional Taliban fighters that will come from Malakand.

There is much more at the link to the Asia Times commentary, but basically, Shahzad is correct.  Implementation of Sharia law is only part of the deal.  The Pakistani Army will leave.  The institutions set up by the Taliban are now formalized and official, recognized by the Pakistani government.  Given the proximity of Swat to Afghanistan, safe haven for the Taliban doesn’t even begin to explain the depths of the problem.  The problem goes not only to territory and terrain, but preoccupation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP).

Although not exclusively, the TTP has primarily been disposed with fights inside of the North West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas.  They are now no longer occupied with fights with the Pakistani Army.

These fighters are now free to engage U.S. troops, and thus has Pakistan traded off its “security” for that of Afghanistan.  And the campaign in Afghanistan has just gotten a little harder.  Now.  How about all of those dignitaries summoned to Sharia court by the Taliban in Swat?  Had the Pakistani negotiators forgotten about that?

One final thing.  Sufi Mohammad … will soon travel to Matta, a sub-district of Swat, to visit his son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah (the Tehrik-i-Taliban commander in Swat) to try to persuade him to end the insurgency.  Of course he’ll be happy to oblige.

In order to stop the violence in Pakistan’s Swat valley of the North West Frontier Province, or so the government of Pakistan hopes, a deal has been struck to turn over Swat to fudamentalist Sharia law.  Zardari still believes that the Taliban problem poses the greatest risk to the survival of Pakistan, and in this he is correct.  The Taliban must be eliminated, he says.

But the analysis is basically correct.  While Zardari believes that the Taliban are the real threat to Pakistan’s existence, Pakistan still does not.  Zardari cannot wage the war against the Taliban – the Army and ISI are needed, and since they are still convinced that this is an American war, the deal has been struck with the Taliban.  Note the nuance with which Pakistan’s Foreign Minister deals with the issue.

This notion of reconcilable Taliban versus irreconcilable Taliban is a convenient excuse for turning off the war.  There may be those irreconcilables out there, but The Captain’s Journal believes that there are relatively few of them.  Another way of saying it is that the ones who have perpetrated the violence will continue to perpetrate the violence.  The tenacity and commitment to the mission is evidence of their intentions.

As for the Pakistani Army and the ISI, as we discussed about five months ago, there is duplicitous behavior taking place.

ONE SWELTERING AFTERNOON in July, I ventured into the elegant home of a former Pakistani official who recently retired after several years of serving in senior government posts. We sat in his book-lined study. A servant brought us tea and biscuits.

Was it the obsession with India that led the Pakistani military to support the Taliban? I asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

Or is it the anti-Americanism and pro-Islamic feelings in the army?

“Yes,” he said, that too.

And then the retired Pakistani official offered another explanation — one that he said could never be discussed in public. The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive. The military’s complicated relationship with the Taliban is part of what the official called the Pakistani military’s “strategic games.” Like other Pakistanis, this former senior official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of what he was telling me.

“Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the official told me. “The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”

As an example, he cited the Pakistan Army’s first invasion of the tribal areas — of South Waziristan in 2004. Called Operation Shakai, the offensive was ostensibly aimed at ridding the area of Taliban militants. From an American perspective, the operation was a total failure. The army invaded, fought and then made a deal with one of the militant commanders, Nek Mohammed. The agreement was capped by a dramatic meeting between Mohammed and Safdar Hussein, one of the most senior officers in the Pakistan Army.

“The corps commander was flown in on a helicopter,” the former official said. “They had this big ceremony, and they embraced. They called each other mujahids. ”

“Mujahid” is the Arabic word for “holy warrior.” The ceremony, in fact, was captured on videotape, and the tape has been widely distributed.

“The army agreed to compensate the locals for collateral damage,” the official said. “Where do you think that money went? It went to the Taliban. Who do you think paid the bill? The Americans. This is the way the game works. The Taliban is attacked, but it is never destroyed.

Whatever the motivation – money or as a buffer against India – the Army is not eliminating the Taliban as Zardari had hoped.  Counterinsurgency tactics can be learned, but belief and volition must underlie the Army’s actions for the campaign to be anything other than for show.  Thus continue the Talibanization of Pakistan.

Prior: Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror

A confluence of events and articles is focusing attention on the question(s) “Why are we in Afghanistan?” and “Is it worth it?”  A main stream media reporter recently sent The Captain’s Journal a note questioning what would happen if the U.S. and Britain completely pulled out of Afghanistan?  This reporter isn’t alone.  The likes of Dr. John Nagl, Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and Dr. David Kilcullen have recently weighed in on a number of both directly and tangentially related issues concerning whether we stay in Afghanistan and what the campaign should look like if we do.  Since this also relates to our own advocacy of a particular strategy for Afghanistan, we’ll take a sweeping trek across this terrain.

David Kilcullen weighs in at The Small Wars Journal Blog with Crunch Time in Afghanistan-Pakistan (an edited version of his statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan, 5th February 2009).  We’ll return to what Kilcullen says shortly, but first, there is a particular comment that runs in the same vein as the many of the objections to the campaign.  Excerpts are provided below.

… is it not better to cut the losses and leave now?  What is the downside of an immediate departure?  Loss of prestige? We have none to lose with any the groups we’re attempting to defeat.  Loss of deterrence? As Israel will discover, misapplied force encourages rather than discourages resistance. (Didn’t some guy named Galula say that about 50 years ago?)  The Taliban take over? Let them. As with Hamas, the only avenue to a positive outcome for us is to let them attempt to govern. If they succeed and create development and stability, we win. If they fail and destroy their popular support, we win … That al Qaeda will flourish? It’s more an identity than an entity, and we can’t defeat ideas with firepower. External events will determine al Qaeda’s viability.  The instability in Afghanistan spills over into Pakistan? Too late. We pretty much assured that when we underwrote the original mujahedeen back in the 80’s and then walked away after the Red Army bolted …  That heroin will flood the world? Legalize drugs and kill their funding source. (And that of the cartels.) (And we can shift the DEA budget to development work.)  That it will become a training ground (again) for terrorists? As long as there is a sea of disaffected people for them to swim in, terrorists will exist and their camps will be somewhere. True counterterrorism is social work – police, intel, development. The solution is social justice, not combat … Aid workers are a lot cheaper than warfighters, and the rising expectation of Pashtuns, driven by the awareness of their neighbors’ prosperity, will become an existential threat to the Taliban.

This objection to the campaign as it is currently constituted is the classic counterterrorism schema in which kinetic operations are reserved for high value targets and the population is changed from policing actions and social justice.  Seth G. Jones with RAND is a proponent of this model, i.e., that policing and intelligence are the answer to the problem rather than military action.

Aid workers would suffer the same fate as the Polish engineer who was recently executed by the Taliban.

When aid workers have no security they cannot perform the functions of an aid worker.  The Taliban will hardly create a stable regime, and Afghanistan would indeed become a haven again for AQ.  Furthermore, the mission of the Taliban (both Afghan Taliban and Tehrik-i-Taliban) is harmonizing into one of support for regional control and then confrontation of the West.  Baitullah Mehsud has made it clear that the goals of the TTP have evolved to one of global aspirations: “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.”

If the Taliban ever were just local rogues and thugs who wanted control over money and women, they aren’t now only that.  There has been a dovetailing not only of ideology but of forces as well.  The Tehrik-i-Taliban shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!” There is no distinction.  Bill Roggio has recently written about al Qaeda’s shadow army, operating in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has reorganized its notorious paramilitary formations that were devastated during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Al Qaeda has reestablished the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The paramilitary force is well trained and equipped, and has successfully defeated the Pakistani Army in multiple engagements. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army has conducted operations against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces.

“The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban’s consolidation of power in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province,” a senior intelligence official said. “They are also behind the Taliban’s successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul.”

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of their forces into the Shadow Army, “especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network,” a senior US military intelligence official said. “It is considered a status symbol” for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

There are no “reconcilables” in this group or the TTP.  The time delay in conducting legitimate counterinsurgency in Afghanistan has ensured that the Taliban have become radicalized.

Michael Yon has penned a sober (and sobering) analysis of the situation in Afghanistan.

The Iraq war, even during the worst times, never seemed like such a bog.  Yet there is something about our commitment in Afghanistan that feels wrong, as if a bear trap is hidden under the sand … We must also understand that Afghanistan is what it is. The military is acutely aware that Afghanistan is not Iraq.  The success we are seeing in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly occur in Afghanistan.  If we are to deal with moderate elements of the AOGs (armed opposition groups) we must do so from a position of strength, and this means killing a lot of them this year, to encourage the surviving “reconcilables” to be more reconcilable.

In fact, Dr. John Nagl waxes even darker in his forecast.

Col Nagl, an Iraq veteran who helped devise the successful strategy there under the aegis of Gen David Petraeus, told The Daily Telegraph that the gains made by the Taliban over the past two years need to be reversed by the end of the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan, around late September or early October, or else the Taliban will establish a durable base that would make a sustained Western military presence futile.

The forecast given by The Captain’s Journal to the querry from the MSM journalist was fundamentally that without U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban would be inside of Kabul within two weeks and the Karzai regime would collapse within one month to six weeks.  The Afghan police would be slaughtered, and the Army would last just a little longer than the police.  The Northern Alliance (which has been relegated to the sidelines by the U.S., and supported to some extent by India) would then be at civil war again with the Taliban.  Al Qaeda and a radicalized Taliban (such as the TTP) along with other international jihadist elements would have safe haven from which to train and launch attacks against Pakistan initially, and the West eventually.

To return to what Kilcullen advocates, he advises against the notion of a scaled-back effort performing counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda.  Whether we like it or not, we must provide security for the population and rebuild government legitimacy.  He also contrasts “chasing the Taliban around” with providing security, a dichotomy The Captain’s Journal rejects.  Having enough troops to chase and kill the Taliban should be part of an effective counterinsurgency strategy.  Petraeus has said so himself.

But Kilcullen is fundamentally right.  Counterinsurgency is the only viable option, short of pulling out of Afghanistan come what may.  Counterterrorism-policing operations against high value targets has failed us for six years in Afghanistan, and engaging only the soft side of COIN (i.e., sending more aid workers to rebuild the nation as the military bolted from the country) is a bizarre strategy to say the least.  As for Pakistan?  Again, listen to one Taliban who, when interviewed, gave away valuable intelligence concerning their perspective.  “If NATO remains strong in Afghanistan, it will put pressure on Pakistan. If NATO remains weaker in Afghanistan, it will dare [encourage] Pakistan to support the Taliban, its only real allies in the region.”

Afghanistan is as good a place to begin the regional counterinsurgency campaign as anywhere.

In an interesting and rather strange Asia Times article on the intertwined relationship between Iran, the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan, pro-Iranian commentator Kaveh L Afrasiabi sees possible cooperation between Iran and the U.S. on logistical supply routes to Afghanistan and other things associated with Operation Enduring Freedom.  If one can get by the dreaming, he makes this interesting statement.

“The difference between then and now is that the US officials are now distinguishing between the ‘good Taliban’ versus the ‘bad Taliban’ and hoping to sow divisions between them and reach a compromise with the former, perhaps as part of an emerging post-Karzai scenario,” said a Tehran University political scientist. The scholar added that he believes Iran does not like this “new approach” and finds it “simplistic and defeatist”.

He adds that the existing Karzai regime is backed by Iran.  The Captain’s Journal is no fan of Karzai, and we have already mentioned that a break with his administration might be necessary.  But it’s unlikely that Iran and the U.S. have mutual interests in anything.  For every U.S. interest, there is a corollary counter-interest by Iran, with regional Persian hegemony being the ultimate aim.

But of interest is that it is now understood worldwide that the U.S. is trying to delineate between “good” and “bad” Taliban.  True enough, there will be some amount of adolescents, teenagers and ne’er-do-wells who got sucked into the Taliban and might be able to be separated from the pack.  But we believe that this fraction is somewhere between very small and vanishingly small.  Hear carefully the words of one Taliban.

Abdul Shafiq is around 30 years old and has sacrificed his family life for two things: reading the Koran and fighting.

After years in exile following the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, this Taliban commander is back in the mountains of his birth, having left behind his old life with his family for one mission: chasing out the “infidel” Americans.

Abdul Shafiq — an assumed name — looks like any other Afghan, except that he has never been as unhappy as in times of peace.

In hiding in Kabul, he rarely spends two nights in the same place, taking a break before returning to the fight.

In the mountains, he heard of new US President Barack Obama “who will change nothing” and of Palestine “where something is happening”.

His future seems set: “As long as the Americans are here, we will fight them,” says the Taliban militant, whom AFP could only meet through local intermediaries …

It was in the northern mountains that he heard, over Taliban combat radio, on September 11, 2001 that planes sent by Al-Qaeda, had struck at the heart of the United States.

“That was beautiful, delicious to hear, everyone was happy,” the warrior says with a smile.

But when the United States invaded Afghanistan the following month, Shafiq and his comrades soon realised they could not withstand the deluge of US bombs and fled. Some went to Pakistan. Others, like Shafiq, went west to Iran.

The Iranian government and the Taliban may have little in common, but they shared virulent opposition to the United States.

Iran took in Taliban in their thousands … In Kabul, the US army, sure of itself, branded the Taliban finished.

It was then that Shafiq slipped quietly home to Wardak. “They told us that the Americans were stopping the Taliban much less,” he says.

He took charge of a group of 30 men who lived on the move, going from one safehouse to another, he says.

Even before then, the Taliban started to regroup. “Everything is structured. The orders come from our leaders in Pakistan …

So much for Iran’s suspicion of the Taliban as suggested by Kaveh L Afrasiabi.  There are many lessons wrapped up in this one interview, only parts of which are included above.  Iran supports the Taliban.  The hard core Taliban will fight until they die or we lose.  They get their orders from leaders Pakistan.  They believe that the U.S. has stood down in the effort to roust the Taliban.

As for the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan, another Asia Times article gives us what The Captain’s Journal believes to be a correct snapshot of the evolution in their thinking.

In some places they aim to enforce strict sharia law. In others, the Taliban want to establish bases from which to work in support of the resistance against foreign forces in Afghanistan.

In yet other areas, the purpose is simply to create chaos and anarchy so that militants can engage the Pakistani armed forces and deter them from supporting the global “war on terror”.

However, the ultimate mission of the groups is steadily harmonizing, that is, to support the regional war and then the global war against Western hegemony; this is the concept driving the neo-Taliban.

Whether the Afghan Taliban who are committed to war against the U.S. in Afghanistan, or the TTP who are committed to war against the West from Afghanistan to New York and London, the goals and aims of the “Taliban” are gradually dovetailing.  There will be fewer and fewer “good” ones left, if there ever were any to begin with.

The Captain’s Journal has kept close watch over the Talibanization of the FATA.  Amir Mir gives us reason to believe that Taliban control over the FATA and NWFP is almost complete.

Fifteen months after the launching of a military operation in the lush-green picturesque valley of Swat by the Pakistan army to dismantle the militant network of Maulana Fazalullah, a major part of the mountainous region seems to have fallen to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Swat apparently lives under the Sharia of Fazalullah.

Not too long ago, the idyll Swat valley, with its rolling hills, gushing streams and scenic vistas, was described as Pakistan’s Switzerland. However, ever since the beginning of the military operation in 2007 the law and order situation in Swat has gone from bad to worse, converting this paradise on earth into a valley of death and destruction. Around 10,000 militants of the Tehrik-e-Taliban have been pitted against 15,000 Pakistan army troops since October 22, 2007 when the operation was officially launched. Leading the charge against the Pakistan army is Maulana Fazalullah, who is also known as Mullah Radio for the illegal FM radio channel he operates. Through his FM broadcast that is still operational despite being banned by the NWFP government, Fazalullah keeps inspiring his followers to implement Islamic Shariat, fight the Pakistan army, and establish his authority in the area …

While following in the footsteps of the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan, the militants of Fazalullah are also pursuing a rigid agenda of religious beliefs which is based on a violent jehadi doctrine. Barbers in Swat and its adjoining districts under have been ordered not to shave beards and shops selling CDs and music cassettes ordered to close down. In some places, just a handful of the militants control a village since they rule by fear – beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and asking women to wear all-encompassing burqas. Similarly, the army is manning several police stations in Swat because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings. The gravity of the law and order situation can be gauged from the fact that one of the busiest squares in Mingora has been renamed by the shopkeepers as ’Khooni Chowk’ because every morning, as they come to their shops, they would find four or five dead bodies hung over the poles or the trees.

Mir also points to the larger organization to which Fazlullah belongs – the Tehrik-i-Taliban, which he decided to join in 2007.

Soon after the Lal Masjid operation, Fazalullah decided to join hands with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan led by Commander Baitullah Mehsud, in a bid to provide an umbrella to all insurgent movements operating in several tribal agencies and settled areas of the NWFP. Since then, Fazalullah and his followers are toeing Baitullah’s line, whether they are issuing a decree, signing a peace deal with the government or scrapping the same. Therefore, it appears by all accounts that the small coterie of Fazalullah-led militants is working in the same mould as the fanatic clerics of the Lal Masjid did, to make the Swat district hostage to its rigid vision of militant Islam. And remember, the valley is hardly 160 kilometers from Islamabad.

Mir inexplicably calls Fazlulah’s followers a “small coterie” of militants.  If this was true, the Pakistan Army would have been successful in its operations in the FATA and NWFP.  In fact, there is reason to believe that the Tehrik-i-Taliban has as many as a division of fighters in Swat.

The governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province has been quoted as saying that there are 15,000 militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

The fighters, who would very nearly constitute a small army division, “have no dearth of rations, ammunition, equipment, even anti-tank mines,”  Owais Ahmad Ghani told a team from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan led by Asma Jahangir, according to newspaper reports. A militant or a foot soldier earned between  6,000 ($75) to 8000 rupees a month while commanders took home 20,000 rupees to 30,000 rupees, the governor said.

The TTP is apparently so confident in its power and de facto authority in Swat that they have summoned Swat valley political leaders and dignitaries before Sharia courts.

A radical Pakistani Taliban cleric is demanding that a group of more than 50 Swat Valley dignitaries appear in his Islamic “court,” local media says.

Maulana Fazullah (sic), commander of the local Taliban militia in the northwestern Pakistan region, wants its provincial and federal lawmakers, dignitaries, elders and their families to present themselves in his sharia court within a week or be hunted down, the Press Trust of India, quoting local media, reported Sunday.

There are too many media reports to mention that indicate that the organization of al Qaeda is staggering under the heavy load of targeted UAV strikes against its leadership in the tribal areas of Pakistan.  True or not, it should be remembered about the TTP that while they were spawned by the Taliban of Afghanistan and aid them in the struggle against U.S. forces there, 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.  As for their global vision, Baitullah Mehsud has said “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.”

The celebration of the demise of al Qaeda should be a short one, with full knowledge that something just as bad, bigger and more powerful is replacing it in the FATA and NWFP region of Pakistan.  Our attention should return to the global counterinsurgency in which we are engaged, with full commitment to the defeat of militant jihad wherever it becomes manifest.

We have provided analysis of Baitullah Mehsud, the center of gravity of the globalist jihad movement in the Taliban controlled areas of Pakistan, head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) and more powerful by far than al Qaeda.  The Guardian has an exposé on Baitullah that is so good and extensive that several quotes will be provided below (the entire article is recommended reading), followed by brief analysis.

… after five years of germination, the disparate forces behind most of these attacks formally merged into the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) under the leadership of an illiterate 35-year-old commander, Baitullah Mehsud, confirming western suspicions that the epicentre of global jihad had shifted. Soon militias allied to the new grouping had permeated all of Pakistan’s border regions, even the northern ski slopes and trout streams of the former tourist haven of Swat …

“From the 26 suicide attacks where we recovered a head in 2007, we made a startling discovery,” says the Sig analyst. “The vast majority [of suicide bombers] came from just one tribe, the Mehsuds of central Waziristan, all boys aged 16 to 20.” Until the Sig team analysed the 2007 bombings, no one realised how successful the Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud had been in recruiting his extended clan to the martyrdom business …

The officer found out more when a few Mehsud boys, who escaped a suicide training camp, recently contacted him. “They told me, ‘We have nothing. Simple things would make a difference. We are fond of football. Give us a ball and we won’t bomb.’ ” The officer is working to recruit informers, but tentatively. Those who resist Baitullah Mehsud have been brutally dealt with – like the 600 elders who spoke out against him in 2005 and were, according to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, each sent a needle, black thread and 1,000 rupees with which to buy some cloth to stitch their own shrouds; all of them were then killed …

“The suicide bombers would be nothing without the bomb makers,” says Pervez, describing how men in caves and cowsheds, operating with a generator, a soldering iron and a pair of pliers, have become eminently adaptable. What the Sig proved was the axiom that today’s Islamic war zones inter-relate, how advice is passed down the line, in knapsacks and saddlebags, in encrypted computer files, in postcards and even in love letters. After insurgents in Iraq began to use mobile phones to detonate roadside bombs in the summer of 2003, the same technique emerged in Pakistan, deployed in one of the two assassination attempts on Musharraf in December. However, as western intelligence agencies caught up, developing high-frequency jammers to block the phone signals, the bombers changed tactics. Pervez says: “In Pakistan they returned to older techniques, using a 300-rupee [£2.50] wireless doorbell to send a low-frequency signal for which no one had thought to make a jammer” …

In the 80s, when Pervez was a young officer, the military and ISI had established hundreds of Sunni madrasas in southern Punjab that were aligned to a strict revivalist sect, the Deobandis, similar to the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. On graduation, most of these students were funnelled by the ISI into the secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, used to target Pakistan’s minority Shia population or infiltrated Indian Kashmir. “All the groups we are familiar with today came out of this process, and by the late 90s these men had had more consistent exposure to war than most officers in premier league armies in Europe” …

The closer you get to Baitullah Mehsud, the more of his strategy you can see. He is estimated to need one billion rupees (£8.6m) a year to keep his operations going. “It’s Jihadi Inc out here,” one senior police officer says. Among the Pakistan Taliban’s most recent recruits are a serial killer and two criminal dons, all of whom have been invited to become commanders. The officer says: “Mehsud’s Talibs now act like criminals, too, mounting a protection racket, charging road tolls, stealing fuel at gunpoint, blackmailing communities.”

They reach out across Pakistan. After arresting Qasim Toori, a wanted villain, in Shah Latif town, southeast Karachi, in January 2008, police learned he had been sent by Baitullah with 19 Taliban fighters to begin a crime wave. In Toori’s most successful raid, on October 30 2007, he held up the Bank al-Habib and stole 5m rupees (£43,000), money that was used to buy arms from al-Qaida. Baitullah’s men simultaneously began kidnapping …

Commentary & Analysis

When behind-the-times television analysts refer to al Qaeda who is being given safe haven in Pakistan, they fundamentally miss the point.  The globalist jihad movement of al Qaeda has been absorbed into the TTP of Pakistan.  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.

Baitullah Mehsud is not only the unchallenged master of the Tehrik-i-Taliban movement in Pakistan and across the border into Afghanistan, and he is essentially the head of not only a terror state, but also of a criminal enterprise worth 1E9 rupees annually (21 million dollars annually).

The group he leads is adaptive and improvisational with regards to their tactics, techniques and procedures.  They are even more experienced in war than the Pakistan Army, and certainly more so than most of the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

As for their global vision, Mehsud has said “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.”

Baitullah Mehsud and the Tehrik-i-Taliban are not just dangerous; concerning the future of global jihad and the security of the West, they are – without rival – enemy #1.

Prior:

Pakistan Declares Baitullah Mehsud Patriot

Kidnapping: The Taliban’s New Source of Income

Tehrik-i-Taliban and al Qaeda Linked

Baitullah Mehsud: The Making of a Terror State

What was once a scenic vacation and ski resort area is now a Taliban stronghold.

Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region outside the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive …

“You can’t imagine how bad it is,” said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. “It’s worse day by day.”

The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.

Militants began preying on Swat’s lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.

A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called “settled” regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.

The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.

Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat’s 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.

The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said …

Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.

On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.

“The terrorists’ aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east,” said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.

“The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create.”

As we discussed in Pakistan Redeploying Troops to Indian Border (and a month before that), this is the effect the Mumbai attacks were intended to produce.  But Talibanization is spreading even further Eastward and Southward from Swat.

Four months ago, the people of the Pakistani mountain village of Shalbandi gained national repute after a village posse hunted down and killed six Taliban fighters who had tied up and killed eight local policemen. The posse displayed the Taliban corpses like trophies for other residents to see, and the village was celebrated as a courageous sign that the Taliban could be repelled.

On Sunday morning, the Taliban struck back.

A suicide car bomber set off an explosion at a school in Shalbandi that was serving as a polling place, as voters lined up to elect a representative to the National Assembly. More than 30 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded, according to local political and security officials. Children and several policemen were among the dead.

The attack was the latest demonstration of the Taliban’s bloody encroachment eastward and deeper into Pakistan from the lawless tribal areas on the western border. Shalbandi is less than 100 miles northwest of Islamabad, the capital, and lies just south of the lush Swat Valley, a onetime ski resort known as the “Switzerland of Pakistan” that has been largely taken over by the Taliban despite large-scale army operations.

The Pakistan military has allowed radical elements to both dictate the terms of its engagements with India and with the radicals, the later as a function of the former.  All the while, Pakistan is falling to the radicals.

Pakistan is beginning troops movement away from the North West Frontier Province towards the border with India.

Pakistan began moving thousands of troops from the Afghan border toward India, officials and witnesses said Friday, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors and possibly undermining the U.S.-backed campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The country also announced that it was canceling all military leave in the aftermath of last month’s terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

Glenn Reynolds speculates that this is the effect that the Mumbaiattacks were intended to produce.  Most certainly so, and The Captain’s Journal forecast this effect one month ago.

While the new Pakistan administration sees the need for the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, the Pakistan Army mostly doesn’t and wishes not to be fighting their own people. The Army also has an almost pathological preoccupation with India, and the rumblings in India over the Mumbai attacks have given both the Pakistan Army and the Tehrik-i-Taliban the perfect cover to end their cooperation with the U.S. and NATO over the Taliban safe haven in the Pakistan FATA and NWFP.

This has long term ramifications for the campaign in Afghanistan, but the most serious ramification is a short term one having to do with lines of logistics.  Recent large scale attacks on NATO supply lines through Khyber (in Peshawar) were newsworthy for their magnitude and scope, but the chronic persistence and results of these attacks is the important story.

For NATO the most serious problem is not even the depots in Peshawar but the safety of the road that winds west to the 3,500-foot Khyber Pass. The route used to be relatively secure: Afriditribesman were paid by the government to safeguard it, and they were subject to severe penalties and collective tribal punishment for crimes against travelers.

But now the road is a death trap, truckers and some security officials say, with routine attacks like one on Sunday that burned a fuel tanker and another last Friday that killed three drivers returning from Afghanistan.

“The road is so unsafe that even the locals are reluctant to go back to their villages from Peshawar,” said Gul Naseem, who lives in Landi Kotal, near the border.

The largest truckers’ association here has gone on strike to protest the lack of security, saying that the job action has sidelined 60 percent of the trucks that normally haul military goods. An American official denied that the drop-off had been that severe.

“Not a single day passes when something doesn’t happen,” said Shakir Afridi, leader of the truckers’ group, the Khyber Transport Association. He said at least 25 trucks and six oil tankers were destroyed this month. “Attacks have become a daily affair,” he said.

This means that the potential logistical supply via Georgia being pursued by the Pentagon takes on urgent importance.  The upcoming Obama administration might have to make some tough decisions regarding Georgia.  “Georgia is the center of gravity in this plan, and our willingness to defend her and come to her aid might just be the one thing that … saves Georgia as a supply route.”

Russia has thrown down the gauntlet regarding her intended future and what she considers to be her near-abroad.  “In the latest of a series of combative moves by the Kremlin, a senior government official in Moscow said the Russian military would commission 70 strategic missiles over the next three years, as part of a massive rearmament programme which will also include short-range missiles, 300 tanks, 14 warships and 50 planes.”

The nexus of Vladimir Putin’s aspirations, the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, and the future of the Russian near-abroad has been all but ensured by the Taliban program to interdict supplies in Khyber, and more specifically by less than a platoon of well-trained teenagers who inflicted terror on Mumbai for three days in late 2008.

Prior:

U.S-Georgia Strategic Partnership

The Logistical Battle: New Lines of Supply to Afghanistan

The Search for Alternate Supply Routes to Afghanistan

Large Scale Taliban Operations to Interdict Supply Lines

More on Lines of Logistics for Afghanistan

How Many Troops Can We Logistically Support in Afghanistan?

Targeting of NATO Supply Lines Through Pakistan Expands

Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan

Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul

Interdiction of U.S. Supplies in Khyber Pass

The Torkham Crossing

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan