Rifts within the Taliban

Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times reports some striking news in the development of the Taliban insurgency, which could point to increasing internal rifts. He cites anonymous Taliban sources who claim that Taliban chief Mullah Omar has fired Baitullah Mehsud, the alleged mastermind of the Bhutto assassination who had been in charge of stepping up attacks against the Pakistani state.

Now, apparently, Omar is trying to return the focus of the insurgency back to Afghanistan, to fight NATO forces and the nascent Afghan state. The divide apparently came over a difference in opinion about who to focus attacks on. “Mehsud was expected to provide valuable support to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but instead he directed all his fighters against Pakistani security forces,” writes Shahzad.

This shift in Taliban strategy was evident, Shahzad says, with the recent attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan province that destroyed oil tankers headed to NATO’s Kandahar airfield.

Holbrooke on Bush's "ineffective" counter-narcotics plan

Former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke tackles the thorny issue of the Bush administration’s counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan -– calling the billion-dollar-per-year plan the “single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy.” According to him, in addition to wasting money, the policy only strengthens the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As most of the poppy crops destroyed are in the insecure south, it pushes penniless farmers with no other options into the arms and influences of the Taliban. Meanwhile, little effort is made to tackle the drug lords and corrupt government officials who enable the trafficking trade.

Holbrooke recommends first boosting security, providing free agricultural support to farmers and building access roads to markets to ensure successful alternate livelihoods, before launching on a complete poppy eradication plan in insecure areas.

New Report on the ‘Forgotten War’

The European Council on Foreign Relations has a new report out calling for U.S. and European governments to “overhaul their strategies and strike a 'grand bargain' to stabilise the country.” Significantly, it urges enticing moderates into the fold of governance and legitimacy through money and other incentives.

There will be no stability in Afghanistan unless “moderate” insurgents embrace constitutionalism and enter democratic politics. Since the Bonn Agreement in the wake of the September 11th attacks, the coalition has supported the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, better known as the Northern Alliance, which brought together the main Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara groupings. For obvious reasons it had no significant links to the Pashtuns who make up 42% of Afghanistan’s population.22 After 2001, despite Karzai’s Pashtun background, Pashtun tribal leaders were largely excluded from government and have been ever since. Many have thus aligned themselves with the resurgent Taliban. The coalition and the Afghan government must work to convince them that they can pursue their interests democratically.

There have already been signs that this is at least possible. Though President Karzai’s overtures to reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were rebuffed, the Taliban, while insisting on a number of conditions, have been receptive to the idea of negotiations as proposed within Karzai's "Peace Jirga". The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently gave his backing to these negotiations, again with conditions attached, but the US administration remains sceptical.

Political agreements - like the failed Musa Qala deal in 2006 overseen by the then ISAF commander, General David Richards – should aim to isolate the “hard-core”, many of whom are foreigners, from more moderate, indigenous groups. Such political agreements would also help avoid the violent tactics that may have won NATO military victories last year but cost vital public support because of high civilian casualties.

An effective policy in the short term would be to identify insurgent leaders willing to cut a deal. The coalition could then operate a system of “divide and rule”, whereby intransigent insurgents would see their erstwhile comrades rewarded with a package of financial and other incentives which add up to a better deal than that offered by the Taliban. (emphasis added by editor).

The report urges European governments to send more troops to Afghanistan, eliminate or reduce the national caveats on their troops, and reverse their “underperformance” by increasing reconstruction aid. On the flip side, the report pushes the U.S. to shift its combat strategy to a more political one and abandon its counter-narcotics plans of aerial spraying or buying up opium crops. It recommends the U.S. shift the onus of the problem onto traffickers and concentrate on arresting and prosecuting drug lords and their governmental supporters.

Ashdown’s Challenges

The Asia Times has an insightful look at the challenges that Paddy Ashdown will face as he begins his new role as the UN envoy to Afghanistan. Pakistani bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad opines that Ashdown will have to talk with “the real players” – Mullah Omar and al-Qaida -- notwithstanding the recent expulsion of European diplomats for allegedly talking to the Taliban.

“Greatest military threat to Pakistan”?

Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader of the newly formed coalition Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, who has been accused by Pakistani intelligence of masterminding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, is getting some media interest.

Bagram holds more than twice as many as Guantanamo

The secretive American detention center at Bagram base now holds more than twice as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay, according to a New York Times report. Despite American efforts to shut down the base prison and transfer detainees to Afghan facilities and oversight, the number of prisoners has continued to grow as Guantanamo stopped taking in detainees.

The Afghan facility can only hold half the people that it was initially designed for, and construction has been slowed down by security and legal issues. Meanwhile human rights groups say treatment of detainees at Bagram, which was formerly abysmal culminating with the beating deaths of two detainees, has improved overall, but overcrowding complaints persist.

Intrigue of expelled diplomats deepens

The intrigue surrounding the expulsion of EU acting representative in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, and UN diplomat Michael Semple, is deepening. A London Times report over the weekend quoted Afghan government sources claiming that the two were trying to “turn” the brother of the late Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah.

New covert US push in Pakistan?

The US is considering sending the CIA on more aggressive, covert missions into the chaotic tribal regions of Pakistan. The New York Times article quotes anonymous senior administration sources saying that the possible missions would be very secretive but would involve CIA cooperation with Special Operations forces. These options are being discussed in response to intelligence reports that see new Taliban efforts to destabilize the Pakistani government. (Also see the earlier Afghanistan Watch post on this)

Blogger “Charlie” who writes for the respected “Abu Muqawama” counterinsurgency blog thinks that Pakistan lacks two conditions that could make these missions successful:

1) A welcoming and cooperative government, whose armed forces take the lead in ground operations.
2) Little in the way of media coverage or Pentagon/Foggy Bottom meddling.

Islamist split in Pakistan

Nicholas Schmidle writes on the split within the Islamist movements in Pakistan in this week's New York Times Magazine. The hard-line Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, reportedly the political front for jihadi groups including the Taliban, seems to have toned down its anti-American and pro-jihadi rhetoric, as it prepares to contest the upcoming Pakistani parliamentary elections. This issue of whether to participate in the elections or boycott them has caused the powerful Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance to split. This alliance won 10 percent of the popular vote last time around and formed provincial governments in two of the four Pakistani provinces.

In the past year, the J.U.I. chief (Maulana Fazlur Rehman) has tried to disassociate himself from the new generation of Taliban wreaking havoc not only across the border in Afghanistan, as they have for years, but also increasingly in Pakistan. At the same time, Rehman has been trying to persuade foreign ambassadors and establishment politicians here that he is the only one capable of dealing with those same Taliban. In the process, some Islamists maintain that Rehman has sold them out. Last April, a rocket whistled over the sugarcane fields that separate Rehman’s house from the main road before crashing into the veranda of his brother’s home next door. A few months later, Pakistani intelligence agencies discovered a hit list, drafted by the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, with Rehman’s name on it.

[snip]

Rehman doesn’t pretend to be a liberal; he wants to see Pakistan become a truly Islamic state. But the moral vigilantism and the proliferation of Taliban-inspired militias along the border with Afghanistan is not how he saw it happening. The emergence of Taliban-inspired groups in Pakistan has placed immense strain on the country’s Islamist community, a strain that may only increase with the assassination of Bhutto.

2007 – a year of records

2007 was a year of records in Afghanistan – most of it violent: the highest US military toll, most suicide bombings and record production of opium. More than 6,500 people, including 110 US troops and almost 4500 militants, were killed last year. Poppy production soared to 93 percent of the world’s supply. The Taliban also seems to be growing more sophisticated in its attacks and targets.

Record level of violence in Afghanistan, by Jason Straziuso (The Associated Press) 1 Jan. 2007:  Taliban fighters avoided head-on battles with US, NATO and Afghan army forces in 2007, resorting instead to ambushes and suicide bombings. But militants did attack the weakest of Afghan forces to devastating effect.

More than 925 Afghan policemen died in Taliban ambushes in 2007, including 16 police killed Saturday in Helmand province during an assault on a checkpoint.

"The Taliban attack who they perceive to be the most vulnerable, and in this case it's the police," said Lt. Col. Dave Johnson, a spokesman for the US troops who train Afghan police and soldiers. "They don't travel in large formations like the army does. That puts them in an area of vulnerability."

Taliban suicide attackers set off a record number of attacks this year — more than 140 — and in many ways they became more sophisticated.

In February a suicide bomber killed 23 people outside the main US base at Bagram during a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney. A suicide bomber in June killed 35 people on a police bus. And in November a suicide bombing that killed six lawmakers also left a total of 77 people dead after security guards opened fire on a crowd of onlookers. Sixty-one school children were killed.