.‘We must do something about Pakistan'
MAYWAND, AFGHANISTAN — Under a waning moon, with no electricity for light, the headquarters of Afghan forces in the Maywand district of southern Afghanistan was cloaked in heavy darkness.
Despite the late hour, district leader Haji Safullah remained awake in his concrete bunker, sitting cross-legged on ragged carpets, talking with police commanders about how to defeat the Taliban.
“Pakistan,” the former mujahedeen warrior said, his voice a growl in the dark. “We must do something about Pakistan.”
As the Taliban insurgency grows in southern Afghanistan, so do suspicions about Pakistan's role in the war. Afghans tend to blame their old nemesis for everything wrong in their country, but their accusations about the Taliban finding money, shelter, weapons and fighters on the other side of the border are getting more specific these days. Mr. Safullah rhymed off the names of Taliban leaders living in neighbourhoods and compounds around Quetta, in west-central Pakistan, and complained bitterly that his men can't hunt insurgents in those havens.
The frustration of such front-line commanders has been percolating upward in recent months, through the ranks of foreign soldiers, NATO officials, and Western diplomats. During a visit to Islamabad yesterday, Canada's Defence Minister praised Pakistan's assistance but pressed for more. “In my ideal world, they could do even better because that way our troops will be safe,” said Gordon O'Connor, who was on a tour this week through Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And diplomats say that each NATO soldier killed by a Taliban bomb or ambush adds weight to an emerging consensus among Western allies, roughly mirroring the conclusion of the battle-scarred Afghan commander: Something must change inside Pakistan, quickly.
On a leafy patio in Kabul, a senior Western diplomat took a long sip of sparkling water when asked whether foreign troops are really fighting a local uprising in the country's south. What about the argument, he was asked, that the NATO forces have been drawn into a proxy war, a struggle against fighters whose instructions come from a neighbouring country?
“It's a bit of both,” the official said, with an uncertain shrug.
The answer wasn't vague for the sake of diplomacy. Nobody has a clear picture of the connections between elements in Pakistan and the Taliban, or how the insurgents draw support from inside the country without, apparently, any meaningful interference from Pakistani authorities. Analysts often point to the deep historical ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which helped nurture the Taliban in the early 1990s, giving them support that helped the movement grow from a religious backlash against corrupt warlords into a theocracy that dominated most of the country.
Some published reports, such as one about Taliban leaders travelling in cars with official ISI licence plates, suggest that Pakistan intelligence retains its links with the insurgents. But does the military regime in Islamabad know about, or control, its ISI agents in the borderlands?
“We don't have evidence of that. But we know Pakistan could, and should, be doing more to stop the Taliban,” a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad said.
Canadian diplomats interviewed in Pakistan last month suggested that Canada must push Islamabad more vigorously for co-operation.
“We're not as aggressive as we could be,” one diplomat said.
Mr. O'Connor's visit this week is the 18th known delegation from Ottawa to Islamabad since the beginning of 2005. That means the Canadian High Commission in Pakistan is busier than most of Canada's missions abroad, but the diplomatic traffic is slower than the bustle among other Western countries. Britain's High Commission in Islamabad says it welcomed 40 official visits, not including military delegations, in the same time period. The U.S. embassy reported “30 to 35,” also excluding military guests.
The Western allies have similar goals in Pakistan, analysts say, but Canada's aims grew more distinct since it took responsibility for security in the troubled Afghan province of Kandahar this year. Kandahar shares a mountainous border with Balochistan, the vast swath of Pakistan's tribal regions. Balochistan has a reputation as a Taliban recruiting ground, a haven for insurgent training camps and home to many of the movement's leaders.
Canada wants Pakistan to crack down on the insurgents coming from Balochistan, but diplomats say it's difficult to reverse the habitual neglect with which counterterrorism officials inside and outside Pakistan have treated the southern tribal belt.
Within Pakistan, the biggest obstacle to a crackdown is the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a staunchly anti-imperialist party that promotes a rigid enforcement of Islamic law. A political summary prepared for Canadian diplomats in Islamabad says the JUI “is still believed to be supporting the uprising of the ‘local' Taliban from the tribal areas, and Balochistan.”
The document adds: “Taliban fighters are apparently recruited and trained in these areas.”
Despite the JUI's unsavory connections, President Pervez Musharraf has relied on the party's strong regional voting base in previous elections.
“Part of the quid pro quo with the JUI was, ‘If you want to go after al-Qaeda because of the American pressure, fine, but we will differentiate between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, because we the JUI support the Taliban,'” said Ahmed Rashid, a prominent writer on Afghan issues.
Sitting in the elegant study of his home in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Rashid leaned forward in his chair to emphasize his next point: The United States focused on hunting al-Qaeda after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, at the expense of fighting the Taliban.
“What happened after the war ended was simply that the Americans were insisting on a wrap-up of al-Qaeda,” he said. “That was translated by the Americans, very conveniently, as meaning Arabs; not Afghans, not Pakistanis. The focus was on the NWFP,” he said, referring to the North West Frontier Province on the northern side of Pakistan's tribal areas where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.
“Because the focus was there, that very conveniently left the Taliban, who were based essentially in Balochistan, completely alone,” he continued. “Which is why they were able to revive and resurge.”
For the United States, this strategy in Pakistan has achieved significant goals. Since 2001, Pakistan has arrested more than 600 al-Qaeda operatives, including major terrorism suspects such as Ramzi bin Al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged organizers of the 9/11 attacks.
But the U.S. strategy left NATO with an unpleasant surprise when the international force assumed responsibility for Afghanistan this year: U.S. intelligence agencies had little useful information about the Taliban revival in the south.
Foreign militaries have misunderstood their enemy, said Mohammad Ziauddin, resident editor at the Dawn newspaper group in Islamabad.
Western officials often refer to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed former leader of the Taliban government, and his sadistic field marshal, Mullah Dadullah, as key leaders of the insurgency.
But those two leaders are merely “foot soldiers,” Mr. Ziauddin said.
“They take orders from the JUI,” he said. “It's not a Taliban uprising. It's a section of the Pashtuns who are pissed off, and they're organized by the JUI to take back Kabul.”
Some diplomats and analysts disagree with Mr. Ziauddin, saying it's not clear whether the JUI has such control over the militants. But there's broad agreement with his two main points: That the JUI feeds the insurgency with its support, whether material, or merely ideological, as the party claims; and that the Pashtun tribe feels marginalized in the new Kabul government.
The Pashtuns have dominated Afghanistan for centuries. As the main ethnic group of southern Afghanistan, Pashtuns led the Durrani Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they formed the core of the Taliban movement that conquered Kabul in 1996.
Pashtun resentment may slowly decline, analysts say, as the northern tribes that overthrew the Taliban in 2001 are increasingly balanced with representation from elsewhere in the country.
But the JUI's influence in Pakistan seems poised to grow. The leader of the JUI's largest faction, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, was appointed as the leader of the opposition in 2004, and his party now dominates the provincial governments in Balochistan and the NWFP. Among the JUI's ardent followers, Taliban victories in Afghanistan only increase the Islamic party's prestige inside Pakistan.
And while General Musharraf is a moderate politician, analysts say, recent defections from his governing coalition will force him to rely even more heavily on the JUI's support during the election next year.
This leaves Canadian diplomats with an exceptionally difficult task in Pakistan, Mr. Rashid said: “We are heading for an even bigger catastrophe.”
Globe and Mail
Despite the late hour, district leader Haji Safullah remained awake in his concrete bunker, sitting cross-legged on ragged carpets, talking with police commanders about how to defeat the Taliban.
“Pakistan,” the former mujahedeen warrior said, his voice a growl in the dark. “We must do something about Pakistan.”
As the Taliban insurgency grows in southern Afghanistan, so do suspicions about Pakistan's role in the war. Afghans tend to blame their old nemesis for everything wrong in their country, but their accusations about the Taliban finding money, shelter, weapons and fighters on the other side of the border are getting more specific these days. Mr. Safullah rhymed off the names of Taliban leaders living in neighbourhoods and compounds around Quetta, in west-central Pakistan, and complained bitterly that his men can't hunt insurgents in those havens.
The frustration of such front-line commanders has been percolating upward in recent months, through the ranks of foreign soldiers, NATO officials, and Western diplomats. During a visit to Islamabad yesterday, Canada's Defence Minister praised Pakistan's assistance but pressed for more. “In my ideal world, they could do even better because that way our troops will be safe,” said Gordon O'Connor, who was on a tour this week through Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And diplomats say that each NATO soldier killed by a Taliban bomb or ambush adds weight to an emerging consensus among Western allies, roughly mirroring the conclusion of the battle-scarred Afghan commander: Something must change inside Pakistan, quickly.
On a leafy patio in Kabul, a senior Western diplomat took a long sip of sparkling water when asked whether foreign troops are really fighting a local uprising in the country's south. What about the argument, he was asked, that the NATO forces have been drawn into a proxy war, a struggle against fighters whose instructions come from a neighbouring country?
“It's a bit of both,” the official said, with an uncertain shrug.
The answer wasn't vague for the sake of diplomacy. Nobody has a clear picture of the connections between elements in Pakistan and the Taliban, or how the insurgents draw support from inside the country without, apparently, any meaningful interference from Pakistani authorities. Analysts often point to the deep historical ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which helped nurture the Taliban in the early 1990s, giving them support that helped the movement grow from a religious backlash against corrupt warlords into a theocracy that dominated most of the country.
Some published reports, such as one about Taliban leaders travelling in cars with official ISI licence plates, suggest that Pakistan intelligence retains its links with the insurgents. But does the military regime in Islamabad know about, or control, its ISI agents in the borderlands?
“We don't have evidence of that. But we know Pakistan could, and should, be doing more to stop the Taliban,” a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad said.
Canadian diplomats interviewed in Pakistan last month suggested that Canada must push Islamabad more vigorously for co-operation.
“We're not as aggressive as we could be,” one diplomat said.
Mr. O'Connor's visit this week is the 18th known delegation from Ottawa to Islamabad since the beginning of 2005. That means the Canadian High Commission in Pakistan is busier than most of Canada's missions abroad, but the diplomatic traffic is slower than the bustle among other Western countries. Britain's High Commission in Islamabad says it welcomed 40 official visits, not including military delegations, in the same time period. The U.S. embassy reported “30 to 35,” also excluding military guests.
The Western allies have similar goals in Pakistan, analysts say, but Canada's aims grew more distinct since it took responsibility for security in the troubled Afghan province of Kandahar this year. Kandahar shares a mountainous border with Balochistan, the vast swath of Pakistan's tribal regions. Balochistan has a reputation as a Taliban recruiting ground, a haven for insurgent training camps and home to many of the movement's leaders.
Canada wants Pakistan to crack down on the insurgents coming from Balochistan, but diplomats say it's difficult to reverse the habitual neglect with which counterterrorism officials inside and outside Pakistan have treated the southern tribal belt.
Within Pakistan, the biggest obstacle to a crackdown is the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a staunchly anti-imperialist party that promotes a rigid enforcement of Islamic law. A political summary prepared for Canadian diplomats in Islamabad says the JUI “is still believed to be supporting the uprising of the ‘local' Taliban from the tribal areas, and Balochistan.”
The document adds: “Taliban fighters are apparently recruited and trained in these areas.”
Despite the JUI's unsavory connections, President Pervez Musharraf has relied on the party's strong regional voting base in previous elections.
“Part of the quid pro quo with the JUI was, ‘If you want to go after al-Qaeda because of the American pressure, fine, but we will differentiate between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, because we the JUI support the Taliban,'” said Ahmed Rashid, a prominent writer on Afghan issues.
Sitting in the elegant study of his home in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Rashid leaned forward in his chair to emphasize his next point: The United States focused on hunting al-Qaeda after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, at the expense of fighting the Taliban.
“What happened after the war ended was simply that the Americans were insisting on a wrap-up of al-Qaeda,” he said. “That was translated by the Americans, very conveniently, as meaning Arabs; not Afghans, not Pakistanis. The focus was on the NWFP,” he said, referring to the North West Frontier Province on the northern side of Pakistan's tribal areas where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.
“Because the focus was there, that very conveniently left the Taliban, who were based essentially in Balochistan, completely alone,” he continued. “Which is why they were able to revive and resurge.”
For the United States, this strategy in Pakistan has achieved significant goals. Since 2001, Pakistan has arrested more than 600 al-Qaeda operatives, including major terrorism suspects such as Ramzi bin Al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged organizers of the 9/11 attacks.
But the U.S. strategy left NATO with an unpleasant surprise when the international force assumed responsibility for Afghanistan this year: U.S. intelligence agencies had little useful information about the Taliban revival in the south.
Foreign militaries have misunderstood their enemy, said Mohammad Ziauddin, resident editor at the Dawn newspaper group in Islamabad.
Western officials often refer to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed former leader of the Taliban government, and his sadistic field marshal, Mullah Dadullah, as key leaders of the insurgency.
But those two leaders are merely “foot soldiers,” Mr. Ziauddin said.
“They take orders from the JUI,” he said. “It's not a Taliban uprising. It's a section of the Pashtuns who are pissed off, and they're organized by the JUI to take back Kabul.”
Some diplomats and analysts disagree with Mr. Ziauddin, saying it's not clear whether the JUI has such control over the militants. But there's broad agreement with his two main points: That the JUI feeds the insurgency with its support, whether material, or merely ideological, as the party claims; and that the Pashtun tribe feels marginalized in the new Kabul government.
The Pashtuns have dominated Afghanistan for centuries. As the main ethnic group of southern Afghanistan, Pashtuns led the Durrani Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they formed the core of the Taliban movement that conquered Kabul in 1996.
Pashtun resentment may slowly decline, analysts say, as the northern tribes that overthrew the Taliban in 2001 are increasingly balanced with representation from elsewhere in the country.
But the JUI's influence in Pakistan seems poised to grow. The leader of the JUI's largest faction, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, was appointed as the leader of the opposition in 2004, and his party now dominates the provincial governments in Balochistan and the NWFP. Among the JUI's ardent followers, Taliban victories in Afghanistan only increase the Islamic party's prestige inside Pakistan.
And while General Musharraf is a moderate politician, analysts say, recent defections from his governing coalition will force him to rely even more heavily on the JUI's support during the election next year.
This leaves Canadian diplomats with an exceptionally difficult task in Pakistan, Mr. Rashid said: “We are heading for an even bigger catastrophe.”
Globe and Mail
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