The different types of "Taliban": The good Bad and the Ugly

Posted on 04 April 2009. Tags: Haqqani, Hikmatyar, Taliban

Neo Taliban and Hikmatyar: Possible partners for peace in Afghansitan.

As each passing week of the American drone campaign brings yet another harvest of civilian deaths, more and more Pakistanis are radicalized, and the government — the nuclear-armed government — grows ever more shaky…Thus the attacks ordered by Obama in Pakistan are escalating the threat of exactly the kind of nuclear instability that he decried in Prague. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

There are several types of “Taliban“. It depends on who you are talking to to find out who the good ones are and who the bad ones are. Mulla Omar vs. Bait Mehsud: A series of unfortunate events in Afghanistan

Many analysts are confused about the dynamics in South Asia. American arm chair thinkers obfuscate the truth to cloak the nefarious acts of sabotage being carried out by the intelligence agencies. Delhi keeps harping about the inevitable collapse of Pakistan and its media in concert with the right wing parties continue to paint the gloom and doom pictures about Islamabad. All this to hide the Delhi’s total failure in international relations and domestic tranquility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6M_Bj6zV1Q&feature=player_embedded

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The CIA faces its toughest test yet to prove wrong the suspicions of many within the Pakistani strategic community that some of the terrorism exported from Afghan soil into Pakistan has direct or indirect support from Washington.

The immediate test centres on Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the bandits who present themselves as Pakistani Taliban. The Americans have begun some cosmetic drone attacks on Baitullah’s territory and there are reports Washington has agreed to launch a joint operation with Pakistan against this bandit. The purpose is to assuage Pakistani concerns about the US role. In July last year, Pakistan’s military leadership confronted senior CIA and US military commanders with evidence showing Washington indirectly protecting anti-Pakistan terrorists on the ground. This newspaper broke that story on Aug. 5, 2008, with a front- page headline, “US told not to back terrorism against Pakistan.”

Mehsud is a good example. This bandit and his former leader and associate, Abdullah Mehsud, pioneered the attacks on Chinese interests in Pakistan, which was the first thing Abdullah did after being released from Gitmo in 2003. Interestingly, he was not handed back to Pakistan despite being a Pakistani citizen, but was released to Afghanistan where he went back into the custody of the US military and the Karzai government. Abdullah was killed when Pakistani security forces caught him sneaking back into Balochistan from Afghanistan, where he most probably was meeting his handlers. How he financed, armed and sustained a 25,000-strong militia remains beyond explanation. This militia continues to have quality arms and generous funding.

Until now CIA drones have never targeted Abdullah or Baitullah or any other militia that is committed to attacking Pakistan. During the operations in Bajaur, our soldiers were reportedly stunned at one point to see close to 600 well-armed terrorists come in from Afghanistan, fight the Pakistani military and then escape across the border. The CIA never attacks such “terrorists.” There has been a meteoric rise in the number of anti-Pakistan militias and fighters within our tribal belt since 2004, complete with religious brainwashing justifying the killing of Pakistanis as a first priority. This has coincided with the launch of terrorism in Balochistan and northern Pakistan, the area between Gwadar port and the Chinese border.

In order to punish the real or imaginary Pakistani tolerance for “Afghan Taliban” – the real Taliban, I must add – someone who wields power in Afghanistan decided to make Pakistan pay by grooming their own Islamic fighters who’d solely focus on fighting Pakistan (as compared to the Afghan Taliban who focus on fighting the Americans inside Afghanistan) – professional killers trained in the art of recruiting and organising death squads, Islam-focused propaganda experts fluent in Pashto, Uzbek, Arabic and, possibly, Chechen, and develop conduits for money and arms supplies from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

The US uses India to ratchet up the heat on Pakistan whenever there is a hiccup in the relationship. These days the Indian climbdown coincides with renewed signs that Pakistan’s political and military leaderships are cooperating with Washington.

In 2002, the Americans were allowed to establish bases in Balochistan and CIA was given the right to recruit Pakistanis in the tribal belt. These two areas of Pakistan are now the most disturbed parts of our country. And now our territory is being used to attack the interests of Iran and China. Washington is creating conditions across our western belt that would make it impossible for China to pursue trade and energy corridors through Pakistan.

Hopefully, Mr Richard Holbrooke heard in Islamabad that we don’t accept American diktat over Afghanistan where we have our own interests to watch like everyone else. The CIA’s footprints. Thursday, April 09, 2009

The US media does not and cannot report on the human tragedy that has fallen on Pakitan. The bombs raining on the civilian population of the coutnry has created a tsunami of tragedy which is impacting the entire country.

While the usual gaggle of sycophants and media hive-minders — along with some ordinarily perspicacious analysts — tell us that Barack Obama literally changed the course of human history by disgorging a great load of thrice-chewed cud about nuclear disarmament in Prague this week, the high-tech drone war the great hero of peace is waging inside the sovereign territory of America’s ally, Pakistan, is helping drive tens of thousands of people from their homes and killing civilians almost daily. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

There is a cadre of “institutes” and “think tanks” that have an agenda that constantly support a particular point of view about Pakistan. Even Google News does not publish the Pakistani perspective–it will publish letters which malign Pakistan, it will publish blogs that criticize Islamabad and will publish news items that spread gloom and doom. It seldom publishes positive news about Pakistanis. News dot google dot com will not publish Rupee News, even after repeated requests and even after meeting all criteria.

WASHINGTON: In its new strategy for the Pak-Afghan region, the US administration seems to have undertaken an ambitious plan for Pakistan which entails political restructuring as well as changing perceptions.

The restructuring involves bringing the ISI effectively, and not just technically, under civilian control. To achieve the other goal, the Americans are seeking to change Pakistan’s perception of India as an enemy.

As a replacement, they are offering a new enemy: the militants operating along the Pak-Afghan border. US seeks to bring about political reform in Pakistan By Anwar Iqbal Saturday, 04 Apr, 2009 | 03:56 AM PST |

80% of Afghanistan is under insurgent control. Taliban sanctuaries around Kabul thumb thier noses at ISAF, NATO & US forces. Why would Taliban need safe havens far away in Pakistan?

Can American Taliban bring Peace in Afghanistan? Impact & Analysis. Recent days have shown a radical shift in the American attitude, specially after Mehsud bragged about the attack on Lahore, took credit for the New York killing spree by a Vietnamese and threatened the White House with destruction. Does this signal a rift between the RAW sponsorhip of Mehsud and their CIA benefactors? Zaid Hamid video on Swat

To the chagrin of the paid writers in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the inconvenient truth keeps surfacing. The Afghan Taliban still owe their fidelity to Pakistan and condemn the fratricidal war against the Pakistani people. Mulla Omar the leader of the Afghan Taliban repeatedly has admonished the Tehrik e Taliban e Pakistan (TTP) which has waged terror against Pakistan and Pakistanis

“American drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people. The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.

“As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army….

“So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees. The commissioner’s office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

When Freedom fighters turn terrorist

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade mujahedeen leader, in a video from February 2007.

The Afghan government has been exploring the potential for negotiations with the Taliban leadership council of Mullah Muhammad Omar and with a renegade mujahedeen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, after receiving overtures from them last year, the officials said. The proposal for talks gained additional momentum from an endorsement by Saudi Arabia and the change to a civilian government in Pakistan, both of which increased political pressure on the Taliban to compromise As U.S. Weighs Taliban Negotiations, Afghans Are Already Talking By CARLOTTA GALL, Published: March 11, 2009

LAHORE: Pakistan and the US have agreed to stage a joint operation to kill local Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani intelligence official told The Daily Telegraph on condition of anonymity.

According to the intelligence official, Islamabad will pass intelligence about Mehsud’s movements to Washington, with the aim of guiding a missile attack from an American drone. He said that while the government opposes all strikes of this kind as an invasion of the country’s sovereignty in public, behind the scenes it is quietly passing on targeting information to Americans. “We are mounting joint operations against Baitullah Mehsud which will hopefully soon show results,” he added. He said the US had agreed to target Mehsud after months of persuasion by Islamabad’s top military leadership.

Intelligence ignored: Mehsud, who is based in South Waziristan, threatened to target the US after claiming responsibility for the attack on a police training centre outside Lahore on Monday. The intelligence official told the British daily that Pakistan had twice given America intelligence about Mehsud’s whereabouts for targeting. He claimed that it had been ignored both times. “He was travelling on a road from point A to point B, and twice we tipped off America,” he said. “But nothing happened. That raised a question mark over America as an ally for us,” the official added.

Major threat: However, US commanders now view Mehsud as a major threat. He is considered to have links to Al Qaeda and last month he joined an alliance of Taliban leaders from across the border in Afghanistan, who are preparing to counter President Barack Obama’s deployment of more US troops in the country. Mehsud has also attacked supply convoys for Western forces in Afghanistan, which travel through Pakistan and cross the northwest frontier through Khyber Pass.

According to the Telegraph, targeting Mehsud may help to rebuild trust between the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and the US. ISI officials, however, say that America is too close to India. They suspect that Washington is levelling accusations of collusion with the Taliban against the ISI to create a pretext for sending US troops into Pakistan or widening its missile attacks beyond the Tribal Areas. Daily Times Monitor

Before we get caught up in Ha Bakree—-Let us take a step back and see what is going on?

The aim is to destroy the peace in Swat and create civil war. SInce when has Muhsud started to control Vietnamese in the USA? Some idiot is now taking credit for everything under the sun–Lahore, Islamabad, and even New York..Lunacy!..it is just hot air! These statements are even more fake than the 10 different images of OBL–who would release a vide right before a US elections. When did the Taliban get into the business of calling press conferences and taking credit for sabotage..isn’t this new? Taking credit for New York was so hilarious– most were in stitches. The only thing more funny was the FBI denying that Mehsud had a hand in the incident involving the Vietnamese.

Let them not obfuscate the issue—”they” are supporting, arming and training these incidents of sabotage against Pakistan–then turning around and blaming Pakistan/Muslim for their own puppets. Brilliant.

SUFI MUHAMMAD: He leads a peaceful group called Tehrik-e-Nifaaz Shariat Muhammadi group (TSNM). He is the Father-In-Law of Mulla Fazalullah. Muhammad Sufi Saeed led a march of thousands of local people in Swat soon after the agreement and is now trying to persuade his son- in-law Fazlullah to accept the terms.

Key Taliban leaders in Pakistan:

BAITULLAH MEHSUD: Head of the newly formed Taliban Movement of Pakistan. He has been named by the Pakistan government and the CIA as the man behind the Dec. 27 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in 1980s; alongside the Taliban in the 1990s and against U.S. and NATO troops after 2001. Now taking aim at the Pakistan military. From the Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, near the Afghan border where Western intelligence suggests Al Qaida is regrouping.

MAULVI FAZLULLAH: Uses an illegal FM radio station in Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley in the northwest to rally supporters to his rigid brand of Islamic rule. Followers have burned down CD shops, girls’ schools and launched dozens of suicide attacks against Pakistani police and military. Commander in the Taliban Movement of Pakistan.

Pakistani cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who has waged war against the authorities in the Swat Valley for 20 months, has “reservations” about a peace accord between militants and the government, a spokesman said.

Fazlullah is leading a rebel group loyal to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is based in the northwestern tribal region and is fighting security forces in areas along the border with Afghanistan.

FAQIR MOHAMMAED: Based in northwestern Pakistan’s Bajour Agency, he is considered a close ally of al-Qaida’s Ayman Al-Zawahri. Part of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan but also a key member of the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law. He has sent hundreds of young men to fight in Afghanistan and has been implicated in dozens of suicide attacks.

SADIQ NOOR: Powerful leader in North Waziristan, where followers have battled Pakistan’s military and provided assistance to the Afghan Taliban across the border. He is closely aligned to Afghanistan’s Jalaluddin Haqqani, a key eastern Afghan commander who coordinates activities between al Qaida and the Taliban.

MAULVI GUL BAHADAR: The leader behind the deeply flawed September 2006 agreement with the Pakistan military that gave breathing space for the burgeoning Pakistani Taliban. Based in North Waziristan. Source: Associated Press

The Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan have already agreed on a ceasefire with Pakistan, and are expected to make an announcement to this effect within a few days.

In an interview with this correspondent on satellite phone from an unknown location, Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that when the Pakistani Taliban began fighting against the United States and other allied forces who had occupied Afghanistan, they were united. But subsequently, he said, Baitullah and other Pakistani militants had started fighting the Pakistani military and “we have cut all ties with them and openly disown them”.

He said the Taliban have a clear-cut policy of not fighting with any other Muslim country, especially with Pakistan, in any manner, and that they are strictly against fighting the Pakistani military. Syed Saleem Shahzad. Asia Times Jan 30th, 2008.

The message is..you brown boys can’t control these animals…so it is the White Man’s burden to take care of this!

Isn’t this another media campaign to create a false flag to dehumanize Pakhtuns, and give the US a reason for intervention? Doesn’t this remind us of the videos run on CNN 24 hours a day about he prosecution of women in Afghanistan circa 2001.Well in “Free and Liberated Afghanistan” Karzai signed a bill a month ago20which mandated that the wife has to have sex on demand and definitely within 4 days. Drugs, Rape and violence has gone up dramatically in “Free Kabul” and the first woman to come out in the open against the Taliban–just fled Kabul saying it was much safer under the Taliban.

There is more outrage about this spanking among the elite than the rape, murder and burning of 2000 men and women who happened to be Muslim in Gujarat (see movie called Parzania)

How about a Youtube video about the 1 million women raped in the USA, and the 10,000 murders in US cities. Maybe even a video about the gangs in NYC, LA and 50 million Indian widows incarcerated in temples, or the condition of the Dalit women 450 million of which live in slavery. Are we also going to make videos about all the sodomy centers called prisons in Pakistan (complete with leg irons) and create a media campaign on 25% of the world’s prison population in the USA…Jeffery Dahmer and the school shootouts..or are the videos confined to FATA and Pakistan.

PAKISTANI VIEW:The Taliban was a construct of the CIA and was armed by the CIA….

Good Taliban according to the Pakistani point of view: The Pakistanis consider the “Taliban” fighting the occupation forces as the good Taliban.Afghan Taliban repudiate links with Swat-admonish Bait Mehsud

Bad Taliban according to the Pakistani point of view: The Pakistanis consider those who attack civilians as the bad Taliban

Ugly Taliban according to the Pakistani point of view: The Pakistanis think of Bait Mehsud and his fillowers as Indian proxy agents and think of them as the bad Taliban.

Baitullah Mehsud played a leading role in a vicious campaign against the military operation in Waziristan throughout 2004, during which he employed many of the tactics evolved during his time in Afghanistan, including beheading local policemen, guerrilla warfare and using the rugged terrain to hide troops and supplies.

At that time, Baitullah was working in close collaboration with Tahir Yuldashev, cofounder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo detainee who is also said to be Baitullah’s brother but it remains unconfirmed. Another report by Dawn claimed that one of Abdullah’s brothers was a serving major in the Pakistan army, during the Waziristan operation which failed in rounding up this top rank of militants. Abdullah Mehsud committed suicide in 2007 after security forces raided his hideout in Balochistan. Dawn

Why is Afghanistan at the nexus of a regional crisis that threatens the security of the United States and the very existence of Pakistan?

Because Afghanistan is awash with money, arms, and foreigners. The Obama administration should think twice before assuming that injecting more money, arms, and foreigners into Afghanistan is going to solve the problem.

When you’ve got a hammer, you look for a nail. The United States has money, military power, and considerable hands-on experience in applying them to counterinsurgencies. So it’s not a surprise that the U.S. wants to apply these skills to the mess in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And, since counterinsurgency is a step up intellectually over the Bush administration’s simplistic invasion = liberation formula, it’s not surprising that the Obama administration is willing to consider that an intelligent, broad spectrum application of American military, ideological, financial, and intellectual power will enable us to gain the upper hand over the Taliban.

However, a case can be made that injecting more money and more arms, even with the noblest purpose and finest Ph.D.s, is part of the problem and not the solution. First, an anecdote, then a bit of information, and finally some analysis. The anecdote comes from Gary Schroen’s book First In (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005).

Schroen, as the title states, was the first CIA officer inserted into Afghanistan after 9/11 and tasked with establishing contact with the Northern Alliance. His book, which was intensively vetted by the CIA, offers a remarkably prosaic picture of the Afghan war.

Schroen and his team flew into northern Afghanistan with several cardboard boxes filled with millions of dollars in US greenbacks. For the duration of the book, Schroen is hunkered down in the Panjishir Valley, dispensing cash, writing long-winded memos to Langley, and mapping the GPS coordinates of Taliban positions for bombing raids that, at least while he’s there, never came. The big event: the arrival of 100 pounds of Starbucks coffee that allows Schroen to drink a decent brew while composing his cables.

Schroen’s book is enlivened by descriptions of actual combat experienced by others. In this passage, a C.I.A. operative, “Craig” is with a ragtag force of 60 Afghans organized by Hamid Karzai facing a Taliban position 600 yards away across a valley:

There was movement on the hilltop, and Craig could make out the figures of two, now three men dressed in black clothing…each holding an AK-47…Then the three men stepped forward and began to move down the slope toward them…The three men reached the level ground of the valley floor and, without breaking stride, picked up their pace until they were jogging…What were these three guys up to? They were moving effortlessly, running about three to four feet apart, maintaining a line…

Then, from down the line, one of the Afghans watching the three men steadily cross the open ground shouted, “Chechnya! Chechnya!” A wave of panic and fear, so intense that Craig could feel it physically, swept through the line of men on the hilltop.

[The Chechens] were reported to be fanatical, fierce fighters, well trained and experts with their weapons. After one particularly tough engagement…a number of the dead…had been found to have been killed by a single shot to the head. This was incredible to the Afghans, none of whom actually aimed their weapons but rather trusted Allah to guide their bullets. They thought that such accurate fire had to be the work of the Chechens.

Craig turned in wonder to look up and down the line of Afghans. He could see panic setting in. Sixty men, all armed, frightened by three men running toward them. He grabbed Sergeant Haidar and shouted, “Tell the men to shoot. Shoot!” The US Taking on the Neo-Taliban and Missing the Point? The Other Side of the Coin By PETER LEE. Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs. Lee can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo

US VIEW:

The Good Taliban according to the US point of view: According to the US view, the Good Taliban are the ones that are in Pakistan and fight the Pakistanis or blow up their homes and offices. The US considers Bait Mehsud and his followers the Good Taliban, that America does not care about.”Till recently, the US particularly avoided any attacks on Bait Mehsud and his followers. There have been no strikes against him at all, even after Pakistani officials provided details of his whereabouts. There are charges that the US and the CIA have been aiding these monsters.

The Bad Taliban according to the US point of view: The US considers the tribals of North and South Waziristan as the ones who are the bad Tlaiban, becuase they move back and forth and help their bretheren across the border.

The ISI’s contacts with some of these extremist groups -with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network, Commander Nazir (sp) and others -are a real concern to us,’ said Mr Gates.

The Ugly Taliban according to the USi point of view: The US considers the Taliban that are fighting the US forces as the really horrible and ugly Taliban.

[The Karzai troops] began to fire long bursts, guns bucking skyward against the prolonged-recoil, panic firing. After a few seconds the firing reached a peak, and Craig watched in amazement as the three men continued to jog forward through the hail of lead slamming the earth around them. ..The three men did not alter their pace or break formation but jogged on…

[The Karzai troops exhaust their 30-round magazines, reload, and empty their magazines again.]

But again the three fighters ran on untouched.

There were now nearing the base of the hill, and as silence fell along the line of men at the top of the hill they could hear the three men shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” over and over as they ran on. It was too much for the Afghans…As if on signal, the entire group of sixty men turned and began to run from their positions.

[T]he three Chechens…were now casually going through the items left by the fleeing Afghans…Craig watched the three men, who now were shouting what had to be obscenities at them. One of the men stood spread-legged and grabbed his crotch with both hands, making hip movements to emphasize his statement. Another turned and pointed his butt at them, shaking it, then turned and pointed toward them, laughing.

Craig and his CIA mate could have killed the three men as they worked their way up the hill, sho’ nuff. But in order not to further humiliate the Karzai troops, Craig calls down an airstrike from a circling B-52 instead. The three Chechens are disintegrated by a 2000-pound bomb just as one of them is giving Craig the finger. Everybody gives a big cheer.

The item of information comes from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007:

First, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty – quite the opposite. Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south are the richest and most fertile, in the past the breadbasket of the nation and a main source of earnings. They have now opted for illicit opium on an unprecedented scale (5,744tons), while the much poorer northern region is abandoning the poppy crops.

Second, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is now closely linked to insurgency. The Taliban today control vast swathes of land in Hilmand, Kandahar and along the Pakistani border. By preventing national authorities and international agencies from working, insurgents have allowed greed and corruption to turn orchards, wheat and vegetable fields into poppy fields.

Third, the Taliban are again using opium to suit their interests. Between 1996 and 2000, in Taliban-controlled areas 15,000 tons of opium were produced and exported – the regime’s sole source of foreign exchange at that time. In July 2000, the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, argued that opium was against Islam and banned its cultivation (but not its export). In recent months, the Taliban have reversed their position once again and started to extract from the drug economy resources for arms, logistics and militia pay. The US Taking on the Neo-Taliban and Missing the Point? The Other Side of the Coin By PETER LEE. Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs. Lee can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo.

IRANIAN POINT OF VIEW:

Good Taliban: According to the Iranian point of view the the good Taliban are the Shia of Herat that control a section of Afghanistan. The Good Taliban are the members of the Northern Alliance which Iran supported for a decade. Most of these are in power.

Bad Taliban: Though Iran considers the Tlaiban in power before 2001 as the bad Taliaban,however they Tehran is confused about these bad Taliban who are now fighting the Americans.

Ugly Talibanaccording to the Iranian point of view. The Iranians think that the Taliban who were in power before 2001 as the worst of the lot.

…

The UN press release, entitled Opium Amounts to Half of Afghanistan’s GDP in 2007, drives the point home:

In its final Afghan Opium Survey for 2007 issued today, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that opium is now equivalent to more than half (53%) of the country’s licit GDP. … the total export value of opiates produced in and trafficked from Afghanistan in 2007 is about $4 billion, a 29 per cent increase over 2006.

Approximately one quarter of this amount ($1 billion) is earned by opium farmers. District officials take a percentage through a tax on crops (known as “ushr”). Insurgents and warlords control the business of producing and distributing the drugs. The rest is made by drug traffickers.

In 2008, opium production dropped because of a combination of bad weather and good policies in government-controlled provinces. However, the Taliban, traffickers, and corrupt officials still extracted $70 to $80 million in taxes on farmers’ output and over $200 million in processing and trafficking revenues from the opium industry.

And a new problem emerged:

Opium poppy eradication has become more risky

Eradication activities in 2008 were severely affected by resistance from insurgents. Since most of the poppy cultivation remains confined to the south and south-west region dominated by strong insurgency, eradication operations may in the future become even more challenging.

Security incidents associated with eradication activities in Hilmand, Kandahar, Hirat, Nimroz, Kapisa, Kabul and Nangarhar provinces included shooting and mine explosions resulting in the death of at least 78 people, most of whom were policemen. This is an increase of about 75% if compared to the 19 deaths in 2007. The major incidents were in Nanarhar and Nimroz provinces.

One of the most serious incidents happened in Khogyani district of Nangarhar, where 20 policemen were killed together with Fazal Ahmad, a MCN/UNODC surveyor whose job was to collect the data that feed into this report. Other incidents happened in Khashrod district of Nimroz, where 29 people died along with the district police chief. Both attacks were carried out by suicide bombers. The Poppy Eradication Force (PEF) faced a large number of rocket attacks while carrying out eradication in Hilmand province.

The nature of the attacks changed between 2007 and 2008. In 2007, police deaths were the result of violence by farmers whereas deaths in 2008 were the result of insurgent actions, including suicide attacks.

Now, the analysis.

Left to its own devices, Afghanistan is not a threat to the safety of the world.

Even with the support of the ISI, the Taliban was little more than an obnoxious gang of bumpkin theocrats unable to project its power beyond the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan.

In 1997, when the Taliban tried to stake its claim as ruler of all Afghanistan by conquering the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, bad things happened, as Steve Coll writes in Ghost Wars [New York: Penguin Press, 2004]:

Mazar became a Taliban death trap. Within days…the city’s Uzbek and Shia populations revolted against their Pashtun occupiers. They massacred three hundred Taliban soldiers. They took another thousand prisoner and sent the militia reeling back down the Salang Highway…

What allowed the Taliban to slip the ISI leash and become a dominant factor inside Afghanistan was its alliance with al Qaeda, an alliance that turned into an intensely symbiotic relationship after 9/11.

Al-Qaeda fighters provided the hard core for the Taliban army, as Schroen’s account illustrates, turning the Taliban into a superior fighting force instead of just another warring faction.

Al-Qaeda also extended the Taliban’s reach through assassination and terror squads. Most famously, al Qaeda operatives assassinated Ahmad Shah Masood, the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, on the eve of 9/11.

Illicit drugs, the mother’s milk of successful modern insurgencies, are keeping the Taliban-al Qaeda axis alive, and giving it the capacity to entrench itself in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even as it became the target of an intensive military and intelligence effort.

Foreign fighters and local opium have extended the reach of the Taliban and turned it into a regional threat.

There’s one other factor.

Paradoxically, the United States forced the Taliban to become the Taliban on steroids, or the neo-Taliban, as it’s sometimes called.

Confronted with an existential threat from the biggest, richest, and most experienced counterinsurgency force on the planet, the Taliban had to elevate its game far above the usual level of cruelty, greed, and venality that is in the skill set of every Central Asian warlord.

Nowadays, the Taliban isn’t just surviving.

It’s flourishing.

It’s pushing aside overmatched government security forces in its areas of operation.

Not only in Afghanistan, where it has a major presence in over half the country. Also in Pakistan, where the Pakistan Taliban dominates the tribal areas (FATA), is pushing into the settled region of the NWFP, and extending its reach by way of cells and terrorism into Pakistan’s heartland.

And it’s not flourishing because it represents jihadist, Islamist, Afghan, or Pashtun aspirations.

The Taliban is flourishing because it is so well-armed, well-funded, well-trained that it attracts the allegiance of commanders and compels the obedience of the local civilian population, and because it’s engaged in the fight of its life against the U.S., NATO, Afghanistan, and Pakistan at the same time and has learned to exploit its resources to the nth degree.

In other words, it’s doing well because it’s biggest, meanest, most paranoid, and scariest guy on the block.

It’s also hooked on opium revenues and dependent on a cadre of professional foreign and domestic fighters to intimidate governments and ordinary citizens.

Think of the Taliban like the Mafia of Sicily and Naples, which are perhaps its closest analogues.

It can’t coexist with pluralistic pro-Western governments, even in the unlikely event that the West agrees to allow the Taliban to participate in coalition rule in Kabul. A bulked-up organization that possesses more money and power than the central government is an unacceptable threat to public safety.

At the same time, the Taliban can’t downsize and become the “good” Taliban because it can’t risk giving up the protection that it gains from drug running and maintaining an extra-legal cadre of assassins and terrorists.

In a head-to-head match-up with the Taliban, which side has the money, weapons, ruthlessness, and desperation to project power into Afghan homes, mosques, and government institutions?

The good news is that the United States and NATO have more money. The bad news is, in an impoverished, tribal society, having a lot of money doesn’t do a lot of good. If the Taliban is able to extract $100+ million from the opium trade, it doesn’t need a lot of foreign sources of revenue like repurposed zakat (Islamic tithes) or contributions from rich armchair jihadists in Saudi Arabia.

The good news is that the United States and NATO have more weapons. The bad news is, there’s more than enough weapons in Afghanistan for everyone.

The bad news is, the Taliban is fighting for its life with every weapon at its disposal. The other bad news is, U.S. and NATO are fighting for…well, a modern Afghan democracy is off the table, so basically we’re fighting the Taliban because they’re fighting us.

The bottom line is that the U.S. is facing an extremely ruthless and capable group with the trappings of a criminal organization that uses money, violence, and intimidation to operate among a dispersed population in a rugged region where the borders leak like sieves and law enforcement is virtually non-existent.

It’s not an environment conducive to the conventional counter-insurgency doctrine of using military and economic measures to secure an ever-growing zone of loyal and grateful citizens.

In its current configuration, the Taliban has enough money, reach, and motivation to challenge the security measures of the U.S., NATO, and the Kabul government throughout contested Pashtun areas.

Perhaps the Taliban should be considered an organized crime problem instead of a counterinsurgency problem.

Leave aside the counterinsurgency tropes about winning the hearts and minds of the people by providing them with security because a) we probably have the hearts and minds of many of the unfortunates living under Taliban rule already b) we can’t provide the sustained security that turns hearts-and-mind affection into active resistance to the Taliban and c) the Taliban is self-sufficient in money, arms, and supplies thanks to its position at the nexus of the cross-border trades in drugs, contraband, and necessities and doesn’t need the support of the people in the way of a traditional guerilla force.

Instead of turning a blind eye toward local opium trafficking by anti-Taliban governors and warlords in the hope that extending the official reach of the Afghan government into those areas will yield security gains, the main security effort should be devoted to denying to the Taliban the fruits of the opium industry-not only the revenue, but the illicit cross-border financial channels and the avalanche of contraband across hundreds of unofficial border crossings it engenders.

Buy it, burn it, eradicate it…do whatever it takes to crimp the financial self-sufficiency of the Taliban.

The U.N. has made the point concerning opium with desperate urgency:

“Since drugs are funding the insurgency, NATO has a self-interest in supporting Afghan forces in destroying drug labs, markets and convoys. Destroy the drug trade and you cut off the Taliban’s main funding source”, said the UN’s drug chief [Antonio Maria Cost].
…
Drug metastases have spread throughout Afghanistan, providing capital for investments, foreign exchange for expensive imports, revenue to underpaid officials as well as funding for weddings, burials and pilgrimages. Corruption has facilitated the general profiteering. The government’s benign tolerance of corruption is undermining the future: no country has ever built prosperity on crime.

…

NATO to help taking on opium labs, markets and traffickers. The opium economy of Afghanistan can be bankrupted by blocking the two-way flow of (i) imported chemicals, and (ii) exported drugs. In both instances several thousand tons of materials are being moved across the southern border and nobody seems to take notice.

Since drug trafficking and insurgency live off of each other, the foreign military forces operating in Afghanistan have a vested interest in supporting counter-narcotics operations: destroying heroin labs, closing opium markets, seizing opium convoys and bringing traffickers to justice. This will generate a double benefit. First, the destruction of the drug trade will win popular support (only 1 out of 10 Afghan farming families cultivate opium, earning a disproportionately large share of the national income). Second, lower opium demand by traders will reduce its price and make alternative economic activity more attractive.

It’s a lot easier to destroy opium than the Taliban. Opium doesn’t run away.

But it still isn’t easy.

Contra the U.N.’s optimistic assertion that destroying the opium trade will win hearts and minds, the opposite will probably be true in the first stage.

Opium is the backbone of whatever prosperity there is in southern Afghanistan today, and not just for a minority of farmers. Virtually all of the funds in the halawa system of traditional finance in Kandahar and the other major cities in the Taliban area are opium-derived. The graft that fattens the local officials comes from opium. Opium pays for weddings, cars, and tractors and injects money into the economy. If the opium boom goes bust, there are going to be a lot of poorer and pissed-off people.

A second point is that an opium war will take years not months. According to the U.N., Afghanistan is over-producing opium at such a furious rate that it is exceeding annual global demand by several thousand tons. That opium-actually, the heroin it was refined into–is sitting somewhere against that rainy day when the West finally decides to get serious about the Afghan opium industry.

In fact, in 2008 the U.N. hypothesized that the Taliban might be anticipating a campaign against its opium revenue base, holding back heroin stocks from the market and ready to engage in sophisticated price manipulation to undercut the eradication campaign:

A wild card in the hands of insurgents. If the Taliban are holding major drug stockpiles, they may welcome lower opium cultivation. The resulting price increase would revalue their stocks and improve war financing. Indeed, news picked up by UNODC surveyors in a number of eastern and southern provinces confirm that the Taliban are taking a passive stance at this time of opium planting, as against past efforts to promote it. If opium prices are allowed to increase because of a moratorium on cultivation supported by the Taliban, the resulting market manipulation would spell disaster in the north-east of Afghanistan where so many provinces have abandoned opium cultivation voluntarily, enticed by expectation of development assistance and good revenues from wheat. If wheat/opium terms of trade change again in favour of the latter, this would spell trouble for Afghan counter-narcotic policy.

The second point is much more counter-intuitive and calls into question America’s self-appointed mission as hammer of Islamic terrorism and the savior of Afghanistan.

More is less.

The threat posed by U.S. and NATO forces is a key element in Taliban unity and effectiveness. Not everybody wants to fight the Great Satan, but those who do fight smarter and harder. The alien presence also sucks in foreign jihadis, increases Taliban reliance on hardened fighters like the ones who routed the Karzai forces in Schroen’s account, and emphasizes the necessity of maintaining and deepening the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship.

Surging more U.S. troops will cause greater Taliban casualties; but an expansion of military operations will probably increase violence and civilian casualties, and will feed general weariness and disillusionment with the U.S. intervention.

U.S. gains may also be unable to remove the well-founded concern that the U.S. is not in it for the long haul and can’t guarantee that transitory security gains achieved under its aegis can be made permanent or even sustained.

My recipe for success:

The Taliban has entrenched itself in the rugged terrain of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan to resist counterinsurgency campaigns originating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its program of terror, intimidation, and propaganda has succeeded in cowing and deterring Afghan and Pakistan forces. Instead of taking the Taliban on head-on where it’s strongest, in the mountain bastion it has prepared so well in anticipation of this battle, fight a war for the relatively open and agrarian opium-growing areas in the southwest.

Stop contending with the Taliban for control of populations in Taliban-dominated areas.. Instead of fighting for territory, fight to deny the Taliban access to opium resources and obstruct its major source of funding.

Throw the main NATO resources into the opium war with the full understanding that it will a) hurt the economy and b) alienate a lot of people. But rely on the fact that more people understand and accept the immorality of opium than accept the U.S. intervention or acknowledge the merit of an extensive and violent counterinsurgency campaign that yields a lot of civilian casualties. Bank on the expectation that there are only a limited number of people willing to die to protect the opium industry.

Reduce the Taliban’s opium revenue to and try to force it to operate more like a true guerilla force sustaining itself off the local population, instead of riding a wave of general, if relative, prosperity.

My prediction: people will be pissed off at the U.S., NATO, and Karzai. But, as the Taliban tries to squeeze money out of a depressed economy to maintain a force of bigoted theocrats and foreign fighters, people will get pissed off at the Taliban, too. And local fighters and commanders will drift away from the Taliban.

Then, as the Taliban faces competition for scarce resources and is deprived of the unifying factor of an direct and immediate existential threat, perhaps it will be further weakened by internal divisions, Taliban allies of convenience will defect and, at last, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or somebody like him will finally take the fight to the Taliban/al-Qaeda core.

Who is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar?

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the only major insurgent commander in the field in Afghanistan who is independent of the Taliban and not beholden to al Qaeda.

He is an experienced and brutal son of a bitch with a rich history.

Hekmatyar was the mujahideen commander who received the bulk of U.S. and Saudi funding–$600 million or so-during the anti-Soviet jihad. He was the preferred client of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service until he was unable to establish a stable regime in Kabul after the Soviets withdrew and Islamabad made the disastrous decision to back the Taliban instead. He adheres to a modernizing strain of Islamic fundamentalism along the lines of the Muslim Brotherhood that is far removed from the obscurantist indoctrination the Taliban leadership received in the Deobandi madrassas of western Pakistan.

After the Taliban took over most of Afghanistan in the 1990s, Hekmatyar fled to Iran, was expelled and had his bank accounts confiscated by Tehran, and survived a CIA assassination attempt using a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. He returned to Afghanistan and somehow (insert suspicion of ISI funding here) managed to draw commanders and troops away from the Taliban and re-establish a fighting force in eastern Pakistan.

Despite the fact that he is credited with one of the bloodiest anti-ISAF actions of the Afghan war-an ambush that claimed the lives of 10 French soldiers last year-Hekmatyar is being cultivated by every anti-Taliban force to an extent that is almost ludicrous.

The Karzai government has consistently wooed Hekmatyar with offers of a role in the Kabul government. A rump faction of Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami party was allowed to contest Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections in 2005 after it made an unconvincing formal break with its founder-it won 34 seats. When Saudi Arabia invited the Taliban and the Karzai regime for peace talks in Riyadh in July 2008, Hekmatyar’s representative was included as separate, third party. At the end of 2008, Hekmatyar’s son-in-law was transferred to Afghan custody (Pakistan had arrested him at American insistence), where he was released, ushered into the Presidential Palace for discussions with Karzai, and given a hero’s welcome in Kabul.

Then Pakistan released Hekmatyar’s brother from custody in January of this year.

China, which provided the lion’s share of Hekmatyar’s arms as the CIA-funded quartermaster of the anti-Soviet war, recently invited Hekmatyar’s designated link to the ISI and Pakistan government, the Pakistan Islamic political party, Jamaat-i-Islami, to Beijing for talks.

Beyond Hekmatyar’s traditional fan club of Karzai, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and China, the United States is aware of his potential as an anti-Taliban asset.

In a November 2008 article entitled Afghan Rebel Positioned for Key Role, the Washington Post provided an insight into U.S. thinking:

[W]ith casualties among foreign forces at record highs, and domestic and international confidence in Karzai’s government at an all-time low, U.S. and Afghan officials may have little choice but to grant Hekmatyar a choice seat at the bargaining table.

Top U.S. military officials have indicated in recent weeks a willingness to cut deals with rebel commanders like Hekmatyar to take insurgents off the battlefield.

However, Hekmatyar has made it clear that he will never enter the field as part of any U.S. or NATO anti-insurgency force.

He has reiterated this stance too many times for there to be any ambiguity about it. As an example, the Jamestown Foundation quotes Hekmatyar on the issue:

“We want all foreign forces to leave immediately without any condition. This is the demand of the entire Afghan nation.”

Doubtless Hekmatyar distances himself from the United States in order to maintain his credibility as an Afghan fighter.

But maybe he also understands that, even if he enjoys the covert backing of the ISI, he will have little chance against a Taliban united and energized by the U.S.-led counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan and swollen by opium profits.

In the end, Hekmatyar, who was notorious for killing more Afghani rivals than Soviet invaders during the jihad, might have the magic formula for cutting the Taliban down to size that the West is looking for.

In 2002, Time Magazine quoted him as saying:

“We prefer involvement in internal war rather than occupation by foreigners and foreign troops”.

Hekmatyar would probably enjoy his “internal war” even more if he got effective backing from the ISI (and profits from his own drug business; Hekmatyar pioneered the refining of heroin inside Afghanistan, instead of just taxing opium) while the Taliban’s opium revenues withered.

A bitter, ugly, underfunded, and depleting civil war devoid of theological, religious, ethnic, or international implications, between two diminished and destructive gangsters unable to project their power beyond the Pashtun heartland.

Maybe this is the best we can hope for in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the time being. Is the US Taking on the Neo-Taliban and Missing the Point? The Other Side of the Coin By PETER LEE. Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs. Lee can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo.

INDIAN POINT OF VIEW:

The Good Taliban according to the Indian point of view: The Indians think that Bait Mehsud and his followers are the good Taliban as they think that he bogs down the Pakistani army so that it cannot do Bharat any harm. The Good Taliban are the members of the Northern Alliance which India supported for a decade. Most of these are in power

The Bad Taliban according to the Indian point of view: : According to the Indian point of view the bad Taliban are the ones that cross the border.

The Ugly Talibanaccording to the Indian point of view: : According to the Indian point of view the Taliban that are in Afghanistan are the worst of the Taliban. These are the ones that threw out the Indians when they were in power. Delhi is really scared of these Talibans.

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