RISE OF THE NEO-TALIBAN, Part 1 Death by the light of a silvery moon
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
NAWA PASS, Pakistan border with Afghanistan - Sitting with four key Taliban
commanders deep in a labyrinth of lush green mountains, I could see the Sarkano
district of the Kunar Valley in Afghanistan, which is the provincial hub of the
American military and a base for the Afghan National Army and Afghan
intelligence.
Scores of guerrilla groups, each comprising a few dozen men, hide on the
fringes of the Kunar Valley and launch daily operations into Kunar and
Nooristan provinces, and with each
passing day they receive new recruits and their attacks grow in intensity.
A year ago, I spent two weeks with the Taliban in Helmand province (including a
few days in captivity - see
A 'guest' of the Taliban, Asia Times Online, November 30, 2006 ), but
since then there has been a sea-change within the Taliban.
Without legends such as the slain Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Akhtar Osmani, and
with an extremely ill Jalaluddin Haqqani, a neo-Taliban movement has emerged
with a new leadership, new zeal and new dynamics. The revitalized and
resupplied Taliban are geared to enter a new phase of war without borders to
fight coalition forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistan army.
In a way, all that has gone before in the "war on terror" in the past six years
since the Taliban were ousted from Kabul has been a dress rehearsal.
For its part, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders are
preparing to take up the fight. According to Asia Times Online contacts
familiar with developments, a joint Pakistan-NATO operation was approved at a
meeting of Pakistan's corps commanders at the weekend. Significantly, they
agreed that the boundaries would not necessarily be drawn between Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
Whether a conventional force
such as NATO can contain the Taliban is another
matter. Obviously, the Taliban are confident. I
asked Shaheen Abid, the Taliban's head of
guerrilla operations in
the strategic Sarkano district, what
was behind the group's revitalization.
Shaheen smiled in response and turned his gaze to three of his subordinate
commanders - Zahid of the Nole region, Mohsin of the Shonk Karey district and
Muslim Yar of the Barogai region.
"I only know how to fight. Answering complicated questions is beyond my ambit,"
Shaheen said apologetically, and immediately signaled for the Taliban's media
relations officer of the Kunar Valley, Dr Jarrah (a jihadi name), to respond.
Jarrah began, "Before answering you, I will ask you a question. Who is
qualified to claim that he has actually seen world?" Before I could reply to
this rather strange question, Jarrah answered himself, "The one who has
experienced true love, the one who has lived in an alien atmosphere and place,
and the one who has spent time in captivity.
"The mujahideen have experienced all three things in the past seven years. We
have been reared on a true love for our global struggle, we were forcibly
displaced from one place to another and we spent lots of time in the detention
centers of Cuba [Guantanamo], in Pakistan, Bagram [Afghanistan] and Abu Ghraib
[Iraq] and braved the brutalities of the CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency],
the ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence] and Afghan intelligence,"
Jarrah said.
"We actually see the world now. We are seasoned and therefore you will see
actual fireworks against the one which claims to be the global superpower."
Shaheen then excused himself and joined his subordinates Zahid, Mohsin and
Muslim Yar, all in their early 20s. "Please don't mind them, they are
discussing their previous operations and planning fresh ones," Jarrah told me.
"We carried out attacks on a daily basis until last Thursday [November 8]. We
assign a particular group for a particular assignment. There are different
sorts of attacks. We do send attackers called fedayeen in which fighters
loaded with rockets and hand grenades and AK-47 guns attack an American base or
the Afghan National Army or the intelligence headquarters in Sarkano.
"In such fedayeen attacks, there is zero chance of survival [for the
attackers].
"Then we carry out specific attacks based on precise information provided by
pro-Taliban elements within the Afghan establishment or by local people. And
then the third and the most expensive attacks are those in which we fire
missiles on an enemy position from a distance. It costs us 250,000 Pakistani
rupees [about US$4,000] per operation.
"We launch all three kinds of operations many times a month. At present, due to
the dim moonlight, operations have stopped for few days. We only launch
operations during moonlight because Kunar is all jungle and mountains and
without such light there is a strong chance of falling into the crevasses,"
Jarrah explained.
Jarrah said that the Taliban's operations are based on various tactics and are
not only asymmetric attacks. "We have tribes and people who live in particular
places. They openly resist foreign troops in the Kunar Valley. Then we have
organized guerrilla groups - we use them as our special forces - and finally we
have a missile battery. Not a single day passes without the enemy facing
several of our attacks in various parts of Nooristan and Kunar provinces.
"The fighters have acquired a lot of confidence due to their successes and now
they confidently play tricks. Recently, we used Afghan National Army uniforms
and laid siege to American troops in Nooristan and killed and wounded many of
them. In return, the Americans threatened to bomb a whole village. That's why
the local people didn't spy on the Taliban's positions," Jarrah said.
Suddenly, in the far distance, we saw the dark skies of Kunar light up.
"That is a light bomb used by the enemy to trace the Taliban's positions. That
is approximately 10 kilometers from here, and obviously a battle is going on
between the enemies and the Taliban. We are not necessarily aware of such
battles every time," Jarrah said.
After a dinner of rice and chicken curry and saying the final prayers of the
day, we all slept in an isolated mud house of the village. The call to morning
prayers marked the start of a new day and a new struggle. After saying prayers
and eating breakfast, the men who had accompanied us the previous evening left,
but within two hours a new group joined us.
"They rotate throughout the day and night. Some of the people will go back to
Pakistan to stay with their families and new ones will join us. Some will
finish their guerrilla operations in the Kunar Valley and join us here to rest,
and then a new guerrilla group will be launched," Jarrah said.
"But do you sometimes have a serious dearth of fighters?" I asked.
"Not at all," said Jarrah, laughing. "Instead, the real issue remains how to
accommodate all the guerrilla groups because people are flooding to us to join
the jihad and we don't always have enough resources to provide for them all at
the same time. But I think we will increase our resources soon, and then you
will see a flood of fighters finding its way against the foreign occupying
forces."
Before I could ask any further questions, a tall man who introduced himself as
Maroof asked me, "What is your name, Mr Journalist?" "Saleem Shahzad," I
answered. "What?" I repeated my name. "Aren't you the one who was detained by
the Taliban last year in Helmand? I listened to your interview on radio after
your release," Maroof said with excitement.
"He is with us now, what happens if he is killed?" I heard Maroof inquiring of
Jarrah in a loud whisper. Jarrah chuckled, "If he is killed, it would be the
will of God."
Maroof was in the Afghan National Army and was once detained by the Americans
for being in the army but "facilitating" the Taliban. He says he did not cough
up anything during interrogation, but when he was released he promptly joined
the ranks of the Taliban.
"The mujahideen have now acquired such strength that neither Pakistan nor NATO
can fight against us. The Taliban are standing on both sides of the border.
More operations breed more Taliban, and this time the Taliban will rule the
whole region," Maroof said confidently.
Jarrah summoned a few armed men and we took a long walk on a mountain trail,
ending up at a goat farm.
This was the Taliban's missile battery, comprising about 200 Russian-made
rockets, which the Taliban call Sakar 20. They are 2.5 meters long with a range
of about 30 kilometers and the capacity to devastate an area of about 100
square meters. The Taliban's Sarkano district battery has six donkeys to carry
the weapons.
"We use these donkeys to carry the missiles and other equipment when we attack
an enemy installation. In this terrain, donkeys are the only 'vehicles' that
can be used as transport," Jarrah said.
"These missiles come from old dumps of weapons the Taliban recovered after the
fall of the communist government in Afghanistan [in the early 1990s]. Russian
technology is far superior to American," Jarrah said, and illustrated his point
by taking out his Russian-made pistol.
"This pistol works like a revolver and you don't need to cock it like American
pistols. It belonged to the Russian special forces. We have mostly Russian
weapons stocks, but we have recently started using American weapons recovered
from American troops or the Afghan National Army," Jarrah explained.
Behind the simple structures, I see the formation of a very well-trained army
which was non-existent even a year ago. Only three years ago, the Taliban did
not have a central command, secure bases, and the motivation they now obviously
possess.
The ideologues of the neo-Taliban were raised and trained by the Pakistani
military to bleed India, and now, using the same techniques, they aim to bleed
NATO and the Pakistani Army.
But it was time to run - I had an appointment that evening with these Punjabi
ideologues.
Next: The Punjabis: From proxies to diehards
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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