NAWA PASS, Pakistan
border with Afghanistan - While I was waiting in a
village mud mosque, several motorbikes emerged
from the evening darkness along a dirt track.
Four strongly built men stopped in front
of me and alighted, their
faces
flushed from their ride. They each gave me a hug,
and their traditional Punjabi greeting was music
to my ears after listening to a lot of Pushtu.
I asked the obvious question: "Are you
Punjabi?" The concern on their faces was
immediately noticeable. "No! We belong to this
land and like many Afghans we were settled in
Punjab [in Pakistan] and therefore learnt Punjabi
and forgot Pashtu, but now we are back in our land
and have learnt our language again," one of the
men explained.
This is perhaps somewhat
romantic. Although such Punjabis might have
romantic ties with Afghanistan, they actually come
from Pakistani Punjab. Before the partition of
British India in 1947, Punjab was seen as a loyal
colony of the British and their recruits fought
against the Afghans. After partition, Punjabis
were seen as usurpers who divided the Pashtun
tribes in the name of a new country called
Pakistan. To many Afghans, Punjabis are
opportunists and while they claim to be Muslims,
their culture is a blend of Hinduism and Sikhism.
Sadiq is not a commander: he cannot be,
because whatever he might say about his ethnicity,
for Afghans he is a Punjabi. I watched as he spoke
fluent Pashtu to his Afghan comrades, moving from
one group to another with a permanent smile on his
face. Clearly, he is the natural leader of the
diaspora of Punjabi guerrillas now in Afghanistan.
Sadiq was in the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a
Pakistani jihadi group focused on the struggle to
regain Indian-administered Kashmir. He was trained
by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to
conduct guerrilla operations all across India. He
knows how to generate resources and lead sorties.
He joined the Taliban in late 2004 as an
ordinary fighter, but because of his skills he
quickly rose through the ranks. He became a
trainer and honed his men's battle skills. And
although he is not a commander, he is more
respected and important than many of them. He is
the mastermind of all guerrilla operational plans
in Afghanistan's Kunar Valley.
An
emirate in the making I said my final
prayers of the day and had my dinner. It was
tolerably cold, and I sat back and by the light of
a gas lamp watched and listened to tired
guerrillas discussing their day.
"I was
thinking before coming here, how do you say your
Friday prayers in the battlefield - I noticed you
did not say any today?" I started the conversation
with Sadiq.
"First, we are all travelers,
so Friday prayers are not compulsory. But most
importantly, this region has been declared
darul harb [enemy country], so Friday
prayers are suspended until it becomes darul
Islam [abode of Islam]," Sadiq replied.
I continued this discussion with Sadiq on
prayers and the circumstances in which they are
suspended and restored, and soon all the people in
the mud hut had gathered around and the
conversation turned to the new dynamics of the
Afghan resistance.
So I launched a series
of questions. "It is still not clear who is in
whose command. What is the command of Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar [leader of the Hezb-i-Islami]? Is
[veteran Afghan resistance figure] Jalaluddin
Haqqani under [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar, or is
he commanding separately? Who do the Pakistan
Taliban answer to? To Mullah Omar? And what are
Pakistani jihadis up to?
Sadiq smiled at
the barrage of questions and responded with some
breaking news, "Mullah Omar, the Taliban
shura [council], al-Qaeda and the Pakistani
Taliban have resolved this issue once and for all.
Soon the mujahideen will announce the revival of a
[region-wide] Islamic emirate, and after this -
like all fighting groups gathered under a single
command in Iraq - all commanders in Afghanistan
will fall under the umbrella of the Islamic
emirate.
"The Islamic emirate will govern
[operations in] Afghanistan and Pakistan, and
whether it is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or any other,
they will be under a single command and will not
be able to defy the emirate because this is
Islam," Sadiq said.
The pronouncement of
an emirate would be a major development, and I
jumped to my feet. "Are you sure that an Islamic
emirate will be announced soon?"
"Yes,
indeed," said Sadiq smiling.
"Sadiq, you
know what this means? It would challenge both
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Are the Taliban capable
of doing this?" I asked.
"Of course we
are," Sadiq replied calmly.
"How?" I
asked.
"Three years ago, it was actually a
dream, but now circumstances have enabled such an
environment. Apart from North Waziristan and South
Waziristan [tribal areas in Pakistan], the
mujahideen used to move in Bajaur [Agency] and
Mohmand Agency as if they were moving in [the
Pakistani cities of] Karachi or Lahore. We were
terrified of being arrested and of the fact that
somebody would be spying on us.
"We used
to make secret trips to Afghanistan to conduct
occasional raids. On the one side the Americans
were after us, and on the other side our own
Pakistani army was tracking us. We didn't want to
fight the Pakistan army, after all, they are
Muslims. We tried our best to avoid fighting them,
and still hardly 3% of the mujahideen are fighting
against them. However, Pakistan did not think the
way we were thinking. They were more cruel and
gruesome than the Americans.
"We had a
companion who had fought alongside us in Kashmir.
His name was Umer, and he was dead against
fighting the Pakistani army. Whenever the military
conducted operations, he used to desert his
companions, saying he could not fight against
Muslims.
"One day, he was arrested by the
ISI. They hung him by one hand from a roof, and
carved stars on his thighs with daggers. They
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