Return of Taliban

AT THE SITE of a bomb attack in Kandahar on June 15. - HAMED ZALMY/AFP

It is not only the scale of the Taliban's recent attacks but also its growing military sophistication that worries the West.

THE past couple of months have witnessed an upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan, with Taliban-led forces launching coordinated attacks in different parts of the country. Significantly, Taliban fighters have, for the first time, chosen to attack government and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) troops in towns and cities. The surge of insurgency seems to have taken the United States administration off-guard. The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Robert Neumann, admitted to Western journalists in June that the government in Kabul and its backers would find it "difficult" to regain control of southern Afghanistan. The Taliban forces today virtually have a free run of the Pashtun heartland. The U.S. envoy said he expected the Taliban to try "an all-out push to scare NATO. I think they will fail".

The military threat from the Taliban became clear after winter set in last year. Schools were systematically torched and Afghan government officials and sympathisers were killed by the Taliban. Recruits in the newly formed Afghan National Army were specifically targeted. Hundreds of schools have been forced to close down, especially in the southern provinces. Western officials admit that the rebel attacks have increased substantially and suicide attacks have quadrupled. General Michael Maples, Director of the American Defence Agency, said in February that for the first time since 2001 the "rebels represented such a threat to the Afghan government's expansion into the provinces". It is not only the scale of the recent attacks but also the growing military sophistication of the resistance that worries Western officials. In mid-May, U.S.-led forces launched "Operation Mountain Thrust", the biggest military operation since 2001, to try and root out the militants in southern Afghanistan.

According to many Western officials, Taliban fighters have been successful in replicating the "Iraqi" style of resistance in Afghanistan. The Afghan Resistance has begun using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to great effect. Added to this tactic is the targeted assassinations of Afghan officials and politicians. Afghans working for the U.S.-led forces and the government have been targeted regularly since late last year. The first wave of suicide bombings also started a year ago. French military officials stationed in Afghanistan say there has been "a transfer of expertise" to the Taliban.

On a tactical level, Taliban fighters regularly launch attacks with a larger number of fighters, ranging from 100 to 400, using sophisticated combat methods. "Their ambushes are well set-up; they know the habits of the Western forces and are clearly battle-hardened," a French military official serving in Afghanistan told Le Monde. A Pakistani official who has served in Afghanistan says that the Taliban have a huge stockpile of lethal weaponry, mostly of Western origin, including Stinger missiles, which they had squirrelled away after the U.S. invaded the country.

President Hamid Karzai has on several occasions in the recent past criticised Pakistan's covert involvement in the ongoing insurgency. American officials have also indicated their dissatisfaction with the level of Pakistan's cooperation in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials insist that they are doing their utmost, but suspicion exists that its intelligence agencies are still involved with the Taliban, which to a large extent was their creation.

Hamid Gul, the former Director-General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was quoted as saying that what was happening in Afghanistan now "was only the tip of the iceberg". He predicted that the military situation will escalate further. "Russia is annoyed with the Americans. Iran is hostile to Western interests and Pakistan is no more in a position to adhere to American directives," Hamid Gul told Asia Times Online. NATO officers have openly said that the Pakistani government has done very little to combat Taliban activity in Baluchistan. In the North West Frontier Province, the Pakistan Army has suffered heavy casualties in its efforts to root out the remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The George W. Bush administration in the U.S. has announced plans to bolster its military presence in the four southern provinces by adding 4,000 troops. In all, NATO will now have four battalions deployed in the South and assistance from the 22,000 American soldiers who operate in the eastern part of the country, bordering Pakistan.

The U.S.-led counter-offensive against the Taliban is the biggest military action in Afghanistan after the fall of the government in Kabul in 2001. In the last three months, the U.S. military conducted more than 340 air strikes as against 160 in Iraq during the same time span. U.S. warplanes have hit targets just outside Kabul and cities such as Jalalabad and Ghazni using 2000-pound bombs. As is usually the case, some of these bombs have hit civilian targets, killing innocent Afghans. This has fuelled anger against what many Afghans perceive as an occupation army.

American officials acknowledge that widespread corruption and the political comeback staged by the notorious warlords have contributed greatly to the alienation of the people from the government in Kabul. In the elections held in 2005 many candidates owing allegiance to the warlords emerged triumphant. The majority of members in the Afghan Parliament owe allegiance to political factions controlled by warlords. However, Western officials emphasise that the main reason for the military resurgence of the Taliban is its ability to coerce ordinary Afghans into acquiescence by intimidation or by giving them money generated from the thriving opium trade. They forget to add that the writ of the Hamid Karzai government scarcely extends beyond Kabul. Even in Kabul, if the events that shook the city in the last week of May are an indication, people have started becoming disenchanted.

There was widespread violence and looting in the city after an American military vehicle allegedly lost control and rammed into a crowd of civilians, killing and injuring some among them. In response, the enraged crowd stoned the military convoy of which the vehicle was a part. The Americans retaliated by opening fire on the civilians. Within no time, the violence spread. Offices belonging to United Nations agencies and Western non-governmental organisations engaged in humanitarian work were targeted by rampaging mobs.

According to reports, many of the protestors carried anti-Karzai banners. The Tajiks, who constitute the majority of the population of Kabul are said to be unhappy with Karzai after he sidelined prominent Tajik politicians such as Mohammed Fahim, Yunus Qanooni and Abdullah Abdullah, the former Foreign Minster. Tajiks constitute around 30 per cent of the Afghan population. The Northern Alliance, a Tajik-dominated force, had played an important role in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Today, because of the rapid spread of the Taliban's influence in the South, U.N. agencies, which had offices in most of the provinces in the region, have been forced to scale down their operations drastically. According to U.N. officials, the Taliban has set up its own parallel administration, including Sharia courts, in many areas in the South. The people are apparently fed up with the political and economic stranglehold many of the warlords have re-established over the local administration after the collapse of Taliban rule.

There is criticism that NATO-led forces have turned a blind eye to the narcotics trade, through which the warlords generate large amounts of illicit money. Afghanistan produces 90 per cent of the world's opium and heroin. Talatbek Masadykov, the U.N.'s Regional Director in Afghanistan, is of the view that most of the fighters in the revived Taliban movement are neither "true believers" nor "real jihadists". He said large numbers had joined the Taliban to earn a livelihood "or because of intimidation or disaffection with the government".

Taliban officials claim that seven key districts in Kandahar are fully under their control. The main bases from where they launch their operations are located in Helmand, Kandahar and Qalat. Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahari, in a video released on June 22, urged the Afghan people to rise unitedly against the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. He warned that "significant violence" was in store for the Western forces in southern Afghanistan.

President Karzai was quick to criticise al-Zawahari, who is said to be holed up somewhere on the long and porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border. At the same time, Karzai expressed dissatisfaction with the military tactics of the U.S.-led forces against the resurgent Taliban. He said the international community should "reassess the manner in which the war against terror is conducted". He told the media in Kabul that his government was deeply concerned with the spate of killings that had occurred in June. Karzai said that between 500 and 600 Afghans were killed in June alone. More than 40 U.S. and European soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since January.

President Karzai seems to be worried by reports that Washington is considering seriously the withdrawal of 3,000 troops from Afghanistan in the immediate future. The real fear among Afghan government officials is that the Bush administration may be setting up a timetable for a complete military withdrawal of its forces from the region. The Karzai government has little faith in the NATO forces. Many European countries have sent troops to Afghanistan with the explicit mandate of engaging only in reconstruction work. There is a marked reluctance on the part of many European governments to take on the military load that the U.S. could leave behind.