B Raman | The Pioneer | June 3, 2006
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Afghanistan continues to boil in the jihadi cauldron while Pakistan
stokes the fire below ---- The upsurge in violence - partly
conventional strikes, partly acts of terrorism - which one has been
seeing in southern and eastern Afghanistan since the end of winter
is not a copy-cat version of what has been happening in Iraq since
2003. It is more a re-run of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s -
this time targeted not against the Soviet Union and their Afghan
supporters, but the US and the UK and their Afghan supporters.
There are some new elements in the current version, which were not
there in the 1980s - the increasing resort to acts of terrorism,
particularly suicide terrorism, for example. But terrorism is not
the mainstay of the jihad being waged by the neo-Taliban. It is
conventional guerrilla strikes.
Carefully planned and skillfully executed ambushes of the convoys of
the Afghan security forces and surprise attacks on posts of the
security forces - often at night - form the essence of the jihad.
Making the opponents bleed continuously is the tactical objective.
Not territorial control.
Regaining control of Afghanistan is the strategic objective, but the
neo-Taliban proposes to achieve it not piecemeal - gaining one area
after another. It proposes to achieve it in one go when the Western
forces, tired and weakened by the continuous bleeding, decide to
quit - as the Soviets did in 1988 - and the Hamid Karzai Government
in Kabul collapses as the Najibullah Government did in 1992.
The Pashtuns - Afghan as well as Pakistani nationals - are in the
forefront of the jihadi insurgency in Afghanistan. There is very
little non-Pashtun involvement on the ground.
The role of Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the
Chechens and the Pakistani members of the International Islamic
Front (IIF) is restricted to training the Pashtuns in their camps in
north Waziristan and guiding them in their operations in Afghan
territory. The only reported ground involvement of the Arabs living
in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region has been in some acts of suicide
terrorism.
Despite the role of Al Qaeda and its associates in the training and
guidance of the neo-Taliban, one sees less of pan-Islamic rhetoric
in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The rhetoric in Afghanistan is partly
nationalistic and partly religious. The Afghans vs the American and
British occupiers. The Muslims vs the infidels. Anti-Christian
rhetoric is more in evidence than anti-Jewish. President Hamid
Karzai is projected not only as an American stooge, but also a
Christian stooge. Western NGOs doing humanitarian work in
Afghanistan are projected as Christian conspirators.
Whereas Al Qaeda has, of late, been talking increasingly of a world-
wide crusader-Jewish-Hindu conspiracy against Islam, the neo-
Taliban's propaganda is relatively free of references to the Hindu
conspirators.
When the neo-Taliban stepped up its activities in Afghanistan
starting from 2004, it projected its jihad as against the American
occupiers of Afghanistan. It has now been projecting it as against
the American-British occupation. Thus, the UK is now being seen to
be as satanic as the US.
In Iraq, the internal segment of the conflict is between the Shia
majority, which dominates the Administration and the security
forces, and the Sunni minority, which finds itself marginalised in
the new post-2003 political dispensation, which is perceived by the
Sunnis as the creation of the US-led coalition. In Afghanistan, the
internal segment of the conflict is between two sections of the
Pashtuns, who are Sunnis and constitute the largest ethnic group in
the country.
What one is witnessing is a conflict between anti-Western,
fundamentalist Sunni Pashtuns (a large number of them from Pakistan)
and pro-Western, less fundamentalist Sunni Pashtuns (all of them
Afghan nationals) serving in the Government and the security forces.
The neo-Taliban is concentrating its jihad presently against the pro-
Western Pashtuns in order to intimidate them into changing sides and
supporting it. It is not focussing on the non-Pashtun ethnic groups
such as the Tadjiks and the Uzbeks living in the north.
Many Western analysts have been connecting the upsurge in violence
in southern and eastern Afghanistan to the on-going induction of
NATO forces into the region so that the NATO could take over from
the US the leadership role in the counter-insurgency - with the
British troops moving to the forefront of the counter-insurgency
operations.
This analysis is somewhat facile. The Taliban started staging a
comeback long before the decision of the NATO to take over the
counter-insurgency responsibilities. The decision of the Taliban
taken in 2003 to revive and step up its activities on the ground in
Afghanistan was an indicator of its confidence in its newly-acquired
ability to stand up and fight against the Americans and other
Western forces.
It was also an outcome of its assessment that widespread anger
against the US among Pashtuns due to American counter-insurgency
methods such as the use of the air force against the jihadis causing
considerable collateral damage. Besides, reports of the violation of
the human rights of those detained at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba had
antagonised a large number of Pashtuns.
Two aspects of the Afghan situation - one positive and the other
negative - as compared to that in Iraq need to be underlined. The
positive aspect is that the newly-raised Afghan Army has been
putting up a better resistance against the neo-Taliban than the
newly-raised Iraqi army against the Iraqi resistance fighters and
the Al Qaeda. The negative aspect is that the new political
structure of Afghanistan is weak and relies largely on one leader -
Mr Hamid Karzai. But political stability in Iraq does not depend on
the continuance in office of any one political leader.
While President Pervez Musharraf has cooperated with the West to
some extent in their operations to nab some activists of Al Qaeda,
he has not extended any support against the neo-Taliban. While he
admits the possibility that some of the Al Qaeda leaders might still
be operating from Pakistani territory, he has been denying the
presence of Taliban leaders, camps or activists in Pakistan.
In the face of Mr Musharraf's policy of total denial, the only
option left for Afghan security agencies is to undertake covert
strikes against the Taliban's sanctuaries in Pakistan without the
help of Western powers.
(The author, a retired Additional Secretary with the Cabinet
Secretariat, is presently Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research
Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter)
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