Afghanistan in danger of Taleban comeback

Security in Afghanistan is dramatically deteriorating as resurgent Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters are regaining control over most of southern Afghanistan.

The nature of insurgency has changed from sporadic attacks by a few hundred Taleban fighters last year to an open warfare led by thousands of Taleban guerrillas this year. Mullah Dadullah, Taleban’s chief commander in the south, claims to have 12,000 armed men and 20 provincial districts under his command.

Massive international efforts have failed to wipe out flourishing drugs trade – allowing the insurgents to enormously benefit from the illicit business and fund their subversive activities.

The question arises as to why Afghanistan is facing resurgent Taleban and mounting violence despite huge international military and financial aid to bring peace and stability to the war-shattered country.

Ill-conceived strategy

The resurgence of Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters almost five years after the US military intervention toppled the regime indicates that the international campaign in Afghanistan is not moving on the right direction, if not failing.

Afghan President Hamed Karzai has recently called on the international coalition to rework its strategy in Afghanistan. His plea comes amid mounting insurgency and violence in the south. NATO’s commander in chief in Afghanistan, General David Richards, has also talked about NATO’s plan to reconsider its strategy in Afghanistan.

US-based Human Rights Watch’s latest report on Afghanistan says that the surge in violence was both predictable and avoidable. According to the report, the US-led coalition has failed to provide ordinary Afghans with political and economic stability – a vacuum exploited by the Taleban and warlords for their own ends.

Analysts criticise the strategy of US-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, reasoning that a military approach could not be a solution to the problem of terrorism, but that the danger should be tackled through effective political administration and eradication of causes of terrorism.

In Afghanistan, the decision to expand NATO forces throughout the country is deemed to have led to a rise in insurgency and instability. “I think the increase of foreign troops in the south, and mistakes in their military operations have caused insecurity in the county, and made the situation worse,” says Hamidullah Tarzi, a former Afghan cabinet minister.

An independent study after the fall of the Taleban found that 80 per cent of ordinary Afghans were backing the new Afghan government as well as presence of international peacekeeping forces.

In sharp contrast, a recent field survey by the Senlis Council revealed that 80 per cent of people in the south were now supportive of the Taleban and were against foreign troops – complaining that the coalition has brought no development to their areas apart from continued fighting and destruction.

According to Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani analyst of Afghan affairs, the Taleban now offer more protection and incentives to the local population than the international coalition in Afghanistan.

The radical change in public opinion could also be attributed to US harsh military tactics. An Afghan Interior Ministry’s official, requesting anonymity, revealed that many of those killed by US air strikes were civilians not Taleban fighters.

“The increasing number of civilian deaths… has directly contributed to the disintegration of local population’s confidence in the international troops,” said Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of Senlis Council, an international security and development think tank. “The US has lost yet more of the support of the local people with the blood of innocent civilians on their hands.”

Mr Reinert also warned that consequences would be “irreparable” unless the currently forced eradication of poppy crops stopped. “Conflicting drug, development and security policies are making Afghanistan spiral into chaos,” he recently told a press conference in London. “The growing violence shows that the current approach in Afghanistan is simply not working. The international community needs to go back to the drawing board and rework its approach in Afghanistan.”

British military offices have recently expressed worries that coalition’s persistent air strikes and deadly clashes could reawaken memories of Soviet occupation that instigated mass rebellion across the country in the 1980s. “There is a lot of suspicion,” said senior British officer in southern Helmand province. “There is a danger that people will see us as the new Soviets.” These concerns are mounting at a time when American warplanes are relentlessly bombing villages to kill suspected Taleban fighters.

Safe havens in Pakistan

One main reason for the surge in insurgency is that the Taleban were ousted from power after the US air attacks in October 2001, but they have never been totally defeated. Some temporarily laid down arms and disguised as civilians, while majority continued to have a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

According to analysts, although the international coalition continued to fight the remnants of the Taleban and al-Qaeda elements inside Afghanistan, it has done little to crack down on terrorists’ training camps, sources of finance and military headquarters in Pakistan.

While the Taleban and their al-Qaeda allies were regrouping, recruiting fighters from Pakistani madrassas (religious seminaries) and Afghan refugee camps, training new fighters and suicide bombers and raising funds for their operations on the other side of the border, the coalition troops were celebrating their illusory victory in Kabul.

America’s negligence to pressure Pakistan to close down terrorist camps on its soil and outlaw extremist religious groups, such as Lashkar Taiba, accused by the US Department of State of sponsoring terrorism in the region, has allowed the Taleban and al-Qaeda elements to seek support of these religious groups to re-establish their rule in Pakistan-Afghanistan border. And now they are back with a vengeance.

Analysts say that although America pressured Pakistan to capture key al-Qaeda elements in its territory, it has not made any attempts to make the Pakistani officials deal with the Taleban leadership in Pakistan tribal areas. And assuming that international coalition would not stay long in Afghanistan, Pakistani strategists tried to keep alive the Taleban in case the county lapsed back into anarchy and fell into the hands of non-Pashtun factions that strongly oppose Pakistan.

Now the Taleban enjoy broad support of not only al-Qaeda elements operating in Pakistan but also Pakistan’s fundamentalist political parties such as Jamiat-e Ulema-e Islami, which came to power in Baluchistan in 2002 general elections and holds key positions within Pakistani government.

War on Iraq

The US invasion of Iraq is deemed to have been a major distraction and obstacle to Afghanistan’s security and reconstruction process.
Just months after the ouster of the Taleban from Kabul and before eliminating the remnants of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States decided to wage a war against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

In early 2002, the United States reportedly started to withdraw its Special Forces and advanced military and surveillance equipment from Afghanistan in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. The distraction allowed the Taleban and al-Qaeda remnants to establish sanctuaries in Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA).

Furthermore, after the collapse of Saddam’s government, donor countries’ attention was diverted towards Iraq’s post-conflict rehabilitation. Thus Afghanistan did not receive sufficient amount of international aid for reconstruction and state building process.

Although billions of dollars have been pledged to Afghanistan by the international community at the Tokyo summit and recently at the London conference, a recent study found that international aid equalled less than 60 dollars per person in Afghanistan, as compared to 250 dollars in Iraq.

Poverty

Poverty is described as a source of instability and a breeding ground for terrorism in Afghanistan. The removal of the Taleban has helped end Afghanistan’s political isolation, but the country continues to suffer grinding poverty, as the pace of reconstruction has been terribly sluggish.

Despite receiving billions of dollars of international aid, Afghanistan is ranked 173rd out of 178 nations on the UN’s Human Development Index – with only five African countries listed lower.

According to UN estimates, life expectancy in Afghanistan is 44.5 years; one out of two Afghans can be classified as poor; 20.4 per cent of the rural population does not have enough to eat; one in five children dies before age five – 80 per cent of them from preventable diseases; and 3.6 million people remain refugees or internally displaced.

Analysts say that people’s poor living conditions and lack of any assistance by the government and international community have driven the local communities into the hands of the Taleban, who offer them protection and cash inducements. Government’s forced eradication of their opium poppy crops has further exacerbated the situation.
Senlis Council, an international security and development think tank, has recently called on international community to deliver an “emergency aid package” to southern

Afghanistan in order to quell rising security tension. “Southern Afghanistan urgently needs an injection of financial aid earmarked for the short-term relief of conditions of extreme poverty in which many people live,” says council’s executive director Emmanuel Reinert.

The US invasion ended brutal rule of the Taleban five years ago, but it has failed to bring peace, stability and development to the multi-decade-war-battered nation. According to findings of a field study by the Senlis Council, people have started losing confidence in the central government and the Taleban are now considered real power holders in the south. Although US-led coalition’s chief commander, Gen Karl Eikenberry, has recently emphasised that “the United States will not leave Afghanistan until the Afghan people say the job is done”, the decision to pull out some 4,000 US troops by the end of the year has given rise of speculation that the Taleban are winning.

A recent study by Senlis council concluded that the recent rise in insurgency demonstrated failure of policies implemented by the international community in Afghanistan, especially the key players – the United States, UK, NATO, the UN, Karzai’s administration and neighbouring country Pakistan.