Afghanistan

  But the suicide bomber remains an alien concept to the region, which is why the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have put an emphasis on murdering religious and leadership figures that criticize suicide bombers.111 Mass-casualty attacks, suicide or otherwise, against soft targets, leaving lots of bodies, Muslim or otherwise, have generally not been the terrorist tactics of choice in post-2001 Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the terrorists have been more selective, primarily sending suicide bombers against targets where there is a generalized antipathy, even if not outright hostility, among the Afghan population. But the amount of collateral damage remains high. Large numbers of Afghan civilians have been killed in such attacks, including a group of schoolchildren killed by the 2007 Baghlan attack.

  In addition to the terrorist threat coming across the border from Pakistan, terrorism is certainly one of the Afghan insurgency’s most important tactics. Most modern insurgencies have made use of terrorism as a tactic in the theater of operations or in the enemy homeland. But they have generally maintained a unity of command, effort, and objective. It is uncertain how much that is the case in Afghanistan. An example of a politically active leader who participates in both the terrorist conflict and the insurgency is Sirajjuddin Haqqani, who has links to both Al Qaeda and the Taliban but is a member of neither and has been linked to the Serena Hotel attack in Kabul in 2007. To Afghanistan’s interior minister Dr. Mohammed Hanif Atmar, “Terror attacks represent weakness, not strength. . . . No one with a political objective would be so careless about the population. The fact that they do not care about their image shows their hopelessness. They can still threaten life but have no capability to derail processes or challenge the government.”

  The Obama administration’s March 2009 Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy identified its core objective to be: “The strategy starts with a clear, concise, attainable goal: disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens.”112 US involvement in Afghanistan has been driven by the counter-terrorist focus before it was involved in the conflicts threatening the future of that country and Pakistan. But defeating Al Qaeda will mean more than killing or capturing bin Laden and the elusive high-level leadership: it will be creating a situation where whatever comes after them will not find even better conditions for transnational terrorism than bin Laden did when he returned to Afghanistan in 1996.

  Terrorism is not a threat that, even if individuals are taken out or plots are thwarted, can be totally defeated. It can be marginalized, weakened, or contained.113 Negotiations with those carrying out terrorism (as opposed to insurgency) are unlikely. Al Qaeda is not interested in returning to Kabul or functioning as governors in rural Afghanistan. They are more interested in showing Afghanistan as one of many fronts in the invasion of the Islamic world by the enemy. Restoring peace, a functioning civil society, and a private sector economy in Afghanistan would not even be guarantees against terrorism. The ability of numerically small terrorist organizations to pose a threat even to highly developed nations with proficient intelligence and security services is a warning not just to Afghanistan, but to all nations. They are reminders that it is not just or even primarily the poor and oppressed who have made terrorist campaigns long and costly.

  Removing Western forces from Afghanistan or even the whole of the Islamic world would not remove the oxygen from the terrorist threat to “The Primary Enemy.” Al Qaeda’s mission is not about removing troops anyway. It is about changing the Islamic world to conform to their ideology. The appearance of foreign troops in the Islamic world is just an example of how degraded current regimes are, that they require armed infidels to protect them from the devout. The groundwork for Al Qaeda’s terrorist offensive grew in the 1990s when there was minimal Western involvement in Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli peace process was progressing. Even then, Al Qaeda had no qualms about targeting the Strasbourg Cathedral Christmas Market in an abortive plot in 2000 or destroying Indonesian churches in the Christmas Eve 2000 bombings.

  Nor will development in Afghanistan or Pakistan by itself provide an effective counter to future terrorism. A peaceful and affluent democracy with well-developed governmental and social welfare institutions is certainly no barrier against terrorism, as the history of a previous generation of European terrorist organizations demonstrates.

  The terrorist war against Afghanistan is not likely to succeed. Nor is it intended to. Al Qaeda leaders such as bin Laden’s lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri have explicitly condemned negotiations, which is how insurgencies tend to end, along with any acceptance of partial or temporary solutions en route to ultimate success.114 Al Qaeda’s specialty is destruction. The extremist essence of Al Qaeda makes it hard for them to work with the Afghan insurgents who, in 2008–10, constituted the major threat to Afghanistan.

  The Terrorist Threat to Pakistan

  Pakistan is no stranger to terrorism. In the 1980s, the Soviets and their Kabul regime allies waged a bloody campaign of state-supported terrorism in Pakistan. Since 2005, however, the terrorist threat emerging from the Vortex now has the potential to affect Pakistan far from terrorists’ remote sanctuaries. Pakistani terrorist groups see the creation of a fundamentalist government in Pakistan as their foremost priority. In her last interview with a Western journalist, days before her assassination by Pakistani terrorists, Benazir Bhutto, who certainly had no interest in minimizing the threat these terrorist groups posed to her country to Western audiences, said “I now think Al Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years.”115

  Al Qaeda’s impact on Pakistan has grown considerably since 2001, the same time as Musharraf first raised expectations for the revitalization of civil society. Al Qaeda has participated in the terrorist networks that have targeted Pakistan’s secular institutions and leadership figures. Musharraf was the target of up to nine assassination attempts, not all by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has attacked Western-related and international targets in Pakistan, such as hotels and the Danish embassy in 2008.

  Other terrorist victims in Pakistan were those supposedly being protected by the security services, such as Benazir Bhutto in 2008 and the Sri Lanka cricket team in 2009. Terrorist organizations may have penetrated the Pakistani security apparatus and are able to act with inside information, even if not the support of the organizations. The only Pakistani arrested in Pakistan in connection with the 2006 attempted terrorist attack on transatlantic airliners escaped from ISI custody.116 Attacks in 2007 inside Sargodha Air Base and the ISI compound in Rawalpindi Cantonment raised fears of inside cooperation with terrorists. Benazir Bhutto was convinced the Pakistani security services were involved in the plots against her, as they had refused to allow her to bring in expatriate bodyguards.117

  Terrorist attacks in Pakistan have increased in intensity and in number since 2007. In the first ten months of 2008 alone, there were 57 recorded suicide attacks in Pakistan, in comparison to 45 reported attacks in all of 2007. Suicide attacks with heavy casualties occurred in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Lahore. By 2009, the number of terrorist attacks had quadrupled over two years.118 The Pakistani Army had, post-2001, believed it would not be a terrorist target because of its willingness to deal with both Afghanistan and Pakistani insurgent groups and because those terrorist figures turned over to the US were limited to “foreigners.” Despite this, the military has found itself increasingly to be the target of terrorism, starting in 2007, when there were 36 attacks on the Pakistani Army, two on the ISI, and one on the Army’s elite Special Service Group (SSG).

  Terrorism in Pakistan inevitably has a nuclear dimension, as it faces the most intense terrorist threat of any nuclear-armed country. The potential penetration of Pakistani security services by the terrorists and their insurgent allies has raised concerns worldwide. Al Qaeda still wants weapons of mass destruction, which fits with its overall strategic goal.119 Pakistan may appear to Al Qaeda as the most viable source to obtain them.

  The Future of Al Qaeda

  Al Qaeda apparently continues to believe that it nee
ds to prepare for ever-larger terrorist attacks, especially against the US and other Western enemies, to maintain their image as the one force striking back at those they claim are waging a global war against Islam. Al Qaeda has never aimed at being a mass organization, but its record of attacks and assassinations shows that it has a powerful capability to prevent a stable government from taking hold in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Al Qaeda are not builders but inspirers and, above all else, destroyers, which meshes with their continued commitment to the acquisition and use of WMD and their focus on Pakistan as a likely potential source.

  It is likely that the next, predictable, Al Qaeda-driven crisis will occur when a large-scale terrorist attack in the US or Western Europe is traced to Pakistan. Kinetic options against Al Qaeda in Pakistan must walk a fine line, and by 2009 the US UAV campaign had apparently been effective. The question remains whether it has been worth the cost to the legitimacy of the government of Pakistan.

  Despite its extensive adaptation and pervasiveness, the revived Pakistan-based Al Qaeda has real limitations as a terrorist organization. Al Qaeda’s commitment to Salafist practices, its brutality and love for public executions and its impatience with local political and social realities have undercut its ability to create a viable alternative to current governing arrangements, whether in the FATA’s South Waziristan or Iraq’s Anbar province, regardless of the ability to interact in different ways created by its networked organization within the Vortex. Al Qaeda’s disdain for negotiations and political settlements, although this historically has been the way outsiders come to power, and their willingness to kill Muslim civilians and condemn other Muslims as takfir, are, taken together, likely to be increasingly divisive. For all its attempt to portray a rhetoric of “third-worldism,” diversity is not something Al Qaeda tolerates well.

  Another detriment is that Al Qaeda lacks a positive vision.120 In the end, Al Qaeda seeks not to build a better world, but to destroy and clear away all that has grown up since the rise of Islam. What shall emerge after, in their view, is a Wahabi-inspired Khalifait (something that has never existed) in which there shall be no place for infidels, Shias, or takfir Muslims. Al Qaeda provides no social services. Its guiding idea of restoring the Khalifait has little direct appeal to most Muslims. It is unable to provide the patronage that is vital to power relations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has a limited ability to tie itself to nationalism while retaining a commitment to an Islam without borders, as Pushtun insurgents have done in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its single-minded fanaticism toward acquiring WMD and using them to create mass casualties has not proven a recruiting tool except against those select few that feel aggrieved at a highly personal level toward the US and the West. Al Qaeda has done little toward achieving the social justice that is the appeal of Sharia law for many people.

  These characteristics have led to widespread Muslim opposition to Al Qaeda, most notably embodied by the fatwa issued against terrorism by the Darool-Uloom Deoband, associated with the root school of the Deobandi-influenced madrassas that were the roots of the Afghan Taliban leadership.121 The Iranians have offered the Hezbollah model as a competing vision to the world’s Islamic revolutionaries, Shia and Sunni alike. Since 2001, Al Qaeda has seen its efforts fail to have their desired impact despite terrorist campaigns in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Southeast Asia. In addition, these campaigns led to grassroots counterreactions in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s actions and attitudes were widely resented and helped undercut the legitimacy of the Taliban regime pre-2001. While there is not yet a groundswell of anti-terrorist sentiment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this history suggests that it may happen there as well.122 Even under repressive regimes, where the local population gets to hear the blasts and see the bodies, they have turned against the terrorists, demonstrated by a failure to win mass support to the terrorists’ cause. Pakistani radical Islamic parties, with their links to terrorism and their disinterest in secular patronage, remained marginal politically. For example, in Pakistan in 2009, popular opinion turned violently against the insurgents in Swat when video of them enjoying the beating of a young woman was widely broadcast on Pakistan television. In the words of US analyst Audrey Kurth Cronin, “A backlash among Muslims against terrorism is well under way.”123

  It has been argued that Al Qaeda has a self-generated internal tendency toward marginalization and implosion that the US and its coalition partners have largely disdained to exploit, both in terms of the conflict in Afghanistan and worldwide.124 The insistence by both Al Qaeda and insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan that democracy is an infidel concept that can have no place in an Islamic regime shows little evidence of being widely accepted; internal corruption instead appears to threaten democracy to a much greater extent than radical ideology. Instead, despite deep societal conservatism and commitment to Islam, there is sympathy for democracy, empowerment, and change, for a better future that is not on offer from terrorists and insurgents.

  The bad news is still that Al Qaeda has the potential to clear the way for future groups that may not share their self-inflicted wounds. Al Qaeda has pioneered effective tactics, techniques, and procedures for the use of the Internet, computers, and global communications.125 It has already demonstrated its ability to contribute to the actions of radical Islamic terrorists worldwide as well as Afghan and Pakistani insurgents. While India had once claimed that all of the terrorist threat it faced was cross-border, it has not repeated these claims in recent years, a recognition that Islamic radicalism has metastasized and is now internal.126 Bangladesh now has the potential to be a second front for terrorism. It has a diaspora community in the UK now larger than that of Pakistanis. So far, despite a long-standing relation with Bangladesh terrorists, Al Qaeda has not penetrated that country’s corresponding UK community in the way it has made inroads with Britain’s Pakistanis, who have proven critical in expanding their presence and capability in Europe.

  Future terrorist groups may seek to build not only on Al Qaeda but also on the networks and organizations associated with transnational Islamic groups that are explicitly peaceful, such as Hezb-ut-Tahrir and Tablighi Jamaat, which bring together large numbers, mobilize them, and create trusted links between them. As advocates for a Sunni Khalifait operating in a world of nation-states, Hezb-ut-Tahrir normally operates in a clandestine cell-like organization even in the UK. Al Qaeda’s limitations have not reduced the risk that, even if these organizations remain peaceful, they can be penetrated and used by terrorist organizations. Their members could be recruited or their clandestine organizations used to support terrorist activities, even if they may not share the terrorists’ commitment to violence. Both the numbers of individuals and the extensive networks involved with such organizations suggest that these could be powerful tools. They, along with the diaspora communities, represent prime targets for penetration and influence by a powerful and skillful terrorist threat. Such groups may also come to share the “leaderless” approach of Al Qaeda, in which the network executes the specifics of broad policies that are publicly announced by leaders who focus more on inspiration than coordination. Pulling the different elements together, there is a real possibility that what emerges from the Vortex, regardless of whether it keeps or discards the Al Qaeda “brand,” may be much more dangerous than the current threat. A potential new group, regardless of name, would have an ability to serve as a focus for grievances about governments, European or third world; globalization; cultural decay; social change; and much else, effectively embracing terrorism as a tool to counter the trends in the post-modern world that have disconcerted or marginalized so many.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFGHAN INSURGENTS

  “For you will be delivered to life in a world where, at the worst, no horror is now incredible, no folly unthinkable, no adventure inconceivable.”

  —Rudyard Kipling, Rhodes Dinner, Oxford, June 1924

  Throughout Afghanistan, in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 def
eat of the Afghan Taliban and their Al Qaeda patrons, anyone suggesting that by 2008–10 these organizations would be waging a cross-border insurgency that would threaten the future of both the country and the regions it borders would have been ignored as a crank. Yet that is precisely what occurred. The Afghan insurgents amount to a “coalition of the unwilling” that were either opposed to, or not included in, the post-2001 political process in Afghanistan, joined by those who had originally welcomed the defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda but have since been motivated to take up arms alongside their successors.

  The insurgency is not a national Afghan movement, unlike that which emerged victorious from the 1978–92 conflict. While their motivations are diverse, the insurgents collectively amount to a xenophobic, anti-secular, anti-Western ethnolinguistically Pushtun opposition. They do not require, nor receive, broad-based support inside Afghanistan as a whole. But by 2008–10 they had managed to achieve such support in a large number of the districts of the five southern provinces where the heaviest fighting is concentrated plus other districts throughout the east and north of Afghanistan, some close to Kabul in Wardak, Logar, and Nangarhar provinces. The insurgency is limited geographically. Where there are few ethnic Pushtuns, there is a limited insurgent presence.

  The majority of Afghans are probably not Pushtuns and, despite widespread frustration and disappointment at the ruined hopes of a better life that were so widespread in 2001, not intrinsically xenophobic or anti-Western. The Afghan insurgents have been able to tap into widespread support from government and government-tolerated sources in Pakistan, the Taliban culture in both Pushtun Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a semi-clandestine network of supporters that exists throughout Pushtu-speaking Afghanistan and Pakistan. While the Taliban Culture has drawn strength from Pushtun roots and its followers are almost universally Pushtuns, it is less about Pushtun nationalism than it is about Deobandi-influenced Sunni Islamic fundamentalism.