by Ahmed Rashid
Immediately on assuming office, the Obama administration conducted several rapid reviews of US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan and after consulting with all branches of the US government, especially the military, unveiled its strategy on 27 March 2009. The new policy promised that major attention would be paid to what was now termed Af-Pak and the region. Obama appointed veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke as the Special Envoy for Af-Pak, while General David Petraeus, who had won accolades for his counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, took over US Central Command headquarters. A new US army doctrine acknowledged that stabilizing war-torn countries was just as important as defeating the enemy militarily.
The USA poured 21,000 marines into southern Afghanistan in the spring of 2009 including 4,000 military trainers charged with speeding up the build up of the Afghan army and police. NATO promised at least 9,000 extra troops to provide security for the August presidential election. For all the lead being taken by foreign actors – the USA, NATO, the European Union and the United Nations – most of 2009 was taken up preparing for the election and ensuring its security. Everything else had to be put on hold. In private US officials regretted the way the elections had distracted attention from the implementation of the new Obama policy. Obama, meanwhile, was unable to point to any immediate success for his policy or prove that it was the right one for Afghanistan.
Another issue complicating matters for Obama was the fraught US relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who in the spring was convinced that Obama and Holbrooke wanted to replace him and hold the elections under a caretaker president. Although this was never the case, Karzai's paranoia, which was constantly being fuelled by his aides and brothers, who drummed up amazing conspiracy theories about US and British bad faith, kept him from trusting the Westerners, as Afghan officials and other sources close to Karzai told me.
The Taliban did not shrink from the challenge of the elections. They too had prepared during the winter and poured both men and materials into the south to confront the Marines. According to military expert Anthony Cordesman, who was advising General Stanley McChrystal, on the eve of the elections the Taliban control of just 30 out of 364 districts in 2003 had expanded to 164 districts. Taliban attacks increased by 60 per cent between October 2008 and April 2009 alone. Forty-four American soldiers died in July and 47 in August, making those the deadliest two months in the war for the US army. British losses were also the highest they had ever been.7
The Taliban were now deploying mass suicide attacks, with up to a dozen suicide bombers being used to attack a target while other soldiers followed them to storm the location. The Americans insisted that these were desperate measures and demonstrated the growing weakness of the Taliban, but they terrified Western troops as well as local police and administrations. On the eve of the elections it was clear that the whole country had become more unsafe.
Forty-one politicians put their names down to run for the presidency, but the front runner was clearly President Karzai himself, even though his popularity was at its lowest ebb and the alliances he was striking with former warlords to help him win the elections had disheartened many Afghans. His nearest challengers were Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the former Tajik foreign minister and close aide to Ahmad Shah Masud, and Dr Ashraf Ghani, the former Pashtun finance minister.
The Taliban promised to intensify their attacks against presidential candidates, their campaign managers, and the provincial councils, whose elections were taking place on the same day. The Taliban opened new fronts in the north and west, where they had had little presence before. Kunduz became an intense battleground: 57 rockets landed in the city on election day, and the German troops were under constant ambush. The US military did not try to hide the truth: ‘It's serious and it is deteriorating…. The Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated in their tactics’, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced on CNN's ‘State of the Nation’ on 23 August.
There were also high-profile Taliban attacks in other cities, including Kabul and Kandahar, well-laid ambushes and attacks against security forces and the extensive use of IEDs. Thousands of US, British and Afghan forces launched an offensive in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan a month before the elections in order to regain territory, block supply routes from Pakistan and release villagers from the clutches of the Taliban so that they could vote. When the elections took place voter turnout was estimated at between 1 and 5 per cent in most parts of Helmand and Kandahar -until major ballot stuffng for Karzai began in the late hours of 20 August. In Babaji, a town in Helmand that had been reclaimed by British forces with the loss of four soldiers, only 150 people voted of the 80,000 who could have. The British suffered 37 dead and 150 wounded in the six-week Helmand campaign to secure the vote. In another village, Zangabad, in Panjwai district in Kandahar province – which was totally controlled by the Taliban – not a single vote was cast, but 2,000 votes for Karzai were sent up to Kabul to be counted. The fraud and ballot stuffng by Karzai's supporters was on an epic scale.
The Taliban had threatened to derail the elections and in one sense they did: the terrified population did not turn out to vote. Turnout was half that of the first presidential elections in 2004, when it was 73 per cent. There were 400 Taliban attacks on election day in which 26 people were killed and dozens more wounded – one of the worst days of violence in the country's history.
The most insensitive move in the hours after the polls closed came when the USA, NATO, the European Union and the UN all congratulated themselves and the citizens of Afghanistan on the ‘successful election’. Their words were aimed at the Taliban, who had failed to stop the elections, but they sounded hollow and deceitful to Afghans, who were more interested in the validity of the elections. Meanwhile, the Election Commission received over 2,500 complaints, of which 570 were considered serious enough to affect the outcome of the elections.
The vote rigging should never have happened. There were hundreds of foreign observers – personnel stationed at the embassies and representatives of the UN – as well as a European Union delegation and other monitoring groups whose specific job was to make sure that this would be a valid election. Afghans and other experts had warned the embassies about possible vote rigging weeks earlier, but the foreign monitors refused to go into the countryside because of the security risks. Ultimately the entire Western community was caught napping by the vote rigging. The biggest mistake was probably the UN's not running the elections, as it had done in 2004, but instead handing them over to the Afghan-run Independent Election Commission, which was beholden to Karzai because he had appointed its members.
For weeks before the final results came out the country was filled with enormous uncertainty. It was clear that even if Karzai won the election, the opposition and much of the public might not accept him as the legitimate ruler. On the other hand, if Karzai failed to secure 51 per cent of the vote, a runoff between Karzai and Abdullah would be held in October. The situation left the country paralyzed for two months, and there were fears that ethnic tensions would increase. Final results are still awaited. In the completed first count Karzai won 55.6 per cent of the vote and Abdullah 27.8 per cent, but the Election Complaints Commission identified more than 2,500 polling stations where fraud took place and ordered a recount of some 1 million votes, which was taking place as this book went to press. It is clear that Karzai has won, but he has to restore his credibility in the eyes of the international community and the Afghan people. Whatever happens, the Taliban has gained immeasurably from this botched process.
In his election campaign Karzai had promised that he would step up negotiations with the Taliban even though they had rejected any proposals for talks – both Karzai and the international community had become more amenable to negotiating with the Taliban. The USA had encouraged Saudi Arabia to establish an indirect link with them, and several meetings were held in Riyadh between representatives of Karzai and former Taliban commanders. Increasingly there we
re attempts to woo those whom the international community termed moderate Taliban members. These included the commanders and soldiers who were not fighting for ideological reasons but out of anger, frustration, hatred of the Americans, the pay or fear of the Taliban.
In the 1990s the Afghan Taliban were essentially a peasant army rather than an international terrorist organization. This is what they still are, though the upper echelons are composed of hard-core jihadists who desire no compromise with the Americans or the Kabul regime. Some, like Mullah Omar, are wedded to the Al Qaeda philosophy of global jihad. Nevertheless, in deciding to talk to the Taliban, Karzai and the West were belatedly acknowledging that the Taliban were not a monolithic organization but one in which there were several interest groups, some of which could be won over. As long as the Taliban believed that they were winning, however -and the botched elections only tended to confirm that – they were unlikely to accept the idea of a negotiated settlement to end the war or to put their faith in the Afghan constitution and parliament.
The real impact of the Taliban ideology was being felt in Pakistan. Compared to the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban that arose across the border proved to be far more ideological, ruthless and committed to Al Qaeda. For years Pakistan has been a ripe target for Islamic militants as it has frequently been on the brink of political and social chaos. For nearly a half century the military and the civilians have competed for power, and no adequate political resolution is yet in sight. There may never be a mass revolutionary uprising in Pakistan like the one in Iran in 1979, but a slow, insidious climate of fear, terror and paralysis incited by the Taliban and other extremists is spreading because the state has been unable or unwilling to stamp them out. Moreover, the country faces growing social unrest fuelled by the sharp division between the extraordinary wealth of the elite and the increasing poverty of the majority of the population. The state is no longer able to deliver social services such as education, healthcare and housing to those in need. All these problems have helped the Taliban take hold in Pakistan.
The failure of the USA to destroy Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban leadership in the 2001 war allowed many Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders and fighters to escape into Pakistan and take up safe residence in Baluchistan and the tribal badlands of FATA. While the bulk of the original Taliban leadership fed to Baluchistan province, many fighters fed to FATA. These included Arabs, Central Asians, Russian Muslims, Chechens, Africans, Indonesians and Uighurs from western China. More recently recruits from the USA and Europe have also trained in FATA.
FATA is made up of seven tribal agencies – Khyber, Kurram, Orakzai, Mohmand, Bajaur and North and South Waziristan – with a population of some 4.5 million Pashtuns, in addition to the 28 million Pashtuns who live in the NWFP and the 15 million who live across the border in Afghanistan. It was from FATA that attacks against Madrid, London, Bali and other places were planned. With high mountains, rugged terrain, few roads and a sparse, xenophobic population who have never received education, medical care or modern development, FATA is the ideal recruiting ground for Al Qaeda.
FATA was established by the British in 1901 as a no-man's-land between Afghanistan and British India. Britain exercised indirect control over the agencies through the Governor General of the NWFP and political agents on the ground. This system – now totally outdated – is what Pakistan has maintained ever since. Even political parties were banned from operating in FATA, and Pakistan's laws and constitution did not extend there. Efforts to carry out reforms in FATA were blocked both by local tribal chiefs who enjoyed their privileges and by the army, which used FATA as a training ground for the militants to be sent to Kashmir or Afghanistan.
The Bush administration did not question Musharraf about FATA's status as long as the Pakistan army and ISI cooperated with the principal US aim of capturing Al Qaeda leaders. Washington's limited and highly selective goals suited the Pakistan army perfectly, because it wanted to preserve the Afghan Taliban as a fighting force in order to exert future pressure on Kabul, prevent India from playing a large role in Afghanistan and influence the financial support that the West gave to the Musharraf regime. At the same time the army had no reason to support Al Qaeda so it was willing to cooperate with the Americans in their pursuit of those terrorists. The army, like the Taliban, believed that the USA and NATO would soon leave Afghanistan and that one day pro-Pakistan Afghan Pashtun elements would return to power in Kabul.
Many Pashtuns from FATA had fought for the Afghan Taliban during the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s and again during and after the US invasion. They had been able foot soldiers for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Now the Pakistani Pashtun in FATA became the hosts of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, providing safe houses, food, transport and other logistics to their guests, who in turn paid the local Pashtuns lavishly for the hospitality and help they received. Living alongside foreign radicals for so many years, it was only natural that the local Pashtuns would also become radicalized, even as they became rich, and that they would ultimately develop their own political agenda.
Soon former fighters and guides who once used donkeys could afford feets of pickup trucks and hire hundreds of bodyguards, who then developed into local militias. As Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban leaders went underground, their local Pashtun acolytes increasingly took on the job of training, fund raising, planning and adapting the new guerrilla war technology that was being used against US forces in Afghanistan. The local Pashtun population became indispensable to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban as both fighters and trainers.
Between 2001 and 2004 the army and the ISI made no effort to stop this activity, vigorously denying that it was even going on. They also vehemently denied that the Afghan Taliban or Al Qaeda were in Pakistan and berated Karzai and any Western diplomat who dared say they were. But after the two assassination attempts against President Musharraf in December 2003, which were planned in South Waziristan, the army slowly woke up to the threat. Its half-hearted response was to send into South Waziristan in March 2004 the Frontier Corps (FC) – paramilitary troops made up of poorly armed and trained Pashtuns led by army officers. The small FC force, without air cover, artillery or good intelligence, faced off against some 2,000 militants, who ambushed and badly mauled it. About 200 soldiers were killed, and many more were captured and later executed. Still others deserted the FC.
The Wazir militants and their leader, Nek Mohammed, aged 27, emerged as heroes. On 24 April 2004 the army signed the first of several humiliating peace deals with the militants, pardoning Nek Mohammed and the Pakistani Taliban leaders, offering compensation for their losses, freeing their prisoners and allowing foreign militants to register with the authorities (none did). A vicious cycle ensued. The army would launch an offensive in FATA, suffer setbacks and heavy casualties and then sign peace deals with the militants that left them in control of the territory they already occupied and sometimes of even more ground.
Most detrimental to the government's cause was the militants’ campaign of terror against the population of FATA. They executed over 300 tribal elders who did not support them, killed civilians and drove out thousands of families who had refused to back the Taliban. At no point did the army ever attempt to protect Pashtun civilians who were trying to resist the Taliban, not even local tribal chiefs who tried to organize militias against them.
In FATA the Taliban set up their own courts and administration and banned TV, music and the Internet. They destroyed schools for girls while madrassas in the area multiplied. Many local Pashtuns were convinced that the army was playing a double game, curbing foreign militancy when US pressure to do so became too strong but happy to see the militants continue fighting US troops in Afghanistan. Through this period there was no coherent US strategy towards FATA since Bush was repeatedly persuaded by Musharraf that negotiating with the Taliban in FATA and making peace accords were good strategies.
By 2007 over 1,500 Pakistani soldiers and policemen had been killed in a wave of ambushes and su
icide bomb attacks in major cities, including Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar. In December 2007 two dozen tribal militias and other groups from Punjab and Kashmir met in FATA, where they joined together to form a new organization, the ‘Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’ (TTP), Movement of the Pakistan Taliban, led by the charismatic 35-year-old Baitullah Mehsud from South Waziristan, a close ally of Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Jalaluddin Haqqani. Mehsud had fought for the Taliban in the 1990s and then helped Al Qaeda leaders escape from Afghanistan in 2001. He was later charged with assassinating Benazir Bhutto and was held responsible for dozens of suicide attacks in Pakistan. The aim of the TTP was to take over Pakistan and turn it into a sharia state ruled by the Taliban.
FATA had now become a terrorist centre and a matter of grave international concern as well as a major threat to Pakistan. The TTP provided training and manpower for the insurgency in Afghanistan, pursued the Talibanization of the NWFP, trained extremists from other Pakistani provinces, guarded the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and trained international terrorists, while its media organs publicized these activities worldwide. Leaders in London, Washington and other world capitals urged Musharraf to do something about the growth of extremism in FATA, but the army's response remained half-hearted.
At the same time jihadism was spreading, with separate but coordinated jihadi movements springing up around the country. In the spring of 2007 radical mullahs took over the Red Mosque in Islamabad and announced their intention of imposing sharia in the capital. The Musharraf government refused to step in, though the radicals numbered barely a dozen. Months later, in July, the army was forced to attack the mosque, by which time thousands of heavily armed militants had holed up inside. A three-day battle ensued in which a hundred people were killed. The militants who survived fed to FATA, where they vowed revenge and became the core of a new group of suicide bombers for Baitullah Mehsud. Punjabi jihadi groups, who until this time had focused only on fighting India in Kashmir, also joined the Pakistani Taliban.