Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Second Edition

by Ahmed Rashid

  The Taliban made dramatic advances in the summer campaign of 2008, entering the settled areas of the NWFP for the first time, attacking police and army posts in Kohat, Hangu and the Swat valley. The military came under intense US pressure to move more decisively against them. On 6 August, after several government officials were killed, the army finally launched an attack in Bajaur, promising to clear the tribal agency of militants within six weeks. Over 250,000 people fed Bajaur to escape the army's bombing. In retaliation the extremists launched suicide attacks around the country, and there were alerts for FATA-trained terrorists in Britain, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Holland. A year later the army was still in Bajaur, and it controlled only half the agency.

  Swat became another major centre for the Taliban. Strategically located just 120 miles north of Islamabad and well developed, with large towns, roads and electricity despite its high mountains, it was an ideal new base for the militants for it gave them access to the broad fat lands that extended beyond the valley into Punjab, the country's largest province. In Swat an itinerant mullah and former ski lift operator, Maulana Fazlullah, had set up an FM radio station in 2004 and begun broadcasting infammatory Islamic texts and threats to the state. The Musharraf government never shut his station down, and Fazlullah soon attracted the attention of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who poured in men and weapons to support him.

  By the time the army finally went into Swat in 2007, Fazlullah had a well-armed militia and multiple radio stations. The army was badly mauled and withdrew, leaving Fazlullah in virtual control of the Swat valley. In 2008 the army again invaded Swat, with 12,000 soldiers, but it was again defeated by an estimated 3,000 Taliban fighters. The fighting forced a mass exodus; over a hundred schools, for both boys and girls, were blown up by the Taliban; and there were many civilian casualties. Again the army withdrew, and the Taliban swiftly imposed their brutal interpretation of sharia, which included executions, foggings, the destruction of homes, preventing women from leaving their homes and executing all those who had earlier resisted them.

  Meanwhile, the growth of extremism in Pakistan was partly responsible for a long-running political crisis in 2007 between Musharraf and opposition political parties, the judiciary and civil society that culminated with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who had been allowed to return home after her long exile. She was killed by two suicide attackers (one shot her and the other blew up her car) on 27 December, just days before the general elections that Musharraf had finally agreed to were due to be held. The elections were postponed after her death but took place in February 2008. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party came to power, now led by her widower, Asif Ali Zardari. Relations between President Musharraf and the new government and the opposition continued to deteriorate until he stepped down in August 2008, after nearly a decade in power. Zardari was elected as the new president. But the army still dominated foreign policy decisions, in particular those regarding policy towards Afghanistan and India.

  In February 2009 the NWFP provincial government and the army signed a peace deal with the Taliban in Swat that allowed sharia courts to be set up in the province in return for the army's withdrawing and the Taliban's disarming – which they promptly refused to do. Despite complaints by Pakistan's increasingly vocal civilians that the accord was a major capitulation to the militants and set a terrible precedent that contradicted the rule of law, President Zardari and the national parliament signed the deal into law on 14 April without even a debate. Within days the Swati Taliban took control of the local administration, police and education in the Swat valley and began expanding into other districts with the clear intention of trying to overthrow the Islamabad government.

  More than 2.5 million refugees fed Swat and the adjoining districts of Buner and Dir. The public was outraged and the government embarrassed, while the USA was horrified, accusing Pakistan of abandoning its responsibilities. Urged on by international pressure, public opinion and the civilian government, the army mobilized and attacked Swat with much larger forces than it had sent in before, finally driving the Taliban out of Swat in June and allowing the internal refugees to return home. But the entire leadership of the Swati Taliban, including some 20 commanders and Fazlullah, managed to escape, and by August they had once again resumed their sporadic attacks in Swat against the security forces.

  As the army prepared once again to attack Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan in October, the Taliban retaliated with a devastating 10-day series of suicide bombings and frontal attacks on military and police personnel in all the major cities of Pakistan. A group of Taliban managed to enter army headquarters in Rawalpindi and take 49 security personnel hostage, who were freed by a commando action 22 hours later. And on 15 October militants launched three coordinated attacks on police and intelligence officials in Lahore. Altogether, more than 300 people were killed that month. All this came at a time when there was still no clear direction to President Obama's Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, the Afghan elections were still in doubt and there were rising tensions between the Pakistan military and the civilian government.

  Meanwhile, since the 2001 war the Afghan Taliban have spread out, creating many different groups. Today there are Pakistani and Central Asian Taliban, and tomorrow there may well be Indian Taliban amongst Indian Muslims – all inspired by the Taliban-Al Qaeda-led war against the USA and NATO in Afghanistan, and all determined to create a Taliban sharia state in their own region.

  Militant extremists arose in Central Asia almost immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, but they were never considered a serious threat until after 2001. Wooing Russia and the five Central Asian states for air and supply bases was essential to US strategy as America prepared for the war in Afghanistan. While the regimes of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan all professed to want to help the USA, they knew that they could not make a move without the blessing of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which still had remarkable influence over the former Soviet states. Only Turkmenistan, with its foreign policy of declared neutrality, refused the US request for bases. The Central Asian leaders hoped that joining the US alliance would strengthen their dwindling credibility at home and also bring them a financial gain. Moreover, they all felt threatened by the Taliban, as well as by the growth of Islamic extremist movements in Central Asia.

  The USA was particularly assiduous in its advances toward Uzbekistan because Washington needed Uzbek airbases to launch the CIA-Special Forces teams into Afghanistan. In response, Russia tried to block the USA and hosted its own summit of Central Asian leaders and the Afghan NA, attempting to outbid the USA by offers of support to help the NA defeat the Taliban. But the Central Asian leaders were dissatisfed with the Russian offers, and Uzbek President Islam Karimov was the first to break with Russia, sending secret messages to Washington saying that he was ready to lease airbases to US forces. Putin realized that Russia could not stop the Central Asian leaders from letting the Americans use their airbases.

  On 22 September, just 11 days after the attacks, Bush and Putin spoke on the phone and sealed a deal that would allow US forces to establish bases for their troops at Central Asian airfields. Russia now insisted only that the US presence not become permanent and that it be removed once Al Qaeda was defeated. The CIA began to fy in teams to the massive Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan to prepare for their incursion into Afghanistan. By mid-October 2000 US troops were stationed at K2. Later, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan also provided airbases to US and NATO fighter jets.

  Before 11 September a handful of sporadic attacks into Central Asia by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) had terrified the regimes. The IMU, led by military commander Juma Namangani and ideologue Tohir Yuldeshev, had confronted the Uzbek police briefly in Namangan in the Ferghana valley in the early 1990s and had then fed to Tajikistan, where they fought with the Islamists in the civil war which lasted from 1992 to 1997. After the war ended the IMU leaders settled in the Pamir mountains in Taji
kistan and launched periodic attacks into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

  In the winter of 2000 the IMU retreated into Afghanistan, where they were welcomed by Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar even as the USA designated them a terrorist group. The IMU now shifted ideological course, no longer seeking simply to create an Islamic state in Uzbekistan but aiming to bring the whole of Central Asia and even the Western Chinese province of Xinjiang under its control. Namangani pledged loyalty to Mullah Omar and began to apply the Taliban Islamic code to his own troops. He also set up an IMU training camp in Kunduz, close to the border with Tajikistan, modelled closely on Al Qaeda's training facilities and encouraged young Central Asians and Chechens to join him there. Suddenly Al Qaeda had a major ideological ally in Central Asia as well as a key partner in building a drug smuggling network that could move Afghan heroin through Central Asia into Russia and Europe.

  President Karimov was stunned when he learned of the proximity of the IMU and Al Qaeda and the operational centres they had established on the Afghan-Uzbek border. Just before 11 September, Mullah Omar had appointed Namangani the Taliban's military chief for all of northern Afghanistan and put him in charge of the defence of the northern capital Mazar-e-Sharif When the USA attacked, Namangani was killed in a bombing raid just before Mazar fell to US and Afghan forces in November 2001. The IMU was routed, and hundreds of its fighters were killed. But the remainder, led by Tohir Yuldeshev, escaped into Pakistan, where they took refuge in FATA. Some married local Pashtun women. Unlike Al Qaeda's Arabs, who had the option of returning to the Middle East via the underground network set up by sympathetic Pakistani militants, the IMU militants could not return home for fear of persecution by the authorities. As a result they became mercenaries in FATA, lending out their military prowess to the highest bidder, be it Al Qaeda, neo-Taliban leaders like Jalaluddin Haqqani or local Pakistani Pashtun militia leaders. They gained an even more terrible reputation than that of other extremists groups for being cruel, heartless and tough fighters.

  The US and European presence in Central Asia failed to push Central Asian leaders toward desperately needed political and social reforms. There were several changes of face at the top of the power structures, but meaningful political or economic changes remained few and far between. Parliamentary elections were held in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005, but the opposition denounced them as rigged by the deeply unpopular President Askar Akayev, who had been in power since 1991. After violent street demonstrations and the storming of the presidential palace Akayev was overthrown. Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a former colleague of Akayev's and a well-known establishment figure, became President, but he too was quickly accused of corruption, nepotism and authoritarianism. Bakiyev tilted towards Moscow and demanded larger payments from the USA to keep its airbase close to the capital, Bishkek.

  In Turkmenistan there was a similar change when the autocratic and bizarre President Saparmurad Niyazov died of a heart attack in December 2006. He had spent 21 years in power and left the country impoverished, even though it was rich in oil and gas. The new President, Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov, eventually began a very cautious and slow policy of reforms and the opening of the country to the West.

  Uzbekistan, the largest and most populated country in the region which had spawned the IMU, underwent a long-term crisis: the government was oppressive and dictatorial and was interested in neither political nor economic reform. People speculated about whether, if President Karimov died, positive changes would follow. Some feared that it would lead instead to a relentless power struggle between various elite Uzbek factions, which only Karimov was capable of holding together. With Karimov in power the President's family and his cronies profted enormously from business deals, while poverty visibly increased among the people and the lack of legalized political parties led to a growth of underground Islamic extremism.

  The worsening conditions in Uzbekistan gave rise to several extremist Islamic movements. The oldest was the IMU but the largest was Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which believed in creating a single worldwide Islamic state headed by a Caliph. A relatively new movement originating from the Middle East, it had become popular amongst young Muslims on university campuses in Europe but failed to have any impact in the Muslim world except in Central Asia. Although HT actively promoted nonviolence, Karimov moved ruthlessly to suppress it, jailing thousands of young people on the often false charges that they belonged to HT. Karimov also persuaded the USA to declare HT a terrorist group. Meanwhile, differences were arising among the Uzbek exiles in FATA, and another group emerged in 2002-3 after breaking away from the IMU. The new splinter group was called ‘Islamic Jihad Union’, and it enlisted militant Turks as well as Central Asians and was especially close to Al Qaeda.

  The Union was said to be responsible for the March 2004 multiple suicide attacks in several cities in Uzbekistan including Tashkent. Over four days suicide attacks killed 47 people. The Uzbekistan government closed the country's borders, arrested 400 people and forced Western reporters and NGOs to leave the country. In July more suicide attacks took place in Tashkent and more arrests followed. Tensions mounted, especially in the Ferghana valley, which exploded on 13 May 2005 when a mass demonstration in favour of local businessmen who had been imprisoned was fred upon by troops. At least 850 people were killed in the massacre, although the regime claimed that only 187 had died. Thousands more were arrested, and many more fed the country. The USA and NATO were forced to criticize Karimov, while China and Russia supported his actions. Karimov reacted in July by ordering the eviction of all US forces from its K2 base.8

  The crackdown in Uzbekistan further benefited the IMU and extremist groups holed up in FATA as young people fed Uzbekistan to avoid arrest and took refuge in FATA. Hundreds of young Uzbeks travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training, and the traffic in militants between these two countries and Central Asia multiplied. The several hundred IMU militants who had taken refuge in Pakistan after 2001 had now become several thousand, with dozens travelling back and forth to Central Asia every month. Tohir Yuldeshev became an even more important leader.

  Other terrorist groups also benefited. In September 2007 German authorities arrested three German Muslims who had trained with the Islamic Jihad Union in FATA and then returned to Germany intending to bomb the US air-force base at Ramstein. The Union, led by Najmiddin Jalolov (also known as Abu Yahya Mohammed Fatih), recruited widely in Turkey. The Central Asian Taliban based in FATA were now a threat not just to Central Asia but also to Turkey and Europe.

  Karimov, now more aware of the dangers posed by the Taliban and the IMU, in February 2009 allowed the USA and NATO once more to start sending goods into Afghanistan via Uzbekistan. By May he had agreed to allow the USA to reopen a cargo base in Navoi in order to send supplies into Afghanistan, although to avoid criticism that he had surrendered to US demands, he nominated the South Korean government to run the base. This new alliance did not hamper the IMU, and in June a series of small suicide bombings and attacks on police stations began in the Ferghana valley and in other towns in Uzbekistan. The Uzbeks angrily closed their borders with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, claiming that the militants were arriving from Afghanistan through these two countries, although it was more likely that the militants had already established secret underground bases in Uzbekistan itself from which they were preparing to launch larger attacks.

  The spread of the Taliban as a role model for Islamic extremism in the region, as a militant force to impose sharia and its interpretation of Islam on the population and as an armed group aiming to overthrow local state structures has continued because of the lack of resolve and policies by local regimes and the international community. The Taliban today are the principal defenders and protectors of Al Qaeda and its attempts to spread global jihad by enticing young people into its web of international violence and terrorism. The Taliban will remain a danger to the world until local Muslim governments and the West commit to the effort needed to combat extremism as well as to deal with the outstand
ing problems of poverty, economic malaise, lack of education and joblessness amongst the populations of the region. A vast new social and economic development programme is needed not just in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and Central Asia if there is to be a long-term answer to the threat posed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda that emanates from the region.

  Appendix 1

  A sample of Taliban decrees

  relating to women and other

  cultural issues, after the capture of

  Kabul, 1996

  (This translation from Dari was handed to Western agencies to implement; the grammar and spellings are reproduced here as they appeared in the original.)

  1.

  Decree announced by the General Presidency of Amr Bil Maruf and Nai Az Munkar (Religious Police.) Kabul, November 1996.

  Women you should not step outside your residence. If you go outside the house you should not be like women who used to go with fashionable clothes wearing much cosmetics and appearing in front of every men before the coming of Islam.

  Islam as a rescuing religion has determined specific dignity for women, Islam has valuable instructions for women. Women should not create such opportunity to attract the attention of useless people who will not look at them with a good eye. Women have the responsibility as a teacher or coordinator for her family. Husband, brother, father have the responsibility for providing the family with the necessary life requirements (food, clothes etc). In case women are required to go outside the residence for the purposes of education, social needs or social services they should cover themselves in accordance with Islamic Sharia regulation. If women are going outside with fashionable, ornamental, tight and charming clothes to show themselves, they will be cursed by the Islamic Sharia and should never expect to go to heaven.