The “New” Taliban
The Taliban was the largest of these groups. Its leadership’s ideological vision did not change significantly after its regime’s overthrow in 2001, and its senior leaders remained motivated to impose in Afghanistan a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam derived from the Deobandi school of thought.22 The Taliban’s primary means for accomplishing this objective were to overthrow the new Afghan government, break the political will of the United States and its Coalition partners, and coerce foreign forces to withdraw. They patiently prepared to outlast the international presence in Afghanistan. “We do have to bear in mind however that in an insurgency of this nature the insurgent wins if he does not lose and we lose if we do not win,” noted a British government assessment. “For the insurgent this places considerable emphasis on astute information operations, management of perceptions, retaining consent of the local population (by whatever means) and being patient. The longer he endures the more likely he will just wait out the counterinsurgency effort.”23
The Taliban included an influx of new members—sometimes referred to as the “neo-Taliban” who were recruited at madrassas and other locations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.24 The Taliban organization that emerged over the course of the insurgency involved two main tiers. The top tier included the leadership structure and key commanders. They were motivated by a radical version of Islam and saw the insurgency as a fight between Islam on one side and Western infidels and the West’s “puppet government” in Kabul on the other side. The Taliban’s inner shura was responsible for strategic decisions and for addressing the most egregious problems. Examples can be found in the Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha), which included orders not to engage in separate negotiations and to report captures and wait for leadership decision.25 Following the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime, the leadership moved to Pakistan. The top tier included the leadership structure and key commanders and was run by a shura headed by Mullah Omar.
With Mullah Omar at the top, the Taliban shura was divided into a series of functional committees: military, propaganda, finance, religious, political, and administrative. At various points, key members of the inner shura included such individuals as Mullah Omar, Mullah Berader (former Taliban governor of Herat), Akhtar Muhammad Mansour (former Taliban head of aviation), Mullah Nuruddin Turabi (former Taliban justice minister), Mullah Abdul Jalil (former Taliban minister of foreign affairs), and Noor Muhammad Saqib (former chief justice of the Supreme Court). Regional shuras in such locations as Peshawar and Waziristan also included political, military, finance, and other committees.
The bottom tier of Taliban guerrillas included thousands of local fighters—men from rural villages paid to set up roadside bombs, launch rockets and mortars at NATO and Afghan forces, or pick up a gun for a few weeks or months. The Taliban also organized a parallel Afghan government, which included governors for Afghan provinces and ministers for such areas as defense and justice.26
While the Taliban remained a puritan religious movement, it had little political vision other than the establishment of sharia law. As scholars Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy maintained, the Taliban had little beyond “the Shari’a, the whole Shari’a, and nothing but the Shari’a.”27 Mullah Dadullah Lang, the Taliban military commander who was killed by U.S. forces in 2007, declared: “We are not fighting here for Afghanistan, but we are fighting for all Muslims everywhere and also the Mujahideen in Iraq. The infidels attacked Muslim lands and it is a must that every Muslim should support his Muslim brothers.”28 This argument was echoed by other insurgents, such as former Taliban spokesman Mofti Latifollah Hakimi: “The issue of Afghanistan is connected with the ongoing war between Islam and blasphemy in the world. Mullah Mohammad [Omar] is representing a huge umma, and a large nation is behind him.”29 The Taliban used young Pakistan-trained mullahs to glorify their cause in mosques in Afghanistan’s east and south.
There were two notable differences between the Taliban’s religious ideology during the 1990s and their ideology after 2001. The Taliban eased some of their aversion to modern technology. During the 1990s, they generally discouraged the use of the Internet and television by closing down Internet cafés and banning television. After their overthrow, however, they leveraged Al-Sahab, al Qa’ida’s media enterprise, to distribute video propaganda and recruit supporters. Key Taliban leaders, such as Mullah Dadullah Lang, were comfortable and relaxed in front of a camera, reciting passages of the Qur’an and outlining the Taliban’s ideology.
In addition, the Taliban adopted suicide bombing as a tactic against Afghan and international forces with the assistance and encouragement of key al Qa’ida leaders, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri. During the 1990s, the Taliban conducted no suicide attacks, presumably because the Qur’an prohibits suicide. This changed by 2003 and 2004, though not all Taliban appeared to be on board with this new tactic. Signals and human intelligence picked up by NATO officials indicated that there were divisions within the Taliban about the use of suicide attacks. For some, collateral damage—especially when Afghan women and children were killed in the vicinity of a suicide attack—was unjustifiable. Infidels were fair game, but not innocent bystanders. The Taliban’s ideology seemed to be somewhat flexible over time, as long as it served strategic purposes.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami was also active, based out of such areas as the Shamshattu refugee camp near Peshawar.30 He argued that jihad was critical in order to fight Western forces and to establish sharia law in Afghanistan. “Believe me,” he thundered in a video clip in response to questions from Agence France Presse, “we do this jihad as we pray, as we fast, or conduct hajj.”31 His daily newspapers, the Sha-haadat Daily and Tanweer Weekly, were available on the streets of Pakistani cities, especially Peshawar. They denounced the Afghan government for apostasy and called Hamid Karzai a puppet of the West. Hekmatyar argued that Western forces were infidels who occupied the land of Muslims. In a video, he proclaimed the United States as “the mother of problems” and warned that Afghanistan’s turmoil would not end until U.S. forces left the region. “The occupying forces…have only one successful way and…that is to pull out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.” In another video,32 Hekmatyar argued that “the Afghan mujahideen have pledged to themselves that they will force America out of their country like the Soviet Union and will not lay down their arms until they drive the occupying forces out of their country.”33 This comment was notable not only for its anti-American rhetoric but also for its reference to the jihad against the Soviet Union. Hekmatyar, of course, had participated in that war with CIA assistance.
Hekmatyar’s traditional influence was strongest among Pashtun communities in Afghanistan’s northeast. Hezb-i-Islami generally enrolled Pashtuns and was implacably hostile to any form of political compromise with Western countries. From its earliest days, Hezb-i-Islami defined the “good Muslim” as one who was no longer defined by his religious attitude but by his political actions. Following the writings of Ibn Taymiyya, Hekmatyar believed it was possible to define a Muslim as a takfir for purely political reasons.34 This gave Hezb-i-Islami notable credentials with the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi’s Jamiat-e-Islami in Pakistan, and the Saudi networks. Hekmatyar had particularly close ties with Jamiat-e-Islami and its view that the five pillars of Islam were merely phases of preparation for jihad and Islamic revolution. In a sense, their goal was to “Islamize modernity” by domesticating Western techniques and knowledge and putting them to work on behalf of an Islamic state. This differentiated them from Deobandi groups, such as the Taliban, who rejected such modernity out of hand.35 Hekmatyar also adhered to Sayyid Qutb’s views about the need to vanquish corrupt Muslim leaders in order to establish true Islamic government.
Unlike either the Taliban or al Qa’ida, Hezb-i-Islami also became involved in politics. “The influence of Hezb-i-Islami in Afghan politics, including in the Parliament,” one senior Afghan official told me, “is significant.”36 A number of Hezb-i-Islami memb
ers were elected to the Afghan Parliament in the September 2005 elections, though many claimed they had broken ranks with Hekmatyar. This suggested that it was not a unified organization. But it allowed Hezb-i-Islami to play a double game: some of its adherents targeted Afghan and NATO forces in the east and some participated in Afghan politics in Kabul and its outlying provinces. Political participation was strongly shunned by al Qa’ida leaders and other Islamists, who considered the democratic political system corrupt and contrary to the establishment of God’s law within a country. In addition, not all members of Hezb-i-Islami agreed on tactical, operational, or strategic decisions of other groups, especially the Taliban. One United Nations report asserted that Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami faction was for the Taliban a “particularly troublesome co-opted group” because “some of its members proved entirely incompatible with the [Taliban’s] ideology and campaign plan.”37
Competing Motivations
The leaders of most major insurgent groups—especially the Taliban, Hezb-i-Islami, and al Qa’ida—were motivated by religion. There were also a number of smaller groups active in Afghanistan and Pakistan that professed somewhat similar ideologies, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The IMU’s leaders were motivated to establish an Islamic state under sharia in Uzbekistan, though they also supported efforts to establish sharia in neighboring countries, including Afghanistan. This religious ideology helps explain why, even after the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, these groups wanted to target Hamid Karzai’s government.
There were, of course, some tensions and ideological differences across these groups. CIA estimates after the September 11 attacks, for example, found deep divisions between the Taliban and al Qa’ida. Al Qa’ida utilized support from the Taliban for outer-perimeter security, but many al Qa’ida fighters looked disdainfully on the masses of Taliban, and many Taliban viewed al Qa’ida members as unwelcome foreigners. The personal and ideological link between bin Laden and Mullah Omar was crucial to keeping intact an unsteady relationship. 38 Despite these and other differences, however, they shared several common characteristics.39
To begin with, they were jihadist—that is, their supporters advocated the necessity of jihad in order to recover “occupied” Muslim lands, or even to struggle against Muslim regimes regarded as traitorous. They were also loosely Salafist, demanding a return to strict Islam.40 Many Salafist movements are opposed to armed jihad, either tactically or by conviction, and advocate the da’wa, or “call” to Islam, as a preferred form of action. For those who advocate both jihad and Salafism, jihad is the way by which Muslims can be united and recalled to the true practice of Islam. The underlying idea is that when the majority of Muslims return to the strict interpretation of Islam, they will be able to reestablish the Muslim umma (the community of all Muslims). In addition, these groups gave the Muslim umma priority over ethnic or national identities and interests. Al Qa’ida leader Abu Laith al-Libi—who was intimately involved in the Afghan insurgency against U.S. forces and was killed in a missile strike in January 2008—argued that in Afghanistan, “the jihad is a story which carries in its twists and turns the just cause of the umma, which seeks in overall terms to establish the religion on earth.”41 Finally, the groups often overlapped geographically. Although the Taliban had no serious objectives outside the frontiers of Afghanistan, they provided space within their territory for training camps for foreign volunteers and made use of units made up of such volunteers in their military campaigns.42
Insurgent groups used religion as a propaganda tool in at least two respects. The Taliban regularly used arguments that “Western countries are trying to destroy Islam” in their conversations with tribal elders and in their night letters.43 As Mullah Dadullah Lang argued: “God be praised, we now are aware of much of the U.S. plans. We know their target, which is within the general aim of wiping out Islam in this region.”44 And the Taliban and other insurgent groups used religion in their recruitment efforts for suicide bombers.
These efforts had mixed success in Afghanistan, but more success in Pakistan. Since mosques historically served as a tipping point for major political upheavals in Afghanistan, Afghan government officials focused their attention on the mosques. One Afghan intelligence report stated: “There are 107 mosques in the city of Kandahar out of which 11 are preaching anti-government themes. Our approach is to have all the pro-government mosques incorporated with the process and work on the eleven anti-government ones to change their attitude or else stop their propaganda and leave the area.”45 Another major factor was a public campaign by Afghan religious figures. For example, the Ulema Council of Afghanistan called on the Taliban to abandon violence and support the Afghan government in the name of Islam. They also called on the religious scholars of neighboring countries—including Pakistan—to help counter the activities and ideology of the Taliban and other insurgent organizations.46 A number of Afghan Muslim clerics publicly supported the Afghan government and called the jihad un-Islamic.47 Moreover, the Ulema Council and some Afghan ulema issued fatwas that unambiguously opposed suicide bombing. They argued that suicide bombing did not lead to an eternal life in paradise, did not permit martyrs to see the face of Allah, and did not allow martyrs to have the company of seventy-two beautiful maidens in paradise.48
But religious ideology was not a sufficient condition for the rise of Afghanistan’s insurgency. Local Afghans were generally not motivated by religion to support insurgent groups and oppose the Afghan government. Rather, they were motivated by poor or nonexistent governance. In most cases, the Taliban and other insurgent groups were not necessarily popular; the Afghan government was simply unpopular. Support for the Taliban would undoubtedly have been greater had they not run Afghanistan with an iron fist in the 1990s. As Ambassador Ronald Neumann remarked to me, “The Taliban conquest of Afghanistan in the 1990s had a silver lining: it gave Afghans a chance to see what they were really like.”49
Yet despite these challenges, the Taliban and other groups mounted increasingly effective operations across Afghanistan’s south and east in 2006 and 2007. They were met by NATO forces that struggled mightily to keep pace.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN National Caveats
STANDING NEXT TO Canada’s command headquarters at Kandahar Airfield when I visited it in 2007 was a makeshift war memorial. The faces of fallen Canadian soldiers were etched in chiseled marble. There were no obelisks or ostentatious monuments, just faces. Corporal David Robert Braun. Private Blake Neil Williamson. Warrant Officer Richard Francis Nolan. The list went on. Each face stared back at those who paid tribute, usually fellow Canadian soldiers shuffling into and out of the command headquarters. Some of the faces smiled sheepishly from the blackened marble, while others stared intently. All had served their country and paid with their lives. Next to each face were their names, biographical data, and units. 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (Shilo, Manitoba). 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment (Petawawa, Ontario). 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Régiment (Valcartier, Québec).
The inscription on the memorial read: “Dedicated to those Canadians who gave their lives in the service of peace while serving in Afghanistan.” Visitors placed flowers and photographs of their fallen comrades across the nameplates. Amid the daily commotion of Canada’s headquarters and the constant roar of fighter jets overhead, the memorial was strangely serene.
Unlike the war in Iraq, which was largely unilateral, the war in Afghanistan was at first fought by a true multinational coalition. NATO eventually became engaged as a full partner in combat operations and reconstruction. But it didn’t start off that way. Following the September 2001 attacks, NATO invoked for the first time Article V of the 1949 Washington Treaty, its founding document. Article V embodied the allies’ collective-security commitment to one another, stating that the “Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”1 Since the United States had been attacked,
they felt obliged to step in.
Within months of the U.S. invasion, a number of NATO countries made Special Forces and intelligence assets available. Many went to Afghanistan, but U.S. policymakers chose to use most NATO assets in the United States. NATO fighter aircraft flew combat air patrols over some thirty U.S. cities and key infrastructure, with continuous patrols over Washington, DC, and New York City. U.S. Air Force and NATO air crews flew more than 13,400 fighter, tanker, and airborne early warning sorties over the United States. There were more sorties flown in the United States than during the war in Afghanistan up to mid-2002, when the continuous air patrols in U.S. cities ended.2
By 2006 and 2007, NATO began to play a more significant role in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, especially in the violent south. Despite a growing list of NATO countries that deployed forces to Afghanistan, however, many countries refused to allow their forces to engage in combat operations. One senior NATO official acknowledged, “It was like fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.”3
“Lead Nation” Strategy
Beginning in 2002, there were few non-U.S. NATO forces in Afghanistan; Secretary Rumsfeld had opposed the deployment of a stabilization force outside of Kabul. With rare exceptions, the 4,000-member International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not venture beyond the capital. Its purpose was to protect the Afghan interim administration and help provide security in the capital. Rather than deploy troops for combat operations, several NATO countries volunteered to help the Afghan government rebuild its depleted security sector. The effort was referred to as the “lead nation” approach. The United States volunteered to lead the construction of the Afghan National Army; Germany was responsible for training the Afghan National Police; the United Kingdom led the counternarcotics effort; Italy was the lead for rebuilding Afghanistan’s decrepit justice system; and Japan (with UN assistance) was the lead for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants. In theory, each lead nation was supposed to contribute significant financial assistance, coordinate external aid, and oversee reconstruction efforts in its sector.
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