, KARACHI – As the months and the years drag on, and the United States is no closer to bringing order to Afghanistan, desperate measures are being taken in an attempt to breathe some life – and credibility – into its campaign in the region.
The recent operation in Angoor Adda, a small Pakistani town on the border with Afghanistan in South Waziristan Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, is a prime example. Pakistani forces, acting on the directions of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), killed at least 12 and arrested 12 suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
The operation grabbed extensive media attention, with reports of “Arab” deaths receiving front-page coverage. Asia Times Online was one of the very few publications to clearly state that all of the arrested people were of Central Asian or Afghan origin. (See Pakistan: FBI rules the roost of October 4).
The point is, those killed and arrested were Uzbeks and Afghans, with some local Pakistani tribals caught in crossfire. At best, these were foot soldiers for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Afghan resistance war who had fled into Pakistani territory from coalition soldiers.
Immediately after this encounter, on the instructions, again, of the FBI, another operation was conducted in the Diamir area of northern Pakistan. The director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, Major-General Shaukat Sultan, confirmed this, saying, “The Pakistan army … with the help of the local administration, following 'intelligence reports', acted swiftly and dismantled a camp.”
According to Asia Times Online sources, however, heavy Pakistani army contingents conducted the operation, but all they found was an empty building that had allegedly been used by the Harkatul Ansar, a banned militant outfit fighting in Kashmir.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, meanwhile, on Sunday praised Pakistan for the raids and for what its military has done against suspected terrorist training camps in the mountainous regions that border Afghanistan.
“In recent days there have been some rather significant activities that the Pakistani forces have taken against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and I think this is a very good omen and I have no doubt it will continue,” Armitage told reporters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
A nice soundbite for people back home in the US, and for the US's favorite “ally” in the “war on terror”, Pakistan, but the hard truth is that neither operation achieved anything of consequence, and the US is still essentially shooting in the dark in Afghanistan.
Certainly, al-Qaeda is weakened, and has been for some time, but the resistance movement is still very much alive and well in Afghanistan, with the Taliban taking the lead role. The anti-US movement is growing and evolving by the day into a struggle similar to the one that saw the Taliban fill the power vacuum created by bickering warlords in 1996. Grounded in a strong sense of order, nationalism and fundamental Islamic principles, the movement is strengthening its hold in the southeast of the country, where the Taliban has gained – and retained – control of five important districts over the past few weeks.
Mujahideen veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyr's Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), meanwhile, has chalked out a different strategy. The HIA has announced that its war will not be against any Afghan. Rather, its aim is to boot out foreign forces from Afghanistan. Under the banner of this policy, the HIA has made ceasefire agreements with local commanders of Eastern Shura in eastern Afghanistan in the key cities of Jalalabad, Sorobi, Logar and Kunhar. By brokering these ceasfires, the HIA's popularity is growing, especially among the majority Pashtuns, who feel marginalized by the ruling Northern Alliance-dominated government in Kabul.
These narrow nationalist factors are the driving force for the incumbent ruling classes in the Pashtun belt to support the resistance, albeit indirectly.
A tug-of-war situation in Kabul in the seat of power between the US-backed Hamid Karzai administration on the one hand and the Russia-Iran-India-backed Northern Alliance on the other hand is another factor allowing the resistance to take root in the north of the country, traditionally Northern Alliance territory. The recent attacks on US targets in Baghlan are evidence of this.
And the lame efforts on the part of the US to create a proxy organization to participate in the Afghan government, such as the Jaishul Muslim, a grouping of “moderate” Taliban, appear to be going nowhere as such an initiative calls for the exclusion of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
However, the US appears set on pursuing the “Taliban” avenue. Reports emerging from Pakistan claim that former Taliban minister Mullah Abdul Wakeel Mutawakil has been released from US custody for him to make contact with Mullah Omar and negotiate some form of a deal.
With operations like South Waziristan and Diamir, and involving the Taliban, it is beginning to look as if the US would dearly like to set the stage for it to leave Afghanistan, and with a modicum of its “face” intact.
Source: Asia Times
