Taliban

Taking Advantage Of Mistakes

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The Taliban are now hitting back with a vengeance, boldly attacking high profile targets with a great deal of success, 10-years after the US-led coalition forces invasion in 2001, of Afghanistan.

But the Taliban there were not completely defeated, they were far from being defeated when they ran away. Now, they are expanding the areas they control and are gaining more numbers of their better trained fighters.

If you got after a believer he will run as long as you chase him and he will only stop where and when you stop chasing him. When you return to your base, he will also returns to where he came from.

Armoured Beasts

Taliban War 10-Years On

It was Ten years ago when the Taliban fighters in their thousands abandoned power, fled their military posts and melted away into the countryside, allowing the Western-led forces to capture Afghanistan without a fight, but they were still there, awaiting the right moment.

Today, that rag-tag militia has evolved into a sophisticated guerrilla force which has recently hit several high-value targets and all but derailed American plans for a smooth and successful drawdown of troops.

Significantly, they have achieved this despite the absence of a charismatic leader, a unified chain of command and a politico- economic vision.

So How Did They Do It?

Until three years after their government was ousted by coalition forces in October 2001, there was little Taliban activity anywhere in Afghanistan, but they were still there.

The Taliban were initially welcomed by the Afghan people for bringing a four-year long civil war to an end, but when they started to implement their strict Islamic code, the people got fed up.

People welcomed the Americans, because they saw them as their liberators, and there was no room for the Taliban to stage a comeback while the Americans were there.

It is believed that the Pakistani military-tolerated the Taliban and they also helped them. If the military didn't encourage them, then, some department or body of people in Pakistan certainly was.

By 2006, however, the Taliban had infiltrated large parts of the south, especially the provinces of Zabul, Kandahar and Helmand. And by 2008, they were spreading out north towards Kabul.

It is now obvious that the Americans had made mistakes which squandered their huge advantage of success in Afghanistan.

First they focused on military objectives instead of the country's stabilisation and development. This was probably their biggest mistake. And the second was; they soon went off to fight a war of their choice in Iraq.

They bandoned the war of necessity that had brought them to Afghanistan in the first place. While they were fighting in Iraq the Taliban were training and recruiting for the long war ahead, in camps set-up in Pakistan.

The Americans absence on the ground, not only led to the country's lack of reconstruction, it allowed rampant corruption among government officials.

And this at a time when millions of refugees were returning from Iran and Pakistan, this led to widespread disenchantment which fuelled insurgency.

Sanctuary In Pakistan

Many analysts also point to the role of Pakistan, from where the Taliban had emerged in 1994, and where most of them fled in 2001.

Many feel the current Afghan insurgency was born in the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. It appears, while the rest of Afghanistan was quiet, Waziristan was alive with Taliban activity, which made banner headlines around the world.

Pakistan sent troops to the border but they did not push the militants out in 2002, and they repeated the process again in 2004.

There were skirmishes between the Taliban and Pakistani troops, which were followed by a series of peace deals with the army that left the Taliban virtually in control of most of Pakistan's tribal areas all along he border with Afghanistan.

Most analysts agree-whether publicly or in private-that Pakistan's security establishment allowed the Taliban to turn Waziristan into a militant sanctuary despite having the capacity to eliminate them.

Coalition Troops Suffered

Coalition troops had their earliest casualties in south-eastern Afghanistan, just across the border from Waziristan. It was the fighting in the south-east, and later in the north-east, in Afghanistan's Kunar province, which is adjacent to the Pakistani tribal districts of Bajaur and Mohmand.

These developments eclipsed the concentration of Taliban fighters in Pakistan's south-western province of Balochistan, who started to quietly infiltrate Zabul, Kandahar and Helmand provinces from Toba Kakar, Chaman, Quetta and the Chaghai areas.

This development remained unattended both by the coalition troops in Afghanistan, who were too few in numbers to handle it, and the Pakistani military, to whom the Americans outsourced the fighting when they went to fight in Iraq.

Western officials admit that until 2008-09, coalition forces in the south were unable to hold areas which were important for the Taliban, such as large parts of central Kandahar and southern Helmand where the Taliban set up bomb-making factories, arms caches and defensive positions, and at the same time protected their own lines of communication.

'Punjabi Taliban'

Since the "troop surge" announced by President Obama in 2010, coalition forces have been able to dislodge the Taliban from their entrenched positions in Kandahar and Helmand, but they are still there biding their time.

THE TALIBAN Emerged in Afghanistan in 1994, Mainly supported by ethnic Pashtuns, who were toppled after US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, fugitive leader Mullah Omar is still a wanted man, but his whereabouts are unknown; so Who are the Taliban?

The insurgency has now spread wider, to areas around the capital, Kabul, and even to the formerly peaceful provinces of northern Afghanistan; the coalition forces are drawing them in.

The Taliban now seem to be relying more on suicide bombings, and spectacular gun-and-bomb attacks to hit targets of great psychological value.

The Taliban boast that their suicide bombers are all volunteers, no person is forced or pressed into make their suicidal decision. People who have relatives killed by the coalition willingly step forward for a mission.

And today there is an unending supply of new-and better trained- fighters entering Afghanistan from Pakistani areas, notably the Waziristan training camps.

Credible sources say that these fighters are mainly Pakistanis, locally called the Punjabi Taliban, who specialise in gun-and- bomb attacks and constitute a major part of the Waziristan-based Haqqani network.

According to these sources, since 2009 these fighters have been travelling up to the border in Pakistani military vehicles, presumably to avoid missile strikes by CIA-operated drones.

A Pakistani military source in the region admits collaboration with these fighters. The army spokesman, Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, rejects this as "malicious and fabricated".

"Nothing can be farther from the truth," he wrote back in a recent text message. But since the recent accusations by US officials that some attacks in Kabul may have been ordered by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, questions over the military's actual role in the Afghan insurgency are now being raised in various quarters within Pakistan.

Peace

Many in the West have long held the view that the key to peace in Afghanistan lies with the Pakistani military. The coming months will show if that is really the case, and whether Pakistan agrees to comply with the demands of the international community.

Recent history has shown us that, rapid growth and huge progress in infrastructure, education and the chance to earn a decent living, is the principle reason for success.

When communisum was sweeping through the jungles towards Indoneasia, Malaysia and Singapore. It was the people who did not want that doctrine; and that is why it failed.

In 1918, Allied Russia was betrayed by Lenin and Trotsky, they signed a shameful peace treaty whereby they betrayed their country and falsified its engagements to their Allies, to gain more time for their brand of communisum, but in the end, it was the people who didn't want it, and that is why it failed.

Usually, common sense prevails, some times it takes longer but eventually it will come through. Centries ago people believed in all kinds of Gods, God of the trees; God of the rivers; God of the Sun; God of the moon, until science and common sense told them there was no such thing.

The U.S.A.

Before a Senate hearing on Thursday 6th October 2011, Admiral Mullen stated definitively that Pakistani intelligence was supporting militant extremists in Afghanistan as they launched attacks on US forces there.

It is known that the Haqqani network, for one, acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, (ISI).

The admiral referred to an attack using a truck bomb, which injured nearly 80 coalition troops south of Kabul earlier this month and the attack on the US embassy and other official buildings in Kabul last week.

Admiral Mike Mullen, is about to retire, but not before letting fly a few choice words at Islamabad "With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy."

The militant group's roots lie in the war against the Soviet Union. Now it operates in Afghanistan's eastern provinces, flitting across the Pakistani border to sanctuary.

In perhaps the most telling part of his testimony, Admiral Mullen attacked Pakistani grand strategy, particularly its use of militant groups like the Haqqanis as "proxies" to increase Pakistani leverage in the region.

In July, the US announced it would withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan. And now, the Americans are very publicly accusing Pakistan of stunning duplicity.

The United States has a number of ways of increasing pressure on the Haqqanis and the Pakistani state. Drone strikes and covert operations, conducted with or without the approval of the Pakistani authorities, can be directed against the militant network.

American aid, to the tune of $4bn (£2.6bn) dollars a year, can be reduced or made conditional. But Admiral Mullen was careful to say that the US was not about to cut Pakistan loose.

"What matters most now is moving forward," he said, arguing that America must work for security and prosperity in Pakistan. It is the accepted wisdom in Washington that there can be no end to the conflict in Afghanistan, and no true stability in South Asia, until Pakistan enjoys a measure of stability and security.

But the Admiral's testimony indicates Washington's intense frustration at Pakistan and the lethal tactics of its shadowy intelligence services.

Where all this may lead? What options the Americans may be considering is unclear. But you can be sure that the Americans are now laying the ground for change.

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The British Forces

They have more than proved their worth, and British personnel their bravery and willingness to fight, sometimes against overwhelming odds has shown us their real courage.

But their limits have also been made clear, not least in the size of the force the UK has been able to deploy and sustain.

Bravery alone in not enough when numbers are required; the courageous British soldier has been let down by the Government who sent them to war, ill-equipped and woefully short of the men and the support required for the job.

The strains on the RAF's airbridge, the supply route from the UK to Afghanistan, and its ageing transport fleet, or the lack of enough of the right armoured vehicles or transport helicopters in earlier years.

Some commentators have asked whether senior officers and officials should have spoken hard truths unto power at an earlier stage, while others condemn the fitting of a force size to financial limits set down by the Treasury.

Welfare officers for some regiments sometimes struggle to cope with the demands of trying to assist the wounded, and bereaved and grieving families, as well as help children left fatherless and widows doing their best to bring up their children on their own.

Cuts to the MoD's budget also mean that financial allowances for servicemen and women are going down, while their pensions are also likely to diminish, at a time that thousands of personnel are being made redundant from the Royal Navy, the Army and the RAF.

All this is damaging morale as the three shrinking services are being asked to do a great deal more with a great deal less.

Of the 10,000 men sent to fight we must remember that a high number of them are non-combatants, the cooks and bottle-washers and the pen-pushers, mechanics, engineers or security etc. If the 10,000 men were all fighting-men it still would not be enough to do the job properly.

And all the time the believer is waiting for the withdrawal which is inevitable; and while he waits, he grows stronger and stronger while we grow weaker and weaker.

The British Government has never learnt from all our history that you do not cut your Forces; you have to retain them in strength if you want to defend your morals and your property.

When the coalition entered the war in Afghanistan, they breezed through the country in a blaze of glory, they did not properly assess the situation they were faced with. So now there can only be one ending: "Taliban".

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