A number of recent developments relating to the Taliban -led insurgency in Afghanistan have coalesced to portend a near-term strengthening of the Taliban, an escalation of attacks, and possibly a concerted push on the capital.
Guerrilla Country
As noted in these pages for some months, a regrouped and resurgent Taliban along with a cocktail of militant actors?including al-Qaeda elements, opium drug runners, warlords, and criminal networks?have formed loose alliances oriented along the common cause of battling the Kabul government and coalition forces and defending the advantageous environment of quasi-anarchy in Afghanistan’s hinterlands. Taliban attacks have become more brazen, resolute, and deadly in recent months, marked by an upsurge in the use of suicide bombings and larger-scale guerrilla assaults. The Taliban resurgence has been fueled by financing, materiel, and fighters streaming in from Pakistan , foreign mujihideen, al-Qaeda, and from some international charities and patrons in the Middle East. The Taliban has benefited from the state of quasi-anarchy in many of Afghanistan’s contested, hinterland provinces, where the Kabul government has been unable to extend its writ and impose security and where thinly stretched Coalition forces battle to maintain a foothold. In these regions, the lack of security, government presence, and development have created a permissive environment for poppy cultivation, with the drug runners entering into synergistic alliances variously with the Taliban, other militant elements, and corrupt provincial government officials. Drug profits fund militancy in return for muscle and protection to bolster the drug lords’ own robust militant wings. The drug profits and the overall anarchic environment serve as the prized life blood of these militant nexuses, in turn driving the militants’ common interest in challenging attempts by the government and Coalition forces to wrest control of the regions. It has also left the local population impoverished, unprotected, and disillusioned with their government. The Taliban and local militant and criminal elements are able to garner local support by presenting themselves as viable sources of livelihood, profit, protection, and survival, or by simple strong-armed intimidation. By seizing local support, the Taliban, drug runners, and other militant elements have entrenched themselves among many villages. Further, in classic guerrilla fashion, the Taliban has exploited the rugged and ungoverned nature of these rural areas to create guerrilla strongholds.
Faust in the Tribal Borderlands
In a development likely to strengthen and expand Taliban operations, Pakistan cut a deal last week with pro-Taliban tribal militants in North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous region in the borderlands with Afghanistan (see this WAR Report). Pakistan agreed, among other terms, to withdraw embattled Pakistani forces to barracks, halt ground and air operations, and free prisoners in return for vows by tribal militants to cease attacks against the army and to not cross into Afghanistan to conduct insurgent attacks. The tribal borderlands are thought to provide sanctuary for core Taliban bases of operations, training, and recruiting, and analysts believe that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda leadership elements are ensconced there. The borderlands serve essentially as the epicenter of Taliban cross-border insurgent operations and al-Qaeda core international terrorist operations. Thus, the deal represents a Faustian pact, in the short-term relieving Pakistan of the dangerous and politically unpopular burden of attempting to pacify and rout militants in the tribal areas but at the cost of allowing greater operational freedom for tribal militants and slackening pressure on and surveillance of Taliban and al-Qaeda elements. The deal creates a more permissive environment for them to build strength and enhance operational freedom, capabilities, and insurgent activities. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf has acknowledged that al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents have crossed from Pakistan into Afghanistan to conduct attacks, and he recently pledged to go after the command structure and leaders linked to the Taliban.
Poppy Crop
A second development likely to strengthen the Taliban and other anti-government/coalition militants is this year’s opium harvest, which reached the highest levels ever recorded, mostly in the southern provinces. The increased drug revenue will likely bolster funding for the aforementioned cocktail of militants whose increased interests in protecting poppy production seems to literally be paying dividends and bind ever closer and more resolute these synergistic narco-militant nexuses.
Welcome to the Jungle?
A strengthened Taliban-led insurgency is bad news for NATO forces who have recently taken over frontline counterinsurgency operations in the Taliban strongholds of the southern provinces. NATO forces are stretched thin across the south, and they are encountering fierce Taliban assaults and resistance, leading to calls for the urgent deployment of reinforcements of 2,000 to 2,500 extra troops, helicopters, and transport aircraft to enable more robust and dynamic counterinsurgency operations, and the full implementation of an ‘ink blot’ counterinsurgency strategy (see August 9, 2006 WAR Report). The reinforcements cannot arrive soon enough to help keep Taliban guerrillas at bay and begin to wrest control of the southern provinces.
Kabul or Bust
Finally, the Taliban may be mounting a push against Kabul in an effort to employ an insurgent strategy that strikes at the center of gravity of the Karzai government and its power. Though the Taliban have conducted a largely rural guerrilla insurgency, last week’s deadly suicide bombing in Kabul?the deadliest suicide attack in the capital since 2001?and, according to the US military, the presence of an active suicide bombing cell within the city targeting Coalition and international troops, underscores the increasing use of suicide bombings by the Taliban and possibly a push against Kabul.