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'Taliban advance only made possible by Al Qaeda's help'
The Taliban advance in Afghanistan could not have taken place without support from Al Qaeda, according to Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid.He told CNNs Wolf Blitzer in an interview on Sunday that Al Qaeda has established a route to Iraq for the Taliban and there is a lot of traffic on it. He said Al Qaeda is also raking in vast amounts of money from the drugs trade, some of which it is siphoning off to the Taliban. The sophistication with which the Taiban carried out the recent jailbreak seems to have been carried out with the help of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda seems to be very much an organisational coup for the Taliban, he added. Rashid, asked about Osama Bin Ladens capture, replied that President Bush would like to see him captured before the United States presidential elections but we have no indication on the ground that anything dramatic is about to happen. He said the US has stepped up its attacks, including attacks by drones, on the Pakistani side of the border and if intelligence indicates that there is a gathering of Taliban or Al Qaeda, the US acts very, very fast and does not always seem to have asked the Pakistanis for permission. Asked if the new government in Islamabad was really going to move against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he replied, The problem is that the military has been engaging the Taliban in peace deals for quite some years and they have not been able to get very much out of it. I think what the civilian government wants to do is to have a more comprehensive plan - political reform in the Tribal Areas, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are based, and economic development. But such plans have to be backed by a strong military position and the problem now is that the military is in a very static position. The military is not on the offensive, it is not showing a picture of strength to the extremists and this is going to stymie the whole effort by the civilian government. Asked if the new government is going to take steps to go after the terrorists, Rashid answered that it would do so, provided the army and the new government were speaking from the same page, which he believes they are not. What is needed is a mixture of social and economic development, plus military power, which only the army can provide, he argues. Asked whether there are elements in the Pakistani military sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Rashid replied: I think there is enormous sympathy for the Taliban within the military establishment and there is no doubt that the Taliban do have sanctuaries in Pakistan where they are not affected by any kind of military action. He said 30-40 percent of the fighters coming into southern Afghanistan are coming from the Pakistani side of the border. Posted by: Fred 2008-06-23 |
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