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| India-Pakistan |
| Across the border from Britain's troops, Taliban rises again |
| 2006-05-27 |
| Azizullah, the serious-minded son of a Pakistani farmer, yearned for martyrdom, his family said. This week the Taliban made his wish come true. The zealots inspired him to jihad, trained him to shoot and dispatched him to fight the infidel Americans across the border in Afghanistan. So it was fitting that after he died last Sunday night, trapped under a hail of American firepower, that a procession of black-turbaned men brought him home. "He always wanted to die like this, a heroic death. We are very proud of him," said his brother, Gul Nasib, a solemn looking man with a drawn face, at their home in Bagarzai Saidan, a village on a yawning plain in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. The Afghan border lay 30 miles north. Now all that remained was a picture of Azizullah on the picture on Nasib's mobile phone, his eyes closed and flowers garlanded around his face. Hushed mourners streamed to the grave, a mound of stones draped with a green cloth. A waft of incense clung to the evening air. The Taliban flag fluttered at one end of the grave; the black and white standard of Jamiaat Ulema Islam (JUI-F), an extremist Pakistani religious party that helps to rule Baluchistan, protruded from the other. An hour earlier a radical cleric, Maulana Abdul Bari - who also happens to be Baluchistan's minister for public health - addressed the village from a mosque. "Azizullah was a true martyr, his place in paradise is guaranteed," he said, his words echoing through a loudspeaker and across the village. "His blood will not be lost. It will strengthen Islam like water feeds a tree." Azizullah died in Panjwayi, a violent district of Kandahar province where US A-10 "warthog" planes pounded a religious school filled with Taliban. The Americans claimed to have killed up to 80 fighters; yesterday a human rights group said 34 civilians perished too. The battle was the climax of Afghanistan's bloodiest week since 2001. A succession of firefights raged across Kandahar and Helmand, where 3,300 British troops are being deployed as part of an ambitious Nato mission. By yesterday an estimated 339 people were dead, most of them Taliban fighters like Azizullah. What worries western commanders and their Afghan allies is not just the intensity of the storm but its direction. The Taliban recruit, resupply and coordinate their war effort from Pakistan, according to western and military officials. The insurgents slip across at several points along the 930-mile border, a largely unpatrolled stretch of sand, rock and mountain. But the weakest - and most controversial - blindspot is in Baluchistan. A vast and largely lawless province, Baluchistan offers a range of hiding places. Returning from Azizullah's funeral service, the Guardian passed young men sauntering down the road or hunkered over tea at roadside cafes. All were dressed in inky black shalwar kameez and roughly tied black turbans - dress that is not native to Baluchistan but in Afghanistan is unambiguously associated with the Taliban. Some insurgents melt into the camps that house more than 231,000 Afghan refugees in Baluchistan. Others shelter in madrassas run by local sympathisers such as JUI-F and funded with Middle Eastern money. North of Pishin, a bustling market town, teenage boys with jewelled skullcaps sat cross-legged outside a mud-walled madrassa. The sign at the gate read "Zia ul Uloom Al Arabiya" - "the Light of the Knowledge of Arabia". Headquarters But the Taliban nerve centre is allegedly 30 miles south in the provincial capital Quetta, which a British officer, Colonel Chris Vernon, recently described as "the major headquarters". Once a British colonial garrison town, Quetta has long been a home to spies, smugglers and fighters. During the 1980s it was a base for Afghan mujahideen battling Soviet troops inside Afghanistan. Today it still has a pungent air of intrigue. Police at checkposts guard for Baluch nationalist guerrillas who have dramatically escalated a bombing campaign against the state. Government intelligence agents sit indiscreetly in the lobby of the largest hotel, the Serena, carefully tracking the movements of visiting foreigners. Diverted western aid, such as American vegetable oil and United Nations sheeting, are on sale in the main bazaar. For those interested, so are guns, heroin and hashish smuggled across the border from Afghanistan. The Taliban move through the town like a dark whisper. Yesterday morning in Pashtunibad district, small groups of young men with kohl under their eyes and silky white or black turbans on their heads strolled between the vegetable stalls and clothes traders. By midday many had pushed into the city's mosques, where preachers dished up the usual fiery fare. At the central mosque, Maulana Abdul Wahid railed against a Jewish and Christian "conspiracy against Muslims" and spoke admiringly about the suicide bombers. "Regardless of the cost to their lives, at least some Muslims are struggling," he told worshippers. The largely low-key Taliban presence occasionally bursts into the open. On May 8 motorcycle-riding assassins gunned down Mullah Samad Barakzai, a one-time Taliban official from Helmand who had shifted his support to the US-backed Karzai government. Yesterday his son, Hafiz Shabir Ahmed, cancelled an arranged interview with the Guardian. "I've been told not to talk about it," he said. The Taliban presence is also a matter of sensitivity for the Pakistani government. Relations with Afghanistan are at their lowest level in years following unfiltered criticism that Islamabad is doing little to close down the Taliban war machine. Last week President Hamid Karzai told a provincial gathering: "We know very well that in Pakistani madrassas, boys are being told to go to Afghanistan for jihad. They're being told to go and burn schools and clinics." Col Vernon's allegation that Quetta was a Taliban headquarters caused Pakistani official to lodge furious complaints with the British high commission, which hurriedly issued a statement distancing itself from the officer's "personal views". 'Martyrs' Pakistan argues it is being unfairly blamed for an Afghan problem. Officials say it is is impossible seal a border which is populated on both sides by Pashtun tribesmen who consider it a colonial anachronism. Up to 15,000 people pass through the main checkpost at Chaman every day, said a military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan. "Everyone has a black or white turban, a shalwar kameez and a beard. Everyone looks like a Taliban. You can't arrest them all," he said. Pakistan has also taken other steps to address western and Afghan concerns. Posters, calendars and audio cassettes celebrating Taliban "martyrs" and Osama bin Laden have been removed from the city centre shops. Four months ago police arrested over 50 radical clerics who defied a ban on broadcasting sermons over loudspeakers. But many believe it could do more. Suspicions linger that elements within the country's intelligence services take a lacklustre approach to clamping down on the Taliban fighters that they once helped to arm and indoctrinate. Such an idea was "rubbish", said Maj Gen Sultan. A western intelligence source said that several Taliban leaders are living in Quetta, possibly including Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged cleric close to the monocular leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. But although Pakistan has killed or detained more than 1,000 al-Qaida suspects since 2001, according to one recent report, it has only picked up a handful of Taliban militants. Until his arrest last October Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi openly spoke with reporters from Quetta. The Taliban's true strength, however, is felt across the border. Over the past six months the insurgents have ratcheted up their campaign to overthrow President Karzai's western-backed government - an idea that once appeared quixotic but has now acquired some potency. At least 32 suicide bombs and almost daily roadside bombs so far this year reveal an enemy that is better organised, funded and motivated than ever before "It hasn't been this bad since 2001," said one westerner with several years' experience in Kandahar. "And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better." Corruption The Taliban are not the only enemy facing the 7,000-strong Nato force. Four years and billions of pounds later, the Karzai-led government and its western backers have dismally failed to draw the southern provinces into the central government. Now they are haemorrhaging support rapidly. The parlous state of central authority is most evident in Helmand. The police are corrupt, government departments defunct and, despite years of disarmament, guns are everywhere. The Taliban rule the night. Abdul Qadeer, a 38-year-old teacher, angrily brandished his work papers as he fruitlessly sought help. The Taliban had burned down his school months earlier, he said. When he started teaching again from a tent in the yard they sent another letter that read: "We kindly request you not to attend school any more or we will kill you." Mr Karzai's failure to bring real change has caused great disillusionment among the "swing voters" that the British mission hopes to woo. Last week Ghulam Sarwar, a weary looking farmer, sat in the shade of a trellis of hanging grapes as his 10-year-old nephew Abdul served tea. The central government was all but invisible in his life, he said, having failed to deliver promised irrigation systems and fertiliser irrigation to grow legitimate crops. "They have given us nothing so the poppy is a kind of revenge," he said. When poppy eradication teams took to the fields, slashing down crops, they sidestepped farmers with bribe money or political connections. But over half of Sarwar's crops were destroyed. "If they are going to destroy our fields there should at least be some alternative. It seems this government is against its own people." |
| Posted by:john |
| #7 All that is quite true Zhang Feihowever the Taliban seem to have the freedom to operate in and from Pakistan. That is a huge issue even with the Guardian's credibility being zero. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-05-27 22:50 |
| #6 The Guardian was one of the original quagmirists. I'm sure the reporter feels very strongly about his stance, and has asked around until he got the quote he wanted. But whether his assertions actually reflect the situation on the ground is debatable. He says - after trolling through various sources for quote he could use - that the situation on the ground is as bad, for coalition forces, as it was in 2001. Well, the Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan until November 2001, with tens of thousands of troops under its command. When the Taliban runs its banner up the flagpole in Kabul, I'll believe it's like 2001 all over again. Given the Guardian's ineptitude at making predictions, I doubt that will happen for the next several decades. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-05-27 21:21 |
| #5 " 'His blood will not be lost. It will strengthen Islam like water feeds a tree.' " Strange that WE are seen as a decaying culture; theirs relies on blood to feed it. Reminds me of Caligula. |
| Posted by: Jules 2006-05-27 20:25 |
| #4 That's been the song the Pak military's been singing since Day 1, hasn't it? And the reason they nurture the fundos... |
| Posted by: Fred 2006-05-27 20:22 |
| #3 The fear of Pak nukes falling into jihadi hands allows a lot of behavior to go unpunished. Perv has convinced many in the international community that "apres moi, le deluge". Thus the acceptance of casualties and the massive foreign aid - billions of dollars and weapons galore... |
| Posted by: john 2006-05-27 20:05 |
| #2 Al-Guardian I was supprised when I opened the link I was expecting the BBC. Perv need to be put on notice. We are not going to ignore cross border incursions anymore. Bombing from the air will insue in X days unless he get a firm grip on the border and these "tribal" areas. Our fighting men are to valueable to lose to farmers sons from Pakistan on a religious quest. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-05-27 19:44 |
| #1 Quagmire! quoth Al-Guardian |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-27 16:53 |