Taliban

If you are like most people who heard Afghan President Hamid Karzai's re-inauguration speech, you are wondering about a few choice words:

Here I would like to invite all presidential candidates, especially my brother Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and my brother Dr. Ashraf Ghani, who is present here, to make joint efforts for fulfilling serious national duties and for a united, proud and developed Afghanistan."

Wait, is he making overtures to the opposition? Would Abdullah and Ghani go for it? 

Well, for Ghani's part at least, the answers seems a near-certain no. Speaking as part of a joint FP and Oxfam America event today by Skype at the Newseum, Dr. Ghani responded to queries about Karzai's mention.

What does it mean? That Karzai is interested in having "my name," said Ghani, but "not my ideas." He went on to say that he had "strict conditions" for entering the government, and was "not inclined" to join "unless those conditions are met." 

So, looks like the powering-sharing option is still out. But alas, that should come as no surprise. 

The Pakistani military reported that they entered and largely cleared the "Taliban headquarters" in South Waziristan today. The reported success is part of a large-scale offensive in the region, which is a stronghold of Tehrik-i-Taliban, an umbrella organization of Pakistani Taliban factions drawn together under the leadership of (the recently-killed) Baitullah Mehsud. The "headquarters" referred to is the town of Makeen, which had been Mehsud's hometown.

How important is it to clear Taliban headquarters, whether in Waziristan or Balochistan? In an interview with FP, Sameer Lalwani, a research fellow at the New America Foundation, argues the answer largely depends on what comes next:

[Makeen] might have been the center of TTP [Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan] organization, but I suspect that at some level, ‘headquarters' doesn't mean as much to an insurgency that's able to melt away and reappear down the road at different locations and continue operations... it certainly disrupts the organization of the group. [But] it's a very fluid network, they have alliances with other neighboring tribes, they're able to parlay their way, probably, for a safe haven within Afghanistan, or in the mountains, for a period of time.

So, it really depends on what the follow-up operations are.... I think this is one of the biggest demonstrations of Pakistani commitment, in their ground invasion of South Waziristan, and the most targeted, and probably one of the stronger efforts we've seen in recent years, but I'd still be apprehensive to say this is a categorical success, even [having] secured a few militant strongholds and, I guess, the center of operations, because the real question becomes ‘how long can they hold it?'"

The Taliban certainly isn't handing the territory off. Responding to Pakistan's recent military successes, a Taliban spokesman said simply, "We are prepared for a long war."

Photo: NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

"She Loves You," yeah, yeah, yeah.

Plus, lots more great detail in the third part of David Rohde's New York Times articles on his time as a hostage in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

We're two installments into New York Times writer David Rohde's five-part epic on the seven months he spent as a hostage of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested in the country. Here's one fascinating excerpt, from the first part:

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of "Al Qaeda lite," a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis' followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

Rohde's revelations about his kidnappers themselves are even more interesting. The Times reporter, his driver, and his translator were on their way to interview a Taliban leader, Abu Tayyeb, when their car was hijacked. They were taken hostage by one Atiqullah, who said he had never heard of Abu Tayyeb. A few weeks into his detention, Rohde finds:

In conversations when our guards left the room, Tahir and Asad each separately whispered to me that Atiqullah was, in fact, Abu Tayyeb. They had known since the day we were kidnapped, they said, but dared not tell me. They asked me to stay silent as well. Abu Tayyeb had vowed to behead them if they revealed his true identity. Abu Tayyeb had invited us to an interview, betrayed us and then pretended that he was a commander named Atiqullah. I was despondent and left with only one certainty: We had no savior among the Taliban.

It's gripping, cinematic stuff -- and all the better knowing there's at least something of a happy ending. (Though Rohde is getting raked over the coals in his New York Times Q&A.) 

With detail like this, the articles show the Taliban in all its diversity. Rohde notes that many members of the Taliban are far more religious and radical than they were 8 years ago. But the movement has fragmented and atomized. Rohde notes that his captors were in essence common thieves, not ideological warriors, driven by and even obsessed with money.

That's why initiatives to bribe and negotiate with Taliban leaders, paying them in exchange for security, seem so attractive to me. The sums of money wouldn't need to be great -- there's not much to buy in Afghanistan anyway. Plus, there are only around 10,000 members of the Taliban remaining in Afghanistan, only 3,000 of whom are full-time militants. (Note, for a sense of scale there: Afghanistan is a good-sized country with a population of 33 million.) And the strategy has worked well elsewhere. 

In a talk given this afternoon at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, retired Gen.  John Abizaid outlined his view of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He argued that it is foolish to approach issues on a country-by-country basis, complaining that "we look at Iraq through a soda straw. We look at Afghanistan through a soda straw." Instead, says Abizaid, the United States must develop a regional strategy that accounts for the roles of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

For the same reason, he suggested, the debate over whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan has been over-simplified; the discussion should be broadened to include the relative demands of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region at large.

Abizaid also emphasized the ideological nature of the conflict, and the need for soft power to address the root causes of radicalism. He noted that Baitullah Mehsud, the top Taliban leader, is referred to as "the commander of the faithful."

"While we may chuckle at that title," Abizaid said, "the people fighting for him do not." When asked whether there should be a shift to a counter-terrorism approach in Afghanistan that relies more upon targeted strikes than nation-building, Abizaid responded that such a plan is impractical. Stabilization in Afghanistan and Iraq is a precondition for effective counter terrorist operations, he argued, because it provides the infrastructure needed to develop the "superb, superb intelligence" needed.

The theme of the talk was that instability anywhere in the region is a serious threat to surrounding countries. With our "ground forces spread thin" and "our 24-7 forces totally engaged," the United States must more fully incorporate diplomatic, political and economic plans to get a handle on the region. A number of questions were directed to the resources required for such a broad regional approach, and towards the end of the talk, the retired general was asked if the situation would be better in Afghanistan had the United States not invaded Iraq.

"All's I know is that we did what we did, and we are where we are," he answered.