U.S. News & World Report | September 29, 2003
Borderline War: The Return of the Taliban
In Afghanistan and Iraq, unpoliced borders
provide easy access for anti-American fighters.
By Ilana Ozernoy
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan – As the sun drops behind a curtain of mountains in eastern Afghanistan, a golden dust rises above this busy border crossing. On foot, donkey cart, rickshaw, and jangling Pakistani truck, a steady stream of anonymous faces spills past a symbolic green fence, unhindered by even a cursory check. They are merchants and refugees, travelers and, perhaps, Taliban fighters. Mohammed Ismael, his eyes focused on the small hammer he uses to mend ersatz Adidas sneakers and black, faux-leather shoes, figures that thousands of people pass through daily--though, he shrugs, "no one can tell you the exact number."
The bustle of this border town is a sign of normalcy--and a cause for alarm. Afghanistan's war-scarred eastern and southern provinces are under a fresh spate of attacks by pro-Taliban guerrillas, some crossing into Afghanistan after being sheltered and stirred to action at Pakistan's fundamentalist madrasahs. For the past three weeks, American troops from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and their Afghan allies in Operation Mountain Viper have been going after as many as 1,000 Taliban and foreign fighters hiding out in the mountainous region northeast of here.
The Talibs may not be able to directly take on the 11,500 U.S. and coalition troops tasked with hunting members of the old regime and al Qaeda, but they know how to play an insurgent's game. Groups of five to 10 fighters stage small-scale attacks—executions of aid workers, assassinations of moderate mullahs and government officials, and hand grenades and jury-rigged explosives directed against coalition forces. At night, the Taliban wages a public relations campaign, dropping "night letters" at mosques, calling on locals to join the resistance.
U.S. Army Col. Burke Garrett, commander of Coalition Task Force Warrior, downplays the impact of the "neo-Taliban." The enemy, he says, includes foreign fighters on "jihadi tours" who tote camcorders to record their exploits. "They videotape themselves so they can go back to Pakistan and get paid," he says.
If they survive. One video, recently plucked from a dead fighter, shows a guerrilla launching a rocket, followed by the scene of a man in Afghan garb rigging an explosive device. The image hits home for Garrett: "That's the mine that killed one of my soldiers." Two American soldiers were killed in recent fighting, bringing the two-year total to 30 American military deaths from hostile fire, though the toll has been far greater among allied Afghans. Some 200 Taliban fighters reportedly have been killed in the past three weeks in the most intense fighting in more than a year.
Gimme shelter. As in Iraq, U.S. forces are facing a combination of foreign fighters and homegrown resistance. In the conservative south, where much of the opposition is concentrated, a Talib can find shelter in any kebab house. "The Taliban were always in Afghanistan," says Khalid Pushtun of President Hamid Karzai's Kandahar office. "They stayed in their houses, in their villages. They were just waiting for some kind of green light to start fighting the American and Afghan authorities."
That green light is a rising anger among some Afghans at what they regard as America's unfulfilled promise of reconstruction. Outside of Kabul, powerful warlords reign, and international aid has been slow to make a difference in daily life. For the next year, the Bush administration is budgeting $ 12.2 billion for Afghanistan: $ 11 billion for U.S. military costs and $ 1.2 billion for reconstruction, including $ 564 million for border guards, police, and the Afghan Army.
The volatile southeastern provinces, the old Taliban heartland, are sliding into a self-reinforcing cycle of instability: Because of attacks on aid workers, international aid organizations have all but pulled out, and curtailed aid work has discouraged international donors, further slowing reconstruction. "The Taliban want to show Afghans, 'Look at these foreigners . . . they are all liars,' " says a man calling himself Mullah Ismael, who allies himself with the Taliban. Tall, reed-thin, with piercing blue eyes and leathery skin, he met clandestinely with U.S. News in a desolate village of Helmand province, three hours southwest of Kandahar. "The [current Afghan] government and the West is like an elephant, and we are like mosquitoes," he says. "We want the enemy to become weaker and weaker, to get malaria and die from the disease."
Ismael, who says he held an important security position in the former Taliban government, describes a strategy of guerrilla warfare to destabilize Karzai's government and force the Americans out. He tells of weapons depots hidden in the hillsides, furtive instructions delivered by anonymous Taliban underlings, and attacks on "NGO spies," by which he means Afghans working for foreign nongovernmental organizations doing aid work. "The current government doesn't let us conduct religious studies," Ismael complains, explaining the lure of Pakistani madrasahs. "I am ready to sacrifice peace and stability for Islam."
Good old days? In this part of the country, the Taliban doesn't have to fight hard to convince a discontented population. In the village of Girishk, two hours from Kandahar, an old man named Shir Ali tacitly divulges ties to the Taliban. "Everywhere there is insecurity and there is no reconstruction," he asserts. "That's why people support us." Shir Ali says he has attended underground Taliban shuras, or meetings, which take place in the folds of the mountains that hug the village. "The Taliban recruit by reminding people of the time when there was no murder, there were no attacks, and there was a real presence of Islam," he says.
And the Taliban can move about without attracting unwanted attention. They look like "any other Afghan," says U.S. Army Capt. Toby Moore, who led several missions against insurgents in Zabul province, east of Kandahar. He says the fighters carry small arms they can easily ditch to blend into a crowd, which makes them difficult to identify.
To western eyes, that may be true. But Afghans can read the subtle signs delineating friend from foe. In the madrasahs, the Taliban are taught to speak in calm, controlled tones, and they often pepper their speech with Arabic. The way a man wears his turban can mark him as a Talib and even show where he's from; a Talib from Helmand province keeps the bulky intersection of cloth wrapped around his head above one of his ears, but a Talib from Kandahar positions it at the nape of his neck.
The police chief of the southern province of Helmand has no doubts that he is in the minority. Amunallah, a stocky man with an easy laugh, figures 70 percent of Helmand's population supports the Taliban, and he even retains a number of Taliban subordinates to keep the peace. Barreling through Helmand's desert expanse in his Toyota station wagon, with the dust rising behind him like puffs of white smoke, Amunallah is always flanked by a ragged crew of armed guards for protection. But in the Taliban belt, it is U.S. military power that counts most. "We are relying completely on the Americans," says Haji Abdulruf, deputy police chief of Girishk. "If there were no Americans, I'm sure the Taliban would take over in two hours."
Anti-Taliban Afghans say that with America's September 11 tragedy, the interests of the world's most powerful nation and one of its poorest have converged. "Before 9/11, we would cry to the world to save us from these cruel men [the Taliban]. But after 9/11, it was the world that was crying," says Amunallah. The enemy lurks in the darkness, so the commander makes haste to get home. "We got lucky when the U.S. was attacked," he says, clambering into his station wagon as the sunset brings the perils of another night.
