Brian M Downing
In the past week, American, British and Afghan troops launched a major campaign around the southern Afghan city of Marjah in Helmand province – part of the counter-insurgency program begun in earnest last year. Shortly thereafter, far to the south in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, a major Taliban figure was taken into custody. The two events may help bring about a negotiated settlement.
All go in Marjah
Operations began near the central Helmand town with little prospect of a large-scale battle with Taliban bands that had operated freely there. The much-publicized buildup to the operation might have been throwing down the gauntlet and challenging the Taliban to a major battle, but the Taliban know such engagements go badly for them as their levies are no match for a Western unit’s cohesion and firepower – a lesson learned repeatedly over the years.
Marjah is not a large city but it is a large town. The 80,000 inhabitants lived under Taliban rule – an embarrassment to Kabul and Washington alike. Further, it is a major center of the opium trade – a source of Taliban revenue, though one often exaggerated. The town will become a logistical and administrative center for counter-insurgency programs: school construction, well-digging, medical and veterinary services, agricultural support, and the like.
The operation seeks to demonstrate the combat efficacy of the Afghan National Army (ANA). The West has made great efforts to build the ANA but has been disappointed by its performance in the field, which unfortunately ranges from desultory skirmishes with local insurgents to negotiated truces with them.
Perhaps most importantly, the Marjah operation is designed to stop the momentum the Taliban has been building over the past several years, which leads many Afghans to believe that the Taliban will once again rule the country and that they must sooner or later settle with them. Taliban success has come less from craft in the field than from blunders in Kabul and distractions in Washington, which left the country open to Taliban parleys with various tribal leaders.
Success over the years has left parts of the Taliban leadership with confidence that they can conquer most of Afghanistan, as they did in the mid-1990s. The campaign into Marjah, in conjunction with counter-insurgency programs and tribal diplomacy elsewhere, will seek to break that confidence and force the Taliban to a negotiated settlement.
Thus far, fighting has been relatively light. Most Taliban fighters fled the town during the buildup; others are putting up sporadic resistance, setting up explosive devices, and preparing to melt into the population if need be. They will also seek to bring Western firepower down upon civilians – a tactic in which the Taliban have developed expertise over the years – making counter-insurgency programs in coming months less likely to take hold in aggrieved people.
Action in Karachi
More significant news comes out of Karachi, the Pakistani port city that has filled with Pashtun refugees over the years and to which the Taliban’s chief council, fearing drone strikes, has fled from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, second to Mullah Omar in the Taliban leadership, was captured by Pakistani and American intelligence officials. Reports indicate that he is providing intelligence, though his colleagues would have changed locations on his disappearance.
Though Baradar’s capture is a welcome event in the fight with the Taliban, his importance is well below that of Mullah Omar, who leads the movement and settles disputes through charismatic power, and perhaps even below that of the regional commanders, who direct local operations in Afghanistan. A few of these regional commanders have been killed in ambushes or by drones, but replaced without the movement suffering badly. French General Charles de Gaulle once noted that cemeteries were filled with irreplaceable people. The same might be said of Pakistani prisons.
More important than Baradar’s capture is Pakistani intelligence’s (Inter-Services Intelligence) apparent cooperation. Heretofore, the ISI has helped capture or assassinate mid-level al-Qaeda personnel and leaders of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban). The former are expendable; the latter were so unwise as to launch an attack toward Islamabad. But the ISI has been protective of the Taliban. Pakistani generals have long seen the Taliban as allies against their traditional enemy of India, which for its part has been extending its influence in northern Afghanistan.
This comes after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Joint Chiefs of Staff head Admiral Mike Mullen and CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus had criticized Pakistan, often surprisingly publicly, for its less than forthcoming help in finding Taliban leaders, who have enjoyed sanctuary in Pakistan since their expulsion from Afghanistan in 2001.
Pressure might also have been placed, in private, by China, which though allied to Pakistan by common opposition to India, is worried about the spread of Islamist militancy from its hub in Pakistan to China’s western provinces, where Islamic peoples such as the Uyghurs chafe under Beijing’s distant and insensitive rule. And Uyghur fighters are reported to be serving with al-Qaeda bands along the Af-Pak frontier in eastern Afghanistan, acquiring skills they might use back home.
Pakistan might have calculated that its support for the Taliban was endangering relations with the US and China, which supply them with modern arms, lavish aid and favorable trade policies. But Baradar’s capture is by no means evidence of any such strategic reappraisal.
Pakistan likely, and probably correctly, sees the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization withdrawing most of their forces from Afghanistan over the next few years – an assessment made only more probably by President Barack Obama’s stated intention to begin leaving in 2011. Baradar might simply be a token betrayal – a sacrificed pawn – to soothe American frustration over an intractable war.
Baradar’s capture, however, might be part of a Pakistani effort to press the Taliban, who now have cause to fear their sanctuaries and support, into a negotiated settlement in which Pakistan sees itself playing a major role. The Taliban would get a few portfolios in the Kabul government and control over parts of the Pashtun regions, which from the perspective of Pakistani generals, would constitute a serviceable defensive glacis.
The Taliban are thought to be split over a negotiated settlement. Some see a powerful but weakening West but know that just behind it are regional powers India, Iran, and Russia who will back the northern peoples of Afghanistan and fight the Taliban endlessly – to the last Afghan if need be. Others in the Taliban, buoyed (perhaps unreasonably) by recent success, are less amenable to negotiations and seek to reconquer the country.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar has consistently said he would not negotiate until all foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan. But he is an odd combination of mysticism and political savvy, and is known to settle major disputes in strategy and politics through the force of his own charismatic authority. His capture or death would fracture the movement and move many parts of it toward a negotiated settlement.
Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.
Copyright 2010 Asia Times
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