Posted: 17-08-2009 by: Thomas Ruttig

The idea of Haqqani taking a lion-share in successfully bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table fitted both the ISI’s current whim of presenting Jalaluddin Haqqani as an elderly philanthropist, and his sons as moderate elements acting as potential peace-makers for the FATA on behalf of Pakistan, and the American anti-terrorism experts’ wailing and crying over Pakistani ‘duplicity’ and the renewed ability of the diabolic ‘Haqqani Network’ to steal across the border and strike into Afghanistan(*****).

The real objective of last month’s attacks may have been to further isolate the Shia of Upper Kurram, disrupt the cohesiveness of their social networks, and bring them to their knees, which, it should not be forgotten, could be the desire of a state confronting semi-autonomous, tribal communities. Of course, the jirga provided the perfect excuse for the state to keep away from Kurram’s problems and gave a façade of law and order. There is no need to admit state failure as long as ‘obsolete tribal customs’ or foreign plots can be blamed.

One can only hope that the details concerning a guarantee supposedly placed with the Haqqanis by the Turi and Bangash - a sum of between 40 and 60 million rupees (US$500,000-700,000) as well as sheep - was a joke. It would be exceedingly untoward if the Haqqanis have managed to add this money to the funding sources of the Taleban.

(*) Conversely, years of sectarian tensions also stimulated the creation of a couple of Shia militant groups in Kurram, called Hizbullah and Mehdi Militia, which have played an prominent role in the recent fights.

(**) In Kurram, basic goods like fuel cost three times more than in other areas of the FATA and Pakistan. A blockade on a smaller scale has in turn sometimes been enforced by the Turi on some of the small enclaves of Sunni tribes dwelling in the uppermost portion of Kurram, for example in Teri Mangal.

(***) Afghanistan’s Ministry for Tribal and Border Affairs was initially established to take care of the relations with the so-called Free Tribes (Qabayel-e Azad), an expression of Kabul’s never fully relinquished claim to the areas cut off from it by the Durand Line.

(****) We reproduce the conclusion of a visionary article by Dawn (click here for the full text), as it provides an insight on the type of disinformation that reaches Pakistani mass media, most probably through some security institutions (propaganda on peace talks is not a feature unique to Afghanistan, nor is it desperation for peace among the public), and on the rather explicit territorial and political claims that the latter seem to entertain regarding Afghanistan:

‘An elder who is familiar with recent arrangements said that the Haqqani network undertook initiatives for restoration of peace in Kurram Agency against the backdrop of growing understanding between President Hamid Karzai and those who had influence over Pakistan's Afghan policy. Now, an option for securing stakes for the Haqqani network in Afghanistan's future political settlement is being reviewed at the highest level. The option is to give the group some share in power in Afghanistan's southern provinces, which will end violence in the volatile Kurram Agency. About the Haqqani network's offers, the elder said that even its affiliates would help the government in maintaining peace in Hangu and Dera Ismail Khan districts, which are facing the worst type of sectarian violence. To that end, the Haqqani network will use its influence over rouge sectarian elements, which are part of their operations, to end attacking innocent civilians. "If the formula works in Kurram then it can be replicated in other troubled areas," he remarked.’

(*****) Even the authoritative article by Daud Khattak published on the AfPakChannel in mid-February, although sceptical on the goodwill of the parties involved, seemed inclined to believe that the deal would have worked (click for it here).

Guest Blog: Reconciliation Reloaded in Khost

posted: 02-07-2011 / by: Emilie Jelinek

Once there was the Strengthening Peace programme, with it provincial branches, like here in Khost, to ‘reintegrate’ willing insurgent fighters. It failed because of corruption and a lack of political support. Now, there is its successor programme APRP, and it is unclear whether that’s just a new name on the same project. Our guest blogger Emilie Jelinek* has been to Khost and already sees reconciliation 2.0 not working properly before it really took off.

In a small, sparsely furnished room on the 4th floor of a shoddily constructed building in Khost's bustling town centre, my Taleban host minimizes his Facebook page on an open laptop as we settle on the cushions that line his fluorescent tube-lit quarters.

The heat is almost suffocating and I remove my burqa, which is awkward and difficult to walk in, yet strangely liberating in the anonymity it provides me.

A few moments earlier on the drive here, I felt invincible in the back of the car under this cheap blue polyester veil, triumphant as I secretly spied on the city through the coarse mesh of my invisibility cloak. I watched groups of men chatting idly by the roadside and a shopkeeper handing over a thin plastic bag of snow-white eggs to a customer. I watched a man flicking a damp rag over a pyramid of blood-red tomatoes to make them seem fresher, more enticing.

Life was almost normal, hardly as though this were one of the most volatile corners of Afghanistan, where only last week another lost soul corseted with explosives blew up a police checkpoint. On this hot June afternoon, all is quiet along the town's eucalyptus-lined streets. Nearby, the perfect blue dome of the Jalaluddin Haqqani mosque shimmers quietly in the heat.

***

My host is wearing a white shalwar kamiz and matching skullcap. He has light brown hair, smiling eyes the color of jade stone and keeps one hand wrapped in a soft white cotton scarf during our meeting. His nom de guerre is Patsun Ghurzang, ‘Revolution Movement.’

It's risky talking to anyone these days, he tells me. He worries that his phone is tapped and laments he can never talk freely to anyone. ‘I am scared every day. Every day I worry I might be arrested. Every day some of us are attacked.’

‘I am mostly afraid of US forces,’ he adds, ‘and secondly of the Afghan intelligence department - they are working for the Americans. But fear doesn't mean we can't fight.’

And there is a lot to fight for in a place where for so many already, waving a white flag and surrendering peacefully has effectively meant losing everything.

Three months ago I met Haji Ismael, the head of Khost's Program-e Tahkim-e Solh (commonly referred to as the PTS, the government's former national program for reconciliation, officially Program for the Strengthening of Peace), set up in 2005 to reconcile and reintegrate insurgents with the objective of ‘healing national wounds.’

The program failed, due to poor funding (or the disappropriation of the funding) and a lack of political support, which meant that opportunities to bring in Taleban were squandered. The Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP) now proposes to integrate the existing capacities of the PTS into its framework, although it is unclear how, with the added risk that this will simply revive former failed efforts under a new name.

Haji Ismail is a white-bearded man wearing a pale green and grey turban. His eyes gleam as he talks and he uses his hands a lot when speaking, pulling invisible streams of words from his mouth with long, brown, delicate fingers. He sits in a run-down office a few streets from here with the ubiquitous portrait of Afghan president Hamed Karzai towering above him, as it does in most government offices across the country.

When I met him in February, he introduced me to two recently reconciled insurgents, who told me they'd decided to stop fighting for two reasons. Firstly, because they said they trusted the head of the provincial commission; and secondly, because the government had promised them jobs, housing and benefits if they surrendered. This was almost a year ago, and they haven't seen a single Pakistani Rupee (the Afghani is not really used in this border province).

‘I regret joining this process; all of my brothers regret it as well,’ one of them told me. "We have received no assistance from the government, nothing that they promised. We gave up everything in Miram Shah [the capital of Pakistan's North Waziristan agency, and a center of Taleban-affiliated groups] and now we have nothing, we can't get jobs. Our six families share a single room. Not even animals live the way we do now. We receive threatening calls from Miram Shah that we will be found and killed and our home attacked.’

***

For all the hype surrounding the APRP, funded to the tune of $132 million, work has yet to begin in Khost province, an insurgent-filled sub-tropical parcel of land saddling the Durand Line that divides Afghanistan's and Pakistan's Pashtun tribal heartlands.

‘We started work about three months ago, but so far we have been focusing on setting up our office’ says APRP spokesman Nasir Ahmad Rokhan. ‘We haven't had a formal inauguration, and no one has been reconciled yet.’

This casts doubt on the veracity of the figures announced by Maj. Gen. Phil Jones, the British director of NATO's reintegration cell in Kabul, who said last month that although the reintegration program had been running for only 10 months, demand from the Taleban to rejoin society had outpaced resources. According to Jones, the number of Taleban fighters who had joined the program stood at 1,740, though an additional 2,000 had applied. The combined figure represents about 15 per cent of the total 20,000 to 25,000 Taleban fighters estimated by NATO to be operating in Afghanistan. Gen. Jones said the number of Taleban fighters coming forward had accelerated since the death of Osama bin Laden.

The fact that the APRP is headed by the one-time leader of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance will certainly be a deterrent to many. ‘There is deep mistrust of the peace commission's leadership,’ my Taleb host tells me. ‘Someone like [former Taleban Ambassador to Pakistan Mulla] Zaeef should lead the commission, not [former Afghan President Burhanuddin] Rabbani.’

The APRP spokesman tells me there is no specific policy in place yet for how they will compensate young Taleban willing to give up their struggle. ‘Maybe we will help them finding jobs or support some private businesses,’ he says vaguely.

Given the amount of attention the peace program is receiving, as well as the millions of dollars that are being committed, this ambiguity and evasiveness almost a year after its inception is alarming.

‘They've promised to release people from Guantánamo and Bagram, but it won't happen,’ growls Patsun. ‘As far as I'm concerned, all these peace talks are nonsense. My friends and I, we are not interested. If the U.S. forces really want to negotiate, they need to be realistic. They need to close Guantánamo. There could be important people there who could advise their friends to join the peace process. Unless there are real changes in the top ranks of leadership, nothing will happen, we will never join this government.’

As reports start to flood the wires about the withdrawal of U.S. troops in the coming year, Patsoon says he praises the news but that no one on his side believes it, assuming that it will only be a symbolic gesture.

I ask what he makes of Taleban methods of targeting their enemies, often with roadside bombs or suicide attacks, which are a far greater cause of civilian deaths in the region than botched U.S. military operations.

‘We have a code of conduct, layha, issued by [Taleban leader] Mulla Omar, in which he is very clear about this issue. Our layha is like the Afghan constitution, and we have a complaints commission: If someone doesn't meet the rules of our constitution, they lose their job or they are sentenced. Actually we have exactly the same structure and framework as a normal government - the only difference is that we are working in the mountains, not in government offices.’

He tells me he has no problem with others operating under the name of Taleban - the only people he hates are the criminals and thieves exploiting the security vacuum in the region who give the Taleban a bad name.

There are no shadows beneath the glaring neon to indicate time passing or that the sun will soon set and prayers must be offered. But my host is fine-tuned to his faith and knows it is time for me to go. As we stand to say goodbye, discordant offerings to Allah are already sounding in the distance through the airless sky.

(*) Emilie Jelinek has been in Afghanistan since 2004 and is currently working on a briefing paper for the Afghanistan Analysts Network. She writes the Captain Cat's Diaries blog.

This blog is republished with her permission and that of the AfPakChannel blog were it appeared first on 30 June under this link.

Conflict going East, conflict going on

posted: 10-08-2011 by: Fabrizio Foschini

The US-led Coalition has declared that its troops’ new strategic focus will be on eastern Afghanistan, after its claims of gains made in southern Afghanistan last year. Although the bad security situation in the East is not new, the recent emphasis on it may be mainly linked to the increased interest (and concern) of the Coalition with regard to the insurgent groups active there, as it is the case with the Haqqani network in Loya Paktia and the neighbouring provinces, argues AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini.

While packing up at the end of his ultimately brief sojourn in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus on 4 July 2011 discussed where he thought the conflict was going. Although it was couched in cautious military language, by the time it was relayed through the media, it sounded like a prophecy: the conflict is moving east(*).

The way some outlets reported on the issue, gave the impression that not only the conflict had moved, but that also the Taleban themselves had been cleared out of southern Afghanistan by the 2010 offensives in Helmand and Kandahar, and were relocating hundreds of kilometres north-eastward. This impression was helped on its way by some in the military: ‘The kinetic battle is pushing insurgents out of Afghanistan,’ a US army captain told AFP(**), ‘and they are moving east to key exit points. Khost has been a traditional embarkation point for insurgents from Pakistan, so the fight here will pick up.’ (read the whole article here). But the idea of the same Taleban climbing in through the window (Khost) after having been kicked out of the door (Helmand & Kandahar) is misleading.

It is difficult to argue seriously that the Taleban have been physically removed from the south. Mainly, the coalition refer to a handful – of many more – critical districts: Arghandab, Maiwand, Zherai in Kandahar as well as Marja and Sangin in Helmand. Moreover, the conflict in the south-east and east has been entrenched for several years (in some areas it started at a very early stage, shortly after the fall of the Taleban regime in 2001). Its main protagonists have been sub-networks of the Taleban that are only – or mainly active – in those particular regions. It is probably only because the situation is now getting so bad that it has become impossible to ignore, that the area has been recognized as the priority by the ISAF command.

The porous border with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan still constitutes one of the insurgents’ major assets, even after the Pakistani army has been reluctantly making inroads into some of the areas (for instance in South Waziristan, Bajaur and Mohmand in the past years, and in Kurram at present – however without significantly reducing cross-border movement of insurgents in any of these areas).

The aggressive attitude by insurgents has led the situation in the east and south-east to slowly but steadily grow worse. This development is coupled with the inability of the Afghan government to extend its presence among rural communities, some of which were antagonized at an early stage due to targeting by foreign troops and abuses by local officers. Currently, the whole arc following the border with Pakistani FATA shows similar signs of an increased volatility, with its farthest ends – Paktika and Nuristan – representing the worst-case scenarios: those of insurgents potentially threatening to take over the entire province.

So what measures are being considered by the ISAF command to counter this threat, in the light of the planned reduction of the foreign troops’ presence and the hoped-for de-escalation of the conflict in view of a peace deal? Let’s turn again to former commander in chief Petraeus: ‘There could be some small [Coalition] forces that will move, but this is about shifting helicopters – lift and attack. It’s about shifting close-air support. It’s about shifting, above all, intelligence, surveillance and recognizance [sic] assets’ (for how helicopter strikes affect civilian casualties read our previous blog here).

Petraeus’s emphasis on greater close-air support, rather than ground troops, may be a tactical response to increased instances of insurgent massing in the east. Local Taleban have employed larger and larger groups of fighters, including in areas that were previously mainly affected by armed groups of small or medium size. This has also brought a change in their possible range of objectives.

During the last months there has been an increasing emphasis in the Western media on the Haqqani network as possibly the coalition’s ‘worst enemy’. This is also seen in the recent appearance of several reports on the group by strategic studies centres (links here and here).