Posted: 17-08-2009 by: Thomas Ruttig
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During all of Kabir’s career, Sedrazam – which literally means ‘prime minister’ (he never made it, though) – apparently remained his deputy. But he was not prominent enough to make it to the UN sanctions list based on resolution 1267. Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed, however, is definitely not a Dzadran. He is the son of the deceased Maulawi Yunes Khales, leader of Hezb-e islami (Khales), one of the seven major Sunni and Pakistan-based mujahedin ‘parties’ in the 1980s. This party has split, meanwhile, into two wings: One, the Jabbarkhel-Ahmadzai faction, is now allied with Karzai; originally led by Haji Abdul Qadir, killed as a minister in Kabul in July 2002, it is now headed by Haji Din Muhammad, its senior family member and by Haji Qadir’s son Haji Zaher Qadir who is apparently successfully running for the Wolesi jirga. The other one, Khales’ Khugiani wing, is opposing the Karzai government but some analysts have insisted it is more because of its exclusion from the administration – similar to what happened in Southern Afghanistan - than for ideological reasons. Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed a.k.a. as ‘khalifa’, the son, established the so-called Tora Bora Military Front in early 2007 as an insurgent outfit operating in the Southern Nangrahar home area of the Khugiani tribe which includes the notorious ‘Black Sawdust’ (or ‘Powdered Sugar’) Mountains. But it possibly drifted closer to the insurgency as early as 2004. Interesting enough, Anwar was rumoured to have been taken out of circulation recently by the Pakistani – for exactly what he is doing now: opening a separate channel with Kabul. To bring Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed in connection with the Haqqani network makes no sense, of course. Also Maulawi Kabir’s influence on it might be limited. After all, he has never really operated in the Southeast and therefore in the Dzadran areas. While he was reported for a while as trying to establish parallel ‘Quetta Shura’ Taleban structures in Loya Paktia around the middle of this decade (and Sedrazam was with him), this either failed or was stopped by Quetta in October 2007 in order to not upset the Haqqanis who are valuable, although not completely trusted allies. (After all, Haqqani Senior’s jihad history is much longer and more impressive than Mulla Omar’s and he was kept at arm’s length from Kandahar as minister for border affairs in the Kabul-based Interim Shura during the Taleban regime.) Reportedly, Kabir was tasked to lead its regional ‘Peshawar shura’ for eastern Afghanistan then. As importantly, we had reported earlier this year that Kabir was not exactly difficult to find. He has not been the most active at the Afghan front but led a life of relative luxury – with ‘a beautiful house close to the Pakistani town of Nowshera in the North West Frontier Province [now renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] and placidly driving around in a posh SUV with a diplomatic number plate’ (see: Willi Germund’s 2 March 2010 AAN guest blog ‘Finding Kabir’, the link here). He had been arrested earlier by the Pakistani authorities – and probably would still be easy to deliver to Kabul. The same might be true for Mr. Sedrazam who most probably was still with him. By the way, the report wave about ‘talks’ had also started with a reference to the Haqqani network. On 27 June this year, al-Jazeera reported that Afghan President Karzai ‘has met Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of a major anti-government faction, in face-to-face talks’ and ‘that Haqqani junior ‘is reported to have been accompanied to the meeting earlier in the week by Pakistan's army chief and the head of its intelligence services’ (Zeina Khodr, ‘Karzai “holds talks” with Haqqani’, al-Jazeera, 27 June 2010). Michael Semple, contacted by the Qatar-based station for comment on the same day, hung the story a bit lower – but might have been closer to the truth: ‘Afghans that I talk to... passed along stories of shuttle diplomacy between Ibrahim Haqqani [the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder of the Haqqani network] and Karzai's government. They claimed Haqqani would travel between Islamabad, Kabul, and Miranshah.’ By the way, Ibrahim Haqqani’s correct name is Ibrahim Omari. And maybe, he did not travel himself.
By the way, this is only one example for a younger, more radical generation of Taleban commanders taking over the movement. Should this radicalisation continue and those Young Turks take over key positions in the movement, we probably can soon talk 'Neo-Taleban‘ with more reason than even before. In the meantime, a few questions remain: Is Ibrahim Omari ‘talking’ on behalf of Haqqani the Elder or Haqqani Junior? If he did (or does) on Haqqani Junior’s behalf, did or does he also talk on behalf of the Taleban leadership? After all, Sreajuddin Haqqani had stated in an interview this June that: ‘[t]he Haqqani Group or the Haqqani Network Group is not an official name or a name we chose. This name is used by the enemies in order to divide the Mujahideen. We are under the highly capable Emirate of the Amir of the Faithful Mullah Umar, may Allah protect him, and we wage Jihad in the path of Allah. The name of Islamic Emirate is the official name for us and all the Mujahideen in Afghanistan’ (read the full interview here). He reportedly also told interlocutors sent from Kabul to inquire about his willingness to talk that they should ‘turn to Quetta’ instead. About what would they talk? And finally, not directly related but as important, why does Haqqani Senior not stop his son killing Dzadran elders? Does he want him to take over his place at any cost to ‘keep it in the family’? Or is he unable to stop him. Then, Tom Gregg’s 22 September appeal on the AfPak Channel (‘Talk to the Haqqanis, before it’s too late’, find it here) might have been almost too late. A set of very last questions: What kind of planes or helicopters do the ‘Taleban leaders’ board? Kathy Gannon’s report doesn’t answer this. Are these US planes, as the NATO official quoted above might have indicated? If that’s the case, how do the Taleban trust the Americans? Wouldn’t they be afraid that they might end up in Guantanamo instead of Kabul? If I were a Taleb and even if Petraeus and/or Kayani gave me their personal word for a safe return, I would not have wanted to be the first one to take such a ticket. Or are these Pakistan Army flights? After all, Kayani had promised to ‘deliver’ the Taleban. Although here the same applies - hand-overs and renditions have happened from Pakistan, too – it is possible that people who are under the influence of Pakistan are flown in, without being asked for their consent. Was Mulla Baradar ‘released’ this way? And what kind of result would emerge from talks between the Karzai government and Pakistani-owned Taleban leaders? Did Kathy Gannon’s source, the Afghan official, leak the report intentionally to make us happy about progress on the ‘talks front’ or is he one of those who doubt that the current approach to ‘reconciliation’ (if it is one) leads into the right direction? Are we being set up for something? (*) Pashto and Dari for ‘soup’. (**) Paktia, Paktika and Khost are part of southeastern region of Afghanistan, but under NATO it belongs to the Regional Command East which also includes the eastern region, with Nangrahar. Facts and Fiction on the Frontier: The Haqqanis and the Kurram peace deal posted: 14-04-2011 by: Fabrizio Foschini For a few weeks, it looked like the sectarian conflict in Kurram Tribal Agency had been brought to a solution. The years-long siege on Shia residents had been lifted thanks to a much talked about peace agreement, allegedly brokered with the help of Jalaluddin Haqqani. This, however, now looks increasingly doubtful and seems to be more the part of a narrative that wants to paint a favourable picture of the old mujahedin commander’s network. Meanwhile, a series of brutal attacks have plunged one of the most strategic areas of FATA once more into instability, while the links between this conflict and the one in Afghanistan grow even stronger. AAN’s analyst Fabrizio Foschini pieces the story together. The 3 February Kurram Tribal Agency peace agreement that took at least two years to broker, has broken down in a matter of weeks. After the initial agreement, traffic on the Parachinar-Thal road which had been blocked for the last three years because of attacks of Sunni militants, resumed with a semblance of normality after it had been inaugurated in a solemn way by the elders returning from a jirga in Islamabad barely two months ago. For the first time since, the Shia inhabitants of Upper Kurram – from the Pashtun tribe of the Turi - were able to use the most direct road to Peshawar and elsewhere in Pakistan. The Sunni militants were supposed to halt their attacks. But their attacks on Shia travellers started again from mid-March onwards, first near Thal in Hangu district, right outside the agency’s border, then, on 25 March, near Bagan in Lower Kurram. In this last instance, they stopped some minivans at a checkpoint, killed 13 people and kidnapped another 45 (sources differ about the number of victims, though; local people insist on higher figures, reporting that some women and children were released after a few days). Kurram, along with Khyber, is often considered the most strategic of the tribal agencies because of its proximity to Afghanistan. The Durand Line here plunges deep towards Kabul; the Afghan capital lies less than 100 kilometers from Parachinar, the main town in Kurram. Almost half of the around 500,000 inhabitants of Kurram are Shia, mostly Turi, and they constitute the majority in the northern portion of the agency. Occasional clashes between the Turi and their Sunni neighbours – mainly Bangash (there are also some Shia Bangash) – over land and water disputes have been recorded since the nineteenth century. Also, the sectarian nature of these clashes and the involvement of fellow Sunni tribesmen from adjoining areas predates the recent conflict. The English colonial recordings for the NWFP and Tribal Areas around the turn of the twentieth century extensively report the presence of Afridi lashkar joining the fight under the guidance of Sunni religious leaders. At the same time, the agency has been one of the least ‘tribal’ ones, in relation to the way many observers have typically portrayed the FATA: it is being partially inhabited by a religious minority who are forced to rely on good relations with the state in order to face down the threats of their neighbours. This has made Kurram one of the most accessible spots for the British colonial power and then the Pakistani institutions in the region. From the perspective of the Pakistani government, it was less remote and wild than, for example, the Waziristans or Bajaur. Parachinar town also has a literacy rate comparable to national levels, a unique feature in the FATA. However, the sectarian clashes triggered in the rest of the country by Sunni extremist militant groups in due course reached Kurram, exacerbating the pre-existing tribal rivalries(*). It was the 1980s, with the influx of Afghan refugees and the arming by the Pakistani government of Sunni tribesmen willing to take part in the Afghan jihad led to the first major clashes in decades. According to some sources, Hezb-e Islami fighters had a part in attacking the Shia inhabitants in the town of Sadda in 1986-87, but the conflict was sparked by confrontations between the two sects during religious ceremonies (for example during Ashura and on the Birthday of the Prophet). Communal riots continued to affect Parachinar at intervals of ten years, but the situation did not escalate into full warfare until April 2007. Since then, a low-intensity conflict has predominated, marked by outbursts of hard fighting which each cost hundreds of lives, and by a blockade of Upper Kurram by the Sunni combatants. This has cut off the Shia from urban centres in Pakistan and reduced their lives to dire extremities(**). The establishment of the Tehrik-e Taleban-e Pakistan (TTP) maximized opportunities for the local Sunnis to receive support from other areas and, as early as autumn 2007, TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud reportedly sent the first Waziri/Mahsud lashkar to Kurram. In the spring of the following year, this was followed by a more permanent group of TTP militants who came from Orakzai agency and whose presence in Kurram was made more formal in the summer of 2009 by the appointment of Mulla Tufan as TTP commander in charge of the agency. Tensions have at times been reported between local Sunnis and their external allies. Even fighters from Khyber agency – belonging to Lashkar-e Islam and Ansar al-Islam, Pakistani Taleban groups that had remained outside TTP - have joined the anti-Shia fight on various occasions, although rivals among themselves. The strategic position of Kurram, which had already entailed a problematic flux of Taleban and foreign fighters fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, quite naturally makes it an interesting spot for those groups who, like the Haqqani network, enjoy cross-border insurgent activities. The presence of Afghan Taleban and al-Qaida fighters and even some top leaders has been widely reported, and sometimes exaggerated, by foreign analysts’ websites as well as by local Shias who hope to get external support to fight the siege imposed on them. Reports about the shift of the Haqqanis’ activities to Kurram and about Serajuddin Haqqani himself hiding in Kurram, after North Waziristan became heavily affected by drone strikes, reached their peak late last summer. According to some sources, these reports played a role in triggering US helicopter attacks on Teri Mangal and Mata Sangar on 27 September 2010, attacks which were directed at militants involved in cross-border firing, but in which some Pakistani security personnel were killed. The most visible, although short-term, reaction to this attack was the closure of the Khyber Pass supply route for NATO troops for over a week. Less evident, although with more far-reaching consequences for the people of Kurram, was the closure by the Pakistani army of the border crossings leading from Kurram to Afghanistan. This closure is enforced to this day.
Reasons that the Pakistani authorities give for the draconian measure are the need to prevent ‘miscreants from outside from exploiting the situation’ (ie the sectarian struggle), and the slightly worn-out issue of the Indian consulates in Afghanistan built close to Pakistan’s border who are ‘engaged in terrorist activities’. ‘We always get this answer from the local commander of the Frontier Corps’, one local journalist told AAN. ‘But why then are the frontier crossings in Waziristan and Khyber agencies open?’ A more local element of Pakistani paranoia could also have played a role: the fear that Kurram’s Shias are growing closer to Kabul than to Islamabad. Kurram, as stated, has been a comparatively ‘civilized’ tribal area, so much so that there was a certain degree of state control by Kabul when the area was part of the Afghan kingdom (until the second Anglo-Afghan War in 1878/80) - certainly to a much higher degree than in neighbouring Khyber or Waziristan, and slightly more so even than in Khost or Paktia. Much later, the minority position of Shia Turi tribesmen made them turn to the PDPA government in Kabul at a time when they were hard-pressed by mujahedin and by Zia ul-Haq’s support for Sunni sectarians (religion was not the only cause; PDPA outreach efforts to the tribes across the border were significant and, at times, quite effective.) More recently, the Afghan government seems to have considered resuming contacts with the beleaguered Turi in order to prevent Taleban infiltrations. This, however, has been done with the usual degree of confusion and inconsistency which plagues Afghan institutions. In a joint jirga in 2007, the governor of Paktia managed to dissuade the tiny Mangal community of Upper Kurram from accepting financial offers from the Taleban in exchange for access to its strategic position on the border: it was the Turi, worried by the Taleban, which had requested him to intervene. A few months later, however, after clashes had erupted between Afghan and Pakistani troops on the Paktia-Kurram section of the Durand Line, and a meeting had been called in Parachinar to settle things, the same governor and Afghan and US officers were fired at by what were reported by some as ‘rogue elements’ of the Frontier Corps. ‘They fired at us twice, even when the plane was taking off’, related one of those present. ‘Karzai’s only reaction was to express astonishment, and the Americans were convinced by the Pakistani that it had been the Taleban arriving on the scene - or they pretended to be convinced.’ Even before the Pak-Afghan Joint Peace Jirga in August 2007, a series of trans-border jirgas between Jaji and Turi elders had agreed to ‘fight terrorism together and live like brothers’, in the words of one of the Afghan participants, the former MP Bedar Jaji. Even in this case, the involvement of the Afghan government was minimal, with just a small contribution to expenses from the Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs(***). However, a 2010 article by the former Nawaz Sharif advisor and prominent Pashtun politician Ghayur Ayub, which was widely republished by the Pakistani press, while advocating state support for the Shia, raised the alarm by its title: ‘Is Islamabad losing Parachinar to Kabul?’ It seems likely that the bogeyman of a long-dead Afghan irredentism on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line was considered useful to justify the sealing of the borders of Kurram, a policy which actually delivers its population into the hands of the militants. Locals are unhappy with the Pakistani army, as one complained: ‘The military does not take serious action against the Taleban. Only in the eastern part of Kurram, near the border with Khyber and Orakzai, do they sometimes claim they’ve killed some Taleban…but if they really wanted to act, they could clear them out in a couple of months.’ Militants, on the other hand, have been hectically active. Rumours of a concerted attack on the Shias by different Taleban groups started to circulate in October 2010. In particular, the Pakistani press highlighted the role to be played by Mulla Tufan and Tariq Afridi, the latter a TTP commander originally from Dara Adamkhel, and both notorious for their anti-Shia stance. It also described how they were supported by ‘thousands’ of Orakzai Taleban (and Panjabi elements of Lashkar-e Jhangvi or similar groups, although this was not so highlighted by the media). Several articles started introducing the idea that Serajuddin Haqqani had been asked by the Shia Turi to mediate with the TTP on their behalf. In an alternative narrative, reported by the Pakistani Express Nation on 28 October 2010, the Turi tribesmen ‘…sought the Haqqanis’ help… They want the Taliban to stand by them in case of intrusions into their area by NATO troops,’ as explained a former MP from Kohat who, according to himself, had a part in the talks. The ideal intention, if such a request was true, of avoiding bloodshed among Muslims – including even Shias - and concentrating instead on the ‘real jihad’ against NATO and the Afghan government, fits well with the evolution of the Afghan Taleban's discourse after 2001. Very sensibly, for example, the Taleban never claimed the killing of eleven Shia travellers from Kurram in Chamkani district of Paktia last summer, even if it was probably Haqqani Taleban enacting the blockade also on the Afghan side. Jalaluddin Haqqani, the father, and Serajuddin, the son, have been endowed with unlimited influence and powers of mediation among the militant galaxy in the FATA, at least by the Pakistani press(****). Later it was ‘revealed’ that the accord had already been brokered in September 2010, that actually Haqqani’s involvement dated back to 2009, that Khalil and Ibrahim, two other relatives of Haqqani senior, had taken part in several meetings in Peshawar and Islamabad, and finally, that the Haqqanis had obtained access to the Shia territory in exchange for their mediation and permission to infiltrate the border from Kurram and to re-deploy safely to their areas if US pressures finally induced the Pakistani army to move its operations into North Waziristan. An elder from Parachinar interviewed by AAN dismissed the whole engagement of the Haqqanis in the jirgas as a tale only, saying that it did not happen in such an overt or relevant way, if it happened at all. Whatever Haqqani’s role was, on 3 February 2011 a 220-strong peace jirga in Islamabad headed by the former federal minister, Waris Khan Afridi, concluded a process initiated over two years previously and sanctioned the peace agreement. It also received verbal support from the TTP in Kurram. Its current commander, Fazl Sayed, was quoted as declaring: ‘Violating the new accord would be punished according to shari’a (Islamic law)…We will first ask the political administration and jirga members to take action against the side violating the agreement. But we will be justified to punish the violators after 15 days, as per the accord.’ However, it was the same commander who bears the strongest suspicion of being behind the recent attacks on travellers. According to the local journalist who interviewed seven women who were released by their captors, the women were sent with a message for the Turi elders, to the effect that the attacks were in retaliation for the Pakistani government not having fulfilled its promises to the militant group. Reportedly, one of Fazl Sayed’s brothers is being held in a Pakistani prison along with another 20 of his affiliates. Again, whatever the truth of the matter, a breach in the cease-fire was only to be expected. If not the local TTP, the Orakzai-based anti-Shia fanatics, Afridi militants fleeing from the current infighting in Tirah, or Hakimullah Mehsud himself could have broken the truce at any moment, given their strong armed presence and the lack of control of the area by the Pakistani security forces. 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