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THE ROVING EYE
Tribal land,
Taliban land
By Pepe Escobar
PESHAWAR - He used to wear a black turban,
khol (eyeliner) and a battered brown shalwar
kameez (knee length tunic and loose pants). He
sported a very long beard, carried a Kalashnikov and
rode a Toyota pick-up.
 He now wears a small
white round cap and a light cream-colored shalwar
kameez. His face is clean-shaven, he is unarmed and
he moves by rickshaw or public bus. He is the same man.
Yesterday he was a Talib. Today he is a nondescript
tribal in Peshawar, Kohat or even Miram Shah - a rugged
frontier Pakistani town swarming with American special
forces.
Or he is one of the top men
being hunted down by these forces, such as Mullah Taj
Mohammed, former deputy chief of intelligence of the
Taliban. During the regime's five years in power in
Afghanistan, he was one of the selected few with full
access to Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Kandahar, and a
self-proclaimed "close friend" of Osama bin Laden.
Reached on a satellite telephone through an
elaborate series of go-betweens, Taj Mohammed confirmed
that he and "several thousand Taliban commanders and
troops" were now deeply involved in organizing a
guerrilla war through which, "Allah willing, we will
throw the foreigners out of our country".
Taj
Mohammed may have been one of the most illustrious
Taliban who looted and fled Kabul on Sunday, November 10
last year, the day before Northern Alliance troops
entered the city in triumph. Taj, with other Taliban
commanders and, he says, "thousands" of soldiers, went
southeast and crossed the border to Pakistan east of
Khost - probably to Miram Shah. He confirms that "a few
thousand" Taliban held the ground against US-led forces
in the Tora Bora mountains in December, alongside Arabs
from al-Qaeda, but most managed to escape. Taj himself
came back to Afghanistan in March, where he says he
fought against the Americans at Shah-e-Kot, near Khost.
To wage a guerrilla war foretold since last
December, the Taliban can count on the full support of
the Pashtuns in their tribal belt in south and
southeastern Afghanistan - where everybody and his
neighbor deeply resents the Tajik stranglehold on Hamid
Karzai's government in Kabul, not to mention American
military movements and constant incursions into Pashtun
areas. Faithful to the Pashtun warrior code, Taj
Mohammed and other commanders swear they fear neither
American forces nor the Pakistani military.
Other Afghan Pashtun sources confirm the
undercover Taliban are still following instructions
delivered by Mullah Omar himself. At the beginning of
the American bombing of Afghanistan last October, Mullah
Omar said that the Taliban and Afghans had weapons to
fight foreign invaders for another 100 years. The
Taliban have already devised their guerrilla strategy -
with a crucial input from their former top military
commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and they may have already
elected another leader in the event of Mullah Omar being
found and "smoked out" by the Americans.
Some
reliable Pashtun sources in Peshawar swear that Mullah
Omar is not holed up in the mountains of Uruzgan, north
of Kandahar province, but in Kunar province, not far
from the Chitral Valley on the Pakistani side of the
border. Only a few hours before General Tommy Franks -
head of the US Central Command - arrived last Sunday at
Bagram air base in Afghanistan, US soldiers came under
Taliban rocket fire near Asadabad, in southern Kunar.
As early as last June a fatwa against the
American military forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan was
circulating in Peshawar, issued by the notorious
fugitive Pashtun leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former
ultra-hardcore mujahideen and Afghan premier, calling
for a "new jihad against the foreign invaders". According
to privileged Pashtun sources, Hekmatyar is also hidden
in Kunar province, where he has access to "an unlimited
amount of weapons".
Hekmatyar's jihad call has
been echoed by none other than Osama bin Laden in a
handwritten letter posted this past Sunday on the
website IslamOnline.net. The letter - which according to
the site was written a few weeks ago - was received by a
Pakistani correspondent from an Afghan source. It is
signed "Abi Abdallah" - "the father of Abdallah", the
name of bin Laden's elder son. The jihad calls confirm
that the Americans in Afghanistan face a guerrilla
coalition of remaining al-Qaeda, Taliban and Hekmatyar's
Pashtun followers, which should not be underestimated at
any cost.
Military sources in Peshawar remain
confident that the operations against al-Qaeda and the
Taliban, as far as the Pakistani side of the border is
concerned, will be successful because of a key strategic
switch: now the Pakistani commandos are no longer
working alongside FBI or American special forces. The
government's position is that Pakistani commandos and
paramilitary forces acting alone are receiving more
tribal cooperation - citing as evidence the situation in
North and South Waziristan, ultra-hardcore tribal areas
very close to the Taliban.
Part of the new
intelligence strategy is to recruit children for 200
rupees a day (a little more than US$3) to find people
who were or who had harbored al-Qaeda and Taliban
fighters. Some tribal leaders, like Malik Mamoor Khan,
chief of the Toorikhel tribe, are saying that "siding
with al-Qaeda or the Taliban may hurt our own
interests". And others, like Malik Tooti Gul, chief of
the Daryakhel tribe, remark that "if we don't back the
government against al-Qaeda, our freedom will be taken
away from us". All this may be only pro-forma, because
tribal leaders simply cannot afford to ignore the
overwhelming popular perception of the Americans as an
invading force which totally controls the Pakistani
military.
The main worries for the average
tribal in Peshawar or elsewhere in the Northwest
Frontier Province (NWFP) are far from being the Taliban
regrouping or the whereabouts of bin Laden. An
influential local player observes that "even average
people now think that America wants to fight and finish
with Islam in this part of the world, starting with
Pakistan". There is plenty of resentment against
President General Pervez Musharraf, his blind following
of US priorities in the war against terrorism, and his
latest alleged rigging of the forthcoming October 10
elections. The resentment is not necessarily expressed
in political language, but in comments like "Why doesn't
Musharraf ask the US to finish poverty in Pakistan?" A
Peshawar analyst says that the population is extremely
frustrated: "They are even attacking the police because
they have been constantly harassed." Peshawar's police
department is notoriously corrupt, even by Pakistani
standards.
On the political front, many are
saying that the only hope is to vote for the Mutahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of six religious
parties which will contest the October elections. MMA's
secretary-general is the notorious Fazlur Rehman, chief
of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI),
which had and still has extremely close ties with the
Taliban. From his headquarters at Dera Ismail Khan,
Fazlur Rehman keeps doubting the impartiality of the
October elections, but he assures that the MMA is
engaged in bringing "a social, mental, economic and
political revolution" into Pakistan. And he warns that
in the event of the MMA coming to power, it would finish
with "foreign interference", devolve real sovereignty to
the country and combat unemployment.
Other
leaders? Their rhetoric is more incendiary. Maulana
Samiul Haq, chief of his own faction of the JUI and also
one of the leaders of the MMA, has warned from Haqqania
- his sprawling and wealthy madrassa (religious
school) that educated most of the Taliban elite - that
"the West is in a pact with the enemies of Muslims all
over the world". For Samiul Haq, "One billion Muslims
will become a military force because of these policies."
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, chief of the
Jamaat-e-Islami, has been more moderate, concentrating
his attacks on Musharraf, whom he accuses of "imposing
constitutional amendments at gunpoint" - an act that
"reminded him of the age of Genghis Khan".
The
overall sentiment in Peshawar is that Musharraf will rig
the October elections to a point where, according to an
influential local player, "he can say that the MMA has
no popular support, and then he can move to smash the
religious parties for good". If that is the case,
Taliban support will be unbeatable in the Pashtun tribal
belt - on both sides of the border.
(©2002 Asia
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