 Political developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan, changing war strategies of the Taliban and the establishment of the Pakistani Taliban Movement under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud may further disrupt reconstruction in Afghanistan. On December 15, various Taliban groups active in the tribal areas and NWFP formed a joint organisation, the Taliban Movement Pakistan, in South Waziristan, headed by Baitullah Mehsud. This new development at the doorstep of Afghanistan is a new challenge to its corrupt armed forces and police. The Taliban had announced that no agreement would now be signed with the Pakistani government and this newly established organisation would take a joint decision in this regard.
In Pakistan, as President Musharraf lifted emergency, the Taliban in the tribal areas and NWFP united to pose a threat to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Last year, a number of events have raised the stakes in Afghanistan and highlighted the threat to the international effort there.
Despite a heavy presence of Pakistani troops, Waziristan has become the largest and most protected sanctuary for the Taliban. Two years after signing a similar peace pact with the Taliban in South Waziristan, the Pakistani government signed another deal with the Taliban in North Waziristan, effectively ceding an entire region to the Taliban. Even in the wake of Pakistan’s earlier surrender of South Waziristan, the new agreement, known as the Waziristan Accord, was surprising. It entails a virtually unconditional surrender of Waziristan. Taliban offices opened immediately after the signing of the Waziristan Accord in September 2006.
According to Wikipedia, on June 4 the National Security Council (NSC) of Pakistan met to decide the fate of Waziristan and take up some political and administrative decisions to control Talibanisation. The meeting chaired by President Musharraf discussed the deteriorating law and order situation and the threat posed to state security. When Musharraf declared emergency, he cited the mounting insurgency in Swat as justification. After ‘Operation Silence’ against Lal Masjid, the Taliban in North Waziristan called for a holy war. After a truce in September 2006, clashes escalated again in 2007, with local tribesmen ousting the Uzbeks and attacking Pakistani security forces again in July 2007.
In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai also faces suicide terrorism. Taliban attacks on government forces have increased. Reports give us documentary proof of Afghan police and intelligence agencies’ atrocities against common people and journalists. The Karzai administration faces numerous obstacles in establishing a durable political structure of governance that is based on political pluralism. The collapse of the Taliban rule and the ensuing vacuum of power provided opportunities to warlords, many of whom were implicated in war crimes. Peace and stability in Afghanistan are only possible if the international community commits itself to helping the administration adopt and enforce an uncompromising policy toward warlords who committed atrocities against innocent men and women. They must be tried in a court of law in order to send the message that there are no longer backdoor alliances.
Efforts to revive agriculture in Afghanistan are being threatened by the country’s continuing lawlessness. It is difficult for the NGOs to work effectively because some people with political objectives want to create terror and stop others being helped. Opium money is corrupting Afghan society from top to bottom. High level collusion enables thousands of tonnes of chemical precursors, needed to produce heroin, to be trucked into the country. Armed convoys transport raw opium around the country unhindered. Sometimes even army and police vehicles are involved in this business. Guns and bribes ensure that trucks are waved through checkpoints. Opiates flow freely across borders into Iran, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries.
Until poverty and infrastructural problems are addressed in Afghanistan, the insurgencies will get larger and larger, and the possibilities of stopping the chaos will get smaller. The UN and the government in Kabul must remember that fighting for the insurgency or growing opium offer many in Afghanistan the only chance of earning a decent wage. Afghanistan is in danger of falling back into the hands of the terrorists, insurgents, and criminals, and the multi-billion-dollar opium trade is at the heart of the country’s malaise. In a series of extraordinary reports, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented atrocities “committed by gunmen and warlords who were propelled into power by the US and its coalition partners after the Taliban fell in 2001” and who have “essentially hijacked the country”. The report describes army and police controlled by warlords who kidnap villagers with impunity and hold them for ransom in unofficial prisons, the widespread rape of women and girls, extortion, robbery and arbitrary murder. Those Afghans who are fighting are doing so because of unemployment. This will only get worse now that the post-war economic bubble has been punctured.
Rising crime, especially the kidnapping of businessmen for ransom, is also leading to capital flight. Violence in Afghanistan in the past few months has been largely cross-border in nature, originating in Pakistan and carried out by individuals of multiple nationalities who return to Pakistan after striking. Foreign fighters are not only bolstering the insurgency, they are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn. They are also helping in changing the face of the Taliban from a hardline Afghan religious students’ movement into a loose network. It now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers. Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.
Formal economic activity remains minimal and is inhibited by recurrent fighting and roads blocked by local commanders. Afghan progress in nation building is real, but often grindingly slow and inadequate to deal with the Taliban threat. Governance and the rule of law are often weak or lacking in high risk and combat areas. State capacity refers to the strength and capability of state institutions. Nation conventionally refers to the population itself, as united by identity, history, culture and language.
The writer is the author of 156 books on terrorism, extremism, human trafficking, Afghanistan, drug trafficking and foreign policy studies and is based in London, UK |
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