When I lived in Kabul a couple of years ago, it
seemed unimaginable that the Taliban could
return. The regime was considered a spent force
and generally disliked by Afghans. Mullah Omar
gathered his associates, told them they were on
their own and fled on his motorcycle.
Today there are reports of Taliban attacks as
close as two hours from the capital. Nato’s
forces are getting hammered in the south by an
astonishingly strong insurgency. Suicide bombs,
utterly alien to the Afghan fighting culture, are
now common.
At the same time, Nato air strikes are hitting
innocent civilians and increasing the
population’s resentment against the western
armies. In this mess, there is talk of making a
deal with the Taliban leadership, whoever they
may be, in a bid to bring peace to the south.
This is a dangerous idea.
It is worth considering that the Taliban are also
responsible for the torture and killing of Afghan
civilians. This is no government-in-waiting. This
is no popular resistance movement such as the
Soviet forces faced in the 1980s. This is a
brutal and nasty insurgency in which Afghans
accused of spying are beheaded, doctors are
assassinated and aid workers kidnapped.
I was in Ottawa recently speaking to a civil
servant involved in the Afghan mission. She told
me with some frustration that the Canadians
opened a clinic hospital just outside Kandahar
city, with the local tribal chief’s blessing. His
son was sick and was treated by Canadian doctors.
Almost as soon as it opened the clinic was burned
down and the tribal chief killed. The message was
clear: do not co-operate with any western force -
on pain of death.
The statistics bear this out. In the first seven
months of 2006, there were 202 recorded attacks
on schools across the country. In the same time
period, 600 civilians were killed or wounded. In
about 70% of the cases, the attacks were linked
to the Taliban. This figure comes from the
respected Afghan Independent Human Rights
Commission.
The strategy seems clear: to isolate Afghans from
their government in Kabul. If it looks like their
own government cannot provide for them, Afghans
will turn to the Taliban. The targets of the
insurgency are deliberate. There is even a guide,
called the Leyeha given out to Taliban fighters
which sanctions the killing of anyone seen to
cooperate with outsiders and destruction of
roads, bridges and dams.
This is an old strategy. In the days of the
Russian occupation, the countryside’s guerrilla
leaders were given arms and funds to isolate the
communist government in Kabul. Then, in the early
1990s, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped the
Taliban rise to power by again, putting pressure
on Kabul.
In the post-Taliban era it was never going to be
easy for a government to put together such a
fractured state. For centuries Afghans have
survived invasions by knowing just when to switch
to the winning side. It is simple pragmatism.
There is a growing feeling that maybe Nato and
America are not going to stay for long. If the
west abandons its Afghanistan project, no one
wants to face the repercussion of being on the
losing side when the Taliban ride back into town
on their motorcycles.
How on earth has the south deteriorated so much?
Sadly, it is because the west has allowed it to
happen. President Hamid Karzai, Afghans and aid
workers have repeatedly called for more
peacekeepers for the last five years.
There have been warning signs the Taliban were
re-grouping. In 2004 I met a couple of tribal
elders from a district in Zabul province who had
come to Kabul to plea for help because the
Taliban had taken over five districts. They shut
down the schools and no one could go out at
night, they told me.
But it was not until 2006 - five years after the
regime fell - that Canadians and British deployed
a large number of troops to the south.
In those five years the south and east were left
lawless for Taliban leaders to re-group and drug
traffickers to move in. As a result, there has
been little development of the economy. Many of
the Taliban’s fighters are opportunists. Honest
civilians can expect a monthly salary of $50. A
Talib fighter can earn up to $700. According to
Amnesty International, the funds for the
insurgency are coming from the region but also
perhaps wealthy Arabs in the Gulf states.
In this so-called “war on terror” it is Afghan
civilians who are paying the price. They are
caught - not only between Nato’s clumsy air
strikes which kill innocent families, but Taliban
terrorists who are determined to turn the country
into a pitiless theocracy once again.