In the final analysis the death of Pakistani Taleban chief Baitullah Mehsud last week in an American drone attack in Waziristan will prove to be a minor victory in the bitter onslaught against the fundamentalist movement, which has strongholds along the Afghan-Pakistan borders. Mehsud’s sudden disappearance from the scene will rattle the Taleban but only temporarily. The movement has proved in the past its capacity to regroup and elect new leaders.
Its resilience is mainly due to the strong tribal backing that it enjoys in the mainly Pashtun areas in southern Afghanistan and in the North West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan province of Pakistan.
The Taleban of Afghanistan and Pakistan represent a unique combination of tribal pride and radical Islamic identity. Mehsud was able to bring competing tribal leaders under his command, finally merging all into the banned Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan.
It is in these vast and impenetrable border areas that Al-Qaeda found refuge after the fall of the Taleban government in Kabul in 2001. As NATO forces battled the Taleban in Afghanistan, their comrades and brothers in Pakistan regrouped and provided both refuge and assistance.
In recent years the central government in Islamabad began to appreciate the threat posed by the growing power of Mehsud’s group. In the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination two years ago and as a result of American pressure, the Pakistani government decided to wage war against its own Taleban. The Swat Valley offensive, which was launched earlier this year, has yielded some success but not without a heavy price for the district’s population. Over two million people have been displaced while the Taleban were able to regroup and relocate.
The Swat Valley offensive coincided with a NATO-led attack in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. To date NATO has not declared victory. In fact its fighting forces, mainly US and British troops, suffered heavy losses. Holding the province is proving costly to the West but it cannot afford to lose this vital battle if the President Barack Obama’s new strategy of focusing on Afghanistan is to hold water.
The war against the Taleban, and by extension Al-Qaeda, has taken many twists and turns since the fall of Kabul and the election of President Hamid Karzai. Under the previous US administration the focus had quickly shifted to Iraq, leaving the shaky Karzai government on its own to deal with rogue provinces, which had challenged the new government.
Soon the Taleban were able to rebuild their power, recruiting men and receiving vital aid from their brethren across the border. Corruption and failure to carry out major development projects weakened the Karzai administration while the Taleban began to extend their control and intensify their attacks against government and foreign troops.
Today there are about 100,000 foreign troops, mostly US, in Afghanistan and the newly appointed NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wants to increase that number as soon as possible. The problem for NATO and the West is that not all countries want to keep their soldiers there for much longer. Even the British can’t agree among themselves on a timeline for the 9,000 men who are in Afghanistan today.
UK’s Afghanistan ambassador said last week that he hopes Britain will withdraw combat troops by 2014. But Gen. David Richards, who will become chief of the general staff later this month recently said he expects the army’s role to evolve, but the whole process might take as long as 30 to 40 years!
The next big test of Karzai, NATO and the Obama administration will be the success of Afghanistan’s presidential elections on Aug. 20. Karzai has already vowed that he will initiate dialogue with the Taleban and other insurgent groups if he wins the elections. It was not the first time that he had made such offer. Even President Obama had suggested at one stage that the US was willing to deal with moderate Taleban leaders.
A military victory against the Taleban is highly unlikely. The West’s strategy appears to be based on the hope that a prolonged military engagement will somehow convince the Taleban leadership to accept an offer to get involved in the political process.
For them to accept this they will have to suffer successive setbacks in the battlefield, lose their Pakistani lifeline and break alliance with Al-Qaeda. It is a tall order but in reality this is the West’s only hope to achieve “victory” in Afghanistan — and it must be achieved from a position of strength.
But NATO’s military commanders must also find ways to deliver painful blows to Taleban militants while avoiding civilian casualties. In most cases they have succeeded only in creating sympathy for the Taleban and resentment among the population.
The war in Afghanistan will not end soon with a decisive victory for either side. Pakistan’s trouble with its own Taleban will most likely continue for many more years. This is the nature of conflicts and wars in the 21st century. One way to move forward for both the governments in Kabul and Islamabad is to focus on national reconciliation as far away as possible from foreign intrusion. That too appears to be a tall order!
— Osama Al Sharif is a veteran journalist and political commentator based in Jordan.
