Authors: David Isby
The east is where the insurgency has been less successful but the proximity of Pakistan has ensured that this remains an area of bitter fighting, although in 2007–08 only one of the top five provinces for insurgency action—Paktika—was in the east. The areas in the east suffered some of the most intense devastation and depopulation during the war against the Soviets. Tribal structures differ between the provinces, with Khost having the most intact and functional tribal system. The east corresponds largely to part of the coalition Regional Command—East (RC-E), but effectively is divided into divergent southeast and northeast insurgencies.
The southeast insurgency focuses on Paktia, Paktika, and Khost provinces. The insurgency there is rooted in Pakistan’s FATA. The insurgents are primarily but not exclusively Afghan Taliban (which still includes increasing numbers of foreigners and especially Pakistanis in their ranks). Pakistan’s TTP operates across the border there. This is the area where the Haqqani network is strongest, drawing on its pre-2001 base among Afghanistan’s Jadrani Pushtuns and its external links to the “Afghan Arabs” with a logistics base in Parachinar. While the tribal authority remains significant here, the traditional leadership structures were damaged by the 1978–92 war which included widespread depopulation and devastation of this area by the Soviets. Opium cultivation has been greatly reduced in this area, but drug laboratories and trafficking routes are in this area. Much cross-border trade is in the hands of Taliban-aligned “mafias,” which have links to Pakistan’s security services dating back to the 1980s.
The northeast insurgency is most active in Nangarhar, Kunar, Kapitsa, and Nuristan provinces, using bases in the FATA (especially the Bajaur Agency), NWFP, and other areas as far north as Chitral. This is the area where, in addition to the Afghan Taliban, HiH, TNSM, and, in the Kunar, Wahabi groups are strongest. The tribal system is important, but less cohesive than that farther south. The Afridis and Shinwaris are made up of independent khels, committed to cross-border trade. The Mohmands retain a strong cross-border structure. The Kunar’s tribal structure has been fractured ever since the former king cleansed the valley of its Safi Pushtun inhabitants in 1944, replacing them with loyalists from elsewhere in Afghanistan. The Nuristanis are divided by clan, tribe, and dialect. This remote province, poor and undeveloped even by Afghan standards, has seen much violence. This area, especially Nangarhar, was previously the site of intensive opium cultivation, but by 2008–09 this had been greatly reduced. By 2009, Nangarhar had been poppy-free for two consecutive years, a remarkable achievement in a province where, after 2001, poppy fields were visible from the main highway to Kabul. This achievement reflects not only the actions of Afghan and coalition Counter Narcotics programs but also that Nangarhar has greater access to development, markets, labor (in Kabul or Pakistan), and other sources of incomes than the insurgency-plagued provinces in the south where poppy cultivation has been concentrated. It also reflects the commitment to narcotics eradication of the Nangarhar provincial governor, Gul Agha Sherzai. Even his critics concede his effectiveness, although they argue his motivation was increasing the market share of his own investments in Kandahar-grown opium. Kunar and Laghman provinces also saw poppy cultivation drop to insignificant levels by 2008.
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The northeast area has seen company-size coalition operations defeated either in forward operating bases or in the field and forced to withdraw, such as the US in the Pech Valley of Kunar and the French at Sarobi Gorge in 2008 or the joint US-ANA outpost overrun at Komdesh in Nuristan in October 2009.
In 2008–10, a central front in the insurgency emerged near Kabul, including Wardak, Logar, and Laghman provinces, some within an hour’s drive of the city. HiH groups have returned to areas where they were strong in 1992–96. Some of the strongest groups, especially in
Wardak, were pre-2001 Afghan Taliban returned from exile in Pakistan to reawaken old alliances with local and tribal leaders. Cross-border Pakistani groups have also been operating in this area, as have a large number of criminal groups using insurgent cover.
In 2009–10, the north, relatively quiet in previous years, emerged as a front in the insurgency.
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Provinces such as Kunduz and Badghis have sizable ethnic Pushtun populations dating back to the nineteenth century, when King Abdur Rahman resettled them there. These populations were reduced in size during the 1978–2001 conflicts, many fleeing to exile in Pakistan or southern Afghanistan. Tensions with their Dari or Turkic-speaking neighbors have been high. The northern insurgency has diverse roots, with many of those near Kunduz receiving support from HiH groups in the east and those in Badghis receiving support from the Taliban in Helmand (where many local internal refugees fled). Operating in the north also allows insurgents to help secure some of the narcotics trafficking routes running through the former Soviet Union.
The insurgency is not a mass movement of the people of Afghanistan or the Pushtun world. It is not popular with grassroots Afghan opinion, unlike the 1978–92 mujahideen. Multiple polls taken with a range of methodologies in Afghanistan suggest that support for the insurgents does not exceed 10–18 percent nationally; consistent with the type of support a fringe party would receive even in a developed country. GEN McChrystal’s report in August 2009 was basically accurate when he said “popular enthusiasm for them appears limited.”
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Even in the Pushtun heartland of the south, there were originally few areas where a majority supported the insurgents. These increased by 2008–10, with many of the districts in Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, and other provinces being someplace where no one is likely to ask polling questions and where intimidation and kinship and local loyalties can compensate for limitations in support for the insurgent cause. Among the Pushtuns of eastern and central Afghanistan there is generally less support for the insurgents than in the south. 2009 polling suggests that nationwide support for the Taliban is only seven percent, with 25 percent in the Pushtun southeast and 17 percent in central Afghanistan; only eight percent nationwide believe the insurgents are likely to win the conflict.
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“Insurgents need 30 percent to sustain a political program or seize power” is the view of MG Mark Milley.
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He added: “The insurgents are popular with ten percent of the people; in no country have they taken power with that.”
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Even if these figures are optimistic and the polling methodologies limited, it shows that by 2008–10 the insurgents did not have the active support of anything approaching a majority of Afghanistan’s Pushtuns.
The widely differing attitudes identified by polling in early 2009 about the insurgents in Wardak and Laghman provinces reflects that in the former they are perceived as follow-ons to the guerrillas of 1978–92 and the Taliban of 1996–2001, while in the later they are seen as alien invaders.
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When asked whether the insurgents had become more moderate in 2009, 58 percent of the Afghans in Wardak agreed, but only 14 percent of those in Laghman.
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This may reflect the Taliban’s massacre of a bus full of Afghans from Laghman in October 2008. This was followed by three to four days of province-wide protests. In the words of Massoud Farivar, Afghan journalist, “Laghman is a conservative province. It has lots of Taliban sympathizers. But the people rose up and said that was savagery.”
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In 2008–10, a majority (albeit diminishing) of Afghans supported the foreign military presence, as an ABC news poll showed. Afghans remain painfully aware that, in the absence of the foreign presence, polarized Afghan factions and, most importantly, their cross-border supporters would plunge the country back into civil war.
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With the continued lack of a functioning civil economy in much of Afghanistan, especially with the 2008 rise in energy and fuel costs, this has created many desperate people in Afghanistan. Such people have a willingness to accept desperate solutions despite limitations as long as they can cross the threshold of legitimacy in Islamic and national terms. When ethnicity is added to the mix, as in the Pushtun areas, it has contributed to the strength of the insurgency. Outside pressures such as effective Al Qaeda-inspired propaganda, US and coalition policy failures, Pakistan policy, and foreign money would have been hard-pressed to fuel an insurgency in Afghanistan post-2001 without it having a degree of legitimacy—even if not support—in Pushtun Afghanistan. Much of this was provided by Al Qaeda, injecting the widespread perception that the
Muslims have been subject to repeated invasion by non-Muslims, and repeated by the media in both Pakistan and Afghanistan until it is widely believed even among the majorities in both countries that do not support insurgents or radicalization.
“Yet it is a force that can regenerate itself, yet not so deeply rooted” even in the demographic of southern Afghanistan where “there are two million people, 45 percent under 15, and some 490,000 potential fighters, yet the total [insurgent force] is 5–10,000,” according to BG Marquis Hainse, CF, who commanded Canadian troops in Regional Command-South in Kandahar in 2007–08.
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MG Mark Milley estimated the insurgent force in October 2008 as 15–20,000.
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Afghan interior minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar spoke of some 10–15,000 insurgents in 2009.
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Later in 2009, US estimates of the number of full-time insurgents had increased to 25,000, an increase of 25 percent since 2008.
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The 2008–09 bottom line is that some 80–85 percent of the Afghan population are not pro-insurgency. Even Afghanistan’s most nationalistic Pushtuns are pragmatic and tired of conflict. “More people are pro-government than we think, though they may not be so overtly. 80 percent of the people in the south say that they believe in government institutions. This shows that if we do this right, we can have success. It is important that we capitalize on success. Tactical and operational success do not translate to strategic success,” said BG Hainse.
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Crime is a vital part of the insurgency, with many criminal combatants using the insurgents’ rhetoric, and so difficult to distinguish from it. The inability of the Afghan government to counter criminal activity has hurt Kabul’s legitimacy in even provinces that have seen few insurgents, but crime affects many Afghans. Mohammed Hanif Atmar, interior minister, reviewing the 2008 crime statistics, said: “Organized crime is increasing. Daily there are over 50 incidents, a sixty percent increase over 2007.”
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2009 polling showed that 17 percent of Afghans had been victims of crime or violence; of these only 9 percent reported the insurgents as the cause, compared to nine percent for foreign forces and 7 percent for Afghan National Security Forces.
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Crime and insurgency have become increasingly interrelated throughout Afghanistan, but especially in the center, where the country’s most functional local economy, that
of Kabul, provides enough money to make crime pay. Kabuli criminals target Afghan elites, often kidnapping them or their children for ransom. There is widespread frustration with the government and their foreign supporters for not providing security.
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By 2008–10, widespread crime in Kabul had done more than the insurgency in the south and east to lead to capital flight and discourage investment in Afghanistan.
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This further encourages the culture of corruption, as other Afghans see this and look to extract resources to enable their own escape.
The appeal of the insurgents inside Afghanistan is not that they are the Taliban or their allies, but that they are Pushtuns (unlike a multiethnic Kabul government), not the government (with its lack of capability, corruption, and failure to met high grassroots expectations) or (infidel) foreign troops (with their intrusive searches and collateral damage). They can also make promises—and sometimes deliver them—of better security. “Crime, narcotics, and endemic corruption create a population susceptible to facile solutions, even from sources like the Taliban,” in the words of US terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman.
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Insurgent Strategy
What has made the insurgency an existential threat to Afghanistan is not so much the weakness of the Afghan state, the internal conflicts of Afghanistan, or the failures of US and coalition policy, but rather the fundamental trans-border nature and its ability to find receptive supporters in some parts of Pushtun Afghanistan, especially in the south. Insurgencies with sanctuaries support and funds from across the border tend to win or, failing that, are able to negotiate themselves a favorable settlement. In recent decades, they have tended to be successful, even against effective practitioners of counter-insurgency warfare. The cross-border nature of the insurgency is complicated by the parallel internal conflicts on each side; neither the transnational terrorists nor the narcotics traffickers want to see the insurgency end, as it would undercut their own position. Rather, both thrived when the Afghan Taliban held power in Kabul pre-2001.
Insurgencies are normally ended by cutting some of the insurgents and their supporters in on the deal of running the country. This is limited in
this case because the Taliban culture pushes towards a maximalist Islamist solution that would have to include the reduction of foreign influence in Afghanistan, reopening it to Pakistani control and, in effect, restarting the civil wars of 1992–2001. Settlements—either top-down, negotiated with the leadership; or bottom-up, negotiated with one insurgent sub-group or subordinate leader at a time—set the terms for insurgent participation in the post-conflict political process.
Splitting off a “moderate Taliban” has proven even more elusive since Pakistan first proposed it as a policy in the late 1990s and Musharraf reiterated it in 2007.
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Those cited as actual or potential members of such a group, suitable parties for negotiation, usually include marginal figures without real authority.