Afghan Journal

The Taliban in Afghanistan’s once impregnable Panjshir Valley

Last month driving up Afghanistan’s magnificent Panjshir valley, you couldn’t help thinking if the resurgent Taliban would ever be able to break its defences, both natural and from the Tajik-dominated populace. With its jagged cliffs and plunging valleys, Panjshir has been largely out of bounds  for the  Taliban, whether during the civil war or in the past 10 years when it has expanded a deadly insurgency against western and Afghan forces across the country. But on Saturday, the insurgents struck, carrying out a suicide bombing at a provincial reconstruction team base housing U.S. and Afghan troops and officials.

They were halted outside the base, but according to the provincial deputy governor they succeeded in  killing two civilians and wounding two guards when they detonated their explosives. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the first suicide bombing in a decade was a message to Western forces that they were not secure anywhere in the country. They said the  bombers came from within Panjshir, which if true  would worry people even more  because that would suggest the penetration was deeper and there could be more attacks.

The Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio wrote that the bombing was a propaganda coup for the Taliban. Panjshir is the home of the legendary Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated by two days before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Under Massoud’s leadership the Panjshir Valley held out against not only against the Taliban, but famously the Soviet before them.

All along the drive by the side of the rushing Panjshir river on way to Massoud’s hilltop mausoleum, the relics of the war against the Russians have been preserved : rusted tanks on roadsides and an overturned  armoured personnel carrier in the river. There were giant Massoud posters everywhere and because it was the anniversary of his assassination at the hands of a pair of men who pretended to be journalists, the ceremonial gates to the valley were draped in black.

And yet there were concerns even then . Security was tight at each of the gates on the narrow and winding highway through the tall mountains, and the Afghan police who stood guard said if Panjshir had been spared the kind of attacks the Taliban had mounted in the rest of Afghanistan,  it wasn’t for lack of trying . They had already carried out attacks in neighbouring Nuristan province and according to a local Afghan police commander responsible for security at one of the checkpoints, American helicopters had been spotted in the area a few days before the anniversary, firing rockets over a hilltop. It wasn’t clear who they were targeting, the commander said.

Even the proud Panjshiris were worrying about the expanding Taliban influence, especially concerned at the time about government attempts to seek reconciliation with them.  One Afghan elder who lost his son in the war against Russians said his village was fully armed to fight  the Taliban.  There was no way they were going to accept the Taliban in the Panjshir, he told me.

Afghanistan’s grisly new museum

A new museum has opened in the western Afghan city of Herat honouring the exploits of the mujahideen who pushed back the mighty Soviet army following the invasion in 1979.  Many consider it to be Afghanistan’s finest hour  when a coalition of guerrillas variously commanded by regional warlords and, of course, heavily subsidised by the United States, fought the Soviet and Afghan government forces.

Reuters correspondent Golnar Motevalli  takes a walk through the museum showing gory scenes of the corpses of Red Army soldiers slumped over tanks  or burqa-clad women cheering the downing of a helicopter from the famously deadly Stinger missiles shoulder-fired by the mujahideen.   

 It’s a stomach-churning reminder that Afghanistan continues to bleed and is still hosting tens of thousands of foreign troops.

Here’s her story.

Buying off Afghanistan’s “$10 fighters”

If you can’t beat the Taliban, buy them out. At last week’s conference in London, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Western backers endorsed his latest attempt to lure away low level Taliban fighters with money and jobs,  committing themselves to a $500 million fund to finance the re-integration plan. The logic is that a majority of the Taliban , 70 percent actually according to some estimates, are the so-called “$10 fighters” who do not share the leaders’ intense ideological  motivation. They are driven to the Islamists because they are the only source of livelihood in a war-ravaged nation. So if you offered them an alternative, these rent-a-day foot soldiers can easily be broken.

Quite part from the fact that several such attempts have failed in the past, the whole idea that members of the Taliban are up for sale  just when the  insurgency is at its deadliest is not only unrealistic but also smacks of arrogance, Newsweek magazine notes in an well-argued article.  It quotes Sami Yousoufsai a local journalist “who understands the Taliban as few others do”  as laughing at the idea that the Taliban could be bought over.

“If the leadership, commanders, and sub commanders wanted comfortable lives,  they would have made their deals long ago. Instead they stayed committed to their cause even when they were on the run, with barely a hope of survival,” the article says quoting the journalist.  Now the Taliban are back in action across much of the south, east, and west, the provinces surrounding Kabul, and chunks of the north.”They used to hope they might reach this point in 15 or 20 years. They’ve done it in eight. Many of them see this as proof that God is indeed on their side.”  Indeed one Taliban member reacted angrily to the idea of a buy-out. “You can’t buy my ideology, my religion. It’s an insult,”he said.

At another level, come to think of it, if theirs is a force largely made of rented foot soldiers,  the Taliban have done exceptionally well  taking control of large parts of the country massed against the world’s biggest military powers. Imagine what it would be like if this wasn’t just a $10 a day army as Karzai and his allies paint it to be and instead a proper fighting force.

So why would they defect ? And just how realistic is this ?  The relatively few Taliban who did accept Karzai’s previous offers to return to society live virtually in self-exile in Kabul, afraid to go to their homes in the countryside where the Taliban won’t spare them. Some of those it had spoken to, Newsweek notes, wanted to go  back  to the Taliban,  but they know they won’t be forgiven. So its a real problem, where do the Taliban go, even after Karzai offers them gobs of money. ” They wouldn’t want to live in expensive Kabul, where people on the streets would make fun of their country ways, huge black turbans, and kohl eyeliner. They hate everything that Kabul represents: a sinful place of coed schools, dancing, drinking, music, movies, prostitution, and the accumulation of wealth.”

To send or not to send…

Here’s a transcript of an interview with Senator John Kerry on US policy in Afghanistan from the PBS news show The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.  Margaret Warner conducted the interview on October 26 with the influential Democrat after he had delivered a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.

Some pundits have suggested that Kerry, who chairs the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, is ‘running cover’ for President Barack Obama in case the President decides not to meet General Stanley McChrystal’s demand to send more troops to Afghanistan.  

Warner:         Senator Kerry, thanks for joining us. You said in your speech today that General McChrystal’s plan goes too far too fast. Are you talking about the troop levels or his basic overall strategy of counter insurgence.