Abdul Samad is devoted to the Taliban. He walks for miles through the rugged terrain of southern Afghanistan, crossing mountains for days at a stretch in search of targets to ambush. The Taliban, he says, are "in a fight ordained by God. The more one contributes, the bigger his reward on the day of judgment." And, when he finds targets--government officials, aid workers, members of the international coalition forces in Afghanistan, Afghan policemen--Samad contributes his share.
But Samad isn't a veteran of the deposed Taliban government simmering over his loss of power. He's a 19-year-old Pakistani who was twelve when the Taliban took power in 1996. Several weeks ago, Samad received a letter from the Taliban's one-eyed spiritual guru and supreme leader, Mullah Omar, who asked him to join the fight. Samad, a recent attendee of a conservative madrassa in Pakistan, where Omar's letter was received, quickly sold his mother's jewelry to buy himself the assault rifle he needed and joined up. "I told my parents that, if I died fighting, they too would be rewarded by God," he says.
And Samad is one of thousands. Though the Western media has reported that the Taliban are reemerging in southern Afghanistan, staging attacks on the U.S.-led coalition, the coverage obscures a more frightening development. Many of today's Taliban fighters aren't scattered remnants of the old regime. They're die-hard young Pakistanis, trained across the border in religious schools and commanded, in a centralized organization, by the reclusive Mullah Omar. And they have a clear, plausible strategy for gaining control of Afghanistan: wear down their opponents with guerrilla attacks until they flee--just like in 1996, the first time the Taliban came to power.
There have been sporadic attacks against coalition forces since the war ended in Afghanistan two years ago, but, in recent months, the scope and number of attacks have increased sharply. The Western press has reported these incidents with alarm, but many media outlets attribute the violence to remnants of the former government. The "Taliban have spent much of the period since the liberation regrouping," reported The Daily Telegraph earlier this month. The United States faces "regrouped elements of the Taliban militia," concurred The Washington Post.
In fact, the Taliban isn't just regrouping--it's recruiting a whole new generation. Several months ago, Omar, who is reportedly hiding in Afghanistan, contacted trusted aides. He asked them to start recruiting Pakistani madrassa students in the southern province of Baluchistan in order to begin a more intensive guerrilla war. "Mullah Dadullah [one of Omar's aides] was sent to Pakistan because he is ... widely respected ... by many Pashtun youths," says a Taliban insider. In the last few months, the insider says, Dadullah has visited dozens of religious schools in Pakistan, asking boys to join his jihad against the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. Those who volunteer are provided information about how to proceed to Afghanistan and whom to contact in the resistance once they arrive.
Omar and his lieutenants have also taken steps to insulate their activities from Pakistani police loyal to President Pervez Musharraf's mission of erasing religious radicalism. According to sources, Omar's lieutenants meet students but rarely interact with the principals of the madrassas or other local religious leaders. "Mullah Omar believes that most of these leaders are cowards or have been bought by U.S. dollars and so cannot be trusted," says one of Omar's associates.
Their strategy has been successful. Raised in an environment of extremist Islam, many young men in Pakistani madrassas consider the U.S. presence in Afghanistan an outrage. "There was peace during Taliban rule. ... But, with the arrival of the infidel forces, not only has law and order rapidly deteriorated, but women are no longer safe even within the confines of their homes," Samad says. "Resistance is incumbent on all Muslims." What's more, the Taliban have focused their efforts on Pashtun recruits in Pakistan. Many Pashtuns are resentful of the current situation in Afghanistan; though President Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun, they feel their community is underrepresented everywhere else in his Northern Alliance-dominated government.
Worse, there has been a general breakdown of law in Afghanistan; local traders have to pay extortion money to warlords and highway bandits, and those who refuse often are killed. As a result, sympathy for the Taliban's harsh brand of order--and for the new Talibs crossing into Afghanistan--is rising. Because the international peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan are small and concentrated in the north, the Taliban can easily move around the south, playing on this sympathy and gaining local support for fighters coming in from Pakistan. "Given the geography of Afghanistan and the growing dimensions of the insurgency, fifteen thousand troops [in the international coalition force] are negligible," says an Afghan government official. And, with no security, there has been little development work in the country's southern regions, the kind of aid projects that could win hearts and minds. Even potable water remains hard to find in the south, and many villagers have to walk miles to fetch drinking water. "We supported the international coalition because we thought they would change our lives, but so far nothing has changed," says a villager who lives near Kandahar.
For Omar, these hardships present opportunities. Indeed, according to intelligence estimates, at least 5,000 Pakistani youths from Pashtun tribal areas have filtered into Afghanistan in recent months. They have quickly armed themselves. "Afghanistan has traditionally been a source of supply of weapons for Pakistan. Now, ironically, for the first time in Pakistan's history, many of those weapons sent across the border to be marketed in Pakistan in the last few years are being ferried back to Afghanistan," says Haji Abdul Samad, a tribal leader in Pakistan.
Fighting has intensified quickly. In the last few weeks, 400 people have been killed in southern Afghanistan in attacks by Taliban guerrillas, who aim to wear down the coalition forces. The fighters' modus operandi is simple: They emerge from their hideouts after sunset and either wait along highways for the jeep patrols of Afghan soldiers or ambush their outposts once the soldiers are asleep. "What we are trying to do is to inflict maximum damage on U.S. troops and their allies so that they get fed up and leave our country like the Russians, who only quit because of the long and unyielding resistance by the Afghans," says one Taliban fighter. "Once the Americans leave, we will easily be able to take over." In the most devastating recent attack, some 400 Taliban militiamen gained control of an entire district of Zabul Province for a few hours in August, where they hoisted the spartan white Taliban flag, killed at least 29 Afghan soldiers, and announced that anybody found cooperating with U.S. forces or their "puppet government" would face grave consequences. The Afghan army ultimately regained control of Zabul.
As they have demonstrated their growing power, the Taliban have won recruits inside Afghanistan as well. "Hundreds of elder tribesmen have volunteered their youths to us," says Mohammed Amin, leader of a group of Taliban in Kandahar Province. "They include small children, some even under twelve. ... Many of them work as our lookouts and supply us important information." In fact, the Taliban may even have infiltrated Karzai's Afghan army, Amin says. "For us, they are like our 'moving bugging devices,'" he says. "We are always well-prepared before we attack because our informants in the Afghan army have given us all the necessary data." Amin notes an incident that occurred three months ago near the town of Spin Boldak in which a Taliban fighter, who had infiltrated the Afghan army, gunned down six Afghan soldiers.
Omar has taken direct control of this force. In addition to directing the recruiting in Pakistan, he is in touch with leaders in the field in Afghanistan, many of whom are equipped with modern satellite phones. Amin shows me a handwritten letter bearing Omar's signature, exhorting him and his fellow commanders to fight the "slavery of the infidel U.S." What's more, sources say, Omar has increased his control over and contact with his ten-member shura council of leaders, who direct fighting in the field.
aced with this increasingly organized resistance, Karzai's government, which exercises limited control outside Kabul, is scrambling. In recent months, Karzai has replaced the governors of Kandahar, Zabul, and Wardak Provinces, looking for stronger officials more willing to combat Taliban militancy. Karzai also has stepped up his rhetorical pressure on Pakistan, calling for Musharraf's government to crack down harder on madrassas.
But, despite Karzai's actions, the Taliban is hardly fading away. In fact, unrest is growing in at least a dozen of Afghanistan's 32 provinces. And the fighting distracts the government from crucial tasks. Before the presidential election--Afghanistan's first--due in June 2004, Karzai must finish drafting a constitution, conduct a census, register millions of voters, and reform the education system. A daunting task for any government. Perhaps an impossible one for a regime facing the new Taliban.
Massoud Ansari is a senior reporter for Newsline, a leading Pakistani news magazine.
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