Category: Foreign Affairs

LASHKAR GAH, Aug 14 — As they have captured more territory in Afghanistan this year, the Taliban have twinned their military offensive with a publicity push. Their pitch goes something like this: We’ve learned the lessons from our time in power, and we’re ready to moderate a bit.

At international conferences, delegates from the Taliban — infamous for outlawing girls’ schools during their rule from 1994 to 2001 — have made a point of being willing to meet and talk with female officials. Old hard-line stances against music and photography have been softening.

But for insight into how the Taliban might rule if they succeed in holding large stretches of Afghanistan, consider Baghran district, in the southern province of Helmand.

There, where the Taliban were scarcely ever out of power, the harsh old policies of the ’90s are still in full swing. Men are hauled into jail if they shave beards, and spot turban checks are still in place to expose any fancy haircuts. And there is still no freedom for women to travel or learn.

The Taliban in Baghran are not an insurgent force but the government, and a long-established one at that.

“In Baghran, you feel like you are in a mini-emirate of the Taliban,” said a 45-year-old shopkeeper, Esmatullah Baghrani, referring to the Taliban’s formal name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. “When I am out of Baghran, I feel like I am in a different world.”

There is no cellphone service in Baghran, reflecting the Taliban’s wishes. Instead, people communicate with the outside world through a handful of “public call offices” — phones in stores near the bazaar.

Through more than a dozen interviews with the men who answered these phone lines, as well as men standing nearby, a rare sketch of life in the Taliban’s most secure stronghold began to emerge. The New York Times also interviewed Baghran residents in person in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

There is probably nowhere else in Afghanistan more completely under Taliban rule. Officially, the Afghan government acknowledges having lost only four out of roughly 400 districts to the Taliban. Of these, Baghran was the first to fall, about a decade ago.

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“You have to obey the rule of the Taliban, and you have to be a good man and not even think of bad things,” said Omar Khan, a shopkeeper. “You have to live the way Taliban want you to live: You have to wear the proper clothing, and a turban, and grow your beard, and offer your prayers in a mosque five times a day, avoid listening to music, and avoid unnecessary chats with people. You can’t meet friends at night for card games.”

But the Taliban’s rule has still proved attractive, or at least tolerable, to many rural Afghans who have endured decades of war. Residents of other parts of Helmand, who find themselves caught in the cross hairs of the war, have sought out Baghran’s relative security, migrating away from the front lines.

“People are suffering under constant war, but we don’t suffer those kinds of problems,” said Hasti Khan, a farmer in Baghran.

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Some things have changed. Public executions, a feature of the Taliban’s national rule, were halted in Baghran in 2007 after an American airstrike killed a large number of Taliban fighters and residents who had assembled for one, residents recalled.

But in most ways, the social restrictions that made the Taliban international pariahs during their reign have been resurrected in full in Baghran. Women leave home only with their husbands or male family members, and then only to visit a doctor or a few other authorized destinations. There are no girls’ schools, and education for boys is limited, too. The Taliban here converted schools to madrasas, which boys typically attend for perhaps three years before returning to family farms.

The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, once famous for pummeling women who went out and men who played music, is back on patrol in Baghran. Vice-prevention officers often carry scissors so that they can deal, on the spot, with haircuts deemed excessively vain.

Despite the rules, many in Baghran take a few risks, here and there, continuing to meet for card games. Radios are ubiquitous and tolerated for their news stations like BBC Pashto, Mashal radio and even Voice of America. “We are not supposed to listen to music, but sometimes when the Taliban are all inside we do listen to music,” one man in Baghran said.

But Baghran’s main mud-brick prison often has 100 and sometimes twice that many transgressors, like Nazir Ahmad, 19, who served three days for his curly bangs. “It’s a style I like,” he said in an interview in Lashkar Gah, where he had come to find work.

The Taliban, which have a robust propaganda arm and a news website featuring lengthy interviews with local commanders across Afghanistan, rarely talk about Baghran.

That may be in part because of its importance in the insurgency’s lucrative narcotics business. For years, it was home to an unusual concentration of heroin processing plants, so many, in fact, that they occasionally attracted Afghan military and counternarcotics raids. As the raids intensified, the Taliban ordered heroin production to move out of Baghran so as not to undermine security there, one local man explained.

Baghran has not been entirely untouched by the war. Western and Afghan troops have occasionally conducted forays into Baghran, initially in search of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s supreme leader, who Western military officials suspected might have sought refuge there after his government was toppled in late 2001. Mullah Omar died more than two years ago in a Pakistani hospital, the Afghan government recently announced.

The post-2001 Afghan government lost Baghran in a matter of three years. When a Taliban insurgency began to take shape, elders simply asked the 15 police officers in the province to quit and return home, recalled a tribal elder, Hajji Wali Mohammad, an uncle of one of those officers. With that, the Taliban became the dominant force.

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“The government did not last long,” Omar Khan, a 35-year-old shopkeeper in Baghran, said. “People were getting used to democracy, and then the Taliban came again.”

Some Taliban officials, particularly those sent to international conferences, have grown savvier during their long exile, and they suggest that the movement has grown more moderate.

For example, the group no longer puts much effort into stamping out television or music recordings now that cellphones have become a fact of life across much of Afghanistan. Taliban-themed ringtones have become common. And the Taliban’s own propaganda wing, which provides battlefield videos and photographs of insurgent commanders and suicide bombers, makes a mockery of the old prohibition on photography and other depictions of the human form.

Where the Taliban remain an insurgency competing with the government for the people’s loyalties, the group’s social restrictions do in fact appear to have mellowed slightly, particularly in the country’s north.

“The Taliban have realized imposing Islamic laws by force will not make people admire us,” a Taliban commander named Fazlullah, who operates in Afghanistan’s far northwest, said in a recent phone interview. “It is our good governance and performance that will win people’s hearts and minds.”

Although the harsher ways have prevailed in Baghran, residents’ complaints often had less to do with the Taliban’s treatment of them than the deprivations that have taken hold: the lack of good doctors and the need to travel to other districts to buy staples, like cooking oil. And some said they were saddened by the lack of opportunities for their children, many of whom tend to work in the opium fields alongside their fathers.

Many residents who were interviewed said they were mostly satisfied with the Taliban’s rule. Some agree with the Taliban’s principles, others have come to accept them.

“I think I like the way of the Taliban,” Mr. Baghrani, the shopkeeper, said. “You live simply, the way you have been created.”

Not everyone, however, has been able to live simply. Ethnic Hazaras had been allowed relatively safe passage through Baghran, on several important market roads, in recent years. But over a month ago that suddenly changed: Hazara elders and other residents said that the Taliban’s district commander, Mullah Ghulam Hazrat Shahidmal, warned that Hazaras would no longer be allowed through, in what was seen as a troubling step back toward the targeting of minorities by the insurgents.

The only link remaining between the Kabul government and Baghran is symbolic: The government still assigns district officials to Baghran. They all serve in exile. “I have never been to Baghran,” said the district governor of Baghran, Salim Rodi, who lives in Lashkar Gah. “This job is a joke.”

His main responsibility is to occasionally remind others that the government lost Baghran long ago. He did so last year, when a new security adviser for Helmand Province complained that Mr. Rodi was not sending regular updates about the functioning of local government, like other district governors.

“I told this man: ‘You are an amazing security adviser. You don’t even know which districts are under the control of the Taliban.’ ”

Joseph Goldstein reported from Lashkar Gah, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar,

 

ISLAMABAD, Aug 13 —A recording posted online Thursday appears to show al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri vowing loyalty to the new leader of the Afghan Taliban, as the Kabul government demanded that neighboring Pakistan crack down on Taliban operations there.

Mullah Akhtar Mansour took the reins of the militant Taliban organization amid a swirl of controversy late last month when it emerged that the movement’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been dead for more than two years.

“We pledge allegiance to you on establishing the Shariah [Islamic law] until it rules the lands of the Muslim—ruling and not ruled, leading and not led,” said the recording, in a translation circulated by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors global jihadist activity.

SITE said the recording was distributed on Twitter and that the voice sounds like Mr. al Zawahiri’s. This would be his first audio release in nearly a year, SITE said, and would end his longest public silence in more than a decade

Mullah Mansour, the Afghan Taliban’s former deputy, has enjoyed the support of most of the movement, but has faced opposition from rivals including his predecessor’s family.

Al Qaeda’s allegiance to the Taliban wouldn’t have much impact on the battlefield in Afghanistan, home to no more than a few hundred al Qaeda fighters, an Afghan intelligence official said. But he added that it would lend Mullah Mansour greater credibility as he battles for the support of his rivals.

It also could heighten concerns in the Kabul government that the Taliban will pursue war instead of continuing tentative Pakistan-brokered peace talks. The cutting of ties with al Qaeda is also a condition of U.S. support for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

In the weeks since Mullah Mansour ascended to the Afghan Taliban’s top post, a period of relative calm in the restive Afghan capital has been shattered by car bombings, which the Afghan government blamed on Pakistan-based Taliban operatives.

An Afghan delegation led by Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani was in Islamabad on Thursday for talks with the Pakistani government. During the negotiations, they veered from recent requests that Pakistan use its influence to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, demanding instead that Islamabad take action against Taliban based in Pakistan, Afghan officials said.

“The delegation demands Pakistan crack down on the Taliban, deny them sanctuaries, shut their training camps, and stop supporting and financing them,” an Afghan official said.

But Pakistan has maintained that peace talks with the Taliban are the most effective way to stabilize Afghanistan, which has sunk further into violence since the withdrawal of U.S. troops began last year. Pakistan’s foreign policy chief, Sartaj Aziz, said before Thursday’s meeting that the talks were “the best option.”

The Afghan and U.S. governments have long pressed Islamabad to prevent the Taliban from operating from Pakistan, with little success. Pakistani officials insist that they don’t support the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, but have said that their priorities are combating the homegrown militants staging terror attacks in the country.

 

KABUL, July 30 — Taliban officials Thursday confirmed the death of the group’s founder and picked his former deputy as successor even as they put the brakes on peace talks with Afghan leaders.

A series of moves — which included strengthening ties with a militant faction that has al-Qaeda links — pointed to possible rifts within the Taliban and a potential major blow to hopes for negotiating an end Afghanistan’s 14-year conflict.

Yet the Taliban also offered some rare hints at outreach and self-reflection by apologizing for “mistakes” under the rule of the late Mohammad Omar, who Afghan officials said died more than two years ago.

A second round of peace talks between the Taliban and the government in Kabul had been scheduled to begin Friday in Pakistan, which hosted the opening session this month.

A statement from Pakistan’s foreign minister said the Taliban had requested the postponement amid “uncertainty” following confirmation of the death of Omar.

A spokesman for the Afghan government says it is investigating reports that Mullah Omar, the reclusive leader of the Afghan Taliban, may have died in 2013. (Reuters)

Taliban officials did not publicly announce their intention to snub the planned talks, but envoys at their political office in Qatar — the base for one major faction of the group — said earlier that they knew of no upcoming talks.

Seeking an end to the 14-year insurgency by Taliban forces is a major priority for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban leadership shifts put in motion by the formal announcement of Omar’s death, however, could raise new complications for the peace bid.

It also could deepen divisions between Taliban factions supporting the peace initiative and those seeking to press ahead with the insurgency, which has included stepped-up attacks in Kabul and gains by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s north.

In an e-mail to journalists, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said Omar had “abandoned this mortal world” as the result of an illness. It gave no further details, and the circumstances and location of Omar’s death remain murky.

On Wednesday, Afghan officials said Omar died in April 2013 in a hospital in the southern Pakistani city Karachi, but they left open speculation that the death carried what they called a “suspicious nature.”

It remains unclear how widely the knowledge of Omar’s death had spread among the Taliban’s ranks since April 2013. But the acknowledgment brought a quick response from the Taliban to proclaim its new leaders.

In comments to the Associated Press, Taliban officials said the group’s supreme council had met in Pakistan and picked Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, Omar’s longtime senior aide, to replace him. Mansour was widely considered a top candidate for the post, but his selection is likely to be controversial.

Although the Taliban said Omar had died of an illness, a rival militant faction accused Mansour and another aide of killing him. Also, Mansour is said to be close to Pakistan’s government. Leaders of several other factions — including those based in Qatar — distrust Pakistan’s powerful intelligence services.

Analysts and political leaders in Kabul said the tumult erupting within the Taliban could potentially empower hard-liners and derail the Afghanistan’s hopes for peace.

“The Taliban are much bigger troublemakers now than they were two years ago. They are more violent, more organized and causing more harm,” said Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament who met with Taliban officials in Oslo several months ago as part of preparations for the talks.

Omar’s death, she said, “could encourage them even more in this direction. The peace process will take much longer now.”

In another leadership shift, the Taliban gave the No. 2 post to the head of the Haqqani network, a militant group that has connections to al-Qaeda. Sirajuddin Haqqani’s group is thought to be linked to a series of attacks, including an assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in 2011.

Haqqani-linked fighters captured Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in June 2009 when he disappeared from his base in eastern Afghanistan. Bergdahl was freed last year in a swap for a group of Guantanamo detainees.

“The Taliban are fighting very hard now, and the situation is getting more complicated than ever,” said Barakzai. “Only a powerful international presence can keep the talks going and keep the Taliban from veering in a very dangerous direction.”

The Taliban statement Thursday — issued in the name of Omar’s son and his brother, Abdul Manan — also apologized for “any mistakes” made by Omar during his “rule of Afghanistan.”

Omar was toppled by U.S. and allied forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks on the United States for not surrendering al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. During its six years in control, the Taliban imposed strict Islamic rule that included banning education for girls, and carrying out acts of cultural purging such as the destruction of ancient Buddha statues.

Murphy reported from Washington. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Undoubtedly the incumbent government in Kabul takes security a top most precedence. It’s not surprising to learn –the onset of regular talks between Afghan government and Taliban leaders are heading towards some resilience if not concrete solution. It worth noticing with succession of talks the degree of uncertainty associated with it went colossal, notwithstanding its credibility diminished. It’s widely considered Taliban’s’ central leadership might not be in the line with the aforesaid developments. Hence, the talks were deemed as individual efforts –faraway from bearing the expected fruits, as the central leadership had not broken the silence to talk on the subject.

The emergence of Taliban’s de facto leader, Mullah Omar first ever surprising message let the dust of ambiguity settle. This has been the subject of greater interests reflecting Taliban’s twin unilateral and uniform stance evident. In the latest development, talks between Taliban representatives and members of Afghan society, focusing on women’s rights in Afghanistan has taken place in Norwegian capital, Oslo. Reportedly, Taliban has demonstrated willingness to let women partake in socio-political endeavors and chase their academic goals unhampered. Will Taliban surrender to equal rights for women?

Earlier, in the latest round of talks Taliban while responding to demands of ceasefire Taliban conditioned it to formation of United National Government. It is an evident shift as earlier it was conditioned to complete withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan. Hitherto, the details of this government is uncertain –however following the political temperament of Taliban, the demand of reservation of lion’s share in the current democratic setup, may be a credible guess.

Mullah Omar also said they formally recognized the legitimate rights of all afghan including minorities as their religious duty. The timing of this message is centrally important –where Mullah Omar seems to be quite optimistic about the forthcomings changes that are likely to materialize. “No one should fear about what will happen if the Islamic emirate comes to power. I assure you that the upcoming changes will in no way resemble the situation following the collapse of the communist regime when everything turned upside down” said Taliban’s Supreme leader. It is found the de facto leader giving assurances as if they have made their way to greater share in the altered forthcoming setup. The degree of confidence demonstrates Taliban will join the government and the peace talks crystallize given their demands of giant share are okayed.

Omar’s statement comes days after Taliban representatives and Afghan officials held first direct talks in Pakistan and agreed to meet again after the fasting month. Mullah Omar confirms Taliban’s political office in Doha for tackling political affairs and was entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring and conducting all political activities. It depicts the said office established years ago contained Taliban representatives set free from Guantanamo bay and Bagram prison for political purpose. It was following this development that the US unbranded Taliban as a terrorist outfit separating it from Al Qaeda. The distinction carved underlines; the US’s deep rooted global interests are endangered by later than former. Broadly speaking it seems to be a sub plan of another master plan where Taliban are given space to join back the political domain and disband militancy. It is this plot that is seemingly crystallizing imminently.

Mullah Omar in his statements confirms the political talks alongside the jihad a legitimate Islamic discourse. He said, “Concurrently with armed Jihad, political endeavors and peaceful pathway is a legitimate Islamic principle and an integral part of Prophetic politics.” He said the objective behind their political endeavors as well as contacts and interactions with countries of the world and Afghans was to bring an end to the occupation and to establish an independent Islamic system in Afghanistan. This is not a genuine claim retracing the footprints of history we hold Taliban a foreign element the sole factor behind foreign occupation –whose oust is demanded at present. This is nothing more than a political statement to drive them to political privileges in the incumbent government in Kabul.

The masses find it hard to unlearn the grave human right violation and women right suppression at the hand of Taliban. The history bears Taliban apolitical say prior to its aristocratic regime and has hardly used legal course to get their political dreams come true.  Even hitherto, Taliban resorted to momentous violence when peace talks are underway. It’s whether a shift or diplomacy Taliban leader calling in for oversized confidence in the ongoing political process. He said, “All Mujahidin and countrymen should be confident that in this process, I will unwaveringly defend our legal rights and viewpoint everywhere.” Taliban should be grateful of democratic setup in practice in Afghanistan that even gives Taliban an opportunity to partake in political maters but it also demands they must be tried for some if not all mass massacres executed across the length of Afghanistan.

Conciliating with political stance of Taliban that make further peace talks, Jihad renders equally unacceptable and illegitimate. Who are they, Taliban have had waged jihad with? They are none expect the innocent civilian who due to bear the brunt of butchery. This tale is confirmed by credible report that lists over 200,000 people killed in war against terror.  Who should be held accountable for these mass killings? The report alleges them for most of casualties. We are peace seekers. We negotiate peace, even with the assassins of humanity, peace and tranquility. This very stance is stressed by both head of government and political leadership of Afghanistan with variant degree of assertion. Awfully peace is talked to those who have killed over hundred thousands of innocents and physically impaired even a multiplied number since the beginning of war launched against terror. Its appreciable Mr. Omar recognizes the legitimate rights of all Afghans including minorities a religious duty –nonetheless prior to asking forgiveness for the past atrocities and submitting to free trial the moral responsibility does not end –Taliban and its politics might not find acceptance.

In spite of differences, let’s put our finger cross for the success and fruitful finalization of negotiations. But, there are some hard born queries to be sought out prior to making any deal. Should Taliban be given amnesty seeing them executed mass massacre of innocent people? Can Taliban get them adjusted with democracy, who are born and raised in dictatorial setup?

These queries might meet their fates as the time advance. After all, the dramatic emergence of Mullah Omar proves to be an impetus for the ambiguous peace talks.

A senior leader for the Islamic State in Afghanistan, currently embroiled in a feud with the Taliban over who will conduct the insurgency there, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike, local media reported Thursday.

The strike killed Shahidullah Shahid and more than two dozen militants in eastern Afghanistan south of the city of Jalalabad. It was in that city where Islamic State militants conducted their first major attack against Afghan civilians in April, killing 35 in a suicide bombing.

The drone strike was Tuesday, the same day Taliban officials met for the first time with an Afghanistan delegation in Islamabad, Pakistan, to open peace negotiations.

The Pentagon said Thursday that “precision strikes” by U.S. forces were carried out Monday and Tuesday south of Jalalabad “against individuals threatening U.S. and coalition forces.” There was no elaboration.

Afghan intelligence officials told media that those killed in the drone strike included Shahid, a former Pakistan Taliban spokesman and another senior Islamic State leader in Afghanistan, Gul Zaman.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls vast portions of Syria and western Iraq. Last year, it began recruiting disaffected members of both the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban insurgencies and providing funding for opening a front in South Asia, said Seth Jones, a political scientist with RAND Corp.

“What they’ve done is they haven’t built anything from scratch. They’ve just reached out to disaffected folks,” Jones said. “It’s possible, for example, if (Afghanistan government) negotiations continue with the Afghan Taliban, that those who don’t want a peace deal may defect to the Islamic State. But the challenge the Islamic State has in this area is its ideology is foreign.”

Shahid was named deputy chief for a region the Islamic State identifies as spanning parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. A cover story in an Islamic State magazine published in December was highly critical of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The Afghan Taliban reacted strongly to the intrusion publishing an open letter on its website in June warning the Islamic State to stay out of its territory. “Jihad against the Americans and their allies must be conducted under one flag and one leadership,” the letter said.

Last year, Shahid was fired as Pakistani Taliban spokesman after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. At the time the Pakistan Taliban said Shahidullah Shahid was a “nom de guerre” and that his real name was Sheikh Maqbool, the BBC reported.

A senior leader of Islamic State operations in southern Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Rauf, who had sworn allegiance to the militants after breaking with the Taliban, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in February.