Author: Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Publication: The Guardian
Date: November 13, 2006
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1946279,00.html
Introduction: Five years on, more than 4,000
killed in succession of attacks and suicide bombings in Afghanistan
Five years ago today the Taliban vanished
from Kabul and a liberated city exploded with joy. As the turbaned Islamists
scurried, whooping residents rushed on to the streets. Men queued to have
their beards shaved, some women removed their burkas and Radio Kabul played
music for the first time in years - announced by a woman. There was savage
vengeance too - some Taliban stragglers were lynched and dumped on the roadside.
But not everyone was celebrating. Sultan Amir,
a Pakistani intelligence agent who helped to propel the Taliban to power,
watched in dismay.
"I was hurt," said Mr Amir, better
known under his nom de guerre Colonel Imam, during a rare interview in Islamabad.
"I had an emotional attachment with the Taliban."
Although reviled by many the Taliban were
really a force of "angels", claimed the 62-year-old agent. "They
brought peace, they eradicated poppies, gave free education, medical treatment
and speedy justice. They were the most respected people in Afghanistan,"
he said.
Pakistani officials claim that men like Col
Imam are relics of a bygone era. Although Islamabad supported the Taliban
in the 1990s, when Col Imam was posted to the western city of Herat, Pakistan's
president, Pervez Musharraf, severed all links with the group after September
2001. But this year's hurricane of Taliban violence - a succession of thumping
battles and suicide bombings that has killed more than 4,000 people - has
given western officials reason to believe that some connection remains.
The insurgency's high level of sophistication
has aroused suspicions that Pakistan has quietly reactivated its old alliance
through its powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The accusations
ring loudest in Afghanistan, where the embattled president, Hamid Karzai,
says Pakistan is up to its decades-old policy of dirty tricks and meddling
in Afghan affairs.
Western military officials share his scepticism.
Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation, an American thinktank that works closely
with the US military, said his government believes the ISI is providing training,
money and sensitive information to the Taliban. "Information is being
passed from the ISI to Taliban units about movements of US and Nato forces,
in some cases very tactical information," he said, citing "clear
indications from intelligence sources".
Across the border in Islamabad, western diplomats
describe themselves as concerned agnostics on the issue. One senior official
said that while he believed the ISI leadership supported Mr Musharraf, there
was evidence of regular meetings between low and mid-level officials and the
Taliban. "Whether these contacts are to stop attacks in Afghanistan or
to encourage them is hard to know," he said.
Allegations
Another diplomat described the difficulty
of collecting intelligence in the tribal belt, where the Taliban's bases are
concentrated. But the volume of evidence was persuasive. "So much of
what we have is second-hand," he said. "But there is so much of
it."
Pakistani officials angrily deny the allegations,
dismissing them as a convenient smokescreen for the failures of Mr Karzai
and his western allies.
"We all know the situation in Afghanistan
is very bad. Someone has to be blamed, so why not Pakistan? Frankly speaking,
it's quite tiresome," said Tasnim Aslam of the foreign ministry.
The military points to its mounting death
toll. Last week a suicide bomber killed 42 soldiers at a training centre in
an attack later claimed by the "Pakistani Taliban". "Would
we get our own people killed? Or sabotage our economic interests? I assure
you we are not suicidal," said Ms Aslam.
Analysts agree that internal conditions play
a large role in Afghan instability. Corrupt governors and police chiefs, powerful
drug lords and outgunned police chiefs have hobbled Mr Karzai's authority,
particularly in the south. In the cities billions of dollars in foreign aid
have had limited effect, with most Afghans still living short, harsh lives
while watching a tiny minority grow fabulously wealthy.
Yet suspicions of Pakistani support for the
rebels as part of a complicated "double policy" persist - fuelled
in part by the admission by Mr Musharraf last month that some retired ISI
officers who served in the 1980s may now be helping the Taliban. "I have
some reports that some dissidents, some retired people ... may be assisting.
We are keeping a very tight watch and we'll get all of them."
Suspicions
Subsequent reports said the president had
ordered an investigation of men such as Col Imam, who in the 1980s ran a network
of secret camps that armed and trained 95,000 mujahideen to fight Soviet troops
in Afghanistan. Afghan fighters respected him because he ate, slept and fought
with them, said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent. "He was not a guy
you'd want to cross," he said. A decade later, he added, Col Imam was
"a major part of putting the Taliban into power".
Col Imam insists he is now fully retired.
Eschewing the trimmed moustache and pressed slacks of many Pakistani officers,
he wore a simple shalwar kameez when the Guardian met him at an orphanage
for 200 boys in Islamabad.
Reeling off the names of Afghan warlords he
described as his "students", Col Imam defended the Taliban's use
of suicide bombers and criticised the British deployment to Helmand. "You
ruled us for 200 years and we respected you. But now you have made a big mistake.
You have ruined yourselves."
The Taliban need no help from the ISI, he
insisted. "We sent three million guns into Afghanistan [in the 1980s],"
he said. "I am doing just one thing - I am praying for them."
These days such sentiments embarrass the ISI.
Two weeks ago the agency's current chief, Lieutenant General Muhammad Zakki,
called a meeting of western ambassadors in Islamabad to assure them the agency
no longer had any "ownership" of the Taliban. The ISI also started
monitoring its former chief, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who ran the agency
from 1987 to 1989 and is another Taliban supporter. "The ISI is surveilling
me, against their will of course," said Mr Gul during an interview at
his home in Rawalpindi. Mr Gul, who advocates a return to a 7th-century Muslim
caliphate, is an adviser to the MMA, Pakistan's hardline religious coalition.
Denied entry into the UK, he boasted of meeting
Osama bin Laden twice and believes the September 11 attacks were committed
by the Israeli spy agency Mossad. "They picked up the scenario from a
Tom Clancy novel. They probably didn't reckon with the towers crumbling so
quickly," he said.
Three weeks prior to September 11 he was in
Kabul as a guest of the Taliban. "I met the cabinet and they hosted a
dinner for me," he said proudly.
Insurgency
Although the government wants Mr Gul to shut
up - one official described his statements as "verbal diarrhoea"
- he taps into a strong vein of fear. Islamabad is anxious about Mr Karzai's
relationship with India and claims Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad
are stoking the insurgency in western Baluchistan province. "We have
evidence and we have told them," said Ms Aslam.
The ISI declined to comment on the controversy.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, five years after their ignominious ouster, the Taliban
have never looked stronger. The insurgents can never push US troops from Kabul,
Col Imam admitted, but they could make life very uncomfortable. "The
mujahideen can prolong the stalemate until the public at home gets frustrated,"
he said, citing last week's US elections. "That is the start of defeat.
That is the victory of [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar."
Backstory
In some ways life was revolutionised after
US warplanes and their Afghan allies toppled the Taliban on November 13 2001.
The hated medieval laws - bans on kite-flying, movies and lipstick; gory public
executions, closure of girls schools - are now a distant memory, and two elections
have passed remarkably peacefully. But greater liberties have not been matched
by increased prosperity. Although the elite enjoys gleaming mansions and expensive
vehicles - many financed through corruption or drugs - most Afghans scrape
through on pitiful salaries, live in mud-walled houses, and on average die
at age 41. Women in dirty burkas beg food from drivers caught in giant traffic
jams. Taliban suicide attacks have shaken confidence in President Karzai.
Despised warlords sit alongside women's activists in the new parliament. And
many wonder where the aid has gone - as winter closes in, Kabul will remain
in the dark, a city without electricity.
