YOU HAVE WATCHES BUT WE HAVE THE TIME Part 1 : War in Afghanistan

ON night between second and third July 2009 US marines launched largest Military operation after Vietnam in Helmand province of South Afghanistan. According to Reports Helmand is responsibility of British troops who are criticized that they have failed to secure Helmand. On other side British say that due to less and number and over stretching and Fatigue they are failing.

Operation Khanjer as it is code named is part of troop surge in Afghanistan before August Presidential elections. According to media reports 4000 marines along with 650 Afghan Police and Military officials with direct support of 50 fighter jets and Gunship helicopters.

The aim of Operation Khanjer according to Operational commander Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade

Our job is to get in there and get it back [from the Taliban] ... We don't want to give the enemy one second to think about what he's going to do. Because we're going to be pushing so goddamn hard on the enemy. Our job is to go in there and make contact with the enemy — find the enemy, make contact with the enemy and then we'll hold on. This is an enemy that's used to having small-scale attacks and having the coalition pull back. There is no pullback. We will stay on him, and we will ride him until he's either dead or surrenders.

So far according to reports coming out of US and British sources 1 American and 2 British soldiers died in fighting in south including 1 lieutenant Colonel of British Army. There are also reports of downing of two med Helicopters by Taliban (AFP).Where as 47 insurgents were killed in operation so far. And one American soldier was captured along with his three afghan Guards in Paktika province of Afghanistan.

WILL THIS INFO CENTRIC FORCE BE ABLE TO CONTAIN AND DEFEAT STONE AGE TALIBAN? IS THE BIG QUESTION

Taliban movement was a Phenomenon, resulting from Afghan civil war.

In early 1992, the forces of Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of a powerful Uzbek militia that had been allied with Najibullah, and the Hazara faction Hizb-i Wahdat, joined together in a coalition they called the Northern Alliance. On April 15, non-Pashtun militia forces that had been allied with the government mutinied and took control of Kabul airport, preventing President Najibuillah from leaving the country and pre-empting the UN transition. Najibullah took refuge in the UN compound in Kabul, where he remained for the next four years. On April 25, Massoud entered Kabul, and the next day the Northern Alliance factions reached an agreement on a coalition government that excluded the Hizb-i Islami led by Gulbuddin Hikmatyar-the protégé of Pakistan. Rejecting the arrangement, Hikmatyar launched massive and indiscriminate rocket attacks on Kabul that continued intermittently until he was forced out of the Kabul area in February 1995. (For more on the Afghan parties, see Human Rights Watch backgrounder, Poor Rights Record of Opposition Commanders).

In June 1992 Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Tajik leader of Jamiat-i Islami, became president of the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA), while Hikmatyar continued to bombard Kabul with rockets. In fighting between the Hazara faction, Hizb-i Wahdat, and Sayyaf's Ittihad-i Islami, hundreds of civilians were abducted and killed. After ensuring that the governing council (shura) was stacked with his supporters, Rabbani was again elected president in December 1992. In January 1994, Hikmatyar joined forces with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of a powerful Uzbek militia that had been allied with Najibullah until early 1992, to oust Rabbani and his defense minister, Ahmad Shah Massoud, launching full-scale civil war in Kabul. In 1994 alone, an estimated 25,000 were killed in Kabul, most of them civilians killed in rocket and artillery attacks. By 1995, one-third of the city had been reduced to rubble.

RAPE, torture and Robbery were a common practice by these War lords. Afghans were being exploited by every war lord and his men. It was that time Taliban movement came out from no where. It was a reaction to the situation and People started joining it in hope of bringing peace to Afghanistan.

The Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. Two contrasting narratives explain the beginnings of the Taliban.[15] One is that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mullah Omar and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals.[16]

Contrary to belief OBL was not invited by Taliban. It was Barhanuddin Rabbani, an Important Tajik leader and Northern Alliance Leader who Invited Osama Bin Laden to Afghanistan and Gave his refuge.

Barhanuddin Rabbani was the one who invited bin Laden to Afghanistan when he ran into trouble in Sudan. Haji Abdul Qadeer, the recently slain Afghan minister, provided him accommodation in Jalalabad).

Taliban movement was a reaction to situation created by war lords. They had no Academic back ground. Some of them were ex students of Madrassas in Pakistan run by Jamiaat e Ulema e Islam, especially from the Madrassas of Mollana Sámi ul Haq but have no Academic back grounds and very few amongst them knew little about Sharia or any thing about Islamic Jurisprudence. According to Ahmed RashidAhmed Rashid (dissent into chaos), after their initial victories Taliban liked the taste of Power. But to run the state is a Tricky Business. They were religious students and claimed to take their ideology from Deobandi version of Islam but they soon they found out the vacuum in their ideology and beliefs. This ideological and Academic Vacuum was filled By Alqaida which soon became ally of Taliban for its own benefits. Due to advancement in ideology, soon Alqaida started having a big influence on Talibani Policies. With his money and expertise Osama bin laden soon became real mind behind Mullah Omer. The movement which in start was not a sectarian movement soon became a sectarian and ethnic movement.

What is al Qaeda? It is recommended to read my essay on the same blog

It’s interesting to note Taliban were never involved in any Terrorist activity in or out of Afghanistan. Where as Al Qaeda was the one, busy in terrorism all over the world. Taliban were reaction to warlords but soon them selves became as repressive as the war lords before them were.

Taliban were not in picture of what Al Qaeda was doing. OBL has now become son in Law of Mullah Omer. Mullah Omer, him self illiterate and having no experience of command or government was bound to act on advices of his son in law, whom he trusted.

After 911, the evidence pointed out that it was work of AL Qaeda. The revenge of US and civilized world was natural. But the way the revenge was carried out made civilized world equal to Taliban and Warlords ruling Afghanistan before arrival of Taliban.

US asked Afghanistan to hand over the criminals responsible for 911. Taliban who now completely depended of Al Qaeda refused to give OBL and other criminals and Asked for evidence. The evidence given was refuted by Taliban because they genuinely did not believe that Al Qaeda or OBL had capability to do it or they did it. Following the Ancient code of PashtunWali they refused and hence Afghanistan was invaded.

In the war against Taliban, Same Northern Alliance was Main ally of US who invited OBL and Al Qaeda to Afghanistan….

Afghanistan’s Taliban could not stand American and NATO might and soon Taliban were defeated. It is noted that Taliban after some resistance mingled in the local population and soon started reorganizing against foreign forces and their northern Alliance allies.

After the fall of Taliban, Northern Alliance got free hand to inflict revenge. They are solely responsible for the bad name which US and NATO are getting in Pashtuns. They provided human intelligence which was in fact biased to take revenge from Pashtuns.

As the United States steps up its air war, civilian casualties have climbed steadily over the past two years. Nearly 700 were killed in the first three months of 2008, a major increase over last year. In a recent incident, 47 members of a wedding party were killed in Helmand Province. In a society where clan, tribe, and blood feuds are a part of daily life, that single act sowed a generation of enmity.

Anatol Lieven, a professor of war at King's College London, says that a major impetus behind the growing resistance is anger over the death of family members and neighbors.

Lieven says it is as if Afghanistan is "becoming a sort of surreal hunting estate, in which the U.S. and NATO breed the very terrorists they then track down."

Once a population turns against an occupation (or just decides to stay neutral), there are few places in the world where an occupier can win. Afghanistan, with its enormous size and daunting geography, is certainly not one of them.

Taliban were Pashtuns and Pashtuns were targeted as if all Pashtuns were Taliban. This hostility towards Pashtuns soon gave Taliban movement color of Pashtun National struggle or a resistance for Pashtun rights.

To make matters worse, the US-backed anti-Pashtun warlords of the Northern Alliance are in an endless wrangle to keep a firm clout in Kabul, despite the fact that Mr Karzai expelled some of these militia leaders from his cabinet. Their clinging to power continues to derail the process of national reconciliation. The Pashtuns see Karzai as a masquerade for these predatory warlords. Like swashbuckling pirates who threaten anyone who stands in their way of illegal and sectarian campaigns. The militia of the Northern Alliance, propelled to power by the American led invasion, use the Western presence as an insurance policy for their subsequent sectarian agenda, prolonging their control of the loin share of the state bureaucracy. The minority-dominated government in Kabul helps the Taliban to manipulate the current Pashtun marginalisation and growing apathy that are mostly living in the south, east and west of Afghanistan. The equilibrium of political power is maintained by NATO and the American forces. This left most of the Pashtuns in the country side with no choice but to turn against the Americans and NATO.

The warlords of the Northern Alliance began overplaying their hands against Pashtuns in many ways, after they helped the fall of the Taliban. The 9/11 was a historical calamity for the Americans, but for the NA it was a God-sent. The mothly group of defeated and spent warlords entered once again the Afghan capital, Kabul with suitcases of American dollars. As Chalmers Johnson puts in his bestselling book The Sorrows of The Empire, “the primary strategy, however, was to reopen the Afghan civil war by having the CIA spread some $70 million in cash among the Tajik and Uzbek warlords that the Taliban had defeated.” This shows that the US got Afghanistan at a bargain-basement price, which is reminiscent of that Hindu Raja who sold one of the Indian states for a bottle of Whisky to the British invading soldiers in the nineteenth century.

The Pashtuns people comprise about 60 percent of the Afghan population who are brimming with despair and anger. They are disillusioned with the US and their imposing an unpopular regime in Kabul, which feeds into growing insurgency. This also offers the Taliban, though loathed by most Afghans for their draconian laws and an aberrant version of Islam, an opportunity for recruitments. Traditionally no government could ever have sustained its power in Kabul without the support of the Pashtuns.

Throughout Afghan history, Pashtun support has been the backbone and life-line of the central government in Kabul. Even governments with direct foreign military invasions, which were preoccupied usually with Afghan ethnic minorities, are also failing to survive for long. The Pashtuns heartland has been traditionally the graveyard of invading forces and their fantasies.

Some sane elements amongst NATO and US are now advising to negotiate with Taliban to solve the current unrest by negotiation. Any student of Political Science and History can see no troop surge can defeat Taliban. Taliban are acting on age old Afghan proverb that “you have watches but we have time”.

Operation Khanjer can have no long term effects. Taliban will again disappear in Pashtuns. Why should they fight now when they have enough time to fight in future?

Interestingly reports coming from Afghanistan suggest that Taliban are becoming against Al Qaeda. And many Influential Taliban leaders are Talking against Al Qaeda and its role.

Islamic extremists who regularly post messages to a pro-Al-Qaeda website in Egypt are accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad,” it says. “Internet criticisms of the Taliban follow a February statement from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar announcing that his movement wants to maintain positive and ‘legitimate’ relations with countries neighboring Afghanistan.”

Its time US and NATO realize that they cannot defeat Pashtuns, soviets failed now its their turn. Wise nations learn from history. Its need of time to engage Taliban in Talks and give them concessions which will help to take it away from criminal gang of Al Qaeda. And bring peace and prosperity not in Afghanistan but also in the region. The real enemy is AL QAEDA not Taliban. They are getting power only due to disregard to Pashtuns. The Allies in Afghanistan are not allies but the enemies who have done enough damage. US should take charge and concentrate on building relations with People especially Pashtuns if it wants to save its interests in region.

As for Pakistan, it should remain neutral. US and NATO will leave Afghanistan in 10 or hundred years but Pashtuns will stay. Pakistan is Home of worlds largest Pashtun population. It’s not in Favor of Pakistan to damage its relations with Pashtuns. So as soon as possible we should get out of this war which is looking as war against Pashtuns.