Seeds
of Uncertainty, and Pride
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management & South Asia Terrorism Portal
Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management
Just as
the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commanders
in Afghanistan began to sense some ‘gains’ in Afghanistan,
observing that fatalities and ‘enemy initiated attacks’
had declined, for the first time in the war, through 2011,
and that the trend appeared to be continuing into the
early months of 2012, the Taliban
declared their Spring Offensive 2012, codenamed Al
Farouq, kicking up their operations dramatically.
The escalation came in the wake of increasing political
uncertainty, with the hardening of US President Barack
Obama’s stance on the withdrawal of US Combat Forces from
Afghanistan “by 2014”, and the commencement of the first
phase of withdrawal.
ISAF data
had indicated a drop of 9 per cent in ‘enemy initiated
operations’ in 2011 over 2010, and a further drop of as
much as 21 per cent in the first three months of 2012,
as against these same period in 2011. Total fatalities
dropped from 10,826 in 2010 to 8,942 in 2011, with only
civilian fatalities registering an increase, from 2,777
to 3,021, over this period.
Year
|
ANA
|
ANP
& Local
|
ISAF
|
Civilian
|
Militant
|
2007
|
278
|
688
|
232
|
1523
|
4500
|
2008
|
259
|
724
|
295
|
2118
|
5000
|
2009
|
292
|
639
|
521
|
2412
|
4610
|
2010
|
821
|
1292
|
711
|
2777
|
5225
|
2011
|
511
|
569
|
566
|
3021
|
4275
|
2012
|
70
(July 1)
|
133
(July 1)
|
223
(July 1)
|
871
(July 1)
|
1592
(July 1)
|
Total
|
2231
|
4045
|
2548
(Since 2001: 3070)
|
12722
(Since 2001: 18,003)
|
25202
(Since 2001: 39,015)
|
Source:
Compiled from multiple sources by the South
Asia Terrorism Portal.
|
With the
announcement of the Taliban’s Al Farouq Spring
Offensive, commencing May 3, 2012, however, these positive
trends have registered a sharp reversal. Al Farouq,
the Taliban announcement of May 2, 2012, declared, would
aggressively target "foreign invaders, their advisors,
their contractors, all those who help them militarily
and in intelligence." The Spring Offensive was named
after Islam's second Caliph, Omar Al-Farouq, known for
his military advances in Asia and the Arab world during
the 7th century. Significantly, the Taliban
announcement came hours after Taliban insurgents, armed
with guns, suicide vests and a bomb-laden car, attacked
a heavily fortified compound used by Westerners in Kabul,
killing seven people and wounding more than a dozen others
on May 2, 2012.
Since then,
the country has witnessed resurgence of violence to an
unprecedented level. Month to month comparisons indicated
that April 2012 registered a three per cent increase in
“enemy initiated attacks”, rising dramatically to 20 per
cent in May 2012, over May 2011. There were an estimated
3,000 ‘enemy initiated attacks’ in May 2012, as against
some 2,500 attacks in May 2011. The United Nations Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) noted, further, on June
26, 2012, that 214 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded
in just the preceding week, in 48 separate incidents.
On June 12, 2012, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Parliament,
"I have noticed that these days, in the past one,
two or three months, attacks on our soldiers, police and
intelligence officers have increased. Every day, 20 to
25 of our youths sacrifice their lives for this homeland
and are martyred." The Institute for Conflict
Management database recorded at least 20 high fatality
incidents (10 or more killings) between May 1, 2012, and
June 30, 2012, in addition to another 16 such incidents
in the first four months of the year.
In one
of the most prominent attacks since the announcement of
Al Farouq, at least 23 people, including 14 civilians,
three hotel guards, five Taliban militants and one Afghan
Policeman, were killed in a gunfight, between militants
and Security Forces (SFs), which occurred following the
seizure by terrorists of the Spozhmai Hotel, outside Kabul,
in the night of June 21, 2012. Armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled
grenades, the terrorists had stormed the hotel, shooting
dead the hotel guards, and taking more than 40 people
hostage. A 12-hour long siege was brought to an end in
the morning of June 22, 2012, when five terrorists were
shot dead by Afghan SFs, supported by helicopter gunships
from the US-led ISAF. There were more than 300 people
in the hotel at the time of the attack.
Widely
divergent assessments are currently emanating from the
US regarding the trajectory of violence in Afghanistan.
Republican Kathleen C. Hochul claimed, on May 24, 2012,
"A year ago, 50 percent of the country [Afghanistan]
was still under Taliban control; now it's down to about
25 percent." On the other hand, Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Dianne Fienstein and House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Mike Rogers asserted, on May 6, 2012,
that the Taliban was stronger than it was before Obama’s
‘surge’. President Obama has conceded that the trends
in Afghanistan are far from reassuring, even as he insists
that the withdrawal plans are “irreversible”, declaring,
“The Taliban is still a robust enemy, and the gains are
still fragile.” The Afghan Taliban (or Quetta Shura) headed
by Mullah Omar, Hizb-e-Islami, the Haqqani Network, the
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and al
Qaeda, retain the wherewithal to fight
the SFs in Afghanistan, and are increasingly reinforced
by a number of Pakistani terrorist formations. In another
disturbing signpost, the Failed State Index saw Afghanistan
rising from the 11th position among States
at extreme risk in 2005, to the 6th position
in 2012.
Almost
all of Afghanistan is now witness to some levels of violence.
As one local commentator noted, “the Taliban are spreading
like wild fire” in the north, which was once the most
peaceful part of Afghanistan. Indeed, just three Provinces
in the country – Dayakundi in Central Afghanistan, Sare-Pol
in the North and Badakshan in the Northeast – remain free
of ISAF fatalities (the most consistently maintained index
of violence in the country). The Taliban are ranging out
from their original strongholds in the South and Southeast,
to spread across the Central, Eastern, Northern and North
Western regions, and have brought key NATO supply lines
between Tajikistan and the Kunduz and Baghlan Provinces
under repeated attack. Major clashes have also been recorded
in the remote North Western Faryab Province.
Of course,
the overwhelming theatres of violence remain centred along
the AfPak border. Thus, for instance, Helmand has recorded
the largest number of cumulative fatalities, at 864, in
the country; Kandahar follows with 460; Konar, 173; Kabul
165; and Paktika, 134. It has long been abundantly clear,
and is now more clearly acknowledged by Washington, that
the problem of Afghanistan is, principally, Pakistan.
Kathleen Hochul thus argues, "The loose end will
always be Pakistan… It is unconscionable to me that we
are giving federal taxpayer dollars to support a country
that puts our country in harm's way."
The situation
is now further complicated by the increasing presence
on Afghan soil of Pakistan’s bête noire, the Tehrik-e-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP),
which is increasingly making common cause with the Afghan
Taliban, both to create room for manoeuvre when it comes
under pressure in Pakistan, and to launch attacks against
the ‘infidels’ and ‘invaders’ in Afghanistan. Pakistani
officials claim that some six to seven hundred TTP militants
have set up bases in Afghanistan, facing the Mohmand Agency
in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan;
another four to five hundred were based across the border
from the Bajaur Agency; and an estimated 300, across the
border from the Upper and Lower Dir Districts of Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The total strength of the TTP in Afghanistan
Pakistani sources claim, is around 1,500, principally
based in Kunar and Nuristan, where US-led coalition forces
abandoned the more remote outposts after suffering heavy
casualties in 2009, and where the Afghan Government has
little physical presence. Reports indicate that the ‘deputy
chief’ of the TTP, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, was currently
operating from the Kunar Province, while Maulana Fazlullah,
head of the Swat chapter of TTP, was believed to be based
in the Nuristan Province. Significantly, on December 10,
2010, the head of the TTP in Upper and Lower Dir, Hafizullah,
and two of his aides, Dr. Wazir and Muftahudin alias
Shabbar, were killed in US drone strikes in Afghanistan’s
Kunar Province. US air strikes also killed at least 35
TTP militants in the Paktia Province, when a group of
about 100 TTP militants fired missiles and rockets at
a convoy of foreign troops on July 23, 2011. Pakistani
authorities also claim that TTP cadres were crossing in
from Afghanistan to execute attacks in Pakistan. In the
latest of these attacks, on June 24, 2012, TTP terrorists
located in the Kunar Province, crossed over into the Upper
Dir area of KP and abducted 17 Pakistani soldiers. Six
of them were beheaded on the same day, another seven on
the next day, and, four bodies were recovered on June
27, 2012. In retaliation, Pakistan has resumed artillery
barrages along and across the AfPak border and ground
operations in the Upper Dir area. TTP spokesman Mullah
Mansoor was among 34 militants killed in clashes with
Pakistani SFs in the Upper Dir area since June 28. No
TTP fatalities have been reported on Afghan territory.
Pakistan
has opportunistically sought to cash in on these disturbances,
launching an unrelenting succession of artillery and rocket
barrages into Afghanistan since mid-2011. On June 26,
2011, for instance, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused
Pakistan of firing over 470 rockets into the Kunar and
Nangarhar Provinces, bordering Pakistan. Officials put
the death toll at 36 civilians, including 12 children.
Subsequently, on July 5, 2011, the Afghan Interior Ministry
claimed that nearly 800 rockets had been fired from Pakistan
into Afghan territory since early June, killing 42 civilians
and injuring 55. Separately, Fazlulluh Wahidi, the Governor
of the Kunar Province, stated that 645 rockets had been
fired just into the Kunar Province, killing 22 people
and wounding 40.
On June
27, 2011, Pakistan’s chief military spokesman Major General
Athar Abbas claimed that there had been five "major
attacks" by the TTP, launched from Afghanistan, which
had killed 55 Pakistani SF personnel in a month. Justifying
the missile and artillery barrages into Afghanistan, he
argued, “The fleeing militants were engaged by the SFs
and a few accidental rounds going across cannot be ruled
out.”
Ironically,
no report in the open source indicates that even a single
TTP militant has been killed in the Pakistani shelling
on Afghan territory, and President Karzai has repeatedly
raised this question with Pakistani authorities, even
as he has come under rising pressure in Parliament on
demands that Afghanistan break all ties with Pakistan
because the “non-stop shelling” has killed many civilians.
Indeed,
while the presence of the TTP in border areas of Afghanistan
is a reality, Pakistan has seized upon this as an opportunity
to push its dominance further into Afghanistan, as ISAF
presence will erode. The objective appears to be to force
more and more civilians out of these areas, in order to
create wider and safer sanctuaries for the al-Qaeda-Taliban
combine – even if the TTP benefits temporarily. Thus,
Afghanistan’s Eastern Border Police Commander Aminullah
Amerkhail remarked, “Pakistan is looking to clear out
these areas in order to deploy fighters who will pursue
Pakistan’s interest once the international community leaves
Afghanistan.” Moreover, rejecting the Pakistani claim
of “a few accidental rounds going across”, Afghan Ministry
of Defence spokesman Major General Zahir Azimi noted,
“The shelling is far too regular to be a mistake. The
shelling does not appear to be targeting fleeing fighters,
but villages.”
Underlining
the problem, White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest
noted, on June 22, 2012, “Our concern about militants
using Pakistan as a safe haven from which to launch attacks
against our forces is well known.” The Afghan Government,
which has for long maintained that Pakistan has been engaged
in creating trouble in Afghanistan, on June 19, 2012,
had accused Pakistan of involvement in the December 6,
2011, attack on the minority Shias marking the Ashura
rite on a Kabul street, killing at least 55 people, including
women and children.
It is under
these unsettled circumstances that the ‘transition’ or,
as the Afghans express it, the ‘inteqal’, is being implemented,
with territories in the country being progressively handed
over to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and
Afghan civil administration. Phase I of the transition
commenced on July17, 2011, and included the handover of
three Provinces and four provincial Capitals. Phase II
commenced on December 1,2011, and gave over another five
Provinces, eight provincial capitals and 40 Districts
to the Afghans, bringing roughly half the country under
direct Afghan control. Phase III commenced on May 13,
2012, and will take an additional eleven Provinces, all
provincial capital, and 122 Districts out of ISAF control,
and would also, by the time of its completion in November
2012, bring 75 per cent of the country under direct Afghan
security and civil administration.
The process
of security transition is being conducted under the Inteqal
(Transition) Framework, laid out at the London and Kabul
conferences on Afghanistan in 2010, under which the international
community’s civilian and military representatives decided
to shift their responsibilities to the Afghans to a supporting,
mentoring, and eventually sustaining role in security,
governance and development. The Joint Afghan-NATO Inteqal
Board (JANIB) established at the Kabul Conference in July
2010 recommended provinces and districts for transition
to the Afghan Government based on an assessment of the
prevailing levels of security and governance. The five
phase transition aims to put the ANSFs fully in the lead
for security across the country by the end of 2014. The
current strength of the ANSF stands at 321,000, [including
195,000 Afghan National Army (ANA) and 126,000 Afghan
National Police (ANP)], and is expected to rise to 352,000
by end 2012.
While the
transition and withdrawal processes have enormously increased
uncertainties in Afghanistan, fuelling both Pakistani
and Taliban ambitions and raising the pitch of violence,
the outcomes are far from satisfactory for either side.
Though it is difficult to establish trends over the short
period since the transition, especially across Provinces
where partial control has been ceded to the ANSF, partial
data suggests that there may have been a spike in violence
in at least some of the areas where control has been ‘transferred’
to the Afghans.
On the
other hand, the ANSF has demonstrated improved capabilities
to counter the insurgents. Significantly, ISAF Deputy
Commander Lieutenant General Adrian J. Bradshaw on
April 25, 2012, had noted:
We
saw considerable improvements in the quality and
capability of the Afghan National Security Forces
also over last year. They showed, in the late part
of last year, and over the winter, their confidence
at planning and coordinating and leading brigade-level
operations, again, in the hardest insurgent areas,
in the south and in the east, working alongside
ISAF, with assistance from ISAF, but with Afghan
forces in the lead. They managed to coordinate these
operations very well with the police and with the
local authorities, and in a number of areas they've
shown competence and capability, which has not only
surprised us, it surprised them.
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Similarly,
the NATO Secretary General’s Annual Report, released in
January 2012, observed that the transition was on track,
and that security conditions had remained “good” in transitioned
areas. According to NATO, since October 2011, 89 per cent
of combat operations were ‘partnered’, and 42 per cent
were led, by Afghan Forces.
Perhaps
in the most remarkable operation in the ANSF’s history,
Afghan Forces killed 36 terrorists enormously containing
the damage when squads of heavily armed Taliban fighters
and suicide bombers launched multiple coordinated attacks
across Afghanistan, targeting government offices, foreign
embassies and military bases on April 15, 2012. With a
powerful focus on Kabul, Taliban cadres even tried to
enter the Afghan Parliament, firing rockets and small
arms, but were engaged, principally by ANSFs and driven
back. 18 hours of gunfire in Kabul ended on April 16,
2012, with just 11 ANSF personnel and four civilians killed,
and one terrorist taken alive. The incident has emerged
as a source of tremendous pride among the ANSFs and a
wider population that has long remained ambivalent in
its orientation to the ANA and ANP.
The ANSF
is, of course, still wracked by teething troubles, and
this includes rogue soldiers, who were blamed for at least
25 attempted suicide attacks in just two months preceding
a May 29, 2011, report. Indeed, the Taliban recently announced
the formation of “a committee… assigned to invite members
of the Afghan security forces to join their insurgency”.
Worse, the incidence of “green on blue” fratricidal attacks
by ANSF against ISAF personnel appears to be increasing,
aggravated by a spate of unfortunate incidents, including
the horrific mass murder of 17 Afghan civilians by an
American soldier, the burning of Korans, and the video
of Marines urinating on the Taliban dead.
The US
elections and an acute crisis of the American economy
are exerting extraordinary pressure for an accelerated
withdrawal from Afghanistan, with widespread fears of
the ‘transition’ being undermined by undue haste, delivering
the war ravaged country into the predatory embrace of
an expansionist and lawless Pakistan and its Taliban proxies.
The direct costs of the Afghan war for the US have variously
been estimated at between USD 530 billion and USD 1.7
trillion, but with vast hidden and secondary costs, including
trillion dollar interest payments on the costs of veteran
benefits and care, as well as on the servicing of war
debt. The US economy is, today, burdened by trillion dollar
deficits, and Federal Debt stands equal to the country’s
Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The mood in Washington is
getting both desperate and ugly – with demands for drastic
reductions in war expenditures, on the one hand, and for
punitive action against Pakistani mischief, on the other,
becoming daily more strident.
Nevertheless,
there are strong indications that there will be no abrupt
‘flight’ from Afghanistan. Indeed, on March 20, 2012,
James Miller, US Defense Undersecretary of Policy, in
his Statement to the House Armed Services Committee on
“Developments in Afghanistan” stated explicitly, “The
United States’ objectives in Afghanistan remain to deny
safe havens to al Qaeda, and to deny the Taliban the ability
to overthrow the Afghan Government.” While estimates vary,
it is clear that a very substantial US presence will be
maintained indefinitely in Afghanistan. In August 2011,
for instance, it was reported that the Pentagon was trying
to strike a deal with the Afghan Government to leave 25,000
US troops in Afghanistan until at least 2024. It is useful
to recall that the total strength of US troops in Afghanistan
in 2009, when President Obama took charge, was just 34,000.
Crucially,
any substantial presence of Western Forces – certainly
including a substantial complement of drones, high technology
assets, and Special Forces – in Afghanistan beyond the
2014 ‘withdrawal’ and ‘end of combat operations’, will
prevent Pakistan from intervening too openly in favour
of the Taliban, and will clearly make a quick and decisive
‘victory’ over Kabul impossible. This assessment is reinforced
by the improving capabilities and strength of the ANSFs.
Pakistan has, moreover, failed to understand its near-complete
isolation in the international community today, and to
appreciate the dangers of what one commentator has described
as “playing chicken with a superpower.” In any event,
with a rising crisis at home, Pakistan’s continued intervention
in Afghanistan can only prove suicidal. Between 2003 and
July 1, 2012, Pakistan experienced no less than 42,264
terrorism related fatalities, with terrorist violence
afflicting every Province in the country, including its
‘heartland’ in Punjab. The country’s economy is in a shambles,
and can only worsen, as populations rise by an estimated
30 million by 2020. Fanaticism and the ideology of violent
jihad are rapidly growing more entrenched across
the country, even as the overwhelming proportion of the
population lacks employable skills, and is progressively
harnessed by the extremists. Every voice of criticism
or dissent is quickly stifled, both by the terrorist constituency
and its radicalized supporters, as well as by an opportunistically
Islamist political and military establishment. Pakistan,
today, has hostile relations with all her neighbours,
even as the Army’s domestic hegemony comes under increasing
challenge from renegade Islamist radicals. Indeed, the
internal dynamic of extremism, state decline and fragmentation
has become self-propelling in Pakistan, and centrifugal
forces can only worsen rapidly if the war in Afghanistan
continues for an extended period of time.
18 months
still remain for the completion of the transition in Afghanistan,
and there is no reason to believe that the US and the
wider West will repeat the folly of 1989, and abandon
this region to Islamist terrorist depredations once again.
While elements of uncertainty remain, and the road to
peace in Afghanistan can be expected to be long, there
is reason to believe that the more pessimistic of past
prognostications will not come to pass. For once, despite
the enduring pain, Afghanistan looks to the possibility
of a more positive future – even as its unrelenting enemy,
Pakistan, can hope for no more than a deepening darkness
beyond.
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