Almost 10 years down the road since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 by US-led forces, American military might, from daisy-cutter bombs to high-tech arms, has acknowledged its failure to smoke out the Afghan Taliban, compelling Washington to initiate peace talks with the once stigmatized and hounded militia to ensure a negotiated settlement of the conflict.
The allied forces stationed in Afghanistan realize that leaving Afghanistan without negotiating with the Taliban is just not possible. In a potentially significant step towards paving the way for peace talks, the United Nations Security Council voted on June 17 to split a hitherto joint sanctions blacklist for al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.
The prime motive behind the UN move is to send a signal that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have separate agendas and that the two groups should not be treated as one anymore. Without that, it would have been highly problematic for the US and other foreign powers in Afghanistan to justify an eventual plan for cutting a peace deal with the Taliban.
Details of the divided sanctions lists were contained in two US-drafted resolutions, which the 15-nation Security Council adopted unanimously. One resolution established a Taliban blacklist and the other an al-Qaeda blacklist of individuals facing travel bans and asset freezes.
"The US believes the new sanctions regime for Afghanistan will serve as an important tool to promote reconciliation, while isolating extremists," the American ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said in a statement. She added that the move sent a clear message to the Taliban that there was a future for those militants who separated from al-Qaeda, renounced violence and abided by the constitution of Afghanistan.
Hardly 24 hours after the UN move, Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time that the US was negotiating a peace agreement with the Taliban. "Peace talks are going on with the Afghan Taliban. The foreign military and especially the United States itself are going ahead with these negotiations," Karzai told a news conference in Kabul on June 18.
A day later, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates conceded in an interview to CNN that the Barack Obama administration had made preliminary contacts with the Afghan Taliban. "We've said all along that a political outcome is the way most of these wars end," Gates added.
Well-informed diplomatic circles in Islamabad say the Obama administration has resorted to a carrot and stick policy towards the amir of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, which is aimed at persuading the fugitive extremist leader to agree to a negotiated settlement.
The diplomatic circles reminded that soon after Osama bin Laden's May 2 killing in the Abbottabad area of Pakistan at the hands of US special forces, there were reports that American and Pakistani agencies had begun an intense hunt for Mullah Omar. International media further claimed that the Obama administration had made it clear to Pakistan that American security forces would not hesitate in carrying out yet another Abbottabad-like raid to capture or kill Mullah Omar, if he is found on Pakistani soil.
However, almost seven weeks after Bin Laden's killing, there are indications that the peace talks between the US and the Afghan Taliban are finally gaining traction, keeping in view the July 2011 timeline given by Obama for the beginning of the withdrawal of American troops from war-torn Afghanistan.
Obama is expected to announce this week how many troops he plans to pull out as part of the process of handing over all combat operations against Taliban insurgents to Afghan security forces by 2014. There are currently about 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan, up from about 34,000 when Obama took office in 2009.
However, even a cursory glance clearly indicates that the Taliban, backed by a new breed of volunteers from Pakistan, are reuniting and expanding their area of operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan, which were their former stronghold.
Despite the fall of the Taliban regime in October 2001, US-led forces have failed to uproot the Taliban, who are gaining strength with every passing year. The resurgence of the Taliban fighters, who melted into the countryside after the invasion of Afghanistan, has surprised American military strategists. Bloody suicide attacks, ambushes, roadside bombs and brazen assaults on North Atlantic Treaty Organization and International Security Assistance Force troops in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan have almost become a daily norm.
The command and control structures of the Taliban are also intact, even though they have lost top military commanders like Mullah Dadullah Akhund and Mullah Akhtar Osmani.
The reclusive Taliban amir is alive and fully functional and has been sending instructions from his hideout in Pakistan to his field commanders through audio-tapes, letters and verbal messages.
In July 2004 the international media first reported Mullah Omar's presence in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province. This information was apparently gleaned by the Afghan interrogators of Mullah Sakhi Mujahid, a close aide of the amir.
On February 25, 2006, Karzai handed over intelligence to Islamabad indicating that Mullah Omar and his key associates were hiding in Pakistan. Almost a month later, Abdullah Abdullah, then the Afghan foreign minister, said he had shared with Islamabad credible intelligence about Mullah Omar's whereabouts.
When the Pervez Musharraf regime rejected the Afghan information as outdated, Abdullah countered that his government wouldn't have handed over information it did not believe in. Abdullah said most of the Taliban leaders who were actively instigating terror in Afghanistan were operating from Pakistan.
Almost six months later, on September 23, 2006, Karzai said Mullah Omar and Bin Laden were both in Pakistan, charging that Islamabad's support for militants had made Afghanistan unstable.
Addressing the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, Karzai said the Taliban leader was for sure in Pakistan, adding, "Pakistani President Musharraf knows it, and I know it ... He is truly there." Commenting on the whereabouts of Bin Laden, Karzai said, "If I told you he was in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf, my friend, would be mad at me. But if I said he was in Afghanistan, that would not be true."
In a veiled reference to Musharraf and his alleged support of militants, Karzai said some in the region were definitely using extremism as an instrument of policy to maintain political power. Karzai's claim about Bin Laden's presence has already been proven true.
On September 9, 2006, CNN ran an exclusive report about the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, stating that the one-eyed Taliban leader was living in Pakistan, though not in the same area where Bin Laden was thought to be.
Quoting US intelligence sources, the report said: "The Taliban leader is hiding in Quetta or its environs." On January 17, 2007, Afghan intelligence released a video in which a captured Taliban spokesman confessed that Mullah Omar was hiding in Quetta under the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Afghan agents had arrested Abul Haq Haqi, a former Taliban spokesman known to the media as Doctor Mohammad Hanif, in the eastern province of Nangarhar. He confirmed that he was picked up after he had entered Afghanistan from Pakistan and that he had come to the country on a mission after seeing his amir. He was further quoted as telling his interrogators that Mullah Omar was running a shadow government from Quetta, complete with military, religious and cultural councils.
However, on November 21, 2009, British newspaper The Sunday Times claimed that in the face of the allegations about the presence of the Taliban leaders in Quetta, they were moving to the volatile port city of Karachi, where it would be impossible for the Americans to target them with the help of their drones.
On December 1, 2009, Newsweek magazine reported that Karachi was the safest place for them in Pakistan, as they would not attract attention by keeping a low profile and not fomenting violence. Therefore, Newsweek claimed, the Taliban leadership was steadily migrating from Balochistan to Karachi "where, well out of America's reach, they can operate more freely".
The February 2010 arrest of the Taliban's number two, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi first gave credence to American claims that Mullah Omar had already shifted his base from Quetta to Karachi, considering it a much safer place. Karachi's large Pashtun population, around 3.5 million, could be relied on to protect the Taliban, who mostly belong to the same ethnic group.
In January 2011, international media reports claimed that Mullah Omar had suffered a massive heart attack, following which he was taken to a Karachi hospital (by intelligence sleuths) to be treated for several days. But as usual, the Pakistani Foreign Office strongly refuted these reports as baseless, in the same manner it used to deny reports about Bin Laden's presence in Pakistan.
On May 23, almost three weeks after Bin Laden's killing, the Afghan private television station TOLO reported that the Taliban's supreme leader had been killed while traveling from Quetta to the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan.
A spokesman of the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, promptly rejected the report and asserted that Mullah Omar was in Afghanistan - not Pakistan. The report was subsequently refuted by a senior Afghan intelligence official who maintained that the Taliban leader had not been killed but that he might have been taken into custody by the ISI following Bin Laden's killing because he was no longer able to contact his people in Afghanistan.
Yet, on May 27, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that some higher-ranking American officials had met with a senior aide to Mullah Omar at least three times in recent months in the first direct exploratory peace talks.
These meetings were facilitated by Qatar and Germany, but the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US State Department had been present each time, meeting with Tayyab Agha, who is a personal assistant to Mullah Omar and considered quite close to him.
At the same time, there were reports that Abul Haq Haqi, the former Taliban spokesman, had played a key role in the US-Taliban communication to pave the way for a negotiated end to the conflict in Afghanistan. Haqi was arrested by US and Afghan intelligence agents from a secret location in Afghanistan in January 2007 and is now acting as a mediator between Mullah Omar and Washington.
According to the proposed peace formula, the US offered the Taliban control over the south of Afghanistan, while leaving the north for other political forces under American influence. But the formula was rejected by the Taliban, saying it could lead to the disintegration of Afghanistan.
The Taliban have always rejected peace talks with the United States as long as foreign forces remain in Afghanistan. However, privately, they have reportedly insisted through intermediaries on direct meetings with senior US officials.
In a major development, the Quetta shura led by Mullah Omar has decided to distance itself from al-Qaeda, at a time when an international reconciliation process gathers pace for a negotiated settlement. Well-informed diplomatic sources in Islamabad say there is a possibility of the Taliban parting ways with al-Qaeda, especially when there is a growing realization among the Taliban that their links to the international terrorist network threaten their long-term survival and their efforts to moderate the image of the Taliban.
The long-time alliance between al-Qaeda and the Taliban was rooted in Bin Laden's personal friendship with Mullah Omar, who now deems it fit, after the al-Qaeda leader's demise, to break with al-Qaeda and negotiate a settlement with Western powers.
The May 8 statement issued by the Quetta shura on Bin Laden's death shows the Taliban now want to distance themselves from al-Qaeda. Although it described Bin Laden's killing as a great tragedy, it neither condemned the death nor announced retribution, as had been its routine in the past when commenting on such deaths in official statements.
The statement seemed to have been drafted carefully by the Quetta shura elders to convey a subtle message from Mullah Omar to international powerbrokers that he was ready to distance the Afghan Taliban from al-Qaeda, which is a prime demand of the United States for entering into a peace dialogue with the Taliban.
In the statement, issued on the Quetta shura's Web site, Voice of Jihad, the Taliban described Bin Laden as the "Great Martyr Sheikh Osama bin Laden", and dismissed claims by US officials that his death would impact the war in Afghanistan. The declaration said:
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan extends its deep condolences to the family of the martyr, to his followers and to fighter mujahideen on this great tragedy. We pray to the Almighty Allah to accept the sacrifice of the martyr. May, the Almighty Allah, salvage Islamic ummah [community] from the current situation of crisis due to the impact of the blessing of the sacred jihad and martyrdom of the martyr."
The statement described Bin Laden as the leader of the global jihad, saying he led the legitimate cause against the Israeli state and the jihad against the Christian and Jewish aggressions in the Islamic world. The statement added:
"The martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden will give a new impetus to the current jihad against the invaders in this critical phase of jihad. The tides of jihad will gain strength and width. The forthcoming time will prove this both for the friends and the foes, if God is willing."
The statement followed days of speculation that Mullah Omar actually wanted to distance his group from al-Qaeda, especially when Bin Laden was no more. In fact, the Quetta shura statement was released five days after his death and it seems strange that the Taliban did not announce any retribution, unlike the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban) which threatened to avenge the killing.
Analysts believe ties between al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban were weakened to a great extent after allied forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, primarily because the goals of the two organizations were not closely aligned. While al-Qaeda is focused on worldwide jihad against the West and the establishment of a religious super state in the Muslim world, the Afghan Taliban are focused on Afghanistan and have shown zero interest in attacking targets outside their country.
Having fought an endless war for almost a decade now, both the Western allies and the Taliban seem to have realized that it should come to an end, as early as possible.
However, the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment have serious reservations about a "selective approach" by the US in peace talks with the Taliban and want the inclusion of other insurgent groups, apart from the one led by Mullah Omar.
Other groups like the Haqqani network, allegedly based in North Waziristan, the Salafi faction of the Taliban that controls Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan and the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have so far not been included in the peace talks.
"We want all these groups to be part of any engagement in Afghanistan ... all of them have genuine stakes there. Without any of them, no arrangement can succeed," a senior Pakistani official was quoted by the English daily, The Express Tribune, as saying on June 20, requesting anonymity.
The Pakistani official said that the issue was at the center of discussions at talks during Karzai's recent trip to Islamabad when the two countries launched a bilateral commission to seek peace in Afghanistan. The commission, which is headed by the countries' chief executives and includes military and spy chiefs, is the first serious effort that indicates a parallel arrangement to carry forward negotiations with the Taliban without American involvement.
"That is what we will like to move forward with ... Americans are keeping us at a distance from any development. This is our answer to them: we can do it better without you," the official said.
He claimed that the Afghan president had also expressed reservations about the West's way of handling the Afghan problem and assured that Pakistani authorities would focus more on peace negotiations through this bilateral mechanism. Interestingly, at his June 18 press conference in Kabul, Karzai clearly indicated that instead of waiting for the US to militarily weaken the Taliban, he would like Pakistan to help end the dispute. "Getting Pakistan's help in peace talks is very important for us," he said.
The resurgence of the Taliban has made things difficult for the allied forces in Afghanistan, especially when there is war weariness back home. American people are asking for an end to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because of the strain they are creating on the exchequer. Afghan leaders, too, have been making headway to deal with a post-withdrawal Afghanistan.
Without talking to the Taliban, the American withdrawal is likely to be risky. The Afghan government simply doesn't have the capacity or ability to hold a fragile country together without the extremely costly and unpopular American war effort.
Therefore, the cold, hard logic of economics and democratic toll of public opinion seems to have prevailed on the US administration in its decision to pursue a negotiated settlement of the Afghan conflict rather than carrying on an endless war that seemingly cannot be won.
(The writer Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto Murder Trail: From Waziristan to GHQ).
