The Taliban collection (2006 onwards)

**davidbfpo** · 07-31-2015

It must be the week to say leaders are dead:

Chief of the Haqqani militant network and father of Sirajuddin Haqqani, Jaluluddin Haqqani, died almost a year ago of natural causes and was buried in Afghan province of Khost, according to reliable sources among the Afghan Taliban.While news of Jalaluddin Haqqani's death had been making rounds for almost a month now, multiple credible sources in Taliban confirmed today that he had died of illness almost a year ago.
The militant group has not officially given out a statement over Haqqani's demise yet.
Sources, however, say Sirajudin Haqqani, Jalaluddin's son, has been running the militant network for over a year now, ever since his father's illness.

Link:http://www.dawn.com/news/1197598/jal...aliban-sources

The Haqqani group was (is) noted as a very capable insurgent group and were loyal to Mullah Omar. Their name appears on many threads and there is an old (2011) RFI thread on them:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=10387

**omarali50** · 07-31-2015

so the multibillion dollar intelligence agencies of the West did not know this till yesterday? isnt that interesting?

**davidbfpo** · 09-25-2015

A column by an Indian SME and ex-RAW insider. The full title being:

Don’t Blame The ISI
It didn’t create the Taliban. The elected government of Pakistan did

Link:http://indianexpress.com/article/opi...blame-the-isi/

It starts:

Some commentators have described the late General Hamid Gul as the father of the Taliban. Gul was no doubt the most virulent anti-Indian face among all ISI chiefs.
But it is not true that he created the Taliban, which was the brainchild of General Naseerullah Babar, Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister during her second tenure as prime minister (1993-96). Benazir did not trust the ISI. She tried to cut it down to size by firing Gul during her first tenure (1988-1990) for the ISI’s failure to oversee mujahideen operations to capture Jalalabad after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal.

**davidbfpo** · 10-16-2015

**120mm** · 11-19-2015

Originally Posted by davidbfpo

I'm not sure if this will link correctly here, but both Abdur Rahman Khan and the Soviets understood geopolitical reality.

Abdur Rahman Khan resettled Pashtuns in key areas where they a) conducted genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Hazara and b) provided a presence in every district, which lines were redrawn to provide "divide and conquer" in geographically defensible areas.

The Soviets attacked the drainage basins to depopulate these areas and drive them into more easily managed cities.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/afgha...spock-articles

Headwaters in the Central Highlands

Rivers always have relevance, but that significance varies based on their geographic context. In countries like Colombia, for example, many rivers are navigable and serve as transportation avenues through or around physical barriers. In countries like Afghanistan they are the opposite; the rivers there are the physical barriers to movement. Their importance, however, is indisputable in regard to agriculture, which directly relates to Afghanistan’s (ethnic) population distribution, peoples’ livelihoods, resource use, and the country’s overall (in)stability.

That a significant number of major rivers have headwaters in the higher elevations of the country’s Central Highlands—in Bamyan, western Maidan Wardak, and western Ghazni Provinces—in proximity to each other often escapes attention. Control over this area, at least in theory, would allow control over Afghanistan’s lifeblood, if the group who controls it is powerful enough. Hence, this is an important issue when considered in the context of ethnic politics and regional stability.