The Taliban collection (2006 onwards)

[davidbfpo]

Watching Afghanistan I'd noted the suicide bomb attack on Afghan women in Kabul, but failed to read on. This FP Blog article starts with this attack, by HIG or Hezb-i-Islami a militant group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and moves onto the wider context:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._war?page=full

The ever pragmatic Hekmatyar is a weather vane, indicating the trajectory of the conflict in Afghanistan and the ever shifting domestic and regional power game. His role in the Sept. 18 bombing shows that the insurgents have the upper hand, their fight against the United States and Kabul government will continue, and Afghanistan is headed toward a messy, full-scale civil war.

[davidbfpo]

An interesting reflective article by a Reuters correspondent, which pulls together different factors and just about fits here!

A taster:

Yet in a week where the United States has gone through a bout of soul-searching about the Iraq war, history matters. Were the assumptions that led to the Afghan war also wrong from the start?

A new book by Vahid Brown and Don Rassler, “Fountainhead of Jihad, The Haqqani Nexus: 1973 to 2012” adds to that history by focusing on the Afghan group that actually did have the closest ties to al Qaeda – the so-called Haqqani network.

As I wrote here, the book has unearthed primary sources to show that the patriarch of the Haqqani network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, had as much influence on al Qaeda as the Arab fighters had on him – providing them with support and an Afghan safe haven during the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Link:http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/20...rom-the-start/

[davidbfpo]

I know the Pakistani detention of Taliban and other Afghan militant leaders has appeared before, but cannot recall which thread they are in! Nor doe the names listed below "rings any bells". Somehow I doubt their (ISI) imprisonment has been that rigorous, more like "guests within walls".

Pakistan has announced the release of seven Taliban prisoners in a bid to help the Afghan peace process.....At least one former senior militant was among the men freed "in order to further facilitate the Afghan reconciliation process", said a foreign ministry statement.....The foreign ministry statement named those freed on Saturday as Mansoor Dadullah, Said Wali, Abdul Manan, Karim Agha, Sher Afzal, Gul Muhammad and Muhammad Zai.....Some 26 Taliban detainees have been freed during the past year, it added.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23999752

[davidbfpo]

Wayback in 2012 Posts 15 & 16 refer to a book edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, 'My Life with the Taliban'.

Today they won the Michael Howard prize, awarded by Kings College London:

Alex Strick Van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn have been awarded the Sir Michael Howard Excellence Award, for their book, An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010 (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012). Alex and Felix are both PhD students in the Department based in Kandahar City in Southern Afghanistan, where they are undertaking research on their respective PhD theses. Alex and Felix are at the forefront of developing our understanding of the Taliban movement. They translated and edited Mullah Zaeff’s memoir, published as Abdul Salam Zaeff, My Life in the Taliban (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2010), and currently are developing an archive of Taliban documents which will be placed online for researchers the world over to use.

Link to archive project:http://www.anenemywecreated.com/An_E...d/Welcome.html

Link to Kings announcement:http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/department.../smhaward.aspx

[blueblood]

A statement this week from Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan's national security advisor to the BBC saying : "Why should America's enemies unnecessarily become our enemies?" may have further added to this mistrust.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30105416

I find it incredibly surprising that post Abottabad, Americans still end up getting played by Pakistani army and ISI.

[davidbfpo]

Thirty one smaller threads referring to the Taliban have been merged into this thread today. Those left alone appear to deserve to be 'stand alone'.

[davidbfpo]

The author of this article in The International Journal Stability of Security and Development is Michael Semple, once the EU's Irish expert on Afghanistan and the Taliban, now an academic @ Queens, Belfast:http://www.stabilityjournal.org/article/view/sta.eh/246

Abstract:

Reacting to corruption and oppression in the Kandahar of 1994, the Taliban is seen as working with Sunni clerics to foster a shariat movement for advancing economic justice and (corporal) punishment. Before long, the organization began substantially rewarding joiners, arming for jihad, and resisting international forces in Afghanistan. Now, with less foreign resources to fight the Taliban, the Kabul central government has unfinished business with its still-robust challengers. In the face of recent modernization in sectors such as education and media, the author details three plausible scenarios for the Taliban to maintain its core shariat mission. One scenario is for the Taliban to re-secure (through continued force) its initial goal, viz., overall state power to promote and enforce shariat across urban as well as rural areas. Another possibility projects Afghanistan as operating a dualist system of separate zones, one for the Taliban’s ‘liberated territory,’ the other for the rest of Afghanistan as governed by Kabul. Achieving scenario three would be formidable: it posits that Taliban leaders may be persuaded that their armed jihad has run its course and can profitably be disconnected from the Middle East’s broader Islamic conflict. Conceivably, then, through accommodations with a shariat-accepting Kabul government, Taliban might be able to win buy-in for peace from its own military and its own fighting priests with their strong ties to Afghan communities in Pakistan.

I expect many here will wish that by 2024 Afghanistan will be a distant memory and a land of "milk & honey".