[Marxism] Embedded with the Taliban

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-taliban11-2009jan11,0,7946082.story

Behind the lines with the Taliban
A Times writer joins Taliban fighters in an especially dangerous part of 
Afghanistan. The men appear to have no fear of troops, and prove to be 
gracious hosts.
By Paul Watson

January 11, 2009

Reporting from Ghazni, Afghanistan — The main highway is "enemy 
territory" for the Taliban, a busy two-lane road where U.S. troops race 
down the middle, trying to steer clear of suicide bombers. The 
guerrillas drive it like they own it.

Grinning with contempt at a convoy of Polish troops trying to plow its 
way through traffic the other day, three Taliban fighters with guns and 
long knives concealed under their heavy woolen cloaks calmly eased into 
the other lane and beat the jam.

When they reached the edge of this provincial capital just an hour and a 
half south of Kabul, the driver pulled onto a dirt track into the 
desert, coaxing the creaking old van over a speed bump and past a 
nervous-looking Afghan army sentry. The fighters flashed him a dirty look.

Just 30 yards from the American-built highway, we were entering Taliban 
country.

The speed bump presumably makes it easier for soldiers or police to stop 
vehicles and search them for guerrillas or weapons. But government 
troops usually stand back and look the other way as Taliban fighters 
move in and out of their vast desert stronghold.

"Police and soldiers can never come to our territory," said one of the 
fighters, a 28-year-old who identified himself only as Ahmadi. "If they 
do, they won't go back safe and sound."

Seven years after a U.S.-led invasion routed the Taliban regime, 
hard-line Islamic fighters who had scattered under massive bombardment 
to their villages and rear bases in Pakistan once again govern large 
swaths of Afghanistan. Although they are strongest in the south and 
east, they have launched attacks in all regions of the country -- and 
are well dug in across regions that surround Kabul, the capital.

The U.S. military says it may need up to 30,000 more troops in 
Afghanistan by summer, almost doubling the number of American forces 
there. Commanders say that the number of U.S. deaths, which rose by more 
than a third last year to 155, according to icasualties.org, is likely 
to rise.

Despite their increasing strength and confidence, Taliban fighters 
rarely welcome foreign journalists. The guerrillas are hyper-alert to 
potential spies.

And, among the Pashtun who dominate the Taliban, an ancient code of 
honor called pashtunwali demands that a host protect the life of a guest 
as if it were more important than his own. That's a tall order when the 
visitor is a foreigner traveling through countryside rife with 
kidnappers and competing militant factions during an escalating war.

Some Taliban commanders considered The Times' request for safe passage 
into their territory, only to reject a visit as too risky. But the 
Ghazni Talibs, eager to show the extent of their control, finally agreed.

With a bunch of plastic grapes and a Koranic verse as rearview mirror 
ornaments, the guerrillas' vehicle blended in with hundreds of minibus 
taxis that shuttle passengers through the Afghan countryside.

The Talibs, whose thick, black beards and large turbans are as much 
emblems of a proud Pashtun heritage as symbols of allegiance to the 
militant mullahs, said they make regular trips to and from Ghazni city, 
and up the highway to Kabul.

In Ghazni province, at least, the Taliban militants are not frightened 
fighters skulking in caves, sneaking out to ambush and then scurrying 
off to another mountain hide-out. They live comfortably in the farming 
villages where many of them were born, holding territory, recruiting and 
training new troops, reveling in what they see as God's gift of 
inevitable victory against heathen foreign occupiers.

"In the early days, there were many spies, so we had to move around in 
small groups," Ahmadi said. "But now we are in groups of 300 or 400. We 
have no problems."

During their downtime, they watch satellite TV and stay current with 
each day's news. Lately, they've seen a lot of bombing and corpses on Al 
Jazeera television coverage of the Israeli offensive against Hamas in 
the Gaza Strip. The Ghazni guerrillas said the images made them more 
determined than ever to fight, and if necessary die, to expel U.S. 
troops and their allies, whom they consider Crusaders bent on destroying 
Islam.

"We are ready to give our blood for the freedom of our homeland, and 
also to end the oppression by the Americans," said Ahmadi, who masked 
his face with a black-and-white kaffiyeh, more commonly worn by 
Palestinian Arabs than his fellow Afghans.

"The Americans support Israel, and when they come all the way here, we 
must at least be ready to defend our land. Death in youth would be a 
matter of pride for us."

Satellite TV has also kept the Talibs up to date on preparations for the 
inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, whom one dismissed as 
"just another infidel," and the impending U.S. troop buildup.

The Talibs say any increase would only give them more opportunities to 
kill non-Muslims in jihad, or holy war, just as U.S.-backed mujahedin 
did in almost a decade of war to drive Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 
the 1980s.

"The Russian army had hundreds of thousands of troops here and lost. Now 
it's the Americans," said a second Talib, who refused to identify 
himself. "If they increase their force to 100,000 or 200,000, we'll 
never lose our morale. We will continue our jihad. The more soldiers 
they send, the happier we become."

Some accuse the Taliban of press-ganging villagers into the fight. But 
the Ghazni Talibs claim that eager volunteers swell their ranks by 10% a 
month, and insist that they turn many away.

"There is no need for all of them," Ahmadi said, and the second Talib 
added with a confident smile: "There isn't so much logistic support 
available either."

Despite efforts by the U.S.-led military coalition to disrupt Taliban 
commanders' ability to direct military operations from a distance, the 
guerrillas appeared to be in regular contact with their leaders, and 
acted on their orders.

After a back road rendezvous, the Talibs' van headed for the two-lane 
highway that links Afghanistan's two biggest cities, Kabul and Kandahar. 
Our driver paused a minute to let a convoy of Polish troops pass in Humvees.

Soldiers swiveling in turrets scanned us through their gun sights, but 
the troops kept moving slowly northeast to the relative safety of the 
city. We headed in the opposite direction, toward Qarabagh district, 
notorious for kidnappers.

Militants often ignore the steady traffic of military helicopters 
clattering overhead, or patrolling ground troops, and brazenly set up 
daytime checkpoints to search for foreigners, aid workers and government 
employees.

In July 2007, militants abducted 23 South Korean Christian aid workers 
along the highway as the bus they were on passed through a district 
bazaar. Two men were killed; the others were later released.

By a roundabout route, trundling through the stubble of harvested fields 
and across streams fed by snowmelt from mountains on the horizon, we 
reached a village within clear sight of a small white observation blimp 
floating on a tether above a Polish base.

A pair of Talibs, their faces obscured by head scarves, met the van with 
fingers on the triggers of their Kalashnikov assault rifles. After a 
quick frisk and a handshake, they escorted us by motorcycle to a large 
compound with towering mud-brick walls.

The building hardly had the feel of a besieged guerrilla hide-out. The 
small reception room had new white curtains, clean cushions for guests 
to recline on and a well-kept wool rug. A few framed photos of family 
elders decorated the white-painted walls.

In keeping with the Pashtun custom of generous hospitality, the 
guerrillas served glasses of steaming hot sweet tea and a bowl of white 
candied almonds. In no hurry to end the conversation, they laid out 
bowls of chicken broth, yogurt, a shaker of salt and freshly baked 
flatbread for lunch.

As the discussion progressed, and the Talibs relaxed, most unwound the 
cloths covering their faces. One reached into a camouflaged vest bulging 
with a bayonet and banana clips of ammunition for his AK-47 and pulled 
out a small round tin to enjoy a pinch of chewing tobacco.

Any indulgence that harms the body is haram, or forbidden, to strictly 
observant Muslims. But in Taliban-held villages, the guerrillas' taste 
for chew wasn't the only hint that the mullahs may be taking a softer 
line on at least some of their old edicts, though they continue to 
execute people deemed un-Islamic enemies, such as teachers and other 
government workers.

The Talibs' van carried a selection of music cassettes for their tape 
deck. When the Taliban ran most of the country, cassettes were seized at 
checkpoints, and countless strands of shiny brown tape were strung up on 
poles to blow in the wind like raffia dolls.

Taliban enforcers used to grab men's beards, and anything less than a 
fistful of facial hair warranted a severe beating on the spot. But 
several men walking the roads in Taliban territory were cleanshaven. 
Even one who attended the meeting was without a whisker. The others 
called the bashful, baby-faced Talib "The Doctor."

The Talibs admitted burning government schools, but argued that doesn't 
mean they are against education, as long as it conforms to their idea of 
proper Islamic schooling.

"Now the government is doing voter registration in schools, and we are 
against elections as long as foreigners are in the country," said the 
second Talib. "They are using schools as trenches against us. So when 
schools get burned, it is their fault."

The Taliban's courts mete out justice under Islamic Sharia law. It is 
harsh, yet popular with many Afghans tired of seeing justice go to the 
highest bidder in government courtrooms, and angry that Western donors 
have pressured President Hamid Karzai to stay the executions of most 
convicted criminals on death row.

Some of the Ghazni Talibs said they had participated in the early effort 
to support the elected government of Karzai, a fellow Pashtun, only to 
become disillusioned and take up arms against it.

One Talib showed a voter registration card with his photo on it. Another 
said he used to work as a laborer for the American military in Ghazni on 
a Provincial Reconstruction Team.

The Talibs' interpreter was a village teenager home on vacation from 
high school in Kabul. The boy said he wants to be a doctor, and was 
eager to find out about scholarship opportunities in the West, but he 
also boasted about his readiness to fight foreigners.

The Taliban is also benefiting from foreign reinforcements, and the 
guerrillas' ranks include Americans, Europeans, Arabs, Chinese and other 
fighters, said Maulavi Arsalan Rahmani, who was minister of higher 
education in the ousted Taliban government.

Now senator in the Afghan parliament, Rahmani said senior Taliban 
leaders who answered Karzai's call for reconciliation, and moved to 
Kabul and other government-controlled cities, feel betrayed by the 
promise of rapprochement. Anger is simmering among almost 60 
high-ranking Taliban defectors because the U.N. Security Council refuses 
to lift sanctions against them.

They include the Taliban's former foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed 
Mutawakel, its commerce minister, Abdul Razaq, and Qazi Habibullah, who 
served as ambassador to the Taliban's closest allies, Pakistan and Saudi 
Arabia.

That discourages other Talibs from dropping their weapons, Rahmani said.

"They don't trust the promises," he added. "They openly keep saying, 
'What good have those who have gone to the other side done? They are not 
given the rights of an Afghan.' "

Still, members of the Taliban are ready for peace and have proposed a 
three-stage plan to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and other leaders, 
Rahmani said, that would culminate in talks about what role the Taliban 
should play in the government.

Rahmani, who vowed to leave the country if the Taliban ever controlled 
it again, said the Taliban should only share power, and not run a 
government itself, because few of its leaders are qualified.

"We have indirect relations with the Taliban. They will accept our 
proposals and the government will too," he insisted. "But what we are 
not certain about is whether the international community really wants 
the war to end. We doubt it, we doubt it."

Emerging again from the desert, the Ghazni Talibs showed no fear of 
being tracked from their village base as the van kicked up a long, high 
tail of dust. They casually parked at the side of the highway, waiting 
for their guest's pickup car to make its way through an Afghan army 
checkpoint.

Their passenger safely transferred, the Talibs, waving and smiling into 
the city, headed off toward the waiting troops.

paul.watson@xxxxxxxxxxx


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu