[While trawling Canadian press in 2008, I came across a gripping account of the Taliban by Graeme Smith, a Globe and Mail Correspondent. This is what I wrote about it in The Telegraph of 8 April 2008.]
GETTING CLOSE TO THE TALIBAN
Indians know Graeme Smith well. He is the youngest captain of a test cricket team ever: he was 22 when he captained South Africa in the 2003 World Cup. He scored 277 against England at Edgbaston in 2003, and 259 at Lords in the next test, breaking Don Bradman’s record of 254 for the ground.
But there is another Graeme Smith – a Canadian reporter who has done an extraordinary video series for Toronto Globe and Mail on the Taliban. Canadian troops are fighting the Taliban along with other NATO troops, so it would have been unhealthy for Smith to go anywhere near the Taliban. But he engaged an Afghan who went and interviewed 42 Taliban fighters without their knowing they were being interviewed.
Indians are perfectly familiar with the Taliban; they were created by the Pakistanis in their madrassahs and sent to Afghanistan to fight the Russians in the early 1980s. Pakistan got much American money and arms for the service. This impression is correct but outdated. Today’s Talib fighter was barely born at the time of the proxy war against the Soviet Union; he remembers none of it. Of the 42 fighters, 12 had lost close relatives in the indiscriminate bombing that NATO specializes in, and 21 had their opium fields, the only source of comfortable living, destroyed. The Americans use helicopter gunships liberally in Afhganistan – more than in Iraq. They flew 2,764 sorties in Afghanistan in 2007 against 1,140 in Iraq. Air strikes killed about 1000 Afghan civilians in 2006 and 1500 in 2007; it is these killings, indiscriminate and unjust, that feed the Taliban. The other factor is opium. That may surprise, because the original Taliban government was very active in destroying opium cultivation. But the current generation of Taliban fighters often cites destruction of opium fields as the cause for joining. They justify opium cultivation by saying that opium is exported to and harms only kafirs.
Insurgency is most active in the south, around Kandahar; so Pashtoon tribes that inhabit that region are more heavily represented amongst the Taliban. Noorzai and Eshaqzai tribes were the source of 16 out of the 42 fighters. Only two were from the Popalzai, the tribe to which Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, belongs; one had lost relatives, and the other an opium field. When the Taliban took over in 1994-96, three tribes – Popalzai, Barakzai and Alokozai of the Zirak Durrani group – lost power; Hotak branch of Ghilzai, the tribe of Mullah Mohammed Omar, gained power. On the fall of the Taliban, the three tribes regained power, and the Ghilzai lost it.
The Taliban find refuge in Pakistan; they get medical treatment in Pakistan, and go there for R&R (rest and recreation), as the American troops in Vietnam used to go to Bangkok and Hong Kong. But their soldiers were not very complimentary towards their host country; they openly abused Pervez Musharraf. They had aggressive designs on Pakistan; they considered Peshawar and Quetta as parts of their own domain and wanted to annex them. One said that these areas were sold to Pakistan by Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan.
There is no doubt that the Taliban were originally created and trained by Pakistan; many of that generation continue in the present Taliban. Musharraf claimed to have severed relations with the Taliban in 2001, but ISI is widely believed by people in India and elsewhere to have continued secretly to support and finance the Taliban. But the current generation of the Taliban shows no sense of obligation to Pakistan. It seems to have changed its stripes in other ways too. A family in Kandahar was celebrating a wedding when four Taliban walked in with guns. The people in the wedding party were petrified; when the Taliban was in power, they could have been shot for revelry. But the fighters asked them to relax, saying they were no longer shooting revelers.
The Taliban are sophisticated users of communication technology; they distribute videos for propaganda, and send news to foreign reporters by SMS. But their view of the world is extremely naïve. They have heard of America, and identify it as the enemy. But in general, they believe they are fighting against Kafirs for an Islamic government; the content of Kafirs is extremely vague. Three of the fighters could not identify President Bush; he was called a Jew, King of America, and son of Clinton W.
Suicide bombings have been a matter of controversy amongst the Taliban. Some argued that wearing an explosive vest was cowardly, as it prevented the fighter from fighting his enemy face-to-face. In 2006, a Taliban faction even took out an advertisement in a Kandahar weekly blaming foreigners for suicide attacks and promising to stop them. But the Afghan interviewees were solidly in favour of suicide attacks, which they equated to their enemies’ air attacks. The Taliban are not very competent at suicide bombing; more than three suicide attacks were required to inflict a single casualty. But lack of competence does not reflect lack of faith; all the Taliban were convinced that suicide attacks were justified by the Quran. They did not know which part of the Quran. One told a story about a battle waged by the Prophet, where a wall could not be breached, so one fighter hauled another over the wall, knowing full well that he would be killed. But the story is apocryphal. Islam prohibits suicide; and it requires that a fighter must declare his intent to fight.
What struck me about Graeme Smith’s reports and videos was not what was there but what was not: Al Qaeda did not figure at all. This would surprise everyone who bought propaganda that the Americans invaded Afghanistan to stop Al Qaeda from attacking the west. The propaganda was persuasive in the aftermath of the New York bombings. But the Afghan mujahid does not care a hoot about a global war between Muslims and Kafirs. He is all for the expulsion of Kafirs from Afghanistan, but has no great ambitions of clearing the earth of Kafirs. He is ignorant and parochial. Graeme Smith thought, though, this might be local: that there may more Arabs and Pakistanis in eastern Afghanistan.
As Smith drove across the green fields of Pakistani Punjab, he thought that many valleys of Afghanistan could be equally lush but for the war. Everyone – Americans, Pakistanis, Indians, Russians – is intent on rescuing the Afghans from others. But this international rescue game has kept the Afghans poor and primitive, while they might have shared our good fortune.
We Indians must bear our share of responsibility for the Afghans’ plight; if we were not so keen on using the Afghans to spite the Pakistanis, their country would not be so war-torn. Pakistan has a young new leader in Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani. In all these days he has still not uttered the K-word. Maybe the time has come when we can make peace with Pakistan.
And yes – we should remove the ban on opium. Since Ambumani Ramadoss is determined to put an end to tobacco, we need another addiction. Let us take to opium in small doses; it will transform Afghanistan.
