By Raza Khan, May 24, 2010 Monday, May 24, 2010 - 2:32 PM Share
As the Los Angeles Timesreports
that failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad met Omar Khalid, the chief of
the Pakistani Taliban in Mohmand, one of Pakistan's tribal regions,
journalist Raza Khan profiles the militant chief and his faction.
Omar Khalid, whose real name is Abdul Wali, is a resident of
the town of Qandharo, and he belongs to the
Qandhari section of the Safi
tribe that lives in Mohmand. The Safis consider themselves to be part of the
Mohmand tribe, but other Mohmands do not believe that the Safis have the same
origins and generally consider them to be more religiously conservative than
other sub-tribes. The region also has fewer Safis than other Mohmand sub-tribes.
Most important, however, the Safis are considered by other Mohmand tribal
members to be the last converts to Islam among the area's tribes.[i]
Khalid, who is now in his thirties, received his education
in his village. As a youth, he worked with the banned Harakat-ul-Mujahidin, or
Movement of Holy Warriors, a militant group dedicated to fighting Indian forces
in Kashmir. During the 1990s, he traveled to
Kashmir rather than join the Taliban in fighting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.[ii] His
activities in Kashmir are unknown, possibly
because militants use code names to operate across the border. Nonetheless,
Khalid seems to have had stronger connections with Kashmiri jihadi groups than
with the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan.
He did, however, lead hundreds of his tribal fighters back to Afghanistan after 9/11 to fight
beside the Taliban.[iii]
Although Khalid's campaign is reminiscent of Sufi Muhammad's
nearby movement, which was organized at the same time, Omar Khalid adroitly
used the Lal Masjid episode in July 2007 to achieve his long-standing ambition
to become a militant commander.[iv] At that
time, he denied having any link to the Taliban or to al-Qaeda, but declared,
"If [the Taliban] come[s] to us, we will welcome them. We will continue Ghazi
Abdur Rashid's [the Lal Masjid's imam] mission even if it means sacrificing our
lives."[v]
Khalid did not seize control of the Mohmand Taliban without
a fight. He had to eliminate a rival faction led by a man named Shah Sahib.[vi] Shah
Sahib was a Salafi associated with the mainstream political group
Markaz-e-Jamiat-e-Ahl-e Hadith, which complained that Omar Khalid's Taliban
faction sanctioned the intentional killing of civilians.[vii]
Until the rise of Omar Khalid after the Lal Masjid incident, Shah Sahib's
militant group was the largest in Mohmand and directed all of its energy into
anti-U.S. and anti-NATO violence in Afghanistan. The group reportedly
included at least some fighters from the Kashmiri jihadi group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Despite mediation by Ustad Yasir, a commander loyal to
Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura, Omar Khalid attacked the Shah Sahib group
repeatedly in 2008.[viii] Shah
Sahib was killed in that fighting, which largely eliminated his organization as
a composed fighting force.[ix]
Occasional attempts to resurrect it have been unsuccessful.[x]
Omar Khalid's elimination of Shah Sahib is notable because TTP amir Baitullah Mehsud opposed such
clashes and was attempting to eliminate fighting between Taliban groups.[xi]
Qari Shakeel and
Asad Sayeed
Omar Khalid's two most important sub-commanders are Qari
Shakeel and Asad Sayeed. Qari Shakeel is from the Michini area of Mohmand,
close to Peshawar,
and he reportedly is a former criminal. Asad Sayeed, who earned a degree in
medicine from Khyber Medical College
in Peshawar, is
a rigid ideologue who ascribes to al-Qaeda's takfiri ideology.[xii]
Taliban Strength
in Mohmand
Omar Khalid claims that he has the backing of about 2,500
militants, but his forces seem to lack popular support in Mohmand.[xiii]
Nonetheless, the lack of organized opposition has enabled Omar Khalid's group
to grow more powerful. Omar Khalid has a significant presence throughout
Mohmand, and it controls three of its seven tehsils: Khawezai-Baizai, Lakaro,
and Ambar. These areas are remote, but Lakaro and Ambar are close to the Afghan
border. Lakaro is also a stronghold for the Safi tribe and abuts Bajaur agency, another
Taliban stronghold in the tribal areas.[xiv]
The Taliban's assault on tribal groups has prompted a
backlash from them, some of whom have formed lashkars (militias) to fight the insurgents. Although many lashkar
leaders have been killed, this local resistance still has been more effective
than Pakistani military operations.[xv]
On August 17, 2009, for example, Mohmand lashkars captured Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan spokesman
Mullah Muhammad Umar, who joined Sufi Muhammad's group in 1994 and became the
face of the TTP. Before his capture, Umar was in constant contact with the media
to ensure that the Taliban got credit for conducting various large-scale
attacks inside Pakistan.[xvi]
Quetta Shura Taliban
Mullah Omar remains an important point of inspiration for
the militants in Mohmand, but they do not accept operational direction from the
Taliban leader and use some controversial tactics frowned upon by Mullah Omar's
Quetta Shura. Mohmand's militants often say that Mullah Omar is their supreme
leader, and they clearly see themselves as part of a political and religious
movement that he leads. Nonetheless, Mullah Omar does not have operational
control over militants in Mohmand.[xvii] Indeed,
the murderous attacks on civilians and beheadings employed by militants in
Mohmand depart from the model set by the Quetta Shura.[xviii]
One reason is that Quetta
is more than 850 miles from Mohmand. Without modern command and control
infrastructure, it is difficult for the Quetta Shura to direct militants in
Mohmand. The Mohmand Taliban do get some support from Qari Zia ur-Rahman, a
Taliban leader in Afghanistan.[xix]
Hizb-e Islami
Gulbuddin
Neither do the Mohmand Taliban have direct operational links
with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e Islami Group (HIG), which is active Kunar,
Nangarhar, and Kapisa, Afghan provinces neighboring Mohmand.[xx] Hekmatyar
abhors the gruesome tactics and exclusivity of the more extreme Taliban groups
like those in Mohmand, recently writing a pamphlet rhetorically asking whether
he should become a Wahhabi or remain a religious person.[xxi]
In the pamphlet, which was released just weeks before HIG representatives began
a round of negotiations with the Afghan government in early 2010, Hekmatyar
claimed militancy in the region was being carried out by Salafis supported by
elements of the Saudi government, various Arab charity organizations, and some
sections of Pakistan's
intelligence services. Hekmatyar may be posturing to demonstrate that he is a
reliable Afghan politician, and not beholden to al-Qaeda and other hardline
movements.
Foreign Militants
People in remote parts of Mohmand have reported seeing
scores of non-Pakistani militants accompanying the local Taliban militants, but
the number and exact locations of these foreign militants has not been
ascertained because they usually were seen while on the move and in small
bands.[xxii] On Jan.
11, 2009, however, about 600 heavily armed foreign and local militants attacked
the Frontier Corps check posts in the Mamad Gat, Sagi, and Lakaro areas. In
all-night fighting, at least 10 Frontier Corps personnel were killed along with
a reported 40 militants.[xxiii] Most
of the militants came from the Afghan side of the border and were joined by
local Taliban fighters. The combined force of insurgents later attacked a
Frontier Corps base near the border.[xxiv]
Al-Qaeda leaders have also used Mohmand as a safe haven,
though it does not appear to be a major stronghold for foreign militants. In
September 2008 Rehman Malik, the interior
security adviser to the Pakistani prime minister (and now interior minister)
revealed that al-Qaeda deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri had barely escaped military
action in the Mohmand Agency.[xxv]
Raza Khan, a Pashtun
journalist, is working on his doctoral thesis at the University of Peshawar.
He has served in several senior positions in Pakistani government ministries.
This is excerpted from a longer research paper, part of the New America Foundation's "Battle
for Pakistan" series, on militancy
in Mohmand.
[i] Caroe, Olaf. The Pathans (Oxford University Press:
Karachi) 1958, p. 362.
[ii] Imtiaz Ali, "Taliban Find Fertile New Ground in
Pakistan," Asia Times, Jan. 30, 2008.
[vi] Shah Sahib is identified in some sources as Shah
Khalid.
[vii] Rahimullah Yusufzai, "A Who's Who of the Insurgency in
Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province: Part Two-FATA Excluding the
Waziristans," Terrorism Monitor, March 3, 2009.
[viii] Mushtaq Yusufzai "50 Killed as Two Militant Groups
Clash in Mohmand," The News, July 19, 2008.
[ix] Rahimullah Yusufzai "A Who's Who of the Insurgency
in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province" Jamestown Foundation September 22,
2008
[x] Noor Mohmand "19 Dead as Guns Blaze" The Nation
August 10, 2009
[xi] Rahimullah Yusufzai "A Who's Who of the Insurgency
in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province"
[xii] Interview with Shakoor Safi, a doctoral candidate at
the University of Peshawar who is researching alien, particularly Arab,
influences on Pashtun culture since the Afghan jihad began. Safi belongs to
Safi tribe and comes from the Mohmand area (February 2010, Peshawar).
[xiii] Information provided by Mohmand-based journalist
Fauzee Khan citing statements made by Taliban commanders in local gatherings
and the estimates of local experts about the strength of the Taliban.
[xiv] Discussion with Shakoor Safi and Fauzee Khan.
The cost of losing wars is more war
By mike | Published: May 17, 2010
After meetings last week in Washington among President Obama, his generals, Secretary Clinton, and Afghan president Karzai, it is worth focusing on what it means for the United States to lose the Afghan and Iraq wars.
The meetings, we should be clear, were about Washington’s slow-motion return of power to the Taleban and its allies. Karzai knows Obama must withdraw most U.S. forces from Afghanistan to better his 2012 reelection chances and so wants to bring the Taleban into the government. Karzai is well-suited to the task; he once urged the U.S. to recognize the Taleban and agreed to be its UN ambassador. And the simple reality is that if Karzai wants to stay in a post-U.S. Afghanistan and hold a share of power he must move to the Taleban’ side.
While Karzai and his U.S. interlocutors met, Iraq had another shot of what seems a trend of steadily increasing sectarian violence. That spasm was a glimpse of what probably is on tap after U.S. forces depart. As we lose in Afghanistan, we also must recall the Iraq war is a disaster-producer that is far from spent. Even if he had WMD, Saddam was no threat to America when we invaded. Likewise, Saddam and Syria’s Bashir al-Asad were key if de facto U.S. allies in the war against the Islamists. Those fascist, secular regimes were the cork in the bottle’s neck; they kept the jihad in South Asia. When we popped the cork to destroy Saddam, we also fatally weakened Syria and so facilitated the Sunni jihad’s westward move into the Arab heartland, the Levant, and Gaza.
Thus, the Obama administration’s decision, with Republican support, is to lose in Afghanistan and Iraq. This means monumental victories for the Islamists led or inspired by Osama bin Laden. Since the Afghan mujahedin beat the Soviets in 1989, only bin Laden consistently has predicted that Islamists would have an easier time defeating the second superpower. He has argued U.S. leaders are soft, risk averse, impatient, and unwilling to use the full measure of U.S. military power. With twin U.S. defeats, bin Laden will be proven correct and many Muslims will join the jihad; as Osama said on another occasion, people follow the strong horse.
More important, the defeats will enhance bin Laden’s status as the unchallenged and prescient leader of Sunni militancy. Many of his Islamist peers damned the 9/11 attacks, claiming they would bring the U.S. military down on the Islamist movement, set it back for decades, and perhaps annihilate it entirely. And many in the U.S. corps of Islamist experts used the same line; Fawaz Gerges’s book The Far Enemy, for example, spoke for many by maintaining the 9/11 attacks and ensuing U.S. military response would make bin Laden yesterday’s news.
Today, however, we are seeing bin Laden’s peers proved wrong and most of America’s Islamist experts exposed as wishful thinkers. After 9/11, bin Laden’s response to criticism was not combative but soothing and patient. He simply said: Wait, the Americans have no stomach for insurgency, cannot stand casualties, and will lose interest if there is no quick victory. Indeed, 9/11 worked like a charm for al-Qaeda. The raids got a U.S. army on the ground in Afghanistan – an event bin Laden labored for since 1997 – and earned an enormous if unexpected bonus by allowing the pro-Israel ideologues around Mr. Bush to start the Iraq war.
By March, 2003, then, bin Laden had caused Washington to deploy two U.S. armies to Muslim lands where they are being treated by largely non-al-Qaeda insurgents to the kind of attrition that beat the Red Army. Democratic and Republican leaders now say America tried the military option and it failed. This is an absurd notion. The killing power of the U.S. military is unimaginable; we have barely scratched its surface in either war. It is more accurate to say U.S. leaders are eager to intervene and start wars, but for 50 years have refused fully to use the military Americans paid for because they fear public condemnation from the media, human-rights groups, and the so-called international community if they seek victory.
In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush and Obama administrations have never been serious about winning; and each has been supported by the party out of power. They have, for example, sent inadequate numbers of troops; put them under rules of engagement that make them targets not killers; and caused our soldier-children to die so Mrs. Muhammad can vote in rigged Afghan and Iraqi elections. In short, our interventionist leaders are happy to pay for their democracy-building ambitions with the lives of America’s young and the nation’s financial solvency.
So, it is time to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, but we must face facts. The price of military intervention is always exactly the same; if you do not irrefutably win, you will surely irrefutably lose. After 9/11, Afghanistan was a mandatory target for a short, decisive punitive military expedition; Iraq was a fool’s errand from the start. We will lose in each place because we are unwilling to win, but no one should believe withdrawal without victory will bring peace. Most wars should never be started, but once a Great Power starts one it must not be lost, especially to a weaker enemy. Losing emboldens the enemy, and today the emboldened enemy is a growing number of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims.
Our bipartisan leadership’s fatal combination of interventionism and defeatism have created an Islamist foe more dangerous today than on 9/11. More remarkable, it has made Osama bin Laden appear a master strategist, one who, it increasingly appears, is on the verge of bringing his emboldened jihadis to the cities and streets of the United States.
All the current Mohammand outfits have grown from ’Taliban’ created by Pakistani Army as UN report on Bhutto killing confirmed.
Let us examine some facts:
1. Pakistan’s democratic government facilitated relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 even though US had strenuously opposed it.
2. As Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor told 9/11 Commission in 2004, Pakistani Army was the midwife of Taliban. UN report on Bhutto killing released on 4/15/10 confirmed this fact when it noted that "The PAKISTANI MILITARY ORGANIZED AND SUPPORTED THE TALIBAN TO TAKE CONTROL OF AFGHANISTAN IN 1996“. So in a way, Pakistani government was in charge of Afghanistan when 9/11 attacks were carried out and hence Pakistani government was responsible for those attacks.
3. Pakistani ISI Director General Mahmud Ahmad had asked Omar Sheikh (the kidnapper of Daniel Pearl) to send $100,000 from a Dubai bank account to Mohammed Atta (the lead 9/11 hijacker) one year before those attacks. Mohammad Atta used that $100,000 for flight training, living expenses and to purchase flight tickets on the day of 9/11 attacks in US and returned unspent $25,000 back to same Dubai account. Musharraf was forced to retire ISI director General Mahmud Ahmad after Wall Street Journal exposed General Ahmad as the chief financier of 9/11 attacks. Pakistani ISI was heavily involved in planning of 9/11 attacks as corroborated by former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham.
4. Ex-CIA official Bruce Riedel said in an interview on 1/29/2009 that ''In Pakistan, the jihadist Frankenstein monster that was created by the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, is now increasingly turning on its creators. It's trying to take over the laboratory.'' Pakistani Army and Intelligence Service (ISI) chose to create this ‘jihadist Frankenstein monster’ with full blessings and financing by Pakistan’s democratic governments in 1990s.
5. Declassified DIA Washington D.C., "IIR (intelligence Information Report) Pakistan Involvement in Afghanistan," dated November 7, 1996 states how "Pakistan's ISI is heavily involved in Afghanistan," and also details different roles various ISI officers play in Afghanistan. Stating that Pakistan uses sizable numbers of its Pashtun-based Frontier Corps in Taliban-run operations in Afghanistan, the document clarifies that, "these Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary combat“.
6. Declassified U.S. Department of State, Cable "Pakistan Support for Taliban" from Islamabad dated Sept. 26, 2000 states that "while Pakistani support for the Taliban has been long-standing, the magnitude of recent support is unprecedented." In response Washington orders the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad to immediately confront Pakistani officials on the issue and to advise Islamabad that the U.S. has "seen reports that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisors. [The Department] also understand[s] that large numbers of Pakistani nationals have recently moved into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, apparently with the tacit acquiescence of the Pakistani government." Additional reports indicate that direct Pakistani involvement in Taliban military operations has increased.
7. Witness how Musharraf fooled Bush by pretending to join US fight against terrorism while sheltering Mullah Mohammed Omar’s QST terror network in Baluchistan and Haqqani’s HQN terror network in Waziristan, while milking Uncle Sam in the process.
8. ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘ as General McChrystal narrated in his August, 2009 report to President Obama. But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002!
With an ally like Pakistan, US is doomed to suffer never-ending terror threat for all time to come.
This is interesting; Ex-CIA official Bruce Riedel said in an interview on 1/29/2009 that ''In Pakistan, the jihadist Frankenstein monster that was created by the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, is now increasingly turning on its current political news creators. It's trying to take over the laboratory.'' Pakistani Army and Intelligence Service (ISI) chose to create this ‘jihadist Frankenstein monster’ with full blessings and financing by Pakistan’s democratic governments in 1990s.
(3)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE