Taliban weakened but still a threat

By Keith B. Richburg
The Washington Post

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Despite the serious setback the Taliban movement suffered last month when it failed to disrupt Afghanistan's presidential election, its militia still poses a formidable threat, with one faction beginning to mount daring, al-Qaida-style attacks, according to Afghan and foreign analysts.

Experts said the movement was beset by leadership rivalries and internal divisions. They also said the Taliban was being squeezed by a new Pakistani military offensive along the border, where many Taliban renegades were thought to be hiding.

Since the Oct. 9 election, there have been several high-profile attacks in the capital, including an Oct. 23 suicide bombing that killed an American woman and the kidnapping of three United Nations workers five days later. The three are still being held, reportedly by a breakaway Taliban faction known as Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims.

But Afghan military commanders and government officials, as well as foreigners with knowledge of the Taliban, said they thought such attacks might be more a sign of weakness than strength.

The successful election "told everyone the Taliban was finished. So they wanted to do something spectacular in the middle of Kabul city," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistan-based journalist.

But Taliban fighters can count on the quiet support of thousands of sympathizers in the largely Pashtun tribal areas of the south, experts said. Most are former Taliban who are not actively fighting or supporting the newly elected government but are willing to supply Pakistan-based guerrillas with food and shelter.

"In these areas, they have buried their weapons in the ground and are doing their farming," said Gen. Afzul Aman, a senior commander with the Afghan National Army. "So maybe they will join them again later."

Aman said the Taliban's current tactic was to get a team of three to 10 men inside the country from the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border. The team ambushes Afghan or coalition troops and then retreats across the mountains. Taliban teams also plant roadside explosives, followed by a rocket or mortar attack on a stalled convoy.

Most officials and experts concede that much of what is known about the Taliban's current military and political state is guesswork. Estimates of its size range from less than 2,000 armed fighters to more than 10,000.
 
The militia mostly bases itself on the Pakistani side of the border where Afghan forces have little on-the-ground intelligence.

In the days leading up to the election, there were scattered attacks on voter-registration sites and workers, but the election was largely peaceful, which surprised Afghan security officials.

One theory is that Taliban attack plans were thwarted by the heavy presence of Afghan troops, U.S. soldiers and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which sent in reinforcement troops. Also, Pakistan, reportedly under diplomatic pressure to guarantee a peaceful election, launched a new offensive at the border.

Another theory is that the Taliban recognized that ordinary Afghans wanted to vote and that the high election-day turnout dissuaded its forces from further alienating the populace by attacking polling places.

"Eight million people all objected to the Taliban," said Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister. "The Taliban," he added, "should feel a bigger defeat than the military defeat."

There also are growing signs of a serious, three-way split within a once hierarchical movement dominated by a single religious leader.

The first indications came soon after the Taliban was ousted in late 2001. Wahid Mojdah, an Afghan judicial official who worked in the Taliban foreign ministry, said some hard-core fighters became active in the armed resistance to the new government headed by President Hamid Karzai. Others began cooperating with authorities. Some fled to Pakistan, hoping eventually to return under an amnesty.

Karzai has offered an olive branch to this group, saying they are welcome to return, except for a handful who have committed crimes or acts of terrorism.

Recently, Mojdah and others said, there had been a further split. Last year, a Taliban commander named Akbar Agha announced he was forming Jaish-e-Muslimeen in a challenge to the rule of the Taliban's longtime commander Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is being hunted by U.S. troops.

According to several analysts, Agha objected to Omar's attempts to reorganize the group. Agha put his loyalists in charge of running the insurgency in key provinces, and the mainline Taliban accused Agha of indiscipline and corruption.

Agha's group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping the three U.N. workers Oct. 28, a daring, first-ever assault against Westerners in the heavily-guarded capital. But Yusufzai, the journalist, said Jaish-e-Muslimeen had used the tactic before, kidnapping several Turkish and Indian highway workers in the past two years. Most were released after a ransom was paid.

Analysts said the new kidnappings, as well as the suicide bombing on a street of tourist shops, were troubling signs that Jaish-e-Muslimeen and the mainstream Taliban movement might be moving toward tactics inspired by al-Qaida and used against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Even during the decadelong fight against Soviet occupation, Afghan fighters never carried out suicide bombings, Afghan observers said.

"There's a saying in Afghanistan: When an Afghan attacks, he first looks around for an escape, an exit," Yusufzai said.