ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan's Taliban have shuttered a newly opened office in the Gulf state of Qatar, vowing to fight on against President Hamid Karzai's government while abandoning a diplomatic approach seen as the best hope of finding a political end to the protracted 12-year war.
Experts said Tuesday that the final withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014 offered the Taliban the hope of a military victory while limiting their incentive to press ahead with peace talks. The Taliban, they said, envisioned the talks more as a means of gaining legitimacy than as a road to peace.
"I think the big gorilla in the room is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It decreases the likelihood of a settlement because it raises the prospects of Taliban military gains," said Seth Jones, a counterinsurgency expert at the Rand Corp., a Washington-based think tank that receives U.S. funding. "Settlements usually occur when both sides reach a stalemate and see little prospect for change in the foreseeable future."
The Taliban office, which opened less than a month ago to facilitate peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan government, was mired in controversy from the outset after the religious movement was accused of trying to set up a government-in-exile by identifying its office as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It also hoisted the same white flag flown during the Taliban's five-year rule of Afghanistan that ended with the 2001 American-led invasion.
Karzai reacted furiously and the Taliban lowered the flag and removed the sign. Both the U.S. and Qatar quickly chastised the Taliban and accused them of reneging on a promise to refrain from using either the name or the flag.
Now the office itself has been temporarily closed, a Taliban official familiar with the talks in Qatar said.
"They (the Taliban) do not go out of their homes in Doha and have not gone to the office since the removal of the flag and the plaque," the Taliban official said in a telephone interview. He said the Taliban blamed Karzai and the U.S. for the breakdown in talks, accusing both of using the name and the flag as an excuse.
A diplomat in the region who is also familiar with the negotiations said: "The (Taliban) Political Commission has stopped all international political meetings and is not using the office."
Both the Taliban official and the diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject and because neither was authorized to speak publicly with journalists.
In Washington U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed the office closure.
"We know the office has been closed," she said. "But, again, we're going to continue to work through the bumpy road, and we're hopeful that we can get it back on track."
In Doha, the office remained guarded Tuesday by Qatari-appointed security along the outside walls. There were no signs of the flag or former sign. The gates to the compound were open, but there was no evidence of Taliban officials inside.
The two Taliban spokesmen at the Doha office did not respond to telephone calls Tuesday from The Associated Press. The Taliban official said all communications with the movement's negotiators have been cut.
White House press secretary James Carney said reconciliation would not be easy.
"It has been a difficult process, and will continue to be," Carney told reporters Tuesday. "And if this effort, the Doha office effort, does not succeed, we will pursue other means and other avenues for peace. Because, ultimately, peace in Afghanistan depends on a reconciliation between Afghans."
The Taliban also flatly rejected Karzai's peace offer made Tuesday ahead of the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when devout Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.
"On the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan, I once again call on Taliban, especially those Taliban who are sons of this homeland, to respect the holy month of Ramadan, to take the way of peace, compassion and kindness and to stop killing of people," the Pashtu-language statement read.
But Taliban spokesman Qari Yasouf Ahmadi said in a statement that they saw jihad, or holy war, as an even greater obligation during the holy month.
"We will continue with our attacks on the infidels and their slaves," he said.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a security expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he wasn't ready to write the peace talks' final epitaph.
"Look, quite frankly this is not necessarily a forlorn hope but what is going on is you have a Taliban increasingly convinced that it can win in the field," Cordesman said. "It finds these peace talks an extension of their insurgency by other means," using them to gain respectability, exposure and set themselves up as a direct competitor to the Afghan government.
The office's closing, however, could threaten a possible prisoner exchange that could free U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier from Hailey, Idaho, that's been held captive by the Taliban since 2009. The Taliban in their opening gambit offered to free Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. A U.S. official has confirmed that talks of a prisoner exchange had taken place, including timelines for the release, as well as a promise from the Taliban to show fresh and verifiable proof of Bergdahl's health.
Still, Jones said the office closing doesn't mean all avenues of discussion are closed.
"The U.S. will still be able to talk to the Taliban, as will the Afghan government. And they should talk," he said. "There may be opportunities to free prisoners — including Bowe Bergdahl — once tempers cool." ___
Kathy Gannon is the Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon Associated Press writers Abdullah Rebhy in Doha, Qatar, David Rising in Kabul, and Deb Riechmann and Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.
Open since? I can't find yeh or nay, but one thing for certain the Taliban will will be around in Afghanistan for a time. For sure.
Taliban Devise New Strategy in Afghanistan: Territorial Control and War on Afghan Intelligence Headquarters
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 12 Issue: 18 September 26, 2014 11:19 AM Age: 14 days
By: Waliullah Rahmani
Afghan soldier on patrol (Source: NATO Training Mission Afghanistan)
On September 10, 2014, Kunduz province’s police chief, Ghulam Mustafa Mohseni, announced that a longtime Taliban stronghold, the Chahar Dara district of northern Afghanistan, had been cleared of insurgents. Mohseni added that the Taliban lost around 210 members in the operations (ToloNews, September 10). The large number of Taliban casualties in Kunduz is one of the many instances of the widening insurgency in Afghanistan. Militants increasingly have been able to carry out attacks with hundreds of people fighting Afghan government forces for days and weeks in order to gain territorial control over specific strategically located areas of Afghanistan.
Along with these major and well-coordinated battles in the field, insurgents are now being used as assets in a clearly drawn intelligence war targeting the Afghan security establishment, with a particular focus on the Afghan domestic intelligence agency. The latest of these attacks was conducted in early September with a group of 19 suicide attackers targeting the National Directorate of Security (NDS) provincial headquarters in Ghazni province. The attack, which lasted for a few hours, was highly sophisticated and brutal, killing and wounding around 180 civilians and security personnel (Daily Mail, September 4).
Large groups of Taliban fighters in combat and an intelligence war are the two main pillars of a strategic shift in the broader strategy of the Afghan insurgency. This shift demonstrates that the Afghan insurgency has changed dramatically in 2014, as the country is heading toward a transformed role for NATO forces left in Afghanistan coupled with a political transition that has been underway for the last five months. Success for various groups of insurgents operating under the Taliban’s banner could be a game changer and would allow the reemergence and reestablishment of a brutal regime in Afghanistan.
Struggle for Territorial Control
Since June, the Taliban have waged four major direct assaults in four Afghani provinces. The largest operation conducted so far has been in Helmand province. Reports suggest that 800 to 1,000 Taliban insurgents were involved in major assaults on the Sangin, Nawzad, Mua Qala and Kajaki districts (BBC, June 25). Fighting there continued for weeks until the Taliban were defeated and areas were cleared; around 100 militants were reportedly killed during the fighting. The Taliban then shifted their operations to northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province where they fought for weeks to take control of the Khan Abad, Chahar Dara and Dashte Archi districts. As a result, they lost tens of their people and fought the Afghan security forces for weeks (ToloNews, August 24). Eastern Nuristan was another target of the Taliban in late August. Afghan security forces waged an eight-day operation to regain control of the province’s Doa Ab district, killing around 30 Taliban (ToloNews, August 29). After being repulsed on three fronts, more than 1,000 insurgents then launched another operation in northwestern Farayab province in a struggle for territorial control of the Qaisar and Ghormach districts. The attacks continued for around a week and resulted in over 130 insurgent casualties (Pajhwok, August 18).
The deterioration of the security situation and a drawn-out, disputed political process have paved the way for the undertaking of a new strategy by the Taliban in Afghanistan. A senior security official in the Afghan government told Jamestown on the condition of anonymity that the Taliban’s efforts for major gains in territorial control is planned mainly for 2015 when the NATO-led ISAF forces will be fully withdrawn and a fragile and weakened Afghan state will have the burden of stabilizing Afghanistan alone. Due to the political instability that emerged during the long-time disputed elections and an uncertain NATO presence, however, the Taliban began implementing their new strategy in 2014, a strategy that the Afghan official termed as a defeated one. [1]
Intelligence War
From the outset of the post-Taliban state in Afghanistan, there have been discussions of a proxy war that is underway in Afghanistan. Senior Afghan officials have always pointed fingers at Pakistan for supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan. [2] Pakistan and its foreign policy masters have continuously denied any involvement in the destabilization of Afghanistan. They have called on the Afghan leaders to stop their so-called “blame-game,” which Islamabad has always deemed destructive to bilateral relations.
A new chapter of the intelligence war has already begun in the form of the growing insurgency, which is directly targeting strategic national security institutions of Afghanistan, the most productive and critical tools in the broader counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts of the country.
In a chronological view, 2012 was the outset of a number of selected attacks targeting the Afghan domestic intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). On December 6, 2012, Asadullah Khaled, the then-head of the NDS, survived an assassination attempt though he was seriously injured in the attack. This was followed by the January 13, 2013 assault on the NDS headquarters in the heart of Kabul (al-Jazeera, December 7, 2012). Attacks on the NDS and the regional offices continue through today. More recently, on May 6, the Delaram district office of NDS came under attack by unknown insurgents. In Jalalabad, on August 30, a heavy and devastating assault was launched on the provincial office of NDS, a few kilometers away from the Khyber Pass on the eastern border (ToloNews, September 18). The latest attack occurred earlier this month in Ghazni province, in which more than 18 people were killed, around 150 were injured and several government buildings worth at least $85 million were destroyed (Daily Mail, September 4).
While it is not clear why the Taliban would be motivated enough to wage sophisticated and costly operations against a specific security establishment in Afghanistan, an in-depth look into the last two years of the blame game could yield a better understanding. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for all of these attacks, but on various occasions the Afghan government has blamed Pakistan instead for targeting Kabul. [3] Recently, Islamabad blamed the Afghan NDS of plotting the June 8 attack on the Karachi airport. However, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for that attack, which lasted several hours (Guardian, July 9). Soon after this accusation by Islamabad, on July 2, the Kabul airport was hit by two rockets, which destroyed a military facility and a number of helicopters. This attack was followed by one on July 17, in which five suicide attackers captured a nearby building in order to then attack the Kabul airport. Soon after the second attack, the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MoI) blamed the Haqqani Network and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. A MoI spokesman stressed that the attack on the Kabul airport was plotted to avenge the coordinated attack on the airport in Karachi (Khaama Press, July 17).
Moreover, the serial targeting of NDS offices in various provinces of Afghanistan became a main pillar of the current insurgent strategy after Pakistani authorities accused the current acting director of the NDS, Rahmatullah Nabil, of having a hand in the Karachi airport attack in mid-June. The Afghan government denied any involvement (ToloNews, June 22).
While no documents have been presented to uncover the role of the NDS behind the alleged plots against Pakistan, a recent public statement from outgoing Afghan president Hamid Karzai clearly states why, from his perspective, Islamabad is supporting instability in Afghanistan. In return for stability and an end to the Afghan insurgency, Pakistan wanted the Durand Line resolved as well as sole control over Afghanistan’s foreign policy and international relations, demands that Karzai has never accepted. [4]
Many in Kabul believe that the nearly continuous attacks on the security establishment of Afghanistan have become a key pillar of the Taliban’s new strategy. If true, a settlement of the Afghan insurgency and peacefully ending the current instability in Afghanistan may be an impossible goal.
Conclusion
The Taliban insurgency’s new approach features large attacks across the country designed to seize and maintain control of territory as well as the specific targeting of intelligence branches. These two methods are tactically and strategically threatening the future of a functional and stable Afghan state. At the same time, Afghans are experiencing the end of the NATO-led ISAF mission. In spite of the difficult security transition taking place and the uncertain political transition, in 2014, Afghan security forces have responded enormously well to the new tactical and strategic shifts of the insurgency even in the most volatile southern regions of Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it is feared that the “resolute mission” of international forces in Afghanistan will not be enough to sufficiently curb terrorism and the insurgency, which threatens to take control of even larger swaths of Afghan territory following the reduced role for U.S. and NATO force in Afghanistan in 2015.
Waliullah Rahmani is a security and political affairs expert specializing in terrorism, insurgency, AfPak affairs and Islamic movements.
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