The Afghan Mission: Talking to the Taliban

AIR STRIKES, WAR ON DRUGS DRIVE TALIBAN

Insurgency's Foot Soldiers Are Motivated by Loved Ones Lost
to NATO Planes and Money Lost to Poppy-Eradication Programs

Air strikes and drug eradication are feeding the insurgency in
southern Afghanistan, as those actions convince some villagers that
their lives and livelihoods are under attack.

In a unique survey, The Globe and Mail interviewed 42 ordinary
Taliban foot soldiers in Kandahar and discovered 12 fighters who said
their family members had died in air strikes, and 21 who said their
poppy fields had been targeted for destruction by anti-drug teams.

The results suggest an unusual concentration of first-hand experience
with bombing deaths and opium eradication among the insurgents,
analysts say. Despite the violence and expensive counter-narcotics
campaigns in Afghanistan, most villagers have not been touched by
these events themselves, and their prevalence among the Taliban
highlights two important motives for the insurgency.

"This is very interesting," said Sarah Chayes, an American author who
lives in Kandahar.

The Taliban may exaggerate their claims of civilians killed in air
strikes, she said, "but I do think civilian deaths, and the
cultivated impression of civilian deaths, is playing an increasing role."

Some analysts have described senior Taliban leaders reaping large
profits from the opium industry, but Ms. Chayes said the ordinary
fighters are simply trying to protect a meagre source of income in a
place where other jobs are scarce.

"It's not profit motive at these guys' level - it's bare livelihood,"
she said. "Anybody would defend that."

Aerial bombings and civilian deaths have both increased: the United
Nations estimates that more than 1,500 civilians were killed last year.

That figure as compares to the 900 to 1,000 civilian deaths counted
by two studies of the previous year. An analysis of the first nine
months of 2007 found the number of air strikes was already
50-per-cent higher than the total for 2006.

Civilian bombings emerged as a major theme of the war last year.
President Hamid Karzai shed tears in public as he spoke about
civilian deaths. In June, a coalition of Afghan aid agencies
published a controversial report suggesting that the rate of civilian
casualties had doubled from the previous year, and that international
forces were starting to rival the Taliban as the greatest source of
civilian deaths.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization disputed the aid groups'
figures, but quietly took action to reduce the likelihood of killing
civilians. A report from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this month
said international forces had reviewed standard operating procedures
for aerial engagement with a view to reducing collateral deaths
caused from the air.

Still, some countries, such as the United States, have been reluctant
to curtail their use of air power.

"The United States views this as the tragic but bearable cost of a
successful operation against insurgents, without understanding that
the Taliban has deliberately traded the lives of a few dozen
guerrilla fighters in order to cost the American forces the permanent
loyalty of that [bombed] village," wrote Thomas Johnson and Chris
Mason, of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California, in an
academic paper last year.

The Taliban are usually reluctant to admit that they're fighting for
any causes other than religion, but they have recently embraced
civilian deaths as a rallying point. Insurgents have helped
journalists arrange interviews with victims in the aftermath of air
strikes in southern Afghanistan, and NATO soldiers have repeatedly
witnessed the Taliban forcing civilians into dangerous situations in
hopes of getting them killed by foreign troops, thus evoking the
wrath of the village.

The Globe and Mail's survey was not scientific, but it offers a
sample of the insurgents' views on the topic. Asked specifically
about bombings by foreign troops, almost a third of respondents said
their family members had died in such incidents during the current war.

Some insurgents complained about bombings by Russian aircraft in the
1980s in addition to recent air strikes under the Karzai government,
suggesting that memories of the Soviet invasion fuel some of the
current opposition to U.S. and NATO troops.

Even those who have not lost relatives in the bombings clearly
identify themselves as defending Afghanistan against such attacks. In
response to the question, "Has your family been bombed by
foreigners?" four fighters offered fatalistic responses such as: "No,
not yet." Two others gave variations on a declaration of solidarity.
"No," one fighter said. "But the families of my friends have been
bombed, and other Muslims are like my own family." Others described
the air strikes hitting closer to home: "No, but our neighbours and
relatives have been bombed."

About half of those who cited bombing deaths in their family said
they joined the Taliban after the killings occurred: six joined
afterwards, five joined before and one was not asked.

Those for whom the bombings was a trigger for joining the Taliban
generally fell into two categories: young men replacing older
relatives who died fighting in the Taliban ranks ("call-ups"); and
men who took up arms against the government after their civilian
relatives were killed.

An example of the call-up mechanism was the case of a 25-year-old
farm worker who said three older members of his family were killed in
air strikes. He specified that all of his slain relatives were
Taliban fighters, and that it was his duty to replace them.

"All of them were with the Taliban and when one of them was killed in
war, after that another was killed and then the third one was also
killed," he said. "So after that I decided to join the Taliban." "But
what is your goal? Do you want to take revenge or what?" he was asked.

"No, no, no," the fighter said. "I would never fight to take revenge
for my family or something else. I am fighting only to remove the
non-Muslims from my country because they are here to destroy our religion."

Others did not dwell on the rhetoric of jihad. A 22-year-old farmer
initially said he abandoned his farm work because foreign troops
arrived in his area, but later specified that three of his relatives
- - two elders and a child - had been killed in an aerial bombing in
the previous year, and that he joined the Taliban after the bombing.

"Are you fighting because of that bombing?" he was asked. "Yes," he
said. "Because of the bombing, and also because the foreigners are here."

Bombing was the only reason given when an older farmer, perhaps in
his 40s, described his motives: "The non-Muslims are unjust and have
killed our people and children by bombing them, and that's why I
started jihad against them," he said. He said his family was bombed
several times. "They have killed hundreds of our people, and that's
why I want to fight against them."

International troops sometimes complain that they're fighting three
wars in Afghanistan: the war on terrorism, a war against insurgents,
and a war on drugs. The first two conflicts are viewed as
inescapable, but the counter-narcotics campaign is often seen as
hurting the rest of the war effort.

With opium production soaring to record levels, however, many Western
politicians are pushing for a new crackdown on poppy farmers. The
International Crisis Group predicted in February that such an effort
would be disastrous: "Insurgents would exploit local alienation to
recruit more soldiers," the ICG report said.

Most of the insurgents in the Globe survey admitted a personal role
in the opium industry, with more than 80 per cent of respondents
saying they farm poppies themselves and a similar percentage saying
the plant is farmed by their family or friends.

Those numbers aren't surprising in rural Kandahar, where poppies rank
among the most common crops. The more significant number, in the view
of some analysts, was that half those surveyed said their fields had
been targeted by government eradication efforts, sometimes more than once.

Eradication was not widespread in Kandahar in the years before the
survey was conducted; it appears the Taliban either exaggerate the
government's counter-narcotics program, or there is a connection
between farmers who face crop eradication and those who join the insurgency.

The Taliban did not seem inclined to admit an economic rationale for
the war, saying it's a secondary reason for fighting after the
primary concept of religious war, but a few described the connection bluntly:

"Previously they were cutting them [poppies] down, but now those
areas are controlled by mujahedeen and now they cannot cut them
down," said a 26-year-old who described himself as a former religious student.

Under the previous Taliban regime, Afghanistan briefly witnessed one
of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns when Taliban
leader Mullah Mohammed Omar declared that growing poppies is
un-Islamic. Some historians say the Taliban cynically cut production
to increase the values of their own stockpiles, but the effects in
the fields was dramatic: a year's crop was almost entirely wiped out.

The idea of opium as a religiously forbidden product has lingered in
Afghanistan, and is often reinforced by the current government. But
many of the Taliban in the survey gave a new rationale when asked to
explain why they have reinvented themselves as protectors of the drug trade.

"We grow it because it damages the non-Muslims," one fighter said,
repeating the line used by many others, sometimes parroting the
phrase verbatim.

"Before this drug reaches the non-Muslims, won't it destroy our own
people first?" he was asked by the Afghan researcher, expressing
concern about Afghanistan's growing population of drug addicts.

But the fighter shrugged off this argument, saying the opium is
mostly consumed in foreign countries.

"Islam says that it isn't permitted," the fighter conceded. "But we
don't care whether it is permitted or forbidden. But we are only
saying that we will grow poppies against non-Muslims."

A private security consultant in Kabul who reviewed the videos of the
Taliban who were surveyed said the recurrence of this argument among
the fighters seems to suggest an indoctrination campaign by Taliban leaders.

"If you read between the lines, some higher commanders have figured
out a good excuse to cultivate poppy," the consultant said. "Those
farmers are quite well brainwashed."

Taliban funding

The Taliban revealed very little about their financing when asked by
The Globe and Mail's researcher. Other sources suggest that their
biggest cash inflows arrive from supporters in Pakistan, sometimes
originally from donors in the Middle East, but the front-line
insurgents didn't seem to know much about those transactions, or else
kept them secret.

"All the Muslims give us money, whether they are Afghans or from
Saudi Arabia or somewhere else," one fighter said.

Other insurgents described voluntary payments by ordinary Afghans and
implied that the insurgents get a cut of the local drug trade. Such
payments were always couched in the language of traditional Islamic
payments to charity, usually in two forms: usher and zakat.

Usher literally means one-tenth, but can refer to any portion of
agricultural crop that is set aside as a donation. Zakat is another
kind of obligatory charity, usually 2.5 per cent of annual profits
from business.

These payments are regularly shared with the Taliban in southern
Afghanistan; farmers sometimes give half their donations to the
insurgents and the other half to the local mullah for charitable causes.

Prominent local drug dealers and businessmen in Kandahar are known to
make donations beyond the requirements of zakat and usher, sometimes
in the form of cash, opium, vehicles, cellphone-recharge card
numbers, or even warm clothing in winter.

Latest developments

Afghan and NATO forces killed more than 40 insurgents in an air and
ground battle in southern Afghanistan, a security official said yesterday.

Troops seized dozens of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades
and heavy machine guns, after Saturday's battle in Dihrawud, a
district in Uruzgan province, the Afghan Defence Ministry said in a
statement, adding many militants were killed, including a commander,
but provided no figures. An official at the ministry put the number
of dead at more than 40.

U.S.-led coalition troops hit a roadside bomb in Kandahar province
Saturday as they were conducting a security patrol with Afghan
troops, the coalition said in a statement. Two soldiers died, it
said. Coalition officials say the dead are not Canadians but their
nationalities have not yet been released.

There have been at least eight instances in the past two years in
which the Canadian government has dipped into its own pocket to
compensate Afghan civilians or their families for accidental deaths
or injuries. But the figures and details of the settlements remain a
closely held secret, despite calls in the Manley commission report
for the Conservative government to be more open and forthright.

The Justice Department, which shares responsibility with the Defence
Department for ex-gratia payments, refused to release any details.
The payments ranged from $1,971 to $31,584.

Under the arrangement, civilians can submit damage claims and lawyers
deployed with the troops are allowed to make payments up to $2,000.
Twenty-five trucks carrying fuel to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan
have been destroyed in a possible bomb attack on the Pakistani
border. Officials say that dozens of people have been injured.

Mohammed Sadiq Khan, a local government official, said that the
explosions and blaze occurred on the Pakistani side of the Torkham
customs post late yesterday. At least 50 people were injured, eight
of them seriously.

Fida Mohammed, the commander of a paramilitary force that helps
provide security at the crossing, said 25 trucks carrying fuel to
U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were destroyed.

Afghanistan's intelligence agency said it had arrested a 14-year-old
Pakistani boy who was planning a suicide car bombing in the eastern
city of Khost. The teenager was arrested Thursday, Khost province
deputy intelligence chief Mira Jan said. A car fixed with bombs was also found.