Working Paper
By
Peter W. Connors, PhD
8165906821
RESURGENCE OF THE TALIBAN
FROM CRUSHING DEFEAT TO RESILIENT INSURGENCY
Losing the War in Afghanistan One Pashtun Village at a Time
Introduction
Over the radio the civilian translator named Jacob told Captain Sheffield F. Ford, III that the situation was so critical he was prepared to kill the two wounded Americans and himself just so they wouldn’t be taken hostage by the Taliban. Ford was commander of Operational Detachment Alpha 765 (ODA-765) and leader of Operation KAIKA designed to kill or capture Taliban leaders in Kandahar province. In the ensuing battle, which took place 23-24 June 2006 near the village of Ghecko in the Panjawi district, two U.S. Soldiers, three Afghan interpreters, and an estimated 125 Taliban combatants including two field commanders were killed. Hundreds of heavily armed Taliban ambushed the 16 Americans and 48 Afghan soldiers at sunset on the 23rd. “All hell broke loose,” Ford further explained.[1] He and his men were completely surrounded and enemy fighters were firing at them from all directions with multiple weapons systems.
The sustained, well-organized, Taliban assault surprised the Special Forces Soldiers who were more accustomed to quick hit and run insurgent attacks. Later that night, Taliban fighters broke through the American perimeter, but were driven back by U.S. air strikes. Team Sergeant Thom Maholic held off attacking Taliban throughout the night from a rooftop, until he was fatally wounded. “After a while, he pretty much expired in my arms,” Sergeant First Class Abram Hernandez said, remembering Maholic’s death.[2] Eventually, Apache gunships, using an infrared beam detectable on the ground with night vision goggles, led the A-team safely back to their original patrol base. And, of course, Captain Ford adamantly refused the translator’s offer to shoot the wounded Americans to prevent their being captured. All were ultimately rescued. On 17 November 2007, during a ceremony held at the United States Army Special Operations Command headquarters, Fort Bragg, N.C., Master Sergeant Thomas D. Maholic’s widow, Wendy, and their son, Andrew, accepted the posthumous Silver Star award on his behalf.
Taliban insurgents, who had been dramatically driven from Afghanistan in 2001 began returning the very next year, and by 2006 they were back in force – better armed, better trained, and fighting a much more sophisticated fight. The Taliban’s battlefield skills took ODA-765 by surprise at Ghecko and served notice of the growing strength of the insurgency in Afghanistan. Despite losing 125 combatants, the Taliban claimed victory in the battle of Ghecko, a village that they continued to control for the next two years.[3] How had the Taliban been able to regroup, rearm, and transform so effectively into a unique and adaptive force? Was the Taliban resurgence genuine or simply a series of relatively minor, isolated, incidents? Supported by statistical evidence, this chapter assess the re-emergent and constantly evolving Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, from sanctuaries in Pakistan; to revamped leadership; to upgraded tactics, techniques, and procedures; to its goals, objectives, motivation; and finally to the possibility of reconciliation with Taliban moderates. Additional contributing factors, such as al-Qaeda’s ongoing involvement, Taliban efforts to coerce the Afghan populace, the use of opium money to fund insurgent operations, and the roles of other terrorist groups – the Hekmatyer organization, the Haqqani network, and the Pakistani Taliban - will also be thoroughly examined. While some Coalition political leaders and military commanders considered the Taliban insurgency all but over by 2003, Taliban militants had instead regrouped, rearmed, and coalesced into a resilient insurgency.[4]
Brief History of the Taliban
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, mujahideen factions began fighting among themselves for control of Afghanistan. In April 1992, combined Tajik and Uzbek forces led by Burhanuddin Rabanni, General Ahmed Massoud, and General Rashid Dostum overthrew Soviet-backed Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah and seized control of Kabul. Rabanni emerged as Afghanistan’s new president, however friction continued between the various warlord factions in Afghanistan for the next two years. Out of the ensuing chaos, arose a new Sunni Muslim puritanical movement known as the Taliban – “seekers of knowledge,” as opposed to mullahs who provide knowledge.[5]
Comprised initially of Pashtun students from madrassas in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban, led from the beginning by Muslim cleric Mohammad Omar, fought corruption and brutality by reinstating strict observance of Islamic law.
ADD PHOTO OF OMAR
By the end of 1994, the Taliban had gained control of Kandahar and Helmand provinces. Bolstered by thousands of new recruits from madrasses in Pakistan, Taliban forces next moved north to capture Kabul in September 1996.[6] Earlier in the year, al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had relocated to southern Afghanistan and established a network of guerrilla camps to train fighters for the jihad.
ADD PHOTO OBL
Bin Laden helped finance the Taliban movement and in exchange Mullah Omar granted him protection from extradition. By 1997, the al-Qaeda guerrillas began integrating into Taliban army units. Although tribal fighting continued over the next two years, the Taliban had gained control of nearly 90% of Afghanistan by 1998 – the year in which the United States first launched cruise missile attacks against al-Qaeda training camps in Jalalabad and Khost in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Afghan citizens soon grew weary of Mullah Omar’s authoritarian interpretation of Sharia law and became disenchanted with the increasingly harsh Taliban enforcement methods. The United States denounced the Taliban for harboring al-Qaeda after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and soon thereafter launched Operation ENDURING FREEDOM to rid Afghanistan of both terrorist organizations. A unique combination of Afghan Northern Alliance fighters, U.S. Special Operations forces, and overwhelming U.S airpower resoundingly defeated the Taliban in just three months. Of the 30,000 to 40,000 Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan at the time, several thousands were killed in the fighting, while thousands more escaped to Pakistan – to the refugee camps and madrassas in Balochistan and FATA tribal agencies where they continued to live and train.[7]
ADD PHOTO SOF ON HORSEBACK
After Kandahar, the seat of Taliban power, was liberated, bin Laden fled allegedly to Pakistan and Mullah Omar initially went underground in southern Afghanistan, then resurfaced in Quetta during the winter of 2002. Omar, who was assisted in Pakistan by both the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Jamait Ulema-e-Islam Party (JUI), quickly reorganized the Taliban movement in Afghanistan under new regional commanders. By the summer of 2002, these new commanders issued the call for all neo-Taliban fighters to regroup, retrain, and rearm. “We don’t consider the battle ended in Afghanistan,” Omar declared in explaining the Taliban’s new guerrilla warfare strategy. “As for the United States’ future in Afghanistan,” he added, “it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors – the Soviets and, before them, the British.”[8]
Talibanistan – “Wilder than the Wild West”[9]
After being routed by the Northern Alliance and U.S. Special Operations forces in 2001, al-Qaeda and the Taliban escaped by the thousands across the Pakistan border into the Dir and Chitral districts, North and South Waziristan, and Balochistan province. These regions became protected sanctuaries for the Taliban and AQ who, over the next two years, successfully regrouped, retrained, rearmed, and refinanced. In Balochistan, the Taliban established training camps at Dalbadin, Chagai, Qila Saifullah, Kuchlak, Loralai, and two near the provincial capital Quetta which quickly became a major terrorist logistics hub. The more than fifty madrassas between Quetta and the Pakistan city of Chaman, on the Afghan border near Spin Buldak in Kandahar province, served as fertile recruiting grounds for new, and willing, Taliban fighters.[10]
The region of Pakistan into which the Taliban fled, often referred to as “al-Qaeda central,” is comprised of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and several northeastern districts of Balochistan Province.[11] These three geographical subdivisions run contiguously north to south along the frontier in western Pakistan and collectively form nearly 1500 miles of Afghanistan’s eastern and southeastern border.[12]
NOTE: Add Appropriate Map of AFG/PAK Border
NWFP, Pakistan’s smallest and northern-most province, is subdivided into 24 districts. Peshawar is the provincial capital and Pashto the principal language of the majority Pashtun population. Northern districts are typically mountainous and wooded, while the southern zone is rocky and arid. The semiautonomous FATA are controlled primarily by fundamentalist Pashtun tribal elders and are comprised of seven Agencies and six Frontier Regions. The area is approximately the size of New Jersey, has a population of roughly 3.5 million people, and is generally mountainous with valleys at 4,000-6,000 feet and peaks extending to 14,000 feet.[13] The tribal areas are administered directly by the president of Pakistan through the governor of the NWFP. Each Agency has a Political Agent, each Frontier Region has a Deputy Commissioner, and twenty legislators represent the FATA in Pakistan’s National Assembly and Senate. National Pakistani legislation, however, does not apply to the FATA.[14]
In December 2001, Osama bin Laden allegedly escaped across the Afghan border into the FATA’s Kurram Tribal Agency and later took permanent refuge in the North Waziristan Agency. Additionally, the Khyber Pass at Landi Kotal in the Khyber Agency cuts through the Safed Koh Mountains at 3500 feet and connects Peshawar in Pakistan with Kabul, Afghanistan. For centuries this has been a major Asian trade route and eventually served as the main U.S. and NATO supply route between Karachi on the Arabian Sea and landlocked Afghanistan during OEF.[15] During the fall of 2007, approximately 120,000 gallons of fuel per day and 85% of all containerized goods heading for Coalition forces in Afghanistan were trucked through Khyber pass.[16]
Situated south of the FATA, Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province and borders Iran to the west, Afghanistan to the north, and the Arabian Sea to the south. Many of Balochistan’s twenty-seven districts are expansive, isolated, sparsely populated by semi-nomadic tribespoeple, and difficult to reach. The Bolan Pass is an historic route through the Toba Kakar Mountains in northeast Balochistan that connects Quetta with Kandahar in Afghanistan. Ironically, during the winter of 2001-2002 as throngs of Taliban were escaping into the Chagai, Qilla Abdullah, and Nushki districts, the United States was negotiating with the Pakistan government for use of Balochistan air bases at Pasni, Shamsi, and Dalbandin.[17]
The frontier provinces and tribal areas of Pakistan would plague U.S. and NATO forces for the duration of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Initially, political constraints precluded Coalition forces from pursuing the enemy across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Failure of the Pakistan government to rein in the Taliban and AQ provided them with a genuine sanctuary in which to reorganize and from which to launch renewed attacks into Afghanistan. By January 2003, Lieutenant General Daniel K. McNeill, Commander of Joint Task Force 180, frustrated with the untenable situation, authorized U.S. forces to cross the Pakistan border in pursuit of AQ and Taliban guerrillas, noting that “U.S. forces acknowledge the internationally recognized boundaries of Afghanistan, but may pursue attackers who attempt to escape into Pakistan to evade capture or retaliation.”[18] Five years later, the controversy surrounding Taliban safe havens in Pakistan had still not been resolved. Describing the continuing threat in the Afghan/Pakistani tribal areas in January 2008, retired Lieutenant General Dell Dailey, State Department Counterterrorism Chief, testified “ We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there. Not on al-Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban.”[19]
The New Taliban’s Arsenal of Weapons
As the Taliban rearmed and regrouped in Pakistan during 2002, they continued to rely on the basic weapons systems used in the fight against U.S. Special Operations forces and the Afghan Northern Alliance the year before.[20] The full complement of Taliban weapons, described in the following chart, remained essentially unchanged through 2008.
Basic Taliban Weapons Systems
7.62 mm Tokarev pistols
Kalashnikov (AK-47) and Simonov (SKS) assault rifles
7.62 mm sub- machine guns
7.62mm RPD and RPK general-purpose machine guns
12.7mm DShK machine guns
30mm AGS-17 automatic grenade launchers
12.7 mm (LAAG), 14.5mm (ZPU), 23mm (ZSU), 57mm (S-60), 85mm (KS-12), and 100mm (KS-19) anti-aircraft guns
82mm, 107mm, 120mm, and 160mm mortars
76mm up to 152mm artillery pieces
Multiple rocket launchers
Main battle tanks and armored fighting vehicles
Makeshift armed vehicles (pickup truck cavalry)
In early 2005, Hong Ying-5 (HN-5) low-level, man-portable air defense missile systems (MANPADS) produced in the People’s Republic of China were uncovered by Coalition Forces in a Kandahar province weapons cache.[21] The HN-5 is a Chinese version of the Russian-designed Strela-2, codenamed SA-7 “Grail” by NATO, and is intended to provide low altitude, short-range air defense cover for ground forces against both jet aircraft and attack helicopters. Each missile has a two-stage solid fuel propulsion system, infra-red passive homing guidance, and a maximum effective range of 3,400 meters.[22] That Coalition Forces continued to capture shoulder-fired missile systems in Afghanistan throughout 2005 and 2006 was an indication the Taliban and al-Qaeda enjoyed continued access to these weapons.[23]
PHOTO OF SA-7
The introduction of Chinese-made weapons into the OEF theater of operations was highly disturbing to U.S. officials. According to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, John D. Negroponte, China sold the weapons initially to the Iranian government, which then turned them over to the Taliban in Herat Province along the Afghan/Iranian border.[24] When asked about the Iranian supply of weapons to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates concurred with Deputy Secretary Negroponte, noting that additional analysis he had seen “makes it pretty clear there’s a fairly substantial flow of weapons.”[25] Also, by 2005, the Taliban had established small scale manufacturing operations along the Afghan/Pakistan border to produce improvised explosive devices (IED) and explosively formed penetrators (EFP).[26] Individual components were made in the various tribal villages on the Pakistan side, then, shipped to Afghanistan for assembly, implantation, and eventual detonation. The Taliban’s use of body and vehicle-borne suicide bombers – “Mullah Omar’s missiles” - increased dramatically during this period.[27] Taliban command and control measures improved significantly due to the expanded use of Thuraya satellite phones and long-range walkie-talkies; and new lightweight mortars and silencers for the AK-47 also entered the Taliban arsenal in 2007.[28] Finally, motorbikes, purchased primarily in Quetta, became the preferred mean of battlefield transportation for the resurgent Taliban.[29]
PHOTO OF TALIBAN ON MOTORBIKES
Escalating Extremist Activity 2002-2003
Did the Taliban Ever Leave?
After retreating to Pakistan following Operation ANACONDA in March, 2002, surviving Taliban fighters wasted little time in staging a return to Aghanistan. Some may never have left.[30] Mullah Omar, who had escaped to Quetta, Pakistan, reorganized Taliban combatants under four senior commanders: Mullah Barader Akhund, Uruzgan province; Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani, Helmand province; Mullah Dadullah Akhund, Kandahar province; and, Mullah Abdul Razzaq, Zabul province. In the Pashtun-dominated provinces of eastern Afghanistan, Omar appointed Saif ur-Rahman, Jalauddin Haqqani, and Sirajuddin Haqqani leaders of the Taliban reorganization effort.[31]
Omar then reinitiated fundraising efforts through Islamic networks, and announced to the world that the Afghan war had entered a “new phase” and that the United States was “doomed.”[32] Small scale Taliban offensive attacks, intended to harass U.S. forces, began as early as April in Kandahar, Khowst, and Nangarhar provinces.[33] Coalition forces countered with Operation MOUNTAIN LION, British-led Operations CONDOR and SNIPE, and Canadian Operation TORII in eastern Afghanistan.[34] During the summer, mid-level Taliban commanders trained their forces and moved weapons and supplies across the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan. In September, President Karzai was nearly killed by a suspected Taliban assassin in Kandahar.[35] As 2002 ended, the Taliban was most assuredly operating once again in Afghanistan.
TalibanBuild-up 2003
By 2003, the Taliban had further regrouped, reorganized, and established small enclaves in several districts of Pashtun-dominated Zabol and Oruzgan provinces. Eighteen Hezb-i-Islami insurgents were killed by U.S. Special Forces and 82nd Airborne Division Soldiers in January near Spin Boldac during Operation MONGOOSE.[36] Operation WARRIOR SWEEP involving units from the 82nd Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions commenced in July to clear the Khowst-Gardez Highway, and in Operation MOUNTAIN VIPER, Special Operations forces and 10th Mountain Soldiers swept the Deh Chopan region in Zabol province of suspected insurgent fighters led by one-legged Taliban leader, Mullah Dadullah.[37] “Hundreds of Taliban fighters have crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan and are claiming large swathes of the country,” Major General Franklin Hagenbeck, Deputy Commanding General Combined Joint Task Force 180, observed in explaining recent increases in enemy activity.[38]