Descent Into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid

Author:Ahmed Rashid
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141020860
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 2008-06-03T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Taliban Resurgent The Taliban Return Home

The Taliban did not just slip back across the border in the winter of 2001/2002; they arrived in droves, by bus, taxi, and tractor, on camels and horses, and on foot. As many as ten thousand fighters holed up in Kandahar with their weapons. For many, it was not an escape but a return home—back to the refugee camps in Balochistan where they had been brought up and where their families still lived; back to the madrassas where they had once studied; back to the hospitality of the mosques where they had once prayed. For those with no families to receive them, militants from Pakistani extremist groups and the Jamiat-e-Ulema in Pakistan—like benevolent charity workers—welcomed them at the border with blankets, fresh clothes, and envelopes full of money. ISI officials, standing with the Frontier Constabulary guards and customs officials at Chaman, the border crossing into Balochistan province, waved them in. Musharraf was not about to discourage or arrest these Taliban fighters who had been nurtured for two decades by the military. For Pakistan they still represented the future of Afghanistan, and they had to be hidden away until their time came.

Initially the arriving Taliban were a demoralized lot. In the previous three months thousands had been killed by American bombs or wounded and left to die in their burned-out pickup trucks. Some Pashtun villages in southern Afghanistan were now inhabited only by women, as all their menfolk had been killed in the bombings. The older Taliban blamed Mullah Omar for destroying their government for the sake of preserving Osama bin Laden. A few leading Taliban gave themselves up to U.S. forces in Kandahar, either because they were compromised by the ISI or because they were so disgusted with Mullah Omar.1 Two Taliban leaders surrendered to Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Kandahar, but he let them go. For the next five years not a single Taliban commander would be handed over to the Americans by the Pakistanis.2

The Pakistani military was stunned at the lackadaisical attitude of the Americans in mopping up al Qaeda. The U.S. failure to commit ground troops in the south and then at Tora Bora convinced army headquarters that the Americans were not serious, preferring that the NA militias do their fighting for them. Pakistani officers told me they were amazed that Rumsfeld would not put even one thousand U.S. soldiers into battle. The ISI sent memos to Musharraf stating that the Americans would not stay long in Afghanistan and that the Taliban should be kept alive. Afghan leaders feared the worst. Karzai had lived in Quetta for a decade and understood how the ISI thought and worked. In late January 2002 he sent Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah to Washington with a strong warning, asking the Americans to stop Pakistan from helping the Taliban regroup. Abdullah said, “I know that the Taliban leaders are in Pakistan. Pakistan should take this opportunity to clean its house because those elements who supported the

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