Thu, Sep 25, 2003 page5

• Taliban leaders alive and well in Pakistan

  COMEBACK TheTaliban forces and their al-Qaeda allies, once chased away by invading US forces, are returning to Afghanistan to wreak havoc and stir up insurgency

  • AP
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  Intercepted phone calls show Taliban commanders have been orchestrating deadly attacks here and in other parts of Afghanistan from a safe haven across the border in Pakistan, a senior Afghan intelligence official said.

  The resurgent Taliban forces who were chased from Afghanistan two years ago by the US-led war -- are getting protection from Islamic hardline politicians and rogue elements of Pakistani security, Afghan and Western officials charge.

  

  Members of the Pakistani Frontier Corps patrol the Pakistani-Afghan border at Chaman, 125km from the Balouchistan provincial capital of Quetta. The situation is tense as border security has been beefed up along the porous frontier, which Afghan officials say is easily traversed by Taliban operatives based in Pakistan.

  PHOTO: EPA

  President Hamid Karzai, in a speech Tuesday to the UN, said that from "cross-border militant infiltrations to hateful teachings at places disguised as madrassas (Islamic religious schools), terrorism continues to make inroads into the space of peace and prosperity."

  Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, has been on the front lines of the recent violence, and many residents say the local government and security officials have been unable or unwilling to end the insurgency.

  Former Taliban walk the streets of this hardscrabble town, hiding only behind a change of clothes. They boldly tried to assassinate the police chief last week and have turned the back roads into a gauntlet of fear for aid workers.

  Safe haven

  It was here in Ghazni province that four workers for a Danish charity were executed by Taliban rebels on Sept. 8; here where three Red Crescent workers met a similar fate in August. In Zabul province, 220km to the southwest, rebels battled for weeks through the deep gorges and craggy mountain peaks against an onslaught of American air power and more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers.

  A Sept. 8 order for Taliban fighters in Zabul to retreat during US bombing came in a satellite phone call from a commander in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, the senior Afghan official privy to sensitive intelligence said on condition of anonymity.

  A similar phone call was placed to Quetta in March by Taliban fighters who had stopped a Red Cross vehicle on a dusty road in Afghanistan's Helmand province. The voice on the other end of the phone was a senior Taliban fugitive commander, Mullah Dadullah, who gave the order to execute an El Salvadoran national, a survivor of the attack, the intelligence official said in a weekend interview.

  The brother of Baluchistan's health minister was arrested this month for alleged Taliban ties and accused of plotting to kill a relative of the governor of Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, which borders Baluchistan.

  "We have this impression that Quetta and surrounding areas are being used by hardcore Taliban forces," Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said in an interview in his Kabul office.

  Zalmai Rassoul, Afghanistan's national security adviser, told reporters the insurgency is being directed almost entirely from abroad -- with Pakistani religious schools teaching jihad, and officials failing to crack down.

  "When the Taliban was first defeated, they were on the run, but they have had time in Pakistan to get a rest and reorganize themselves," he said. "And now they are being incited and encouraged to come back to Afghanistan."

  Pakistani officials strongly deny that the Taliban are receiving sanctuary in their territory.

  "There is no truth to the allegations that Taliban have bases in Quetta to harm the interests of President Hamid Karzai's government," Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema said Tuesday.

  As head of the Interior Ministry's crisis unit, Cheema is in charge of cooperating with the US in the war on terrorism.

  Switching sides

  Pakistan was a strong supporter of the Taliban regime, but switched sides following the Sept. 11 attacks and has become a key ally of the US. Still, rogue elements of the military and intelligence services are believed to have maintained old allegiances.

  The sharp rise in attacks comes as the West scrambles to increase its commitment in the country, a change of heart that analysts complain may be too-little-too-late after two years of foot-dragging.

  US President George W. Bush earlier this month asked Congress for an additional US$800 million for Afghan reconstruction, and NATO last week began assessing whether to expand a 5,000-strong peacekeeping mission beyond the capital, Kabul.

  In Ghazni, Mohammed Chaos Aolya, the director of the Red Crescent Society here, said police were slow to react when he received an urgent phone call on Aug. 13 from a frantic worker injured in the Taliban attack.

  "They are all afraid to do anything," Aolya said. "The police didn't want to come with us to the area, so I myself went and brought the dead bodies back and tended to the wounded."

  Aolya said that anybody familiar with the province knows that "Taliban and al-Qaeda walk around freely during the day." He said Taliban supporters no longer wear the black turbans favored by the religious militia during its rule, but don't otherwise do much to hide.

  He also blamed the US for not doing enough to eradicate the group.

  "They have cut down the Taliban but they have left the roots remaining, and now this plague is growing back," he said, adding that nearly all shipments of blankets and food to the region have been halted since the attack on his workers.

  "Ghazni is a poor province. This is hurting every man, woman and child," he said.
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