Thu, Oct 11, 2001 page6

• Infiltration a key part of strategy

  SUBTERFUGE Cultivating Taliban defectors, promoting internal insurgency, and seeking to erode the government from within are all elements of the US war effort

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  In a country where treachery and intrigue have long been weapons of war as effective as the Kalashnikov and the Stinger missile, Jalil is a precious asset, the very type of operator whom the Western powers would kill for in their campaign to throttle Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

  Jalil is a spy for the Northern Alliance opposition and has just returned safely from a perilous sortie to Kabul behind the Taliban lines on a mission to sow disaffection and mutiny within the enemy ranks.

  It was his fifth clandestine outing to Kabul this year, the second since the World Trade Center was reduced to rubble. The information he brings back from the capital after posing as a refugee on his way out may be limited, but it is vital to Northern Alliance plans to storm the city and encourage an internal insurgency in Kabul to hasten the Taliban's collapse.

  "There is a serious danger. I could be caught and sent to the front line," said the sad-faced 50-year-old who agreed to meet at the office of his military commander, his head shrouded in a black and white headscarf.

  "Coming back I took cover as one of a group of refugees. I didn't talk to anyone. If anyone asked I said I was a trader. I had to go through the Taliban checkpoint. They took my money and my watch."

  Jalil spent three days in Kabul last week on the eve of the launch of the US bombing campaign, being spirited into the city at night by hillmen who charged US$150 to smuggle him across the mountain front line on the Salang heights north of Kabul.

  His mission was to contact and cultivate a Taliban commander who is a sleeping Northern Alliance agent, increasingly fearful for his life and keen to salvage whatever he can from the wreckage of a career serving the Taliban for years.

  "He was one of my officers when I was in charge of a brigade in the Kabul garrison," said General Abdul Basir, an alliance brigade commander and Jalil's boss. "He continued to keep in touch with me and I helped him when he was with the Taliban. I used to pay for his information. Now I don't even need to pay him any more."

  The wooing of the Kabul officer has gone on for a year, Jalil said. Jalil stayed with him for three nights in Kabul last week and is confident he will dance to the opposition's tune if and when the Northern Alliance band strikes up.

  "He keeps asking me too many questions, more than before, about what we will do when the bombing starts, what we will do, what he should do," Jalil said of the Kabul officer. "His mood has changed."

  The Kabul officer's brief, according to his handlers, is to take the 200 men under his command and arrest Pakistanis and Arabs, generally reckoned to be some of the Taliban's fiercest fighters, when given the signal to act. He has been promised a berth on the other side if he delivers.

  Insurgency

  In the broader scheme to topple the Taliban, the Kabul officer's role of betraying his masters is a small one. But cultivating defectors, promoting internal insurgency, and seeking to erode the Taliban from within are key elements in the US strategy and in the Northern Alliance's hopes to occupy a pivotal position once the dust has settled in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

  The Northern Alliance says 30 Taliban officers commanding 1,000 men have defected since the bombing began on Sunday and many more are "sleepers," kept in place in the Taliban but following opposition orders and ready to turn their weapons on the Taliban when the time is right.

  It is impossible to confirm the veracity of the Northern Alliance's spying prowess claims or the accuracy of the defection rate. But there is little doubt that both sides in the civil war are in regular touch across the front lines by walkie-talkie, via messengers, and through secret agents infiltrated into enemy territory.

  The history of Afghanistan's civil war for the past 12 years has been one of continuous duplicity, of shifting alliances of expediency achieved by greasing palms and promotions, fueled by grudges and double-dealing by warlords out to get the best for themselves and the armies of retainers they bring with them when they switch sides.

  General Basir's brigade is essentially an army of men from his native Salang region north of Kabul with strong ties to their home villages and their commander. It is the same across Afghanistan, with warlords commanding the loyalty of their home turf and dealing with their peers from other regions.

  "There have been many cases on both sides when commanders were exposed and arrested trying to contact the other side," says General Del Agha, Basir's chief of staff and himself a former spy and regional secret police chief.

  Two Taliban regional military chiefs were jailed six weeks ago after being caught negotiating with the opposition. Another senior Taliban officer has been in jail in Kandahar in the south for a year for similar offences.

  The ethnic Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum must be dizzy with the multiple side-switching he has performed over the past decade. He is currently on the side of the Northern Alliance, but no one knows for how long.

  Underhand tactics

  In the spying game, the Afghans, with their long history of being invaded and occupied by alien powers, are past masters at charming the occupier into a false sense of security before stabbing him in the back. Women and children were used routinely by the mujahidin guerrillas to spy on the Soviet occupation force in the 1980s and Northern Alliance officers say the tactic is still being applied against the Taliban.

  That is why women and girls cloaked head to toe in traditional dress going in and out of Kabul are now being searched by teenage girls working for the Taliban security service.

  The Americans are also waging a hearts-and-minds campaign, eager to foment insurgency and feed the Taliban's internal rot through propaganda leaflets, Voice of America radio broadcasts, airdrops of foods and medicines, and covert operations.

  Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, said on Monday that Washington was resorting to psychological warfare to undermine the Taliban and that US commandos had been sent into Afghanistan to "reach out" to Taliban opponents among tribal leaders in the regime's southern heartland and to encourage dissent in the Taliban ranks.

  "We are preparing an insurgency," Basir said. "We are facing about 15,000 Taliban fighters [in Kabul]. We can count on about 3 to 4,000 armed men taking part in a rebellion when the fighting starts."

  In addition to Jalil's recruited Kabul officer, the general said he regularly sent another agent across the lines to talk to another Kabul commander, an old schoolmate whom the general viewed as almost totally reliable. "His mission is to get close to senior Taliban figures, find out their whereabouts and hideouts, where they deploy their guns. I can rely on him 95 per cent. I've been in touch with him for five years."

  Jalil said that when in Kabul last week he drove around the city in his contact's car, keeping an eye out for Taliban troop movements and deployments, but that little was visible during the day since the Taliban's main military movements occurred after nightfall during the Kabul curfew from 9pm to 5am.

  "I've met the Kabul commander four or five times. My mission is just to meet him and give him his instructions. The link with him was weak to begin with, but it has got much stronger since Sept. 11," Jalil said. "He's afraid this [Taliban] system could collapse soon. He thinks that could happen when the war starts and he's afraid for his life."
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