On September 28, exactly a day before the National Unity government marked its first year in office, residents of Kunduz city, in northern Afghanistan, woke up shell-shocked to find their overrun by the Taliban, their own leaders air-lifted to safety.
Three days later, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) may have recaptured the centre of Kunduz, but the Taliban’s lightning strike on this town was an intelligence failure of mammoth proportions, underscoring the inability of the already over-stretched ANSF in coming to the aid of the under-resourced provincial security forces. There may have also been a sinister collusion of powerful elements in Kunduz who blocked the deployment of ANSF from neighbouring provinces, and opened the doors for the Taliban to sweep into the city through virtually unmanned security posts, freeing all their men from prison.
Many worthies have expressed outrage and tried to score political points off each other. But as the chief of National Directorate of Security (NDS) and the acting minister of defence admitted, they had been forewarned but had failed to act.
The Taliban takeover of Kunduz city, short as it may have been, can only be the opening salvo as it demonstrates a significant shift — the Taliban moving its area of operations from the rural to the urban. Apart from underlining the un-preparedness of the military in repelling such attacks as well as the questionable role of the US and Nato, whose strategic partnership pact with the Afghan state could not save Kunduz, it also highlights the role played by local militia commanders, old power-brokers and warlords in the province who have a stake in the continuing chaos as that’s the only way they can remain relevant.
The takeover is the fruit of two years of planning by the Taliban with the aim of making north Afghanistan the main hub of their activities. Working with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Chechens and Arabs, who have been pushed out by the Pakistan Army from their decade-old sanctuaries in the tribal area of Waziristan, north of Afghanistan, serving as a gateway to Central Asia, is the new base for these regional-transnational and Afghan terror outfits. Critically, it does not border Pakistan, which gives Islamabad plausible deniability of any event that occur here. The ethnic mix in a province that borders Tajikistan and Uzbekistan also helps the multi-racial terrorists to blend in, and not stand out as they would have done elsewhere.
Kept on a tight leash by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) affiliates who drive the groups, the Taliban’s capture of Kunduz, using hundreds of IMU and IJU fighters, many of whom preferred to die fighting rather than risk capture and being handed back to their countries, was a masterstroke. Few noticed the creeping Talibanisation of the countryside leading into the cities, or the manner in which, bit by bit, they established themselves in rural sanctuaries on the outskirts of the provinces around Kunduz, Baghlan, Takhar and Mazar-i-Sharif. From there, they were moved into Kunduz itself, cutting Kunduz off by taking control of key transport corridors. On standby since April 2015, the terror cells were moved into position for the final assault on Id-ul-Adha.
Many believe that the man behind the Talibanisation of the north is Kunduz’s shadow Taliban governor Mullah Salaam, who briefly led the insurgency in Kunduz in 2009. Number one on the Coalition Forces’ 10 most wanted terrorists of the province and captured in 2010 during a joint operation by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency in Faisalabad, Pakistan, he was the Taliban and Pakistan’s deep asset. Released and tasked with resuming the command in northern Afghanistan in 2013, he has been crisscrossing the province, exploiting local grievances in the face of the government’s abysmal track record.
But Salaam was not working alone. Working under the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s executive council, and with the Pakistan military’s logistical and financial support, he has turned northern Afghanistan into a Taliban haven. Bringing in the LeT fighters for their knowledge of the region is a ploy of Pakistan’s Army, but it is the backdoor entry of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria through the non-Afghan terror outfits such as the IMU, IJU, Al Qaeda and LeT that the Pakistan Army has facilitated a far graver danger.
Not only is LeT’s renowned terrorist Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi pulling the strings, he is acting as the link between the Taliban and the tactically superior ISIS, and with Kunduz almost within his grasp, paving the way for the ISIS to expand operations into Central Asia. The Afghan Taliban may have no grand agenda beyond Afghanistan, but the same cannot be said about their patrons and affiliates who aim to establish an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia.
As Selig S. Harrison said while writing about the father of the Taliban, the former dictator of Pakistan, President Zia-ul Haq: “Gen. Zia spoke to me about expanding Pakistan’s sphere of influence to control Afghanistan, then Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and then Iran and Turkey… We have earned the right to have a very friendly regime in Kabul. We won’t permit it to be like it was before, with Indian and Soviet influence there and claims on our territory. It will be a real Islamic state, part of a pan-Islam revival, that will one day win over the Muslims in the Soviet Union, you will see.”
For anyone who hasn’t connected the dots, look at the timing of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s comments at the United Nations General Assembly and Army chief Raheel Sharif pushing for a revival of peace talks between the Afghan government and Afghan Taliban at the Munich Security Conference on September 30. Right after the Taliban overran Kunduz. Or look at the attempt to drive a wedge between the Afghans and the US over the bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz. Whoever called in the air strike did not have Afghanistan’s best interests at heart.
In Pakistan’s short-sighted use of Taliban in Afghanistan for its own strategic gains lies the danger of the ISIS getting access to the strategic province of Kunduz, and the no less significant neighbouring provinces of Baghlan, Mazar and Takhar. This must be stopped through a comprehensive and coherent strategy to ensure they stay secure and not turn into terror hotbeds.
The writer served as an adviser in Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate of Local Governance
