This month the Taliban declared
the start of a Spring Offensive. This one is supposed to be different as
for the last six years. The Spring Offensive usually means five months
of the Taliban killing civilians and the security forces and foreign
troops killing lots of Taliban. This year the Taliban boasts that it
will be different, with fewer civilians and more Afghan police and
soldiers killed. So far it’s more of the same, with even more civilian
casualties from Taliban attacks. These civilian losses were up about 30
percent this year over last year. So far the Taliban have killed more
police, but have in turned suffered more losses themselves. It appears
that this year’s Spring Offensive will be as much of a flop as the last
six were.
Most Afghans ignore the Taliban and their talk of another
Spring Offensive. That’s because most of the Taliban activity occurs in
two (Kandahar and Helmand) of the 34 provinces. Some 40 percent of the
Taliban violence is in ten Kandahar and Helmand districts (out of 398 in
the entire country). Why that concentration of Taliban activity? It’s
because of the heroin. The Taliban put most of their effort into
protecting the districts where some 90 percent of the heroin in
Afghanistan is produced. The other areas cursed with Taliban presence
are ones that smuggling routes (to get the heroin to the outside world)
go through. The Taliban don’t like to talk about this and they terrorize
local media to stay away from it. International media avoid it as well,
but on the ground it’s all about drugs and the huge amount of cash they
provide for the drug gangs and their Taliban partners.
In the rest of Afghanistan people notice the differences since
the Taliban were driven out in late 2001. In early 2001 only a million
children were in school, all of them boys. Now there are eight million
in school, and 40 percent are girls. Back then there were only 10,000
phones in the country, all land lines in cities. Now there are 17
million cell phones, with access even in remote rural areas. Back then
less than ten percent of the population had access to any health care,
now 85 percent do and life expectancy is rising. The GDP and average
income has been increasing every year since 2002 and has more than
doubled on a per-person basis since the Taliban days. This has been an
unprecedented period of economic growth for Afghanistan. The drug trade
only benefits about ten percent of the population, mainly in those few
districts where the drugs are produced and moved to the border for
export. The Taliban, and some other Islamic terrorists (like the Haqqani
Network) survive only because Pakistan provides them with sanctuaries
and the drug gangs provide lots of cash to hire new gunmen each year to
replace the thousands who get killed. Young men still join the Taliban
because of the high unemployment in many rural areas and thousands of
years of tradition (once the crops are planted many men are free to go
raiding).
The battle is mainly between the Taliban and the Afghan
security forces. Foreign troops have largely withdrawn from combat and
their casualties are down over 70 percent compared to last year. Most
foreign troops deaths now come from accidents, or the occasional loss
while advising or training Afghans. The Afghans are not as efficient at
killing the Taliban, losing about one policeman or soldier for every two
Taliban killed. Foreign troops generally kill ten for every one they
lose. The security forces advantage is numbers, there are over 300,000
police and soldiers, which is more than ten times the size of the
Taliban force. In the areas where the Taliban are most active the
security forces only have four or five times as many men. This is
because the security forces are needed in the rest of the country to
deal with the endemic banditry, tribal feuds and high level of violence
that has been common in Afghanistan for centuries.
Over the last few years the security forces have been more
active, going out and finding the Taliban and attacking them. They do
this with the help of American UAV surveillance and intelligence troops
(with all their monitoring and analysis capabilities). Another important
U.S. contribution is air support (smart bombs and helicopter gunships).
How much of that will remain after most foreign troops leave by the end
of next year is still being negotiated. Without the air support and
intel assistance Afghan police and troops will suffer more casualties.
NATO is sending the Afghan Army more mortars and artillery, but these
weapons are not as accurate as smart bombs nor will it always be
available.
The intel aid is particularly useful in finding and capturing
or killing Taliban leaders. For that reason the Taliban are keen on
getting senior government officials (there are a lot of them) on the
drug gang payroll to not make an effort to keep any of those valuable
resources in Afghanistan after 2014. The Taliban and drug gangs also use
a lot of that cash to bribe police commanders, or individual cops to
assist in a specific attack. Corruption remains a more serious problem
in Afghanistan than violence and terrorism. Since reporting on
corruption makes for dull reading, more media attention is directed at
the Taliban violence (which is less than the total number of people
killed by the “normal” violence in Afghan society.)
While NATO has been bringing in supplies and equipment over
the NDN (Northern Distribution Network) for years, sending equipment out
of Afghanistan via the railroad links in the north has proved to be
more of a problem. That’s because the northern neighbors are trying to
prevent these shipments via Russia from being used to smuggle drugs. It
could also be a scam to extract some bribes out of NATO to go easy on
the inspections, which are severely limiting the amount of stuff that
can be shipped out via the north.
This northern route is the result of NATO and the U.S.
negotiating agreements with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan and Russia to move all sorts of supplies and equipment over
the
NDN.
Four years ago nearly all land movement of supplies came in via Pakistan. But that changed after
Pakistan
closed
its
border
to
NATO
supplies
in late 2011
26 because of a friendly fire incident on the Afghan border that left 24 Pakistani troops dead. The
plan
was
always
to
completely
replace
Pakistan,
but
that
has happened
sooner,
rather
than
later, at least when it comes to bringing stuff in.
Now Pakistan has to worry about losing some of the transport
business for Afghan civilian goods. That's a major industry in Pakistan,
because nearly all (save air freight) cargo enters and leaves
Afghanistan by truck. But now Afghanistan is building its first railroad
system, connecting it with the Central Asian rail network terminal on
the Uzbek border. Even with the longer distances, moving cargo would
eventually be competitive coming and going via rail through Central
Asia, compared to going via truck through Pakistan. The NDN makes for a
fundamental change in Afghan-Pakistan relations. Now Afghanistan can
look north for economic, cultural and political alliances, rather than
just with Pakistan and Iran, two countries that have not always been
kind to Afghanistan.
May 2, 2013: In the east (Nangarhar province) border police
fought their Pakistani counterparts and captured and burned down a
Pakistani border post. One Afghan policeman was killed and then was
hailed as a hero in nearby towns and cities. This violence was all about
an ongoing dispute about exactly where the international border is.
Recently Pakistan built some new border posts forward of previous ones
but still, according to Pakistan, on Pakistani territory. This has led
to shooting between Afghan and Pakistani border guards. There’s also a
tribal rivalry element to all this.
Most of the Afghan-Pakistani border is occupied by Pushtun
tribes. This frontier, still called the “Durand Line” (an impromptu,
pre-independence invention of British colonial authorities) was always
considered artificial by locals, because the line often went right
through Pushtun tribal territories. However, the Afghans are more
inclined to accept the Durand Line, and fight to maintain it. The
Pakistanis believe absolute control of the border is impossible, and
attempts to stop illegal crossings cause additional trouble (as
tribesmen do not like excessive attention at border crossing posts).
This recent violence is also linked to years of anger over Afghan
Taliban and other terrorists hiding out in Pakistan and Islamic
terrorists (fighting the Pakistani government) hiding out in
Afghanistan. This has led to regular Pakistani shelling of suspected
terrorist camps in Afghanistan, which often kills innocent (or
semi-innocent) Afghan civilians. The Afghans protest and the Pakistanis
refuse to halt the shelling and rocket fire.
May 1, 2013: The Taliban began this year’s Spring Offensive
by making several attacks on police, most of which failed. One roadside
bomb did kill three police, including a local commander. But in the next
48 hours the police struck back killing or capturing over a hundred
Taliban.
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